108 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



REPORT OF WORK IX THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT. 



To the President of the Michigan Agricultural College: 



Sir — The following is a brief report covering the work in the English 

 Department for the year 1897-98: 



The working force of the department remained the same as in the 

 year previous, with the exception that, owing to the largely increased 

 attendance and the consequent increase of divisions and of essay work, 

 the librarian was, with your approval, employed to take some class 

 work and essav work. The arrangement will be continued in the year 

 1898-99. 



The year ends the connection of Professor A. B. Noble with the Col- 

 lege, he having accepted a position as professor of English in the Iowa 

 Agricultural College. It is fitting that I here record my appreciation 

 of his long, earnest, intelligent, and laborious work in this department. 

 It is a source, too, of congratulation to ourselves and to the College that 

 the system of work we have evolved to meet the peculiar requirements 

 of an Agricultural College Course and the pressing needs of the material 

 that composes the freshman class in such a course has already met 

 such flattering recognition as is implied in the desire to transplant our 

 system to a sister institution where the problem to be solved is the 

 same as our own. I greatly rejoice in Professor Noble's well-merited 

 promotion, and shall always feel sincere gratitude to him for his un- 

 failing zeal and wise counsel in the work of the department. 



The plan of English work adopted in the Agricultural Course at its 

 reorganization has been continued throughout the past year, and justi- 

 fies itself more and more emphatically as time goes on. Its basal prin- 

 ciples are a minimum of theory with a maximum of practice — the at- 

 tention directed primarily to the thought and secondarily to the form 

 in which the thought is couched; the careful study of the successful solu- 

 tion by great writers of problems of expression, and constant, persis 

 tent, untiring exercise upon these problems in a carefully graded course 

 of exercises extending through the whole four years. These principles, 

 no doubt, have been in theory fully accepted by all teachers from time 

 immemorial; but the detailed adjustment of them to our condition 

 has been a matter of long and painful evolution, and was finally suc- 

 cessful, in as far as we can flatter ourselves that we have attained suc- 

 cess, only through a revisal and re-arrangement of the entire agricultural 

 course in all its departments, under a resolution of the Board of Agricul- 

 ture in 1895 appointing a committee, of which I was a member, to in- 

 vestigate the course, determine its defects, and suggest desirable 

 changes. The opportunity to revise the English course in its entirety 

 was eagerly seized, and the course now in operation was the outcome. 



I would call your attention to the fact that in this new arrangement 

 the work of the teachers has been increased three-fold, notwithstand- 

 ing that the actual number of class-room hours remains the same. This 



