The country school labors under disadvantages in its competition for teachers and pupils, especially where it has but a small attendance. It is impossible for the teacher to properly systematize her work and classify the school. The classes are small, many times of only one or two pupils, so that there is no incentive to competitive excellence. The teacher's time is so cut up and spread out over a great number of subjects that it is impossible for her to do her best work in any of them and the interest of teacher and pupil is likely to lag. There are, it is true, many excellent rural schools, but this is due either to the fact that the attendance is large, or that by good fortune an exceptionally capable teacher has been secured. If the latter is the case, it is quite certain she will not stay more than a term or two, because better inducements will be offered her elsewhere.

There are hundreds and hundreds, and it is safe to say thousands, of districts in Iowa where these conditions are almost certain to prevail for many years to come. These districts are so small and their resources so limited that their revenues, without excessive taxation, are bound to be limited to such an extent that they cannot afford to employ teachers whose ability commands goods salaries. It is only by consolidating these weaker districts and forming one strong district which can afford to have the best teachers, building and equipment, that the best educational advantages can be secured without heavy additional expense.

The great educational need in Iowa, in the opinion of many of the strongest educators, is of a better trained teaching force. This need is felt most by the rural schools, because under present conditions only a few of them comparatively pay salaries sufficient to induce teachers who have had professional training to work in them. The salaries are so low that young men and women are discouraged from preparing themselves to teach because they can do better in other occupations. At least, if a young man or woman prepares for the teaching profession, it is with the view of securing a position in a good graded school, and having gained the professional training, such positions are easily obtained. The common schools get little or no benefit at present from normal schools except during the experimental stage of the teacher's career, while she is acquiring the experience which will qualify her for a position in the graded schools. The average salaries paid to teachers in Iowa during the year 1900 were: To males $40.20 per month, and to females $30.24. In 1897, the

committee of twelve reported salaries paid in different states as

Iowa has improved since that time in the payment of salaries to men, but not to women. The great number of inexperienced third grade teachers, with whom their employment is merely a make-shift, both on the part of the teacher and the board of directors, keeps the average salary paid to women in Iowa very low, although not as low as in some other states.

The complaint is often made that the farmers' boys and girls want to leave the farm and go to the towns. The atmosphere of the cities and towns with its exitement, its society and its many attractions and allurements appeals to the young people. Younger and younger every year, it is said, they feel this discontent with rural life and they desire to get into town. How many towns. and cities there are in Iowa where a goodly proportion of the population is made up of retired farmers who have left the country and moved into town to satisfy this craving on the part of their children. They have come, they say, to educate their children and give them the best they can afford. They have left the farm, often at great sacrifice, and many times, it must be admitted, with results not the best for the children. Not every boy and every girl who comes fresh from the country with good health and pure morals is able to retain those blessings under changed conditions in town. They have not been prepared for it; they have grown up under different surroundings and the new life may not be the best for them.

If these people who remove into town to educate their children could have a good graded school within easy reach of the home farm, offering to their children educational advantages equal to a town school, with well paid, capable teachers, a comfortable, well lighted, sanitary school building, and the enthusiasm of numbers and the inspiration of competition, is it not reasonable to suppose that they would have stayed on the farm and been better satisfied then they are now having broken up the associations of many years and moved into town? In some parts of Iowa a strong and intelligent effort has been made to bring the country schools to a standard of efficiency equal to the best graded schools of the towns by closing several small schools and uniting the revenues of the districts in which they are located into one good central school to which the children are transported at the expense of the consolidated districts. Where this plan has been given a fair trial under approved methods it has been highly satisfactory. Indeed, the concensus of opinion in the educational world is practically unanimous that this is the only method by which districts which are now supplied only with small schools can be given adequate educational advantages, even for children up to the seventh or eighth grades. The system has been on trial for several years in the east, notably in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Indiana and Ohio, with results highly gratifying to the advocates of the system.

