Newspapers / The University of North … / Nov. 20, 1918, edition 1 / Page 1
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5'il The news in this publica tion is released for the press on receipt. THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA NEWS LETTER Published weekly by the University of North Carolina for its Bureau of Extension. NOVEMBER 20,1918 CHAPEL HELL, N. C. VOL. V, NO. 2 Ediiorial Board i B. 0. Branson, J. Q, d©R. Hamilton, L, R. Wilson, R, H. Thornton, G. M. McKie. Batered as second-class matter November 14,1914, at the iPostomce at Chapel Hill, N, C., under the act of August 24,1912. FEEBLE SOCIAL AGENCIES Seventy-nine people in the hundred in North Carolina are country dwellers, liv ing outside towns and villages, in sparsely settled areas in the open country, in widely scattered homes. Tlie civic agency that is closest to these homes is the country sohool. The coun try school teacher is nearer than any oth er public servant to the units of rural population. When the schools are in session—which is to say, during the pe riods ranging from 80 to 117 days of the year in the various counties—the teacli- ers when so minded can reach half the country homes every day directly through the children, and the rest of them indi rectly by tlie grape vine route, as country people say. When the day schools are not in session, the next best agency of svVift communication is the Sunday schools, and as a rule half of these are closed during another third or half of the year. It is a population that is hard to reach. We know because we have tried to do it —in tlie war stamp drive the other week, and in many another campaign during dihe last quarter century. Our attempts to reach the country peo ple in the war stamp campaign in Orange county brought us to a keen realization jf the fact that the rural school is a social agency of tremendous possibilities, but also as a matter of hard fact that it is a feeble agency in North Carolina, for the following reasons— ^1. The white country schoolhouae is e^upty and idle in North Carolina for more than six months of the year. 3. More than half the white country children of school age are not in average ■daily attendance, while 84,000 of them are not in school for as much as a single day of the year. 3. Around a fourth of the teachers year by year are raw recruits, taking the place of teachers who marry or abandon teaching for better paying occupations. This year, under war conditions, the brand new teachers will be around a third or even a half of the entire public school corps of the state. 4. And finally, something like two- thirds of our country schools are taught by new teachers year by year. In some counties the fraction is even larger; in others it is less. This kaleidoscopic change of teachers in our country schools is the most serious problem we have to solve in public education in this state. This one fact reduces the country school to its lowest terms as an agency of social •uplift. Because the country school terms are short, the ratios of attendance small, the salaries poor, and tlie change of teachers incessant, our country schools in this and ■every other state have been far below the mark as agencies in organizing the nation for war. The country schools are tremendously important, because forty-one million peo ple in these United States dwell in the open country, outside towns and villages •of any size whatsoever; and nine million naore dwell in small centers of less than 2,500 inhabitants. No agency can reach these people like the ’country schools, and the country schools have failed to reacli them in the liberty bond and war stamp drives, the Red Cross, and the Ar my Y canvasses. In many of our coun try counties the teachers have been true- blue patriots—there is no doubt about that, but in most of them, the teachers and school authorities have done little or .nothing in patriotic war work. The country people have money, they ihave a fervent patriotic interest in the war, and now that their boys are in the •trenches they are anxious and willing to Bear their share of the national burden of ■war. The trouble is they have not been igiven a fair chance with the town and ■city dwellers. They are too remote from the wliirlwind campaigns of the cities. The drives are over and the accounts are closed before the country people have had li' time to catch a comfortable long breath. ^ Wlien the buyers of the 4th liberty ^ bonds among the 51,000 people of six ^ country counties number 64 all told, it is „ .safe to say that the social agencies in these xegions are feeble, and that the feeblest social agency of them all is the country school. The people of these country coun ties are not poor and they do not lack patriotism. What they lack is the infor mation, stimulation, and opportunity to purchase that the country schools could have furnished every home. The war has tremendously emphasized the pitiable deficiencies of the country schools of the nation