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What is an efficient rural school? What may we expect such a school to accomplish? In general, I believe that a rural school should accomplish exactly what any first-class elementary school should accomplish. The boys and giris from the farm homes have the same desires, the same rights, and the same abilities that the boys and girls from villages and cities have, and many of them will fill the same or similar stations in life.

There should be very little difference in subject matter taught in rural or village and city schools. Since we do not believe that all children educated in the rural schools should necessarily stay on the farms, and since most of the subject matter proper to be taught in elementary schools is of exactly the same value to people living in the country as to those living in villages and cities there is little reason for turning them into trade schools for educating children to be farmers and farmers' wives. Can any good reason be given why reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, geography, history, hygiene, music, drawing, and the manual and domestic arts are of greater value to city children than to those living in the country? Do they not form as good a foundation for specialization later on in things pertaining to the farming industry as for any other business or profession?

Subjects in all schools should be taught in the terms of the child's environment, and the means of approach will in some instances be very different in the rural school from that which would be best in the village school. The country has very great advantages for teaching much of the elementary school work. The rural school offers the very best of opportunities for direct teaching. What excellent subjects for oral or written composition can be found on every hand in the country! Much of the practical side of the subject of agriculture and of the advantages of country life might be taught in the language class. What excellent problems for work in arithmetic are afforded by the business of the farm. What an important part farming, farm products, and farmers themselves have played in history.

It is true that enthusiasts of unusual personalities have accomplished wonders through agricultural rural schools. They have wrought near miracles in the communities in which they have worked. Work of this kind, however, is too re

mote a possibility for many districts to depend upon such methods as a general means of improving our rural schools. The great problem is to make the necessary adjustments to teach the regular subjects well rather than to make any great change in subject matter.

The first requisite for increasing the efficiency of the rural schools is faith in their possibilities. We must never allow ourselves to think that a rural school cannot do just as much for its pupils as is possible in any other school. How many people would have made a failure of their lives had it not been for a few people that believed in them.

Not only is it necessary for us to believe in rural schools, but by our enthusiasm and faith make others believe in them. It is not difficult to believe in the efficacy of rural schools, for there are rural schools that are as nearly perfect as schools can be made.

It is true that there are disadvantages in rural school work, but there are advantages as well. Among the disadvantages are isolation for the teacher, inferior janitor service, difficulty of securing good boarding places, multiplicity of grades, and in many instances very meagre salaries. All of these, even the isolation of the teacher, are remediable. The teacher can do very much to remedy these conditions. The greatest thing that she can do is to make herself so useful to the community that the people will come to her assistance and do their part to better these conditions. It is seldom that a teacher who has proven herself unusually valuable to a community has difficulty in getting a good home, opportunities to get about, a satisfactory solution of the janitor question, combinations in her program to overcome the disadvantages of the multiplicity of grades, and an advance in her salary in due time. Some of the advantages of rural schools are independence of the teacher, the small number of pupils, the teacher's standing in the community, and the opportunity to As these will teach many subjects first hand. be discussed under other headings later, I will not consider them further at present.

There are two general types of rural schools, each having its advantages and disadvantages. They are the consolidated and the one-room. schools. Many advocate the the consolidated school, and with good reasons, as the solution of the entire problem, but consolidation is at

best only a partial solution, for there are many objections and difficulties in the way of general

consolidation.

The one-room school possesses some merits that the consolidated schools can never possess. There is a community pride in a school located near its patrons that is often a great help to the schools as well as to the community. The teachers can meet the parents in their homes as they could not do in communities served by consolidated schools. The children do not have to ride several miles night and morning, making in some instances very long days. And so we might go on and enumerate other advantages. The consolidated school has the same advantages that town and city schools have.

There are many factors that contribute to make the rural school effective, but the one factor that is above all others in importance is the teacher. The greatest problem in rural school work is to get good teachers who realize the great opportunities that are theirs to do a very interesting and much needed work. With almost any kind of a building and the most meagre equipment, any teacher who has ordinary ability coupled with that high sense of duty which should fill the hearts of all that are privileged to be the leaders and directors of children can teach a most excellent school.

Many teachers seem to have a feeling that teaching in a rural school is professionally beneath them. This seems to be especially true of some trained teachers, but some of the best trained teachers that I have ever seen in work have taught in rural schools and were proud to be known as country school teachers. I have had trained. teachers turn down good grade positions to remain in the country school, and it was no mistake professionally.

