can; she
is often poorly paid; she is sometimes inexperienced; frequently the
labor of the school absorbs all her time and energy. Unfortunately these
things are so, but they ought not to be so. And we shall never have the
ideal rural school until we have conditions favorable to the kind of
work just described. The country teacher ought to understand the country
community, ought to have some knowledge of the problems that the farmers
have to face, ought to have some appreciation of the peculiar
conditions of farm life. Every teacher should have some knowledge of
rural sociology. The normal schools should make this subject a required
subject in the course, especially for country teachers. Teachers'
institutes and reading-circles should in some way provide this sort of
thing. This is one of the most important means of bringing the rural
school into closer touch with the farm community. Ten years ago Henry
Sabin, of Iowa, one of the keenest students of the rural-school problem,
in speaking of the supervision of country schools, said:

The supervisor of rural schools should be acquainted with the
material resources of his district. He should know not only what
constitutes good farming, but the prevailing industry of the region
should be so familiar to him that he can converse intelligently
with the inhabitants, and convince them that he knows something
besides books. The object is not alone to gain influence over them,
but to bring the school into touch with the home life of the
community about. It is not to invite the farmer to the school, but
to take the school to the farm, and to show the pupils that here
before their eyes are the foundations upon which have been built
the great natural sciences.

The programme needed to unite rural school and farm community is then,
first, to enrich the course of study by adding nature-study and
agriculture, and about these co-ordinating the conventional school
subjects; second, to encourage the co-operation of the pupils,
especially for the improvement of the school and its surroundings;
third, to bring together for discussion and acquaintance the teachers
and the patrons of the school; fourth, so far as possible to make the
schoolhouse a meeting-place for the community, for young people as well
as for older people, where music, art, social culture, literature, study
of farming, and in fact, anything that has to do with rural