has distributed them among school and school officers where they could be utilized to the greatest advantage in guiding and developing a taste for a better type of rural school architecture. It has been the practice to give preference in lending these models to those who would agree to duplicate them and undertake to adapt the plans suggested to local needs and local climatic conditions. Counties in several States have taken these models as standards and are working out better school buildings for their rural districts. This special agent has spent some time helping with rural school surveys in several counties in Tennessee and has attended meetings of associations interested in public health in Cincinnati, Chicago, and Houston, Tex. He has held conferences in Nashville with school officers from all parts of the country, especially from Tennessee and the adjoining Southern States. In cooperation with Mr. Sherman C. Kingsley, of the Elizabeth McCormick memorial fund of Chicago, he has prepared a bulletin on open-air schools, and in cooperation with Miss Helen Le Garde, of Providence, R. I., he is preparing a bulletin on school baths. He has also completed a bulletin on schoolhouse architecture, which is supplementary to a comprehensive bulletin which he prepared for this bureau in 1910, and which has been of very definite value to school boards and school architects in this and other countries. This special agent has also been made director of the recently established substation of the Bureau of Education at Nashville, reference to which is made elsewhere in this statement.

The second special agent in this division was appointed in January, 1915, and has given to the bureau 18 days of service in the office at Washington. In this time he has conducted correspondence relative to the health of school children, has studied and summarized the work of the bureau on this subject in the past three years, and has helped make plans for the continuation and improvement of this work. He is cooperating with Dr. J. H. McCurdy, of the International Y. M. C. A. Training School, Springfield, Mass., in preparing for this bureau a comprehensive study of the status of physical education, athletic training, health supervision, and instruction in hygiene. He is cooperating with the members of the Board of Health of the Territory of Hawaii in making a comprehensive study of health conditions of school children in one or more of the Hawaiian islands. Requests which come to this bureau emphasize particularly the need for more assistance in planning school buildings; in the care of the health of school children; in the improvement of janitor service in schools; in methods of lighting, heating, and ventilating; in school furniture; in the hygiene of school instruction; in more intelligent adaptation of school work to defective children in school lunches; and in the organization of special schools

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION AND EDUCATION FOR HOME

MAKING.

During the year there has been formed a division of industrial education and education for home making. A specialist in industrial education was appointed in August, 1914, and two specialists in home economics in March, 1915.

The specialist in industrial education has spent almost two-thirds of his time in the field and away from Washington. Immediately after his appointment he spent 40 days in an industrial survey of the city of Richmond, Va., and in helping the school officers of that city to inaugurate a system of vocational extension education. He then gave four days to the superintendent and board of education of Schenectady, N. Y., in conferences concerning an industrial survey of that city. In the winter he gave 16 days to the commission on vocational education for the State of Washington and made 29 addresses in eight cities of that State. In the winter and spring he spent more than three months in visiting schools in 53 cities, in 16 States, including all of the Pacific coast States. He visited and participated in 23 National, State, and local conferences on industrial education, 3 of which were called by the Commissioner of Education. From the time of his appointment to the end of the fiscal year he made 81 addresses on various problems connected with vocational education to audiences of teachers, members of boards of education, labor unions, commercial organizations, school patrons, and others.

While in the office he prepared for the Report of the Commissioner of Education a chapter on vocational education. He also prepared for publication a report of the Chicago conference on the training of teachers for vocational education, a summary and abstract of the bulletin on selection and training of teachers for State-aided industrial schools for boys and men, a report of the Richmond conference on the training of teachers for vocational education, a report of the Cincinnati conference on vocational education in small cities, portions of the report of the Richmond industrial education survey, and seven letters in the "vocational education letters" series. He has also prepared a course of study in the manual arts. He has begun the preparation of mailing lists of special teachers and directors of manual arts and vocational education, the revision of statistical schedules relating to this subject, and the preparation of a set of model forms of records and reports for vocational schools.

Of the two specialists in home economics, one has been assigned to the task of cooperating with the departments of home economics in colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts, and the other specialist will cooperate in a similar way with normal schools for training teachers. Both will do what they can for the improvement and extension of

education for home making in elementary and secondary schools, one in the schools of the Northern and Western States and the other in the schools of the Southern States. The first of these specialists was at the time of her appointment on the Pacific coast, and before coming to Washington she visited forty or fifty schools, including universities, colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts, normal schools, and city high schools in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana; attended the meetings of the Central California Teachers' Association, meetings of the Inland Empire Teachers' Association and of the Washington State Congress of Mothers at Spokane, and the meeting of the Wisconsin Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations. Later she visited schools in New York and Delaware, participated in a rural education conference at Purdue University, Indiana, and prepared plans and a program for a conference of heads of departments of home economics in land-grant colleges which was called by the Commissioner of Education to meet at the University of California the second week in August.

