CHAPTER XXII FINANCIAL SUPPORT Willingness to pay a test of appreciation The surest test of the loyalty and appreciation attaching to any institution is the willingness to pay for its advantages. Granting the necessary financial ability, therefore, the measure of support accorded to the rural schools indicates the esteem in which they are held by their patrons, and the value attached to the education these schools represent. The rural schools originated in the pioneer days when poverty and privation were the common experience of those who dared to claim the new regions. The school shared in the general poverty, as was right it should, and was perforce satisfied with its meager equipment, which was on a par with other standards of the day. But the pioneer days are gone, and the farmers have become the most prosperous and well-to-do of our industrial groups. They constitute a class of high intelligence, and control one of the most fundamental and important of all occupations. Their wealth has increased until the amount invested in agriculture is more than twice that devoted to manufactures. During the present generation the value of farm holdings has more than doubled, and the tendency is still upward. The present reign of prosperity has favored the farmer more than any other class of workers. Has the rural school shared in the general advance in prosperity that has reached the farms? Taking the country as a whole the expenditures for public education have more than doubled during the last decade. This is a marvelous advance, probably never before equaled in the history of any country. Has the rural school received its share of added support, or is it still on the basis of the pioneer days when rigid economy was the price of bare existence? The rural school has not shared prosperity While the rural schools have reaped some benefit from the great advance in wealth and prosperity, they have not received their full share. In buildings, equipment and salary they are still too near the old level. Towns and cities have erected commodious and attractive buildings, and supplied them with the necessary material and apparatus for efficient work. But, excepting for the occasional country school, the rural schools are yet stranded dangerously near the poverty line. Log schoolhouses are common in the South, and are still to be found in use in such northern states as Indiana and Illinois. At least five thousand primitive log buildings are in use for ruralschool purposes. Colorado employs more than three hundred sod, adobe or log school buildings, with other equipment to match. An actual survey of all the rural schools for whites in twenty-eight counties of eight southern states recently showed that fully half of the fifteen hundred and seventy-nine schools were being held in old, weather-beaten buildings, a large proportion of which had never been painted, and a considerable number of which had never been ceiled-mere shells of cabins. Thirty per cent, of these schools used home-made desks similar to Annual expenditure per child of school age for school purposes in each -Courtesy of Russell Sage Foundation. state in 1910. those found in the colonial schools buildings of two hundred and fifty years ago, and twenty-seven schools reported no desks of any kind, but only rude benches for seats. A similar survey in from one to three counties in each of seven northern states revealed conditions no whit better, if the difference in economic conditions is considered. The latter report concludes that in these northern states the buildings are for the most part old and out of date-one room, low ceilings, dingy and dark. The grounds are bleak and bare of beauty or attractiveness and, like the buildings, poorly kept.1 Even town and village schoolhouses, to say nothing of city buildings, are now warmed by steam or circulating The poverty of currents of heated air, are thoroughly the rural school ventilated and have provisions for sanitary drinking fountains and other hygienic equipment. But more than half of the country schools of all the states are yet heated by an unprotected stove set in the middle of the room, radiating its heat directly on the pupils. One out of eight of all rural schools is entirely innocent of shades for the windows, the sun finding unhindered access to the room. Less than one school out of twelve has any janitor service provided except that given by the overworked teacher; hence cleaning days are few and far between. Three-fourths of the rural schools of the entire country are without water supply on the premises, while about one out of five has no water within a quarter of a mile. The common drinking cup and the old wooden or rusty tin water pail are still in common use. Half the outhouses are an insult to decency and a menace to morals. 1 See Bulletin Number five hundred and fifteen, United States Bureau of Education, page thirty-one. |