on the status of teachers, (1) in the number of available positions, (2) in requirements, (3) in salaries, (4) in conditions under which to work?

6. Are you willing to help accomplish consolidation in your county? If so, are you willing to study the question sufficiently so that you can speak with authority on it?

CHAPTER XV

THE CONSOLIDATED RURAL SCHOOL

There are in the United States at the present time three distinct types of rural schools. These are, in the order of their development, the dis

The three types

of rural schools

trict school the union school and the consolidated school, and may be defined as follows:

A district school is an ungraded one-teacher school usually within walking distance of all the families in the territory it serves.

A union school is two or more district schools united in one enlarged district or semi-graded school.

A consolidated school is two or more district or union schools combined in one large graded school, conveniently located, and to which pupils from the outlying districts are transported, usually at public expense.

The difference between the consolidated and union schools is more vital and real than apparent. These two types of schools have not always been distinguished from each other, and union schools are not infrequently called consolidated schools. This confusion is due to the failure to bear in mind that the term "consolidation* as applied to rural schools has acquired the right to bar from its classification all schools which are not satisfactorily graded, whose buildings and equipment are inadequate and out-of-date, and to which pupils living at a distance are not transported.

District schools, as already shown, had their origin at a time when life was simple, families large, roads new Place of disand poor, and when education beyond. trict schools the simplest rudiments was looked on more as a luxury than a necessity. They were created to meet an immediate and pressing need, and inestimable good they have rendered. For two hundred years they have been for rural America the most important social institution after the home and the church.

Union schools are probably as a rule inferior to the average district school. This is because of overcrowded Union schools not conditions and intensified disadvanthe highest type tages, with almost no added advantages. A recent investigation of union schools in eight states brought out the following facts: Of the twoteacher union schools, approximately sixty-five per cent. had both teachers in one room, which in certain instances was converted into two rooms by means of curtains or some other form of improvised partitions. Sixty per cent. of all the union schools covered by this investigation were using one of the old district buildings which in only a few instances had been enlarged or altered. Fewer than ten per cent. were offering transportation of any kind. This investigation confirms the conviction that union. schools are in the main mere makeshifts, often instituted to save expense, with no thought of improving conditions.

However well they may have served the past, district and union schools do not meet the needs or measure up to the standards of the present. Weighed in the balances of comfort, educational efficiency and hygienic requirements, these schools are found wanting, and must give way to a type of school patterned after twentieth cen tury standards.

That consolidation seems the best and most desirable type of rural school has been proved beyond all reasonable doubt. Professor Eugene Daven

Looking forward to consolidated type

port, who has made an exhaustive investigation of the success and opera

tion of rural-school consolidation, says: "No case is on record in which the change has been made back again from consolidation to the small school. . . The most searching inquiry has failed to discover any disadvantages worthy of mention."

Before consolidation had passed through the stage or experimentation, Honorable William T. Harris, then United States Commissioner of Education, wrote: "Upon the success of consolidation rests the chief hope for the improvement of the rural school. It is fortunate that a device which changes the ungraded school into a graded school involves a saving of expense. The improvement is well worth the trial, even were it to double the cost of the rural school; but, as will be seen by statistics, it is secured with an actual saving of expenditure. Better teachers, more sanitary buildings, less personal expense on the part of the pupils, better classification and many lesser advantages are commending this reform over the country."

President E. T. Fairchild, of the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, says: "Would it not pay as an investment to bring the school up to the same high standard of efficiency that is being enjoyed by the modern up-to-date farm? . . . The old-time country school, as many of us remember it, has gone, never to return. The large attendance, the male teacher in the winter, the pupils ranging in age from six to twenty-one are no longer in evidence. Consolidation is the only