Plans for Rural School Buildings, With Estimates of Cost and Forms of Specifications and Agreements: Ontario, Department of Education (Classic Reprint)

The School Building. Show me your school-houses, said a shrewd farmer. They will tell me more about the people of your township than I can learn in any other way. The school-houses have no prejudices, they speak the truth, and the whole truth, about the attitude of your municipality towards all that makes for genuine progress. That farmer was right. Like people, like school, is true oftener than it is not. The school is closely related to the home. The progress of the one should keep pace with the progress of the other. The log school-house belonged to the days of the log shanty with its trough-covered roof. The unpainted, box-shaped, dilapidated, desolate looking school should pass away with the log shanty and the old frame dwelling house we have outgrown. The houses of to-day indicate prosperity, comfort, and growing good taste. So should the school. We should build schools in keeping with our new homes, or, better still, with those we expect to have ten years hence. Moreover, we should have the best school-houses we can afford, and we can afford to have them a little better than the average home of the section. The new house, or barn, or stable, or pig-pen is not built on the same plan as the one of forty years ago. The farmer has seen something better than the old one, and so he builds, not according to the past, but for the future, and if possible he makes some improvement on what he has seen. So, too, the school-house should not be patterned after the old one, not even after the best one in the township, but after the best one that can be found in the Province. And there are other and greater considerations. Architecture is the highest of the Industrial A rts, and the most useful of the Fine A rts. I ts function is to please the eye as well as to satisfy the requirements of convenience and stability. The most perfect building, accordingly, is that whic
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)