m courtesy.

On the whole, most of the local school inspectors and superintendents
interviewed by the writer impressed him favorably so far as personal
character went. They seemed to like their work and were doing what they
could under the circumstances.

PROPOSED MEASURES

There is no other public institution in the country so varied in its
organization, its strength, its methods and ways as the elementary
public-school system. It ranges from a shanty-like to a palace-like
building, from a teacher almost illiterate herself to a teacher with an
education and training which fit her for a college chair, from a few
hundred dollars of yearly appropriation to tens of thousands of dollars
for upkeep of a single school, from one teacher to a staff of teachers
in one school, from an almost voluntary attendance to a rigid compulsory
attendance. All these wide variations, in themselves picturesque, are a
weakness of the system.

When the writer speaks of the weakness of the elementary public schools
he uses this term in a relative sense, keeping always in mind that there
is no other tool in the hands of the government so powerful in stamping
out and keeping out illiteracy and hyphenism as the public school.

To make it meet these tasks a uniform public-school system based on
standard requirements should be established throughout the country by
the Federal, state, and local governments closely co-operating with one
another for this purpose.

The Federal Bureau of Education should certainly be developed and
elevated to the status of a department similar to that in a number of
the states, and in almost all foreign countries.

The reorganization and the support of an efficient public-school system
would require heavy public expenditure, a substantial part of which should
be contributed by the Federal government to the states as an inducement to
the latter to meet the minimum standard requirements in regard to the
public-school system and to accept Federal inspection of the schools for
the purpose of ascertaining that the states and the counties were keeping
to the minimum requirements, which might be as follows:

(1) Enlargement of one-teacher schools through either consolidation or
development; no less than two teachers and no less than three classrooms
in each school.

(2) At least a general high-school education, two years of training in
teaching methods, practical and theoretical acquaintance with
agriculture, with l