304 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



knowledge of agriculture on the part of teachers, sixteen States have 

 passed laws requiring teachers to be examined in this subject; but 

 it has been found that these requirements alone do not solve the 

 problem. 



The facilities for training teachers along vocational lines are inade- 

 quate. The State normal schools are doing what they can to prepare 

 their students for such work, but the time that can be given to voca- 

 tional subjects in a year or two in the normal school is extremely 

 limited; and besides, the normal schools enroll only a small per- 

 centage of those who teach in the rural common schools. Their stu- 

 dents go largely into the grade work of village and city schools. Out 

 of a total of about two hundred normal schools, one hundred and 

 fourteen of those for whites and thirteen of those for negroes are 

 giving instruction in agriculture. 



In addition to these, there are in Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, and 

 Wisconsin about two hundred and eighty high-school normal train- 

 ing courses of one or two years in length, which include some work 

 in agriculture. It is said that a large percentage of those who 

 graduate from these training courses go directly into the rural 

 schools, and while the training they get in this way is by no means 

 adequate, yet it is better than that secured by the average rural 

 teacher. With the State normal schools and these training courses 

 there are now over four hundred institutions giving instruction in 

 agriculture to prospective teachers in the elementary grades, and 

 while the meagerness of the instruction they can give in agriculture 

 is to be deprecated, it is nevertheless encouraging to know that some- 

 thing in this line is being done in such a large number of institutions. 



Trained teachers for the high-school courses in agriculture are 

 also scarce. The graduates of the four-year courses in the colleges 

 of agriculture find such attractive opportunities in farming or the 

 salaries offered them by agricultural colleges or experiment stations 

 are so large that teaching in the public high schools as a profession 

 does not appeal to many of them. The initial salaries offered by 

 high schools may be as good or sometimes better than these grad- 

 uates could command in other lines of professional or practical 

 work, but the outlook for permanent employment and for increasing 

 returns as the years go by is not so good. 



The condition with reference to teachers of agriculture is some- 

 what better in the special agricultural schools and the subsidized 

 agricultural departments in public high schools than in the ordinary 

 public high schools. In the former the employment of trained 

 teachers of agriculture is usually one of the conditions upon which 

 State aid is given. The permanence of agriculture in these schools 

 is assured, and, furthermore, the funds from the State treasury 

 enable the local authorities to pay relatively high salaries without 

 seriously affecting local taxation. Under such conditions the teaeh- 