as effective social agencies—and their deficiencies in North Carolina are no greater than in every other state. These deficiencies are less pronounc ed in time of peace, but they are not less menacing to the welfare of the state and the nation. Country necessities and country schools are the largest consideration in the edu cational legislation now being urged upon congress by Senator Hoke Smith and Dr. P. P. Claxton, our Federal Commissioner of Education. Constructive Suggestions Our country schools are never likely to be effective social agencies unless we can have comfortable country school homes for the teachers; homes alongside the schools, on lots large enough for gar dens, orchards, pig and poultry ranges, dairy pastures and demonstration plats for our standard money crops—say 10 to 20 acres each. Country school teacher- ages, in other words, are an indispensable necessity. They are the rule in every old- world country; they are the exception in the United States. In the whole of North Carolina there only 61. In a country home of the sort we name, a good teacher can afford to settle down comfortably and contentedly on a mod erate salary for a long term of years. Such a teacher would have a chance to relate his school to community needs and to offer his home and farm as illustra tions of enlightened home making and progressive farming. Dr. P. P. Claxton has these funda mental necessities in mind, when he pro poses (1) to lend the 126 millions of Pos tal Savings Bank money to country school communities, at 3 or 4 percent, for the purpose of building good schoolhouses and teacherages, (2) to make the country schoolhouse or school home the country post-office, and the teacher the postmas ter, and so to keep him remuneratively busy at his post the year round, (3) to arrange ample quarters and facilities for the country parcels post, and thereby en courage the fami-to-city plan of trading, (4) to use the children as daily mail car riers and thus increase the mail facilities of the cauntry regions while decreasing by millions the E. F. D. expense account of the nation, and (5) to transfer to the country teachers the millions saved in this way. High officials in the postoffice depart ment have given enthusiastic endorsement to Dr. Claxton’s plan. The manifest advantages are teacher- ages, better school buildings, teachers permanently resident in the community, better salaries, country schools better re lated to country occupations and country life, school projierties better cared for and more widely used for community pur poses, better mail facilities, a daily-mail interest on part of the homes in regular school attendance, and rapid development of the country parcels post. It means the country school, at least, as a social center. We’ve been talking about a full quar ter century. Here’s a practical plan of approach to it. It’s worth thinking about hard and long. A LIVE COUNTRY SCHOOL Miranda High School, which is one of the best in Rowan or any other county in the State, has shown its good judgment by inaugurating a practical course in dairying. Education has been defined as that which teaches a man to excel in any giv en undertaking. It is just as important to teach a boy or girl how to raise the best cattle, how to get the best and most butter from a pint of milk and how to market it to the largest advantage, as it is to be able to display the greatest skill at the piano, to recite with best flow of English or to do many of the other things SCHOOLS AND THE WAR President Wilson The schools and colleges of America are justified by their works when the youth of our land and the homes from which they come are united in unself ish devotion and unstinted sacrifice for the cause and the country we hold dear. The spirit of Democracy is a herit age cherished and transmitted by pub lic education. All that America has meant to us and to the world in the past it must mean with greater and more disinter ested devotion in the future. The civic sense that has made each home and child a part of a communi ty, part of a State, part of a Nation, is today deepened by this war and its issues. It affects the fate of the many lands and peoples whose blood is in our veins, and whose happier future will be part of the triumph of the princi ples for which we fight. commonly termed education. The State will be helped in proportion as other schools follow the example of Miranda.