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.
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