Schools that are consolidated under the Holmberg Act may receive aid ranging from $750 to $1,500 annually, according to the size of the area embraced in the district. Village and town schools that associate with themselves a certain number of outlying rural districts for the purpose of taking advantage of agricultural and other industrial instruction may, in addition to the above, receive $150 for each rural school so associated, and besides this an additional $50 may be voted to every such rural school. More than a quarter of a million dollars will be expended for the associated schools during the current year.

Table 2 gives the special State aid available to public schools since 1900:

TABLE 2.-Special State aid to public schools.

The greatest weakness in the system. The Minnesota system of State aid, unfortunately, makes no provision for aiding the poorer districts. At this point it fails to equalize educational advantages.

About $775,000 is distributed annually among the semigraded and ungraded rural schools of the State. Certain requirements are made in regard to school equipment, length of school year, and teacher preparation, before such direct aid-which ranges from $75 to $150 per year-can be granted. Under the present law, whatever funds may be needed by the school district above what will accrue from the first four sources of taxation mentioned above, must be provided by a local tax not to exceed 15 mills on the dollar. Here is the real difficulty. Many of the sparsely settled districts in the northern woods, with their comparatively low valuation, are unable to meet the State requirements for aid, even though they vote the limit of 15 mills. On the other hand, the older wealthy districts in the southern part of the State may obtain the highest State aid by voting a very small additional tax-perhaps a mill or two-on their very high valuation. This condition of inequality is regretted by Minnesota schoolmen, and will, no doubt, soon be remedied.

A variety of units of school organization.—Minnesota presents an interesting study in school organization. Throughout the central and southern parts of the State the small districts with their one

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and two teacher schools prevail. These can not, under the law, embrace less than 4 square miles of land, and few of them exceed 9 square miles. Some of the small schools are well built and well taught, but many are inefficient, and can do little or nothing toward improving modern agricultural life. They are the least satisfactory schools in the entire system.

Several northern counties contain very large school districts that have been able to resist the temptation to subdivide into many smaller units. Some of the districts are surprisingly large. One in Itasca County, for example, embraces 62 townships or 2,232 square miles, an area larger than Delaware and twice the size of Rhode Island. The district has 60 outlying schools, besides schools in several villages and good-sized towns. The whole district is so thoroughly organized and school advantages are so uniformly administered that this form of school organization has proved vastly superior, in most ways, to the small one-school unit. One school board of three men, together with a professional superintendent and his assistants, supervises all education within the district.

Certain portions of north Minnesota, notably St. Louis County, still contain some so-called "unorganized territory." All such territory is, by law, vested in a county board of education for educational purposes, and the county superintendent is clerk and executive of this board. This means that schools are established wherever needed and of the kind needed, by the county board and county superintendent, with funds voted from the county at large. Where the superintendent is a man of good executive ability and force of character this system, too, proves very satisfactory. It tends to give the poor, remote communities as satisfactory educational advantages as others.

Associated schools, or schools of the trading center.-As suggested by its name, this form of organization contemplates bringing about an intimate relation between a centrally located village or town school and all the small rural schools within the radius of its trading community. Under this organization the outlying districts retain their local organization and the control over the home school. At the same time a new board-the associated board-representing all the outlying schools and the central school, is organized to look after the common interests of the association of schools. This system provides adequate supervision for all the rural schools, as the superintendent of the central school is held responsible for the work done in the associated schools. The services of the industrial teachers of the central school are also extended to the rural schools, so that the latter, in a manner, become parts of one complete system, all centered in the village school. School association is often the first

step in the direction of consolidation with the central school. The system of trading-center schools has proved generally satisfactory.

Rapid progress in school consolidation.-Prior to 1911 only nine consolidated districts had been organized in the State. In the spring of that year the Holmberg Act, which provides a new and more liberal law for the consolidation of schools, went into effect. Under it 107 additional communities have effected consolidation. The progress of the movement to reorganize the schools is especially strong in the northern part of the State, where the small districts. have never had a very strong hold upon the people. The schools are centered usually either in the open country or in rural-minded villages. Of such schools receiving aid, for the year 1911-12, under the Holmberg Act, 13 were in the open country and 17 in villages. In any case no school can secure State aid for industrial purposes that does not own or have a long-time lease on at least 5 acres of land for experimental purposes. No consolidated school comprising an area of less than 12 square miles can draw State aid under the abovementioned act.

Growing interest in a larger unit of organization.—Minnesota is no exception to the large number of States in the Middle West that are beginning to seek ways and means to attain a more satisfactory unit of school organization than the prevailing small district. Such small territories, it is readily understood, can not maintain strong farm schools, but the plea for local democracy and home rule has usually been sufficient to block the plans for progress in consolidation. On the other hand, Minnesota has the significant example of what has been done for consolidation and centralization in the large undivided districts and unorganized territory in the northern part of the State. The larger the unit, apparently, the easier it is to consolidate the schools.

