XX INTRODUCTION 



AGRICULTURE THE DOMINANT INTEREST 



An essential factor in education, which for the most part 

 has been overlooked, is to be found in the environment of the 

 child. One's power of interpretation is bounded by his ex- 

 perience, and yet we have gone on trying to fit a strange 

 world down on to the child. We have expected him in some 

 way or other to understand language and solve problems that 

 are entirely foreign to him. This is neither good pedagogy 

 nor good common sense. The school work must be based upon 

 what the child brings to school with him. His life, his home, 

 his vocabulary, his experience in the shop, in the quarry, on 

 the farm, must furnish the concrete illustrations of the truth 

 to be taught. It is the thing about which the child knows 

 that interests him and that becomes the best means of inter- 

 pretation. 



The teacher, therefore, must be a student of community life 

 as well as of text-books. He must be familiar with the insti- 

 tutions and interests of the community. He must know what 

 the children know, how they think, and in what terms they 

 express themselves. 



Any new truth which the child gets must be related to what 

 he already knows. The closer the teacher gets to the real ex- 

 perience of the child the more likely he is to awaken a live in- 

 terest. In a rural community agriculture is the dominant 

 industry. It determines the modes of life, the ways of think- 

 ing, and the basis of comparison. Therefore the problems in 

 arithmetic can be more readily comprehended if they are 

 cast in terms of the farm. The dominant industry or interest 

 is the key that must unlock new truth. 



Arithmetical truth must be cast in the concretest terms 



