no AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



"I have a special acre myself and do not propose to have my boy beat me 

 raising corn." 



This movement is not a question of adding new duties to the county 

 superintendent and teachers without additional pay, but a question of oppor- 

 tunity and service. No movement has yet been projected where superin- 

 tendents of education and teachers may be of greater service to the people 

 than in the organization of the Farm-Life clubs. This plan also furnishes 

 the best method yet devised of bringing together in harmonious co-operation 

 all the interests looking to better education and better farming. In this 

 work the county superintendents, the teachers, the merchants, the newspapers, 

 the State College of Agriculture, the State Department of Agriculture, and 

 the State Department of Education can all work together for the common 

 good. 4 



Another important phase of the agricultural-club idea is 

 being developed by the Farmers' Institute Specialist of the Office 

 of Experiment Stations of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture. It is known as Farmers' Institutes for Young 

 People. The following statement in regard to these institutes 

 will indicate the object and character of the work undertaken: 



In order, therefore, that opportunity to become acquainted with agri- 

 cultural operations may be given to those who have left the public school 

 and from whose ranks the future farmers and their wives must be supplied, 

 the farmers' institutes in several states have organized and are now con- 

 ducting what is known as "institutes for young people." The majority of 

 these are not institutes in the sense in which the work of the farmers' 

 institute has come to be defined. They are in reality boys' and girls' clubs 

 conducted in the same manner as those operated by the public schools 



Because of the fundamental difficulty in securing teachers capable of 

 giving vocational training and instruction in agriculture in the rural schools, 

 and from the fact that after the scholars leave school no provision has 

 been made for giving them the opportunity to receive such instruction, the 

 farmers' institute has undertaken the training in agriculture of rural chil- 

 dren after leaving school. In doing this it has found it necessary to drop 

 from its system of instruction the purely educational feature and to devote 

 itself strictly to giving vocational instruction. Such studies and practice, 

 therefore, as the institute utilizes have in view the perfecting of the indi- 

 vidual in his vocation. The institute system, therefore, partakes more 

 nearly than any other of the trade-school method, and is intended for youths 



4 From a letter written by L. N. Duncan, U.S. demonstrator for Alabama, and professor 

 of school agriculture, Alabama State Agricultural College. 



