community might be presented here;
the people could assemble to listen to the discussion of political and
other social and public questions, which are the subjects of thought
and of conversation in the neighborhood. This is real social and
educational life.

=Better Roads.=--Not only does consolidation tend to all the above
results but it does many other things incidentally. It leads to the
making of better roads; for where a community has to travel frequently
it will provide good roads. This is one of the crying needs of the day
throughout the country.

=Consolidation Coming Everywhere.=--Consolidation is now under way in
almost every state of the Union and wherever tried it has almost
invariably succeeded. In but very few places have rural communities
abandoned the educational, social, and civic center, and gone back to
their former state of isolation and deadly routine.

=The Married Teacher and Permanence.=--In order to make the consolidated
school a success, the policy will have to be adopted in America of
building, at or near the school, a residence for the teacher, and of
selecting as teacher a married man, who will make his home there among
the people whose children he is to teach. Such a teacher should be a
real community leader in every way, and his tenure of service should be
permanent. Grave and specific reasons only should effect his removal.
With single men and women it is impossible to secure the permanence of
tenure that is desirable and necessary to the educational and social
welfare of a school and a community. This has been demonstrated over and
over again, and foreign countries are far ahead of us in this respect.
Such a real leader and teacher will, it is true, command a high salary;
but a good home, permanence of position, a small tract of land for
garden and field purposes, and the coming policy everywhere of an
"insurance and retirement fund" would offer great inducements to strong
men to take up their abode and cast their lot in such educational and
community centers.

CHAPTER VII

THE TEACHER

=The Greatest Factor.=--Now, although we may have a beautiful school
campus, an adequate and artistic building, a library, laboratories and
workshops with all necessary physical or material appointments complete,
we may yet have a poor school; these things, however desirable, will not
teach alone. The teacher is the mainspring, the soul of the school; the
"plant," as it may be called, is