FOURTH SESSION

October 20, 1922, 2.30 p. m.

REGENT THOMAS J. MANGAN, presiding

REGENT MANGAN: In continuing the discussion begun this morning it might be well to say something of the position of the Board of Regents; for, after all, I suppose that perhaps we have a little to say about education in the State. And in that connection I would ask you, fellow educators, to bear in mind the fact that we claim to be the sponsors of the only constructive rural school education that we have had up to date the township law. Now that law may be discredited. It was abolished. And yet it was the first piece of active, constructive rural education that was had in the State. And out of that, without a question, is going to be evolved some system of rural education. We are committed to the improvement of rural education even beyond that. Our Vice Chancellor, for example, is a country boy, a boy educated in the rural schools before he obtained his professional and other education, and for years this subject has been deep in his heart. I know that since I have been on the Board the matter has frequently been discussed, and it has also been our hope to get something constructive concerning the administration and support of the rural schools.

It had been demonstrated by experience that it was absolutely impossible to get constructive work from the top down. And so it was felt that this work must be started by the rural people themselves and brought up to the Department of Education. I think it was with that idea in view that this Committee of Twenty-one was originally formed. I know that they had our full cooperation in all the work that they did, because we felt that there was truth in the homely saying, "You can drive a horse to water, but you can't make him drink," and that if some system were evolved that would be clearly from the folks who were to be benefited, then naturally they could go back with the best possible grace to these people with the system that they had worked out.

When this matter first came up and the Committee of Twenty-one was formed, there were no funds to meet the expenditures that must necessarily be met in this connection, but eventually $75,000 was given to the Board of Regents by the Commonwealth Fund to finance. a survey of rural schools. I may read from the resolution of October 7, 1920, by which this gift was accepted; perhaps it will explain the whole situation:

l'oted, That the Board of Regents approves the tentative plan outlined by the President of the University for a thorough study of educational conditions in the villages and rural communities of the State, the survey to be carried forward in full cooperation with the Committee of Twenty-one appointed by the rural and farm organizations; and that the offer of $75,000 made for this purpose by the Commonwealth Fund to the Board of Regents be accepted, the expenditure of the funds to be under the direction of the President of the University and the committee on elementary education.

I should not have laid any stress upon this matter if I did not want it to appear and in speaking of myself I speak for the Board that regardless of the position that any one may have taken on this rostrum or outside this rostrum, whether they are connected with the Department or not connected with the Department, they do not in any manner represent the Regents of the State of New York, who are the governing body of the education of the State; and any position that they may have taken and any sentiments that they may have expressed are purely and simply the sentiments and the expression of the individual. In other words, our position is absolutely receptive. This committee was appointed to find out facts, and every fact that they found out we as a Board want to avail ourselves of in the constructive legislation that we hope will subsequently follow. And whether these facts come from the Committee of Twenty-one, from individuals, from the discussions here, or from whatever other source, this Board of Regents is not committed to anything except facts. And from facts we want to draw and evolve. a constructive system that will be of some benefit to the community. We appreciate the arduous, strenuous work that has been done by this committee, and we fully appreciate the importance of the results as given to us. We may agree with some of their findings and recommendations and not with others. Statistics constitute fundamentally the only scientific method of approach, but figures may at times be misleading. Sometimes they do not represent what they purport to represent. But, in any event, we feel, as a Board, that we owe a deep debt of gratitude and a hearty vote of thanks to the men who have given so much of their time, and given it so faithfully, skilfully and graciously to this work. They have done a great service and have thrown much light upon this problem of our rural schools.

This is the first proposition. Now bear in mind that no matter where this information comes from, all we want is facts. This money was given to the Board of Regents for constructive work. The report on the expenditure of this fund will be made by the Commissioner of Education to the board from which this fund came. And the facts and recommendations in that report, covering the

essential and valuable things worked out by this committee, and such modifications as we may have gleaned from such papers as we heard this morning or from such as we are about to hear this afternoon, will enable the Board of Regents to formulate a policy and a plan that will be of real service and value to the agricultural communities and to rural education.

I trust that I have not taken too long, but I felt it was necessary, by reason of criticisms and discussions that I have heard, to explain the position of the Board of Regents in this matter.

Continuing the work of the morning, the next address will be "Resources in Rural Education" by Dr Ernest Burnham of the department of rural education at the state normal school of Kalamazoo, Mich.

RESOURCES IN RURAL EDUCATION

ERNEST BURNHAM, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF RURAL EDUCATION, WESTERN STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, KALAMAZOO, MICH.

In the current number of the American Journal of Sociology, Dean Alfred H. Lloyd of the University of Michigan discusses "The Ages of Leisure." The growth value of the leisure afforded by long childhood and youth is appraised. The cultural advantages enjoyed by the peoples who gained leisure when they were relieved by slaves from the tedium of routine is evaluated. And thoughtful attention is commanded in a most illuminating statement of the new leisure insured by the accumulated services of science and mechanics in all lines of work.

