316 REPORT OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



upon himself for plans and methods and has been living in compara- 

 tive ignorance of what liis fellow-workers in agricultural education are 

 doing in similar directions. The mere collecting and publisliing of 

 what is being attempted in agricultural extension work will, no doubt, 

 by the mere bringing together of suggestions and placing them in the 

 hands of educators, gradually secure their adoption and thus in time 

 effect substantial unity of method. 



Another feature which the investigation revealed is the increased 

 use of agricultural literature wherever agriculture is being taught to 

 country people. Standard agricultural books, experiment station 

 bulletins, publications by the United States Department of Agricul- 

 ture, and agricultural periodicals, all are taken and read as never 

 before. Children in their school and home garden and in their corn- 

 growing contest work are reading scientific books and bulletins to get 

 the latest information to enable them to plant, fertiHze, cultivate, 

 and care for the things that they have undertaken to produce. 



A fifth fact is the intense interest that school children are taking in 

 agricultural study both in the town and country schools. The reports 

 without exception, when speaking of this phase of education work, 

 refer to it as a point of special note. 



The investigation further shows that a great obstacle in the way of 

 extension work in agriculture is the lack of teachers qualified for 

 giving tliis kind of instruction. The means for supplying an adequate 

 number of capable teachers is a problem not yet satisfactorily solved. 

 It is manifest, however, that tliis extension work in agriculture must, 

 before competent teachers can be had, provide a profitable career for 

 educated men. Extension teaching will have to become a profession 

 to be engaged in continuouslj^ and be at least as remunerative as 

 regular instruction service in colleges or normal schools, before com- 

 petent men and women will prepare for and enter upon institute work 

 as a Hfe pursuit. 



The committee in its report formulated the following tentative 

 definition of extension teacliing in agriculture : 



Extension teaching in agriculture embraces those forms of instruction in subjects 

 having to do with improved methods of agricuhural production and with the general 

 welfare of the rural population that are offered to people not enrolled as resident pupils 

 in educational institutions. 



The institutions for liigher education not agricultural are doing 

 very little in the way of extension teacliing in agriculture. The 

 normal schools, however, have taken up this work with considerable 

 vigor in some of the States and have not only been giving agricultural 

 instruction to their students but have also been sending out instruct- 

 ors to assist in the farmers' institutes, by delivering lectures, to con- 

 duct demonstrations, and to aid in school garden work, in connection 

 with the district schools. Some of the normal schools are issuing 



