The New Education Part 20

"Of course. Now think a minute. Do many of the boys from this country become sailors?"

"No'm," from the cla.s.s.

"What do they become?"

"Farmers," cried the cla.s.s, hissing the "f" and flattening the "a."

Certainly, the boys in a farming community, brought up on the farm, naturally become farmers, yet in the interim, between babyhood and farmer life, they go to school. How absurdly easy the task of the school--to determine that they shall be intelligent, progressive, enthusiastic, up-to-date farmers. The girls, too, marry farmers, keep farmers' homes and raise farmers' sons. How simple is the duty of seeing that they are prepared to do these things well!

The task of the city school is complex because of the vast number of businesses, professions, industrial occupations and trades which children enter. In comparison the country school has the plainest of plain sailing. What are the ingredients of successful farmers and farmers' wives? What proportion of physical education, of mental training, of technical instruction in agriculture, of suggestions for practical farm work, of dressmaking, sewing and cooking, enter into the making of farmers' boys and farmers' girls who will live up to the traditions of the American farm? To what extent must the school be a center for social activity and social enthusiasm? How shall the school make the farm and the small country town better living places for the men and women of to-morrow?

The duty of the country school is simple and clear. It must fit country children for country life. First it must know what are the needs of the country; then, manned by teachers whose training has prepared them to appreciate country problems, it will become the power that a country school ought to be in directing the thoughts and lives of the community.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 22: An extensive reference to this school will be found in "Country Life and the Country School," Mabel Carney, Row, Peterson & Company, Chicago, 1912.]

[Footnote 23: Supra, pp. 180-181.]

CHAPTER X

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES AND SUCKLINGS

I Miss Belle

The sun shone mildly, though it was still late January, while the wind, which occasionally rustled the dry leaves about the fence corners, had scarcely a suggestion of winter in its soft touch. Across the white pike, and away on either side over the rolling blue gra.s.s meadows, the Kentucky landscape unfolded itself, lined with brown and white fences, and dotted with venerable trees. A buggy, drawn by a carefully-stepping bay horse, came over the knoll ahead, framing itself naturally into the beautiful landscape. Surely, that must be Joe and Miss Belle; it was so like her, since she always seemed at home everywhere, making herself a natural part of her surroundings. Another moment and there was no longer any doubt. It was Miss Belle with three youngsters crowded into her lap and beside her in the narrow buggy seat, while a dangling leg in the rear suggested an occupant of the axle.

"Well, well," cried Miss Belle, cordially, as Joe stopped, glad of any excuse not to go, "where are you bound for? You didn't come all the way over to ride back with me?"

"No, indeed, Miss Belle," I laughed back, "no one ever expects to ride with you so near the school-house. I'll walk along ahead until you begin to unload."

"Go along, now you're casting reflections on Joe's speed. Come, Joe, we'll show him." Joe, who did not leave his accustomed walk at once, finally yielded to the suggestion of a gentle blow from the whip and broke into a trot.

"Lem'me walk with you," cried the rider on the springs, slipping from her perch and stepping out beside the buggy. So we journeyed for half a mile. The horse, under constant urging, jogged along, while the spring rider and I trotted side by side over the well-made pike. Then Miss Belle drew rein in front of a small, yellow house.

"Now, out you go," she exclaimed to her young companions. "All out here but one. Goodbye, dearies. All right, up you get," and in a moment we were snugly fixed in the buggy for a half hour's ride behind Joe.

"You see those two little girls who got off there," said Miss Belle, pointing to the house we had just left, "well, they are two of a family of six--two younger than those. Their mother died last winter, so naturally I take an interest in them. Their father does his best with them, but it is a big task for a man to handle alone."

The last child was unloaded by this time, and Miss Belle, settling herself back comfortably, chatted about her work in a one-room country school in the Blue Gra.s.s belt of Kentucky.

II Going to Work Through the Children

"Maybe there are thirty-five families that my school ought to draw from," she began. "Six years ago when I took this school some of them surely did need help. Dearie me! The things they didn't know about comfort and decency would fix up a whole neighborhood for life. They wore stockings till they dropped off. Some of the girls put on sweaters in October, wore them till Christmas, washed them, and then wore them till spring. You never saw such utterly wretched homes. There was hardly a window shade in the neighborhood, nor a curtain either. It wasn't that the women didn't care--they simply didn't know.

