52 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



where teachers are made have at last commenced to study real life in one 

 of its most concrete forms (65, pp. 45-46). 



Normal schools have so far been too much occupied in pro- 

 viding for instruction in agriculture to give much attention to 

 the pedagogical problems of the subject. These problems con- 

 cern (a) the organization of courses in the normal school itself, 

 and (&) methods of teaching the subject in the public schools. 

 Naturally, the former has been the first to receive attention. The 

 organization of work in agriculture has been in two directions, 

 one in the science work already referred to, and the other in the 

 purely agricultural courses recently introduced. 



Special efforts of adjustment have affected nature-study more 

 than other science studies. Many believe that as far as the ele- 

 mentary schools are concerned agriculture should have the nature- 

 study aspect, or as some prefer to say, nature-study should have 

 an agricultural trend; that since nature-study has to do with 

 material drawn from the child's immediate environment, and 

 since a large part of this environment is more or less agricultural 

 (consisting of animals and plants under control of man) a good 

 course in nature-study forms an adequate preparation for a 

 teacher to give such agricultural instruction as will meet the 

 needs of rural schools, and at the same time enables a teacher to 

 make use of school gardening and other practical or economic 

 phases of the subject in city schools (66). 



The particular direction in which nature-study has been most 

 modified in its readjustment has been in the school garden (67). 

 It has been found that the school garden may serve as a very 

 effectual means of unifying most all nature-study work. Chil- 

 dren are not only able to "grow things" in gardens, but in doing 

 this work successfully have had to solve many of the problems 

 that are fundamental to agriculture. The character of the soil, 

 the conservation of water by cultivation, the protection of plants 

 from insect and other enemies, and many other factors of suc- 

 cessful plant-growing are encountered. Many normal schools 

 have regarded this readjustment of nature-study and other sci- 



