234 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



years of age. I don't think I will take the time any more to go into 

 the matter to call attention to its imperfections. Of course, this 

 work has been taken up in a great many places already. 



Then, a number of good elementary text-books have been pre- 

 pared, and I am informed on good authority that one of these text- 

 books has already reached an edition of 2OO,0U0 copies, and I know 

 it is being used very extensively, and with very considerable success 

 in a number of states. Of course, in elementary schools we can do 

 but little in teaching that which relates directly to agriculture, so 

 we must supplement the elementary school as far as possible 

 with the high school. Now, the high school is practically a new 

 institution in this country, although it is favored with a consider- 

 able number of pupils. If you had gone back I think about fifteen 

 years you would have found the number of pupils attending high 

 school in this country, but then the high schools were chiefly in 

 the larger cities, and did not exceed 200,000 of the entire population. 

 In the course of the next ten years the number had risen to over 

 600,000, and today we have probably 800,000 students in our high 

 schools. That shows how rapidly people have taken to the idea 

 that the public should support elementary education. 



Now, if secondary education is a good thing for the city people, 

 H 'think a fair presumption w^ould be that it is a good thing for 

 the country people also. Now, the city high schools have been more 

 and more modified to suit the conditions of city life, until today, 

 in many of our cities, we have not only the ordinary elementary 

 studies in the high school, but we have a high school business course, 

 and a domestic course, and a scientific course, and a manual train- 

 ing course, and these are growing more and more popular. Now, 

 in the same way we must have this specialized education for our 

 country people. We must introduce into these schools special 

 studies on the conditions of country life, and in these schools we 

 can teach a considerable amount of agriculture, and subjects re- 

 lating thereto, and there is no doubt about it, it can be done suc- 

 cessfully. It has been done in other countries, and the system of sec- 

 ondary agricultural education now existing in a number of European 

 countries is thoroughly successful. All the students of education 

 that have looked into this matter, are, I think,' agreed on this 

 point. We are beginning to organize such schools in this country. 

 There have been organized, I think, eight. We have them connected 

 with our agricultural colleges, and we have also in a number of 

 places, rural high schools. 



I cannot enter into a discusion of the best plan. Indeed, I am 

 not sure that there is a best plan. The probability is that we shall 

 come to have high schools with different agricultural courses, 

 graded according to the different conditions in those regions and 

 states. The main point is to get a fundamental elementary educa- 

 tion along agricultural lines. We have recently been interested in 

 the Department of Agriculture, in an effort made last year to 

 establish a secondary agricultural school in a rural community in 

 Maryland, and it may be of some interest to you, if you have not 

 followed that movement, to learn something about that school, 

 which is a little different in some respects from other schools 

 of the same class. There was a rural community in Maryland 

 which found itself without high school advantages, and the people 



