The rural school has held a low rank among educational institutions on
account of the inferior methods of instruction which have prevailed by
reason of the fact that the children were too few and their
qualifications too various to permit the forming of classes. Children in
various degrees of advancement from ABC's to higher arithmetic, and
yet numbering only ten, twenty, or thirty in all, are enrolled under one
teacher. Most branches of study could muster only one or two pupils in
each class: Five to ten minutes a day is all that can be allowed in such
cases for a recitation. No thoroughness of instruction on the part of
the teacher is possible, nor is there much improvement to be expected in
the method of instruction where classes can not be formed. The
benefactor of the country school therefore looks to other devices than
class instruction, and the author of this book has shown in what ways
the teacher of one of these small schools may extend his influence into
the families of his district, encourage home study initiate practical
experiments.

It is expected that the teacher, besides his daily register in which he
records the names and attendance of his own pupils, will keep a list of
the youth of the district who have been in attendance on the school but
have left to take up the work of the farm, and that he will endeavor by
proper means to persuade them to enter upon well-planned courses of
reading. Occasional meetings in the evening at central places, or on
some afternoons of the week at the schoolhouse itself, will furnish
occasions for the discussion of the contents of the books that have been
read, and experiments will be suggested in the way of verifying the
theories advanced in them.

Not only can the mind of the country youth be broadened and enlarged in