LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,

BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, October 20, 1913.

SIR: I know of no more successful attempt to adapt the organization, work, and ideas of a country school to the needs of country life than that made by the Farragut School, located in the open country near the village of Concord, Knox County, Tenn. Through 10 years of varied success this school has demonstrated the fact that the work of the rural school may be adjusted to meet the practical needs and requirements of country life without losing any of its value for discipline and culture.

The community served by this school is not rich. It is just an ordinary American farming community. What it has done other farming communities may do without greater effort and expense than any American community should be willing to make for the education of its children. The people of this community have learned already that the larger expenditure necessary for the school of better type is its best investment.

The manuscript submitted herewith, prepared by A. C. Monahan, one of the bureau's specialists in rural education, assisted by Adams Phillips, principal of the school, gives a brief account of the origin, growth, and work of this school and its relation to the life of the community. I recommend that it be published as a bulletin of the Bureau of Education as an illustration of a new type of school which should and will, I believe, become much more common than it now is. Some sentimental interest may attach to this school because of the fact that it is located near the birthplace of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, whose name it bears.

Respectfully submitted.

To the SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

P. P. CLAXTON,

Commissioner.

5

THE FARRAGUT HIGH SCHOOL,

INTRODUCTION.

The Farragut High School is loated in Knox County, Tenn., about 15 miles west of Knoxville and 11⁄2 miles north of Concord, a village of 300 population on the Southern Railway. The school building stands in the open country at the junction of the Concord Pike with the Kingston Pike, which runs westward from Knoxville through a succession of open valleys well adapted to farming. The region is typical of the better farming sections of eastern Tennessee.

In the same building with the high school is an elementary school of 150 children from the tenth school district of Knox County. The section tributary to this elementary school contains 12 or 15 square miles and formerly had three elementary schools of one or two rooms each. The high school had last year (1912-13) 90 students, nearly all of whom were from the western half of Knox County, and the large majority were from the tenth district. The high school is one of the system of county high schools and is supported out of the county high-school funds, which in this, as in other counties of Tennessee, are separate from the fund for elementary schools. Tuition is free to all pupils who are residents of Knox County; others pay a fee of $3 per month. The school has no dormitories and makes no provision for boarding pupils. The pupils either return to their own homes each night or they find board and room in the neighboring farmhouses. Last year there were only 10 boarding pupils.

THE SCHOOL HISTORY.

In 1902 a number of heads of families in the tenth district of Knox County met for the purpose of devising some means by which their children might have the advantages of a good home school offering opportunities for a better kind of education for their children. They enlisted the cooperation of the district school directors. Mass meetings were held in which the need for a better school and the means of obtaining it were discussed. The school was planned to include a high school adapted to the needs of the community. Charles W. Dabney, then president of the University of Tennessee, now president of the University of Cincinnati; P. P. Claxton, then professor

of education at the University of Tennessee, now United States Commissioner of Education; J. D. Eggleston, now president of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, but at that time located at Knoxville as editor of the bureau of publicity and information of the Southern Education Board; Wallace Buttrick, executive secretary of the General Education Board, New York City, and others, took an interest in the movement, addressed the public meetings, and advised with the people and their committees. At the suggestion and invitation of one of the farmers, a careful survey of the community was made by Mr. Eggleston. As a result of his personal canvass and of mass meetings, public sentiment was aroused in favor of the undertaking, and a local subscription of $5,000 was secured in work, material, and cash. This was followed by a donation of an equal amount in money from the General Education Board.

A school farm of 12 acres was purchased, and upon it was built a comfortable wooden house with six classrooms and an assembly hall, heated by furnaces, and well ventilated. The location selected, at the junction of the Concord and Kingston pikes, was the site of an old fort of the Civil War period. The site overlooks the valley for a distance of from 1 to 3 miles in every direction, and the location is easily accessible from all the territory served by the school. The school was opened to pupils in February, 1904.

The department of education of the University of Tennessee was particularly interested in the school, because it was hoped to make of it a model for southern rural communities and also that it might be an object lesson for the students of the summer school of the South, held at the university, and for the regular students of education in the university.

The course of study was the traditional elementary and high-school course, modified by the purely agricultural surroundings to as large a degree as sentiment, training of teachers, and equipment would permit. It emphasized practical agriculture, horticulture, domestic science, and manual training. But the modifications were not so great that students completing the four years of the high school could not enter the State university and other colleges and universities of the State and section.

For the first four or five years of its existence the school was supported and managed by an incorporated board of trustees, in cooperation with the school board of the tenth district of Knox County. From the beginning it was open free to all white children of school age-6 to 21 years-in the district, and to those over 21 at a nominal fee.

For two years the work of the school had proceeded satisfactorily; several hundred volumes had been placed in the library, which was used by both the school and the community; the grounds had been put