the above, Bates county should spend annually $30,000 for new buildings.

If we multiply expenditures, number of teachers, and number of pupils by one hundred, we will get about what the result would be for the entire state.

2. A Larger Unit of School Organization

[From the Report of the Educl. Com. of Kansas, 1910, in the 17th Bien. Rept. Supt. Publ. Instr. Kas., 1909-1910, pp. 34-36.]

The Educational Commission, appointed by the State Teachers' Association in October, 1901, begs leave to submit the following report:

4. A larger unit of school organization.

This committee has given careful consideration to the question of a larger unit of organization for the schools of Kansas and is fully convinced that the enactment of a law making the county the basis of organization would be highly beneficial to the cause of general education.

More

Three units of organization are in use in the various states of the Union; the district, the township, and the county. than half of the states are organized on the district basis. The New England states, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and a few other states have adopted the township system. The Southern states use the county plan. Iowa and South Dakota have recently undertaken the adoption of the county unit. Committees on the codification of the school laws in several other states have recommended it for adoption. Many schoolmen and others who are giving their attention to the practical working of school affairs and to the consideration of plans for the improvement of schools to meet the needs of the times are urging the adoption of the county as the unit of organization. Wherever the plan has been given a trial the results are highly satisfactory.

The following are a few reasons for the superiority of the county unit over the district system:

1. It is less expensive. This has been true in most places where it has been tried. In the comparatively few instances in which the cost of schools has been increased, the superior facilities afforded have more than counterbalanced the additional outlay.

2. It equalizes taxes levied for school purposes. In one county in Kansas the valuation of a certain school district is only $63,000;

of another district $3,521,000. The tax levied in the first district is seven mills; in the second no tax was required this year. In two other wealthy districts the levy was only four-tenths of a mill. Other counties in the state now show similar conditions. Certainly no valid reason can be given why one man should pay fifteen or twenty times as much for the education of his children as another, equally wealthy, should pay for the same privilege. Under the county system railroad and other corporation taxes would be more widely distributed and present conditions greatly improved.

3. It insures equality of school provisions as to schoolhouses, apparatus, and other school equipment, thus making greater uniformity of attainment possible.

4. It secures for teachers greater permanency of position. Under the district system, the teacher often loses her position on account of petty neighborhood quarrels. Such conditions would be less likely to affect the school under county organization and greater efficiency would be a natural result of the longer tenure of office of teachers.

5. The county system reduces the number of schools and increases the number of pupils in attendance at each, thus making possible better grading and classification and adding the inspiration of numbers.

6. It is a means, possibly the only one, of obtaining that closer supervision necessary to bring the common schools to the highest degree of efficiency. The single visit paid by the county superintendent to the district school annually can accomplish but little in the way of efficient supervision. The county system renders possible the appointment of assistant superintendents or supervisors who can visit schools often enough to be of some real service to them.

7. It eliminates all district boundary disputes, having a decided advantage in this respect over both district and township systems.

8. It makes consolidation of schools easy and practicable. The greater efficiency of consolidated schools, because of their better buildings, better equipment, more competent teachers, more thorough supervision, more careful grading and classification, is admitted by all educators and by all patrons familiar with them. A carefully worked out plan of consolidation for the country schools of our state would be of inestimable value to the cause of education.

This committee is in favor of immediate steps being taken to establish the county system in the state of Kansas. Many reasons can be added to the above for its adoption. We believe that this would be a great forward movement for the common schools and

would enable them to meet the growing needs of the children of the state, which, under present conditions, they are unable to do. We commend this measure to your favorable consideration, believing that it will appeal to every lover of progress in education as being worthy of enactment into law.

The Vermont Educational Commission (1913) recommended that a comprehensive state scheme for educational reorganization be effected, with the end in view of creating a series of consolidated schools in the towns, each in turn connected with a complete high school, and each such group of schools and towns to be under the supervision of a full-time superintendent of schools. This is not essentially different in principle from the county-unit idea, as found in Maryland or Georgia.

It is only in such consolidated schools, however organized, that a curriculum suited to rural-life needs of the present and future can be provided, and it is only in such places that community-center schools capable of real rural service can be developed. The following extract, dealing with the school system of an essentially rural state, points out clearly the need of redirecting the curriculum of the rural schools if they are to be made to meet rural needs.

3. Rural School Needs in Vermont

[From Study of Education in Vermont, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Bul. No. 7, 1914, pp. 8-13.]

