and whenever they advanced to occupy new territory they always took the school with them and almost contemporaneously with the erection of the cabin home was the appearance of the rural school house. The curriculum of this little district school was narrow and the methods of instruction were poor as compared with our modern conceptions but it served its day. Formal instruction was not so needful to the frontiersman because his children were obtaining a practical education by participation and strong self-reliant men and women were produced with but a few months of school attendance.

Furthermore, the old time district school occupied an important place in the social life of the community and it was the center of the entire community of much truly educational activity besides intensive and formal instruction. Then, too, there were few opportunities for entertainment and recreation so the people of a community naturally turned toward the school for amusement. Here were held the neighborhood spelling school, the debating club, the literary society, the singing school.

But conditions have changed. The old time plow with its wooden share has been replaced by the tractor; the ox cart has, through the course of evolution, given way to the automobile. There has been a marvelous social and industrial change in our nation and life has become more complex in all its phases. New industries have sprung up on every

hand with a consequent division of labor. Production and preparation of the things necessary to the convenience, comfort, and life of the home and community are far removed beyond the limitations of the child's observation. With the multiplying and growth of cities came many artificial attractions and interests, and the daily paper made the youth familiar with city life. He

read and heard of the great rewards of commercial enterprises. The district school failed to attract longer as a center for the social and intellectual life of the community and its usefulness as an institution was hampered.

A valuable means of education was thus lost to the country child when he was deprived of the opportunities for participation in the social and industrial activities of the community. Now he must gain knowledge of the experiences of an expanded and complex society mainly by means of books since it was impossible for him to become familiar with the activities of an enlarged community by means of observation. The burden and responsibility of the school was greatly increased and as a result its curriculum was broadened. Many new subjects were

from time to time added to its program of studies in an attempt to bring the child in contact with the ever increasing experiences and activities of a modern complex life. An educational crisis was at hand. Education by observation and participation that was such an important factor in the training of the pioneer child was supplanted by a system of education by information as it existed in the textbooks of the enlarged school program of studies. The opportunities for giving expression were fewer and more difficult and most unfortunate of all was the fact that the things about which the child learned were either largely foreign to his needs or but indirectly related to his interests and environmental condition. The school was thus faced away from those natural interests which reveal the possibilities of rural life and which are conducive to a development that meets its needs and purposes.

The district school did not keep step with rural economic progress. The telephone, rural free delivery of mails, parcel post, improved roads, and modern farm machinery gave evidence of rapid advancement. The farmer built a home that afforded facilities essential to the conveniences and comfort of his family; he constructed barns and outbuildings that were adequate to his needs; he provided improved modern houses for his poultry and his live-stock. In all the community there was but one evidence of retardation, one institution of bygone days, and that was the country school, which, instead of having improved, had deteriorated.

The old building constructed twenty-five or fifty years before was ugly, weathered, impaired, inhospitable, and hygienically if not physically uninhabitable. Everything had moved forward except the little district school. It had been going down for a quarter of a century and was fast becoming eliminated as an institution as a result of neglect.

WHAT THE SURVEY OF 1913 DISCLOSED. I. Academic Training of Teachers then in Service.

Not over half of the teachers in the rural schools were graduates of high schools and about eighteen percent had no education beyond the elementary grades. Teachers in high schools in such districts had insufficient academic training, probably sixty percent of them not being college graduates and about one-fifth of them were not even high school graduates.

II. Teaching Experience and Tenure of Office.

III.

Sixty percent of the teachers in the one-room rural schools had taught five years or less. No, other types of schools had so many beginners in the service. This indicates that the rural school districts were giving experience to beginners and in many cases if this experience was successful the teachers went to the cities and villages to teach. This was caused by the low salaries in the country, absence of organization of rural life for social purposes and lack of privacy and opportunity for the teacher to study. There were frequent changes in positions and in the one-room township elementary and village high schools half of the teachers were teaching in those schools for the first time. Professional Training of Teachers.

Nearly half of the teachers whose schools were surveyed had no professional training whatever. Of the beginners in September, 1913, seventy-one and four-tenths percent had not professional training.

IV. Teachers' Institutes.

V.

