PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS.

THE RURAL SCHOOL PROBLEM.

BY HON. HENRY RAAB, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF ILLINOIS.

When I promised to present at this meeting a "paper" on the "Rural School Problem I felt conscious that I should not be able to solve this problem; but in the conviction that everything that may help to bring this problem nearer its solution will be meritorious, I undertook to offer a contribution to that end. And the improvement of the rural schools is a task in which every lover of his country and his race may profitably engage. Our city schools, in fact all our schools, do need the thought and work of the best talent, but our social and financial conditions rest more heavily upon the schools of the country, and naturally hinder their growth and prosperity. Where I quote statistics I can give them best for my own State, Illinois, but I believe that, except the former slave States and those recently admitted into the Union, Illinois is a fair average representative of the condition of the schools in the American Commonwealth. The superior or inferior features of the school laws of the different States do not affect the conditions of the graded or ungraded schools in such a manner as to come under consideration here. And what I am able to say about the school laws of my own State, namely, that the people under these laws have the power to make their schools good, provided they will put enough money into them and give them sufficient care and attention, is equally true of the other States. The machinery of administration in some States may not be quite perfect and the application of a little oil in its different parts might prevent friction, yet one thing the school laws of all the States permit the people to do: to employ competent teachers, to giving them permanent positions, and to pay them living salaries. The last two named things, especially, will secure the first, the desideratum in all schools, competent, well-prepared teachers, who love their calling and are proud of their work. For, with the most glorious enactments, the most spacious and well arranged school buildings, the most comfortable furniture, the best text-books and the most ingenious apparatus and contrivances, schools without good teachers are like a manufacturing establishment without the propelling power.

After these prefatory remarks you will at once see where I stand and what I consider the solution of the problem mentioned; yet there are other factors, which enter into the problem, and which have to be discussed. Though it seems scarcely necessary in this assembly of enlightened schoolmen to define what a rural school is, I make free to state, it is a school which is taught by one teacher and in which all ages from six years to majority are represented; a school which is mostly kept open from five to seven months in the year; a school situated all alone in the country and generally more than forty rods from any human habitation. tinguished from the graded school, which is situated in a village, town, or city, and is divided into grades according to the attainments of the children, and is supervised by a principal or superintendent, and of which each grade is taught by a different teacher. I very much regret that, for comparison's sake, this distinction does not extend further back than 1880 in the school reports of Illinois, and the numbers for 1880 and 1890 only are here given. Of a total of 704,041 pupils enrolled in 1880, 266,831 were enrolled in graded schools and 437,220 in ungraded schools; in per cent., about 38 of the whole number in graded and 62 in the ungraded schools. The graded schools were taught by 4,908 teachers, or 22 per cent. of all the teachers in the State; the ungraded by 17,340 teachers, or 78 per cent. of all the teachers in the State. Now mark how these figures are changed, ten years later, in 1890: Of a total of 778,319 children, 400,159, or 51 per cent., are enrolled in the graded; 378,160, or 49 per cent., are enrolled in the ungraded schools; of a total of 23,164 teachers, 8,462, or 36 per cent., were employed in the graded, and 14,702, or 63 per cent., in the ungraded schools. The average number of children taught by one teacher was 47 in the graded and 26 in the ungraded schools; the average length of term in the graded schools was 8.6, in the ungraded 7.2 months; the cost of tuition per capita on the enrollment was $15.43 in the former and $13.25 in the latter per year, or to reduce it to an equality, $1.80 and 1.84, respectively, per month.

What do these figures teach? In the first place it is most conclusively shown that the number of children instructed in rural schools is constantly diminishing; that the cost of tuition in rural schools is higher by a fraction than that in graded schools, owing to the smaller number of pupils intrusted to the teacher in the former compared with that of the latter, and that the salaries paid in rural schools are much smaller than those paid in the graded schools. Were the salaries paid in the country in a measure equal to those paid in towns and cities, the cost of tuition would be about 100 per cent. higher. And what a loss of human energy, when 51 per cent. of the children are taught by 36 per cent. of the teachers, in the graded schools, and 49 per cent. of the children åre taught by 63 per cent. of the teachers, in the ungraded schools.

I suppose the drift of population into the cities, instead of diminishing,

children instructed in The labor-saving ma

will increase in the future, and the number of rural schools will proportionately diminish, too. chines in agriculture have lessened the number of laborers on farms, and the constant growth of our large cities has correspondingly drawn more men to those centers of population.

