Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/184

180 text-books they used. These books, in general, are quite in a foreign tongue. They possess literary value enough; the arithmetics contain an abundance of problems for training in railroading, manufacturing, brokerage, banking, insurance, the grocery business, what not, but only now and then an example on surveying, or measuring wood, and nothing whatever on mechanics and agriculture. The vocabulary contains some words that are in use in the district, but not the terminology in which the community is thinking and exploiting its hopes and fears, its ambitions and ideals, especially its practical life.

A light-keeper on one of the Maine islands, years ago, as I landed from a lobster smack to teach the winter school, said to me: "I am glad to see somebody who can talk something besides lobsters and mackerel." This island was engaged in those industries, and had one of the largest fleets along the shore, and was becoming a prosperous community. Naturally they talked "mackerel." In the schools, however, mackerel and lobsters were tabooed. They used the common text-books, containing about everything except what nine tenths of the pupils needed most to learn. I tried to obviate this omission by making problems directly related to their home industries, by teaching something about the resources of the ocean, the habits of its denizens, and kindred subjects, but to no purpose, for, immediately, I was overwhelmed with curt notes from irate mothers, saying: "We get enough talk about mackerel and lobsters' at home, without having it taken into the schools. Our men talk 'mackerel' all day and half the night, and we can't stand it to have the children take it up." Yet I had taken up the theme in a very different way, trying to cast about it enough of science and romance to take away the odors of familiarity, but they would have 7 none of it. Fathers said to their boys: "Don't follow the sea. Its a dog's life." Mothers taught their girls to seek life in the larger towns and cities. Anything but the life by which they were winning their bread. They discouraged the hope of finding a larger life in their island wealth and the resources of the surrounding sea, and sent their boys and girls to the city.

The rural communities hitherto failing to row their weight in the economics of the world, now finding themselves dropping astern, are entering complaint of unfair treatment in the social and industrial distribution. This however may be a hopeful sign, for men are thus compelled to turn their attention to the conditions underlying the situation. In such an examination they can not fail to discover that there is great waste in these country districts, not only of land, but more striking and important, great waste of human energy. The girls and boys are not educated. The rural community has never made a just estimate of human values. Its values are in land and cattle, boys and girls are a kind of necessary nuisance. At the most, after twelve or fourteen years of age, they are left to train themselves. The community has never been