392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



to be taught, or the quality of grosser products studied, independent 

 class work must be provided throughout the course. Then there are 

 certain scientific phases which must be pursued in class further than 

 may be thought profitable to the science student, though the cases are 

 not nearly so numerous as is generally supposed. 23 Such training must 

 be provided largely by collateral courses and from students' projects 

 carried on at their homes. And it is necessary that agricultural stu- 

 dents who purpose to apply their knowledge to that vocation, be segre- 

 gated late in the course for the treatment of the subject as whole, where 

 its ideals may be developed and its various phases synthesized into an 

 independent " science of agriculture." 



Could it be known at what stage a young person's schooling is to 

 cease, his best interests seem to dictate a previous substitution of imme- 

 diately usable knowledge for much of that of merely "disciplinary " or 

 " preparatory " value. 24 The practical difficulty of accomplishing such 

 kink should be given to chemistry or botany or even geography and arithmetic. 

 Let these arts and sciences be taught from their own standpoint, with as direct 

 application to as many affairs of real life as possible; but let chemistry con- 

 tinue to be chemistry. . . . Every high school that has a natural agricultural 

 constituency of any considerable importance should put in a department of 

 agriculture on the same basis as its department of chemistry. ' ' — Davenport, 

 "Education for Efficiency," p. 126. 



"A thorough grounding in the natural sciences is essential to thorough 

 agricultural courses, but so long as the instruction is confined to the departments 

 of pure science it has had, and will have, very little significance or importance 

 to agriculture. . . . 



' ' If the divisions of science were strictly adhered to we should have no such 

 thing as agricultural science. . . . The present-day plan for the classification of 

 agricultural knowledge and its formulation into courses of instruction ... is 

 based on the application in the natural divisions of agriculture, rather than- on 

 its scientific origin. ... A proposal to return to the former basis of the primary 

 sciences would find scant indorsement among men who have studied the peda- 

 gogics of agriculture. ' ' — Editorial in Experiment Station Record, January, 

 1908, p. 402. 



23 ' ' The sharp distinction between preparation for college and preparation 

 for life is fading out. ... So far as general culture is concerned, preparation 

 for a higher school, rightfully conceived, coincides with preparation for life. ' ' 

 —Brown, "The Making of Our Middle Schools," p. 438. 



81 ' ' Vocational training is to be postponed as long as possible. It is to rest 

 upon the most extended general schooling which the individual can get. ' ' — 

 Brown. "The Making of Our Middle Schools," p. 459. 



"The human plant circumnutates in a wider and wider circle, and the 

 endeavor should be to prevent it from prematurely finding a support, to prolong 

 the period of variation to which this stage of life is sacred, and to prevent 

 natural selection from confirming too soon the slight advantage which any 

 quality may temporarily have in this struggle for existence among many facul- 

 ties and tendencies within us. The educational ideal is now to develop capacities 

 in as many directions as possible. ' ' — Hall, ' ' Adolescence, ' ' Vol. II., p. 88. 



' ' Vocational training ought not to be included in the six years that are 

 sufficient for the elementary school course. . . .The grave error of the past has 

 been to frame a school course on the hypothesis that every pupil was to go for- 



