ADDITIONAL COPIES OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON, D. C. 5 CENTS PER COPY Rural School Leaflet No. 40. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR BUREAU OF EDUCATION WASHINGTON, D. C. February, 1926 [Reprint from School Life, February, 1926] A Rural Curriculum: An Outstanding Need in Rural Schools Rural Schools Require a Curriculum Made with Full Knowledge and Due Appreciation of Their Other Determining Factors. Three Essential Determiners of Curriculum: Objectives, Pupil Nature, and Environment. Rural and Urban Children Differ in Preschool Experiences and in Environmental Conditions. Rural Curriculum Must Provide for Profitable Use of Rural Potentialities By FANNIE W. DUNN Assistant Professor in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University A school is the resultant of a certain group of interacting factors-pupils, teacher, educational objectives, curriculum, buildings and equipment, time available for education, and environmental conditions. With respect to a number of these, it would be easy to show that rural schools have definite handicapping deficiencies and needs. The space available for this discussion being limited, however, it will be confined to the outstanding need of a curriculum for rural elementary schools, made first-hand for them, with full knowledge and due appreciation of their other determining factors, present and future. A curriculum may be defined as that series of experiences, participated in by pupils under the auspices and oversight of the school, which comprise the school's contribution toward the realization of the educational objectives it has set up. These experiences may be both passive and active. They may consist of reading, talking, hearing, seeing, feeling, working with the hands, active play, concentrated study or thinking, or anything else which engages the central nervous system and results in its modification. Common Objectives of Elementary Schools The curriculum has three essential determiners. These are the educational objectives which are desired as its outcome; the native abilities, capacities, and potential motives of the pupils to be educated; and the contributions, positive or negative, which the environment exclusive of the school makes to the realization of the desired ends. It is a matter of fairly general agreement among educational theorists that the educational objectives of the elementary school are common to all, the same for rural schools and for rural children as for schools and children anywhere in the Nation. Any progress we make in defining these elementary school objectives is exactly as valuable for rural schools as for any others. If it were true also that pupil nature and environmental conditions were the same in rural schools as elsewhere, a common curriculum would suffice for schools in all localities, excepting only the administrative differences in organization 84970-201 necessitated by the one and two teacher situation-of which more later. With respect to pupil nature, we do not yet have sufficient data to enable us to say with positiveness how the native ability of rural children in general compares with that of the Nation's children as a whole, nor how the acquired capital of habits, knowledge, and motives which the rural child brings with him when he first enters school compares with those of children in other types of communities. It is possible, however, on the basis of more or less casual observation, to list many differences in this experimental accumulation, logical in the nature of the situation, and to say with considerable certainty that rural and urban children do differ materially in the nature of the contributions which their preschool years have made to their intellectual and emotional status at the beginning of the school period. School but One of Educational Agencies It is certain, moreover, that there are many differences in the general nature of the outside experiences encountered during school years by urban and rural children, respectively. The school is but one educative agency. What of education the home and community adequately provide, it does not need to afford. Different supplementation of experiences is needed in rural and urban schools. Different points of approach will frequently be indicated for the same educational content. Different grade placement may be required for experiences which both types of schools must furnish, because the out-of-school life lays the necessary basis for them at different stages of development of the children in the two types of situations. Indeed, every school differs to some extent from every other school in the original nature of its pupils and their environmental conditions. But to make outright different curricula for each school is impracticable. Time, to say nothing of local ability, is lacking. It is not, however, impracticable to make distinct curricula for different large classes of situation. There is no reason, for example, why, if it is judged desirable, the State of Texas might not have one general curriculum for its city schools, another for its native white rural schools, another for its Mexican schools, and still another for its negro schools. It might desirably go still further and provide distinct curriculum organizations for its one and two teacher schools. Such curricula, with sufficient provision in each for flexibility and adaptation to individual schools or pupils, would be far more helpful to teachers and school officers than a single State curriculum of any one type could be. Best Curricula Adjusted to City Conditions There is to-day an increasing tendency to found the curriculum on environmental conditions and needs. Our best courses of study, however, have been made for city systems, and are definitely adjusted to the needs and conditions of city pupils. The rural schools need equally good courses of study, definitely adjusted to the needs and conditions of rural pupils. This is not to dispute the unquestionable fact that there will be-must bemuch that is common in the constitution of elementary curricula, no matter for what situation designed. For there is very much in common in child nature and in life experiences in even the most variant communities. The rural-school curriculum should draw, as all the best curricula do, on that which is most worth while in our social heritage, on the results of scientific investigation and experiment in educational practice, and on any other materials which, pragmatically evaluated, appear to be serviceable to it in reaching the elementaryschool objectives. But the rural-school curriculum should be made first-hand out of all the source materials which afford means to the achievement of the desired ends under rural-school conditions, and not be a mere making over of the urban-school curriculum, which has been organized from source materials to achieve desired ends under urban-school conditions. To use a homely illustration, the garments of men and of women serve similar, yet not identical purposes. They have many elements in common-backs, fronts, sleeves, fasteners, collars, etc. They may be made of the same or very similar material. But no modern tailor would cheerfully accept a commission to make out of a man's suit one reshaped to fit the woman's specifications, or vice versa. The first step in the making of the rural elementary school curriculum-that is, the setting up of aims and objectives in line with the best modern educational theory-would be common to all types of situations. The second would be the determination from a survey of the rural social situation of points to be specially emphasized by the school because they tended to be left undone by the home and community education, or points which the school might stress more lightly because the outside experiences largely made provision for them. Next, the curriculum maker would need to canvass the experiences potential in the rural environment for realization of the educational objectives. Unquestionably here would be wide divergences from the corresponding contributions of an urban environment. The rural curriculum would need to point out such potentialities and give definite guidance in their profitable use. A rich range of such suggestions should be made in order that a school so situated as not to be able to make use of part of the suggestions might yet find in its environment other suggested potentialities. Select Experiences in Harmony with Characteristics Educative experiences should be selected and organized in relation to the nature of the learners so far as this may be determined. Lacking any basis for believing rural children to differ psychologically from urban children, we would make such organization in harmony with the general principles of child psychology. If, however, we had any adequate evidence of differences characteristic of rural children, either in degrees of mental ability or in types or modes of learning activity, such differences should be duly considered and experiences selected in harmony with the prevailing characteristics. A special condition to be met in rural education is that of the one and two teacher schools. All that has been said above applies to these schools as well as to rural schools in general. But whereas the graded organization is as practicable in seven and eight teacher rural elementary schools as in any city school, and may be readily adapted to any school of more than four teachers and even fairly well to three-teacher schools, it is quite impracticable in smaller units. The number of resulting daily classes is so great as to make teaching an impossibility. For these schools, therefore, it is desirable to devise a more convenient type of organization. It has been found possible in such schools to put together in the same class children differing from each other in advancement by from two to four years, instead of being all within one year's level, as in the graded school. This, however, is only practicable and efficient when the curriculum is effectively organized according to this plan. Some progress has been made in this so-called "group" organization of the one and two teacher school curriculum. Experiments are also being tried in the application of the modern plans of "individual instruction" to these schools. Probably the best form of curriculum for them will consist of a combination of group organization and related individual instructional materials and exercises. |