PREFACE.

It is now generally conceded that our rural schools should be based on principles broad enough to produce an agricultural citizenship of highest ideals and filled with a desire to live their lives in the open country, in the intensive cultivation of the soil. This has called for a reorganization of the time-honored one-teacher school, now well under way in many sections of the country. In some localities, it is true, the small school will continue to be the only school for many years to come; but even in such places school work can be revitalized and redirected so as to answer more fully the needs of present-day agricultural life.

The reorganization of the prevailing system of rural schools aims to provide, within reach of all country children, carefully graded elementary schools and a sufficient number of rural high schools adapted to the particular needs of the rural community, in order that people in the country may procure a broad farm culture and the fundamentals of a scientific agriculture without going away from home. Through this means the schools should be enabled to produce the trained leadership required to put the rural population. fully abreast of the many new problems in country life. Many factors enter into the problem of remaking the rural schools, such as wellprepared teachers, satisfactory unit of organization, close and intelligent supervision, and redirected course of study. Of these, none is more important than the first.

It is certain that the trained leadership needed in rural districts can not be fully realized until a staff of teachers, professionally trained, imbued with correct vision and real power, establish themselves in the rural districts as permanent teachers and community builders.

The teaching profession has recognized for some time that rural teachers are not generally so well prepared as they should be to cope with the difficult problems confronting them. Indeed, special preparation of rural teachers is a comparatively new thing in the United States. Some educators still hold that any teacher of reasonably good academic and professional preparation should be able to teach a good country school. This may be true enough so far as the universal elements of an education are concerned; but it is quite another thing when it comes to rooting the school to the soil and making it

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answer the needs of the community where it is maintained. We prepare teachers for kindergarten work, for English, for Latin, and for other subjects. Why not also for rural schools, where the problems are many and increasingly complex?

Satisfactory data have long been lacking on which to base a campaign for better-prepared teachers. The purpose of the present study is to lend assistance in this direction. First, it seeks to ascertain the preparation and efficiency of the staff of rural teachers now at work in the schools; and, second, it aims to summarize and put into available form what the normal schools, agricultural colleges, and other schools are doing for rural teacher training.

The pursuit of the study has not been without its difficulties. The data used in the tables set forth in the following pages are the result of correspondence carried on with nearly 6,000 teachers living in all sections of the country, and with all the regularly listed normal schools and agricultural colleges. The teachers addressed were not always prompt in making reply, and sometimes had to be followed up to other communities, because their schools had closed before they could be reached. As a result of this the study has been drawn out over nearly a year and a half; but in return it is felt that the data, though representing only a small fraction of the whole number of rural teachers of the country, are sufficiently accurate to answer the purpose for which they are intended.

H. W. F.

EFFICIENCY AND PREPARATION OF RURAL

SCHOOL TEACHERS.

I. EFFICIENCY OF RURAL TEACHERS NOW IN THE SCHOOLS.

METHOD OF PROCEDURE.

The first section of the study is based on a simple questionnaire addressed to nearly 6,000 teachers at work in the rural schools. It was deemed impracticable to communicate with all the large army of approximately 267,000 rural teachers in the field. Accordingly, a careful selection of numbers was made, by counties, in each of the 48 States, in such manner as to make this typical of all the several geographical sections of the country, with their own educational characteristics and peculiarities.

The final comparative figures are not based on the educational status of individual States, but on that of the States by grand divisions of the country, viz, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, South Central, North Central, and Western. It would have been eminently unfair to have based the figures upon a ranking by States, since it was necessary to limit the study to one or two typical counties in each State. It is believed that under the group system of comparison, involving as it does a range of from 8 to 12 typical counties to each geographical division, the study is sufficiently intensive for the law of averages to become effective.

As a first step of procedure, special collaborators of the Bureau of Education, residing in the different States, or the local State department of education, or both working together, selected for use in the investigation 3 to 5 counties typical of their particular States. The number of counties selected in this manner-192 in all-was further reduced to 55 before the correspondence began. These 55 counties appeared to contain all the marked geographical and topographical peculiarities of the grand divisions that might reasonably be expected to have influenced the local educational development to be found in the larger list of counties. For instance, the counties selected in the South Atlantic division represent every geographical variation; the Atlantic coastal plain, the Piedmont, the great mountain valleys, and the Appalachian belt are all included. In similar manner the

richness or comparative poverty of the soil and population, whether agricultural, mining, lumbering, or stock raising, native or foreign, black or white, have all entered ir to the final consideration.

The questionnaires were filled in and returned by 2,941 of the persons addressed, this being about 50 per cent of the total number on the lists. The resulting data were thereupon compiled and tested from other sources and tabulated, as will appear from a study of the following pages. Graphic charts have been added wherever it was deemed feasible.

Table 1, following, summarizes all the data by States and grand divisions under captions based on the queries sent out. It shows that 55 counties are included in the study, with a total of 2,941 teachers reporting. Of these, only 697, or a little over 25 per cent, are males. There are 529 men and women, or exactly 18 per cent of the whole number, who are married. There are 1,937 teachers giving instruction in eight grades or more, which means that fully 66 per cent of all the teachers have from 22 to 35 or more recitations daily. Very few teachers are provided with homes by the boards of education. Most of them board and lodge in the district where they teach, although 526 report that they do not reside in the school community. The length of teacher experience is a little more than 45 school months for each teacher, divided among 3.4 schools. The figures for academic preparation show that 117, or 4 per cent, of the teachers have had less than eight years of elementary school preparation; 950, or 32.3 per cent, have had no professional preparation whatever; and only 20 teachers report attendance at schools making a specialty of preparing teachers for rural schools.