Children Turn Out Better When They're Raised in the Country, 1914

Published in the Jackson County Journal, the Raleigh News & Observer, and the Watauga Democrat, February 1914

Prof. Charles H. Utley, formerly of Wake County but now superintendent of the graded school at Webster in Jackson County, writes for the Jackson County Journal an article on “The Country Schools” that deserves to be widely read:

Every one who has given the subject any thought has noticed that the great men in the city are usually those who come from the country. It is also true that the rugged characters who go to the city and find conditions there plastic under the touch of their personality generally leave children who are by no means the caliber of their father, indicating that the city is not the place to develop the sterner virtues.

So for the sake of the city in which the country boy is to play such an important part the country boy needs good educational facilities. But Prof. Utley makes the plea for better educational facilities for the country boy, to the end that he may do more for the country. He would have the educated country boy stay at home instead of rushing off to the city.

Prof. Utley finds in the efficient country school the solution of the problem of the drift to the city. He well says that the efficiency of the country school in the future will largely determine the joy of living in the country. This is recognizing an essential fact in connection with the problem of keeping country boys in the country. Living in the country must be made more pleasant than it has been heretofore.

Answering the question as to how the country school will do what he says he can do Prof. Utley says the country school must teach the natives how to live and how to get a living. It is well known that homes in the country are not as attractive as they might be and that the comforts of life are not as plentifully provided in the rural districts as they are in the city.

The well-equipped country school will meet these needs from two directions. It will spread the refining influences which tend to make for happiness in the home and it will produce the efficiency which transmutes itself into the wealth which makes the comforts of life possible. “The future,” says Prof. Utley, “holds out many flattering promises to the intelligent, progressive young people who are educated along the lines of industrial science.”

There is no doubt at all about the strategic part which the country school will hold in the solution of the problem supporting the teeming millions of the land. Greater production is clearly seen to be one of the crying needs of the day. The country school, teaching among other things the branches that will tend to enthusiasm and success in farming, can accomplish wonders towards bringing lagging supply within reach of hurrying demand.