The Sentinel=record., 1912-09-15
PRACTICAL WORK
 IN SCHOOL ROOM
COLEBROok BELIEVES IT HAS SOLVED THE PROBLEM OF
 BETTER RESULTS.
Various New Side Issues Are Being Installed to Teach the Things nec-
 essary in Every Walk of Life.


 the needs of the community? The people of Colebrook. New Hampshire, think they have solved the problem. Their experiment is intensely de- scribed in bulletin just issued for free distribution by the United States Bureau of Education.
 Colebrook Academy is located in a town of about 2,O00 population in northern New Hampshire. Starting in the first third of the century as a private school, 1t later became part of the public system of education. For years it has successfully done the work expected of a high school in the traditional branches of the New England school Now it is trying to do something more. Without lowering it's standards, without ceasing to fur nish the training necessary for those going into the professions, it is en- deavoring to provide tan adequate edu- cation for the great mass of boys and girls who ought to remain and grow up with the country. It is seeking in other words, to readiust itself to the needs of the particular community in which it is. Just what this read Justment means may be seen from the following four significant additions to the school plant. The greenhouse, the dairy laboratory, the domestic arts de- partment, and the workshop, including a carpenter and blacksmith shop. Complete courses are given in agricul- ture and domestic science. Colebrook is the center of rural district, and these are the vital interests of large part of the population.
 Colebrook Academy does not pro pose to become a vocational school. It remains a general high school. The science exist side by side with thor ough courses in the traditional high school subjects, as well as the com mercial branches.
 Its purpose is not primarily to make good farmers, or skilled me chanics, or professional housekeepers, says Hon. H. c. Morrison, stase su- ,1erintendent of New Hampshire. 'The primary object is the education of the boy and girl to become sin cere and efficient and happy man and woman, capable of becoming an edu- cated worker with material things capable of getting life's happiness out of work rather than out of the leis- ure which comes after work, if indeed it comes at all. A further purpose is to educate the strongest youth to- ward the farm and the industries in stead of toward the professions and business exclusively"
 In the work of the school it is re- peatedly emphasized that the new courses are established in the belief htat there is just as truly cultural of the individual to be- had from competent instruction in az riculaure or domestic science as from instruction in Latin.
 The significance of the Colebrook movement lies in the fact that it demonstrates the basic priciple upon which the American high school must stand or fall that it shall be a di- rect source of strength to the com munity that pays for it. The feeling exists that secondary rural schools have in many instances weakened the communities which supported them; that by the very efficiency of their work, they have trained young men and women for other fields of use fitness and have thus frequently de- prived the community of the services of its best citizens. It is said that New Hampshire has been notable sufferer from. this process, and that readjustment is necessary if the pro- cess is to be checked and the up- building of the country districts is to go on again. All over the country there is the same problem. It seems obvious that if the public school is to justify itself it must constantly put back into the community the best of each generation as permanent res idents.
 Particularly important is the part to be played by the reconstructed rural high school in the country life move ment. The Colebrook Academy digni- ges the fundamental arts of agricul- ture and home-making. Given schools of this type with program of studies matching the real interests of the community, and rural civilization may in truth be made as efficient and sat isfying as other civilization.