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confidently believed that this agency for providing teachers for the rural schools will be ever increasing in its efficiency." In our opinion there is no other avenue open for the training of teachers for the rural schools in Nebraska than through the agency of our strongest high schools. The graduates of the colleges, universities, and advanced courses of our normal schools will be required for superintendents, principals, and high-school and grammar-grade instructors of our town schools. The graduates of the elementary courses in our state and private normal schools will be required for the grade work in town and city schools. It follows that we must look to our high schools to train those who are to teach in the rural schools. It is a condition and not a theory that confronts us.

But the greatest of all educational campaigns that can be waged in this country at this time is for state and county superintendents, high-school principals, and teachers everywhere to unite their forces in giving every American boy and every American girl a thorough eighth-grade education. This minimum amount of education is absolutely essential if we are to make this in reality as well as in name a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We should give them eight years of education, nine months or 180 days to each year.

What have we done as a nation in the amount of schooling we have given to each inhabitant? The scale gradually ascends from 1870 to 1906, having for the past ten years exceeded five years of 200 days each as the average education given to each member of the entire population of the United States. The maximum was reached in 1900 in about five years and a quarter of 200 days each; that is to say, 1,046 days would have been given to each individual in our country at the rate of public instruction for that year. Do you get the force of these figures? It means this: The average education of all our people— old and young, illiterate and learned, in both state and nation-stops short of finishing the sixth grade. Theoretically, then, we give 100 per cent. of our people almost six years' schooling, but in reality we do not afford 50 per cent. of our people this amount of education. Of the number who enter the first grade less than 30 per cent. finish the eighth grade, and less than 10 per cent. enter the high school. Of those who enter the high school less than 10 per cent. graduate. Of those who enter college or university less than 10 per cent. finish the course.

There are about 25,000,000 children of school age in the United States today. All the children now of school age will have passed beyond the range of public-school education in the next fifteen years, or at the rate of 1,666,000 per year. Since they leave the public schools with an average education of considerably less than six years, if we were to begin now to raise the average education to eight years it would mean at least two years more of education for each individual pupil than we have been giving, or an aggregate of 3,333,000 years more education for all the pupils passing from the public schools each year; and in fifteen years a decade and a half-it would mean an aggregate of 50,000,000 years more of education for the common people than we are now giving them. In other words, as we ordinarily express school attendance, it would mean an increase in average daily attendance of 3,300,000 pupils, and increasing the length of the term to nine months in the year.

What to teach our teachers in the training schools and what our teachers should teach their pupils in the public schools so as to give our boys and girls a thorough eighth-grade education is a paramount issue in American education today. In Nebraska there is but one subject, under the existing statute, which it is mandatory to teach, namely, physiology and hygiene with special reference to the effect of alcoholic stimulants and other narcotics upon the human system. There is now a great conviction taking fast hold upon the leading educators and the people everywhere that it is much better to teach much of a few things rather than a little of many things. And so came to pass our crusade in Nebraska for the five essentials-reading, arithmetic, grammar, geography, and history. By reading, we mean not only the ability to grasp the thought of the printed page in a silent study of the

book, newspaper, or magazine, but the art of a good oral expression of the thought in the recitation as well as before the school or a public audience. Reading must comprise a knowledge of our best literature and include a mastery of the arts of correct spelling, punctuation, pronunciation, and the proper use of the dictionary. Arithmetic should be intensive rather than extensive. Eliminate stocks and bonds, exchange, alligation, duodecimals, and all such impractical subjects. Make rapidity and accuracy the watchword in the fundamental operations. Let thoroness and exactness be the motto in the principles and applications of fractions, denominate numbers, and percentage. These are the indispensables to be mastered in arithmetic. This subject should also comprise mental arithmetic. Grammar should include English composition and letter-writing. In geography nature-study, agriculture, and commerce must be given consideration. History must not only tell the story of our country—it must teach the principles of free government and the duties of American citizenship.

In the old civilization the few led, the many followed. And I am led to believe that our system of education, like the old forms of government, forgets the many to care for the few. If it be so, it is a grievous fault, and grievously must we answer for it. Therefore let us inaugurate a system in our education that will prepare the ninety per cent. for the actual problems of life and the everyday responsibilities of American citizens, rather than to create crowns for the few, make educational aristocrats, and kingly interpreters of the more fortunate 10 per cent. "The people must needs take thought of what they shall eat and wherewithal they shall be clothed. And the education that fits them best for this is, from necessity, the best; at least until they are so developed and improved that the people, the great longing, struggling, hungering, needing, hoping, despairing, and yet unyielding people, shall not need to take thought only of what they shall eat and wear."

This would not be an attempt to build society. It would be an attempt by society to build the individual. Such a policy holds that the state is strong in the proportion in which every individual in the state is free, large, educated, independent. The policy too long pursued may have given us a finer educated upper class, nobler and deeper thinkers in greater numbers than we would have were we to bend our efforts along this new line, but we have educated the top long enough at the expense of the bottom. Let us unite to educate society from the bottom to the top. "We are not attempting to lift the favored classes higher; we are not attempting to give to those that already have; we are attempting to put our hands under the foundations of human society and lift everybody up. That is a slower work; but when it is done and its fruits are ripe you will never doubt again which is the wisest and best policy."

