No. 7. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 30» 



accomplished through the united efforts of officers of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture, the Agricultural Colleges and 

 Experiment Stations, State Superintendents of Public Instruction, 

 county superintendents of schools and others engaged in educa- 

 tional work. 



The work in school gardening at the State Normal School at Hy- 

 annis, Mass., was described and illustrated for the purpose of show- 

 ing how such work can be profitably correlated with letter-writing, 

 composition, arithmetic, business training and social training. Sim- 

 ilar work in the Normal School at Washington, D. C, with which 

 the United States Department of Agriculture is co-operating, was 

 described for the purpose of showing methods of training teachers 

 for gardening. The young women in the senior and junior classes 

 of the Normal School are required to learn by precept and practice 

 some of the details of i)ropagating and growing plants in the potting 

 room and greenhouses of the Department, and to apply this infor- 

 mation in caring for gardens at their homes. These gardens are 

 inspected and photographed by the instructor in charge of this 

 work. The young women also participate in directing school garden 

 work in the grounds of the United States Department of Agricul- 

 ture, where boys from adjacent schools have vegetable plots, and 

 in the improvement of school grounds in different parts of the city. 



Some of the school grounds in Rochester, N. Y., were shown for 

 the purpose of illustrating what children are doing with little or 

 no financial aid for the beautification of school grounds and the ad- 

 jacent streets. In the vicinity of one school, a mile of shade trees 

 and lawn between the curb and the sidewalk have been planted and 

 cared for by the pupils. 



The efforts to introduce agriculture into the elementary schools 

 of the country were briefly reviewed, attention being called to state 

 adoption of text-books in North Carolina, Alabama, Florida and 

 Georgia, and county adoption in Virginia and Maryland. Mention 

 was also made of outline courses in agriculture prepared for the 

 teachers in Illinois, Indiana and Missouri, and of clubs of boys and 

 girls which have been organized in Ohio, Illinois, Icwa and TexaSj 

 to conduct simple agricultural experiments. 



It was argued that before much can be done toward the successful 

 introduction of nature study and agriculture into the rural schools, 

 teachers must be^given better training for this work and the schools 

 themselves must be improved. Considerable attention is now being 

 given to courses for teachers in the agricultural colleges and normal 

 schools of Missouri, Michigan, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York and 

 North Carolina. The improvement of schools could be brought 

 about by increasing their revenues so that teachers could be better 

 paid and retained for a number of years, and by abandoaing smj^U 



