tions under private management with a similar aim. The supply of trained teachers furnished by the different high schools, normal schools and colleges scarcely more than equals the demands from the rapidly growing public schools of cities and villages. As a result of these demands, together with the better salaries and more attractive life in cities and villages, few trained teachers are found in the rural schools. Generally speaking, the great majority of rural school-teachers are young women without any special education to fit them for teaching beyond that provided in the schools they teach or, at the best, by a neighboring high school. In this respect the most of rural schools are not provided with teachers of sufficient skill and training to do the important work to be done. The low and insufficient salaries paid and the uncertainty of securing and holding a situation tend to make the rural teachers' position a hard one. Of recent years some of the more progressive states have established special county-schools for the training of teachers for the rural schools, and others, as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Maryland, North Dakota and West Virginia, have also passed minimum-salary laws. Under these laws every public-school teacher must be paid at least a certain monthly salary ($40 to $45), and no board of education or school-district may pay a smaller sum. The question of obtaining trained and expert teachers is the second large and important problem yet to be solved.
Buildings. The old-fashioned, country school-house was constructed of logs, rough lumber, stone or, in some of the prairie-states, even of sod. It contained one oblong-shaped room, about 20 feet wide and 30 long, was heated by a fire-place or stove, and was furnished with rudely made desks and benches for the pupils. It was oft-times very poorly lighted and generally cold in winter and hot in summer. Very little was thought of ventilation and fresh air. Instead of being the best-built and neatest-looking building in the community and surrounded by well-kept grounds, it was more apt to be unpainted and dilapidated in appearance by its broken shutters and windows. In the larger number of cases it was located on the most exposed or least desirable piece of land in the district; hence the school-house surroundings were altogether barren except for the tangled growth of weeds that sprang up during vacations. As one drove through the country the school-house could frequently be picked out as the worst and most doleful-looking of all the buildings. Many of the farmers' barns looked neater and more inviting. Unfortunately many thousand country-school pupils still go to school in buildings of this kind.
However, a great change is taking place, and all over the United States new structures are being built for the rural schools, which are properly and sufficiently heated, ventilated, lighted, provided with furniture and apparatus for school-work and surrounded by shade-trees and neatly kept grounds. It is coming to be recognized that the “little, red school-house” of olden time lacked many things necessary to the health, comfort and progress of pupils and that the pupils of the rural schools are entitled to as good, healthful, useful and beautiful school-buildings as the pupils of the village and city schools. To encourage the erection of better school-buildings in the rural sections a number of states now offer special aid in the way of additional funds. To provide against poorly constructed buildings it is becoming a common practice to require, before any rural school-building is erected, that the plans for it shall be approved by some competent county or state educational officer. For the information of parents, teachers and school-boards many states have issued books of plans of model buildings and pamphlets giving in detail the requirements that should be fulfilled, that a child may attend school and not be under unhealthful conditions.
Improvement of Rural Schools. During the past decade many efforts have been made to improve the character of the rural schools; and at present these schools are receiving more attention from the people concerned and from educators, legislators and public men than ever before. That these schools deserve such widespread assistance and improvement is evident. In the main the rural schools are the weakest and least satisfactory, yet at the same time the most important, part of the American public schools. Though exact and reliable statistics are wanting upon the number and attendance of these schools, certain conclusions can be drawn indirectly. In 1905 there were approximately eighty-two and one half millions of people in the United States, of whom somewhat more than half lived in rural districts. During this year there were enrolled in all the public elementary schools of the country nearly sixteen million pupils. It is safe to assume that in the neighborhood of half of these sixteen million pupils attended rural schools. These eight million country-school children are entitled to an opportunity for a complete education equal in degree to that provided in the public schools of the cities and towns. The difficulties to be overcome are many, yet the following movements and reforms are well under way. The first results seem to indicate that the boys and girls who are pupils in rural schools are to have a chance to become really educated men and women; not educated away from the home and the farm but for the home and the farm.
