57 



over into Ohio and took with him two people at least fmui iiis own county, one of 

 whom was opposed to school consolidation; and while he had him over there he jfot 

 him converted, and he went back and established the school. I can not speak now 

 as to the numbers, Init there are at least 25 per ci-nt more j)upils in attendance from 

 the same territory than were in attendance under the <ild plan, and they have two 

 years of high school where they had none before; and the cost only slightly exceeds 

 the cost of the schools as they were organized before. 1 think 1 may say it is true 

 that almost unanimously the people now approve the plan; and yet we are finding 

 great dilliculty in organizing such schools in other parts of the State. We have 

 formulated a plan for that purpose, and hope to bring about good results. 



H. T. Fkexch, of Idaho. We have a large tract in the southern part of the State, of 

 some 200,000 acres, which has recently been brought under irrigation. This land 

 was withdrawn under the Carey act, and was nearly all sold and is being settled 

 ra})idly, and the company reclaiming the land has set aside 5 acres in the center of 

 five different townships in this tract for t lie purpose of Iniilding township schools. 

 Those schools are some of them under construction, and they will all be soon com- 

 pleted and they will be the only schools that we have. The idea will be to bring the 

 pupils to the schools, which will be graded schools, in a measure, and which will 

 teach agriculture. Our State superintendent is entirely in sympathy with the idea of 

 teaching agriculture in the public schools, and we have succeeded in putting some 

 leafiets in the State course of studies. That is an experiment to some extent, but it 

 is being watched with interest, and I am sure it will result in much good and that the 

 consolidated school system will he established, at least in our State. 



G. C. Ckeei.max, of Ontario. I would like to say one word and for one reason only. 

 My children attend a consolidated school, the only one we have in our Province, 

 and we are all so well satisfied with it that I do not think there is any danger what- 

 ever, although it is only on a three years' trial, that we will go back to the one-room 

 school. We have a radius of about 5 miles. The farthest families are5J miles away, 

 l)ut the majority are within the 5-mile limit; and the children come in every morn- 

 ing and go out to their homes every atternoon after 4 o'clock. 



When we went about among the one-room schools asking for the lists of children 

 we found there were 95 in all in scliool attendance, on the average, in those five- 

 school sections all put together. Those one-room schools were being conducted 

 very largely by young lady teachers, some of them very young ladies, not getting, 

 some of them, more than $300 or §350 a year for the work. After consolidation, 

 much to my surjirise, there came to the school on the day it opened more than 

 150 children from those sections; and to-day, out of the same five sections, there 

 are, although we opened only in November a year ago, over 200 in actual attendance. 



Now, in finding out just exactly how that came about, we discovered that children 

 who had quit school one, two, and three years ago, and some of them as long as five 

 years ago, were coming back to the graded consolidated school to finish their educa- 

 tion, because with the more experienced and skillful teachers they were able to get 

 additional benefits which liad been impossible when the teacher in the schoolroom 

 was some young girl, herself not out of her teens and hardly out oi her fifth book, 

 who had come back to teach them. 



Then the little tots from 5 to 8 years old are coming. I live up in what is called 

 sometimes the frozen north; I live in Guelph, Canada. In January, February, and 

 March of this year there were 22 children in the primary grade there who did not 

 miss a day, some of them coming 5 miles to school every morning. Most of these 

 little tots would have been shut out entirely from the one-room school, where they 

 had to go a mile or a mile and a halt through the snow and on foot. 



The only thing that wdl ever throw out the consolidated school is the expense, 

 which has proved to be greater than was ever anticipated. When you take the cost 

 of hiring teams at from $2 to $3 a day every day, or five days a week, and sending them 



