Charlevoix county herald. (East Jordan, Mich.) 189?-1953, 1920-03-26

4
used in transportation. Glass Z
schools also stand a good chance o
reaching requirements of the Smith
Hughs law in teaching agricultur,
throughout the entire year Undel
this law they may receive five or si,
hundred dollars year of fedora
| money. Last year the East Jordan
schools received nine hundred dol
| lars under this act.
Everyone will agree that the func
tion of the schools is to fit children
for the needs of life. We agree also
| in our opirion that vocational train
| ing is necessary to train for the
| needs of life. Whether boy is in
town or on the farm, he needs to
learn to use his hands as well as his
head. He should know how to make
a cultivator or a screen door, and
do his work well. There is no reason
why a child, who is a future wife
and mother, should not learn at
school how to draft patterns and
plan her daily meals. The home is
busy place and the mother as well
as the father would frequently do the
work twice than to take time to teach
all the little things which they are
paying to have done in the schools.
But is this possible in the rural
schools as they are under the one.
room plan? There are 60 one and
two room schools in Charlevoix coun.
ty. The average is seven grades and
22 pupils per school. There are from
2 to in a class and some times only
one. The teacher has from twenty
five to thirty-five classes daily.
Wilson township has the usual kind
of school programs. Alton teacher
has q classes and in four of her
classes she hears more than one
grade at once. She has recitations a.
the time and when she answers ques-
tions she has to take time from the
limited recitation periods. She gives
fifteen minutes each to four of her
classes and the rest only ten minutes.
You may well imagine that she bare
ly hears the lessons and | can assure
you that she wastes no time. If a.
child has four classes he thus recites,
and gets help directly from the teach
er only forty minutes in an entire day.
But Miss Keller is even so more for
tunate than many other teachers for
she has no fifth and no sevent
grade. The teacher in the Brintnal,
school district has "a classes, Miss
Cook in the Knop school has 30 class
es and the Deer Lake teacher has 2.
classes.
Because it is the hardest kind of
teaching, we can not keep out teach
ers. We have to take beginners and
because trained teachers can pick
their positions. AS soon as our be-
ginners get start they too are indie
pendent and leave us. We have thi,
year sixty teachers in the rural
schools. rs of these were not teach.
ing last year, and the last day of
school in 1920 found 81 out of sc who
mad not taught the preceding year
The rural school teacher average |
less than three years of experience in
the one room school, We lost to |
the towns where the girls can do bet
ter work in fewer classes, receive |
more money and have companion
teachers for social and professional |
hours.
In this county forty could do the
work that the sixty are doing and
nave only one or two grades apiece,
40 better work because of improved |
conditions, work out their own prob
lems, and train for the grades for
winch they are by nature best adapt
ed.
Grade work could thus be improved
In consolidated school and we could
easily find room in our new pro-
grams for manual arts, as seen at tho
county fair, for domestic science and
practical agriculture.
IL seems that boys and girls of the
country are entitled to just as good a
;hance In every way as the city chiI
lren is there any reason why. your
children should have to leave home
~ critical period, board among
strangers, in order to attend high
school? In the upper peninsula amid
storms and drifts such as we have
known only this winter, the high
school students ride back and forth
with the grade children, and are home
every night straight through their
nigh school life. They belong to
heir glee clubs, have their basket
oall teams, their parties, and other
features of their high school life but
,hey are home to talk things over
with father and mother throughout
he entire four years.
TO date in this county the country
have never had an equal op-
Dortunity with city children either in
chances of making good or in attend.
ng high school. There are in this
county 1852 children of school age
n rural districts. In graded districts
here are 266. and in the three cities
$3.50. or these SS country children
ire attending high school, 23 from
ne two small villages, and 1858 from
cff 90 L