=Progress in the High Schools.=--A similar development characterizes the high schools of the country. Education has extended downward from above. Universities everywhere have come into existence before the establishment of secondary schools. Not only are the universities, the normal schools, and the agricultural colleges of recent origin, but the high schools also are modern institutions, at least in their present systematized form. The high schools of the cities constitute to-day one of the most efficient forms of school organization. At the present time the better high schools of the cities are veritable colleges--in fact their curricula are as extensive as were those of the colleges of sixty years ago. Vast numbers attend them; their faculties are composed of college graduates or better; they have, as a rule, various departments, such as manual training, domestic science, agriculture, commercial subjects, normal courses, etc. In addition to the traditional curricula, the high schools, like the universities, normal schools, and agricultural colleges, have kept pace, in large measure, with the material progress described in the first part of this chapter. =How Is the Rural School?=--We have described the progress that has been made in various fields of the industrial world and also in several kinds of educational institutions. At this point the question may, with propriety, be asked whether the rural schools have generally kept pace in their progress with the other and higher institutions which we have mentioned. We believe that they have not. The rural schools have too often been the last to attract public interest and to receive the attention which their importance deserves. [Illustration: A neglected school in unattractive surroundings] [Illustration: A lonely road to school. No conveyances provided] [Illustration: A better type of building with some attempt at improvements] [Caption for the above illustrations: THE ONE-ROOM SCHOOL] CHAPTER V A BACKWARD AND NEGLECTED FIELD =Rural Schools the Same Everywhere.=--The one-room country school of to-day is much the same the whole country over. Such schools are no better in Michigan, Wisconsin, or Minnesota than they are in the Dakotas, Montana, or Idaho. They are no better in Ohio or New York than they are in Minnesota or Wisconsin, and no better in the New England states than in New York and Ohio. There is a wonderful similarity in these schools in all the states.