The Rural Junior High Schools of New Hampshire

Abstract

The rural junior high schools of New Hampshire are part of a state-wide campaign made by agricultural communities to prevent the migration of their young people to the larger cities. Twenty-one rural towns have materially improved the local schools by adopting some modification of the junior high school idea. The term is used in the New England sense, approximately equivalent to the western term county, and is to be sharply distinguished from the term village or city. A typical example is found in the town of Weare, six miles square, well watered, with rich soil, wide meadows, orchards, rocky pastures, forests, ponds, and streams. Weare has no city water, no police department, no municipal lighting system. The railway service consists of one passenger train a day to and from Manchester, fifteen miles away. The inhabitants of Weare, 1,o73 people, very generally the direct descendants of pioneer colonial families, dwell on farms and in eight small hamlets. There is no central village, and the homes are widely scattered over the thirty-six square miles. In 1919 the total school population was I50 pupils, distributed in eight one-room country schools, with about twelve pupils attending the Manchester High School and other city high schools. A vivid statement of the conditions in Weare was made in 1919 by the superintendent of schools to the state department of education. Weare has long known that its most valuable products are those of its farms, fields, and homes-its crops of milk, eggs, lumber, and children. For the milk, eggs, and lumber Weare received clothing, groceries, and bank checks. The exchange was an equitable one. This was not the case, however, with the children and the young people. The city absorbed them and made no return payment. Weare had never had a high school, and its very nearness to Manchester was proving its undoing. It was easy for boys and girls who had completed the elementary school to enrol at the Manchester High School, a well'75