be brought into vital contact with other communities
in a district or whole county, and may be brought together to consider
their common interests and to try experiments in co-operation, first
for educational purposes and then for general community prosperity.

At first the rural teacher in many localities will have enough to do
with securing proper accommodations for the children in school, for
good buildings frequently wait for a teacher who has the courage to
demand and persist in getting them; but the larger work for the
community is only second in importance and adds greatly to the
responsiveness of the older people to the suggestions of the teacher.
One great weakness in the past has been the short term of service of
the average teacher. It takes time to accomplish changes in a
conservative community, and the new education will be successful only
as the new teacher becomes a comparative fixture. To build oneself
into the life of a rural community as does the physician, and to
ennoble it with new ideas and higher ideals, is a missionary service
that can hardly be surpassed at the present time in America.

137. =Higher Education.=--The normal school, the rural academy or
county high school, and the college have their part in rural
education. It rests with the normal school to supply the trained
teacher and the normal schools rapidly are meeting the demands of the
present situation. Training classes for rural teachers have been
established in high schools or academies in twelve or more States.
More and more these higher schools are relating their courses of study
to the rural life in which so many of them are placed.

138. =What the University Can Do.=--An increasing number of young
people from the country are going to college. The college was founded
on the principle of educating American youth in a higher culture than
local elementary schools could provide. It is the function of the
college and the university to open wider vistas for the individual
mind than is otherwise possible, to do on an infinitely larger scale
what the teacher is attempting in the elementary grades. These higher
schools are passing through a humanizing process; they are making more
of the social sciences and the art of living well; and they are
allying themselves with practical life. In the case of established
institutions with traditions, and often with trustees and alumni of
conservative tastes and tendencies, there are difficulties in th