than they should? What, in your judgment, explains the fact that farmers' wives show a larger percentage of insanity than women in other occupations?

3. To what extent is your schoolhouse used as a social center? Could this use of the school plant be extended? What would be necessary in the way of additional equipment?

4. Do you know how the young people of your community feel about the comparative merits of country and town as a place to live? What are the chief points of attraction the town possesses for them?

5. How many days a year is your schoolhouse actually in use? Is it not a poor financial policy to lock up so large an investment the greater part of the year, when the school property could well be used for many other purposes than school work?

6. Do you think it practicable to make the one-room schoolhouse serve as a neighborhood center? Do you think it practicable to make the consolidated school serve such a use in your community?

7. To what extent do you think such social and athletic activities as those described in the chapter are a factor in making boys and girls satisfied with farm life? 8. Could you teach children to play a wide range of games and plays? Do you think it pays a teacher to prepare in this line? Is such knowledge worth while even outside of school? Do you know the rules of games well enough to act as an official in judging contests?

CHAPTER XVII

Growth of the American high school

THE RURAL HIGH SCHOOL

The American high school is a product of the last fifty years. Its forerunners in the field of secondary education, the Latin grammar school and the academy, never gained the hold on the affections of our people that the high school has attained. Neither has the elementary school appealed as strongly as the high school. Although free in their support of elementary education, the American people have been doubly generous in maintaining the high schools. Almost every town and village boasts its well-equipped high school. Especially during the last decade has the high school increased in importance and power. Its attendance, now one million three hundred thousand, has proportionally outstripped that of the elementary school, its curriculum has been vastly broadened and enriched, its buildings and equipment have become marvels of excellence and completeness, and the funds placed so liberally at its disposal have not unfrequently necessitated unwise economies in the support of the elementary school.

This rapid development in high-school education has, however, hardly as yet touched the rural schools. Only here and there do we find high schools as an integral part of rural education. rural communities The accepted standard for the rural

The high school still rare in

school has in most places been an elementary course of eight years. The farm child who has had an opportunity at this grade of school has been looked on as having all the education required, or at least all that could be expected. High schools have been considered out of reach of country districts, or as belonging only to city people.

farm children

But this standard is passing-has already passed in many rural communities. Rural children require as much education as the children of towns High-school training necessary for and cities. The demands placed on their intelligence and training in a career on a modern farm are at least as great as will be made on the average urban worker, and their ability to profit by this advanced education is certainly not less. The willingness of the rural communities to provide highschool education for its youth is one of the first tests of its right to the loyalty of the young people. The four years of school privileges above the elementary grades now so generally available to urban children must be similarly open to country boys and girls, else we can not blame them for deserting the farms for the better educational opportunities afforded by the town. The high school must be free and it must be accessible to the boys and girls of the farm.

The high school is not yet free to the majority of rural children, even if they are willing to go to town for their

Free high schools not generally accessible

high-school training. In many states the rural youth must himself pay a tuition of from three to five dollars a month if he attends the nearest town high school. His district disclaims all responsibility for his education after he completes the elementary school. Some states, as

Iowa, for example, have recently provided that graduates of rural schools may attend the nearest high school, the district to pay the tuition fees. But in the Iowa law, reasonable as the demand on the district is, the liability is limited to three dollars and fifty cents a month, any amount in excess of this devolving on the pupil.

But even where the rural district freely pays the tuition in the town high school, such a situation is far from satisfactory. The high-school training afforded rural children should be in rural high schools and not in town and city schools. Not only in curriculum but in spirit and in teaching, the rural high school should represent the life and activities of the farm. If the rural high school is to maintain an adequate standard of efficiency, if it is to serve its patronage aright, it must take into its program of studies training in the concrete affairs awaiting its graduates. There are at present more than two thousand public and private high schools in the United States teaching agriculture, but comparatively few of these have actual country environment, most of them being situated in towns and cities. Such is also true of the more than one hundred special agricultural schools of secondary grade located in seventeen different states. While the agricultural courses taught in the city school are valuable as educational material and well worth while from the standpoint of general culture and development, yet of necessity they lack the vitality and concreteness possessed by similar courses taught with an immediate environment of farm life and conditions. In the reorganization of rural education that is now going on, therefore, there must be definite provision for the installation of high schools as a part of the rural system.