some quarters there is
great dissatisfaction with the schools as distinctly hostile to rural
life, not in sympathy with rural ideals, and serving mainly as a
"gang-way" to the life of the town. The Country Life Commission reports:
"The schools are held responsible for ineffective farming, lack of ideals
and the drift to town. This is not because the rural schools as a whole
are declining, but because they are in a state of arrested development,
and have not yet put themselves in consonance with the recently changed
conditions of life."

The country people have a right to insist that their schools shall fit
their boys and girls for country life, inculcate in them a genuine love
for the country and an appreciation of rural values, with the natural
expectation that most of them will be needed on the farm. Even if a third
of the pupils should ultimately go to the city, it is unjust to the
majority and to the community, to make the country school simply a
preparation for city life.

_The Urbanized Country School_

"The education given to country children," says Sir Horace Plunkett, "has
been invented for them in the town, and it not only bears no relation to
the life they are to lead, but actually attracts them toward a town
career."

From the beginning, doubtless, teachers have been largely city-trained.
Though country-bred perhaps, they have caught the city fever and it seems
to be very contagious. They have brought city manners and styles in
clothing, the city standards and ideals and the love for city life.
Unconsciously perhaps they have impressed the minds of children with the
superiority of all things urban. Even the text-books are products of the
city. The city curriculum has been adopted whole,--contrary to all reason.
The teaching material often, instead of being connected with the farm,
echoes the distant city's surging life. It deals with stocks and bonds
and commerce, rather than problems of the dairy, the silo or the soil.

The suggestive power of such books and teachers is very great with
impressionable children. The lesson is quickly learned to honor commerce
above farming, city speed above country thoroughness, superficial success
above the homely virtues, and mere numbers, bigness, roar and hustle above
the lasting joy of tested friendships. With the young minds filled with
the tales of the wonderful city, which rival the Arabian Nights in
allurement, the wonder is, not that so many are dazzled and f