CONCLUSIONS 
(1) The widespread belief that the country children as a 
class are the equal of the urban children is a false one, as 
there is a much greater number of retards in the country 
schools and almost no accelerates, while in the city schools 
there is 12 per cent acceleration and only 24 per cent retard- 
ation (it must be remembered that in the city there is an 
artificial acceleration) . 
(2) Nothing is being done in the rural schools to meet 
the special need of the retarded and defective children. 
(3) The number of defectives in each school seems to 
depend largely on the physical environment, those in the iso- 
lated unprogressive districts having a much greater per cent 
than those located in the fertile farming districts. 
(4) The causes of the former are the same as given in 
a previous section for the presence of a large number of both 
young and adult defectives in these districts: namely, be- 
cause the stock was originally poor, because these individuals 
of poor stock have intermarried with those of their kind, and 
because during the years there has been a constant draining 
off of the more ambitious blood from the country to the cities. 
(5) School attendance is very irregular owing to the 
ignorance of the parents and to the neglect of duty by the 
truant officer. 
(6) The rural schools which because of the many prob- 
lems connected with them and because of the lack of super- 
vision found in the larger school systems should have well- 
trained teachers, have the poorest class of teachers in the 
county because the pay is inadequate. 
( 148 ) 
