The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1921-07-22
EDUCATIONAL NOTES

believed will be of interest to a num-
Der Of st. Francois county people, are
taken from recent circular addressed
to the County Superintendent OF
Schools:
"As you know the county unit bill
has been held up by the referendum
which means that the people will vote
on this bill at the general election in
November, 1922.
"A good many questions will now
be asked you regarding the status Of
bonds voted since March l, 1921.
Since it was known that the bill had
been held up by the referendum, there
has been no decision from the Attor-
ney General regarding this matter.
However, since there never was any
question about the legality of bonds
voted since March /, 1921, in districts
not maintaining a first class high
school, but the only difficulty being in
the matter Of selling the bonds, will
say that a number of bonding COM
panies have now signifed their will
ingness to buy such bonds. SO I see
nothing whatever in the way of adj
vising your districts desiring to vote
bonds to go on and do so. ~"
II shall not undertake to discuss the
merits of the county unit bin in this
circular. l know that many good peo-
pie, in fact many county superintend-
ents, were opposed to the county unit
bill. This, of course, was their right,
and as far as ] am concerned. there
are no hard feelings one way or the
other regarding the matter. believed
and still believe that the county unit
bill would have eliminated some of the
weaknesses of our school system,
Some other people thought not. Be
that as it may, we now know the stu
alton that confronts us-that the
school system stands now just as it
did before any county unit measure
had ever been passed.
~ want on this occasion to speak
of another matter which has been on
my mind very much since have been
in the state office. l have been crit
icised for referring to it. Some have
felt that we were doing the state u
great good when we persisted in stat
ing that she is far down on the list of
the states of the union in education.
An the night of June 9th at Warrens-
burg, in the address delivered by the
United States Commissioner of Ed
ucation, Hon. J. ]. Tigert, he made
this statement: 4 have been surprfs-
ed on coming into Missouri to find
that there are some people who take
the report of the Russell Sage Foun-
dation seriously. This report ranks
Missouri thirty-fourth in education
In the first place, no state can be
ranked educationally as there are GER
tain elements that go to make up ed
ucation that can not be measured. If
all the things that make for develop
ment in education were to be taken
into consideration In an attempt to
rank the states of this nation, Mis-
souri, would stand fifth or sixth from
the top
81 feel now that we should refrain
from the spreading of propaganda,
drives, etc, and direct all our energies
towards the development of the
schools with such machinery and such
facilities as we have at hand. / wish
you would take special pains to note
how many schools you will have this
year with attendance of less than ten,
and study this problem.
"There is no greater work to be
done than the advancement of educa-
ton. feel very deeply on this sub
ject and want the boys and girls on
the farms to have theasame opportun-
titles, if possible, aase thes boys and girls
in town EdueatfoR0o bfoadensia the
vision, tenpers the heart, land makes
golden The light that fallss apsh The
|hearthistone n-the homes of'ea4 iand!9
Whatever you and can do-to help IN
this great work will be time and en-.