No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 51 



AGRICULTrKA L EDUCATION. 



It is uot to be expected tluit the time will evei- come, when every 

 farmei- will be a graduate of a College of Agricultiue, or that ever a 

 majority can be so educated. The time, however, ought to come, and 

 come soon, when every farmer's child will have opportunity for 

 obtaining a knowledge of the elements of the natural sciences which 

 relate to the farmer's life and occupation. 



All that is needed, is to plant a graded school in each district, 

 equipped with ptroper teachers and appropriate apparatus, to ac 

 complish this result. The old siugie-teacher-district-school is no 

 longer competent to give the amount and variety of instruction 

 needed by country children. The teacher who, with the present lim- 

 ited curriculum, is obliged to hear twenty-seven classes each day — 

 which is the average for the countrv teacher in Pennsvivania — can- 

 not be further burdened with additional work, no matter how im- 

 portant, or how urgently needed, such additional instruction may 

 possibly be. The country teacher has reached his limit of physical 

 endurance, and the imposition of further work mtist result in the 

 slighting of present studies, which even now, owing to the conditions 

 named, are inadequately taught. 



Give the country teacher the same chance in the number of classes 

 which he shall hear, that his city cousin has. and his scholars the 

 same opportunity for gaining knowledge that the city children 

 now enjoy, and there soon will be such an impetus given to country 

 living and its occupations, as will revolutionize agriculture, and 

 speedily stop the flow of her best blood away from the farms, to be. 

 alas, too often corrupted and lost, in the great putrid sea of city life. 



THE COMMITTEE OF TT^'EILVE. 



At a meeting in Denver, Colorado, in 1805. the National Council 

 of Education, appointed, what has now become known and famous, 

 as the '"Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools." This comjnittee, 

 comjiosed of Henry gabin, D. L. Kihle, A. T>. Poland. C. C. Eounds, 

 J. H. Phillips, B. A. Hinsdale. S. T. Black. W. S. Sutton. L. E. 

 Wolfe, W. T. Harris, L. B. Evans and C. R. Skinner, leading educa- 

 tors in the United States, after a very exhaustive examination of 

 the whole subject of education under country conditions, reported 

 to the association, in a volume of oyer two hund.-ed pages, the results 

 of their inquiry and the conclusions reached. 



The learned character of this committee gives its recommenda- 

 tions a value, greater than those of anv other authoritv in this 



