year of normal school or college training, while in one-room schools we find only 45% of the teachers have graduated from high schools and less than 4% are normal school graduates. One can easily see that this is a very important factor in bringing about an efficient school.

The greatest factor in any school is the teacher. The characteristics that make an efficient teacher are (1) natural ability, (2) academic and professional training, (3) an opportunity to have close supervision. In many sections of the country the last two of these factors are lacking.

Rural teachers have their eyes turned toward the graded school. In the thirteen years experience as principal and superintendent in New Hampshire I have found but two teachers who have declined village or city positions to that of the one-room school.

A study recently made in a state normal school showed that while 70% of the pupils received their training in rural schools more than 75% intended to teach in villages and cities. Here in New Hampshire superintendents of rural sections are able to get but a small percent of the normal graduates for the oneroom schools.

Pupils were tested in reading, arithmetic, language, spelling and writing. The results were in favor of the consolidated schools.

(1) Its holding power is greater than that of the one-teacher schools in the upper grades.

(2) There is a significant difference in the grade-achievement.

(3) When changed into yearly proggress the grade-achievement differences range from 18% to 40% with a median difference of 27%.

(4) The subject-achievement differences range from 10% to 44% with a median difference of 27.3%. The greatest difference is in the rate of handwriting.

(5) The age-achievement is favorable. to the consolidated school.

As this study was made for the purpose of getting facts and not for any other reason it seems to the writer that this is one of the strongest arguments for the consolidated school when the climate and physical features of a state will permit.

No school is efficient unless it serves as a community center. School buildings should be used for all kinds of legitimate community meetings, such as farmers' institutes, community clubs, parent-teacher associations, Sunday school conventions, school socials, school plays, lecture courses, boys' and girls' clubs, and community agents' meetings. Certainly these meetings are not now being held very often in the one-room schools but we find many such organizations existing in the consolidated schools in the middle west.

One of the arguments advanced against consolidation is transportation. It is said that many hardships are brought about by having pupils walk a mile and then ride two or three miles. In New Jersey 100 children were asked to write on consolidation and particularly transportation. Each of these pupils had attended a district school. Ninetynine percent preferred the consolidated school and the one who objected said she drove her own team. Personally I should not request pupils to walk any of the distance (beyond two miles) but would request teams to call at the homes.

In many sections school districts own vehicles. This has its advantages. These are covered and can be heated during the winter months. Here in New England we have not made such progress.

The curriculum of the consolidated. school is richer and more practical than that of the one-room school. Music, physical education, drawing, civics, wood working, and domestic science are essential today. We have tried to teach many of these subjects in the rural school but have failed.

To summarize:

E'

DUCATION is a subject which everyone seems ready to attack with temerity. The average layman will listen to the advice of a doctor in matters pertaining to health or to a lawyer in matters pertaining to legal litigation, but steadfastly maintains that he is as qualified to be an authority in educational matters as any school official who has had the advantage of years of special training and preparation for work in that particular line. The writer of this article realizes this ignorance in regard to educational methods and all other points in the technique of learning. Nevertheless, as a citizen of New Hampshire, he ventures to raise his voice in behalf of one of the state's oldest, most productive, and most sacred institutions-the district school.

opinion on the part of school officials that the rural one-room school house should give place to the consolidated "village school," and although the State Board of Education has never officially admitted that to be its policy, the trend of the last few years has been in that direction. The reasons which are usually given for this transition are the difficulty of obtaining trained teachers for the country schools, the lack of uniformity which characterizes the work in these scattered institutions, and the possibility of affording better equipment and a fuller curriculum in consolidated schools.

From the standpoint of a pupil there are certain disadvantages of the consolidated school which in the opinion of some might counterbalance its good

school children over the hilly roads of rural New Hampshire, amid the rigors of a Northern New England winter does not always appeal to parents who are interested in the health of their children. In many cases the town transports the children only a portion of the distance, which means that they have a long walk to and from school and a cold luncheon at noontime.

