Download or read book Plans for Rural School Buildings written by and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-04 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Plans for Rural School Buildings: With Estimates of Cost and Forms of Specifications and Agreements "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 farmerwas 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 Arts, and the most useful of the Fine Arts. Its function is to please the eye as well as to satisfy the requirements of convenience and stability. The most perfect building, accordingly, is that which combines convenience, stability, and beauty. Of the public buildings in a community, the school building is the most important. If we are to cultivate the taste of the pupils and of the rest of the community, both it and its surroundings must be an example of taste, simplicity, and dignity in form and design. But, in the matter of school architecture, trustees are handicapped. They do not themselves know from experience what the good points are, nearly so well as they know the good points of the farm and other buildings they use every day. To provide them with the help they need, this book has been prepared by the Department of Education. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.