LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,

BUREAU OF EDUCATION,

WASHINGTON, D. C., February 13, 1908.

SIR: I have the honor to transmit herewith a manuscript entitled "On the Training of Persons to Teach Agriculture in the Public Schools," and to recommend its publication as the first number of the bulletin of the Bureau of Education for the year 1908.

By the so-called Nelson amendment to the agricultural appropriation bill for the year 1908 the sum of $5,000 was added to the appropriation to each of the States for the better endowment and support of the agricultural and mechanical colleges which had been previously endowed and aided under the two Morrill acts, of July 2, 1862, and August 30, 1890; and it was provided that this addition should be increased by the sum of $5,000 annually till it should reach the annual amount of $25,000. When this maximum is reached, at the end of a five-year period, each State will receive annually, including the $25,000 previously granted under the second Morrill Act, a total of $50,000 for agricultural and mechanical college purposes.

With these liberal endowments and the still larger amounts appropriated by the State governments the "land-grant colleges" have been able to give a great impetus to agricultural education. They have helped to form the rising demand for a wide extension of such education in high schools, normal schools, and schools of elementary grade.

As was pointed out in the report of the Commissioner of Education for the year 1906, there is grave danger that the demand for the teaching of agricultural subjects shall far outrun the supply of properly qualified teachers. Such a mischance might result in a serious setback to a great educational movement-one of the most promising educational movements, in fact, of the present generation. It is accordingly significant that the Nelson amendment contained the following provision: "That said colleges may use a portion of this money for providing courses for the special preparation of instructors for teaching the elements of agriculture and the mechanic arts.” The Bureau of Education bears some responsibility in this matter, since the Department of the Interior is charged with the distribu

tion of the annual appropriations under both the second Morrill Act and the Nelson amendment, and this Bureau is the agency through which that function is discharged. With a view to rendering some assistance in the shaping of plans for such training of teachers as may be undertaken by the colleges with the aid of these new funds, I have asked Prof. Liberty Hyde Bailey, director of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University, to prepare the bulletin which is presented herewith. Professor Bailey is among the foremost of those who are making the new movements in agricultural education, and his suggestions will have value and interest, not only for the authorities controlling the agricultural and mechanical colleges, but also for all who are interested in these new educational undertakings.

Very respectfully,

The SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

ELMER ELLSWORTH BROWN,

Commissioner.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

The most significant contemporaneous movement in education is the effort to adapt the work of schools directly to the lives of the pupils. It is the expression of the effort to make the school training applicable. The normal activities of the child are to be directed and trained in such a way that real education will result there from. Education will grow out of the child's experience, rather than be imposed on him.

If this is to be the motive of popular education, then agricultural and industrial subjects will be made more and more a means of school work. It is therefore a question of the first importance how to organize these subjects into an educational harmony. The agricultural subjects are specially difficult of organization, because they are so many and so diverse and so unlike in different regions. The character and success of the teaching of these subjects lie immediately with the teacher; there have been no institutions consciously to train teachers for such work; therefore it is not strange that many educators should consider the training of persons to teach agricultural subjects to be the most important educational question now before us.

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