Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1915-12-10
given by it to the cause of education.

Granted that a achool of considerable
size, with sufficient pupils to admit of
grading to good advantage, is the basis
of a better school than a small, struggling
one, yet there are other things to con-
slider, such as the health and comfort of
the children, which should even take
precedence. Were Vermont, for example,
so situated that pupils could be conveyed
quickly and easily by some such agency
as the motor bus all the year around,
instead of by the slow and tedious process
of live horsepower, and were the weather
and temperature such as to make ten or
fifteen miles of road travel no real hard
ship, the centralizing of the pupils
might be a more feasible undertaking.
In the Ease of Vermont, as conditions
now are, we do not believe public senti-
ment will sustain a much more general
closing of the small schools than is now
being done. 1t should be remembered,
too, that there is often a distinction be-
tween a small school and a weak one.
All small schools are not weak, nor are
all large schools strong. To set a definite
number of pupils as the sole measure of
a schools quality and its right to survive
is a grave mistake, we believe. Vermont
has never gone as far as that. 1t did,
until the passage of the act of 1915, fix
an average attendance of six pupils as a
qualification for the giving of public
money, but even that is now swept away,
the school funds no longer being divided
on a basis of the number of legal
schools.
Nor or we quite convinced of the
wisdom of ''chloroforming" the so-called
weak schools. Too frequently it means
chloroforming the community as we'll.
Instead of "mercifully' administering
this form of treatment, why not try to
build up both the struggling community
and the school? The hold that the little
old schoolhouse has on the people tribu-
tary to it is not altogether sentimental.
1t is their social as well as educational
center. Take it away or close it and let
it rot down and the community feels the
effect in many ways, not least of all in
loss of pride and of courage for the
future. Nothing helps more to de-
populate a locality than closing its
school.
We will place over against the action
| Df yNoot Niroipio nc oatonnonAol hu tho
contemporary, a simple news item taken
from town correspondence in the last
issue of this paper, and ask our readers
whether they do not consider it a wiser
and better policy for Vermont than
"mercifully chloroforming" the small
schools. The item is as follows:-
Royalton has a new school house, or
essentially new, in the Dickey district,
in the southwest corner of the town.
1t is the frame of the old building
turned around, and given new siding.
and new walls inside, new large win
dows in abundance, new blackboards,
new floor, probably hardwood or hard
pine, and a basement, with cement
flor, and a hot-air furnace, and is
equipped with the modern seats, and is
second to no country school, probably,
in the town or county. Land should be
worth from one to five dollors an acre
more in that district for this improve
meet, which means that children in that
neighborhood will not be freighted off
to other and remote quarters for school
privileges; and is public notice that the
people of this neighborhood appreciate
good educational advantages for theil
children, and recommends the officials
in charge of the work. There will be q
service there next Sunday from 8 to
O'Clock it the afternoon, if not pre-.
vented by rain.