1404 Rural School Leaflet 



girls have shown in exhibiting results of which they were honestly ashamed, 

 simply because they had promised to do so, and in refusing proffered aid, 

 may be worth infinitely more than the good ears of com that failed to 

 appear in some particular cases. 



SCHOOL CLUBS AND SCHOOL CONTESTS 



M. G. Nelson 

 (Superintendent of Fifth District, Delaware County) 



The editors of the Cornell Rural School Leaflet have asked me to relate 

 my experience with club work. It has been experimental, and, Hke all 

 experiments, contains errors. The slogan " Back to the farm " does not 

 appeal to me, but "Stay on the farm" does. The principal reason I 

 left the city and entered on my present work was that great opportunities 

 are given a district superintendent to influence the rising generation 

 to stay on the farm and to prevent the drift toward the city shops. Too 

 often have I seen my boys, after a year in the factories, lose every vestige 

 of color and take on that sickly palor caused by smoke, bad air, and lack 

 of sunlight. 



A certain boy disliked to mill<:. In his mind this department of farm 

 work was a necessary evil. It happened that his father purchased a 

 Babcock testing machine. The boy learned to operate it and proceeded 

 to test the various cows. Milking became a little more interesting. It 

 occurred to him that a cow was a machine, which must be rightly managed 

 in order to produce the best results. He began to realize that the quality 

 and the amount of food given to the cow had an influence on the amount 

 of milk produced. While before this boy ha.d seen nothing but drudgery 

 on the farm, he came to see, through his newly opened eyes, that farming 

 is a business that furnishes many interesting problems to the thoughtful 

 mind and that the working out of these problems is most fascinating. 

 This boy by accident discovered that farming is an occupation furnishing 

 infinitely more interest and freedom than the front platform of a trolley 

 car or work in the shop can ever give. He is at present managing a farm 

 of two hundred acres and having worlds of fun doing it. 



The agricultural club reaches such boys not by accident, which happens 

 to a very few, but by design, which touches many. In the Fifth Supervi- 

 sor>' District of Delaware County we have an experiment club and a boys' 

 and girls' agricultural club the work of which culminates in an annual 

 school fair. The experiment club is composed of the teacher and the 

 pupils of District No. 4 of the town of Davenport, which is a general farm- 

 ing commtmity. This district supports an ordinary' school, which has 

 small but level and well-drained grounds. The teacher of this school is a 



