or the year of not more than sixty
per cent of the enrollment. Going to school is not yet considered a
serious business by many of the rural patrons, and truant officers are
not so easily available in the country as in the city.

_In financial support the rural school has of necessity been behind the
city school._ Wealth is not piled up on a small area in agricultural
communities as is the case in the city. It would often require square
miles of land to equal in value certain city blocks. But making full
allowance for this difference, the farmers have not supported their
schools as well as is done by the patrons of town and city schools. The
school taxes for rural districts are much lower than in city districts,
in most instances not more than half as high. It is this conservatism in
expenditure that is responsible for many of the defects in the rural
school, and particularly for the relatively inefficient teaching that is
done. The rural teachers are the least educated, the least experienced,
and the most poorly paid of any class of our teachers. They consist
almost wholly of girls, a large proportion of whom are under twenty
years of age, and who continue teaching not more than a year or two. Not
only is this the case, but effective supervision of the teaching is
wholly impossible because of the large area assigned to the county or
district superintendent of rural schools. In no great industrial project
should we think of placing our youngest and most inexperienced workers
in the hardest and most important positions, and this without
supervision of their work.

The rural school has not, therefore, yet been adjusted to its problem.
It has a splendid field of work, but is not developing it. Our farming
population have capacity for education and need it, but they are not
securing it. There is plenty of money available for the support of the
rural school, but the school is not getting it. Enough well-equipped
teachers can be had for the rural schools, but the standards have not
yet required adequate preparation, nor the pay been sufficient to
warrant extensive expenditure for it.

In the rural school is found the most important and puzzling educational
problem of the present day. If our agricultural population are not to
fall behind other favored classes of industrial workers in intelligence
and preparation for the activities that are to engage them, the rural
school must begin working out a better adjustment to its pro