ghborhood, for only by acquiring a desire for these
advantages will the people in the more isolated parts of the community
come to interest themselves in the activities of the whole community at
its village center.

It is becoming more and more apparent that if the school is really to
function as it should, that it must have the active interest and support
of its patrons. It is not enough that they should assemble at the annual
school meeting, elect school officials, vote taxes for its maintenance,
and then leave its management to the school board and teachers. It is
highly desirable that every encouragement should be given toward making
teaching a life profession, but as teaching becomes professionalized it
tends, like every other calling, to become more or less of a
bureaucracy. It is essential that educational methods should be
determined by and be in charge of educators who are trained for such
service, but if they get the idea, as sometimes seems unfortunately the
case, that it is the business of the people to supply funds for the
support of the schools and then to leave their entire operation to the
teachers and superintendents, they assume an attitude which is fatal to
the life of the school, for no educational system, however ideal in
theory, can be effective without the sympathetic understanding and
cordial support of the majority of its patrons. It is for this reason
that large emphasis is being placed by progressive educators on the
organization of parent-teachers associations or school improvement
leagues for the discussion of school problems by parents and teachers.
In many cases the parent-teachers association forms one of the chief
bonds of the country community and the State of Virginia has built up a
remarkable system of community organization through its Cooperative
Educational League with hundreds of local leagues which interest
themselves in all phases of community life.

The school is also coming to realize that although it is the institution
specially created for the systematic education of the child, that much
of his education is received outside the school and that certain phases
of his education may be accomplished more effectively through the
cooperation of the school with other institutions and agencies. Thus
instead of seeking to absorb all of the time of the child and to give it
all kinds of training within the school or as part of its curriculum,
the school is commencing to develop methods