r-farmers--men who teach in the winter and farm in the summer--an
excellent setting for country boys and girls. He believes in activity
for children, too. "If the school appealed as it ought to the motor
energies of children, instead of having to drive them in, you would have
to drive them out." To prove his point Mr. Rapp cites the instance of
one man teacher, who, before the days of manual training in the schools,
decided to have manual training in his one-room Berks County school.

"He did the work himself," Mr. Rapp says, "dug out the cellar and set up
a shop in it. The only help he had was the help of the pupils, and the
work was done in recess time and after school. They made their own
tools, cabinets, book-cases, picture-frames, clock-frames, and anything
else they wanted. And do you know, when it got dark, that man would
send the children home from the school in order to be rid of them."

Consolidated schools help. They make rural education broader and easier,
but the one-room country school, presided over by a live teacher, may be
made worth while. Social events, sports, contests in farm work and
domestic work, studies couched in terms of the country, may all prove
potent factors in shaping the child and the community.

IV Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse

Without, as well as within, the little red school-house may be
transformed. The course of study may establish a standard in rural
thought. The rural school-house may set a standard of rural architecture
and landscape gardening.

How typical of old-time country schools are the lines:

Still sits the school-house by the road,
A ragged beggar sunning.
Around it still the sumacs grow,
And blackberry vines are running.

The unpainted, rough exterior of the little school vied with the unkempt
school grounds. Both supplied subjects for artistic treatment. To the
consternation of the poet and the romancer, the modern one-room school
is painted, and the school yard, instead of being filled with a thicket
of blackberry and sumac, is laid out for playground, flower-beds and
gardens. The up-to-date country school, while far less picturesque, is
much more architectural and more useful.

The State Superintendent of Education in Wisconsin furnishes free to
local school boards plans of modern one-room schools. With a hall at
each end for wraps, an improved heating and ventilating device, and all
of the light coming from the north side, whe