No part of our school system is in such need of teachers of training, ability, and experience as the rural schools. They offer great opportunities for teachers to become large professionally because they present great problems that require the very best thought and effort to solve. A friend of mine, who was a clergyman and a prodigious worker, in discussing positions once said to me that he considered a church run down in membership, financially weak, and housed in a dilapidated building or not housed at all, a more desirable position than a church that was flourishing; for such a church gave him an opportunity to do constructive work; it offered problems worthy of his very best endeavors; it needed whatever of ability he possessed.

The joy that comes from accomplishing a good piece of work of any kind is one of the greatest joys of life, and the greater the obstacles overcome the greater the joy and satisfaction of accomplishment.

The ideal training for a rural teacher would. be a normal school course supplementing a four year high school course, but this does not mean at all that teachers may not be very proficient who have obtained their training through experience, reading, study, and observation. I do

not want to say anything to discourage teachers who have not had the advantage of the normal school course or other special training. Teachers who are willing to improve every opportunity to make themselves better may become excellent teachers, even though their school training has not been all that it should have been. There are teachers who are not graduates of any kind of school who are performing a most excellent service, and fortunate indeed are the boys and girls who happen to be members of their schools. But such teachers did not just happen to be what they are. They have made themselves efficient through faithful and hard study and work.

Any teacher with a reasonable foundation in the elementary subjects and a willingness to work can, by improving her odd hours in study, make up for the defects in her earlier education and training, provided she is at the same time a student of her work and makes practical application in her school of the knowledge thus obtained.

Never before have there been such opportunities for professional improvement as there are today. Several of our leading universities and colleges are offering splendid courses by correspondence, conducting the work in such a way that even the personalities of the instructors are felt. Not only is nearly or quite the whole range of college work covered by these courses, but high school work as well. In addition to the regular academic work, special courses are arranged for teachers, covering method work, psychology, school management, studies in curricula, and in fact everything that is offered by a first-class school of education.

The many summer schools and institutes give teachers fine opportunities to take short courses under people who are experts in the subjects they teach. The expenses of such courses are usually very light.

I am not one of those people who believe that teachers should as a rule spend the summer vacation simply resting unless the state of their health demands such a rest. I think of the summer vacation as an excellent opportunity to make ourselves better for the coming year's work. I do not mean that all of the vacation should be spent in work. There should be some recreation. Well regulated recreation is not only necessary for our pleasure, but it is a real factor in efficiency. The work of most summer schools is so arranged that a part of each day may be devoted to recreation, so that taking the summer courses is after all a real vacation.

I would rather have a teacher a little deficient

in education and training who realizes his weakness and strives each day to make himself better, than to have a teacher whose education and training are much more complete, but who feels that his education is finished. Some of the best teaching that I have ever seen has been done by teachers in subjects that they had never taken in school. They had taken allied subjects and had a good foundation for acquiring a knowledge of the subjects they were teaching.

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most adequate, most completely equipped normal training school buildings in the country. The fact that it is christened the "T. J. Major Training School" added materially to the brilliancy of the festivities. Colonel Tom Major is one of the notable figures in Nebraska history. He was a member of the first State Legislature, and has often been a member of the House or Senate. He has been upon the Board of Normal Regents more years than has any other man. A brilliant leader as a young man in the Civil War, he has been ready to fight valiantly for any cause or any man in whom he believed, and no man could be more appreciated by his personal and political friends than is Colonel Tom. Major.

The fiftieth anniversary of Peru Normal School, the dedication of the training school bearing his name, the presentation to him and by him to the school of a portrait painted by one of America's master painters of New York was glory enough for any man.

Incidentally it was a great day for Dr. W. A. Clark of Kirksville, Missouri, and Hon. J. W. Crabtree of River Falls, Wisconsin, both past presidents of the school. This was particularly true of Mr. Crabtree, who as principal of the school, and as state superintendent of Nebraska, was always closely allied to Colonel Major in all of his educational campaigns. It was a time of glorification for Mr. Crabtree as well as for Colonel Major.

It was, of course, the greatest opportunity

be better for those who come there. No lovelier site could be desired. A hard-wood forest in a state that has no other equal forest of any kind! A campus that is rolling east and west and north and south, and northeast and southwest, and southeast and northwest in most artistic surface lines of beauty! A world within itself is Peru Normal!

One thing only has it lacked, and that was just one building that was beautiful, and now they have the most beautiful school building in the state, and it is on the one site where it could stand and not be buried in the forest.

