which
children are sometimes subjected in the privacy of the covered wagon, we
cannot dismiss the objection lightly. The solution, however, is not in the
direction of the inefficient district school, for that, too, has its moral
dangers; but in thorough supervision of the transportation under
trustworthy adults.

While the gospel of consolidation is rapidly gaining, all through the
country, closing thousands of unnecessary schools every year, the movement
often meets determined opposition, though advocated by all leading
educational authorities. In time, however, in a disintegrating community,
the scarcity of children forces centralization. The Indiana statute makes
this automatic by its very sensible provisions. The law enacted eleven
years ago permitted school trustees to close schools having less than 12
for an average attendance. The amended law of 1907 allowed the abandonment
of schools with an attendance of 15 or less and made it compulsory if the
number fell below 13. Consequently 679 rural schools in Indiana were
abandoned in 1904, 830 in 1906 and 1,314 in 1908 and in the latter year
16,034 children were carried to school.

_Advantages of Purely Rural Centralization_

In a closely settled township the natural center for the consolidated
school is the village, other things being equal. But if the center is a
city or a large town, results are not ideal. It is not good for country
children to be village or city commuters. If the driver is the right sort
of a man, the drive itself need not be harmful; but distance from home,
particularly in a village among strangers, day after day, is not a good
thing for most children. Furthermore, to add the country children to the
city or village school means one more method of exploiting the rural
neighborhoods and urbanizing the children. From the country view-point it
is not desirable. The town school does not pretend to fit for rural life,
but is frankly based on city needs.

The purely rural type of consolidated school is gaining in favor. To this
plan must country lovers look for a school which combines efficiency with
real training for rural life and avoids many of the objections to village
centralization. Professor Foght speaks of it with enthusiasm: "This is
the ideal type. It contemplates the establishment of the school right in
the heart of the rural community, where the child can dwell in close
communion with nature, away from the attractions and allurements of t