A commission of nine experienced teachers, six men and three women, with Señor Pérez as chairman, was appointed by executive decree to formulate the program of study for the projected rural schools. It began its sessions in February, 1917, and met frequently for two months. Its report was presented in May, 1917. Approved by the executive in June, by decree it went into effect on March 1, 1918. The main contentions of the commission in support of its plan are well worthy of notice: 1. Far-reaching changes within a generation in the commercial and industrial life of the nation have affected the rural districts and have called for different subjects and methods of instruction for the children of these districts. The rural school of the future must be recognized as fundamentally an elementary industrial school adjusted to local conditions. 2. The successful rural school must have the following aims: To inculcate conscientious and efficient labor; to minister to a well-regulated and happy home life; to diffuse the knowledge of private and public hygiene, and to further the increase of population and public wealth and, in general, the possession of a well-founded and enduring popular liberty. 3. The intimate relation of the rural schools with the problems of home life requires the new rural school to be taught by women, and therefore the training of young women as teachers in such schools should be at once initiated and continued as the basis of their success. Concrete illustration is found in the successful intensive training of 24 young women in a course of six weeks at the normal institute at Montevideo in the summer of 1917. 4. In the administrative organization the committee was guided by the following general principles: (_a_) Not to install rural schools by foundation or transfer except in localities where donations of ground of not less than 4 hectares (10 acres) should be immediately available; (_b_) to urge similar donations, public or private, to existing rural schools which lacked grounds of the minimum area above indicated; (_c_) to propose and encourage the transfer of rural schools that had no grounds annexed nor could obtain such by donation to another parish where such advantages could be obtained without prejudice to the interests of the rural schools in the district. 5. No child below 7 years of age should be admitted to the rural schools.