THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 343 



reader should supplement the two types of instruction outlined 

 above, but particularly the second, the more general economic, 

 social and civic type of teaching. The readers should be dis- 

 tinctly supplementary, their general function being to stimulate 

 interest in more intensive study and to give coloring and emo- 

 tional content through personal instances and sidelights. Thus 

 a description of cooperation in Denmark or of the work of Pastor 

 Oberlin or the story of the founding of the John Swaney School 

 could not but give the student an impetus to the discovery 

 through his formal courses of the techniques for bringing about 

 such changes in his own community. 



One of the most frequent objections to proposals to expand 

 the curriculum on its civic side is that there is not time for such 

 a modified curriculum in the one-teacher rural school. That is 

 true in essentials. It is also true that there is not time for the 

 efficient teaching of any curriculum in a school consisting of 

 eight grades and presided over by one teacher only. Where at 

 all possible the old one-room school must go. It belongs to the 

 age when farming was carried on by means of a single horse and 

 a double shovel or a "bull tongue" plow and each family was 

 a self-sufficing unit with but few and simple contacts with the 

 outside world. This is the age of machine farming and it is also 

 the age of efficiency in education. The consolidation movement 

 is so well under way that it scarcely needs the support of argu- 

 ment ; it is much more in need of guidance. There are three 

 kinds of consolidation, and of these complete consolidation of 

 enough districts to make the school really efficient and to pro- 

 vide high-school facilities is by far the best type where it is at all 

 possible. This sort of consolidation involves transportation, 

 which is at once the most expensive and the most combated fea- 

 ture of consolidation. But even transportation pays in the long 

 run. Where complete consolidation with transportation does not 

 appear to be feasible many districts are consolidating for high- 

 school purposes and leaving the district schools intact for the 

 elementary students. Such a policy seems of doubtful wisdom. 

 While there is a saving due to the lack of community transpor- 

 tation, the cost in duplication and inefficiency probably overbal- 

 ances the saving. The third type of consolidation is to be found 

 where two or three or four districts unite, usually for fiscal 



