Country Life Readers
By Cora Wilson Stewart
First Book
Preface
There is an increasing demand for the education of adult illiterates who have somehow missed their opportunity in early life, and also for the better education of adults that have a very limited degree of learning. The city has provided for this need to some extent with evening Schools, designed mainly for foreigners. All the textbooks for evening schools have, therefore, been prepared strictly for immigrants and city dwellers. Rural America is coming to realize that there exists a need for education among adults in the rural sections as much as among those in the cities. For this reason moonlight schools, rural evening schools, which begin their sessions on moonlight evenings, have been established and have now been extended to fifteen States. The people attending these schools demand textbooks which deal with the problems of rural life and which reflect rural life, and to meet this demand this book has been prepared. The author has utilized the opportunity when the rural dweller is learning to read to stimulate a livelier and more intelligent interest in such subjects as agriculture, horticulture, good roads, home economics, health and sanitation, and those subjects, which, if taught to him, will make for a richer and happier life on the farm.
Suggestions to Teachers
An excellent opportunity is offered in this Reader to introduce profitably certain objects and operations of rural life. If the teacher will utilize this opportunity, it will both give an added interest to the subject and impress the principles of the same. Therefore, the teacher is urged to study these suggestions and to follow them as carefully as possible.
1. The script, following the printed lesson, is designed to constitute the writing lesson of the evening's session, and should be copied at least ten times. The letters in script are intended for additional practice work in copying.
2. In connection with the road lessons on pages 10 and 11, a discussion of good and bad roads would be profitable, this discussion being based on the facts stated in these lessons. For instance, there may be an estimate of time lost and of injury to team and wagon by bad roads.
3. For teaching the banking lesson on page 17, a supply of blank checks should be provided in advance. After the lesson has been read, the checks should be distributed among the students. Then, after a line is read in concert, the action mentioned should be performed by the class. For example, after the class reads, "I write the date," all should write the date on their checks; after reading the next line, they should write the name of the payee.
4. The lessons on fruit will be more interesting if...
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