The fee for a State certificate is three dollars, and the holder is authorized to teach in any of the public schools of the State for a term of five years. The law requires that in case applicants fail to receive diplomas or certificates one half of the fee required shall be returned.

FINANCIAL REPORT.

No. of applicants...

Fees collected from applicants for certificates..

Fees returned,....

Amount on hand and paid over to State treasurer..

17

.$51.00

15.00

.$36.00

The number of applicants has not been as large as was expected, and yet it is equal to that of other States for the first year after the organization of similar boards.

Many of our teachers are reviewing and preparing for the next examination, which will be held in Davenport the coming month of August.

Before closing this report I desire to call attention to the apparent deficits of the various school funds for the year 1882. I do not think it at all probable that this is an actual shortage. It arises, no doubt, from the practice of borrowing from one fund in favor of another, which, in many cases, swells the receipts beyond what they really are. It may also be accounted for in part by carelessness and inefficiency of school officers, and furnishes a strong argument in favor of a consolidation of funds. It should also be stated that county superintendents are required to copy the original reports of secretaries and treasurers in reporting to this department. The item, "Paid for other purposes," is frequently erroneously reported as "Amount on hand." Wherever this mistake was made for the year 1881 it goes to swell the apparent deficit of the present report.

With the utmost faith in the future growth and efficiency of our schools, and yet with a keen sense of the imperfections of our laws, which I trust will be speedily remedied, this report is most repectfully submitted.

J. W. AKERS,

Superintendent Public Instruction.

ESSAYS UPON EDUCATIONAL QUESTIONS.

COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL.

BY PROF. R. D. JONES, OF GUTHRIE COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL.

"This system of high schools

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is the identical plan rec

ommended by the immortal Jefferson to the legislature of Virginia, the next year after he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

"Iowa, then the possession of a foreign prince, afterward annexed to the United States by his far-seeing policy, was first to adopt his stateman-like system of public instruction."

The foregoing statement we find in the report for 1858, made by the Hon. Maturin L. Fisher, then State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

It is interesting to note that the conception of the county high school system originated in the fertile brain of that man of ideas, Thomas Jefferson, he who meditated upon the sources of law, and the origin of liberty, and was proficient upon the violin; who pondered on profound problems of political science; and, when Minister Plenipotentiary to France, sent seed, and shrubs and plants to the farmers of America; who drafted with equal ease a Declaration of Independence, and a model mould-board for an improved plow; who was the founder of the Democratic party, as well as of schools and colleges. Truly he was a man of versatile and remarkable talents!

How extensively this county high school system of Jefferson has been established in other States, I have no means of ascertaining. In Iowa a law was passed March 12, 1858, authorizing the establishment of county high schools, and providing certain aid by the State. This law was repealed December 28, of the same year. During the short period in which it was in force a county high school was established at Albion, Marshall county, but the law under which it was estabished

having been repealed, and not realizing the aid promised by the State, after a year or two the school suspended.

Nothing was then done until the year 1870, when Senator Marcus Tuttle, of Cerro Gordo county, introduced a bill authorizing counties. to" establish and sustain a high school for the benefit of those who desire a more advanced education than the ordinary schools of the county afford, and for those who desire to fit themselves for the vocation of teaching." The bill became a law. This law was slightly

modified in 1873, but has since remained unchanged.

As yet, there is but one such school in the State. In 1874 the people of Guthrie county voted to establish a county high school. The school opened January, 1876, with about fifty pupils. The enrollment during the school year, ending May 18, 1883, was one hundred and forty.

The board of trustees consists of six members besides the county superintendent, who is president ex officio. Two trustees are elected each year by the people, just as other county officers are elected.

It is intended that these trustees shall represent different sections of the county. One of the trustees lives thirty miles from the school. Some others live nearly as far away. More responsibility must rest upon the principal of the school than in the ordinary city high school.

