dren who have not finished the
eighth grade and who are staying away from school constitute twenty-nine
per cent. of the population in the consolidated schools, as against
sixty-three per cent. in the district schools. The Vernon consolidated
school in Trumbull County, Ohio, has enrolled nearly nine-tenths of the
children of school age. Before the consolidation only three-fifths were
in school.

Theoretically, the introduction of agriculture, manual training, and
other applied courses which are found in most consolidated schools,
should have some effect on the lives of the children. In order to show
its extent Superintendent Hall, of Montgomery County, Indiana, asked one
thousand children (five hundred in district schools and five hundred in
consolidated schools) what they proposed to do after they left school.
Arranged according to the kind of school in which the children were, the
answers showed as follows:

_District_ _Consolidated_
_Chosen Profession_ _Schools_ _Schools_

Teaching 151 122
Business 123 73
Farming 92 129
Law 55 21
Mechanics 48 86
Medicine 13 9
Ministry 12 4
Stock-breeding 3 41
Miscellaneous 3 15
--- ---
Total 500 500

Agricultural studies--stock-breeding and farming--and mechanics show up
strongly in the consolidated schools, at the expense of teaching,
business and law in the district schools. While such figures do not
prove anything, they indicate the direction in which the minds of
consolidated school children are moving.

Eli M. Rapp, of Berks County, Pennsylvania, voices the spirit of the
consolidation movement when he says:

"The consolidated school furnishes the framework for a well-organized,
rural education. Its course of study is broader, its appeal is stronger,
its service to the community more pronounced, and, best of all, it holds
the children. Progressive rural communities have wakened up to the fact
that unless their children are educated together there is a strong
probability that they will be ignorant separately."

III Making the One-Room Country School Worth While

The brilliant success of the consolidated schools reveals the
pos