Regularity, Punctuality, and Attendance.—The larger spirit and life of the consolidated school induce greater punctuality and regularity of attendance. When pupils are transported to school they are always on time, and when they are members of a class where there is considerable competition they attend school with great regularity. There are many grown-up pupils in the district who would not go to the small schools, but who will go to a larger school where they find their equals; and so the school attendance is greatly increased. We have, then, the advantages of greater punctuality, greater regularity, and more pupils in attendance.
The school spirit is abroad in the consolidated school district; people are thinking and talking school. It becomes the customary and fashionable thing to send children to school.
Better Supervision.—There is also much better supervision in the consolidated school; for, in addition to the supervision given by the county superintendent or his assistants, there is also the supervision of the principal, or head teacher. This is in itself no small factor in the making of a good school. Good supervision always makes strongly for efficiency.
The School as a Social Center.—Other effects than those above mentioned will necessarily follow. The consolidated school can and should become a social center. There should be an assembly room for lectures, debates, literary and musical entertainments, and meetings of all kinds. The lecture hall should be provided with a stage, and good moving-picture exhibitions might be given occasionally. There, also, the citizens may gather to hear public questions discussed. It could thus become a civic and social center as well as an educational center. All problems affecting the welfare of the community might be presented here; the people could assemble to listen to the discussion of political and other social and public questions, which are the subjects of thought and of conversation in the neighborhood. This is real social and educational life.
Better Roads.—Not only does consolidation tend to all the above results but it does many other things incidentally. It leads to the making of better roads; for where a community has to travel frequently it will provide good roads. This is one of the crying needs of the day throughout the country.
Consolidation Coming Everywhere.—Consolidation is now under way in almost every state of the Union and wherever tried it has almost invariably succeeded. In but very few places have rural communities abandoned the educational, social, and civic center, and gone back to their former state of isolation and deadly routine.
The Married Teacher and Permanence.—In order to make the consolidated school a success, the policy will have to be adopted in America of building, at or near the school, a residence for the teacher, and of selecting as teacher a married man, who will make his home there among the people whose children he is to teach. Such a teacher should be a real community leader in every way, and his tenure of service should be permanent. Grave and specific reasons only should effect his removal. With single men and women it is impossible to secure the permanence of tenure that is desirable and necessary to the educational and social welfare of a school and a community. This has been demonstrated over and over again, and foreign countries are far ahead of us in this respect. Such a real leader and teacher will, it is true, command a high salary; but a good home, permanence of position, a small tract of land for garden and field purposes, and the coming policy everywhere of an "insurance and retirement fund" would offer great inducements to strong men to take up their abode and cast their lot in such educational and community centers.