ctically every consolidated school is some
form of community or farmer's club.... Especially during the past
year much was done through these agencies for the promotion of
rural life, social and educational. The consolidated school
principal, with his faculty, is experiencing a new and enlarged
obligation and opportunity.

Bowman County:

Considerable work for consolidation has been done from this office.
Sixteen public meetings have been held, and the proposition of
consolidation thoroughly discussed with more than twelve hundred of
our people. Through this system of education the movement is
finding favor with our people, and it will be only a short time
before more than half of this county is consolidated.

McHenry County:

We have three purely country consolidated schools, each serving a
township, and from our experience here we have come to the
conclusion that districts of this kind are not a success with bus
transportation unless they have an assessed valuation of $175,000
or more. Part of the burden of transportation must be borne by
parents of the children attending school. With the family
transportation system these schools are working out very well,
being able to employ three teachers and run nine months of school
per year without exceeding the maximum tax levy.

Eighteen consolidated and graded schools were in operation in the
county last year, and 40.2 per cent of all the children in the
county are now enjoying graded school facilities.... McHenry is a
purely agricultural county.

Everywhere the consolidated school has been successful and has shown far
greater efficiency than the scattered one-teacher schools. This gives
promise that the consolidated rural school will in a few years prevail.

THE RURAL SCHOOL-TEACHER

In a number of states visited by the writer the prevailing type of rural
school-teacher was a girl of from eighteen to twenty years of age. That
the country school-teacher is an astonishingly young person is attested
by all reports on the subject. An educational survey of South Dakota[35]
showed that the largest group of rural teachers range between nineteen
and twenty-five years of age; twenty-nine teachers were under seventeen
years of age, and fifty-three were just seventeen.

Most of the teachers about whom the writer collected information were
serving their f