No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 261 



modified to some exteut after study. In any case, here is one thing 

 we accomplish with all-lhis work, regardless of whether any methodM 

 are changed or not, and some will be probably; here is a thing that 

 is done and it is a thing that is necessary. Home-making is made 

 popular with the girls, and do you know, my friends, I think it 

 is about time that an elfort is being made to make it more popular? 

 It is all right for girls to study algebra, geometry, Latin, Greek 

 and all those subjects, but if it is going to lead those girls away 

 from home rather than toward the home, it seems to me that it 

 is about time we give them some of this training with that other 

 training. 



Now I want to draw one distinction, that is this, ana the reason 

 I am going into details with you, ladies and gentlemen, is this: I 

 feel that in the work you are in, you have a right to know exactly 

 the methods we are following in the establishment and maintenance 

 of these schools. Some of you have co-operated in the work of 

 these schools already; meetings have been held in these schools; 

 I want to draw this distinction for your information; sometimes 

 a department of agriculture or of home-making, either or both, is 

 established in connection with an existing high school, the school 

 continuing as a high school with those vocational departments. 

 Sometimes a special vocational school is started, which merely 

 means that there must be in that school these two vocational courses. 

 You may have a high school that has one vocational course, the 

 agricultural, or one, the home-making. If you start a school that 

 has both, you have what is known as a vocational school, what 

 could be called, in truth, a vocational agricultural school; and I be- 

 lieve that is the type of school that is coming into the open country, 

 because in that school, the subjects are properly balanced with re- 

 lation to each other, the academic studies receiving the proper 

 amount of attention and not too much. 



This is a picture of an old academy that was on its last legs, just 

 about dead, taken over as a vocational school and started this 

 year for the first time as a vocational school with an enrollment 

 of between 60 and 70 pupils. In that school were placed a faculty 

 of 5 teachers, principal, academic teacher, and one teacher who 

 devotes part of her time to the teaching of English and part to the 

 teaching of drawing and music. The salary list of this school which 

 is right in the country, a mile and a half from any railroad, runs 

 about 13,600 of which the state pays $2,400. I claim that the coun- 

 try is just as much entitled to the services of qualified teachers, 

 and experienced teachers, as the towns and cities are. And I claim 

 that it is about time that the state put as much money into in- 

 struction in the rural districts as it does into the districts in the 

 cities, and I also feel that not only the question of efficient teachers, 

 but I believe it is about time that we let the cities and towns ex- 

 periment with new teachers and we took the experienced teachers 

 in the country. I think we are entitled to that. Three of these 

 five teachers are college graduates, and the other two are graduates 

 of normal schools. There is no reason why we should not have a 

 school of this kind in every section of the State. That school is 

 operated by four districts that went together for that purpose and 

 I believe in many cases the township is not the ideal unit to operate 



