wretchedness and desolation of the past
to the light and civilization of the future, saved and blessed by the
lives of a teacher and her children.

CHAPTER XI

WIDE-AWAKE SLEEPY EYE

I Fitting Schools to Needs

This is the story of a school that was built to fit a town, and it
begins with a hypothetical case. Suppose that there was a town--a
prosperous town of some 2,247 souls, set down in the middle of a
well-to-do farming district. As for business, the town has a few
industries and some stores; the countryside is engaged in general
farming. Suppose that the school board of such a town should come to you
and say: "We are looking for a school superintendent. Are you the one?"
Suppose you said, "Yes." How would you prove your point?

Out in Minnesota there is a town named Sleepy Eye, set down in a
well-to-do farming district. At the head of the Sleepy Eye schools there
is J. A. Cederstrom. Mr. Cederstrom has proved by a very practical
demonstration that he is "the one."

When Mr. Cederstrom took charge of the Sleepy Eye schools he found an
excellent school plant, an intelligent community and a school system
that was like the school system of every other up-to-date
two-thousand-inhabitant town in the Middle West. Before Mr. Cederstrom
there lay a choice. He could continue the work exactly as it had always
been carried on, improve the school machinery, and make a creditable
showing at examination time. That path looked like the path of least
resistance. Mr. Cederstrom did not take it, however. Instead he made up
his mind that after measuring the community and the children he would,
to use his own words, "fit the work to their respective needs."

"The work offered has been somewhat varied," Mr. Cederstrom explains. "I
have not attempted to follow any set course or outline of work made out
by some one else who is not familiar with our conditions and needs."

Where does there exist a more admirable statement of the principle
underlying the new education? This man, when given charge of a school
plant, deliberately chose to make the school fit the needs of the
community upon which the school was dependent for support. Oblivious of
tradition he set about remodeling the school in the interest of its
constituency.

Sleepy Eye is located in a farming district. Many of the boys who come
to the Sleepy Eye School will manage farms when they are grown men, and
many of the Sleepy Eye girls will marry farmers and mana