66 THE NA TURESTUDY REVIEW U:3-mar., ,908 



Under the Morrell Act, the land-grant colleges were established 

 to meet a necessity for scientific training in agricultural work, but 

 since these colleges are at such great distances from the people 

 needing agricultural education, and since the expense of attend- 

 ing such schools is beyond the means of many parents, the atten- 

 dance at these colleges is much lower than the most sanguine have 

 hoped for. These colleges, however, are performing a most 

 important work in preparing young men for instructional, deli- 

 cate, experimental work and for leadership in the practice of 

 modern farm methods. Since at least one-half of those attending 

 the public schools are in the elementary grades of the rural schools 

 the necessity for agricultural education has thrust itself more or 

 less into the elementary grades. Here the natural environment 

 of the child is being utilized, in a small degree, to prepare a 

 foundation for the more extensive education of the high school, 

 which will the better fit young men and women to carry on their 

 life work more economically and with a degree of joy and pleasure 

 that should be the reward of every citizen. 



The function of an agricultural course in the high school should 

 be to offer studies whose general cultural value is quite as great 

 as is their agricultural value. A young woman or a young man 

 who sees in his agricultural work little else than the scientific side 

 will enter life with the all-too-prevalent belief that only the prac- 

 tical is the open sesame to the greatest pleasures of life. 



Perhaps the county, township, or village high school offers its 

 courses at the period in the life of the child when its studies have 

 a most beneficial effect, since in this period the individual is seek- 

 ing the cause for the effect and is looking for results from certain 

 causes. Life habits are being formed not only for citizenship, 

 but for occupation. Neither an agricultural nor a manual train- 

 ing course should be offered as substitutes for present courses, but 

 rather as a more direct adaptation and application of the present 

 studies to the industries of the people who support the school. A 

 protest has often been sounded against secondary education in 

 the expression, "My child will never become a teacher or a law- 

 yer." The demand for industrial education, and the protest 

 against the so-called cultural and disciplinary studies, will never 

 be properly satisfied by substituting a majority of agricultural 

 studies or manual exercises for studies that reinforce or furnish 

 a foundation for the moral and social virtues incident to agricul- 



