EDITORIAL. 305 



ing positions in the vocational subjects are sufficiently attractive to 

 secure the favorable consideration of agricultural college graduates. 



The agricultural colleges are helping to solve the teacher problem. 

 To meet the present emergency among teachers now in service, they 

 are holding summer schools, conducting traveling schools in connec- 

 tion with teachers' institutes, and offering special courses in agricul- 

 tural subjects for the graduates of other colleges and of normal 

 schools. This undoubtedly is work that needs to be done in all 

 parts of the countiy. 



Kecent experience indicates that many of the successful teachers 

 now in service, after taking short courses of a few months or a year 

 devoted almost exclusively to agriculture and methods of teaching 

 it, are likely to become our most successful high-school teachers of 

 agriculture. They have already acquired the high-school point of 

 view, they know the limitations of high-school pupils, and they are 

 not likely to attempt college work in high-school classes. Their 

 college work in a new and inspiring subject of study gives them 

 renewed freshness and enthusiasm, and they readily see the possi- 

 bilities of agriculture without being led unduly to magnify its 

 importance. 



In other ways the agricultural colleges are beginning to make their 

 influence felt in the teaching profession. The Bureau of Education 

 reports that thirty-six of the colleges for white persons now offer 

 their students some opportunities to fit themselves as special teachers 

 of agriculture for high-school work. Some of these offer only cer- 

 tain courses in general education, elective to students in agriculture; 

 a larger number offer courses in general education and special courses 

 in agricultural education ; a few which have departments of education 

 allow students in these departments to elect courses in agriculture; 

 while nine institutions offer prescribed four-year courses for teachers. 

 This feature of agricultural college work has grown rapidly in the 

 past two years, and it will probably develop more rapidly in future. 



Whatever the agricultural colleges may have done in a special way 

 to encourage the teaching of agriculture in high schools, an examina- 

 tion of the statistics of high-school courses indicates pretty clearly 

 that their influence upon this movement has been productive almost 

 in direct proportion to their activity. As evidence of this it may be 

 said that over eighty per cent of the high schools teaching agriculture 

 are in eighteen States having in their agricultural colleges some 

 definite organization — an extension department, a department of 

 agricultural education, a teachers' course in agriculture, or some other 

 definite agency — for reaching the public schools. And if the four 

 or five States were selected which are showing the largest results in 

 public-school work in agriculture these would be found to be States 

 whose colleges of agriculture have been longest in this field and most 

 active in its cultivation. 



