: > * = .
populatison chenges very little that in & perticular small school ¥ may
vary 50 per cent within & few years. The present Superintendent, for
example, has been 9 two-room schools reduced to one-room schools some
of which were later restored to two-room school status. Also he has
seen 10 one=-room schools closed for lack of legal attendance, and even
now we have & one-room school caring for an enrollment of 57 as an example
of a problem heretofore multiplied many times.
It is believed that conditions prevailing in Loudoun County are
favorable to the closing et an early dete of the 3 two-room schools
and 4 of the § one-room schoolse The Sunny Ridge school is unfevorably
located for consolidatione
Let us examine the case for our hijh schools. Within the last few
yeers educators and the public have shown indicstions of being thoroughly
aroused to the condition that hizh schools were baing geared to s college
preparatory systsm" Without regard fcr‘the fact that less thean one=-fourth
of the pupils entering high school were in turn entering college all high
schools were slmost entirely devoted to preparation for college. There
exists in the land today & wave of indignation demandinz that high schools g
prepare for life. I quote below from e lefter written by & greduste of a
Washington City high school € years after graduation and published in the
Weshington Post on December 15, 1930.
"I went to know", the letter ssid, "Why you and your teachers did not
$ell and teach me sbout 1life and the hard, c¥rtically practicel world into
which you sent me =-- Why & did you have to spend so much time on dry,
uninteresting subject-matter and so little on genuine 1life prolems:™ %The
writer told how he had gone to college for a year, left school in the de-
pression,harriec, landed on relief, snd finally: "I am s'hnsbsnd, and a
father, working my way blindly from & high school intellectusl to & respect-
able, self-supporting, voting citizen of the comrunitye In this transition