A Stake in the Land Part 20

Reverend Kuizinga of the Dutch colony at Holland, Michigan, stated that in the backwoods parts of the colony, in purely rural districts, the school activities ought to be more efficient than they are; certain schools might be consolidated so as to make fewer grades for one teacher, teachers' salaries must be increased, and the program for teaching citizens.h.i.+p broadened.

A leader of an Italian colony at Canastota, New York, stated that the Italian parents appreciate the schooling of their children, who attend the American public schools, speak English among themselves, and prefer the American to the Italian ways of life. In regard to the same colony, the county school superintendent said that the Italian children attend school fairly regularly, are able pupils, and excel American children in their studies.

There is at least one school district in the same colony which has a defective one-teacher school, which the writer chanced to visit. The trustee of the school, an American woman, married to an unnaturalized Italian settler, said that she was worried about getting a school-teacher for next year, as the county pays only $17 a week. Last year it paid $15, and that was an increase of $3 over the former salary.

She thought the county might possibly pay $20 this year if she could not get anyone for less. The people did not like the teacher they had last year--they thought she did not know enough. There are now seventy-three children of school age, but there were only twenty-six before, and the schoolhouse is only large enough for twenty-six. The building is very small, oblong in shape, with a small part.i.tion at one end for cloakroom and entrance. The school board voted $250 for enlarging the building and taking down the part.i.tion, but the trustee was certain that this would not be done for that small sum, as "lumber is so high, and the carpenter wants something." The building needed painting and a number of the windows were broken The woman said that last year many children of school age worked instead of going to school, as there was n.o.body to force them to go. Now that she was trustee, she said, she would see that everybody went.

GROWTH OF THE CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL

The defects of the one-teacher school have led to the consolidation movement which is rapidly developing throughout the country. The Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Dakota reported in 1916 that the consolidated school was becoming more and more the school of the rural districts and he recommended liberal state aid to these schools. There were at that time 123 "open country" consolidated schools in the state and 210 town consolidated schools, the latter being in reality rural schools.

One county superintendent reported that in the last two years a number of districts had voted to consolidate their schools; another said that 40 per cent of the pupils were attending consolidated schools. The Rural School Commissioner of Minnesota stated that consolidation has a very promising growth in the state; that 210 districts have been organized, half of which were established during the two years ending in 1916. And so the story goes in each state that has a largely rural population.

There is some opposition to this movement by parents who live farthest from a proposed consolidated school, because of the distance and inability to provide children with hot lunches. But this opposition is easily overcome by the provision of public transportation facilities for the children and by serving hot lunches at the schoolhouses. Some opposition comes from the landowners in the neighborhood of a one-teacher school which has to be closed on account of consolidation.

Their fear that there will be a lowering of land values is baseless, as the settlers in that section get much better school accommodations through consolidation than they had before.

Advantages of the consolidated school over the one-teacher school are obvious. It makes possible a better division of time in recitation and study. The teaching is more efficient on account of specialization and a better and more stable teaching staff.

In the office of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, North Dakota, the writer found the following statements in the reports of various county superintendents for 1916.[34]

Barnes County:

The past two years have been marked by the number of districts that have voted to consolidate their schools. Five towns.h.i.+p consolidated schools have been built in the open country. Each of these buildings has four schoolrooms, a good-sized gymnasium, an auditorium with a stage, domestic-science room, and a manual-training room. They are modern buildings in every respect, steam heated, water system for drinking fountains and toilets. One six-room village consolidated school and one open country two-room school have also been completed. They are also modern buildings. In these schools the country child has equal opportunities with the city child. These schoolhouses are used as centers for the social life of the neighborhood and are proving most successful.

Benson County:

Several districts during the past two years have consolidated. We believe these schools are demonstrating their superiority over one-room schools at least in the way of graduating pupils from the eighth grade. Ten schools operating as consolidated schools graduated as many farm boys and girls as did nearly eighty one-room schools, during the past year.

In connection with practically every consolidated school is some form of community or farmer's club.... Especially during the past year much was done through these agencies for the promotion of rural life, social and educational. The consolidated school princ.i.p.al, with his faculty, is experiencing a new and enlarged obligation and opportunity.

Bowman County:

Considerable work for consolidation has been done from this office.

Sixteen public meetings have been held, and the proposition of consolidation thoroughly discussed with more than twelve hundred of our people. Through this system of education the movement is finding favor with our people, and it will be only a short time before more than half of this county is consolidated.

McHenry County:

We have three purely country consolidated schools, each serving a towns.h.i.+p, and from our experience here we have come to the conclusion that districts of this kind are not a success with bus transportation unless they have an a.s.sessed valuation of $175,000 or more. Part of the burden of transportation must be borne by parents of the children attending school. With the family transportation system these schools are working out very well, being able to employ three teachers and run nine months of school per year without exceeding the maximum tax levy.

Eighteen consolidated and graded schools were in operation in the county last year, and 40.2 per cent of all the children in the county are now enjoying graded school facilities.... McHenry is a purely agricultural county.

Everywhere the consolidated school has been successful and has shown far greater efficiency than the scattered one-teacher schools. This gives promise that the consolidated rural school will in a few years prevail.

THE RURAL SCHOOL-TEACHER

In a number of states visited by the writer the prevailing type of rural school-teacher was a girl of from eighteen to twenty years of age. That the country school-teacher is an astonis.h.i.+ngly young person is attested by all reports on the subject. An educational survey of South Dakota[35]

showed that the largest group of rural teachers range between nineteen and twenty-five years of age; twenty-nine teachers were under seventeen years of age, and fifty-three were just seventeen.

