CHAPTER XIV THE MOVEMENT TOWARD CONSOLIDATION Many different factors are at work for the betterment of the rural schools. Of these none is more vital and Changes necessitating consolidation single larger one. important than the movement toward consolidation, or the combining of several small district schools into a This movement first arose in New England, where it owed its origin to the dwindling size of the district schools. A generation or two ago it was common for the rural school to enroll thirty or forty pupils, and not infrequently as many as fifty were to be found within its walls. But that day is past. Permanent social and industrial changes have come about, and towns and cities are claiming an increasingly larger proportion of our people. Besides this, not a few of those who live on the farms now send their children to the town school instead of to the little home school. The consequence is that the district school has been losing in numbers, and occasional schools have become extinct from sheer lack of pupils. Thousands of rural schools are to-day running with less than ten pupils, and many with under half that number. This loss in numbers has produced serious consequences in the rural school, and our people are coming to see that the interest, the efficiency and the economy formerly belonging to the larger district school are want Loss in efficiency through small schools ing in the small schools of the present. To continue these unprofitable schools is like attempting to carry on our manufactures in thousands of primitive and poorlyequipped shops, each employing but a few workmen, instead of conducting such industries in well-equipped factories manned with hundreds or thousands of skilled mechanics. Readjustments must be made to meet the changed conditions in education, just as they have been made to meet new conditions in the industries. Consolidation is no new and untried experiment, as many unacquainted with its history think. Massachusetts Origin of contook the first step toward consolidasolidation tion in the year 1869, and has steadily continued the policy to the present day. The pioneer in the movement was Superintendent William L. Eaton, of Concord. He looked about him in Concord Township, and saw the small and struggling schools, each irregularly attended by little groups of children from the neighboring farms. He concluded that the children would be better off in one larger and stronger school. But the homes. were widely scattered, and the distance was too great to walk. There was no law at that time allowing public money to be spent for the transportation of children to school. A new law was sought for this purpose, and the school was opened. At first the new school consisted of only two districts, but others voted to come in, and by the end of ten years all the schools of Concord Township were consolidated. The movement thus begun soon extended to other New England states, and so on to the Middle West, and Extent of more recently to the South and the consolidation far West. Consolidated schools now form an integral part of the school system of fully three This is a This building was planned for a school of forty or fifty pupils. The attendance has now dwindled to nine. For two years the boy shown in the picture was the only boy in the school. case where a good district building adequately equipped attract pupils when a consolidated school is within reach fails to |