5. Fifth and last, as a method for making the school a social center, is the suggestion that the teacher herself shall become something of a leader in the farm community. The teacher ought to be not only a teacher of the pupils, but in some sense a teacher of the community. Is there not need that someone should take the lead in inspiring everyone in the community to read better books, to buy better pictures, to take more interest in the things that make for culture and progress? There are special difficulties in a country community. The rural teacher is usually a transient; she secures a city school as soon as she can; she is often poorly paid; she is sometimes inexperienced; frequently the labor of the school absorbs all her time and energy. Unfortunately these things are so, but they ought not to be so. And we shall never have the ideal rural school until we have conditions favorable to the kind of work just described. The country teacher ought to understand the country community, ought to have some knowledge of the problems that the farmers have to face, ought to have some appreciation of the peculiar conditions of farm life. Every teacher should have some knowledge of rural sociology. The normal schools should make this subject a required subject in the course, especially for country teachers. Teachers' institutes and reading-circles should in some way provide this sort of thing. This is one of the most important means of bringing the rural school into closer touch with the farm community. Ten years ago Henry Sabin, of Iowa, one of the keenest students of the rural-school problem, in speaking of the supervision of country schools, said: The supervisor of rural schools should be acquainted with the material resources of his district. He should know not only what constitutes good farming, but the prevailing industry of the region should be so familiar to him that he can converse intelligently with the inhabitants, and convince them that he knows something besides books. The object is not alone to gain influence over them, but to bring the school into touch with the home life of the community about. It is not to invite the farmer to the school, but to take the school to the farm, and to show the pupils that here before their eyes are the foundations upon which have been built the great natural sciences.