DISCUSSION

MASON S. STONE, superintendent of education of Vermont.-We had an educational campaign in Vermont last May and in the evening our governor and one or two other prominent speakers participated. Mr. Cap E. Miller, of Iowa, rendered excellent service n the day meetings by presenting the agricultural phase of education. As the state was ready for an advanced movement along educational lines, these meetings helped to intensify and crystallize opinion, and contributed to the strong constructive legislation of the 1906 session of the General Assembly. This session gave to the state more new and coherent school law and more aid for public schools than any legislature since the state was organized in 1777. The results were an excellent high-school law, a law permitting the consolidation of schools with state aid to the extent of 25 or more per cent. of the transportation expenses of the pupils, an increase in the permanent school fund, and a law permitting two or more districts or townships to unite in employing a supervisor whose salary shall be no less than $1,250, $1,000 of which shall be paid by the state.

We have just completed another campaign for educational purposes. This was to nlighten the people in regard to the needs of our schools, to advocate industrial educa

tion, to show that our schools are too bookish, and that pupils should be taught to do as well as to know, and also to instruct school officials and others in regard to the new laws and the increased advantages that will accrue to the schools of the state through the new professional supervision system and greater state aid. These meetings have been largely attended, and a greater interest than I have ever known before in the state has been manifested. Therefore, I believe in educational campaigns.

RURAL SCHOOL-BOARD CONVENTIONS

C. P. CARY, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, MADISON, WIS.

I distinctly remember, when I first began to think seriously of teaching school, that my father gave me a very serious talking to on the matter. He had been a farmer on a small scale all his life and he urged upon me that farming was the most independent occupation any man could follow. He thought that school teaching was one of the most unsatisfactory and most dependent occupations a man could follow. He said that the farmer was in a position to ask no odds of anyone; that he could always make a living from his farm, and that while others were dependent upon him he was always independent of others.

I mention this conversation in this connection for the reason that it flashes light upon problems connected with educational affairs in our country schools. It is true that the farmer feels independent of other people industrially, politically, and socially. His occupation is one of the most fundamental and one of the oldest in which modern men engage, strongly tending toward conservatism and individualism. While he has readily enough in past years and generations combined on a small scale with his immediate neighbors in log-rollings, house-raisings, harvesting, threshing, and the like, yet all this has been on terms of complete equality and mutual consent.

Custom has had a strong hold upon the farmer, and even today such remarks as "What was good enough for me is good enough for my children" are far from uncommon. The farmer has in the past been hard pressed to clear off the mortgage from the farm, to get his farm well stocked, and to get new buildings, and it has been his desire to hold the taxes down to about the minimum limit. That this is not true of all farmers or all communities goes without saying, and it also goes without saying that entire states differ in some degree, owing to industrial conditions, nationality, and other causes.

I here speak of traits that tend to manifest themselves in rural populations. It might be added that the farmer has never been a discriminating critic of school work. The teacher who can succeed in getting the good-will of the pupils, no matter by what method, is usually regarded as a successful teacher; while the teacher who has trouble with the pupils is looked upon as a failure, no matter what the circumstances may be leading to the "trouble."

Once more, the farmer, in past years has not had a keen appreciation of the value of an education. To him as a rule an education means ability to read, write, spell, and figure. I remember in my own case, that after I had completed the ordinary work in the country school and had left home, my father one day remarked with considerable earnestness that he was proud of the education he had given his son. He thought and said that I had received at his hands an excellent education. I have no doubt that he was far from being an exceptional case in estimating what constituted an excellent education.

It has happened, then, that our country schools have been far less progressive than city schools generally have been, for the reason that farmers have been slow to realize the desirability of establishing larger units than the little subdistrict schools and they have shown an intense desire to manage these schools for themselves without any outside interference. They have desired to have the school run upon a cheap basis, and to have the architecture of the simplest and most conservative kind. They have been willing to send their children to school in the dead of winter when there was little work to do and have

been willing to send the younger members of the family, whose services were of no economic value, to school in the spring and fall.

