ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS 121 



The Baltimore County (Md.) Agricultural High School 

 presents some features that deserve special mention: 



The school is meant especially to meet the needs of a rural community. 

 It presents all the usual subjects taught in high schools, except foreign 

 languages, and in addition teaches agriculture, domestic science, and manual 

 training. It is thus planned that students graduating from this school will, 

 in addition to a good general or academic education, have some industrial 

 or vocational training to fit them to take their places in the world (155, p. i). 



The principal, who is a specialist in agriculture, devotes the en- 

 tire year to the school, spending the usual summer vacation in 

 the interests of the school, inspecting and directing the work of 

 the pupils who are carrying out in a practical way experiments 

 and problems outlined during the school year. In this manner 

 the principles of agriculture taught in the school are carried 

 over into practice under normal farming conditions. In addi- 

 tion to offering excellent instruction in agriculture and in other 

 subjects, the school further serves the community by giving 

 courses for rural school teachers and for farmers and their 

 wives, and by furnishing a center for religious service and literary 

 and social activities for the young people (156). 



Most of the high schools giving instruction in agriculture 

 are of the village-township type. The work of two of these 

 high schools which were among the first to make agriculture 

 a subject of instruction has already been referred to in chap. 

 vii. The motive for reorganizing rural village and township 

 high schools on the basis of country-life interests is well ex- 

 pressed tin an account of the New Holland (Ohio) High School : 



The larger percentage of the boys and girls who are enrolled in the village 

 and township high schools of this state will spend their lives either in the 

 rural districts or villages where farm life and agricultural industries are the 

 leading interests. They will be either farmers or farmers' wives, or they 

 will be engaged in business very intimately connected with agriculture. In 

 view of this condition the Board of Education at New Holland, Ohio, has 

 placed agriculture in the curriculum of the high school (157, p. 3). 



Another of the earlier schools of this type whose success 

 has attracted considerable attention is the John Swaney School, 

 Putnam County, Illinois (158). 