The second specialist in home economics prepared a six weeks course of study in home economics for women of rural communities, studied conditions in rural communities in the State of Delaware, and planned and directed four schools of home making in that State. These schools, each of which was in session three days in the week for five weeks, were attended by the married women and older girls of the communities in which they were held. They were planned and directed in cooperation with the department of home economics in Delaware College as an experiment and in the hope of finding some practical means by which instruction in regard to the allimportant work of home making in rural communities may be brought to the millions of countrywomen who can never be helped much by any plan yet worked out. The experiment seems to be a success, and it is expected that the plan will be tried in a much larger number of communities within the present fiscal year. This specialist also visited rural schools in Baltimore County, Md., and made an extended trip through the States of New Jersey and New York and all the New England States studying the work which the normal schools of these States are doing in preparing teachers to give instruction in elementary and secondary schools in regard to home making. She has prepared a mailing list of public schools, colleges, and normal schools in which instruction in home making is given.

RURAL EDUCATION.

At the beginning of the year the appropriation for the division of rural education became available for services in Washington, and four specialists who had previously had headquarters in different

sections of the country were transferred to the District of Columbia. The work of the four specialists was differentiated, one receiving the title of rural school extension agent, the others of specialist in rural education, rural school practice, and rural school administration, respectively. In January two women were appointed as assistants in rural education, both of whom had had wide experience in rural school affairs, one having been a State superintendent of public instruction, the other a rural school supervisor and an instructor in the department of education of a State university.

The work of the division includes:

I. Investigation of rural and agricultural education.

II. Distribution of information in regard to rural and agricultural education. III. Propaganda through general and special educational meetings and through meetings of rural-life organizations, such as farmers' clubs, women's clubs, school improvement associations, etc.

IV. Personal advice, given upon request, to State legislatures, State and local school officers, school superintendents, supervisors and teachers, and school cooperating organizations, such as parent-teacher associations and civic clubs.

Members of the division have spent from one-fourth to one-half of the time in the field visiting rural schools, advising rural school officers, State education officers, and State legislatures, and attending educational meetings. While in the field they have lectured before State legislatures, commercial clubs, farmers' organizations, women's organizations, parent-teacher associations, education meetings, teachers' institutes, summer schools, colleges, normal schools, high schools, county school rallies, fairs, etc. In this work they have visited nearly all the States of the Union and have participated in more than 100 important conferences.

The division has prepared 10 "rural letters" to be multigraphed and sent to all rural school superintendents and to others interested in rural schools, and has also assisted in the preparation of the bureau's exhibit at the Panama-Pacific Exposition.

The division has now 15 sets of lantern slides on five different phases of rural education, which are loaned to rural school officers for short periods. They are sent by express at the expense of the borrower. An outline lecture accompanies each set.

The specialist in rural school administration, in addition to his share in the activities mentioned above, has prepared for publication during the year the chapter on progress in agricultural education for the annual report of the commissioner for 1914 and four bulletins on Consolidation of rural schools and transportation of pupils at public expense, County-unit organization for the administration of rural schools, Organization of State departments of education, and Free textbooks and State uniformity. He has also assisted in the preparation of bulletins on Important features in rural-school im

provement, Agricultural teaching, A statistical study of the public school system in the southern Appalachian Mountains, Agricultural schools in Minnesota, and Agricultural schools in Georgia.

With the assistance of the specialist in rural education, he has made an extensive study of the size of rural school districts in about one-half of the counties in the United States, the attendance in each district, the number of teachers, etc., and, for comparison with these figures, others showing for each county the number of school districts needed if they averaged 12 square miles in extent, the number of children that would then be available for each school, and the saving in buildings and in the number of teachers that would result from such an arrangement. The result of this study will be published as a bulletin of the bureau, to assist in a campaign for enlarged rural school districts. He has examined the education bills before the 43 legislatures in session during the year and prepared digests of them. These digests were issued as "legislative circulars" and sent to persons interested especially in school legislation, including all members of committees on education in all State legislatures in session during the year. He has met with State committees, State school code commissions and similar bodies preparing educational legislation in several States and has assisted in the preparation of proposed legislation in others. He appeared personally before the education committees of the State legislature or before the full legislature in six States. He has served as secretary of the committee on college organization and policy of the association of American agricultural colleges and experiment stations, and as such is directing investigations and studies being made under the general direction of this committee, and has assisted the standing committee on instruction in agriculture of this association in the studies it is making.

The specialist in rural education, in addition to the general work and the work with the specialist in rural school administration mentioned above, made investigations and prepared reports on the extent of the movement for furnishing homes for rural teachers, on schools for the education of adults and the eradication of illiteracy in rural communities, and on the movement for establishing teachers' employment agencies in connection with State departments of education. The last two months of the year he spent in Porto Rico, studying the rural schools in that island in comparison with the schools of the Philippine Islands. Special attention was given to the means adopted in these schools to make the education given in them meet the needs of the rural and village life of the island.

The specialist in rural school practice spent much of the time in the field, visiting 24 States and the Province of Ontario, studying the rural schools, participating in conferences on rural education, and making approximately 154 formal addresses. He directed the special