Chapter XII: Section 1: The executive committee may also recommend a course of

reading to be pursued by members, and it shall be their duty to
make such other recommendations from time to time as shall have for
their object the more effective carrying out of the purposes of the
association.

Whether the Oceana County plan of a set annual meeting or the Kent County plan of numerous itinerant meetings is the better one depends much on the situation. It is not improbable that itinerant meetings, with an annual "round-up" meeting of the popular type as the great event of the school year, would be very satisfactory.

Other counties in the state have taken up the Hesperia idea. In some cases associations similar to the Kent County association have been developed. More recently the work has frequently been carried on by the county commissioner of schools directly. "Institutes on wheels" have become a factor in the campaign for better rural schools. One commissioner writes:

My aim has been to bring into very close relationship teachers,
patrons, and pupils. This is done, in part, in the following
manner: I engage, for a week's work at a time, some educator of
state or national reputation to ride with me on my visitation of
schools. Through the day, schools are visited, pupils' work
inspected, and in the evening, a rally is held in the locality
visited in that day. A circuit is made during the week, and Friday
evening and the Saturday following a general round-up is held. The
results of this work have been far reaching. Teachers, patrons, and
pupils are brought into close relationship and a higher standard of
education is developed.

The form of organization matters little. The essential idea of the "Hesperia movement" was to bring together the teacher and the school patron on a common platform, to a common meeting-place, to discuss subjects of common interest. This idea must be vitalized in the rural community before that progress in rural-school matters which we desire shall become a fact.

It is only fair to say that administrators of rural-school systems in several states are attempting in one way or another, and have done so for some years, to bring together teachers and school patrons. In Iowa there are mothers' clubs organized for the express purpose of promoting the best interests of the schools. In many of the communities the county superintendent organizes excursions, and holds school contests which are largely attended by patrons of the schools.

Ohio has what is known as the "Ohio School Improvement Federation." Its objects are: (1) to create a wholesome educational sentiment in the citizenship of the state; (2) to remove the school from partisan politics; (3) to make teaching a profession, protected and justly compensated. County associations of the federation are being organized and the effort is being made to reach the patrons of the schools and to create the right public sentiment. In many of the teachers' institutes there is one session devoted entirely to subjects that are of special interest to the school-board members and to the patrons of the schools. Educational rallies are held in many of the townships, at which effort is made to get together all the citizens and have an exhibit of school work.

In Minnesota, a law was passed recently to the effect that school officers within a county may attend one educational convention a year upon call of the county superintendent. They receive therefor, three dollars for one day's services and five cents mileage each way for attendance. Already a number of very successful conventions have been held, wherein all school districts in the counties have been represented.

The county institutes in Pennsylvania are largely attended by the public and are designed to reach patrons as well as teachers.

In Kansas, county superintendents have organized school-patrons' associations and school-board associations, both of which definitely purpose to bring together the school and the home and the officers of the school into one body and to co-operate with individuals for the purpose of bettering the school conditions.

Doubtless other states are carrying on similar methods.

An interesting movement wholly independent of the Hesperia plan has recently been put into operation under the leadership of Principal Myron T. Scudder of the State Normal School, New Paltz, N. Y. He has organized a series of country-school conferences. They grew out of a recognized need, but were an evolution rather than a definite scheme. The school commissioner, the teachers, and the Grange people of the community have joined in making up the conference. An attempt is also made to interest the pupils. At one conference there was organized an athletic league for the benefit of the boys of the country school. The practical phases of nature-study and manual training are treated on the programme, and at least one session is made a parents' meeting. There is no organization whatever.

Dr. A. E. Winship, of the _Journal of Education_, Boston, had the following editorial in the issue of June 21, 1906:

It is now fourteen years since D. E. McClure spoke into being the
Hesperia movement, which is a great union of educational and farmer
forces, in a midwinter Chautauqua, as it were. Twelve miles from
the railroad, in the slight village of Hesperia, a one-street
village, one side of the street being in one county and the other
side in another, for three days and evenings in midwinter each
year, in a ramshackle building, eight hundred people from all parts
of the two counties sit in reserved seats, for which they pay a
good price, and listen to one or two notable speakers and a number
of local functionaries. One-half of the time is devoted to
education and the other to farm interests.

It is a great idea, well worked out, and after fourteen years it
maintains its lustiness, but I confess to disappointment that the
idea has not spread more extensively. It is so useful there, and
the idea is so suggestive, that it should have been well-nigh
universal, and yet despite occasional bluffs at it, I know of no
serious effort to adopt it elsewhere, unless the midwinter meeting
at Shelby, in one of these two counties, can be considered a spread
of the idea. This child of the Hesperia movement, in one of the two
counties, and only twenty miles away, had this year many more in
attendance than have ever been at Hesperia.

This work of uniting more closely the interests, sympathies, and intelligence of the teachers and patrons of the rural school has had a test in Michigan of sufficient length to prove that it is a practicable scheme. No one questions the desirability of the ends it is prepared to compass, and experience in Michigan shows not only that where the educators have sufficient enterprise, tact, enthusiasm, and persistence the necessary organizations can be perfected, but that substantial results follow. For the sake of better rural schools, then, it is sincerely to be hoped that the "Hesperia movement" may find expression in numerous teachers and patrons' associations in at least the great agricultural states.