"I saw it all," said Miss Belle, nodding her head thoughtfully, "and it worried me a great deal at first. I just had to get hold of those people and help them--I had made up my mind to that. Impatience wouldn't do, though, so I said to myself, 'Now, my dear, don't you be in any hurry.

You can't do anything with the old folks, they're too proud. If you succeed at all it's got to be through the children.' So I just waited, keeping my eyes open, and teaching school all of the while, until, the first thing I knew, the way opened up--you never would guess how--it was through biscuits.["]

III Beginning on m.u.f.fins

"The folks around here never had seen anything except white bread. There wasn't a piece of cornbread or of graham anywhere. You know what their white bread is, too--heavy, sour, badly made and only half cooked. The old folks were satisfied, though, and there didn't seem to be any way to go at it except through the youngsters. Day after day I saw them take raw white biscuits and sandwiches made of salt-rising white bread out of their baskets, wondering how they could eat them. Still I didn't say anything, but every lunch time I ate corn m.u.f.fins or graham wafers, with all of the gusto I could master. One day a little girl up and asked me:

"'Say, Miss Belle, what may you all be eatin'?'

"'Corn m.u.f.fins,' said I. 'Ever taste them?'

"'Nope.'

"'Well, wouldn't you like a taste?'

"'Sure I would.'

"She took it, and a great big one, too. 'Um,' says she, smacking her lips, 'Um.'

"'Like it?' I asked.

"'Um,' says she again, like a baby with a full stomach.

"'Oh, Miss Belle,' piped up Annie, 'how do you make 'em?'

"That was the chance I had been waiting for.

"'Would you like to know?' I asked, and to a chorus of 'Sure,' ''Deed we would,' 'Oh, yes,' I put the recipe on the board, and it wasn't two days before those girls brought in as good corn m.u.f.fins as I ever tasted.

Little Annie is a good cook--never saw a better--and before the week was out she says to me:

"'Miss Belle, ma's mad with you.'

"'What all's the matter?' I asked.

"'She says since you taught us to make those corn m.u.f.fins she'll be eaten out of house and home. The first night I made 'em pa ate eleven.

He hasn't slackened off a bit since. He must have 'em every day.'

"That made the going pretty easy," Miss Belle went on. "The m.u.f.fins were mighty good, they were new, and, by comparison, the white biscuits didn't have a show. It wasn't long before I had the whole neighborhood making corn m.u.f.fins, graham wafers, black bread, graham bread and whole-wheat bread. They sure did catch on to the idea quickly. Every Monday I put a recipe on the board. These women knew how to cook the fancy things. It was the plain, simple, wholesome things that they needed to know about, so my recipes were always for them. During the week each of the children cooks the thing and brings it to me, and the one who gets the best result puts a recipe on the board Friday.

"You see, after I once got started it wasn't hard to follow up any line I liked. By the time I was putting a recipe a week on the board the mothers got naturally interested and would come to school to ask about this recipe and that. They wouldn't take any advice, you understand, not they! They knew all about cooking, so they thought, but they were mighty proud of the things their daughters did, particularly when they took the prizes at the county fair. Besides that, it made a whole lot of difference at home, because the things they made helped out a lot and tasted mighty good on the table."

Miss Belle's next move was against the cake--soggy, sticky stuff, full of b.u.t.ter, that was very generally eaten by all of the families that could afford it. Expensive and fearfully indigestible it made up, together with bread, almost the entire contents of most lunch baskets.

"I couldn't see quite how to go about the cake business," Miss Belle commented, "because they were particularly proud of it. Finally, though, I hit on an idea. One of the women in the neighborhood was sick. She was a good cook and knew good cooking when she saw it, so I got my sister to make an angel cake, which I took around to her. I do believe it was the first light cake she had ever tasted--anyway, she was tickled to death.

It wasn't long after that before every one who could afford to do it was making angel food. Of course it's expensive, but since they were bound to make cake, that was a lot better than the other."

Similar tactics gradually replaced the fried meats by roasts and stews.

When Miss Belle came, meat swam in fat while it cooked and came from the stove loaded with grease. Everybody fried meat, and when by chance they bought a roast they began by boiling all of the juice out of it before they put it in the oven. Miss Belle's stews and roasts made better eating, though. The men-folks liked them hugely and the old frying process was doomed.