Experience in Minnesota seems to point to the county as the natural unit of school organization wherever it is the unit for civic administration. The Minnesota advocates of this system would elect a nonpartisan board of education of, for example, three members, from over the county at large, or by election districts-three or more in the county, according to the size of the board. This board should then choose a professional superintendent for a term of years, who might be held responsible for the selection of competent teachers and for the general management of the schools. Under such a system the old district lines would drop away and educational advantages be equalized over the county. Schools would be elected wherever needed and abandoned where no longer required. Some small schools would probably continue to persist, although the tendency would be toward consolidation into strong, efficient systems.

Minnesota successful in fitting the rural schools to the needs of the open country. It is of little avail to consolidate or associate the schools for country people if merely gathering children together is the end of the reform.1

Minnesota is an agricultural State and appreciates the value of a system of schools organized to prepare scientific agriculturists and men and women of right vision to take their places in community affairs. The laws providing for consolidation and association and for the several kinds of State aid all aim at fostering real rural schools. The consolidated schools extend their educational opportunities to young and old alike. They have, first, the regular courses for the boys and girls of school age. They also make it possible for young people who for good reason can not attend school regularly to take valuable short courses, or even, in some instances, evening and correspondence courses. Some of the schools have short courses for the parents. Of greatest importance are the socializing activities resulting from these consolidated schools. Mr. E. M. Phillips, formerly rural school commissioner for the State, says:

Already the principals in the various schools are arranging for boys' and girls' clubs, farmers' clubs, women's clubs, lecture courses, debates, exhibits, contests, agricultural institutes, social gatherings, potato and corn growers' and stock breeders' associations, cooperative marketing, and numerous other activities suggested by local conditions. The possibilities in this direction seem unlimited. Experience indicates that with direction and encouragement upon the principal's part, the school easily becomes the community center for all desirable cooperative activity. The larger interests, the wider scope and possibilities revealed in dealing intimately with more people engaged in a common cause, the exchange of social courtesies, all tend to broaden the outlook of patrons as well as children. Neighborhood differences, including petty quarrels and feuds, are lost sight of in the thought, and living is rounded out with contentment and a new hope. This is not visionary. Thus early in the movement the tendency to improve conditions for life in the country is asserting itself in consolidated school communities.

II. WORK OF THE LARGE UNDIVIDED SCHOOL DISTRICTS.

How the large districts are organized. The large northern counties of Minnesota have for the most part only recently emerged from the great forest. Some sections are yet in the hands of the lumberjacks, although large areas are already leaving the "cut-over-land" stage and are developing into excellent grain and dairy farms. While a county remains unorganized educationally the entire area of the

1Some time ago the writer visited a fine, well-built consolidated school in a certain State of the Middle West. The school was reared in the midst of an ideal environment of field and forest, and yet the course of study did not permit one to believe that it was intended for rural folk needing to be set in harmony with their own daily environment. Full courses in Latin and German prevailed, with optional courses in French; no attention whatever was paid to nature and the soil.

territory is administered by a county board of education, of which the county superintendent is clerk and has the practical management of school affairs. As soon as this board of education may deem advisable—a matter dependent upon growth in population, increase in wealth, etc.-it may by due process of law set off separate commonschool districts from the unorganized area. The State law encourages the organization of such territory into large units by granting to districts embracing 10 or more townships all the powers of independent school districts. Occasionally these large units become subdivided into several smaller districts; but, on the whole, the administration provided by law is so satisfactory that many large districts have continued intact for years, until at the present time it is quite common to find within them several good-sized villages and scores of outlying schools administered by one educational board of three members.

A businesslike administration.-The success of these large and often topographically unwieldly districts lies in the businesslike way with which their affairs are managed. In the first place they have a central board of education, comprising three members, elected from at large over the district at the regular November elections for three years each. These men are expected to devote much time to school affairs, for which they receive good compensation. The compensation depends on the size of the districts, ranging from $200 a year where the districts contain 30 schools to $800 a year where there are 91 schools or more. In addition to their salaries, the members of the board are "paid their actual and necessary traveling expenses incurred and paid by them in the conduct of their official duties, including their visitation of schools."

The executive powers of the board are vested in a professional school superintendent appointed by the board for a term of years. Some of the strongest school men in the State hold these responsible positions and responsible they truly are, for the superintendents are charged with the enforcement of the school policy for the entire area, both as to main purpose and smallest detail. From the central school where his offices are usually in the largest village in the districthe and the board plan for the schools. From this point the superintendent supervises as many of the schools as he can. What he is unable to do in person for lack of time is done by his assistants, particularly the teachers of agriculture, manual training, home economics, and music, who make the rounds of the rural schools, and who often in their turn have further assistants. This plan works for close, intelligent, and helpful supervision.

Because it might be difficult at all times for the central board to know the educational needs of each part of the district, the law pro