But let us look first at the rural school, its grounds, building, surroundings, outhouses, drainage, water-supply, furniture, apparatus, and teachers. The picture that I have to draw has a few bright spots. There are rural districts where the culture and sentiment of the people demand good houses, beautiful surroundings, needful apparatus and contrivances, and comfortable furniture, and where the directors have the good sense to seek competent teachers and, when they have found such, to keep them by paying living salaries and sustaining them in their laudable efforts to instruct and educate the children of the district. Such bright spots, however, are the minority; the daubs and blotches, gray in gray, are far more numerous. In many instances the school grounds are bare, the fences torn down and neglected, no shade trees nor flowering shrubs, coal bin open to the depredations of the tramps, outhouses unclean and offensive, no walks nor well, a rectangular, tasteless house, looking more like a barn than a building for human beings to live in. The gable-ends without any windows, the door in one of them, and three windows in each of the long side-walls. The provisions for healthy light, one of the first requisites of a schoolhouse, are totally ignored. The door opens directly into the schoolroom, where, besides the furniture, clothing and dinner pails, and in winter time, sleds and skates and all sorts of things, have to be kept during school hours. (It seems impossible to keep the air in such a room in a condition fit to breathe.) The stove, oftentimes rickety so that it is constantly endangering the lives of the children, overheated in wintertime, causing those that sit near it to roast, while those in the remote corners are shivering with cold; the walls dingy and without plaster in some places, the ceiling black with smoke, the floor unswept, the windows covered with film; such is often the place into which the rural population sends its children. Without sound blackboards, Without sound blackboards, without maps and charts, without globe, reference books or supplies, the teacher is compelled to "make bricks without straw."

Now, all this would not be so bad if care were taken to procure good teachers, those agents who can awaken the minds of the children and lead them to culture and humanity. But what is the practice? The schoolyear is divided into a fall, a winter, and a spring term. During the winter term, when the work on the farm does not require their presence at home and the larger boys can attend school, a strong, experienced (?) teacher, sometimes a man, is hired; in fall and spring, when only younger children attend, a young, cheap teacher of little experience, generally a woman, is considered good enough for that primary work. What, under such cir

cumstances, the results must be, needs no comment. If anything is done at all, the teacher can convey some little literary, textbook knowledge; government and moral training receive very scanty attention. Yet, even where the school year is not divided into terms and the teacher is employed for the entire year, from five to eight months, cheapness is the condition on which he or she is hired. That "poor teaching, poor pay" go hand in hand, needs no proof. And where does our supply of teachers come from? When a boy or girl, mostly the latter, has "fagged through ” the country school as it is, and has imbibed sufficient textbook knowledge to pass the county superintendent's examination and is of the minimum age at which she is by law permitted to engage in teaching, she goes out in search of a school, and hires to the district at the closest salary they can agree upon. In the name of humanity, I ask, what preparation, what training, have these young people for the responsible office which they are to fill? Do not tell me that "docendo discimus," that by teaching we learn, and that the desire to teach is inherent in man. Like the desire to teach, the desire to heal is inherent in man; yet do you, for this desire, employ every man as your physician? Do you not expect of the one who is to take charge of your body that he undergo a rigid training in a medical college, hearing lectures and dissecting bodies, studying in hospitals and at the bedside, before you allow him to apply the scalpel or to administer physic? Yet, in teaching, no such preparation is deemed essential; the desire to teach stands for the preparation and ability to teach. It is true many have become teachers in the course of years after many sad failures, but the truth is also that only few, as teachers, survive this time of trial and experiment. The average life of the teacher in Illinois in '84 was as follows: In graded schools, men 81.5 months, women 59.5 months; in ungraded schools, men 34.5 months, and women 21.5 months. Or in other words, men in ungraded schools taught almost five years and women about three years. No one will contend that five or three years, respectively, are sufficient time for acquiring experience in teaching, even for teachers who have before had professional training in normal schools.

Since the average experience of the teaching force of one entire State is of so short duration, the graded schools have another advantage over the rural schools, that of supervision. Where in towns and villages more than one teacher is employed, generally the more experienced one is made principal, and to that one the subordinate teachers look for guidance, aid and support, for counsel and admonition in questions of government and instruction. In cities some person or persons are appointed simply for this work. But in the rural schools the young teacher has for days, nay, weeks and months, no one to look after him or her, if a disgruntled parent does not come around to "look after things." The county superintendent would gladly do more in this direction, but the great number of schools and their distance from one another forbid that officer from