NORMAL SCHOOLS OF AGRICULTURE FOR INSTITUTE 



WORKERS. 



BY PKOP. JOHN HAMILTON, Farmers' Institute Specialist, Washington, D. C. 



Farmers' Institute workers, whether they be the managers in 

 charge of the institute organization and responsible for its develop- 

 ment and success, or the lecturers or teachers giving instruction in 

 the institute school, occupy an important place in the new agricul- 

 ture, and are as much a necessity in agricultural education as are 

 machinery and improved animals or plants in modern farm practice. 

 They have come into existence to satisfy a need in farming; the 

 need for reliable and useful information respecting agricultural 

 operations. Every rural community is suffering for lack of this kind 

 of information, whether it be old and highly progressive or new and 

 correspondingly backward. The need is universal; it is urgent, and 

 it is paramount in importance to agriculture. 



SYSTEM OF PUBLIC EDUCATION. 



When our system of public education, was established it seemed to 

 have been assumed that the adult farmer, by reason of his years, was 

 capable of taking care of himself. That with such instruction as the 

 common school gave, he would be able to understand the forces with 

 which he was to deal sufficiently well to enable him to use them, if 

 not to the best possible advantage, at least skilfully enough to se- 

 cure a livelihood for himself and family. 



So long as soils were new and until their natural supply of imme- 

 diately available plant food had become exhausted, this theory ap- 

 peared to be correct. When, however, lands became poor and crops, 

 consequently, began to grow less, and when the best farmers were 

 unable to arrest this decline, it became evident that more was nec- 

 essary to equip a farmer for his calling than the meager education 

 given in the old-time public school. The days when anybody could 

 farm had departed along with the fertility of the virgin soil that had 

 made such agriculture possible, and the new era the age of restora- 

 tion and conservation was ushered in, in which only the well-in- 

 formed could hope to succeed. 