I have known Peru Normal School for many years. I have known all of its principals for nearly a third of a century, both as principals and in other fields, and I have known Colonel Major in all of his educational activities, and it was one of the privileges of the year to have a part in these festivities.

Since June 1, 1910, when the present administration was installed, the school has had a phenomenal record despite the magnifying of two newer schools.

The most notable factor in the development of these years is the unfolding of a real Teachers' College. This has come in part from the extension and intensifying of Departments of Home Economics, Manual Training, Public School Music, Rural Education, Scientific Pedagogy, and above all, of the Department of Commerce, which enrolls hundreds of students each year.

The rural school feature now has several

country schools for practice, the teachers thereof being expert leaders of rural communities, receiving nearly $100 a month, the state supplementing the district salary.

The annual Musical Festival at Peru Normal is the musical event of eastern Nebraska, drawing patronage from a wide range.

This was one of the first normal schools of the country to adopt a complete budget system.

More than 2,750 students have been graduated from Peru in the half century of its existence. President D. W. Hayes is entitled to all the honors bestowed upon him at the semi-centennial celebration in June, 1917.

AUTHORS WHO ARE A PRESENT DELIGHT (VII.)

AMOS RUSSELL WELLS

BY GEORGE PERRY MORRIS

Upstairs in the former residence of a Beacon Hill Bostonian facing the State House, and under the shadow of the gilded dome that is the hub of Holmes' Boston-centred universe, you will find Amos R. Wells most any day during the working year. That is when he is not in his other sanctum at Auburndale, loveliest village of the Newton plain, or at Sagamore, on Cape Cod, where he foregathers with "Father Endeavor Clark," George Coleman of Ford Hall fame, and other leaders of the Christian Endeavor movement. But wherever he is found the modern Amos is busy, which is natural considering that he is editor of the Christian Endeavor World, editorial secretary of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, a member of the International Lesson Committee, and co-editor of Peloubet's Notes on the Sunday School Lessons.

Nor is this all. He writes voluminously and with versatility for secular and religious journals; sometimes over his own name, and sometimes not. Whether he has as many nom de plumes as W. Robertson Nicoll of the British. Weekly, he alone can say. By "he" I mean Wells. The point is that Mr. Wells is technically proficient in society verse and in hymn writing. He can write an editorial for the Sunday School Times, shift his gear so as to run off a jest for Life or Puck, and then put his clutch back into the ecclesiastical notch and write counsels for the Puritans who read the Congregationalist, or the Cavaliers who read the Churchman. Nor is this all. Good Housekeeping knows him for a sage commentator on the conservative masculine aspects of twentieth century feminism; and The Delineator will welcome a satirical skit on the foibles of woman's latest attire.

It is not surprising, therefore, that a variety of constituencies know this author, some for his sober sense and some for his trenchant wit and suffusing humor; some for his exposition of the tragedies and hypocrisies of the personages of the Old Testament, and others for his pen portraits of contemporary political leaders like Roosevelt and ecclesiastical statesmen like William Booth. If one group were to praise him, it would be for his piety. Another would stress his understanding of nature in her more consoling and inspiring moods. Yet another com

pany would nod affirmatively were his "verse of occasion" praised.

soon.

He has his admirers among a huge host of men and women who first read him in his capacity as an interpreter of Christianity to youth, and for those he has put forth a small library of essays, sermonettes, counsels of perfection. More than a quarter of a century he has done this sort of preaching, chiefly in prose; and its influence no one can appraise adequately. At least five stories stand to his credit, in which with deliberate design he has been didactic while nominally only imaginative. Three volumes of verse have garnered in his wisdom and his wit; and another is planned for and will be issued In short, he has a "following" that is large,, loyal and likable, one that does not change its moral and religious ideals when London veers and Paris gyrates. He is orthodox in theology, in morals and in civics. He had good forbears of fine old New England stock and his father was killed in fighting for democracy in the '60's. He grew up with the ambition to be good and to do good, and to know and to be able to tell what he knew. Finding his way to Antioch College in Ohio he found it a place of "plain living and high thinking," with traditions of liberty, intellectual and political, to which he took like a duck to water. Later he joined the faculty, taught about all the subjects on the curriculum, and nominally got $500 a year salary. But only once during the eight years he was teaching did promise and reality meet and kisspecuniarily speaking. Nevertheless it was a great training for the work that lay ahead. He had to know many things and know them well enough to teach them. He had to study thrift, and did it so well that he had a bank account. He edited local and college journals and got that all around training that such work best gives to the future editor. He learned shorthand, and ever since has found it a matchless tool for getting through his huge and varied burden of work.

