conditions. The school administration is to a very great extent de- 

 pendent upon the sentiment of the people, not only to furnish them 

 adequate funds but also to give them moral support. Neither of these 

 things have been forthcoming in sufficient quantities to permit any 

 very fundamental reconstruction. 



The fact is that only two ways to remedy the conditions we have 

 mentioned seem open. One way would be to increase the present 

 number of schools, making each school at least a two-room graded 

 school equipped with all the best modern appliances; to double or treble 

 the remuneration offered the teachers, thus attracting to these schools 

 men and women thoroughly trained and highly efficient, and in addition 

 to provide specialists to teach the \'arious branches of agriculture, 

 domestic science, manual training, business, music and drawing in 

 each and every school. E\'en this would not completely remedy certain 

 defects and there are so many obstacles, both financial and otherwise, 

 in its way that such a policy could not be carried out. 



The other way is the logical way out of the difficulty under existing 

 circumstances and offers the maximum of advantage with the minimum 

 of expenditure and waste. This is as rapidly as possible, to abolish 

 the cross-roads, one-room school with its one poorly paid teacher 

 struggling to teach thirty or more pupils in eight different grades 

 everything from the alphabet to higher mathematics, and consolidate 

 at convenient centers. Grades of high school rank could be added 

 to each such school and enough specialists provided to teach the various 

 courses that are at present necessarily omitted from the curriculum. 

 Public transportation could be provided for the pupils, thus doing away 

 with irregular attendance on account of bad weather and poor roads. 

 This policy, however, the people in those districts which suffer most 

 under the present system are not yet ready to endorse. The vote 

 among all the school patrons was two to one against consolidation with 

 public transportation of pupils. 



It is not our present purpose to attempt to prepare a brief for consolida- 

 tion. That lies quite outside our province as Investigators. We would 

 simply point out that in a Consolidated School it is quite possible to 

 remedy the defects and meet the demands we have mentioned; to broaden 

 the curriculum, increase the number of grades and at the same time 

 raise the standard of teaching efficiency. Several thousand schools in 

 the United States are doing this to-day and doing it successfully. Nor 

 is the cost of this prohibitive, for the expense of maintaining such a 

 school is but little more than the expense of maintaining the various 

 smaller schools which it displaces, once the initial cost of building and 

 equi])ment is met. For example the Baltimore County Agricultural 

 High School, one of the finest and most complete schools of its kind 



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