August 19, 1! 



HORTICULTURE 



Education in Horticulture at Massachusetts Agricultural College 



No one uowadavF iloiilil^^ the value of education. 

 Every one believes it is desirable to have as much as 

 he can get. The great questions are how to get it and 

 what methods of education are best. 



Horticultural education is comparatively a new 

 line, at least in America. Being new, we might expect 

 to find the methods somewhat unsettled; and it would 

 be no great surprise if the results of horticultural 

 education were not so good as the results of a theologi- 

 cal education, for instance, which has been much longer 

 practiced in this country. It certainly is true, however, 

 that horticultural education has made great progress in 

 recent years. The methods have been very much 

 improved, and I am sure the results are more satisfac- 

 tory to everyone than they used to be. 



The larger part of such work is now done in the 

 State agricultural colleges, and, in considering this 

 general subject, we naturally turn first to them. Some 

 of these colleges have been designed and managed with 

 the purpose of giving a general education; perhaps the 

 majority of them have had in view a general education 

 with specialization in the various lines of agriculture. 

 Thus in all these colleges horticulture has been only one 

 of many subjects, and it has had to compete with such 

 topics as agriculture, dairying, engineering, general 

 science, and sometimes the classics. This competition 

 has had many advantages, but it has also had obvious 

 drawbacks. It has greatly complicated matters. It 

 would have been much easier to develop a purely horti- 

 cultural college by itself,' quite separate from all these 

 conflicting interests. That is what has usually been 

 done in Germany, and to some extent in England and 

 Scotland. I think we shall come to that presently in 

 America, but for very different reasons and from very 

 different points of view. 



At the present time the agricultural colleges give 

 very fair opportunities for a horticultural education. 

 Some of them give very excellent opportunities, in my 

 opinion, but there is still a great room for improve- 

 ment. One fundamentally important point, which the 

 public largely fails to grasp, is that the primary object 

 of these colleges is education rather than horticulture. 

 Under present circumstances, it is more important that 

 he should be taught horticulture. There is not space 

 here to discuss this matter, but it is a point of vital 

 consequence. If we could devote the entire four years 

 of the college course to actual manual practice, properly 

 systemized and thoroughly carried out, our graduates 

 would be much more elTicicnt in growing gloxinias, let- 

 tuce, or strawberries, than tlioy are now, but they would 

 not be so well educated; that is, so well developed 

 mentally. 



The great progress which has been made in horticul- 

 tural education during the last ten years has been chiefly 

 in the line of increasing the educative value of the 

 horticultural courses. It is my firm conviction that a 



course in floriculture, or in pomology, or in landscape 

 gardening, will develop a student mentally quite as 

 much as a course in astronomy, civics, Greek, or Taga- 

 log ; but in order to do so, it must be as well organized 

 and as well taught. The trouble has been in years 

 past that the teachers of Greek knew how to teach their 

 subject so much better than we knew how to teach horti- 

 culture that we could not compete with them, in spite 

 of the many natural advantages of our subject. But 

 just as soon as we learn how to teach pomology, for 

 instance, in a thoroughly effective way, that subject can 

 be substituted for Greek or ethnology in the college 

 course. It then gives the same results from the point 

 of view of education, because it develops the student's 

 mind, and it is very much better from our point of 

 view, because horticulture has a more practical use to 

 the student than the subjects which it has displaced. 



Any one who has carefully examined the course 

 siven in the agricultural colleges will be forcibly struck 

 l:)y the fact that such technical courses as those in flori- 

 culture, landscape gardening, market gardening, fruit 

 growing, etc., have been very greatly increased in 

 recent years. They have been given more time, they 

 have been put in a better position in the college course, 

 and are much bettor taught. A great deal more atten- 

 tion is given now than formerly to actual practice, or 

 to the teaching of purely technical matters. At some 

 future time I may be able to explain more in detail how 

 some of these courses are carried out. 



A certain amount of work along horticultural lines is 

 done in all the agricultural colleges. Some of them 

 give special attention to horticulture, as for instance 

 the New Hampshire State College and the Massachu- 

 setts Agricultural College. As horticultural interests 

 are so prominent in Massachusetts, it is a natural neces- 

 sity that special attention should be given to them. Wo 

 are now giving the following courses to those students 

 wlio follow the regular work covering a period of four 

 years : 



A. (Kequired.) Propagation and pruning of plants. 



