Rural School Leaflet 125 i 



kind that is now possible; but the farther removed the laboratory, the 

 less direct the teaching. 



The school should reflect the work and the needs of its community. 

 If the community is pastoral — and all rural communities are pastoral — 

 then the school should have a pastoral sentiment and feeling. Actual 

 farm experience has great power in the training of the young. We had 

 not realized how much real value it has until we measured the inadequate 

 results of much of the city experience and of much of the formal tradi- 

 tional school work. We are now to catch up these rural experiences 

 and practices into a working plan of education, and we shall make the 

 open country a real background of school work. We are all experimenting 

 with the subject now if not even playing with it, but it is becoming more 

 real and in time we shall have a genuinely pastoral motive running through 

 the schools. The out-of-doors is the background of civilization. 



In order to introduce agriculture into any elementary rural school it 

 is first necessary to have a willing teacher. The trustees should be able 

 to settle this point. The second step is to begin to study the commonest 

 and most available object concerning which the teacher has any kind 

 of knowledge. The third step is to begin to connect or organize these 

 observations into a method or system. This simple beginning made, 

 the work should grow. It may or may not be necessary to organize a 

 special class in agriculture; the geography, arithmetic, reading, manual 

 training, nature-study, and other work may be modified or re-directed. 

 It is possible to teach the state elementary syllabus in such a way as to 

 give a good agricultural training. 



In the high school the teacher should be well trained in some special 

 line of science; and if he has had a course in a college of agriculture he 

 should be much better adapted to the work. Here the teaching may 

 partake somewhat more of the laboratory method, although it is possible 

 that our insistence on formal laboratory work in both schools and colleges 

 has been carried too far. In the high school, a separate and special 

 class in agriculture would better be organized ; and the high school syllabus 

 of the State Education Department provides for this. 



In all agricultural work in the schools of the State, the College of Agri- 

 culture desires to render all the aid that it can. Correspondence is 

 invited on the agricultural questions involved. In special cases an officer 

 of the College may be sent to give advice on the technical agricultural 

 phases of the teaching. Considerable literature in the publications of 

 the College is now available and will be sent on application. 



In many districts the sentiment for agricultural work in the schools 

 will develop very slowly. Usually, however, there is one person in the 

 community who is alive to the importance of these new questions. If 



