150 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



een different states and seems to be meeting with splendid success. In 

 connection with this school is established a high school. This enables 

 all country children to have the advantage of from two to four years 

 of high school training. These high schools are necessarily small. 

 Such a variety of courses of study as are now offered in our large cities 

 is not possible, nor in my judgment, desirable. These young people 

 should be educated for rural life. This idea should not be lost sight of, 

 while the primary object of course should be to make strong, liberal- 

 minded men and women, who should be so trained as to be in touch with 

 their environments and ready and willing to enter upon the every day 

 duties of life when their school days are over. Efforts of course should 

 be made to stimulate pupils to secure further education after com- 

 pleting the high school course, but it should not be a function of these 

 high schools to educate pupils away from the farm and country life. 

 The training should be toward the farm and not away from it. There is 

 no place where brains and education count for more than right in the 

 country. As district high schools will necessarily be limited to teach- 

 ing force and apparatus it would be much better to give one course well 

 than to offer several courses and give thorough instruction in none. In 

 order to be of the greatest good to the greatest number I believe they 

 should be industrial in character, giving as much science as possible and 

 its application to practical affairs of rural and home life. Those of us 

 who are not engaged in public school work do not perhaps grasp the im- 

 portance of the rural high school or the number of bright boys and girls 

 that could be reached if these schools were established throughout the 

 State. It is often said and quite truly too, that the majority of our 

 strong men come from the farm; but while one strong man may emerge 

 from the great crowd, many others are not heard of simply because they 

 do not know, and their parents do not know, the value of education. 

 Many others who do not know and who would willingly avail themselves 

 of such opportunities do not have the means under present conditions 

 to give their children a chance. There are in this State 6.525 ungraded 

 schools. The number of pupils of school age in these districts is 308,642, 

 or an average of 45 pupils for each district school. Suppose that cen- 

 tralization was carried out and that ten sub-districts were united in one 

 central school. This would mean a school of eleven rooms, forty pupils 

 for each room, and in the State there would be 650 of these schools. 

 But it may be said, and truly too, that all the children of school age do 

 not attend school. Statistics show that in the district schools of this 

 State there is an actual enrollment of 214,000 children, or an average of 

 thirty-three children for each district school. If these were gathered 

 into central schools, ten districts in each school, we would have 650 

 schools with eight rooms each, and an average of forty pupils in each 

 room. But the question might be asked, "How many of these pupils 

 would be prepared for high school work?" Taking at random a num- 

 ber of high schools in the State having about the same enrollment that 

 each of these central schools would have we find that about sixty pupils 

 in the school are enrolled in the high school department. 



If country children would avail themselves of high school advantages, 

 as do city children, we would have 650 of these high schools with an 

 average of 60 pupils in each. Can you imagine what this would do for 

 the rural population of Michigan? The time is approaching rapidly 

 when some plan, either this one or some other one equally as radical, 