One conclusion stands out as the fundamental and important outcome of this study. It is that the chief problem with which the state is concerned is the care and development of its elementary and secondary schools. No one whose vision is true would seek to belittle the problem of higher education, but in rural communities, such as prevail in Vermont, the problem of the common school overshadows all others. So overwhelming is its importance that it is not too much to say that if the state develops an efficient and fruitful system of elementary and secondary schools, and makes sure of an effective source from which teachers for the elementary and secondary schools may be drawn, the essential problem of education for Vermont is solved.

The detailed studies that follow show that of the nearly 1700 schoolhouses in the state, nearly 1400 are one-room school buildings nearly all of these rural schools. Of the 83,000 children between the ages of five and seventeen, 57,000 are attending the elementary schools. Few of these children enter the school before six years of age, and practically none remain after sixteen. For these elementary schools there are required about 2400 teachers, whose pay is between $8 and $9 weekly. The future of Vermont and her citizens is to be wrought out in these schools and by these teachers.

In a similar way the detailed study elsewhere presented shows that the problem of secondary education in Vermont has the rural situation as its essential factor. To make these two agencies, the elementary school and the secondary school, effective in forming the lives of the children is the fundamental problem which confronts the state.

A study of the detailed reports will make it clear that, notwithstanding the great amount of devotion put into the separate schools, and notwithstanding also the intelligence applied by this or that supervisor, the elementary and secondary schools of Vermont have for years been conducted upon a curriculum whose tendency is to draw children away from the homes in which they were born. Notwithstanding certain improvements, the school still fails to interest them directly and efficiently in the life about them. This condition is dealt with in the two sections relating to the elementary and secondary schools. These sections carefully discuss the fundamental questions, What is the elementary school for? What sort of school can serve fruitfully and efficiently the aspirations, the needs, and the vocational wants of a rural population? Whether the answers to these questions have been completely worked out or not, it seems clear that at least four things must be done in order to bring the elementary and secondary school system of Vermont to the point where, as an agency of civilization, it will meet the requirements of its people.

First, there must be adopted in the elementary school, and later in the high school, a course of study related to the life of the child. This does not mean that the strong intellectual motive of the elementary school must be abandoned. The value of studies like the mother tongue and elementary mathematics can never be questioned, but it is clear that the domination of the college and of preparation for college has had an undue effect upon the courses of study and the methods of instruction even in the elementary schools, ninety-five per cent of whose children are never to enter college. The difficulty arises partly out of the fundamental con

ception of education and partly out of a failure to accomplish practically the result aimed at. That human being is educated who has been so trained as to make the best out of the place in life in which he finds himself, taking into account his full capacity

spiritual, intellectual, economic. Education is therefore a relative, not an absolute term. The school as the agency of education is founded upon this conception, but traditional school methods tend constantly to obscure it and to harden into specifics unrelated to the life experience of the children. As a minimum the school should do at least three things for the child · teach him selfdiscipline, teach him to think, and strengthen his relations to the social and industrial interests of his community. It is not too much to say that not alone in Vermont, but throughout our states, in the country-side schools the children are put through the grades under a régime which gives them little self-discipline, dulls their minds with artificial repetitions and routine tasks, and, so far as it educates them at all, educates them away from the life in which they have grown up. Any form of school that weakens the child's interest in the life of his community is deficient in the elemental requisite of the school as an agency of civilization. Something is radically wrong with a school in an agricultural community that develops motormen, stenographers, and typewriters, and fails to develop farmers, dairymen, and gardeners. A course of study prepared with the view of correcting this condition is the first step in reform.

As a part of elementary and secondary instruction there should be included the gradual development of vocational facilities. The chief industry in Vermont to-day is agriculture, and while manufacturing is also making strides, it may fairly be assumed that for many years to come agriculture will remain the chief vocation of its citizens, and the development gradually of a sufficient number of trade schools or courses in agriculture should be a part of the school program. Such schools will naturally form a part of the regular system of schools, and their development will be a part of the work of the board of education and its experts, working in unison with the towns.

Secondly, there should be provided for the school system of Vermont an educational administration that shall supervise the schools as a whole, and that shall bring to every high school and to every elementary school genuine, sympathetic educational advice. It has been pathetic to see the eagerness with which the rural school teacher reaches out for educational help. One's respect for womankind (the typical rural teacher is a young woman of twenty-two or twenty-three) and one's respect for the rural