— Spencer Crescent. BOND BUYERS IN ORANGE Eight hundred and thirty-seven people in Orange County bought 3>331,006 worth of 4th liberty bonds the other day. Our quota was 1300,000, and we went beyond it by more than 10 percejit. The State as a whole went nearly 20 percent over. In the State at large, the bond buyers in the last drive were 47 people in the 1000 of population; in Orange they were 56 in the 1000. In this particular we were far beyond the state average. And now to give praise where praise is due, we call attention to the fact that the buyers in the north end of the county outnumbered the buyers in the south end by nearly four to one. So the records show. The population of the five north ern townships is only 50 percent larger than that of the two southern townships, but the bond buyers in the north out numbered the bond buyers in the south by nearly 300 percent. The figures are 587 and 250. The Farmers Did it The difference lies in the farmers. In the north end they were bond buyers in large numbers. They were 238 or nearly half the total; in the south end they were only 32 or barely an eighth of the total. The north-end farmers bought $35,000 worth of bonds; the south-end farmers bought only $4,750 worth. Surely the farmers in Chapel and Bing ham townships are not less patriotic or less keen in the matter of wise invest ments than the farmers in the other end of the county! Tfie chances are that the Hillsboro can vassers got out to the country people bet ter than the Chapel Hill and Carrboro canvassers did, and so gave the country people a better chance to buy north of the railroad. If that is the case, then we must do better next time in our end of Orange. Federal Interest $30,000 All told the buyers of liberty bonds of the various issues number 1624 in Orange County. Counting out the people who have bought more than once, our liberty bond holders now number around 1000 persons. The war stamp purchasers num ber around 3,000. Again excluding duplicate names, we find that the owners of gold-bearing gov ernment securities in Orange County now number 3,750 people. Altogether they own $750,000 in war stamps and liberty bonds, and the federal interest money they will be receiving on these securities year by year is some $30,000. A nice little nest egg, that! And it will buy $60,000 worth of com modities when money drops again to its customary exchange level, as it is bound to do when the war is over. Who Gets it? But for every single dollar of federal in terest that goes into our country regions, nine dollars will go to our town dwellers. Why? Well, because the town dwellers have been the bond buyers for the most part in Orange. While the farmers were buying $40,000 worth of bonds the other day, the townspeople were buying $290,- 000 worth, and the ratio of country pur chasers was even smaller in the other bond drives. Here’s a matter for our farmers to think over! It’s dead easy to be a bond owner now- a-days—and to nobody easier than our farmers! They have more money now than they ever bad before in all their lives. HIGH SCHOOL HINTS The emergencies of war have served to give clarity and emphasis to the move ment already under way to make second ary courses in science contribute more constanly and effectively to practical needs. This practice should prevail in order that a large number of future citi zens may be interested in science, attracted to continued study, given appreciation of and respect for sientific process, train ed in the most useful phases of science, and thus enabled to become better citi zens. The general recommendations are as follows: 1. Work in science, as in other sub jects, at all times, and especially in war time should be made to contribute defin itely to one or more of the following ob ject! veg; (1) Health of the individual and of the community; (2) command of fundamental process; (3) worthy home membership; (4) vocational guidance and preparation; (5) citizeifship in a democracy; (6) worthy use of leisure; (7) ethical character. In the present emer gency items (1) and (4) should be par ticularly stressed. 2. To encourage high-school students to elect more work in science and at the same time to lay a foundation for a gen eral appeal to science and iis methods, every effort should be made to arouse a lively intrest in science, particularly in grades 7 to 9. High School Aims 3. In the present crisis training must be given for specific tasks, need for which has been created or made more emphatic by war conditions. Hence great and in creasing emphasis must be laid on the ap plications of science to those processes most necessary in winning the waf. In deed, such immediate and purposeful real problems consitute the beat basis for educ ation in science whether in war time or not. 4. High schools are urged to provide science instruction adequate in kind and amount to make the pupils competent in fields of science and industry in which they are needed for national service. 5. The schools should also undertake, as a part of their duty the training of adults through night schools for tasks to which they are called by the national emergency. Wherever practicable, cer tainly in grades 7 to 9, in junior high schools, and the first year of four-year high schools, the artificial separation of the sciences so that they are treated as separate subjects should be ignored for the greater end of interpreting the problems of daily life. In solving a problem ap peal should be made to any science that will contribute to the problem in hand.