600 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



The first six years of school life should be given unreservedly to the 

 fundamentals of a general education as expressed in the rudiments of 

 knowledge and of hand skill; that in the seventh and eighth years voca- 

 tional training and liberal training should be correlated; that between 

 the two, after the sixth year of the course, there will be permitted a con- 

 stantly varying amount of time and energy, as local conditions may war- 

 rant, but that the vocational studies shall be pursued side by side with 

 studies that lead to a liberal education. 



Assuming that the course of study of the first six years has contained 

 its fair proportion of manual work, the" seventh and eighth years will lay 

 added emphasis upon hand skill. With this hand work there will be 

 offei'ed related lessons in English, geography, history, physics, arithmetic 

 and drawing. The demands of industrial life, and not a traditional school 

 course, will determine the nature of the shop work. Since in any occu- 

 pation which the boys and girls would follow, eight hours would be re- 

 quired, six hours of instruction each day is none too long a time for them 

 in school — the program of study to be so arranged by alternating theory 

 and practice as to avoid the work becoming fatiguing. 



On the academic side, the subjects in the order of their importance will 

 be English, mathematics, science, history and geography. English will 

 include the topics of literature, reading, composition, grammar, spelling, 

 and penmanship. Mathematics will include arithmetic, algebra and geom- 

 etry. Science v.'ill include elementary physics, with emphasis on mechan- 

 incs, and electricity, and elementary, chemistry. History will go hand 

 in hand with geography, with emphasis on the social and industrial de- 

 velopment of the United States, United States history and civics, industrial 

 history and economics. 



All study will be under direction in the school room, and recitations 

 will te mainly for the purpose of instruction and training in method of 

 study, and will not be for mere quizzing. Related subjects will be cor- 

 related and grouped under one main subject in order to unify the work to 

 the highest degree. 



Warren says: "The teaching of agriculture is but a part of the great 

 movement in industrial training. To those who are not familiar with 

 the nature of agriculture teaching it maj'^ seem like a trade subject, but 

 it is not primarily a trade subject. Nearly everj^one is interested in 

 growing plants and animals, and there are some fundamental principles 

 of this growth that every boy and girl should have an opportunity to 

 learn, for the educational training and intelligent interest in life that this 

 knowledge brings." 



The impetus given to the introduction of manual training in the schools 

 of the United States during recent years has been little short of phenom- 

 enal. No school system making any pretentions to completeness can 

 now consistently ignore the claims of manual training to being an integral 

 part of the curriculum. So widespread has the recognition of these 

 claims become that many of the largest school systems in the country 

 have not only introduced hand work as a part of the regular class in- 



