Eliminate Advantage Urban Child Has for High School Education, Jan. 31, 1924

The County’s Schools

Tomorrow morning’s meeting of Board of Education and school committeemen is one that should interest every person who has at heart the welfare of popular education in Harnett county. Question as to whether the present school system is adequate to the needs of the county cannot be answered in the affirmative. No serious minded person will declare that the urban dweller should have any advantage over the rural citizen, in any respect, and most assuredly not in educational opportunities.

The matter must be looked upon from the broad viewpoint of equalization of opportunity, and if that view is put into practical working shape it will relieve the farmers of Harnett county of an almot unbearable burden schooling their children.

The county’s educational machine is slipping a cog when it continues to spend thousands upon high schools that do not and cannot function to advantage of its rural population. School advantages, equal to all, must go to the pupil—must be placed within each pupil’s reach—and this can only be done when standardization is made so as to apply to the farmer’s school as well as to that of the town dweller.

Numerous instances might be cited showing the great cost to the farmer in sending his children to high school, the tremendous expense of which bars a large majority from the high schools of the county. Is it right? Should the town dweller’s nearness to the school give him advantage in school opportunity for his children over those of the rural districts? Of course not. And yet that is the case with the present system.

There are those—few they are, thank goodness—who are ever ready to cry out against enormous expenditure of money for schools, more schooling, higher schooling. A bigger, broader view of the matter may not be within the capacities of these few, but they should at least be able to learn that the county can grow no larger than its brain power.

How big do you want your boy to be, Mr. Farmer Citizen? Don’t you want him to be as big as his city cousin? Of course you do. You want high schooling for him, so that he will be better prepared in his manhood days to reflect credit upon his good old daddy who provided it for him.

Harnett county must change its school system into a high school system, and give equal opportunities to all the children. From the editorial page of the Harnett County News, Lillington, N.C., Jan. 31, 1924, Henderson Steele, Publisher.