GAGE COUNTY TWO CONSOLIDATED SCHOOLS ONE RURAL HIGH SCHOOL ONE FEDERATED CHURCH FIVE RAILROADS LAND WORTH $100 PER ACRE AND SELLING MARSHALL COUNTY FED 300 CARS OF CATTLE LAST YEAR IT MARKETS $6000 WORTH OF EGGS EVERY YEAR ITS LAND RAISES 60 BUSHELS OF CORN PER ACRE 300 BUSHELS OF POTATOES PER ACRE LAND WORTH $90 PER ACRE COUNTY AGENT, MARYSVILLE, Kan. JEWELL COUNTY LAND WORTH $100 PER ACRE I ACRE PASTURES THREE COWS I ACRE GROWS THREE TONS ALFALFA COUNTY AGENT, Mankato, Kan. Such advertising pays or corporations representing millions of wealth would not practice such advertising. The state has hundreds of townships, each representing several million dollars invested. Why allow these countrysides with all their fertility and wealth and beauty to lie unspoken and at the same time permit them to be littered and defaced with signs promulgating a city's Hog Cholera Serum that is inferior to and costs more than that which their own agricultural college makes, for the support of which they pay taxes; with signs advertising patent medicines that do not cure; tobacco that we do not want, and lots in the city's "new addition," which is no more a part of a city than the land which we have in corn? So long as the farmer humbly pursues the policy of "Please, what will you give?" and "Please, what do you ask?" he will be a burden to himself and his sons will be dissatisfied. Coöperation in business and coöperation in educational matters and legitimate advertising will have a tendency to hold those on the farm who are already there and also attract to the farm many who are in absolute ignorance of the one place where life in its greatest fulness may be realized. CHAPTER XV THE CLOSING OF SCHOOL NO LONGER in many states do we have a winter term of school followed by a spring vacation and a summer school. Such was the division of the school years at Constad's Crossing. The winter term closed about the middle of March, and its closing brought back to use the curtain that so successfully hid from view the mysteries of Santa Claus and Christmas. These exhibitions have been decried by the laterday teachers as a waste of much valuable time. The criticism may be justified in some cases but in the majority of cases it is not. Among fond recollections are the wonders of our school exhibitions. We had our Irish and German dialect declamations and songs; we had dialogues and orations. True, the declamation and oration were not strongly differentiated, but we had them both and everybody liked them, and they created quite a little stir locally just the same as a school exhibition of the present day given under captions of "Senior" and "Junior plays." It is a most unfortunate condition that has overtaken society as regards its entertainment. The whole social scheme seems to have changed. In many, many ways we have quit home production. Everything must be imported, not only imported breakfast foods, imported meats, but imported speakers, imported singers. Knowing and preaching the doctrine of "learning to do by doing," we learn to do by "watching others." At the present time we are having community welfare meetings throughout the state and speakers are being imported to address these meetings. The people gather, give respectful attention, but that is all they give, and unless these people are stirred to activity nothing is gained by such meetings. I am writing of a real backward step in educational and social progress. This backward step is ' being taken in every walk of life. The sociologist cries for rural leaders and the city and large town are turned over to leaders-every performance is an all-star affair-stars in the schoolstars in the church-stars in the college. The individual who is but average looks passively on and learns to do by watching under the guidance and inspiration of an "all-star team." This book is written in the interests of the rural school, and while the rural school has much to strive for there is much included in present day accomplishment that it is well to avoid. High ideals are beautiful and helpful, but helpful only when people are led into action. The old school exhibition is not considered from a literary or artistic standpoint par excellence. The games we once did play, for example, town-ball, in which we chose up, giving first choice to the one whose hand came out on top of the bat if it were a round bat, or if flat, to the one who guessed lucky two out of three on wet or dry, were not, scientifically considered, up to present day games. But what of the results? Who will dare say that the benefits from the games were not as great when all played as to-day when the school is represented by a team in whose interests the entire play activity of the school has been sacrificed? Notwithstanding that the game has reached a high degree of perfection, is the growing child benefited by an activity in which he has no part except to parrot-like scream the "Ricketty, Ricketty Jams" at such designated times as are deemed expedient by the leader? In the old school exhibition everyone had some part and every mother's boy and every mother's girl did best and they were all stars, and all very happy over their success, and their happiness and success lasted till the next school exhibition. Who will dare argue that the benefit was less great than that which comes with our closing events of school to-day when boys and girls make of the occasion a dress affair which few can afford, and import a speaker who does the orating and declaiming while the class sits with folded hands amid palms, ferns and cut flowers listlessly awaiting formal con |