84 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



reshaped by growth that one who teaches them must periodically re- 

 learu his subject matter. 



Economics, Political Science and Sociology are studies in this depart- 

 ment which answer to the description just given and the teachers of all 

 of these subjects find their material differing widely from year to year. 

 This variableness in material makes the lecture method of presenting 

 these studies almost unavoidable and a species of informal or conversa- 

 tional lectures supplemented by quizzes from a text-book has proven the 

 best way for teaching these subjects at this college. This method of 

 teaching is further dictated by the fact that the students to whom 

 this work is given are properly advanced students — ^juniors and seniors 

 — and therefore are not only capable of benefitting from the lecture 

 method but also fairly exact something more than mere text book 

 routine from their teachers. 



Under the circumstances of presenting the courses in this department 

 in the way which has been described, it has long been found that fifteen 

 hours per week is the very maximum of time that an instructor can 

 efficiently teach these subjects to such students and it is highly probable 

 that by shortening this time the instruction would be sufiiciently im- 

 proved in quality to more than equal the diminished quantity. It is 

 much to be hoped that some settled policy may soon develop which will 

 properly determine the constituents of a day's work for college teachers. 

 It seems timely for many reasons to enlarge here upon the inquiry as to 

 which of the two kinds of economics, to which reference was made in a 

 preceding paragraph, should be taught at agricultural and engineering 

 colleges. The place of economics as a cultural study in the curriculum 

 of the modern college seems assured since it affords similar materials 

 for teaching purposes as that furnished by any other science. But 

 it seems demonstrable that it is the practical usefulness of the subject 

 in these days of insistent economic problems, class strivings and social 

 questions which has caused Avithin a decade the manifold additions to 

 the economic courees offered in our colleges and universities. College 

 students are interested in these matters and want to understand the 

 principles and forces which govern economic matters. The problem of 

 selection becomes indeed an ardous one to the college instructor when 

 confronted with the task of choosing the three or four phases of econ- 

 omics which he is allowed to present from the seventy or more now 

 offered by the modern university. 



The selection at an engineering and agricultural college, however, 

 is commonly limited to a choice between specialized phases of economics 

 which bear closely upon agriculture or engineering as the more general 

 and elementary features of the subject. At this college the choice has 

 been made in favor of the general presentation both because of the 

 greater disciplinary value from the better elaborated elementary prin- 

 ciples and also because it is believed that the future agriculturalist or 

 engineer should be interested and instinicted in social problems as 

 a citizen and member of society first and foremost, rather 

 than as a mere technicist. The question is the same with econ- 

 omics as it is with any of the other sciences which have useful appli 

 cations: should the science come first in class room presentation and the 

 practical features later, or should the order be reversed. It is much to 

 be feared that in many college schemes of study in which courses in 



