272 REPORT JF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



Oklahoma, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, 

 and Wisconsin are giving regular instructions in nature study and 

 elementary agriculture. 



Not content to wait for the formulation of definite courses of 

 instruction in agriculture for the rural schools and the training of 

 teachers in this subject, there is in man}^ places an effort to do some- 

 thing tangible to arouse the interest of farmers' boys in the study of 

 agriculture. Through the agency of farmers' organizations coopera- 

 ting with the State agricultural colleges and State and county depart- 

 ments of education, boys' agricultural clubs have been organized, 

 largely in connection with the schools, in Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, 

 Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas, 

 Wisconsin, and probabl}^ other States. The members of these clubs 

 have regular institute meetings and lecture courses, go on excursions 

 to educational institutions and large farms, conduct variety tests 

 with corn, cotton, sugar beets, and other crops, and exhibit their 

 products at school, county, and State fairs. 



A remarkable change has taken place in the attitude of school 

 officers and teachers regarding nature study and elementary agri- 

 culture as school subjects. A few 3^ears ago it was unusual to find any 

 subject relating to agriculture in public schools in the programmes of 

 the teachers' meetings. Now scarcely an educational meeting of 

 importance is held anywhere in the United States without at least 

 one paper on some phase of this subject, and in many cases whole 

 sessions are devoted to the discussion of various topics relating to it, 

 from nature study and school gardening to the more formal courses in 

 agriculture. A few examples will serve to show how widespread is 

 this interest. 



At the sixty-seventh annual convention of the American Institute 

 of Instruction at New Haven, Conn., in July, 1906, which is largely 

 attended by school officers and teachers from difl'erent parts of New 

 England, the teaching of elementary agricidture was largely discussed 

 in the department of rural education, fornuil papers on this subject 

 being presented by the superintendent of education of Vermont and 

 the professor of agriculture of the Massachusetts Agriculture College. 



New England has also been aroused to a serious and thorough dis- 

 cussion of this matter b}^ the report of a Commission on Industrial 

 and Technical Education presented to the legislature of Massachusetts 

 in April, 1906. The chairman of this commission was lion. Carroll 

 D. Wright, for many years United States Commissioner of Labor and 

 now president of Clark College at Worcester, Mass. This commis- 

 sion was appointed by the governor of Massachusetts in accordance 

 with an act of the legislature, and spent nearly a year in a study of 

 the relation of children to our industries and the condition of industrial 

 education at home and abroad. The commission found that "there 