For the purpose of learning to what extent this remedy has been applied in Iowa, what the results are where it has been tried and how a trial of it would be likely to be received by the people where it has been discussed, this department asked the county superintendents of schools to report the situation in their several counties, giving both sides of the question, and especially were they asked to state the effect where experiments had been made. Their reports, which are summarized elsewhere, furnish reliable and quite complete information upon the progress of this forward movement in education in Iowa.

The purpose of this inquiry was to bring out, not merely the favorable side of this problem, but to present also all the objections that have been made to the adoption of the plan of consolidating small schools and transporting the pupils to a central school. In the solution of this problem it is necessary to know all that we have to meet to satisfy the people that it is a wise policy, just as every good lawyer in preparing for a trial tries to put himself on the other side to understand as fully as possible what he must

overcome in order to win his cause. We have set forth the objections in detail in every county, no matter how trivial they may be. If the objections are trivial they will be all the more easily overcome. If they have weight, then we should not try to avoid them, but seek to remove the causes for these objections. It will not do to ignore them. The people whose children are affected by this proposed change will not be satisfied with being told by a school-man that it is for their interest and they should not complain. They must be convinced through their own judgment that the plan is right. Those who know most about the new system and who have had experience in its practical operation are very confident that almost any reasonable person would be convinced of its merits if he would take the trouble to inform himself thoroughly concerning it and learn what it has done where it has been given a thorough trial. We hope in this brief study to bring together some practical suggestions and give to both the patrons of the schools who are discussing it and to the school-men of the country something new to think about bearing on this problem.

Briefly summarized, the advantages claimed for the system by the county superintendents, 95 per cent of whom favor the plan,

are as follows:

I.

2.

It will secure better teachers.

It will reduce the per capita cost of education in the districts affected in nearly every case and without exception after the first cost of buildings, where buildings are required, has been paid.

3. It will insure better classification of pupils, so that both teacher and pupils may spend their time to better advantage. 4. Larger classes will stimulate competition and better effort and greater interest and enthusiasm among the pupils.

5. Supervision will be more thorough and more easily accomplished by the county superintendent and by the principal of the township or central school, where it is large enough to require a principal and assistant teachers. Certainly the county superintendents can give better attention to the schools if their number

is reduced.

6. The attendance would be larger, as experience has shown.

Greater punctuality would be secured, as the children. would all be brought to school before 9 o'clock in the morning. Consolidation would provide better buildings and more apparatus and libraries without additional expense.

8.

9. Longer and more regular terms of school would be the result of uniting the forces of several small districts into one strong central school which could be kept running eight or nine months in a year.

IO. The health of the children would be better guarded where they are conveyed from their homes to the school in comfortable vehicles than where they have to travel through mud or snow for a mile or so to the school, as they often do under the present system.

II. The older children would be kept at home and in school longer than they can be at present, because the central school could provide advanced courses of study under a capable teacher. So the necessity of going to town to school would be put off several years. The course of study would be so arranged as to accommodate these older pupils at such time as they can be spared to attend school. This would tend to keep the boys and girls on the farm instead of encouraging them to leave it and go to the towns. This is one of the main purposes of this system.

12. It will improve the farm surroundings and add attractions to country life by stimulating a desire to know more about the works of nature. Colonel Francis W. Parker has pointed out the wonderful opportunities for elementary education to the child living on a farm.

13. In the central school there would be opportunity for the study of special branches which cannot be offered in the district school because the teacher lacks either the time or the ability to teach them.

14. In short, and to sum up, the opinion of the county superintendents is almost unanimous to the effect that the consolidation of small schools and the transportation of the pupils to a central school at the expense of the district would result in better schools at less or no greater expense.

The disadvantages which the county superintendents report are urged by the people, and by themselves in some cases, against consolidation and transportation, are numerous, and some of them have much force and cannot be successfully met in all cases without radical changes in conditions, and the erection of safeguards. This refers chiefly to the objection of bad roads. The picture presented in the table accompanying this report summarizing the objections to this system is a powerful argument for better roads. In fact, the chief objection brought against the system is the impassable condition of the country roads at cer