368 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



teachers away from the schools, and then in supporting institu- 

 tions and agencies for the preparation of competent teachers, 

 would be to rake at once the status of the teaching profession 

 and thereby enhance the efficiency of the schools throughout the 

 land. Without encroaching upon the autonomy of the several 

 states, such cooperation would recognize in a most effective way 

 the dependence of the nation's welfare upon the public schools 

 and the significance of the teacher's service to the nation's life. 



The country child to-day is at a distinct disadvantage educa- 

 tionally as compared with the city child. Not only are his 

 teachers immature, transient, and untrained, but his term of 

 schooling in the average of cases is from one to three months 

 shorter each year, and from two to three years shorter in its 

 entirety. Attendance laws are often laxly enforced or not en- 

 forced at all. The expert supervision, which could do something 

 to offset the immaturity and lack of training upon the part of 

 the teachers, is practically non-existent. The course of study is 

 ill-adjusted to the needs of rural life. 



For fifty years and more the difficulties of the rural school 

 situation have constituted the most serious and perplexing prob- 

 lem of American education. During all of these years courageous 

 efforts have been made throughout the country to find a solution 

 of this problem. While these efforts have enlisted the service of 

 hundreds of competent and devoted leaders, they cannot be 

 said as yet to have done more than touch the surface. When 

 one remembers that one-half of the nation's children are en- 

 rolled in the rural and village schools it is not difficult to under- 

 stand why the largest advances have been at best only local and 

 sporadic. The problem is of too vast a magnitude to be af- 

 fected fundamentally by anything short of a great national 

 movement. The time for that movement has clearly come. 



At basis the difficulty is economic and social rather than edu- 

 cational. If the country child is to have opportunities for 

 schooling equivalent to those provided for the city child, pro- 

 portionately more money must be spent on the country schools 

 than on the city schools. The one-room, ungraded schools are 

 small schools, and the ratio of teachers to pupils is necessarily 

 high. The consolidation of the one-room schools will reduce this 

 ratio and make for economy; but consolidation is impossible in 



