Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1917 — RURAL EDUCATION A NATIONAL PROBLEM [ARTICLE]

RURAL EDUCATION A NATIONAL PROBLEM

By JAMES Y. JOINER.

(State Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Carolina.) Rural education bulks big in public thought and public discussion today. It is a problem of national as well as of state and local importance, of urban as well as of rural interest. Quantitatively it is 58.4 per cent of the problem in all distinctly agricultural states; and at least 80 per cent of the problem in the states known as the “Southern .states.” It is of vital interest to the city as well as to the country, because the country is vitally related to the well-being of the city. According to the evidence of past history and of present observation, the city is largely dependent upon the renewal of its population from the countryside for leadership in all lines of business, commercial and professional, for civic righteousness, for spiritual guidance, and for the preservation and the perpetuation of the best in its civilization. Truly has Emerson said that if the cities were not re-enforced from the fields, they would have rotted, exploded and disappeared long ago. A reliable authority states that five-sixths of the ministers and six-sevenths of the college professors of this country were born and reared in the country; 26 of the U 7 presidents of the United States were country-born; three-fourths of the men in authority in our city churches and about the same percentage of the influential men of affairs, merchants, manufacturers, bankers, lawyers, were born and reared in the rural regions. From such evidence the supreme importance of this problem of rural education is apparent. the agencies for rural education cost what they may, they are cheap at any price. They will not come in one generation, for all the greatest things in civilization are of longest growth. This generation may be well content to sow in faith the seeds, assured that from them shall grow some day a finer flower and fruit than ever were before produced.