iciency may attempt to enlarge the curriculum and to employ newer
methods of teaching, but his talents are useless if he is hampered by a
conservative, unappreciative, and indifferent community. When the school
becomes a social center of the community's interest and life, there will
be no difficulty in achieving any policy which the State permits or
which a skilled teacher urges. Scattered schools will be consolidated,
and isolated ungraded schools will be improved. Given an interested
community, the modern teacher can vitalize every feature of the school,
changing the formal curriculum into an interesting and liberalizing
interpretation of country life and the pedantic drills and tasks of
instruction into a skillful ministry to real and abiding human wants.

PREFACE

No rural population has yet been able permanently to maintain itself
against the lure of the town or the city. Each civilization at one stage
of its development comprises a large proportion of rural people. But the
urban movement soon begins, and continues until all are living in
villages, towns, and cities. Such has been the movement of population in
all the older countries of high industrial development, as England,
France, and Germany. A similar movement is at present going on rapidly
in the United States.

No great social movement ever comes by chance; it is always to be
explained by deep-seated and adequate causes. The causes lying back of
the rapid growth of our cities at the expense of our rural districts are
very far from simple. They involve a great complex of social,
educational, and economic forces. As the spirit of adventure and
pioneering finds less to stimulate it, the gregarious impulse, the
tendency to flock together for our work and our play, gains in
ascendancy. Growing out of the greater intellectual opportunities and
demands of modern times, the standard of education has greatly
advanced. And under the incentive of present-day economic success and
luxury, comfortable circumstances and a moderate competence no longer
satisfy our people. Hence they turn to the city, looking to find there
the coveted social, educational, or economic opportunities.

It is doubtful, therefore, whether, even with improved conditions of
country life, the urbanization of our rural people can be wholly
checked. But it can be greatly retarded if the right agencies are set at
work. The rural school should be made and can be made one of the most
importa