The reader of Dean Lloyd's article gets from it a new significance for vocational and professional education. The day's task intellectualized, mastered and subordinated is seen to be an achievement great in itself, but vastly greater in its essentially fundamental relation to a self-respecting, consciously independent, citizenship in a new age of leisure.

Leisure is the keeper of the threshold of culture. To be sure, a hard routine of work and worship lived up to days, months and years, exercises the impulses for refinement which are characteristic of human nature, thus establishing a rich background for culture, but such life is spent too completely on the perceptual level. Things, facts, deeds, persons all objectivities absorb the mind and weary the body. Leisure is a ladder to the conceptual level of life. Το climb to this level of wider horizons and truer understanding is the sacred birthright of every civilized person. The conservation of this birthright is the function of vocational and professional education,

but its capitalization waits on reflection and the intellectual nourishment so richly provided in the achieved cultures of mankind.

The fellowship of brotherhood is the greatest ethical ideal yet experienced in the world. The comradeships of the workaday world enrich brotherhood with instinctive sympathies and concrete appreciations. But the realm of the noblest human fellowship lies above and beyond the mere mutuality of common tasks. Only when the imagination touches these tasks with the light of the wider relationships and makes them keys to brotherhood with the generations, with the races, and with the ages, does man get a sense of that greatest fellowship which constitutes his chief dignity and his crowning glory. The illuminated imaginations of great men have put the pure gold in the social inheritance.

These introductory statements have the purpose of at least glimpsing the greatest resource in humanitarian effort - a gripping belief in the intrinsic value of a human being. Analysis of this value discloses the triune elements of material effectiveness, intellectual distinction and unselfishly apprehending fellowship. The obvious interdependence of these elements makes the educational process synthetic and the educated man is a resultant, rather than the result of the process. Not until the value of the educated man is actually put above all other values and only with the sense of this truth will the heart, the intelligence and the will of this nation, the great states that compose the nation, and the multiple communities which compose the states and the nation be aroused to utmost action by the shame and disgrace which undeveloped human souls demonstrate throughout this land.

Grant that education is the nation's, the state's and the community's greatest problem and immediately the situation throbs with energy, thought, purpose and action. Inventory is imperative, if not in all phases of the problem, then first in that part which is least satisfactory. This has brought New York State, as it would bring in practically all the states, a "rural school survey." This survey proves beyond peradventure or doubt that this great State has and does visit penalizing handicaps on the innocent children of the farm and small community homes.

Rural education is no separate province and to the extent that it has been segregated for purposes of intensive study there has been gained only the necessary information to enable the State's educational leadership to reincorporate it in the State's educational program with truer perspective and in honestly proportionate participation in all the educational resources of the commonwealth.

These resources are not different or less for rural education than for any other of the State's educational obligations. That less has been accomplished in the small communities is now known in specific terms of money, organization, administration, supervision, technic, curriculum, teachers, pupils and community reaction. The indictment is inescapable because the diagnosis is transparently conclusive. Alibis and palliatives and personalities ought to be instantly outgrown in the presence of the defined problem of doing simple justice which the situation discloses. Much has been done all the time by local, state and national leaders else the better conditions now present would still be unfulfilled. The truth is that not enough has been done or is being done to equalize the educational opportunities of the children citizens of New York, and this is the truth which gives purpose to the inquiries, suggestions and inspirations by the press, the pulpit and this Convocation.

The problems involved are now clearly known by a rapidly increasing number of people; the seriousness of the whole matter is superficially known by the general public; surely people do care, and certainly more will be done immediately, until presently the stigmas resting upon community, state and nation will be entirely removed. This will be done largely by the same means that are already employed, and it is the assembling, the elaborating, the economizing and the adequate utilization of these means to which the constructive part of this discussion now turns.

In general terms resources in education are money, organization, technic, personnel and social control. That rural education in New York State is not, comparable with urban education, adequately capitalized in any of these respects is beyond question. This is true also nationally, and since the local situation gets its true importance. only by this wider perspective, just as rural education is most significant as an essential element in the total problem of public education, a wider look at the situation may properly precede more specifically applied suggestions.

Money. National, state and local financial resources have been successfully united in a nationwide progressive program for the rebuilding of the country roads. In my state $14,500,000 was available for roads in 1922. Of this amount, the Nation paid $4,000,000, the state $8,500,000, and counties $2,000,000.

Rural education has greatly benefited by the cooperation of the Nation and the states in a fairly adequate financing of adult and industrial education through extension work, the experiment stations, and the land-grant college. For some years now this combined aid. by state and federal money has percolated into many high schools in