County superintendents when elected by popular vote have as a rule been very sensitive to the good-will and approval of the farmer. The result has been that this official has done comparatively little aggressive work in the way of securing better buildings, better ventilation, better teachers, better courses of study, and all other things that make for the upbuilding of a modern school. County superintendents who grew too active in many of these matters were usually put upon the political shelf at the earliest opportunity. A change, however, is coming over the farmer. The daily newspaper is reaching him, the magazines, the lecturer before the farmer's institutes, political speeches, have of late years contained less of the element designed to appeal to the mob spirit and more to intelligence and reason. The telephone is reaching into the country, likewise the trolly lines. The increase in reading among our farming population in the last decade is something enormous. The farmer shows an increased desire to be up with the times in barnbuilding, stock-raising, grain-raising, and everything else that pertains to his industrial and economic welfare. It would be strange indeed if he were not growing more sensitive to the needs of the school. Many states have shown a decided tendency toward centralization of various kinds; particularly is this true in the doing-away with the subdistricts and the substitution of the township system or some other large unit in its place. This makes it possible for the people to select, as a rule, a better board of education than could ordinarily be secured in the little district. Less attention is paid to the petty fault-finding or mischief-making of various members of the community. In Wisconsin our experience with the township system has not been altogether satisfactory for the reason that in many cases the board has made use of most of the money in ways that are past finding out. I hasten to say, however, that the township system is not in extensive use in our state, the old subdistrict with its three board members being still in use in practically all except the newer counties in the north. The farmers generally are opposed to any form of consolidation. They are very loath to give up their little home schools, or to surrender in any way their direct management of them.

When I entered upon the work in the office of state superintendent of schools four years ago, it seemed to me that, aside from a few changes in the law, the chief thing that could be accomplished was to carry the message of the newer school, newer educational ideas and ideals directly to the people of the rural districts. The task for a time, however, seemed so large as to be hopeless. Ultimately the plan was evolved of holding school-board conventions systematically in every county in the state at least once a year, and of securing an assistant in the department who should devote his entire time to the rural-school problem, one of his chief duties being to attend these school-board conventions and address the school-board members upon the most immediate and pressing needs of the school. After a good deal of effort, legislation of this sort was secured, and last year school-board conventions were held in every county in our state and, with one or two exceptions due to illness on the part of the speaker, a representative of the educational department was present and made two addresses before the conventions. The subjects taken were "The Minimum Equipment for a Rural School," and "The Sanitary Condition of the School and How to Improve It." The present year the two topics taken were “The School Board and the Teacher" and "The Financial Aspect of the School Problem."

These school-board conventions were attended last year in the aggregate by about 12,000 school-board officers, and this year the number will be somewhat larger. It is too early yet to look for extensive results. Nevertheless, hundreds of schools have doubtless reaped benefits from these meetings. In the first convention that I addressed last fall there chanced to be a county superintendent from another county seated on the platform with me. In the course of my address I turned to him and asked how many schools in his county had purchased ventilating stoves as the result of the school-board conventions held the year before. He replied, twenty. If I had asked him with reference

to the apparatus, I presume that the reply would have been equally satisfactory. Here was a county in which probably one district out of every five or six had within the first year of our efforts made provision for improvement of this one matter of ventilation. I cannot say that this case was typical; probably it was more than the average, yet this is merely a surmise on my part, for I have no data of an accurate sort for determining results that have been reached.

I am well aware that there are a number of other states in which school-board conventions are now held with considerable regularity. There can be no question that the school-board conventions with one or more men going out from the state department of education to assist, is one of the most fruitful movements for the improvement of the county schools. Hundreds of school-board members in my own state have said that never before had they been told what they ought to have in the way of supplies, or that they ought to ventilate the schoolhouse, or that it mattered concerning the manner in which a house is lighted, and the like. We have found the farmers eager, surprisingly eager, for all the information they could obtain concerning improvements in education.

To reinforce what was done the first year, we sent out to the annual meetings a letter to be read by the clerk, bearing upon the questions that had been discussed in the conventions. This of course we shall continue to do from year to year. School-board officers very generally have felt that it was unfortunate that all members of their districts could not be present at these meetings in order that all might have the uplift and the outlook that they themselves received. In a few counties active and interested citizens called meetings at schoolhouses and presented a program of a mixed character, a part of which was intended to serve as missionary work for the good of the schools. We confidently believe that the outcome in a few years will be a deep and far-reaching change of attitude among country people toward the rural-school problem. The present year a part of our efforts were directed toward impressing the school-board members with the necessity, if they really desired to give their children suitable educational opportunities, for better salaries for teachers, longer school terms, better attendance, teachers with greater maturity and better training. In addition to this campaign of education for education, we have for several years past, with more or less regularity, been sending out from our normal schools, institute conductors and other teachers adapted to the work, into the rural districts to visit rural schools, hold evening meetings and teachers' institutes on Saturday. In this way within the past six or eight years many counties have had the benefit of the services of an educational expert and enthusiast for a period of a week or more. The efforts of these men have been unified to the extent that unification was desirable, and the outcome has been excellent.

To sum the matter up in a few words, we need of course good educational laws, but quite as much as educational laws we need campaigns of education for education among our people. I am well aware that the needs of no two states are precisely alike, and yet I think it would be difficult to find a state in which it is not exceedingly desirable to bring the message of education home to every parent.

B. ROUND TABLE OF SUPERINTENDENTS OF SMALLER

CITIES

A SEVEN-YEAR COURSE FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AND A FIVE-YEAR COURSE FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS

J. M. GREENWOOD, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, KANSAS CITY, MO. An educational round-table conference is of the nature of an educational clearinghouse in which ideas are exchanged, accounts balanced, new experiments outlined, existing methods and processes criticized, and educational systems compared. It is here also

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