done what is still
better--they have inspired. They have gone into many a dormant farm
community and awakened the whole neighborhood to a quicker life. They
have started discussions, set men thinking, brought in a breath of fresh
air. They have given to many a farmer an opportunity for
self-development as a ready speaker.

Other educational agencies, such as the agricultural colleges and
experiment stations, have profited by institutes. No one thing has done
more than the institutes to popularize agricultural education, to stir
up interest in the colleges, to make the farmers feel in touch with the
scientists.

Farmers' institutes are a phase of university extension, and it is as a
part of the extension movement that they are bound to increase in value
and importance. Reading-courses and correspondence-courses are growing
factors in this extension movement, but the power of the spoken word is
guarantee that the farmers' institute cannot be superseded in fact. And
it is worth noting again, that while university extension has not been
the success in this country which its friends of a decade ago fondly
prophesied for it, its humbler cousin--agricultural college
extension--has been a conspicuous success, and is acquiring a constantly
increasing power among the educational agencies that are trying to deal
with the farm problem.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HESPERIA MOVEMENT

The gulf between parent and teacher is too common a phenomenon to need
exposition. The existence of the chasm is probably due more to
carelessness, to the pressure of time, or to indolence than to any more
serious delinquencies; yet all will admit the disastrous effects that
flow from the fact that there is not the close intellectual and
spiritual sympathy that there should be between the school and the home.
It needs no argument to demonstrate the value of any movement that has
for its purpose the bridging of the gulf. But it is an omen of
encouragement to find that there are forces at work designed to bring
teacher and school patron into a closer working harmony. A statement of
the history and methods of some of these agencies may therefore well
have a place in a discussion of rural progress. For the movements to be
described are essentially rural-school movements. Of first interest is
an attempt which has been made in the state of Michigan to bridge the
gulf--to create a common standing-ground for both teacher and
parent--and on that basis to ca