Arizona sentinel Yuma southwest., 1915-12-16
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partments. The country is dotted with experimental farms which prove soil values and the farmer of today is learning from the government haw great and all embracing must be the knowledge necessary to the carrying on of his work, for he must know of chemistry, mechanics, markets and fi- nance, transportation, and a world of things which his father or grandfather would have laughed at as the frills ot a doctrinaire education, notwithstand- ing the early example of the wise and many-sided farmer who was the third president of this country.
 I have said in previous report that the Bureau of Education should either be abolished or put to serious high purpose. I believe the latter to be the wise. in fact the necessary, course. There is a real use for it. As in the Bureau of Mines, we seek to save the lives of miners by educating them in the use of explosives and life-saving apparatus and by instructing opera tors in safe methods of building their vast underground workshops, so l would erect the Bureau of Education into a bureau of educational methods and standards, in which would be gath cred the ripe fruit of all educational experiments, upon which the schools of the country would draw. This is wide country, and there is need for na- tional clearing house where can be centered and exchanged the results of the most remote experiments.
 Why Not a Rural School Campaign?
 There is no disguising the fact that we have most difficult problem in the United States-and I cannot believe it is ours alone-in the rural com munity. A majority of our school chil- dren are in rural schools. The query arises, Are our rural schools doing their part in making life in the coun- try desirable? An ambitious people will 20 where education can be had for their children There is on sense in talking of the charms of country life and the independence and dignity of producing from the soil if the school at command is no more modern than a wooden plow The old-fashioned one-roomed schoolhouse, which holds 40 or 50 ungraded pupils, having but a single teacher who knows nothing but books, is not modern institution, tho great men have issued from it's door. 1t may be all that the county can af- ford where many schools are main tained, but it is not all that the coun- ty can afford if the schools are group ed and grades instituted. The richest State in the union has over 4,000 schools of this character, wherein the teachers are paid less than competent farm hands, and this brings to mind the correlative thought that one need ed reform in the school system is in the elevation of teaching into real profession, as in older countries. As it is now, a teacher is almost without status in our society. And this, in addition to the inadequacy of the pay, has drawn to the profession those who use it only as a makeshift and those who, out of a spirit of self-sacrifice and love for the work, serve in the highest way the public good Of the former class we need fewer, and to the latter should come increasing honor
 How can the schools of county be so coordinated and combined as to make them efficient tools? What should be the standard for a teachers qualifications? How may children be be brought to and taken from the school to distant homes at the least expense? To what extent should the teaching be out of doors and the ex- amples those of real life? How can the boy learn that there is adventure in farm life as we'll as in the city?- for adventure he will have. To what uses may the school building be put as a community center for the neighbor- hood dance, lecture or moving picture show, or, perhaps as the home of a cooperative buying or marketing as sociation? These are but a few of the questions which many men have tried to answer, and there have been some experiments made and right answers given.
 But it is as hopeless a task for (. local school board to find these an swers as for lawyer to know all the decisions of all the courts The teach CTS, the superintendents, and the school boards need leadership; they need an authoritative statement of I,1rf 11n