taught to the child by the schoolmaster are necessarily dry and
juiceless if they are not thus brought into relation with the child's
world of experience.  Almost all of the school reforms that have been
proposed in the past one hundred years have moved in this line.  The
effort to seize upon the child's interest and make it the agency for
progress has formed the essential feature in each.  In this reform
movement Colonel Parker has made himself one of the chief influences. 

The rural school has held a low rank among educational institutions on
account of the inferior methods of instruction which have prevailed by
reason of the fact that the children were too few and their
qualifications too various to permit the forming of classes.  Children in
various degrees of advancement from ABC's to higher arithmetic, and
yet numbering only ten, twenty, or thirty in all, are enrolled under one
teacher.  Most branches of study could muster only one or two pupils in
each class: Five to ten minutes a day is all that can be allowed in such
cases for a recitation.  No thoroughness of instruction on the part of
the teacher is possible, nor is there much improvement to be expected in
the method of instruction where classes can not be formed.  The
benefactor of the country school therefore looks to other devices than