Excerpt from The Consolidation of Rural Schools in North DakotaThe chief support of a Republic is education. This being so, then the first and main purpose of an education in a Republic is to train the future citizens in such a way that they may appre ciate highly and participate intelligently in the various'govern mental activities, and second, to prepare these citizens to earn and enjoy a good living in the various fields of human endeavor. This is the prime and sole function of the common school, which includes the rural school. This the rural school once did, .but today it. Is failing in its mission when compared' with the city school. It has been a great institution. It is yet the greatest Americanizing agency in the rural community. In the major ity of states it is the most important educational institution, for it enrolls in these states the majority of school children, and. To the majority of them it gives the only school training they ever will receive. This is also true of our state. According to the latest available statistics there are now in the state public schools with an enrollment of pupils. Of that number of schools are rural (one-room) schools with an enrollment of This means that the great majority of school children in the state are enrolled in the rural schools. Thus i is most im portant that we improve in every way possible the rural school.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.