From an educational standpoint it is still a matter of considerable doubt as to whether the complete equipment and diverse curriculum are real essentials in the Grammar School period. To be sure, they are in a sense a sign of the times. Sometimes as we watch a long line of workmen at the factory bench, each tending a single machine, dropping in a bolt, or sliding in a bit of leather, every moment through the long hours of the day we think with some regret of the days when individual workmen fashioned their product painstakingly by hand, each with a pride in his workmanship and a skilful deftness of touch acquired from a long apprenticeship under some old master. With almost the same feeling we see a long line of school children lockstepping into a city school house to the tune of a victrola, watched over by a corps of teachers and then turn our thoughts back to the little white school house at the corners where from one to two dozen pupils labored under the direction of a less trained teacher. But where the more eager learners and stronger personalities blossomed out and unrestrained by the complicated mechanism of machine education were allowed to delve away more or less according to their own ideas and lay the foundations of ambitions which produce great lives. In the Keene High School as in many other cities the number of valedictorians who prepared in the district school is greatly in excess of the number which would be proportionate to the country students studying in the institution. The fact that Daniel Webster or Lewis Cass or Horace Greeley felt the first

impetus of ambition in the personal contacts of the country school house does not, of course, necessarily mean that we should turn our backs upon progress but it does in the light of some of our leadership to-day lead us to wonder if we are not getting too many machine made articles. So much from the point of view of the pupil.

There is one fact which seems to be ignored by many of our educators to-day and that is the fact that our schools should affect not only the children who study within them but, like the church, should affect the entire community. The district school house has for generations been the real community center of the New Hampshire farming districts. Many a man in prominent life to-day can remember "seeing Nellie Home" from the old singing school; the Hallowe'en or Christmas party, or even the prayer meeting held in the little white school house at the corners. Many a politician or public lecturer can tell you of some of the best efforts of his life delivered to intelligent audiences seated about the initial carved desks of the familiar room. Rob the back country districts of their heart and core, compel the farmer to send his children through the cold and sleet for miles to the nearest town, and the result will be more deserted farms and foreign settlements where once stalwart intelligent New Hampshire farmers reared their sons and daughters to carry on in the state.

In the last Legislature Herbert N. Sawyer, Master of the State Grange, and George Putnam of the Farm Bureau sponsored a bill providing for an additional scholarship in our normal schools for those students who will spend their first two years after graduation teaching in the one-room district schools. Is not some step in this direction well worth while? Our country school house like the country church stands as the breeding place of the real morale and backbone of New Hampshire. Let us preserve them.

fare as it is at present. In fact we might face desolation as acute as that which Russia has experienced were it not for the opportunity afforded by the public school system to awaken our national consciousness which seems for the moment to slumber. There is hope for the solution of many pressing national problems, through the process of education which must necessarily begin in our public schools.

The Pilgrims came to America to secure religious freedom. They believed that salvation was to be obtained through individual responsibility rather than through the collective responsibility of the church. This belief lead the Pilgrim fathers to teach their children to read so that they might prepare themselves for salvation by studying the Bible.

In 1642. Massachusetts appointed a commission to inquire whether parents were properly teaching their children to read, and in 1647 the Bay State passed a law obliging every town having fifty householders to appoint a teacher of teacher of reading and writing. Thus was the idea of the public school system inaugurated in our country at a time when. the state was a servant of the church and the motive was one of religion. It can be seen that at this early date the idea became prevalent that the best interests of the state required that the children be educated.

This conception of education continued nearly until the time of the Revolution. Soon after our constitution was adopted the people began to appreciate that there were other motives for general education than the one which concerned religion. There was a growing understanding of the fact that the union of states could not survive unless the children were educated to perform properly their functions as citizens of the new Republic.

At that time there were a few outstanding leaders who realized the far reaching effect which the education of

youth would have upon the future history of the United States. In 1796, in his farewell address to the American people, George Washington spoke of the great necessity of properly educating the future generations. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States wrote: "I consider knowledge to be the soul of a Republic and as the weak and the wicked are generally in alliance, as much care should be taken to diminish the number of the former as of the latter. Education is the way to do this and nothing should be left undone to afford all ranks of people the means of obtaining a proper degree of it at a cheap and easy rate." James Madison, the fourth President of the United States, wrote: "a popular government without proper information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy."

So the religious and formative epochs were passed and about 1820 the United States felt the urge of its first educational consciousness. This was the beginning of what we may consider as the national epoch. People first began to move toward cities and centers of population. Suffrage became general and there arose questions of great political significance. As Abraham Lincoln. expressed it, the need of training our youth "to appreciate the value of the free institutions" became of great importance.

Since the time of Lincoln many new conditions have arisen in the life of America. When the Civil War began the largest percentage of our population was found in rural communities. There was very little inter-communication, one community with another. We had no international questions to settle. Today a great many more people live in cities than in the rural districts. The various new methods of communication which science has evolved have annihilated both space and time. We are a part of the community of nations whether we like it or not.