Most of the teachers about whom the writer collected information were serving their first or second year. Only a few had been teaching for three or more years. According to the above survey of South Dakota, 31 per cent of the rural teachers were teaching their first school, and only 9.6 per cent had taught as many as four schools. Few teachers, the report showed, have taught more than one or two years in a school, while the average teaching life of a rural teacher is three and three quarters school years. The instability of the profession is so great that it is necessary for the state of South Dakota to recruit annually about one third of its total teaching force of 7,000.

An investigation made by the United States Bureau of Education in 1915 covering all sections of the country found that the number of school years taught by the average rural teacher was six and one half, but stated that the large majority of these teachers fell far below the average. The average time spent by a teacher in one community is extremely brief; the investigation showed that it is less than two school years, or considerably less than one calendar year. Even this average is considered a high one for the majority of the teachers.

Equally illuminating figures on this point are contributed by the state of Wisconsin. The state Superintendent of Education reports as follows:

TABLE VII

LENGTH OF TEACHING SERVICE IN WISCONSIN RURAL SCHOOLS, 1915-16[36]

================================================== |Teaching Services| Total Teaching Period | in Locality | Service ----------------+-----------------+--------------- 1 year or less | 4,136 | 1,421 2 years | 1,650 | 1,545 3 years | 508 | 1,093 4 years | 187 | 738 5 years | 83 | 517 6 years and over| 66 | 1,316 ----------------+-----------------+--------------- Total | 6,630 | 6,630 ==================================================

A number of the teachers that the writer interviewed had only grammar-school education, with a year or two of high school. Only a few had full high-school training. In general the training which qualifies the rural teacher for his work is appallingly slight. Of the rural teachers in South Dakota covered by the survey mentioned, 58.3 per cent had completed a four-year high-school course; 45.8 per cent reported attendance at professional schools; 54.2 per cent became teachers by taking examinations instead of by going through normal schools and colleges of education.

The investigation of the United States Bureau of Education referred to above brings out the striking fact that about one third of the rural teachers have had no professional preparation whatever, not even summer courses or other short courses. It was discovered that 4 per cent of them had less than eight years of elementary training, and that 45 per cent of the rural teachers have completed four years of high-school work, but have not done more.

A bulletin of the United States Bureau of Education[37] presents the following facts regarding the training of rural school-teachers: The average rural school-teacher remains in the teaching profession less than four school years of 140 days each. This means a complete turn-over of teachers every four years, or that about 87,500 new teachers must be provided annually. During the school year ending 1915 the normal schools graduated 21,944 students. It is quite certain that most of these found positions in towns and cities, as did most of those graduating from schools of education in universities and colleges. Therefore the great majority of the 87,500 new teachers needed annually for the rural schools must go to their work professionally unprepared.

Extracts from the reports of county superintendents in various states show the same low level of qualifications; one reports that nearly 40 per cent of his teachers have been untrained and inexperienced. The following quotations are taken almost at random from the 1916 reports of county superintendents filed in the office of the state Superintendent of Public Education of North Dakota,[38] and might be duplicated by reports from almost any other state having a largely rural population.

Bowman County:

During the last two years (1914 and 1915) nearly 40 per cent of our teachers have been untrained and inexperienced. We are trying to convince our school boards that training for teaching is just as essential as training for any other vocation in life, and that the trained teacher is worth more and should receive more pay than the untrained, and that the sooner we engage trained teachers for our schools the sooner we will have better schools.

Logan County:

There is a lack of permanency in the teaching force (due to lack of resident teachers--over 90 per cent are non-residents), and this has many disadvantages. Too many of the rural teachers are not in sympathy with the rural conditions in this county.

The teachers in the rural districts, especially in the backwoods places, impressed the writer as having little influence upon the surrounding community, particularly in cases where the community was composed solely of immigrants. The immigrants seem not to take the teacher seriously. A number of them said that they do not go for any practical advice to the school-teacher, believing that such a young girl knows little. In personal interviews the teachers said that they are doing some Americanization work by explaining to the children certain big historical events in the country's life, such as Was.h.i.+ngton's crossing of the Delaware, the battle of Bunker Hill, the liberation of the negroes. Their understanding of the difference between the American democracy and the European autocratic and aristocratic governments seemed to be vague. Even their knowledge of American history was mechanical rather than conscious or interpretative. In general, the writer was impressed that teachers of this type--young girls--themselves need further development before they can do effective educational work in the schools, not to speak of the community.

The teachers themselves complained of low salaries, difficulties in handling boys, especially immigrant boys who come from big cities. There are hards.h.i.+ps in finding suitable living quarters and board, particularly in new immigrant colonies where the people live in shanty-like shelters and continue to eat pork and sauerkraut, sour milk, herring, onions, etc. One teacher, a girl about nineteen, told the writer that she could find an American farm only at a distance of five miles from the school and that she had a hard time to reach the school from her boarding place in the winter snows and blizzards.

Not one of the teachers interviewed expected to make teaching a lifetime profession. They all looked upon their present position as only a stepping-stone to a better life. They hoped either to continue study and go through college, or to take up skilled office work, such as that of a stenographer or bookkeeper.

The average salaries of rural teachers are given in the reports of various state superintendents as follows:

Average monthly salary of teachers in rural schools in North Dakota:[39]

Year ended June 30, 1914 $53.25 Year ended June 30, 1915 54.92

Average monthly wages of teachers in rural districts in South Dakota:[40]

Year ended June 30, 1915 $53.75 Year ended June 80, 1916 55.04

Average monthly salary of teachers in Nebraska, year ended July, 1916:[41]

Males $73.21 Females 50.94

Average monthly wages of teachers in rural districts in Minnesota, 1916:[42]