40 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



leaflets on nature-study. Others publish occasional bulletins on 

 various phases of public-school agriculture, for example, the agri- 

 cultural colleges of Massachusetts (45, 46, 47, 48), Illinois (49). 

 Minnesota (53), Missouri (50), Pennsylvania (51), Tennessee 

 (52), and California (54, 55). Material designed to aid 

 teachers is sometimes prepared by faculty members of an agri- 

 cultural college, for example, of the agricultural colleges of 

 California (56), Illinois (58), and Michigan (57), to be pub- 

 lished by the state department of education or by some school 

 magazine. 



These extension publications are distributed free of charge 

 and often large editions have to be reprinted to meet the 

 demand. The extension bulletin of Ohio State Agricultural 

 College (41), for example, is printed in editions of from 

 10,000 to 20,000. The maiiling-list is made up anew each year 

 from responses to notices that names will be dropped from 

 the mailing-list unless requests are renewed. Pupils of the 

 public schools are expected to carry on some work suggested 

 by the college and report upon this work in order to receive 

 the bulletin regularly. In this way the extension department 

 is kept in close touch with the teachers and pupils of the 

 state. The bulletin serves several purposes : it is a means of com- 

 munication between the college and the schools ; it presents vari- 

 ous phases of agriculture of interest to the pupils; it assists in 

 organizing agricultural clubs among the public-school children; 

 it is the organ for promoting interest in rural-school improve- 

 ment, such as consolidation of rural schools and beautifying 

 school grounds. 



Each agricultural college has more or less correspondence 

 among teachers and pupils but some colleges have encouraged it 

 and made it a feature of their extension work. This method has 

 the advantage that conies from establishing a sort of personal 

 relation between the college and the individual. But the work 

 involved in a correspondence dealing with several thousand indi- 

 viduals is enormous and almost impossible for an agricultural 



