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Country Schools
The problems of the country school child is one which continues to agitate country people. Country people are cast-iron conservatives on the subject of schools and are rightly jealous of their small schoolrooms where so many of their parish problems, after school hours, are often thrashed out. They resent, and perhaps rightly, the wholesale transportation of their children to town schools ; the automatic closing-down of their own schools in consequence. Country schools, with their tiny attendances and intimate atmosphere, are, as I can testify, often very efficient. They solve the problems of people like myself, who for one reason or another cannot or will not send tiny children to superior and often inefficient private schools carried on, at suitable fees, in Edwardian villas in town suburbs. Like Sir Charles Trevelyan, I have an admiration for the country elementary school which I put into practice. Yet the miracle wrought in the children of country labourers when transported to town schools is astonishing. Country children are, odd though it may seem, often undersized and palpably undernourished. Fresh air does not, as many towns- people appear to think, replace good food, and hopelessly bad teeth, poor bone formation and stunted growth are all painfully evident in the majority of country school-children. A few .months of a town school, with its one sound, well-cooked meal a day, works the miracle. But the fault is not, clearly, in the country school, but in country wages, country housing conditions and, again and again, country ignorance.
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