CHAPTER III

THE OLD CURRICULUM

The modern rural school must have a broader and more practical curriculum than the old type of school. While it is a justifiable boast that our nation has a very low percentage of illiteracy, and while certain agricultural states where rural schools prevail have the lowest percentage of all, yet such a test for education will no longer serve. It is well worth while to have the advantages of education so well distributed that every citizen is able to read for himself concerning the world in which he lives; and this is a great advantage over former centuries. But bare literacy is too low a standard to be taken in our day as a measure of education. The opportunities are too great, and the demands too pressing for this to be adequate. Our quest must now go farther and ask to what extent education has prepared for the highest degree of efficiency. We must not be satisfied that most of our people possess a little education, but must make sure that they possess an education equal to the opportunities and demands of the age.

It should therefore be assumed that every rural boy and girl of to-day is to learn the simple elements of Mere literacy no reading and writing. It is a crime. longer a test against childhood and against civilization where it is otherwise. But we must next ask to what extent they have entered into the waiting heritage

of the world's great literature; do they like to read, and do they know what and how to read? How far are they acquainted with the great lessons of civilization as revealed in history, and as shown in the development of their own country? How familiar are they with the machinery of government of their country, state and nation, and how ready patriotically to share its responsibilities? How well do they know the fruitful fields of modern science, especially as it relates to their own lives and bears upon their line of work? Have they secure in their possession the easily available knowledge of the science of agriculture and stock raising which will enable them to make highly successful farmers? Do they understand the economic principles underlying the successful business management of the modern farm and home?

Do the girls know not only the routine of housekeeping as learned in their homes, but also the science that should guide in the selection and preparation of foods, and the hygienic care of their households? Have they had an opportunity to study the arts that will enable them to make their homes beautiful, as well as comfortable and healthful? Have both boys and girls trained their hands as well as their heads to work skilfully, so that they have not only learned the dignity of labor, but have established high standards of excellence for all that their hands find to do? Are they grounded in the laws underlying physical health, and do they prize the purity and health of their bodies above rubies and diamonds? Is their education not only sufficient in amount, but also of the right kind to prepare them for the real experiences that await them in the estate of manhood and womanhood on which they soon will enter?

In short, are these rural boys and girls equipped with an education that will give them a fair chance for successful living under the stress of twentieth-century conditions?

All these questions must in some way be affirmatively answered by the rural schools; for our farm children. Vital subjects lack- must be supplied with these fundaing in rural school mental aspects of education. But such questions can not be so answered by the old type of rural school with its meager and narrow course of study. Most of these things can not be learned in our rural schools, for they are not taught there. These lines of study have been excluded from the rural schools partly because the one-room school can not teach so many things at once; partly because the place which some of these studies should take is occupied by subjects that might well give way for more useful ones; and partly because the need for them has not been fully realized.

How many rural schools still teach essentially what the parents of the present generation studied in their Old standards rural school-days! Who of us can still prevail forget those early school experiences! First we began on our "letters," our spelling and numbers. We soon advanced to the dignity of reading and arithmetic, to which later geography, grammar, physiology and a small text in history were added. But the narrow and futile emptiness of the grind! We went over the First Reader, and then over it again, until we knew it by heart.-"Do we go up? We do go up. Will he go up? He will go up." These and such like striking tales were our unvarying mental diet day after day for a whole year of reading. Then we attacked the Second

Reader after the same fashion, and proceeded to wear it out, both literally and figuratively, as we had done with its predecessor. So we advanced to the wonderful Third Reader and, if we continued in school beyond this grade, to the fourth, or finally, even to the fifth of the series. We read them all through from beginning to end. We reviewed them. Then we read them by selections made by the class; finally, by selections made by the teacher. Thus for eight mortal years our thought and imagination were confined within the limits of a few pitiful little collections of stories which we read threadbare, and finally exhausted, while all this time a great storehouse full of beautiful things to read was waiting ready at hand. If only some one had unlocked the door for us, who can tell how much richer and more fruitful our lives might have been! Why were we not allowed to explore these rich literary fields, instead of being compelled thus to mark time at their entrance?

With like results we spent golden hours in grinding out the senseless tangles of impossible mathematical problems never to be met outside the cov

Lack of practical value of studies

ers of our dog-eared arithmetics, while at the same time we would have been unable to solve the simplest problems of home or shop or farm. How we puzzled our small heads over the mysteries of partial payments, especially arranged for the torment of the small boy; over all sorts of discounts never used in business; over profit and loss under conditions that would astonish merchant or banker; over compound proportion of truly appalling proportions; over the reduction of all but irreducible fractions; or over problems of imaginary hounds chasing imaginary hares for so many leaps of so many improbable lengths for such and such a distance,