Agricultural education

“ We all agree that it is desirable for a young man to take a full college course, even in agriculture. But it is better to have a half-loaf than no bread. Yes, better to have a slice than no bread. The colleges furnish the whole loaf, the half-loaf, and the slice. And young men are nourished by all.
One reason why agricultural education has not made more rapid progress is because the children of the country schools have been taught in such a manner as to lead them to think that there is no chance for brains in farming. ”

“ There is a proverb in Grange circles which expresses also the fundamental aim of all agricultural education—"The farmer is of more consequence than the farm and should be first improved." The first term in all agricultural prosperity is the man behind the plow. Improved agriculture is a matter of fertile brain rather than of fertile field. Mind culture must precede soil culture.
But if the improved man is the first term in improved agriculture, if he is the effective cause of rural progress, he is also the last term and the choice product of genuine agricultural advancement. ”

“ We may next discuss as briefly as possible the methods by which agricultural education may be advanced. We may not consider all of them, but rather attend only to some of those agencies that seem of peculiar interest just at this time.
There is one underlying requisite of successful agricultural education that is all-important. It is faith in agriculture. Any man to succeed grandly must have absolute faith in his business. So the farmer must believe in agriculture. ”

“ Agricultural education has made great progress within the past few years. Methods are crystallizing and at the same time the field is enlarging. We once thought of agricultural education as wholly special or professional, but we now conceive of it as an integral part of general and fundamental educational policy. As a college or university subject it is necessarily technical and semi-professional; but college work must articulate with the common-school work, as language and science now articulate with the schools. ”

“ Recent Emphasis upon Agricultural Training.—A similar development has of late been taking place in agricultural education. France and Germany offer elementary instruction in agriculture, while the former has also introduced the subject into the normal schools, and the latter has established a secondary agricultural institution open to students at the close of their sixth year United States offers courses in all grades of education. ”

“ These methods and others like them are being invoked for the purpose of bringing to the farmers in their homes and neighborhoods some of the benefits that the colleges and schools bestow upon their pupils.
We have seen something of the need of agricultural education, of the kind of education required, and of the means used to secure it. Does not this discussion at least show the supreme importance of the question? Will not the farmers rally themselves to and league themselves with the men who are trying to forward the best interests of the farm? ”

“ Of course the idea is not a new one, but its present practical application is a timely one, and it will not be long before this branch of agricultural education will become a prominent factor in rural betterment. ”

“ An important advance for the farmer was the increased opportunities in agricultural education. The Hatch Act had provided for agricultural programs to be established in the Land Grant Colleges, and ensuing legislation in 1917 called for farm courses to be added to the high school curriculum. ”

“ The last point is of great importance because of the comparative absence in country communities of opportunity near at hand for good high-school training.
Agricultural education is distinctively technical, not in the restricted sense of mere technique, or even of applied science, but in the sense that it must be frankly vocational. It has to do with the preparation of men and women for the business of farming and for life in the rural community. ”

“ No evident progress has been made in introducing agricultural science teaching in the primary schools of the entire Dominion. The first step taken in the direction of agricultural education was for the enlightenment of farmers. ”

“ Agricultural education should begin in the primary school. In this school the point of view, however, should be broadly pedagogical rather than immediately vocational. Fortunately, the wise teaching of nature-study, the training of pupils to know and to love nature, the constant illustrations from the rural environment, the continual appeal to personal observation and experience, absolute loyalty to the farm point of view, are not only sound pedagogy, but form the best possible background for future vocational study. ”

“ An important part of a system of agricultural education has been, as it seems to me, already established. I speak of our national, state, county, and town associations for the promotion of agriculture. The first three may educate the people through their annual fairs, by their publications, and by the collection and distribution of rare seeds, [Pg 348] plants, and animals, that are not usually within reach of individual farmers. By such means, and others less noticeable, these agencies can exert a powerful influence upon the farmers of the country ”

“ Our State and national governments have recognized the importance of agricultural education by founding the agricultural colleges, and in so doing they have done well; but, unless we are prepared to maintain that we know already all that we can or all that we need of the science of agriculture, the system needs, to complete it, such provision for increasing our knowledge in this direction as well-equipped experiment stations can furnish. Despite the great advances of agricultural science in the last thirty years, there is still a vast region to be explored ”

“ Rural education has to do with the education of people, more especially of the young, who live under rural conditions; agricultural education aims to prepare men and women for the specific vocation of agriculture. The rural school typifies the first; the agricultural school, the second. Rural education is but a section of the general school question; agricultural education is a branch of technical training. ”

“ However, our chief interest is, perhaps, in those institutions that are formed purposely and especially for agricultural education and which are usually supported out of public funds. There are three great fields of endeavor in which these institutions are working. The first step is to know—to know the truth. So in agriculture we must know. Know what? Know how nature works. So the man of science studies the soil and finds out what plant-food it contains, how the water acts in it, what heat and air do, and the inter-relation of all these elements. ”

