EXPERIMENT ST ATI OX RECORD. 



Vol. XVII. February, L906. No. 6 



The joint meeting of the State Teachers' Association and the State 

 Farmers' Institute at Berkeley, Cal., December 26 29, L905, was of 

 unusual interest to the friends of agricultural education. It was an 

 unusually large meeting, over seven thousand persons being present 

 at the various meetings of the sections. In this way representative 

 school officers, teachers, and farmers were enabled t<> conic into close 

 personal touch and to discuss educational problems from a variety of 

 standpoints. 



The United States Government was represented by the Director of 

 this Office and the State government by the governor, superintendent 

 of public instruction, and other officials. Matters relatingto thegen- 

 eral interests of education throughout the country were presented by 

 Superintendent L. D. Harvey, of Wisconsin, and A. E. Win-hip. 

 editor of the Journal of Education, Boston. Most of the sessions were 

 held in buildings of the University of California, and President 

 Wheeler and a considerable number of members of the university 

 faculty took part in the meetings. Other universities and the normal 

 schools were also represented. The interests of various grades of 

 schools from the university down to the kindergarten were discussed. 

 Members of the legislature, city officials, editors, librarians, farmers, 

 and business men also participated. 



It was. therefore, of unusual significance that at such a meeting the 

 claims of agricultural education to a place in the public school system 

 in secondary and elementary schools, as well as in the college, were 

 elaborately and earnestly presented and discussed by a considerable 

 number of speakers. More significant even was the general atmos 

 phere of sympathy with the idea that the industrial element must in 

 one form or another become a permanent and pervasive constituent of 

 our public school system. 



This was impressively enforced by the earnest and thoughtful 

 address of Governor Pardee, in which unanswerable statistic- were 

 made to show that the children, and especially the boys, were in the 

 vast majority of cases leaving school at so early an age that tin 1 schools 

 were making little impression on their minds or characters; that there 

 was little in tin 1 school curricula to aid them in their life work, and 



