Book excerpt: Excerpt from Consolidation of Country Schools Agreeable to the request contained in the resolutions adopted by the Illinois Farmers' Institute at the Bloomington meeting in February, 1903, the College of Agriculture proceeded at once to gather reliable information. Letters were sent to all the states of the Union asking what had been done, if anything, and how it had succeeded. Opinions were collected both from professional educators and from farmers who had experienced the workings of the system, all from sources the most diverse. Aside from this, a trusted agent of the institution visited the region in Ohio where the system had been longest in use, with instructions to note all the conditions found both favorable and unfavorable. The investigation was begun and conducted without bias or previously formed impressions as to the merits or demerits, advantages or disadvantages of this method of administering the school system. As the investigation proceeded, however, the conviction that is inevitable to anyone who really studies this question gradually forced itself upon the consciousness and, in spite of efforts to the contrary, the reader will detect its presence in the mind of the writer at the time of putting the data in final form. It is therefore the more necessary to assure the reader that this conviction arose during and by virtue of this investigation and that it did not exist in advance; indeed there was no opportunity for pre-existing opinions because the writer had never before given the slightest attention to the details of the subject. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This 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.