No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 61 



which means, that he must be educated in the sciences that underlie 

 his art. This Ivnowledge the great mass of farmers cannot secure, 

 unless it is given in the public school, and it cannot be given there, 

 for the reasons that have been stated, until the schools are graded, 

 and more time is given to the teacher to do his work. One would 

 suppose from the spirit of content that exists among those who have 

 the management of our rural schools, that we had reached perfec- 

 tion, and that there is nothing further to be desired or possible to 

 be obtained. A visit to any well conducted city school will soon dis 

 pel this illusion. They demonstrate, every day, that scholars can be 

 fitted there for entrance to the freshman or sophomore class in any 

 college in the land, and that this not only can be done, but is done, 

 in the same time in which the country child is at work ui)on the rudi- 

 ments of an education, in the ungraded country school. The one 

 has full opportunity and advantages, the other has a most meagre 

 apportionment of each. 



The report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for 

 1901 shows that there are over ten thousand (10,348) ungraded 

 schools in Pennsylvania. All of these, with few exceptions, are in 

 the country. It is distressing to see these thousands upon thousands 

 of country children, who ought to have, and could have, as fine an 

 education as any m the land, denied the privilege, and forced to be 

 content with the elementary training of an ungraded country school, 

 or else leave their homes and incur the additional expense of tuition, 

 board, and room, in some town or city, where the system of education 

 is adapted to children's needs. In the days of ignorance of better 

 methods, this apathy was entitled to some excuse, but now, in these 

 days of enlightenment, of progress and better knowledge of what is 

 possible to be done, it is a crime to sit unmoved, when our groping 

 children cry to us for light. 



