Country life and the country school : a study of the agencies of rural progress and of the social relationship of the school to the country community . true thatfew teachers^ either ruralor urban, fully appreciatethe possibilities of theirposition. It is also truethat country teachers areespecially deficient in thisability. But at the sametime it may be asked ifthese inexperienced youngteachers are wiselv di-rected, or ever taught tosee the larger relation-ships and meaning ofcountry life. Here per-haps is a query which county superintendents, institute instructors, and normal schoolfaculties
Country life and the country school : a study of the agencies of rural progress and of the social relationship of the school to the country community . true thatfew teachers^ either ruralor urban, fully appreciatethe possibilities of theirposition. It is also truethat country teachers areespecially deficient in thisability. But at the sametime it may be asked ifthese inexperienced youngteachers are wiselv di-rected, or ever taught tosee the larger relation-ships and meaning ofcountry life. Here per-haps is a query which county superintendents, institute instructors, and normal schoolfaculties may well ponder. Before censuring country teachers, the critic should con-sider the vast difficulty of their position and undertaking. Thevery limitations of the system under which they are forcedto work, as shown in Chapter VII, are so numerous that anefficient degree of success is practically unattainable. Thehard physical conditions, long muddy walks, cold lunches,heavy janitor work, poor ventilation, and other unsanitary con-ditions, are in themselves enough to tax the strength of anyindividual, to say nothing of the nervous strain and worry. When First We Go to School 194 COUNTRY LIFE AND THE COUNTRY SCHOOL occasioned in the management of twenty-five or thirty dailyrecitations and the general direction of an ungraded is almost no virtue or ability not listed in the categoryof a good country teachers accomplishments. She must pos-sess a fair degree of all-round scholarship; be something ofan artist, carpenter, cook, musician, and gardener; know justwhat ails a smoky stove, a rattling window, or a dull boy; beable to bandage wounds, pull teeth, start fires, drive a frac-tious horse, conduct a Sunday school, or fish lost boots fromthe muddy depths of the public highway. And all this forthe royal sum of forty or fifty dollars a month! Professional isolation is another matter to be reckonedamong the country teachers troubles, and one more influen-tial and serious t
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade, booksubjectcountrylife, bookyear1912
