m 



10 Mav, TOJS.] American Agriculture. 265 



undertaken in the liigh school without the facilities which 

 the colleges possess. The methods employed in the high 

 school have been those of the college, overlooking the fact 

 that pupils between 15 and 18 are different from those 

 between 19 and 22, physicalh^ and intellectually. 



(c) Suitable text books for high school instruction have been 

 lacking. Most of the existing books have either been 

 written by University men who knew little of the high 

 school mind, or by high school men who knew very little 

 of practical agriculture. 



Dr. Hunt, Dean of the College of Agriculture at Berkeley, in discuss- 

 ing this matter, attributed some of the failure to the school laws. He 

 put the matter in this way: — 



" In order to secure a regular certificate to teach in a high school 

 in California, one must have five years' preparation in a University. 

 Undev certain conditions, a person having four years' University train- 

 ing, and a special preparation in agriculture, may be allowed to teach 

 agriculture in a high school, but he must not teach anything else, such 

 as chemistry, physics, or botany. The person wjio has the regular certi- 

 ficate is allowed to teach any subject, whether he has had preparation 

 for it or not. What has happened in far too many cases is something 

 like this : A community having a rather small high school, and 

 struggling to support it properly, starts an agitation for the introduction 

 of agriculture. The school has, say, five teachers — two men and three 

 w^omen. The Board of Education looks around for a teacher of agricul- 

 ture. To get a man with a regular teacher's certificate would require a 

 salary of $1,500 or $2,000. To secure a man with a special certificate, 

 perhaps $1,200 or $1,500 is required. This means an additional man 

 to teach one subject. The Board of Education cannot afford it. If 

 they employ a man to teach agriculture who has a regular teacher's 

 •certificate in place of the man who has been teaching physics and 

 chemistry, they must pay him more than the principal. The result is 

 that the man who is already oA^erburdened with teaching physics and 

 chemistry is asked to take on the teaching of agriculture, though he 

 knows nothing whatever of the subject. 



. Often he is afraid to get acquainted with the farmers of the neigh- 

 bourhood, because they might ask some questions which would display 

 his ignorance." 



Such is Dean Hunt's view of the situation. 



That his view is not overdrawn may be shown by the fact that the 

 Federal Bureau of Education has sought to determine the training 

 of the teachers of agriculture in -the 2,200 high schools of the country, 

 and has found that 51 per cent, of the teachers of agriculture in the 

 schools reporting have had no training whatever for agricultural work. 



Dr. Hunt considers that the solution for this problem is that where 

 the high school can only aff'ord five teachers, or less, the teacher -of agri- 

 culture should be principal of the school. 



Where the schools are larger, and good salaries' can be paid, better 

 results would be obtained Avhen the teacher of agriculture is not charged 

 with the responsibilities of the principal. 



