ol and still be able to live at home. Obviously it is important
from the standpoint of community development that the high schools
should be placed at community centers and that where some of the
communities are too small to support senior high schools that they
should be located at a village which serves as a center of what, for
want of a better term, we may call "the larger community" (see pages
232-3).

One of the reasons for consolidated schools is that the objectives of
rural education are changing and that country people are demanding that
their children be educated for country as well as for town life.
Formerly the content and method of rural education was an imitation of
that of the city and inevitably made industrial, commercial, and
professional occupations the ideal of the pupil. The schools of New
England have done an immense service to the rest of the country but they
were an important factor in depopulating many a New England town. The
introduction of nature study, agriculture, and home economics is
becoming general in rural schools. Educators do not desire to train
rural children solely for farm life, and thus to segregate a farm class,
even were that possible, but they are attempting to give equal emphasis
to the values of country life so that it may prove equally attractive to
the best as well as to the less efficient rural youth.

Furthermore the whole attitude of rural as well as urban education is
changing from that of teaching individuals so as to equip them with
intellectual tools for their personal advancement, to one of training
future citizens who will attain their own best interests by useful
service to the community. The curriculum and objectives of the school
are rapidly becoming socialized, and as this process goes on the school
will more and more become the most important single institution for
creating community loyalty.

The community school, particularly the high school, no longer confines
itself to the instruction of its regular pupils; it is the educational
center and headquarters of the community. With the assistance of the
Extension Service of the agricultural colleges, rural high schools are
holding one-week extension schools for farm men and women, and under the
Smith-Hughes Act they are offering continuation short courses for the
younger farmers. The progressive rural high school is taking a live
interest in the one-room district schools which may be too far from the
center for