Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/493

Rh schools are able to attract and to hold a better teaching force, not only because of higher salaries, but because of better living and social opportunities.

However, while it is possible to secure for consolidated schools trained teachers who are able to carry out a course of study such as is found in our city schools, at the present time there is a dearth of teachers who know anything about the country schools or who have been trained for the special purpose of teaching in these schools. Normal schools fulfill but half their mission if they neglect the rural schools. They are fast waking up and endeavoring to supply the need, as is evidenced by the fact that nearly all the 1912 circulars contain offers of work in agriculture and instruction for rural teachers. Terre Haute, Macomb, Kirksville, Hays and a few other western normals have established model rural training schools. Certainly normal schools and agricultural colleges should keep in touch with country schools through systematic visitation, and this is being done in some states. When Minnesota offered grants for efficient rural school work she wisely offered bonuses to higher institutions for the establishment of departments of manual training and agriculture. Not only normal, but high schools and some fifty others come under this provision. A Minnesota educator writes that some of this work is being wretchedly done and the money wasted, but it must be borne in mind that the pedagogy of the rural school is still in its infancy and blunders are bound to be made. Wisconsin has a system of county training classes, and other states have established such classes in connection with high schools, but what should be the character of the rural school curriculum is still very problematic. At the present time there is a very strong feeling that nature study, school gardening, elementary agriculture, domestic science and manual training should be a vital part of the country school curriculum. In Europe the school garden originated with the rural school, and as early as 1814 it was to be found in Germany. Practically all northern European countries with the exception of England require school gardening or elementary agriculture to be taught in the country schools. Certainly a policy that has been pursued for so many years in industrial Europe merits attention here. In this country, on the contrary, the school garden movement developed in the city. At the present time about ten states require elementary agriculture to be taught in the rural schools, and teachers to pass examinations in the subject. These states are mostly in the south.

It would seem that the establishment of rural school libraries would have been one of the earliest and easiest steps to have been taken for the betterment of these schools, but practically little has been accomplished. Few York boasts of a library for every school. Ohio has a large traveling one. Minnesota encourages the establishment of libraries by the