The attendance at the teachers' institutes was much greater than it would have been if the teachers had not been paid for attendance. The attentiveness of teachers at institutes was good in only about half the lectures. The State Superintendent of Public Instruction addressed eighteen institutes and the order and attention were so noticeably poor in over one-third of these institutes as positively to interfere with the work of the institutes. In three lectures the Superintendent had to demand attention before he could proceed. Class Room Instruction.

The most common faults of teaching observed from the survey were: (1) Teaching from the book exclusively, (2) leading questions, and (3) unnecessary talking. Arith

metic was probably the best taught subject of the curriculum. Less teaching was done from the book than in other subjects and students were given opportunity for self-expression. The teaching of Geography and History in the schools visited was extremely weak. Physiology and Hygiene was one of the most abused subjects in the course of study mainly because the pupils were not required to react on the various problems discussed. Only one out of five hundred ninety-two one-room schools, one centralized or consolidated school out of seventeen, one village school out of thirteen, one high school out of twenty-two, made any provision whatever for the teaching of Manual Training. The teaching of Domestic Science was in practically the same condition. There was extreme meagerness of apparatus in most schools for teaching Agriculture. In many districts the teaching of Agriculture which should have been a basic subject of the curriculum was bookish and failed to connect in subject matter with the life of the pupils.

VI. Equipment of Elementary Schools.

The one-room rural schools were poorly provided with educational, social center, and sanitary equipment. Nearly one-twentieth of the children were sitting in seats obviously too large; one twenty-fifth were sitting in large seats with small low desks in front; over fifty percent of the children occupied sittings in which the relative positions of seats and desks were incorrect. There were but few adjustable sittings and no schools were found using movable desks.

Although excellent taste had been shown in the choice of pictures in some schools, in many the only pictures were calendars, magazines, and daily newspapers. Nearly half the schools had some decorations other than pictures but they were unkempt, such as dust covered evergreens, flags, corn, drawings, mottoes, curtains, flowers, paper chains, and advertisements.

The needs of the smaller children especially were neglected in the placing of blackboards. In many places the wood and plaster boards were still in use. Little attention was given to the chalk dust nuisance. Some of the one-room schools had no teacher's desk. But few had sand tables. Many children used slates. Many different kinds of textbooks were in use generally and in some schools several different publications were used in the same subjects. In Reading, Language, and Geography, particularly, editions of textbooks from fourteen to thirty-four years old were in use. Eighty percent of the one-room schools had no supplemen

VII.

tary readers. One-fourth of the one-room schools visited had no libraries. One school had a library but the board of education discontinued it because the children were reading the books too much and the board feared that the regular work would suffer. One-fourth of the schools surveyed had no dictionary. Only two traveling libraries were found in the five hundred ninety-two township schools visited.

The Physical Plant.

Many schools had an insufficient number of square feet of ground for organized play, fifty-six percent having less than a half acre. In some cases the children played in adjoining fields. There was a common disregard for education through play and games.

School grounds connected with one-room schools were in poor condition as to ornamentation and in many cases were unimproved and unkempt. Only a few schools had play apparatus and where found it was meager, such as a baseball, a rope, etc. The school was no longer a play center and had lost its hold on the older boys and girls.

Nearly three-fourths of the buildings were at least twenty years old and some were over three-fourths of a century. Many were of unknown age. A majority of the buildings had no cloak rooms or closets for storing apparatus. Nearly one-half of the buildings visited were in need of repair.

About sixty percent of the one-room township schools were lighted from opposite sides. Many were lighted from three sides. Some were lighted from four sides. Window space was disproportionate to the floor area.

A small percentage of the schools visited had jacketed stoves and ventilating facilities. The foundations of the buildings were not tight in many cases and some had no foundations, thus rendering the proper heating of the building difficult.

Ninety percent of the one-room schools had no means of ventilation except the windows and these were without window boards to prevent draught. The schools that had humidifying apparatus were rare.

Ninety-nine and six-tenths percent of the one-room township schools had earth toilets and failed to meet the requirements of the state building code. Many conditions were revealed that were dangerous to the health and morals of the children. Some of the toilets were within a few feet of wells and others were close to the school building and