Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Experimental Rural School at Winthrop College, Rock Hill, S. C
At the outset the effort was to see clearly: First, what the farm wife must do all her life; second, what the farmer must do all his life. Then regardless of tradition, the resolve was to make a school that will train the farm children for their future work in the home, on the farm, and in the social life around them.
It was recognized that activity has given the race its power. Man began by making crude weapons and tools out of wood, bone, stone, etc., and throughout the history of the race education has been in activity, not in books about it. Hence we began frankly with the activities of the farm, both in the home and in the fields. The children from the outset, felt a joy in the work. This stirred an interest in all their tools: plows, hoes, books, pencils, paper, everything used in furthering their work. Thus they became their own teachers and teachers of all those in contact with them. They mastered reading, writing, drawing, out of their own zeal which was born of the inter est that grew out of their progress.
Simultaneous activities are made possible by this interest. A visi tor will see a group working in the garden, another group on the veranda sewing, another in the kitchen at a cooking task, another in the workshop, and still another at their numbers or reading with the teacher in her room.
With these activities are related such essential technics as drawing, reading, writing, numbering, and modeling; so that the children master these largely without the irksome effort that is characteristic of the old schools. How this is done will be seen especially from Mrs. Browne's account of the corn cycle.
It will be noted that the exercises are ordered so as to develop the body along with the organs of sense and the mental power. The content of the words the children learn along with their activities is both concrete and vivid. From the outset they are led to put facts together and draw conclusions.
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