l_, pages 133-301.

KERN: _Among Country Schools._

GILLETTE: _Rural Sociology_, pages 233-263.

BRYAN: _Poems of Country Life._

CHAPTER XIX

THE NEW RURAL SCHOOL

132. =Nature Study in the New Rural School.=--In striking contrast to
such a defective rural institution as has been presented is the new
rural school and the country-life movement of which it is a vital
part. The first step in the new education is a growing recognition of
the function of the school to relate its courses of study and its
activities to the daily experience of the pupil. The background of
country life is nature; therefore nature study is fundamental in the
new curriculum. Careful observation of natural objects comes first,
until the child is able to identify bird and bee and flower. To
knowledge is added appreciation. The beauty of fern and leaf, of
brookside and hillside, of star-dotted and cloud-dappled sky, is not
appreciated by mere observation, but waits on the education of the
mind. This is part of the task of the teacher. The economic use of
natural objects and natural forces is secondary, and should remain so,
but the new education takes the knowledge which has been gained by
observation and the enthusiasm which has been distilled through
appreciation, and applies them to the social need. Agriculture comes
to seem not only an occupation for economic ends, but a vocation for
social welfare also. With all the rest there is a moral and religious
value in nature study. Nature is pre-eminently under the reign of law;
obedience to that law, adjustment to the inexorable demands of nature,
are essential to nature's children. No more wholesome moral lesson
than this can be taught to the present generation of children. Nature
ministers also to the spiritual. Power, order, beauty, intelligence
speak through the language of the natural world to the human soul, and
the thoughtful child can be led to see through nature to nature's
God. Such a God is not a theory; in nature the divine presence is
self-evident.

All theory in the new rural school is based on experimentation.
Together the new teacher and the pupils beautify the grounds and the
interior of the school building; they plan and make gardens and try
all sorts of gardening experiments; they grow the plants that they
study, and, best of all, they see the process of growth; from the use
of soil and seed and proper care they learn lessons in practical
agriculture that giv