munity institutions is part of the homemaker's work--and a delicate
task it often is. It is not enough for a mother to adopt a cast-iron
policy of indiscriminate approval of pastor or teacher, although that
is often recommended. Do you remember your resentment as a child of
the inflexible judgment "The teacher _must_ be right"? Really there is
no "must" about it, and the child knows that as well as we. The
mother, therefore, who is able to review the matter in dispute calmly,
justly, and withal sympathetically, and who indorses the teacher's
action after such review, is a better conserver of the public peace
than the prejudging mother.

Or suppose she fails to indorse the teacher's course. We have always
been led to expect that this failure ruins forever the teacher's
influence with the child. There are some of us, however, who doubt the
immediate destruction of a wise influence, even if we should say, "No,
I do not think I should have punished you in just that way. But
perhaps you have not told me all that occurred. Or perhaps you
overlook the fact that you had annoyed Miss ---- until, being human
like the rest of us, she lost her temper. Is it fair for you to treat
your teacher in such a way that you cause her to lose her
self-control?" It is usually possible for the wise mother to turn her
fire upon the child's own error without outraging the childish sense
of justice by indorsing something which does not really deserve
indorsement.

There is, perhaps, no way in which the mother of a family can do so
much for the community institutions as by keeping up her own interest
in them and thus stimulating the other members of the family to a
willingness to do their part in the work of uplift. Where everybody is
really interested and working, the first great stumbling block in the
way of public enterprises has already been surmounted.

In the case of the school, however, the well-trained mother will find
additional work to do. We who have been teachers know how vainly we
have sought for intimate acquaintance on the part of parents with the
school. And we who have been mothers know something of the
difficulties in the way of gaining such intimate acquaintance. In
spite of, or perhaps because of, my long years of schoolroom
experience, I am quite unable to conquer my reluctance to knock at a
classroom door. There is an aloofness about being a school visitor
which most mothers feel and few enjoy. However, it is possible to ga