232 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



able to give instruction in a great many things which are of 

 immense advantage to the children, but which, of course, it is 

 utterly out of the question to teach in our little country district 

 schools. For instance, such subjects as cooking and sewing 

 and many other practical subjects which might be mentioned. 

 But what I want to suggest is not so much that, but thought 

 something on that line might be done in Connecticut with 

 great advantage. Some of our small towns cannot give their 

 children proper educational advantages unless they have a 

 larger grant of money. In many of these towns they have to 

 close the district schools earlier than they ought, whereas if 

 they had one school in the center of the town, employing com- 

 petent teachers, where boys and girls of school age could con- 

 gregate, not only many of the studies which it is now imprac- 

 ticable to take up in the small schools could be given, but 

 instruction in plant life and many of the other things which 

 have been suggested here today could be added. One diffi- 

 culty, I suppose, is in the right kind of teachers. I don't know 

 but what the graduating classes at our State Agricultural 

 College could be drawn on for this purpose. If we could 

 make an arrangement by which these boys and girls could then 

 go down to Willimantic to the Normal School and take a term 

 or two there it seems to me that then they might go out pretty 

 well equipped to do splendid work. There is no use whatever 

 in putting out a course of study devised to carry these ideas 

 into effect and put it into the hands of many of the teachers 

 like some that we have in Connecticut. The teachers in the 

 country schools of Connecticut, as we all know, are not what 

 we would like to have. I should say that they are decreasing 

 in the State of Connecticut, because I think the movement is 

 upward toward insisting upon a better grade of teachers, but 

 in many places they are still not what they ought to be, and it 

 is not because of the responsibilities of their positions so much 

 as it is because of the conditions under which they work. We 

 need better school privileges, and that is one of the most im- 



