eel a responsibility for the making of some
contribution to the rural school's social program. He cannot help having
some advantages, in judging the results of school training, over the
teacher who is busy with the process of instruction itself. Without
doubt the rural worker has felt incompetent to enter much into
educational discussion, thinking that such matters are sacred to those
who have pedagogic training, but a moment's thought convinces one that,
since the teacher has more to do with the preparation for life than the
living of life, it is socially unsafe for the teacher to have a complete
monopoly of educational discussion and to obtain no help from those who
test the product of his schools.

The rural school has at present needs that stand out. First, it needs to
be socialized. This is true also of the urban school, but it is not
equally true. Urban schools have to some degree responded to the
pressure of modern life and have assumed in increasing measure a social
function. There has been no such pressure from rural communities. Often
the educational ideals for which country people have enthusiasm are
composed of experiences in a school-spirit less social than that usually
found in the rural school of the present time. This means that the
pressure of public opinion often pushes backward, while the urban school
is being forced forward.

Neither country school nor city school can obtain much success in its
socializing program until it really ministers to the physical needs of
its pupils. Theory to the contrary, the school system still forgets that
the chief business of the child is the making of a body, and that for
the sake of future personal and social welfare the needs of the body
must have right of way. Until this fact of nature is given its full
worth and the mental side of the school work is subordinated, public
education can never be a complete success. So long as the body needs of
the growing child are exploited for the purpose of obtaining mental
results that appear to the adult outside of the teaching profession both
trivial and premature, there can be no hope that the school will
maintain a perfectly wholesome social program. This problem is certainly
as serious in the country school as in the city school. This matter is
no by-product. When the schools fail to conserve human possibilities by
ignoring the regulations imposed by natural law upon the operation of
their educational processes, the schools