No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 435 



as any one else, lliat there is some very poor teachinj? in agriculture 

 being done, that mistakes, grave mistakes, have been made in the 

 teaching of agriculture in our schools that have brought severe criti- 

 cism and condemnation upon the whole matter of agricultural educa- 

 tion. I realize that many teachers who have attempted to teach 

 this work have not been prepared. I also realize that it has been an 

 almost impossible task for a teacher unprepared, having text-books 

 not suitable for public school work — that it has been an almost im- 

 possible task for them to go into a school and do any kind of teach- 

 ing along agricnlinral ]ilu^'<. But a beginning must be made, we profit 

 by the mistakes we made more than by the successes with which we 

 meet, and I think that Pennsylvania has profited quite largely by the 

 mistakes made in the public schools. We are still making mistakes 

 and probably will continue to do so. 



The question of teaching agriculture on a basis satisfactory to the 

 educators, the farmers, the boys who are taking the work, is in a pro- 

 cess of evolution 3'et; we realize that. The school code of 1911 gives 

 school districts all the authority they need, practically all the author- 

 ity they need, to establish agricultural schools of various types. The 

 vocational education act of 1913 provides specifically for agricultural 

 •departments in high schools and special vocational agricultural 

 schools, sometimes known as farmers' high schools or agricultural 

 high schools. Usually in this State they are referred to as voca- 

 tional schools or agricultural high schools. 



You will probably be interested to know the distribution of these 

 agricultural schools. I wish to tell you what determines the location 

 of an agricultural department in a high school or a vocational agri- 

 cultural school: First, the community must need that type of educai 

 tion; second, they must want that type of education; and in the third 

 place, they must be willing to carry it on as it should be conducted.^ 

 That accounts for the distribution of these agricultural high schools' 

 over the State of Pennsylvania. Some districts have been very anx- 

 ious to have them. I wish to state also that there are a number of 

 counties not marked up on this map which have filed applications 

 with the Department of Public Instruction asking for State aid, the 

 special State aid granted to carry on this work, and their applications 

 are being considered at the present time. I would like to call your 

 attention to the fact that there are but two counties on the northern 

 tier of counties in which there are no argicultural high schools, Mc- 

 Kean and Warren. I am glad to say for those counties that we have 

 several requests from each of those counties. There are men in this 

 audience tonight, members of the State Board of Agriculture, who 

 have always stood behind agricultural education; there are mem- 

 bers here to-night who have spoken to us with reference to the estab- 

 lishment of such agricultural high schools. In reading over the his- 

 tory of the Pennsylvania Stat^ Board of Agriculture, I was inter- 

 ested to find the number of times at which different members of the 

 State Board referred to the necessity for agricultural education in the 

 country. There are but two counties on the western frontier, Beaver 

 and Lawrence, in which there is no agricultural high school. There 

 is one county, Mercer county, which now has four of these agricul- 

 tural high schools. Some of the states in the Union have established 

 congressional district agricultural schools and some have established 