“ The practical work he can learn upon his father's farm during spring and summer, and the technical by continuing his studies during the winter months in a school of agriculture. The establishment of such winter schools is in contemplation. But, in the meanwhile, to bring home to farmers the advantages of a first-class agricultural education for their sons, and at the same time to teach these farmers the more practical application of science to agriculture, the Department decided on a preliminary period of Itinerant Instruction. ”

“ Does the farmer require a special agricultural education?
He is to live by agriculture; must he not learn the art by which he is to live? We might safely answer on general grounds, "All arts are best learnt by practice; and unless there is some special reason why farming should be taught to schoolboys, this art will follow the rule of others, and be learned by apprenticeship after school." ”

“ In May of 1910 there were 975 institutions giving instruction in agriculture. There has been a rapid development at the same time of college-extension work in agriculture, agricultural education under the county system, and consolidated rural schools, together with numerous other activities, which have been of practical value in creating better standards of knowledge and practice of farming. ”

“ Let us cease thinking so much of agricultural education, and devote ourselves to educational agriculture. So will the nation be made strong.
The life we live, even on the farm, is full of science and history, civics and economics, arithmetic and geography, poetry and art. The modern school helps the pupil to find these things in his daily life and, having found them, to apply them to living for his profit and enjoyment. For this reason it works largely through the "home project," boys' and girls' clubs, gardening, and many other activities. ”

“ Agricultural education is necessarily based upon general education, but our agricultural educational institutions are wisely specializing themselves, making their courses relate to the actual teaching of the agricultural and kindred sciences to young country people or young city people who wish to live in the country. ”

“ Education in agriculture has made much progress. The number of institutions teaching agriculture increased more than sixty per cent. in nineteen months. They had ten per cent. more students in agriculture in 1910 than in 1909, and more than eight times as many students taking the teachers’ course in agriculture. Colleges and high schools give place to some form of agricultural instruction; and the necessity of fostering soil Conservation is recognized today as never before. ”

“ The means for extending and improving agricultural education will develop and expand in the same measure that we apply ourselves to the problem.
Agricultural colleges have not rendered the assistance that they should in extending agricultural education, because their field has been too restricted. Excellent as their instruction may be, it reaches only a very small percentage of our people directly. ”

“ But suppose that no young men came forward to take agricultural studies, the new education would still tell powerfully on agriculture. Think you that we can send out year after year—as we did last year—a hundred graduates from all our various departments, whose powers of observation have been trained and whose real knowledge of subjects bearing on agriculture has been extended by close study in Botany, Animal Physiology, Geology, and Chemistry, without its telling ultimately on the progress of agriculture? ”

“ In a country like ours, which is emphatically agricultural, I presume it will not be doubted, that a practical scientific knowledge of agriculture would constitute an important appendage to the education of every American citizen. Indeed the most certain mode of improving the agriculture of the country will be to make it a branch of elementary education. ”

“ What I have said regarding the part which education and organization have played in the advancement of agriculture refers mainly to what has been done for the adult population by Government agencies, voluntary associations of farmers and others, the agricultural press, lectures, and the example of excellent farmers. Not much has been done in the rural schools as yet to educate the children towards aptitudes, inclination, and ability for deriving satisfaction as well as material prosperity from the occupations of rural life. ”

“ All the influences there point to agriculture as the best calling for a young man who is fit for it, whereas in other colleges the influences are all in the opposite direction. At our agricultural colleges a youth has all the necessary advantages of general education, and also an education in the lines fitting him especially for the calling he has selected. (United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin 138, condensed.) ”

“ When education is finally allowed to reach him in such a way as to be indispensable to him, it will at last have become truly democratic.
In this spirit agriculture is divided into its teachable units. The lists of divisions of the teaching force or curriculum in the larger agricultural colleges illustrate this admirably. In Illinois, for example, the title of professors and instructors are associated with such divisions as thremmatology, agronomy, pomology, olericulture, floriculture, soil physics, dairy husbandry, dairy manufacture, horses, beef cattle, swine husbandry, farm crops. ”

“ Indeed, so great is the progress of farming on the scientific side that it seems likely to enter the ranks of the learned and dignified professions.
At least, scientific research and methods have finally brought the art of agriculture to a paying basis and the up-to-date farmer, equipped with a scientific education and technical training steps forward very much in advance of the so-called business men and intellectuals of the rural towns. ”

“ We believe that it is essential for the welfare of agriculture that there should be placed within the reach of every young farmer a sound, general school education, including such a grounding in the elements of sciences bearing upon agriculture—e. g., chemistry, geology, botany, and animal physiology—as will give him an intelligent interest in them and familiarize him in their language. ”

“ The various Departments of Agriculture are doing splendid pioneer work, but the full harvest of their sowing will not be reaped until the number of tropically-educated agriculturists has been increased by the founding of three or four agricultural colleges and research laboratories in equatorial regions. ”

“ Agriculture will always be the principal industry in the greater part of the state and the foundation of its prosperity.
With the renewed interest in agriculture, increasing demands are being made on the educational institutions of the state to provide training in agricultural subjects. Farmers want their sons and daughters to take up farming as their life work fitly prepared for it. Farmers themselves are demanding training in advanced scientific methods. City men and boys in ever increasing numbers desire to go on farms and are looking for places to secure the necessary training. ”