duties, in cooperation with their mothers. In response to the influences coming from the vocational classes, many homes have been improved. People have been made happier and better in these consolidated districts, and the social life of the communities has been greatly enriched.

All these things, while somewhat intangible, still have a cash value. The ranch property in these districts has increased in value as a direct result of the good schools and the helpful influences that emanate from them more than the new school plants cost. The good schools have proved to be a paying proposition. In these 25 com

munities in Weld County the people are to be congratulated upon the degree of success they have attained in reorganizing their schools. They have accomplished it by the harmonious cooperative effort of a large majority of the people in each community.

THE JOHNSTOWN CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL.

One of the best of the consolidated schools is at Johnstown, in the western part of the county. It is in a fine farming district, a leading dairy district of the State. The farms are improved and well stocked with pure-bred or high-grade dairy cattle. It was not until several other communities had consolidated their schools and had erected fine buildings that the people of Johnstown united on a school-improvement program that is still in progress. In the light of what they have accomplished within the past year and a half, it would almost seem that they had deliberately waited for most of the other

consolidated districts to build new schools first, so that they might have the benefit of the experience. At any rate the Johnstown community now has one of the finest single school buildings that the consolidation campaign has yet produced in Colorado. It is a most beautiful structure in external appearance, combining both beauty and utility in an unusual degree. A picture of the building is shown. The district also has a commodious grade building that might have been used for several years for both high-school and grade purposes and a good garage to properly house its fleet of motor busses.

The new building cost $160,000. Three separate bond issues were voted for its erection and completion, and all carried unanimously. There was not one opposing vote. It is intended for a junior and

Dedicated April 26, 1922.

senior high school and a general community center, and it will serve both purposes well for years to come. It has a fine arrangement for classrooms, laboratories for physics, chemistry, vocational agriculture and home making, offices, pure running water, electric lights, a moving-picture projector, and all the other equipment of a first-class modern school. The school and community auditorium will seat more than 1,000 people, and the stage serves also as a large and wellarranged gymnasium.

The building was dedicated on the evening of Thursday, April 27, 1922. A general invitation was issued to all interested parties to attend the dedicatory exercises.

The citizens of the village of perhaps 300 people served a 6 o'clock dinner free to all who came. Those present will not soon forget the event, on account of the dinner and the fine spirit that pervaded the banquet as well as throughout the exercises. The Federal Commissioner of Education, Hon. John J. Tigert, was present and delivered

an address. Among other things he praised the people of the community for the fine spirit of cooperation that was in evidence everywhere, and he declared it to be the finest consolidated school building he had ever seen in any State up to that time. The superintendent of public instruction for Colorado presided at the meeting, and the president of the Colorado Agricultural College, who, as a boy, farmed the quarter section of land on which the new school is located, also made an address and gave the dedicatory pronouncement. Other distinguished visitors also were present and took part in the impressive ceremonies of setting apart this remarkable building to the uses for which it had been erected. Among them were representatives from Wyoming, South Dakota, and Kansas.

This was the most important meeting ever held in Colorado in the interests of better rural schools, and at no similar meeting has there ever been such a gathering of distinguished visitors as were present on this occasion. The community greatly appreciated the presence of Commissioner Tigert and all the others who assisted in the dedication of this fine consolidated school.

Many of the statements made with regard to the people of Johnstown could also be said of the people in the other Weld County consolidated schools, but it seemed eminently fitting and proper to give special mention to this community, since its new building, the finest of its kind up to the present time, was dedicated shortly before this account of the Weld County consolidated schools was written.

UN

OF

Department of Rural Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York.

I. TYPICAL CONDITIONS.

Rural welfare is frequently conceded to be the most serious and baffling problem of American life. In attacking this question from the educational point of view the immediate demand is for ruralschool supervisors who can correct the defective practice of untrained novices in the field. But the fundamental and basic need is for teachers of adequate preparation and leadership. Because of the strategic position of the country teacher and the numerous advantages of the school as an agency for rural progress, the preparation of rural teachers is regarded by many as the crux of the whole farm-life situation. Be this as it may, the task is clearly one of farreaching significance, as a brief presentation of facts will indicate. The farming population of the United States includes about 38,000,000 people. Of this number, approximately 8,000,000 are children. These 8,000,000 rural children, constituting over a third of the total public-school enrollment of the Nation, attend school in 200,000 one and two room country schools. About 300,000 country teachers, supervised by 3,500 county superintendents and rural schools supervisors, are employed in the instruction of country children. This large army of rural teachers has never been accurately studied and analyzed. In fact, lax supervision, limited funds, and the constant change and unrest of its personnel have thus far made accurate study of the rural teaching population almost impossible. Cautious estimate, however, based on typical studies, reveals startling conditions.

The national situation.-In 1914 Dr. H. W. Foght, then in the Bureau of Education, undertook a study of 6,000 rural teachers in 55 typical counties of the United States. Replies were received from 2,941. The results of this study are generally considered

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