The line of activity now in greatest need of sane directive capacity is that looking toward the reconstruction of the rural school in order to adapt it more closely to the demands of an agricultural population and to make it the center of a richer social life. There are those who still refuse to see a need for any reform whatever in this direction; there are many more who seem to feel that the whole problem has been solved when manual training and nature study have been added to the official programme. In many cases the manual training finds thorough satisfaction in the production of hideous monstrosities which are defended solely on the ground that they have been made with the hands, and in other cases it has already sunk into the deadening process of slavishly and mechanically following a book, a thing quite as far from freeing the personality of the child as the old process of memorizing definitions in technical grammar. In very few cases does the nature study give much promise of making the farm, the orchard, or the vineyard more productive, or the home a more healthful or beautiful place for human habitation. But little is being done in either direction to free the human spirit, to make it at home in the world, to render it capable of subduing the earth and having dominion over it. To the discerning the amount of waste energy along these lines is appalling. The South will be fortunate indeed if it escape a season of disappointment and discouragement which may retard real progress along this line for decades.

But there is a saving clause in the situation. The General Education Board and the Southern Education Board have united to encourage the establishing of rural industrial schools to serve as norms or types. Doctor Dickerman, in his report as field agent to the third Capon Springs conference, called attention to the possibilities of such centers. In speaking of what might be done in Alabama, he said:

And if there were such schools in every county always in close touch with the experiment station and alert to every valuable idea coming from that source, we can see that the results would be of the highest value to the whole business of agriculture. Think of energetic, able teachers in so many places taking their pupils through lessons on plant growth and setting their boys to putting every fresh idea into practice on their fathers' plantations. That would lend fascination to things that are now uninteresting and give to drudgery the joy of a pastime. Or, better still, think of these teachers as interesting themselves and their pupils in every material interest of the community as well as in other interests that are social and moral, giving their attention systematically to a study of the resources of the locality, its mineral deposits of coal, iron, and stone, its forests of pine and cypress and oak, its water power and manufacturing facilities, its adaptation to market gardening and stock raising; mastering all knowledge of this kind and filling the minds of their pupils with it-how it would change the whole life of those boys and girls and give their home a new atmosphere. It would temper the restlessness so common among young people, and it would check the hankering for a factory village or city. It would hold their ambitions and hopes to wise channels, engage them in manifest duties, and habituate them to a share in productive enterprises within their reach. That would mean for them prosperity and happiness, and it would mean everything good to the rural community.

Through the mediation of Doctor Dickerman, bringing together local initiative and outside aid, two industrial centers were established in Washington County, Ga. The Farragut School, at Concord, Tenn., the result of similar effort on the part of President Dabney and Professor Claxton, and aided by the General Board, will open in January. It is a consolidated school, and is to be made the center of community life, realizing as nearly as possible the ideal of a rural school. It will have a new, well-equipped school building, a shop, and a farm of 13 acres. Through the encouragement of the boards other centers have been equipped. Some of these are in active operation, and promise, without abandoning what is valuable in the humanistic conception of culture, to give an education adapted

to life under rural conditions. And when the present wave of superficial sentimentality has run its course, to be followed by discouragement or indifference, these individual schools which have been presided over by sane heads will survive to serve as centers from which a wholesome development will slowly radiate in all directions.

The summer school movement.-But no movement looking toward a real and permanent advance in education can long ignore the education of the teacher. For, after all, the consolidated school, with its funds increased by local taxation, with its new and well-equipped building, its lecture hall, library, laboratory, and workshop, its larger grounds, with all the facilities for the school garden-all these constitute so much dead material, the mere instruments of education, which must wait for their quickening power upon the personality of the teacher who is to administer them. The great regenerating force in the world is the living human personality. For this there is no substitute. Between the whole system of educational machinery on the one side and the child on the other stands the living teacher to transform the mechanical into the vital, to translate material appliances over into larger life and power and social efficiency.

Thus this educational campaign comes in time, by the logic of its own inner development, to find in the teacher a focal center of interest. It has become obvious enough that the inefficiency of the rural school can not be adequately stated in terms of bad buildings, short term, and antiquated curricula. Chancellor Kirkland, of Vanderbilt University, in an address before the Richmond conference, said with telling force that he had visited rural schools and come away thanking God that the term was no longer. This is one way of stating the confirmed conviction of the discerning that the real improvement of elementary schools in the South waits upon the education of teachers.

