338 REPORT OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



nesota, with 65 high schools applying for the privilege of introducing 

 an agricultural course with State aid when the law permitted only 

 10, as another emphatic illustration of the trend of public-school 

 sentiment. The task now is to put vocational agriculture " within 

 walking or riding distance " of every boy on the farm, and he be- 

 lieved the high schools are ready for this expansion. 



E. J. Wickson presented the fourth topic of the program, on the 

 relation of the agricultural colleges to the solution of rural problems. 

 It was contended that " the truth which our aginculture now most 

 urgently needs is not to be gained by extending investigation in the 

 physical sciences nor in the application of the results to agricultural 

 practice, though both are desirable." Research is now needed in 

 rural economics and sociology. Prof. Wickson urged, therefore, that 

 the agricultural colleges should broaden their research and instruc- 

 tion in such subjects as economics and social science, and that in 

 universities with agricultural courses these subjects should be treated 

 from an agricultural point of view. 



Discussing this subject, J. H. AVorst emphasized the importance 

 of teaching the " hereditary farmer " ways of utilizing the develop- 

 ments of modern science for equipping the rural home wnth domestic 

 and sanitary conveniences; and A. B. Cordley held that the best 

 assistance that can be given the farmer is a local demonstration of 

 the commercial success of a scientific system of farming adapted to 

 his own conditions. Such a system must be so devised as not only 

 to be profitable to the individual farmer, but also to conserve and 

 increase the fertility of the soil. It can not be regarded as success- 

 ful if it fails in either of these respects. 



WORK OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION. 



The Boston meeting of the National Education Association, July 

 2-8, 1910, included, as have several of the earlier conventions of the 

 association, many papers and discussions relating to agricultural ed- 

 ucation. J. Y. Joyner, in his annual presidential address on Some 

 Dominant Tendencies in American Education, called attention to the 

 fact that " any educational system to be vital and useful in a democ- 

 racy must have its roots in the life and needs of all the people, and 

 must be shaped in accordance with the demands of the present and 

 the ideals for the future." He called attention to the fact that re- 

 cently it has occurred to those responsible for school policy that the 

 public schools of the various grades were fast becoming merely pre- 

 paratory schools, each for the next school above it in rank, and that 

 little attention was being given to the type of work which would "' fit 

 the common man to meet and solve the common, everyday problem of 

 his life, and to lift his life to a higher plane of efficiency, service, and 

 happiness." He characterized the passage of the land-grant acts and 



