486 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



its appeal to the practical man is that there is a far more adequate return 

 for the money invested. 



The greatest drawbacks to the furtherance of consolidation are the 

 reluctance of communities to give up their district schools and to substi- 

 tute a new order of things, and the lack of legislation to permit and 

 encourage it. The few real difficulties, such as bad roads, great distances 

 to be traveled, long hours away from home, and cold lunches, which have 

 been urged against consolidation, are also met with by those who attend 

 • district schools, and are on the contrary partially solved by transporta- 

 tion. In Indiana improvement of roads is following fast in the wake of 

 the consolidation movement. The installation of domestic science en- 

 ables the schools to furnish warm lunches. Those who make the com- 

 plaint that expenditure is increased overlook the fact that the man who 

 sends his children out of the district to a better school pays twice for 

 their education, taxes in his own district and tuition in another, and the 

 man who patronizes his own one-room school sometimes spends four 

 times as much as the city man while receiving a poorer return for his 

 money. The cost per pupil in a consolidated school is often the same 

 or more than in one of the larger one-teacher districts ; however, it is 

 not cheapness that should be sought. The cost certainly should not be 

 exorbitant, but it should be adequate to secure the best educational ad- 

 vantages. A recent study by Professor J. F. Bobbitt mentions the fol- 

 lowing objections which are being made to consolidated schools : attend- 

 ance is not radically bettered, scholarship is not improved, and cheapness 

 is not secured. Professor Bobbitt replies that wliile his statistical study 

 shows there is not a great difference in attendance during the first five 

 years, the attendance is much better in the upper grades. He also sa5's 

 that those who argue that scholarship is not strengthened base their 

 opinion upon the results of formal examinations, utterly ignoring the 

 fact that children in the consolidated schools have a broader curriculum, 

 more individual attention from teachers and better social and sanitary 

 conditions, all of which can not be measured by the traditional word 

 examination. 



On the whole it seems that consolidation has been tried long enough 

 and in a sufficient number of geographically different localities to raise 

 it above the experimental stage and to prove it a solution for some of 

 the ills from which the country schools are suffering. 



The student of the rural problem is next confronted by the question 

 of means that have been found effective in furthering consolidation and 

 in making consolidated schools more efficient. Those states possessing 

 laws of a prohibitive, persuasive or constructive t^'pe have a basis of 

 procedure the lack of which has prevented progress in other states. 



From nearly every state superintendent to wliom Professor D. D. 

 Hugh sent a questionnaire asking for information regarding legislative 