The bureau had not proceeded far with its study of conditions before the inadequacy of facilities for the education of southern teachers impressed itself strongly upon the consciousness of those who were directing its work. The normal schools and departments of education in universities are doing good work in the professional training of teachers, but they are altogether inadequate to the demand for new teachers, to say nothing of the great army in the field needing and desiring better preparation for their work. From this situation there came to Doctor Dabney the suggestion of a great summer school for the whole South, situated at some central and accessible point and equipped to meet the needs of teachers in all grades of service. At the request of President Dabney the University of Tennessee offered its whole plant free of charge to the movement. The people of Knoxville, Doctor Curry as agent of the Peabody fund, the General Education Board, and individual friends of the cause made the experiment possible by providing funds. The members of the Southern Education Board cooperated heartily by wise counsel, by personal presence, and by valuable addresses during its session. The whole campaign had contributed to make it possible by the sentiment which it had awakened. Thus all the interests and forces of the whole movement for which the conference stands were for the time merged in the Summer School of the South, which opened as an experiment at the University of Tennessee on June 19, 1902. The story of that school, with its faculty of distinguished instructors from all parts of the country and its enrollment of 2,000, representing the best in the teaching force of the South, is well known. It was at once a conference, a campaign, and a school of solid academic and professional instruction, continuing for six weeks and touching every Southern State, every phase of educational interest, and every grade of educational activity from the kindergarten to the college.

This experiment clearly demonstrated the demand for a school of this type, and the friends of the cause immediately decided to continue it. Dr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, executive secretary of the Southern Education Board, says in his survey

of the work of the year (1902), after referring to the summer schools at other points:

Especially at Knoxville, however, it is intended to continue what, upon a still larger and more comprehensive scale, may be termed in a peculiar sense "The Summer School of the South," a school not exclusively for Knoxville or for Tennessee, but for all the South. Here those teachers who may wish at small expense to study together at some common southern point may find inspiring local and climatic conditions and a faculty so large as to permit the broadest selection of courses. The promoters of the school hope to provide a great representative institution, well organized and well equipped, presenting an ample range of subjects through the very ablest teaching force that careful selection and adequate resources can command.

With this feeling of permanency, the management provided for the second session of the school more adequate material equipment, engaged a much larger faculty, and brought the whole work to a much more efficient state of organization. At this session a faculty of 91 instructors, chosen from all parts of the country with special reference to peculiar fitness for the work, gave 149 courses to 2,150 students registered from 31 States and Territories, from Canada, Porto Rico, India, and Japan. The school, while essentially southern in aim and in sympathies, was pervaded by that catholicity of spirit which has characterized this whole educational movement.

This one school alone, with its equipment of model schools, model libraries for public schools and for teachers, its exhibits of work in manual training, drawing, etc., brought together from two dozen or more of the best city school systems in the country, with its laboratories and experiment station, its comprehensive course of instruction and the efficient corps of instructors behind it, with its army of teachers at once creating and sharing its corporate life-this one school alone represents an educational force which no one would at this time attempt to estimate. But this was only one of a number of summer schools in session in the Southern States during the summer just past. On a somewhat smaller scale the work and spirit of this central school was repeated at the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina, Rock Hill, S. C., the University of Georgia, the University of Mississippi, the Peabody College at Nashville, the University of Texas, and at other points. The work in many States, like that in Virginia under the leadership of Superintendent E. C. Glass, of Lynchburg, has behind it a record of many years of devoted and effective service. But with this new impetus, with the liberal support of the General Board and friends of the cause, it was made possible this year to plan the work on a larger scale and to render a larger service to a greater number. The schools in Virginia, Mississippi, and Georgia were especially strong in faculty, in curricula, and in numbers. One of the most valuable results of the summer school at the University of Tennessee has been the establishment in it of a permanent department of education for the training of teachers for secondary schools, supervisors of special new branches like manual training and agriculture, and principals and superintendents.

