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Fred L. Mahannah, state inspector of normal training high schools, Des Moines, Iowa, says:

The agriculture that we are offering in the normal training high schools differs radically from what should be offered in a high school where the object is to train scientific farmers. We require but a half year's work, tho a number of schools offer a full year. As a general rule, the teacher in charge is the regular science teacher, who has had a summer school's work in the special phases of the subject. We have been trying to raise the qualifications as rapidly as possible, and, by 1915, our requirements will be that the teacher of agriculture must have at least twenty-four semester hour credits in agriculture, unless more than a year's work is offered, in which case graduation from an agricultural college will be required. Our normal training classes in agriculture are made up largely of girls who are prospective teachers, and we feel that the great need in their case is to give them enough knowledge of agriculture to enable them to enter more intelligently and sympathetically into the life of the rural community in which they are engaged as teachers. We have found it extremely difficult to get teachers of agriculture who have had any special training, but we feel sure that the work we have been offering normal training students has been of great value to prospective rural teachers, particularly to those who have been born and raised in town.

W. E. Larson, rural school inspector for Wisconsin, Madison, Wis., says:

In Wisconsin the teachers' training course is given in connection with the regular high-school course, that is, those who are taking the training are also taking a regular four years' course. In this way the Wisconsin method is different from that found in several states. The teachers' training course is, in as many respects as possible, like a regular English course. A special teacher is employed to teach the professional subjects. All that this teacher can really do is to take charge of the professional work and reviews. This teacher is not allowed to take any of the other classes in the high school, unless these classes be considered a part of the professional work. The teaching of agriculture is therefore a part of the regular high-school course, and not necessarily a part of the work in teacher training. I believe that if the high schools are to train teachers for countryschool work, considerable of the work that we are now trying to include must be eliminated and certain other fundamental branches must be taken up. Chief among these branches are agriculture and domestic science. The country-school teacher needs to be master of a certain amount of knowledge that is directly needed in the teaching of a country school. The idea of having a high-school teachers' training school and a college preparatory school must be given up, unless the colleges are willing to accept the work done in the teachers' training course as sufficient preparation for the work in the college.

L. S. Ivens, director of agricultural education for Ohio, says:

It is my opinion that teachers who expect to teach in the rural schools should study agriculture at least one year before they take the work in the normal training high school. They should also have agriculture thruout their one-year course in the normal. The course should be half professional and half academic. In other words, half of the time devoted to the study of the subject should be on methods of teaching it. The first term of nine weeks' time should be given to nature-study agriculture; second term to elementary agriculture; third term to advanced agriculture; and the last term to rural organization. The last term should include all kinds of contest work, the organization of farmers' institutes, schools, rural fairs, Chautauquas, granges, clubs, and co-operative associations. The future rural teacher and superintendent must become a rural leader and this will require him to have a better knowledge of the methods of rural organization. Our future rural teachers must make better use of the state's agricultural institutions. In our normal courses that are now in preparation in Ohio, we have set apart special time

for work to be done by men and women from the agricultural college, experiment station, domestic science school, and medical schools. This work will not be merely lectures, but will be mostly demonstration work. The state medical association will send us men who will demonstrate to the teachers better methods of rural sanitation, not only for cattle and hogs, but also for the children. Methods of heating and ventilation, what to do in emergencies, how to maintain sanitary kitchens, and other health rules will be explained and demonstrated by members of the state medical association. Members of the state dental association will explain their work in each county normal training high school.

Rufus W. Stimson, agent for agricultural education, Board of Education, Boston, Mass., says:

We have in Massachusetts no agricultural teacher who has been trained for his work in a normal training high school. Our agricultural teachers either are self-made men, who are thinkers and observers, and have demonstrated their ability to conduct the kinds of farming they are called upon to teach profitably, or they are graduates of agricultural colleges who have also been able to establish a strong presumption of ability to teach farming in such a way as to make it profitable. It will generally, we believe in Massachusetts, be possible to secure farm-bred men who have added to their practical experience the training afforded by one or another of our state agricultural colleges. Considerable attention is being paid to the correlation of the instruction of pupils in rural schools with country life and labor. The state normal training schools of Massachusetts are the sources from which are drawn most of the teachers for this work. Even in our normal schools, however, there is no absolute uniformity in the courses of study. Biology, plant and animal life, with considerable productive effort in the form of home gardening, are perhaps the main factors in the teaching in which the prospective teachers are trained. In Massachusetts, we are unequivocally committed to the value of productive effort carried on in connection with formal schooling.

