48 



Tlon. "William T. Harris, ('oniniissioiier of Education. Uoluix introcluced, spoke 

 as follows : 



Address of Hon. William T. Harris. Commissioner of Education. 



Gentlemen. 1 thank .von for this indication that you like to hear or see me for 

 a moment and hear a word from ine. and I would like to put in that word ri^ht 

 here on the suh.iect that has now heen brought ni) before you. The National 

 Educational Association has one large general meeting, as you do. and it ha-* 

 ever so many dei)artnients and may have ever so many more. Anyone who is 

 interested in any line of education in one of these departments may, if he can get 

 together twenty or thirty or forty or Hft.v ])ersons who wish to pursue his spe- 

 cial line of investigation, have a dejiartment formed for them, and the general 

 executive committee of the association, in going from one cit.v to another yea;- 

 by year, make arrangements for them and take care of all the business part of 

 it, so that all that these particular specialists who form a new group need to do 

 is to meet at that room which is provided for them on the dates specified. T 

 think, myself, it is really most important that agriculture — that is, agricultural 

 instruction — in the elementary schools, and perhaps also in the secondary 

 schools, should be provided for in the National Educational Association, and if 

 President Butterfield should l)e charged with that matter and bring it before 

 the association it would be very easy to get such a department established, and 

 the movement would prove fruitful to the National Educational Association 

 itself, because it would get hold of and meet a certain desire and impulse that 

 is moving throughout the country to have agriculture recognized. I suppose 

 there are various crude attempts all over the country to introduce instruction 

 in agriculture. Sometimes that movement stops at the vestibule. When you 

 and I, Mr. Chairman, were little boys agricultural instruction in this country 

 began at the vestibule, and l»egan by teaching a little book chemistry and a 

 little Latin, and things of that kind, and never got beyond that. Of course the 

 great point now in our day is that we push beyond the vestibule, and sometimes 

 we push so far that we forget that there is any vestibule and that there ought to 

 be one. Now is the time when there ought to be a department devoted to agri- 

 culture in the National Educational Association. The National Educational 

 Association collects at its meetings from 2<).!iO to 35.(»00 people sometimes. We 

 had one meeting attended by 36,000 people in Boston last year; a very large 

 gathering, and a great market fair, as it were, of education of all kinds. 



Once I was interested in getting up a series of round-table discussions ; it is 

 amusing to think of it. and perhai)s some of you here may remember the result 

 of it. We had discussions at Saratoga, and we had them on such transcendental 

 subjects as Schopenhauer and his pupils in Germany and their pessimistic 

 discussions. You could have such discussions in round tables, but not on the 

 farm. 



But agriculture should be brought up every year at the educational associa- 

 tion and a harvest of the thoughts be gathered there. That was the ob.iect of 

 establishing this great market fair of the National Educational Association — 

 that each one should bring his contribution to it. and find other jiersons who had 

 been working along those lines; and each one taking what is brought by the 

 others, each goes home richer by many things than the one thing that he 

 brought. That is what will happen in the National Educational Association if 

 this section is formed. There will be a gathering together of results and a 

 reaping of them, and it will give the agricultural colleges all over the cou-itr\ 

 and the State universities which deal with agriculture a part and place. Every 

 university, of course, every year finds certain lines on which it wishes it could 

 influencethe elementary schools, and each one examines the educational instruc- 

 tion in the elementary schools to find something that might be adopted in his 

 own State. There are thousands and thousands, sometimes as many as a hun- 

 dred thousand programmes of the annual meeting of the association circulated 

 all over the country before the meeting. But I need not tell you about the 

 National Educational Association, except that it has .$l.")(».(Hi() at interest, income 

 to be appro])riated to jn-inting its i>roceedings, so that a good paper on any sub- 

 ject always gets printed, and it is possible to get these papers reprinted some- 

 times, us the matter is electrotyped. 



