Farmers^ Week in Agricultural College. 91 



the number of oat heads in the hoop and found what percentage of them 

 were smutted. This was repeated in several places in the field and an 

 average taken. A calculation was then made of the proportion of the 

 crop lost by smut. Next the teacher got a bulletin on how to treat 

 smut and gave it to the farmer. The following season this farmer 

 treated his seed oats, had no smut, and saved several hundred dollars. 



"In a similar manner farmers can be taught how to select seed 

 potatoes, how to spray fruit trees and the like. An infinite number of 

 subjects can be taken up by the teachers, depending on the type of 

 farming in the immediate locality of the schools and not dealing in a 

 lot of glittering generalities about which the teachers know nothing. 

 Then, too, the teachers can borrow some good farm papers from their 

 patrons and select good articles for supplementary reading by the 

 pupils. 



' ' The teachers can take an acre of timber land and have the pupils 

 determine the number of merchantable trees, ascertain the species of 

 each and find out the value of the lumber. The children can count the 

 number of rings on the trees that are down and find out how long it 

 takes to grow trees of a given size. Then the teacher could find out 

 what revenues this acre of timber land would bring if handled as a forest. 

 The forest service would furnish on request literature on how to handle 

 woodland and how to estimate the amount of lumber in a tree." 



That 's not only good teaching, but it 's also good strategy and good 

 politics. 



When harvest time comes, have the children save and bring to 

 school the best samples of grain and the best ears of corn, and then 

 have a little school and neighborhood corn show, the best specimens to 

 compete afterward in a tow^nship and a county contest. 



Frequent excursions should be made to neighboring farms for the 

 purpose of examining some special crop, implement, method of tillage, 

 or breed of live stock. The best neighborhood methods of plowing, 

 planting, cultivating and harvesting, should all be made tributary to 

 the information of the class in agriculture. 



The farmer who w^ould hesitate to come into the school and talk 

 about his superior cattle, swine, sheep or poultry, can be easily per- 

 suaded to talk about them to a visiting group of children on his own 

 farm. And after that it's not so hard to get him to talk to the w'hole 

 school or the neighborhood at a school meeting. 



The educational value of such school work is hard to overestimate. 

 It sets children and parents to thinking for themselves about the mean- 

 ing of their owm work. And it promotes ideal as well as practical re- 

 lations between the school and the home, and the parents with their 