William P. Evans, state superintendent of public schools, Jefferson City, Mo., says:

Inasmuch as the state is providing aid based on the teaching of agriculture in the high schools, and in view of the fact that many teachers have been trying to teach agriculture this year with inadequate training, this department issues the following requirements which will be insisted upon as the minimum preparation for such teachers next year. For the teacher of agriculture in a third-class high school, five hours of college work in agriculture will be required. Teachers in first- and second-class high schools must have had seven and one-half hours of college work in agriculture. No teacher who has had less than this amount of study of agriculture can do satisfactory high-school teaching in the subject, unless he has had previous first-hand knowledge of farm work. . . . . All of this required work in agriculture may be done by a student in one summer at a normal school or at the state university. It is proper to state that these requirements are higher than previously maintained in Missouri, but are much lower than those in other states north and east of us.

C. J. Brown, state supervisor of rural elementary schools, Department of Education, Baton Rouge, La., says:

Such a course should be established only in rural high schools or in small towns where the rural idea prevails. There should in every case be parallel courses in: (1) General science, including those phases of physics, chemistry, and biology which relate in a practical way to agricultural operations; (2) Rural economics and sociology, without which the subject of agriculture, however well known, does not assume its due importance or proper

setting; (3) Farm shop and machinery, where practical experience may be had in the most common and important phases of such work. The aim of such a program should not be to give a comprehensive course, but should be to stimulate such an interest in agriculture as will cause the prospective teacher to continue learning. Two years should be the maximum time devoted to the subject until the agricultural work in public schools has become fixed and more extensive than at present. The first step should be a survey of the community in which the school is located, touching all phases and conditions of the community; work should then be studied in the light of the principles evolved from such survey. Observation trips in the community should form a very important phase of work. Actual field work should be insisted upon. In many activities observation might serve fairly well, but a certain amount of actual work is necessary. There should be much experience with machinery. The shop will not offer nearly enough, so pupils might assist in assembling parts of machines for farmers. The course would be quite incomplete unless it informed students as to progressive agricultural movements operating in their territory, the relative importance of such movements, how and what the teacher must become as a factor in them. It would seem almost necessary in the present stage of the subject in the public schools to give student teachers a definite idea of just what should be taught in certain grades, of how to teach it, and of the actual apparatus and equipment essential.

E. C. Bishop, schools section, Iowa State College, Ames, Iowa, says: The old-line college professor thinks that the teacher of agriculture in the rural schools ought to be a specialist in either farm plants, farm animals, soils, or other topics, rather than that he ought to have a general knowledge of fundamental principles as applied to the common things concerned in plant and animal life and farm management. We have a few of those people who think that the normal training course in high schools ought to specialize in one or two of these topics if time does not permit a thoro training in all of them, and they would turn this teacher loose trying to teach farm crops very thoroly, when anyone who has been thru the mill knows that even the elemental phases of soils, farm crops, farm animals, or other subtopics cannot be successfully taught without at least a speaking acquaintance with the elementary phases of the other related topics. They are related in the home, and the teacher cannot make a close division, for the reason that her training was in one topic only.

The late Seaman A. Knapp, of the United States Department of Agriculture, probably did more for the cause of agricultural education, especially in the southern states, than any one man in this country. I quote from his paper before this department in 1909, which, in my opinion, is the best statement yet made for agricultural education in the public school:

The public demand for agriculture has made this error-a lack of definiteness. It would have been much better had legislatures simply demanded the teaching of two or three things, which are universally required and which would have given some greatly needed information to the people. Instead of agriculture, there should be substituted the vegetable and fruit garden, the cow and her products, and poultry. These three lines of instruction would give definiteness to what is required. As it is now, teachers are perfectly at sea, and there will be an attempt to teach almost everything, from pure science remotely to agriculture to the purely mechanical methods of the farm. In the family vegetable and fruit garden would be included all the instruction in soil, in seed selection, how plants feed, how they grow, and in methods of cultivation necessary for the rural town and the country in an elementary form. Practical lessons about the cow and her products and poultry would give the knowledge required in every household in regard to such common food supplies as milk, eggs, veal, beef, and the flesh of fowls; how to

produce economically; their value; and the offices they perform in the human system when used for food. Instruction of this character is along the line of the people's necessities and gives the kind of knowledge required by the toiling masses. There is little danger of teaching incorrect theories or methods upon these subjects, because the objectlessons are at hand for correction. In most schools it would be better to give instruction in only one of these at a time, commencing first with the market garden; second, poultry; and third, the cow and her products. No one should be considered educated who is ignorant of the economic production of these and their great value in the food supplies that must form one of the chief sources of sustenance for the human race.