While in one sense it may be said that neither the conference nor any of its boards nor its campaign committees have any direct official connection with these summer schools, yet in reality they represent the whole movement with all its interests focused on the education of the teacher. No one of these schools can be properly interpreted as the peculiar product of any particular time or locality or body of men. They all represent a peculiar moment in the development of educational forces in the South, and, as different institutions, are but different focal points in the one great movement. Both their existence and their phenomenal success reflect the growing consciousness of the truth that the teacher is the soul of the school and that in his education are embodied the highest social interests.

The movement as a liberalizing and unifying force.—The work of the conference and the boards can not be adequately stated in terms of schoolhouses and school programmes. They are touching life in another way-less tangible, perhaps, but none the less real and vital. With their simple creed of serving the highest interests of society, through the education of the child, they have furnished a convenient point of contact for all constructive social forces; and this simple fact of focusing all social interests on the one point and interpreting the whole in terms of the service of humanity, has tended and is tending on the one side to produce a livelier sense of social solidarity and on the other to give each individual a larger and holier view of his calling. This is not only a timely service to southern society, just emerging from the extreme individualism incident to the isolation of rural conditions; it is a wholesome antidote for the separateness and provincial attitude of American life as a whole. On this plane this whole movement overflows sectional boundaries and becomes a liberalizing and unifying force in our national life. In it professional men and men of affairs from the North and from the South, recognizing that all sections and all interests of society have a common stake in the education of the whole people, and having been moved by the passion of service in this one common cause of a common country, have been borne on to that larger patriotism which recognizes in every problem of American life the interests and responsibilities of American citizenship.

Note to p. 360, line 28.-Since this paper was put in type we have learned that Dr. H. B. Frissell, president of Hampton Institute, assisted actively and efficiently in organizing and conducting these earlier meetings of the conference, a fact which did not appear in the records. Too much credit can not be given Dr. Frissell for his services to this whole movement

Note to p. 379, line 28.—Mr. Murphy was elected a member of the Board in August, 1903.

CHAPTER IX.

THE FINAL ESTABLISHMENT OF THE AMERICAN COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM IN WEST VIRGINIA, MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, AND DELAWARE, 1863-1900.

By A. D. MAYO, A. M., LL. D.

The final establishment of the complete American system of common schools in the 16 States known as Southern, dating from the year 1863 in West Virginia and practically achieved in all these States by 1875, was made possible by the cooperation of the people of both sections of the Union in the State and National Governments. This movement originated in the organization by which an increasing number of the freedmen, at first emancipated by General Butler as "contraband of war" during the progress of the Union armies, were put in training for their new life as free laborers and prospective citizens by occupation in connection with the Army. At a later period they were enrolled as soldiers and laborers in the cultivation of vast areas of abandoned lands. Besides this, the instruction of these people of all ages in the rudiments of learning was at once attempted, with the result that probably more than a million of them were able to read before the close of the civil war. As fast as possible under the circumstances the poorer class of the southern white people was included in this dispensation of the rudiments of civilization. This early venture in a field hitherto only partly trodden, the combination of the industrial and educational agencies of civilized society with actual warfare, was developed by gradual steps into a well-digested plan by which the National Government, through the agency of the Freedmen's Bureau and in cooperation with a variety of operations in the Northern States, labored for several years to prepare 6,000,000 of the emancipated race for their final elevation to full American citizenship.

At this time there were several special movements and agencies of great importance to the educational future of the Southern States. Among these was the benefaction of the Peabody education fund, followed by a series of munificent gifts from northern and southern friends of education, like the Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Tulane, and Sophie Newcomb colleges, with others at later periods. Also may be named the corresponding gifts in the founding and support of a score of important schools of the secondary, higher, and industrial education for the colored race, to the extent probably of $50,000,000 during the past thirty years. The National Bureau of Education was established in 1867. The attempt to obtain national aid to education occupied the attention of the United States Congress from 1880 to 1890. These and other movements were the expression of a friendly and unselfish spirit of public cooperation and Christian brotherhood on the part of all sections of the country for the relief of the educational destitution which in 1865 was declared by their own educators the most dangerous element in the southern problem.

But no people as numerous and intelligent as the 12,000,000 of the white population of the 16 Southern American States in 1870 could either have been forced or persuaded to adopt a change so radical in their public policy as the complete establishment of the American common school for all classes and both races without a deliberate conviction that such a new departure was an absolute present