438 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 0£f. Doc. 



model from which they made their own. They also had an agricul- 

 tural exhibit. Mr. Wittman of the State Board of Agriculture, vis- 

 ited this class and took the boys on a tour of the town. He visited 

 a number of the chicken pens of the town by daylight and gave the 

 boys a number of very valuable hints on the subject of poultry. Farm 

 forestry is also one of the subjects of the four years' course in agri- 

 culture in these schools, not forestry as a profession, but farm for- 

 estry as applied to the farm. It seems to me that any boy, that every 

 boy has a right to expect that his school shall train his hand as well 

 as his head. That is particularly true of the boy in the country. I 

 believe we make a mistake when we train the boy's head alone. In 

 order to give the boy an all around development, I believe we must 

 make provision to train his hand and his head and his heart. Black- 

 smithing is a part of the four years' course in agriculture. Wood- 

 working of various kinds — this happens to represent a class in rope 

 splicing. The boys take a keen interest in this work. Harness re- 

 pairing, as it is practiced on a farm, is also taught in these schools. 

 The boys are taught how to use tools, how to take care of tools, they 

 are taught the various processes connected with the use of tools. The 

 work which they do is not the manual training of to-day, good as that 

 is, but it is what you might term applied manual training, it is ap- 

 plied shop work, it is what we like to term farm shop work. The 

 things the boys make while they are learning the use of tools and the 

 processes involved in using the tools have some direct bearing on the 

 working of the agricultural course, some direct relation to home 

 farm life. These boys built this colony housje. There is a cor- 

 relation between shop work and poultry raising. 



It is hardly necessary to point out that a four years' course in ag- 

 riculture would be incomplete without a study of farm crops. This 

 one slide will give you a very slight idea, a brief glimpse only, of a 

 part of the practical work carried on in connection with the work of 

 farm crops. These boys are looking over the result of a germination 

 test of corn. The boys are taught how to select and store corn and 

 carry on the germination test. These boys, in connection with their 

 work in vegetable gardening, planned out, drew the plans of and made 

 a hot-bed and planted therein certain vegetables. Here you will note 

 them glazing the sash; they made and glazed the sash. Perhaps that 

 is hardly a very practical exercise, because as a rule a man buys his 

 sash rather than making and glazing it, and yet for one illustration 

 perhaps there was no valuable time lost. This second slide shows 

 them completing the hot-bed. This again is correlation between the 

 farm shop work and the vegetable gardening work. Dairying is a 

 very important industry and in many of our counties if the teaching 

 of agriculture in our schools is going to be of value, it is because it is 

 practical, it is because we are teaching the boys to work with things 

 rather than to talk about things. This means that it will be neces- 

 sary for us to have, as we do have in these agricultural schools, it will 

 be necessary to have laboratories fitted up with dairy apparatus; 

 it will be necessary to make frequent trips to dairy farms. 



This slide explains itself. I think you will realize that it will be 

 impossible for me to give you more than a glimpse into the various 

 utilities of these schools. The one thing I want to leave with you is 

 this, that an attempt is being made to make the work through and 