The school is supported by a tax upon all the property in the county. The average tax is about five eighths of one mill. A man in reality worth $5,000 is assessed at one-third of this, or less, and pays about $1 per year for the support of the county high school. But the majority of the men in Guthrie county do not pay taxes on $5,000 worth of property, and, therefore, do not pay even so much as $1 per year for the support of the school. The railroads and non-residents pay, I think, at least one-fourth of the expenses of higher education in Guthrie county; but, so far as I know, they do not complain. They realize that it pays to educate. They have the commendable spirit of the Hon. John I. Blair, who, though a resident of New Jersey, is said to have paid one million dollars of school taxes in Iowa and who has done so gladly, because he believes that it costs less to sustain schools than it does penitentiaries, that in the end it is cheaper to employ teachers than policemen.

Guthrie county, being comparatively new, is not blessed with large towns, nor well equipped high schools. This school has, therefore, afforded an opportunity to many young and men women to obtain an education which they could not otherwise have acquired.

In many other counties in this new State a city high school cannot or will not be sustained. A school supported by a whole county can and should be sustained. Such a school is a center of light. It creates an intellectual atmosphere on the frontier. It moulds public sentiment when the community is new and opinions are plastic. It creates an educational sentiment among both old and young and gives to all a higher ideal of life and its duties and possibilities. More can be accomplished in moulding public sentiment and in determining the tone of public morality in the first ten years of the life of a community than in the next twenty. There are counties in Iowa with not a single high school of any kind whatever. Put such a school there, and you will soon have a hundred young people eagerly obtaining what, in after years, money could not buy-an education, a well disciplined mind, a thirst for knowledge, a noble ambition to be and to do, and a manly determination to bear worthily the duties and burdens of life.

Of this hundred, scarcely five would have gone away a hundred miles to school. If the school is near, it is better known. The pupil does not seem to be going so far from home. Local interest is greater and a much larger proportion of the young people attend. "If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain." The pupils will not go hundreds of miles to the school. The school must be brought to the pupils.

One objection only is ever made against the school, viz.: that all parts of the county are not equally represented. To this I reply:

1st.

Guthrie county is better represented at the county high school than is the State of Iowa at any college or university within her borders.

2d. When a school draws it pupils from a larger area than two miles square, equality of representation from all parts of this area is, in the nature of things, improbable.

3d. The benefit of a school is not so much to those places from which its pupils come as to those places to which its pupils go.

The first point needs no amplification. All must admit the truth of the second. It may be an advantage to Black Hawk county to have the State Normal School located there. It may be a disadvantage to Fremont county to have the State University so far away. But what shall we do? Abandon all schools for higher education? Certainly not. The school must be placed somewhere. Place it there and thank God for it. We cannot scatter the Iowa University over

every school district in the State. Let us locate it where it will do the greatest good to the greatest number. Then let us be broad minded enough to look upon it and to support it as the State University of Iowa, the students of which may perhaps come largely from adjoining counties, but the benefit of which is State wide-nay more-which cannot be bounded by State lines.

The graduates of the Iowa State Normal School are scattered all over Iowa, putting into use in the schools where they now are, the progressive ideas and culture obtained at this school; and what the Iowa State Normal School is doing for Iowa, the Guthrie County High School is doing for Guthrie county. The grade of the district schools of Guthrie county has, without doubt, been raised by the county high school. "It is an inseparable part of the school system of the county. Very few young men and women attempt to teach without attending two or three terms at the county high school."-[Official report of county superintendent.]

Thus far I have spoken particularly of the urgent need for the county high schools in counties not otherwise well provided with city high schools and academies. Should there be a county high school in Johnson county? Education should be made free-not only common school education, but also college preparatory or high school education. Guthrie county is the only county in the State of Iowa where the poor but ambitious country student can obtain his college preparatory education without paying his own tuition. All honor to Guthrie county! This consideration seems to me to settle the question. These country boys with their strong constitutions and vigorous minds are the bone and sinew of the colleges, as well as of our business and national life.

Has the State of Iowa no duty to perform, in behalf of these boys and girls who do not live within the limits of the city high schools. In some way, either by a separate school or in connection with the city high school, free tuition ought to be guaranteed to these farmer boys and girls to whom in a great measure the next generation must look for its great men and noble women. It is neither right nor just nor wise public policy to compel them to pay tuition in the city high school nearest them, besides running the risk of being refused admittance; because it is the privilege and duty of the State to help each one to make the most and the best of himself. "But there remain yet, probably, three fourths of all the youth in the State who are so situated that they will never, while our system remains as at