Finally, much of the work of the school has not appealed to the pupils as interesting or valuable. This has not been altogether the fault of the curriculum, but often has come from the lack of adaptability of the work to the pupils studying it. Through frequent changes of teachers, poor classification, and irregularity of attendance, rural pupils have often been forced to go over and over the same ground, without any reference to whether they were ready to advance or not. In other cases, careless grading has placed children in studies for which they were utterly unprepared, and from which they could get nothing but discouragement and dislike for school. In still other instances the course pursued has been ill-balanced, and in no degree correlated. Often the whim of the child determines whether he will or will not study certain subjects, the teacher lacking either the knowledge or insistence to bring about a better organization of the work. The unskilled character of the rural school-teaching force, and the impossibility of securing any reasonable supervision as the system is at present organized, make us again turn to the consolidated school as the remedy for these adverse conditions. For with its improved attendance, its skilled teaching, and its better supervision, it easily and naturally renders such conditions impossible. Give the consolidated school, in addition, the greatly enriched curriculum which it will find possible to offer its pupils, and the vexing question of the relation of the rural school to its pupils will be far toward solution. Let us next consider somewhat in detail the curriculum of the rural school. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: See "Consolidated Rural Schools," Bulletin 232, U. S. Department of Agriculture.] [Footnote 2: Bulletin 232, U. S. Department of Agriculture, p. 38.] [Footnote 3: Bulletin 232, U. S. Department of Agriculture, p. 51.] III THE CURRICULUM OF THE RURAL SCHOOL If we grant the economic ability to support good schools, then the curriculum offered by any type of school, the scope of subject-matter given the pupils to master, is a measure of the educational ideals of those maintaining and using the schools. If the curriculum is broad, and representative of the various great fields of human culture; if it relates itself to the life and needs of its patrons; if it is adapted to the interests and activities of its pupils, it may be said that the people believe in education as a right of the individual and as a preparation for successful living. But if, on the other hand, the curriculum is meager and narrow, consisting only of the rudiments of knowledge, and not related to the life of the people or the interests of the pupils, then it may well be concluded that education is not highly prized, that it is not understood, or that it is looked upon as an incidental. _The scope of the rural school curriculum_