18. Expanded school grounds to a size which encourages organized outdoor play and the planting of schoolgardens.

19. Graded these grounds, put down cement walks, and installed sanitary drinking-fountains.

20. Sought the assistance of the ablest specialists in rural education that our nation affords.

21. Introduced a high quality of school supervision.

22. Employed expert supervisors in primary methods, music, art, physical education, manual training, agriculture, and domestic crafts.

23. Retained special help of the juvenile court in working with delinquent pupils, and engaged the services of trained nurses to examine each pupil at least once each week.

24. Raised the standard of efficiency of the whole teaching force.

25. Held a liberal number of male teachers in the grammar grades, most of whom are making teaching their lifework.

26. Put fewer pupils with each teacher, thereby giving the pupils more personal attention.

27. Resulted in enrolling a larger percentage of the school population.

28. Increased the percentage of daily attendance of this increased enrolment.

29. Increased the percentage of promotions of this increased attendance of this increased enrolment.

30. Added at least an average of 10 days' attendance per pupil per year.

31. Reduced the percentage of failures and retentions more than one-third.

32. Overcome, to a considerable extent, the tendency to quit school before graduating.

33. Made a standard rural high school possible.

34. Inspired a high percentage of eighth-grade graduates to attend high school.

35. Reduced truancy to a minimum.

36. Classified and graded the schools better.

37. Came closer to the real interests of the children. 38. Obtained the good-will and co-operation of patrons. 39. Economized the time of pupils, teachers, and patrons. 40. Overcome local petty prejudice; made the remote country child associate with children of other localities; gave him a broader view, and extended his circle of friends and acquaintances.

41. Created social centres, with their libraries, literary societies, business and industrial organizations, athletic associations, and amusements.

42. Fostered a taste for the best that life can give, and enriched the whole life of the people.

43. Placed strong class leaders in every school.

44. Aroused enthusiasm for healthful rivalry and fair competition in all school work.

45. Made pupils progressive, contented, comfortable, and happy.

46. Taught punctuality and dependability by example. 47. Safeguarded the health of the children.

48. Emphasized a high moral tone.

49. Formed a better basis for the study of the school as a factor of economics and sociology.

50. Made better school legislation necessary.

PROBLEMS AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

We leave the problems and bibliography, if any, here to the instructors, reading-circle directors, or others to devise if they think them desirable.

CHAPTER XIII

THE CURRICULUM OF THE CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL

PRELIMINARY PROBLEMS

1. How should a consolidated school be distinguished by its programme of studies from city schools, elementary and high? 2. What important rural needs for knowledge, habits, and aspirations not obtainable outside of schools are unmet by the present consolidated-school curricula?

3. What advantages has a school for sequential curriculum-making in which both elementary and high schools are in the same building? Need there be a sharp mark of cleavage between elementary and secondary education? Why?

4. In what ways is the consolidated school like the Gary schools in organization and possibilities? (See bulletin on the Gary schools published by the U. S. Bureau of Education through the Government Printing Office, and the survey of the Gary schools, in several volumes, published by the General Education Board, New York City.)

5. If possible, examine the programmes of study of several consolidated schools and test them by the principles expressed by Doctor Bobbitt in his book on "The Curriculum" (Houghton Mifflin Co.).

I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CURRICULUM CONSTRUCTION The activities in which children engage by which are produced the educational changes, physical and mental, which society needs for the accomplishment of the social purpose constitute the curriculum. Society desires "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for each of its members individually, and for itself as a co-operative organism. It must create individuals possessed of social knowledge, habits, and aspirations developed in the direction of vital, voca

tional, avocational, civic, and moral efficiency. Thus will the highest good of the individual and of the entire group be progressively promoted. To acquire these efficiencies for promoting general welfare and happiness, the young are stimulated by various means to gain social insight, ability, and responsiveness. They gain these through co-ordinated and purposeful activities, mental and physical, of the senses, the emotions, the remembering and thinking abilities, and of the various parts of the body.

Growth in these efficiencies through these activities must be progressive and sequential. Such sequence and progress are provided for many important social efficiencies by the ordinary activities of the home. The child learns how to act by acting, how to live by living. Thus he learns to walk and to talk, two great accomplishments, to participate in many home activities, and to "be good to live with." His instincts of play, imitation, curiosity, communication, and many others lead him to do many things that provide him with definite and necessary forms of social efficiency. In the colonial rural home, or "household," practically all the abilities needed for promoting individual and social happiness were acquired at an early age. There was little need for specialized institutions to add to this training. Half of the American homes to-day, however, are city homes, and lack most of the opportunity for broad home education through participation. The farm home has lost much of its educative value, both because of the growing specialization and reduction in the breadth of training, and because of the tremendous increase of scientific knowledge and complexity of human life, for much of which the home alone cannot well prepare. These facts might be proved beyond the patience of any reader.

The school is a specialized institution, usually of the government, which should do for children educationally what other institutions are not doing to help them grow best in social efficiency-power to promote the general wel

fare, or universal happiness of the finest kinds. It is a supplemental institution. Children who are being more adequately and economically educated at home for social efficiency than they could be at school need not go to school. If the church does a large share of educational training, less is required of the school. The superior school investigates social needs and desires; it studies the nature of the children; it learns what is being done and not being done for them educationally out of the school; it determines the limitations under which it operates; it then attacks the problem of selecting the most fundamental types of efficiency which it should and can undertake; and finally arranges these most essential activities, "the studies," progressively and psychologically for the learning and teaching processes. These most needed and most feasible activities undertaken by the school constitute the curriculum, or the "course of study," as it is frequently termed, and, more scientifically, the programme of studies which may contain several curriculums, or courses.

In recent years we have developed printed courses, or curriculums, of study, or activity, for many types of efficiency. Frequently, the course for each group of abilities, such as a statement of desirable knowledge, skill, and appreciation in music or reading, is printed in a separate volume, or even in three volumes-one for the lower grades, another for the upper grades, and another for the high school. In some cases each of these volumes is quite large and indicates what activities to encourage, in what order, in what manner, or methods, and how to test results of teaching in the form of socially desirable efficiencies. Recently published volumes are also setting up reasonable standards of attainment for children of different grades and kinds. A certain degree of speed and comprehension is, for example, sought in reading for each grade for each natural grouping of time, such as first term, second term, etc., for each year. All of the determinants of the public school vary greatly