The part of the educational system that has received least attention in the immediate past is the rural school. Much good work has been and is now being done in the reorganization of courses of study, in training teachers, in planning for material equipment, and all the various details that help make an efficient school system. While these efforts have been well directed and are in large measure being carried out, they have nevertheless been inadequate for reviving the rural school. Rural interests and rural problems are not like the city's interests and its problems; and educators everywhere, especially in the South, are coming more and more to believe that the course of study adapted to securing the most efficient rural life is radically different from any other course of study. The elementary school must, if it fulfills its high purpose, minister to the needs of the community in which it resides. To do this a course of study coordinated with rural life is needed, together with a corps of teachers trained to put in operation the work that the country districts need. It is not within the authors' purpose to make a study of rural interests and conditions or to outline a course of study for the rural schools, but to suggest some of the lines along which the teacher should be trained who essays to teach in the country district. Individual sections contain footnotes. [Best copy available has been provided.]