388 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



in agriculture. The biologists, especially, are gravitating toward the 

 use of the familiar things with which agriculture must deal. 8 If the 

 agriculturists do not take advantage of this it will be their own fault. 

 For if the scientists are to assume that part of the burden for the sake 

 of the sciences, such " loss of jurisdiction " over their subject should 

 not be taken amiss by the agriculturists, who may rest assured that the 

 others have no means of cheating so as to achieve their " disciplinary " 

 results wthout thereby doing that which is best for agriculture. Only 

 in making the two phases of work complementary is agriculture se- 

 curing a permanent place in the course. It may be that keeping the 

 two interests uncorrelated will not only result in the continued deca- 

 dence of high school science, but will also keep the subject of agriculture 

 pedagogically outside the course of study, however much pains may be 

 used to print it in. 9 



Agriculture in the high school will bear one of three relations to 

 the fundamental sciences, namely, it will be taught before the related 

 sciences are taught, or while they are being taught, or after they have 

 been taught. 



The success of agriculture in the high school depends upon its being 

 made of such dignity as to challenge the powers of the better students. 10 

 And the better students will not be attracted to a subject that is long 

 kept in its elementary stages. 11 There is more to lose than to gain in 



8 " I often wish that the phrase ' applied science ' had never been invented. 

 For it suggests that there is a sort of scientific knowledge, of direct practical 

 use, which can be studied apart from another sort of scientific knowledge, which 

 is of no practical utility, and which is termed 'pure science.' But there is no 

 more complete fallacy than this. What people call applied science is nothing 

 but the application of pure science to particular classes of problems. It consists 

 of deductions from those whose general principles, established by reason and 

 observation, constitute pure science. No man can safely make these deductions 

 until he has a firm grasp of the principles; and he can obtain that grasp only by 

 personal experience of the operations of observations and of reasoning on which 

 they are founded. ' ' — Huxley, ' ' Science and Culture, ' ' Chap. IV. 



9 " In every case correlation has been successful, when the instructor was 

 sufficiently versed in his own subject and the kindred subjects to know when and 

 how to bring the two together to the best advantage. ' ' — Abbey, ' ' Normal School 

 Instruction in Agriculture," p. 29. 



' ' Eelate the school to life, and all studies are of necessity correlated. ' ' — 

 Dewey, "The School and Society," p. 107. 



10 ' ' The highest type of spontaneous, whole-souled activity can not be devel- 

 oped about trifling or worthless things." — Hodge, "Nature Study and Life," 

 p. 23. 



11 " If a child at any particular epoch in his development is compelled to 

 repeat any fixed form of action belonging to a lower stage of development, the 

 tendency will be for him to stop at that point, and it will be difficult, if not 

 impossible, to get him up on to a higher plane. . . . Thoroughness in the pursuit 

 of any study in the elementary school may result in cessation instead of pro- 

 motion of mental growth. ' ' — Harris, ' ' Educational Creeds of the Nineteenth 

 Century, ' ' pp. 39-40. 



