84 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



fact that our teachers were not prepared to teach it. Agriculture 

 is a business, and the teacher must be qualified to teach that before 

 she can teach it. If we had put into the statutes that the teachers 

 of the common schools of this State should teach the Latin lan- 

 guage, those teachers would have fitted themselves to teach that 

 language, and would have taught it, and there were plenty of 

 schools in the State where they could learn the Latin language 

 without great expense, and the teaching of Latin, if it had been 

 required by our statutes, might have been successful, even though 

 not desirable. But when the teaching of agriculture was 

 required, the teachers were not fitted for that line of work, and 

 they did not know where to go to fit themselves for it. There 

 was only one place in the State of Maine where they could go, 

 and that was to the State College, and of course it was out of the 

 question for all the teachers of Maine to go there and educate 

 themselves for this work. That is one of the reasons why agri- 

 cultural teaching in the common school failed. 



Another reason, perhaps of less importance, was the fact that 

 the men in charge of it attempted too much, they aimed too high, 

 and they shot over the heads of the children. This matter has 

 been tried not only in this country, but in European countries. 

 I find in France the study of agriculture is compulsory. They 

 met there the same trouble that we met. When the study of 

 agriculture was introduced into the common schools the teachers 

 were not fitted to teach it, but a provision was put into their law 

 which helped them out in a measure. This was that the normal 

 schools which educated the teachers (and I understand there are 

 many of them in that country) should establish a course in agri- 

 culture. In that way they are attempting to overcome the 

 greatest difficulty in the way. I believe that the study of agri- 

 culture in the common schools can best be accomplished in an 

 indirect manner. I want to speak to you of what has been done 

 in the state of New York, where the attempt has been made to 

 teach nature studies, which is along the same line. Cornell 

 University, I think it was, issued some leaflets, of a few pages, 

 upon some common subjects in nature, some phenomena that 

 arise in nature. These leaflets were issued by the professors in 

 the college, and these professors went right out into the common 

 schools and talked with the teachers, and with the school officers 

 and the pupils. The subject of one of these leaflets is "How 



