FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 149 



State foreign students, which in nearly all cases were country boys and 

 girls, over nine thousand pupils. These children paid as tuition from 

 twenty-five to fifty dollars. They were in nearly all cases at the expense 

 of either paying board or keeping a horse and buggy to transport them 

 to the school. This expense varies from seventy-five to one hundred 

 dollars for each student. All told it is not extravagant to say that the 

 country people of Michigan paid last year one million dollars in their 

 efforts to procure high school education for their children. This need not 

 be regretted for it was money well spent. But we know that in every 

 community where there is one parent who can spend a hundred dollars 

 to send his children to the high school, there are five others who cannot, 

 and it is safe to say that, if high schools were tree to the country children 

 as are our graded schools, from five to ten times the number would secure 

 high schooling that are now able to 'take advantage of the oppor- 

 tunities offered. How many children near Detroit would take advantage 

 of the high school if it were not for the fifty dollars tuition charged? 

 There is a farmer living just outside the corporation of Kalamazoo whose 

 four children have completed the eighth grade but he cannot afford to pay 

 forty dollars tuition for each in order to send them to the Kalamazoo high 

 school. There are thousands of such cases in the State. 



A few states have tried the plan of paying tuition of students who 

 have completed the eighth grade and who are ambitious to attend a 

 high school outside of their own district. This makes it somewhat 

 easier for children to receive high school training but does not solve the 

 problem. The mere tuition is only part of the expense incurred by chil- 

 dren who must go away from home to school, and while such a plan 

 would enable a few to receive high school training who would not other- 

 wise be able to do so, yet it would not make it possible for the great 

 body of country children to secure high school education. It will not be 

 possible to educate the children of our rural communities in our present 

 city high schools. The high schools must be brought to the country, the 

 country cannot be taken to the city. 



Under present conditions young people living in the country, if they 

 attend high school, must either drive anywhere from one to twenty 

 miles each morning and evening, or live during the week in the village 

 or city in which the high school is located. To drive every school day 

 of the year in all kinds of weather and all conditions of roads is enough 

 to try the strength of the strongest. It is a severe strain on strong 

 boys and scarcely possible for girls. But even more objectionable is the 

 plan of allowing these young people to remain in the city away from 

 parental restraint during the week. Very few parents will ever think 

 of doing so unless they have a near relative to whom they can entrust 

 their children. 



The great body of children cannot pay tuition and transport them- 

 selves to these high schools. Not only the schools, but transportation 

 as well must be furnished. Of all the plans proposed it seems to me 

 that the only feasible one for establishing good high schools in rural 

 districts is found in the centralization idea. With this system all the 

 children of one township, or of a certain number of districts, are 

 gathered into one school. Wagons call at each house in the morning 

 and convey the children to school and bring them home again when 

 school closes for the day. The expenses of transportation are borne by 

 the district. The plan is in operation in a few counties in each of eight- 



