PERIODICAL LITERATURE 79 



background. This account of the "Macdonald Movement" 

 before it was carried out in actual practice prepared the public 

 mind for the numerous reports of the work that have appeared 

 since. 



Mention should be made of one more popular article on rural 

 education appearing in '1903, entitled "Farmer Children Need 

 Farmer Studies" (108). The title indicates the general nature 

 of the discussion. That the writer is in full accord with the 

 views already noted of other contributors is shown by the fol- 

 lowing statements: 



Our educational system has been made for city people, and the country 

 school finds it second hand and ill-fitting and unattractive. To this fact 

 more than any other, perhaps, is due the backwardness of education in agri- 

 cultural states. 



Quoted from a private letter : 



Statistics show that in this state each year sixty young men take up 

 ministry, sixty-six law, and seventy-two medicine, while 13,000 annually 

 take up agriculture as a gainful pursuit. But our school books are written 



for the few not the many At present the entire curriculum leads 



away from the farm Pick up any high-grade arithmetic in use in 



the rural schools and you will find no lack of attention to banking and 

 commissions and foreign exchange and commercial affairs generally. But 

 agriculture arises to no such dignity not even in schools that will find five 

 times as many recruits for the farm as for the city. The same applies to 

 other texts. 



The typical examples above presented of popular periodical 

 literature on rural education appeared in 1903. This year was 

 chosen because it seemed to mark the beginning of a somewhat 

 general public interest in the subject, and partly because most of 

 the development of agricultural education in elementary and 

 secondary schools has taken place since that time. 



During the period from 1904 to the present the subject of 

 rural education has continued to receive notice in popular peri- 

 odicals (105, 109, no, in, 112). The public has been kept in- 

 formed concerning various phases of its development, agricultural 

 and other industrial work in schools receiving especial attention. 



