580 IO\YA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



(3) The influence upon the communities at large, the parents as well 

 as the children, has been wholesome. Beginning with an awakening in- 

 terest in one thing — better seed corn, for example — communities have 

 rapidly extended their interest to other features of rural improvement, 

 with the result that in the regions affected by the agricultural club move- 

 ment there has come about a general upward trend in the thoughts and 

 activities of the people. 



(4) These club activities have in many instances exercised a very stim- 

 ulating, if not a "redirecting," influence upon the ordinary v.-ork of rural 

 schools and teachers. 



(5) The knowledge gained from the work of these clubs has demon- 

 strated that the natural love of competition among boys and girls (as well 

 as their elders) can be utilized to immense advantage in furthering their 

 own education for efficiency. 



Setting aside the question whether boys' and girls' agricultural clubs 

 may eventually be superseded by more permanent organic developments 

 in general public education, they have at least an undoubted value at the 

 present time and seem to be an important, if not necessary, link in the 

 evolution toward a more efficient educational system. Experience with 

 them has gone far enough to furnish well tested plans for states and sec- 

 tions that are now ready to take up this work. 



Various agencies have taken the initiative in starting this movement 

 under particular local conditions, but the insr>iration for state-wide 

 activity in these lines has generally come from some individual or 

 official source connected with the state department of education, the state 

 agricultural college, or the United States Department of Agriculture. 

 In the absence of such initiative the work has sometimes begun in the 

 zeal and wisdom of some county officer or association, as the county 

 superintendent of schools, the farmers' institute society, the county fair 

 association, or teachei's' association, the grange organization, or the 

 Young Men's Christian Association. Experience has shown that the work 

 has aUvays been most permanent and productive when it has resulted 

 in a definite local organization, preferably under the leadership of the 

 county school superintendent. 



THE RELATION OF CLUB WORK TO RURAL EDUCATION. 



The organization and work of these various clubs has in many cases 

 assumed the character of school "extension work" in agricultural edu- 

 cation. As such it is directly contributory to the field of agricultural 

 education in general; but in many instances it has acquired a very inti- 

 mate relation to the regular work of the public elementary and secondary 

 schools. Thus in Ohio the state superintendent of agricultural extension 

 work writes that most of the boys' and girls' club activities are now con- 

 ducted as a part of the school v.'ork and that "agricultural clubs as such 

 are coming to be things of the past," so that no separate records or 

 statistics of such work are now generally kept in that state. 



The exhibits of what has been accomplished by these clubs are fre- 

 quently the most attractive features of local and state fairs, and have 



