Date of Award

8-1940

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Degree Discipline

Science in Educational Administration

Abstract

There is a division of opinion as to merits and the purposes of the village school of the present. Many persons who attended one and two-teacher schools at the beginning of the century are of the opinion that the modern village school is inferior to the village school of thirty years ago. Some think that the curriculum of the small school is inadequate in that it attempts to teach subject matter drawn largely from an urban situation. In many respects the present-day rural school is better than the rural school before 1900.1 The physical plants are better equipped; the teachers are younger and better educated. Dilapidated shacks and unsightly log houses have given way in large measure to well constructed, painted and attractive buildings. Instead of the uncomfortable benches, often without backs, are convenient desks. Instead of the ancient school master, one finds a young person, generally a woman, who has completed on the average two years of work above the high school. There is almost universal effort to adapt the curriculum to the needs and interest of the child in the small town situation. But although rural schools have improved greatly there is a general feeling that this improvement has not been proportionately as great as has been improvement in city schools. Contrasts can easily be drawn in the matter of grounds, sanitary toilets, drinking fountains, heating, and even teachers. The small community will more readily accept services of a teacher who has had no experience whereas the city generally demands experience. Because of these contrasts rural people are beginning to demand for their schools, (1) a better and more efficient organization, (2) closer and more effective supervision, and (3) more competent and better trained teachers.

The problem may be stated in terms of the following questions: 1. To what extent can the curriculum of M. R. Wood School be improved? 2. How can we measure the improvement of the community in terms of the school curriculum?

1 Sorokin and Zimmerman, Principles of Rural-Urban Sociology, pages 487 - 490.

Committee Chair/Advisor

A. C. Preston

Committee Member

Richard L. Jeffreys

Committee Member

Walter R. Harrison

Publisher

Prairie View State College

Rights

© 2021 Prairie View A & M University

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Date of Digitization

12-14-2021

Contributing Institution

John B Coleman Library

City of Publication

Prairie View

MIME Type

Application/PDF

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.