TEXT-BOOK OF AGRICULTURE. 695 



coiiio into use — tho information-book, in which the .sul)ject-matter is to 

 be learned and from wliich recitations arc to be made and the nature- 

 stud}' book which will set .pupils and teachers at work with actual 

 things and affairs. The former will no doubt ))e more popular at the 

 beo-innino-, but the latter will have the more a])idin2- influence, because 

 it rests on sound pedagogical principles. In the lower grades, general 

 nature stud}- will no doubt prove to be the most useful method of 

 presentation, for this is fundamentjil. As the grades advance, agri- 

 cultural nature study can gradually be introduced. 



It is proba))le that the most useful book, at least for the present, 

 will be one that attempts at the same time to awaken an interest in 

 counti-y life and to set the pupil at the working out of specific problems. 

 Mere problems are too "dry" to attract pupils except now and then 

 under the inspiration of an extra good teacher. On the other hand, 

 mere information-giving has little teaching value and is not likel}' to 

 arouse an}- important enthusiasm for the open country and the farm. 

 At a recent convention I heard it said, in advocacy of a certain text, 

 that the book "would teach itself.-' This is a doubtful encomium. 

 The book that does all the work for the pupil has little abiding value. 



It is probable that no one system nor one set of texts can be made 

 to work in different parts of the Union. The introducing of agricul- 

 ture into the rural schools is a very different question in the East from 

 what it is in the West. In the West, and largely in the South, agri- 

 culture dominates public sentiment. In the East, however, agricultural 

 sentiment is far from paramount, and in some parts it is scarcely dis- 

 cernible. Moreover, the theories of the relations of the university 

 and agricultural college to the administration of public education are 

 uidike as between some of the thirteen original States on the one hand 

 and the States formed from the Northwest Territory and from the 

 farther West on the other. In most parts of the East the movement 

 is likely to originate extraneously to the public school system and to 

 be at first of an advisory and interest-arousing character. It would 

 seem to l)e a most curious anomaly that it is so ditlicult to introduce 

 agricultural sul)jccts into scliools in the agricultural regions; but the 

 wonder is explained when one remend)ers that school systems began 

 with thinus that are extraneous to the dailv life and onlv latterlv have 

 come to the point of putting into pedagogic form the things and activi- 

 ties whereby men li\('. It seems to be the history of the evolu- 

 tion of institutions that they have begun at the top and worked down- 

 ward to the connnon and homely aflairs of life. This movement for 

 the teaching of agri<'ulture in the schools, in other words, is the expres 

 sion of the desire to i)ut the scliools in line with the activities of the 

 people. Necessarily, the agricultural insti'uction will attain the great- 

 est pi'ominence in those regions in which agriculture itself attains to 

 the greatest impoitance. 



