rural schools for city children

Irish Jesuit Province

Rural Schools for City ChildrenAuthor(s): T. CorcoranSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 61, No. 724 (Oct., 1933), pp. 615-618Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20513627 .

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615

RURAL SCHOOLS FOR CITY CHILDREN.

BY THE REv. T. CORCORAN, S.J., D.Litt.

M ,rODERN living and working conditions make change of scene at fairly regular intervals a permanent element in the lives of many con

cerned with education. This new fact has full force within the profession of teaching. What, then, of such needs in the case of pupils at the primary age? For those who live in the country, or in towns and villages of the average size within Ireland, there is no such need. The daily rnound for them is full of variety. It is otherwise with those who are growing up through the years of childhood within a small compass of populous streets and lanes in large towns and cities, those of, say, 15,000 population and over. The great

mass of these children, under 14 years of age, have only the rarest chances of seeing beyond their owni street environment. The movement for providing them with playing grounds in their own corner of an urban area is as yet in its opening stages. Even were these grounds fully provided, they would remain what their naature

makes them-very urbanised places. Of great popular service, they cannot suffice alone.. The urban child needs a regular provision for education in the real country.

That provision need not be very frequent in order to produce its very best and fullest effects. There need not, again, be any requiremeent of regular buildings outside the urban district. T,o provide them and main tain them would uot be practicable: and even if they

were provided, there would soon come to be that same ness, about days spent within them, that would rob the change of scene of most of its value. A much more acceptable scheme will also prove to be educationally more effective and as attractive as it is inexpensive.

Several times within the late spring, summer and autumn months there will be periods of some days each,



616 THE IHISH MONTHLY

when fine weather can be depended on with consider able security. Place on an early day within such periods, a real school excursion to a quiet spot in the country. It is to be an excursion for schooling. That need not mean the maintenance of such regular school work, on such a day, as calls for the assiduous use of pen and ink and paper, desks, charts, blackboards. They should all be put aside, with the possible excep tion of the blackboard, which is capable of easy trans

portation and is a good focus for ordinary class work in the open or under shade of trees. Prepare a group ing of class exercises which, while all part of the regular curriculum, allow of teaching under what may be called excursion conditions. Oral work of every kind can

* used: so, too, can music, physical training in all

forms, and even sketching in small notebooks, fitted for use on the knee. This provision is easily made for the occasion, and its presence will allow of plenty of pra tice in arithmetic and algebra if desired, as well as of geography. All that is needed on this side is a special one-day time table for each clalss, devised and published beforehand. There is value in insistence on its use: the school-day in the country thus remains a school, day. The make-up of the intellectual fare is the one alteration needed.

There should be no intention of thus transferring a whole school, unless it is a small school. For the average urban school in a populous city area, it will be best to take at most a couple of classes out at a time, and to provide for the whole school on a rotation system. Children of from 8 to 11 or 12 are best able to respond to this temporary change of conditions. Due publicity should be accorded to those occupiers of land who make provision from their available acres for the day's schooling in the country. A spot that will in clude some timber, with a stream near by, and with these two elements available not too far from a road,

will prove very useful. For senior pupils, access to a sandpit or a piece of bogland or marsh, will enable special lessons to be given, lessons very profitable in their case,



RURAL SCHOOLS FOR CITY CHILDREN 617

yet not so practicable with younger pupils. X little planning will secure that several hours beyond the usual school-day period may be spent in the open, anad thus an abundance of time can be given to recreation and organised games of the usual type. All who are able to do so should be got to prepare by means of composi tion allied to simple sketches, an account of the days

which are thus worked through by a class each year. The best of these accounts, written on one side of the paper, shouldl be permanently put on record by being fastened or pasted into the class log-botok. This large collective record can be easily prepared on the now usual binder principle, by the use of large pages of brown paper, kept in a strong cover till a number of sheets is completed so as to, allow of a practical exer

cise in permanent binding. As for the issue of transport-that depends. There

is plenty of room here for adult believers in education to become co-operators in a scheme that brings healthy variety in school work into the lives of dwellers in slum streets. With a group of junior or of senior classes it will be

easy to devise some special forms of practical work, issuing naturally into suitable class instruction; vari able according to the time of the year in which this day of out-of-doors school work is carried through. The range of months may be fairly taken as extending from the middle of May to the middle of October, in any average Irish year. It thus covers the late spri.ng sea son, and goes right through and beyond the harvesting period. For a senior class, the making of co-operative surveys of a stubble field will be excellent practice in

mathematics, and will alter in any locality from year to year. No damage will be done to any tillage land by the operation of many surveying parties: and all that will be needed for due execution will be a fair quantity of twine and a few flag-sticks. 5These can be connected with such activity in practical mathematics, as the estimation of the yield of a potato-field on the basis of the single drill, duly measured: and again this



618 THE IRISH MONTHLY

estimation need not injure a single potato-top. The like can be done with even such growing crops as oats,

wheat, meadow. With junior pupils, above all with the youngest

practitioners in oral Irisji, there will be great and ever-varying use for the principle bf the Aga,zzi system, now come into widespread national use throughout Italy. The children them selves collect their own materials, for a "' one day museumm of external nature in leaf and spray and blade and wayside or bankside flower. Here everything is natural, nothing is artificial. There is no room for any detailed method, taught or prescribed; all that is desirable is the application by teacher and class together of the principle of the 'Sisters Agazzi, the true modern restorers of "c the home and homeland

within the school." The arrangem-ent of the assembled material, ever fresh and ever changing, on a few sheets of white paper, will be an excellent lesson basis for Irish oral practice. So will the resultant description of the contents. The numbering of flowers and of single blades of grass will give ample practice in the conduct of arithmetic. The choice of colour-terms will here have its full opportunity of development: and nothing conduces more to a sense of command over a language than descriptions of cololur, position, and size with shape, in the case of objects chosen by the children themselves. Natural objects got on the spot, far excel the teaching value of any made "gifts " or "didactic

material " whatsoever.



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