274 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



heat, equip and keep in repair, the children are carried to one 

 central point where they are given the advantages of a graded, or 

 better still, a high school of first grade. 



This method of dealing with the rural school problem is becoming 

 more and more popular where it has been tried out. It marks the 

 beginning of a new school system, one that will be both cultural 

 and practical. It ushers in what will some day be known as the 

 Agricultural Age. It w^ill put the boys and girls in rural districts 

 in touch with an educational system that will be continuous; one 

 that will best fit them for the work they are to take up when they 

 leave school. This is something that has not been in the schools 

 of the past and is not being done in many of the schools of to-day. 

 In fact, there is no correlation between the work that is being done 

 in many a school room and that which is to be done by the boys 

 and girls after they leave the school. With the advent of the con- 

 solidated school, all this is changed, and we find the boys and girls 

 actually studying the problems that will confront them when the 

 dreams' of youth have passed and life becomes a reality. 



CONCLUSION 



Betts and Hall's "Better Rural Schools," says: "Great movements 

 and deep-seated reforms never come by chance. They are always 

 produced by adequate causes, by forces that are consciously set in 

 motion and carefully administered. There is still a great amount of 

 social inertia to overcome and of ignorance and selfishness to be re- 

 moved, before rural education comes full}^ into its own. Indifference 

 to educational needs and advantages is still the rule in many com- 

 munities. Prejudice yet obtains in hundreds of districts not only 

 against the consolidation of schools, but against all improvements. 



"These conditions must be wisely and courageously met. They 

 cannot be overcome by fine theories nor by the appointment of edu- 

 cational commissions. The passing of wise laws and the adoption 

 of helpful resolutions may be a step in the right direction, but with- 

 out the winning of the people most concerned all these things will 

 prove futile and fruitless. The reform now being sought in rural 

 education will require hand-to-hand work, and almost a house-to- 

 house canvass, to instruct, inform, convince and convert. A doubter 

 must be persuaded here and a skeptic won over there; a stingy man 

 must be stirred into seeing greater value in his children and their 

 future than in his stocks and his farm; here an obstacle will need 

 to be removed from the way of progress, and again enthusiasm will 

 have to be created and maintained ; movements already started must 

 be cherished; projects that advance but slgwly must be hastened, 

 steps taken in wrong directions must be checked, and every phase 

 of the situation watched with the greatest wisdom and care." 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH 



By REV. B. MONROE POSTEN, Poftstown, Pa. 



I have been pastor for twenty-two years in the country and am 

 not looking at this problem from a ten story window in the city. 1 

 Ihave purposely worked in a number of sections of both New York 

 State and Pennsylvania. I wanted to find out conditions for my- 