The foregoing opinions make, as it were, a symposium on the subject assigned me. The following points stand out prominently in these state

ments:

First, the elimination of some subjects from the old traditional highschool course in order to give sufficient time in which to teach manual training, domestic science, and agriculture to the prospective rural teachers in our normal training high schools.

Second, in order to give agricultural education and rural economics proper dignity in the high-school course of study, our colleges and universities must give due entrance credit therefor when properly taught in the high school.

Third, the most available agencies for training teachers for the rural schools are our public high schools that are qualified to give normal training.

Fourth, the proper agencies for training the directors of the normal training work in our high schools, including the work in agricultural education, are our state normal schools.

Fifth, the greatest problem in agricultural education is the training of a sufficient number of teachers qualified to give such instruction in the rural schools. The Country Gentleman, in a recent issue, declared that the greatest problem in agricultural education for the next ten years will be the training of teachers for this work; that if the course of study and equipment are valued at 20 per cent, the qualified teacher should be valued at 80 per cent. As in every other subject to be taught in our public schools, so it is in agriculture-as is the teacher, so is the work. Therefore, let us urge upon our state normal schools, our agricultural colleges, and all institutions qualified to give teacher training to begin here and now a crusade for the preparation of teachers, not only in our normal training high schools, but in our rural schools as well.

II.

A. V. STORM, PROFESSOR OF AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY
OF MINNESOTA, MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.

Education has become greatly extended and widely differentiated. With this has come a great divergence of opinion among even the leaders in education as to which of the many phases of our public education is most important, and consequently entitled to the most attention.

One of the most prominent city superintendents in America once assured me that if he had to abandon either his high schools or his kindergartens the high schools would have to go. Yesterday you heard from this platform one of the accepted leaders in present-day public education make an eloquent appeal for a recognition of the supreme importance of the American high school. A popular vote would probably indorse by a good majority the statement that the grade schools are the most vital in our system, while there are those of unusual acumen who maintain that the college-where people of vision are prepared for leadership—is of greater significance in advancing civilization than is any other one factor. Parallel with this contention as to which is the most important part of our educational organization (which when finally solved will probably reach the same conclusion as did the famous argument begun by the discontented pendulum) is the contention as to which is the more important purpose of education, the attainment of culture or the attainment of vocational efficiency.

Inextricably involved in the above discussion is the rural school. The rural school is rapidly coming into its own in the amount and kind of attention it is receiving. Having successively served as the object of our blind, bombastic faith, our ridicule, and our pity, it has now come to be a matter of greater concern to more people and to more classes of people than has any other feature of education. The place where the great masses of our conservative and conserving population receive their entire education is now acknowledged to be worthy of the most careful thought of the best men and women of the times.

There are many causes for this deepening interest in rural schools. The development of scientific and practical sociology, economics, science, and agriculture; the lack of free land; the rush to the cities; the practicability of elementary work in home economics and agriculture; the dependence of urban upon rural progress and success-all these and many others have called with a loud voice for a better rural school. "As is the teacher so is the school" has lost none of its truth in the passing years. A better rural school, then, means a better rural teacher. Where and how shall she be prepared? Two years ago I studied the normal training situation in the United States and found that in no state replying to inquiries can the state normal schools furnish an adequate supply of teachers for the schools. Because of many conditions, the rural schools were the ones to feel the lack first and to the fullest extent. The logical conclusion is that the rural teacher must be prepared largely by the local high schools.

How are they to be prepared? The difference in organization will cause this to vary. In most states the high-school normal course is four years long and includes general as well as normal preparation. In Iowa, the special normal work is distributed thru the last two years. In Vermont, it consists of one year of normal work after graduation from the high school. In Minnesota, it has a special year of exclusively normal work which may

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