The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-11-24

no doubt come forward with the necessa- ry supplement to the state appropria ton.
 But little argument is required to show that our county needs such high school for the education of the youth growing up amid the complex problems of our in- dustrial and agricultural developments and especially the youth of our rural pop ulation. Too many of our boys and girls of the rural districts are drifting into the avenues of business and industrial occupations with no high school training and even with very imperfect elementary training, and therefore no high ideals for personal achievement, or growing up on the farms with no ambition for better things. These youth need the stimulus of possibilities and hopes that the county high school, offering practical training, would hold out to them. Such stimulus would clear their intellects, quicken their imagnatons, and reveal to them the un- dreamed of treasures lying all about their homes. The influence of such an in- stitution would within a few years be felt down in the elementary schools, where the children would become eager to prepare themselves for the high school: it would open the door of opportunity for self-improvement and culture to hun dreds who have never felt and who will never lttli Nllhcul SuCH StHDOiS tue fA- quisite joy of intense mental application experienced by the student passing from the sphere of the elementary school 10 the sphere of the high school; 1t would quicken ambitions, arouse higher ideals, and carry the blessings of original think ing and investigation into homes that must otherwise remain within the mar row channel of primitive methods of thinking and living.
 Rural Population.
 l wish to emphasize the fact that it is our rural population that stand in need of the blessings the county high school will bring than do our urban population. Birmingham is blessed with it's fine sys- tenn of public schools, continually grow ing and expanding. as are also other smaller cities within the county. The children of our urban population have the benefit of well organized elementary schools articulating with well equipped high schools. while the children of our rural population must attend less efTi- cient elementary schools, with no high school at all, except the fortunate few who are able to bear the expense of at tending some of the city high schools. Are the latent possibilities of the country child any less promising than those of the city child? Should not the county do as much for her. children as the city does for her children? The drawing of this contrast does not by any means indicate that there is any thing antagonistic be- tween the interests of the city child and the country child. On the contrary their interests are mutual. The city and the county cannot exist the one without the other and each should and does contrib ute to the welfare of the other. That q city high school should be conducted along lines different. in some details, from what a county high school should be conducted does not imply that the eduea- tion of the mind and the culture of the heart of child in the one is fundamen- tally different from the cultivation of the mind and heart of a child in the other. It only implies that the matter of envi- ronment of occupation determines method and kind of work to be done in system of education.
 It is not my purpose in the discus sion of this subject to enter into the details of the organization of the coun- ty high school. However, there are two points to which l wish to call at tention before I take my seat. One is that the course of study should be made practical and the other is that the school should be made accessible.
 It was Chancellor Payne of the Uni- versity of Nashville who in combating