1916. And
so the story goes in each state that has a largely rural population.

There is some opposition to this movement by parents who live farthest
from a proposed consolidated school, because of the distance and
inability to provide children with hot lunches. But this opposition is
easily overcome by the provision of public transportation facilities for
the children and by serving hot lunches at the schoolhouses. Some
opposition comes from the landowners in the neighborhood of a
one-teacher school which has to be closed on account of consolidation.
Their fear that there will be a lowering of land values is baseless, as
the settlers in that section get much better school accommodations
through consolidation than they had before.

Advantages of the consolidated school over the one-teacher school are
obvious. It makes possible a better division of time in recitation and
study. The teaching is more efficient on account of specialization and a
better and more stable teaching staff.

In the office of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, North
Dakota, the writer found the following statements in the reports of
various county superintendents for 1916.[34]

Barnes County:

The past two years have been marked by the number of districts that
have voted to consolidate their schools. Five township consolidated
schools have been built in the open country. Each of these
buildings has four schoolrooms, a good-sized gymnasium, an
auditorium with a stage, domestic-science room, and a
manual-training room. They are modern buildings in every respect,
steam heated, water system for drinking fountains and toilets. One
six-room village consolidated school and one open country two-room
school have also been completed. They are also modern buildings. In
these schools the country child has equal opportunities with the
city child. These schoolhouses are used as centers for the social
life of the neighborhood and are proving most successful.

Benson County:

Several districts during the past two years have consolidated. We
believe these schools are demonstrating their superiority over
one-room schools at least in the way of graduating pupils from the
eighth grade. Ten schools operating as consolidated schools
graduated as many farm boys and girls as did nearly eighty one-room
schools, during the past year.

In connection with pra