Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1910-09-30
is DISAPPEARING
District School Soon Thing of
the Past in Some Parts of
Country.
CONSOLIDATION is RULE
Two-thirds of 100000 Country In.
situations to Be Merged Into
$4,000.

The district school must go. It Is
un-American; it is behind the times;
1t has failed to keep up with the march
OF progress; it has let the city schools
steal the boys from the farm and
educate them for a city life.
Now the familiar little structure at
the country crossroads is doomed to
extinction. Two hundred thousand of
from border to border, are marked by
the hand of progress.
The one room peighborhood school,
with one teacher, often sadly ineh-
,cient, is passing away. In it's place
is coming a new factor in country life,
a school six or eight times as large.
with three or four teachers Of train
ing and ability, a school prepared to
bring the country boy or girl an educa-
ton that promises TO revolutionize the
rural development of America.
A remarkable movement is under
way in the United States, almost I'M
noticed by the general public and lit
tie appreciated by many of the farm
ing communities themselves, but deS-
timed to play a most important part in
the education OF the 100000 country
children of school age and Of the gen.
erations that are to follow them
Educational Hardships Over.
Yesterday the country boy toiled
Through Indifferent roads and across
plowed fields to the crossroads district
school Today a big carryall, full of
rollicking children and drawn by ex-
cellent horses, rolls up to the farm
70
nlarity of the rural mail carrier.
The children pile in The van moves
on to the next farmhouse and accu-
mulates more children. Through the
winding roads OF a district, oftA for
ty miles square, a kalf dozen of these
big wagons, maintained at public ex-
pense. are taking hundreds Of children
every day to a two story schoolhouse,
such as the country pupils OF few
years ago never dreamed of. At night
the wagons roll back over the morn
ing's route. depositing children at their
own doorsteps.
! The country is solving the back to
the farm" problem. It has found the
means to stop the great outpouring of
sturdy boys and girls to the city
schools, where they have been edu-
Gated ''away from the country" 1t
has succeeded in bringing into the
country, almost to the farmhouse door,
an education for the country youth
equal in its general features to that of
the city school and supplemented by a
vocational training for permanent life
on the farm. 1t is an education for
the farm, not for the pilgrimage to the
city.
: The new prodigy that is rising out
of the ashes Of the district school is
known for want of a better name as
the consolidated rural school," The
name fails to describe this great new
institution of rural life. 1t is more
than a consolidation of country schools.
1t is a graded school. high school, a
manual training school, agricultural
school, domestic science school, almost
q minis ture university.
Practical Farming Taught.
The new system teaches the "voca-
tional training for the farm" The |
new schoolhouse, instead of standing |
on a barren lot at q wind swept four |
corners, is surrounded by a carefully
plated farm of ten acres or so. In the |
more advanced of the schools expert |
mental buildings have been erected, |
small fruit and forest tracts laid out |
miniature dairy and poultry plants con-
structed and experimental work of all
kinds launched.
The boys are taught stock judging. |
breeding. crop rotation. scientific anal |
ysis of the soil, the keeping of farm
accounts and kindred subjects. Con-