3. If you are in a district-system State, find out the number of trustees elected, the number of teachers employed, and number of schools of each size one-room, two-room, etc. in your county, and compare schools and teachers with enrollment.

COLLATERAL READING

*Boyle, J. E. Rural Problems in the United States. *Carney, M. Country Life and the Country School.

(142 pp.)

(405 pp.)

Country Life Commission. Report. (65 pp.) (Roosevelt Commission.) *Cubberley, E. P. Rural Life and Education, part 1. Fiske, G. W. The Challenge of the Country. (274 pp.) *Gillette, J. M. Constructive Rural Sociology. (408 pp.) Grayson, D. Adventures in Contentment. Hanifan, L. J. The Community Center. (214 pp.) *MacGarr, L. The Rural Community. (239 pp.) McKeever, W. A. Farm Boys and Girls. (326 pp.) Symposium. The Rural School as a Community Center. part II, National Society for the Study of Education. (75 pp.) Wilson, W. The Evolution of the Country Community. (221 pp.)

Tenth Yearbook,

CHAPTER XXI

RURAL-SCHOOL REORGANIZATION

Attempts to solve the rural-school problem. As was stated in the preceding chapter, the unfortunate condition of rural life and education has, within the past two to three decades, attracted the attention of many statesmen, publicists, editors, and students of educational problems, and much thought has been given to the rural-life question. President Roosevelt became so interested that, in 1908, he appointed a Country Life Commission to study the problem and make recommendations. The Smith-Lever Act was largely an outcome of the recommendations of this Commission. The lack of the right kind of an educational system early became evident as one of the main factors in the rural-life problem, and much thought has been given to the question of how to secure the proper kind of educational advantages for rural and village children. As President Roosevelt well said, country boys and girls are not given "a square deal" in the matter of education.

Two general plans have been followed in attempting a solution of the problem. The first, and the earlier, was to try to explain to country and village people how wasteful and ineffective the existing district schools were, and how much better education they might provide for their children were they to abandon some of the many small schools, and haul the children to some central school where there would be more children and larger possibilities of providing a good school for them, and then to try to induce them to hold an election and vote to make the needed consolidations. This is what has been known as the voluntary transportation and

consolidation movement, and much effort has been expended in trying to secure results under it.

The other plan, and in general the later one to be employed, has been to force the abandonment of the district system by law, to replace it with some form of the township-, community-, or county-unit organization, and then to put this larger unit at work at the problem of providing schools suited to the needs of country children. We shall describe each of these methods, and state the general results attained under each.

Beginnings of the consolidation movement. The first law permitting the expenditure of public money to transport children to school was enacted by Massachusetts, in 1869. The original intent of the law was to permit the carrying of the older children to a central town high school, but, after about 1875-80, towns there began to take advantage of the law to close up small outlying schools and to transport the children to a central town school. After 1882, when the disstrict system was abolished in Massachusetts and the town system restored in its place, the transportation movement increased so rapidly in importance that, in 1888, the State began for the first time to collect statistics as to the amounts of money spent for the purpose. This amounted to twentysix thousand dollars in 1888; to-day it is approximately nine hundred thousand dollars.

By 1890 the consolidation movement was under way in all the New England States; New Jersey and Nebraska had made consolidation possible; and Indiana had begun consolidation without waiting for any legal permission. Ohio, in 1894, was the first State west of the Allegheny Mountains to enact a law permitting the expenditure of public money for the transportation of pupils, and between that date and 1910 the movement became national in scope. In 1895 the National Education Association appointed a committee to

investigate the whole matter of rural education. This committee reported, in 1897, and recommended the abolition of the district unit and the substitution of the township or county, and the enactment of laws providing for the consolidation of schools and the transportation of pupils.

Slow adoption of the idea. After about 1900, due largely to the changing rural-life conditions which had by that time begun to manifest themselves in all agricultural regions, the consolidation idea may be said to have taken root, and the rural-school problem now became a topic of general discussion. Between 1897 and 1905, some twenty States enacted permissive laws under which it became possible to vote consolidations and to transport children to a central school. By 1910 only ten States had as yet enacted no such legislation. From permission to general adoption, however, proved to be a long step.

From about 1900 up to at least the outbreak of the World War, a large amount of energy was expended in an effort to induce rural people to consolidate their schools. Hundreds of reports favoring the idea were prepared, committees of citizens visited consolidated schools in other States and reported, many illustrated magazine articles were written setting forth the advantages of the plan, and many State superintendents of schools and college professors lectured on the question and showed, by lantern slides, the type of school that might be provided for rural and village children. The outstanding result in the strong district-system States, however, was that but little was accomplished. Only here and there among the more intelligent of the rural communities could the rural people be induced to give up their district system, even when shown beyond doubt that the results would be beneficial to their children. Despite arguments, facts, and illustrations from successful consolidations, they clung to their little schools as though liberty might pass

Proposals for con-
Proponents of the

from the land were they abandoned. solidation awakened violent hostility. idea were termed impractical visionaries, superintendent after superintendent gave up in disgust, and many county superintendents lost their office because of the enemies they had made in the districts through advocating consolidation. Until the general coming of the automobile, many farmers opposed the plan because they feared it was a hard-roads movement in disguise which city people were trying to "put over on them.

Even as late as 1923, the Joint Committee in charge of the Rural School Survey of New York State reported that:

the rural people of New York State are in a great many cases one might say in a majority of cases opposed to consolidation of schools, and even to the redefining of district lines. To be sure, the farmer knows that the little school house cannot carry his child very far on the road to knowledge; it certainly cannot give the child a high-school education. He knows that a little school with small attendance is very expensive per pupil. He knows that the equipment is meagre, and the teacher usually less qualified for work than teachers in schools of the neighboring towns. But the farmer will resist to the bitter end any movement on the part of the superintendent or the State to set up a well-equipped, graded school through compulsory consolidation. In most communities the people are not in an attitude of mind to consider the question as applied to their community on its merits.

Small results for effort expended. Here and there, in the district-system States, some county superintendent of schools of large insight and energy has succeeded, by the exercise of much patience and perseverance, in creating one or two consolidated schools that set a new standard for rural education, but the marked interest these accomplishments awaken only serve to emphasize the contrast between these few successes and the wholly inadequate educational facilities which surround them on every hand.