The great bulk of printed material about community schools is descriptive in character. There are a few analytical accounts, and probably still fewer reports of experimental programs. Together, however, they provide evidence on such questions as.these: (a) How can schools learn the community's needs and resources so as to serve it effectively? (b) How have schools and communities worked together to improve the school program and the community? (c) In what ways are community-school programs effective? Some of the studies bearing on these questions are described in this chapter.

Even though well-qualified and adequately prepared teachers were in every classroom, there would still be certain cases of delinquency and emotional disturbance with which they would need the help of specialists. Actually, many teachers now employed need much mere than assistance with a few complex behavior problems. Because they have not been adequately prepared for their child-guidance responsibilities, they need in-service assistance in child study and counseling and in techniques of work with groups. Consequently, special school services that supplement and facilitate the work of the teacher make an important contribution to the prevention of delinquency.

Now and then, in the complicated affairs of men, the factors in a situation arrange themselves in such a way as to accelerate the development of some service or institution so that it makes a generation's normal growth in a Jew short years. This has happened in the development of educational services for young children over the past dozen years.

During the seventy-five years for which nation-wide statistics of education are available, the educational system of the United States has experienced amazing growth. These years have been busy ones in all aspects of our national life. The boundaries of the nation have been filled out, with eleven new states being organized. Our population is nearly three and a half times greater than it was in 1870, shifting in the twenty years from 1920 to 1940 from 51 per cent rural to 56 per cent urban. Seventy-eight cities have in this three-quarters of a century passed the hundred thousand mark. Our national income has increased likewise from nearly seven billion dollars in 1869 to seventy-six billion in 1940 and, under conditions created by the war, doubled again by 1943.

During this current school year around thirty million students are attending school in this country, counting all students and all schools. Naturally the schools differ widely since, according to our American ideals for education, they are under obligation to provide the wide variety of educational opportunities needed by this large segment of the total population.

One of the fundamental problems in the teaching of reading is to determine its place in the whole curriculum. Earlier chapters have defined the nature of reading and some of the problems involved in developing good reading habits. They have also shown the numerous demands the present day makes for ability to read widely, understandingly, and almost continually. This chapter will attempt to show how reading plays an increasingly heavy role in the developing school program, and the ways in which the curriculum affords opportunities for the growth of reading interests, habits, and skills.