— Federal School News. NO PEACE WITH KAISERISH President Wilson has answered Ger many’s peace proposal with a decision which not only fulfils the expecta tions of the supporters of his diplomacy, but also dispels the fears of those who predicted he would substitute victories at arms with defeats at diplomacy. No peace with kaiserism. Autocracy must go; no armistice can even be thought of while Germany continues her atroc ities on land and sea; one cannot be con sidered unless it is fully dictated by the al lied commanders in the field in such terms as provided absolute safeguards and guar antees that Germany’s agreement will not be a scrap of paper. This in a few* words is the President’s answer. If it does not bring a capitulation which may be more than unconditional surren der, allied diplomats and American offi cials believe it may cause a revolution in Germany. Beyond question it speaks for the en tente allies as well as the United States. The dispatch of the President’s reply was followed by the issuance of this formal statement at the White House by Secre tary Tumulty: The government will continue to send over 250,000 men with their supplies ev- every month and there will be no relax ation of any kind.—Exchange. THE FAITH OF OUR LEADERS One of the outstanding and significant things in connection with the war is the attitude toward God and spiritual things of the great leaders of the Allied forces. Almost without exception—we do not at this moment recall a single exception —they have avowed themselves reverent believers in God and in the necessity and efficacy of prayer to him in this world crisis. This was true of Roberts and Kitchner at the beginning of the war. It is no less true of their successors, Haig, and Byng, and Foch, and Joffre, and Pershing. In reply to a message sent him recently by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, General Pershing gave his memorable testimony to his faith in prayer: “The invisible, unconquera ble force let loose by the prayers, hopes and ideals of Christian America is incalcula ble. It furnishes the soul and [the mo tive for the military body and its co-oper ation. It steadies us to resist manfully the temptations which assail us in the ex traordinary conditions in which we find ourselves. ’ ’ In view of this attitude assumed by the men whom they admire and almost adore as the exemplification of everything splendid and manly and heroic, it will not be easy for the boys who come home from the front to take up again the old sneer that religion is something good for women and children, but having no ap peal to real men.—Watchman Examiner. LIVESTOCK AND THE WAR Recent statistics show that the allies have sacrificed 28.7 percent of their meat animals and Germany 36.3 percent. We are now feeding our armies, and as soon as the war is over we must help replen ish the farms of Europe with breeding stock of all kinds, and we do not want our allies to find us unprepared when the time comes. We have today record prices for live stock. There is no doubt that these prices are going to continue for some time. But even if they weren’t, there is a bigger and nobler thought behind it all. Our country is engaged in a life-and-death struggle. Every resource at our command must be thrown into the fray. The live stock industry furnishes a rapid means of rendering first aid. Let it never be said that our boys suf fered from a lack of rations as long as we have the land, the capital, and the means for supplying them with enough and more.—Jay E. Markle in the Country Gentleman. WARREN’S BOND FAILURE Warren County has a hurt conscience. Her quota of the Fourth Liberty Loan was $1,015,000 and she subscribed only $148,150. She is suflering remorse. Ex pression has been given her feelings in the following editorial appearing in the Warren Record of October 22: In the name of Heaven may Warren never fail again to line up to its limit be hind the men Out There. May the County never again hold its money while the blood of heroes flows. May never again lack of interest and a ninth-hour start be laid at our door while boys of eighteen and twenty give not only themselves but invest over one-sixth of their income in bonds. May Warren awake and quiver from end to end. This is a fight of Heaven against hell. Self-ease, lack of interest, selfishness must be scrapped: it’s red war to the last for eternal justice. We can make no apologies; but each citizen of Warren County can here and now resolve that never again will War ren fall under, it matters not what sacri fice is necessary to carry it over. We cannot be false to the men who battle for right against the Legions of Hell, and a man who fails his Govern ment at this its supreme moment of trial is false to the blood of heroes. Never again for Warren.—State Wait Stamp Bureau.
The University of North Carolina News Letter (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Nov. 20, 1918, edition 1
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