At least once a year Edward Everett Hale of Boston "blew in" as a trustee of the college, and stirred faculty and students by his intense Americanism, his unique incarnating of the New England that was, and his wise counsel as an old journalist and author to aspiring youth. The more readily, therefore, did young Wells accept the call to Boston when it came in 1891 and he

was asked to take the chair that eminent men had filled who had previously edited The Golden Rule. To settle in Boston and be near the heroes and heroines of Wells' literary dreams was to enter Utopia; and so he came, and the local Authors' Club has had few more loyal or serviceable members, and the larger literary personalities of the city few devotees equal to Mr. Wells in intelligent appreciation.

Like many wise jesters and comic sages he can look most solemn when most facetious and most clever when most serious. There is nothing Falstaffian about his mien or port, nor on the other hand is he Quixotic and Praise-God-BareBones in his make-up. He is not unctious, but

a

neither is he ascetic in type. Neither advancing years nor incessant toil have chiselled many lines on a face and brow that betoken the thinker and uplifter. He has a twinkling eye, a movable eyebrow, a ruddy complexion, and clean-cut profile. His figure is elongated, loosely articulated, and when he walks it is not as a militarist but as an author temporarily released from captivity. When he speaks it is with precision. Like most editors who talk at all, he blue-pencils his own copy as he spiels along. But he would rather write than speak (publicly), and write about others than be written about. So let's let him off! He will keep for another "interpretation."

THAT BOY, THE PROBLEM OF THE HOUR, IS THE HOPE OF THE NATION

BY ERASMUS WILSON
[In Pittsburgh Gazette-Times.]

He's just a little freckled lad with tumbled hair,

Full of fun and everlasting grit,

Nothing seems to daunt him

No matter how you taunt him,

For he's learned the manly art of keeping fit.

You never hear him whining, for he's never on the outs, This curly-headed Sergeant of the Brave Boy Scouts.

They've taught him true politeness in that company of his; Instructed him in every manly form,

And he's glad to do a favor,

Without a single quaver,

To one who's weatherbeaten in the storm.

He'll smile you back to living if you've lost your whereabouts,

This merry, blue-eyed Sergeant of the Brave Boy Scouts.

What tricks that little tighe has learned in his peculiar way,

Self-defence and first aid to the sick,

Why, he'll aid a wounded brother

Like a tender, loving mother,

He can help an ailing comrade mighty quick.

He'll have him up and smiling although you'd have your doubts,

This very clever Sergeant of the Brave Boy Scouts.

Got a boy who's acting wild like, and one you can't control?

Enlist him in a regiment at once,

They've got a splendid plan

To teach a boy to be a man.

He'll soon prove wisdom loving, or a dunce,

But if he's got it in him he'll enjoy the lively sprouts, And some day be a Sergeant in the Brave Boy Scouts.

-Percy W. Reynolts in National Magazine. The torn and shattered condition of the world is appalling, and to the serious-minded, those whose vision carries beyond the limits of the passing day, the future is confused, and confusing.

To these it is not a matter of keeping out of war, nor of getting into it, but of being prepared for whatever may happen.

This preparedness is not limited to resisting invaders from outside, but rather to preparing our young men for useful, dependable citizens. Experience has taught us that this work must begin with the boy rather than with the young

or mature man.

Hence the boy problem.

Who is most concerned in this matter, and upon whom is the greater responsibility?

These questions are first in order, and should, therefore, receive immediate attention.

The boys who are to become the citizens of the future are already here, growing older day by day, and becoming more and more firmly fixed in habits of life.

Patriotism, and even loyalty, being more or less matters of habit, they come well within the pale of habit-forming methods, such as school and home methods.

It is, then, to the home and the school that we must first turn for the solution of the boy problem, but mainly to the school, seeing that the home of the boy has relegated much of its authority and control.

This naturally leads us to ask what the schools are doing in the way of fitting boys for citizenship of the higher and better order, a type of which we stand greatly in need.

You can no doubt recall that famous recipe for cooking a hare: "First catch the hare, then cook it to your taste."

First catch the boy, then make of him what you will. All you have to do in order to catch him is to interest him in something, then you have him haltered, and when he is halter-broke you can lead him at will.

To attempt to drive him is but to make him wild and wary, and to cause him to shy at any object you place in his way.

Taken in the right way the boy is most tractable, but if taken in a wrong way he is

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