a state-wide teachers’ pensions system and a complete revamping of financial support of schools through a State and county aid plan.  Salaries of teachers have been increased the last six years from a minimum of $40 a month to a statutory minimum of $800 a school year.  The teacher shortage occasioned by the war will be solved without much delay in Ohio, as county and state normal schools report prospective increases in attendance of fifty to one hundred per cent or even greater for next year.

The time had come in 1913 when the little district school with its narrow curriculum and crude methods of instruction did not meet the needs and purposes of modern industrial and social life in Ohio.  It had not kept step with rural economic progress.  In the whole State it was the one evidence of retardation, an institution of bygone days which had deteriorated instead of having improved.  The right of every child to educational opportunities for development to the fullest extent of his possibilities was not recognized by the State in the school system as it existed at that time.  Governor Cox, in his first message to the general assembly in January, 1913, recommended that a complete school survey be made.  A survey commission was created.  To acquaint school patrons with the object of the survey in progress and to get them to discuss in their own communities the defects and the needs of the schools, November 14, 1913, was set apart as “School survey day” and a light burned in every school building in the State that night.  Delegates were appointed to attend a state-wide educational congress the next month, and in January, 1914, the Governor called a special session to enact the rural school code.

The survey report disclosed that not half of the teachers of the State ever had attended high school, nor had normal training.  Rural schools were mere stepping stones for young teachers before securing positions in village and city schools, agriculture was scarcely taught, schools were without equipment, three-fourths of the buildings were twenty years old or older, unsanitary, poorly lighted, without ventilation and insufficiently heated.

With one stroke the new school code created county supervision districts under the control of county boards, elected by the presidents of village and township boards; provided for county superintendents and supervisors over smaller districts within the county; required academic and professional training of all new teachers henceforth, and gave communities wider powers to centralize and consolidate schools.

At present ninety-five per cent of the elementary teachers have had professional training, and high school teachers are required to be college graduates or have equivalent scholastic attainment.  The most common faults of class-room instruction have been to a great extent eliminated.  Standard methods of presentation are being practices in an attempt to give to each child opportunity for development of his possibilities.