The Public High School 15 



The aim of the special schools is avowedly vocational. They 

 possess facilities for carrying on practical farming in its various 

 branches, which are surprisingly complete in view of the short 

 time since the inception of the idea. Where these schools have 

 started de novo we find the most radical departure in the way 

 of equipment and curriculum. Where agricultural departments 

 have been grafted on to existing institutions, or where these 

 have been " reorganized," there we find the least innovation. 

 This statement, with appropriate change of phraseology, applies 

 equally well to the public school. 



We find special schools on the one hand with but few acres 

 of land or no ground at all for practical work, and on the other 

 hand with large tracts for the illustration of quite diversified 

 methods of farming. Sometimes we find fair-sized observation 

 tracts but no room for outdoor laboratory work ; if the students 

 do farm work in such schools, much of it may be as day laborers 

 working out their board, diminishing the time for school work 

 proper. This is not apt to be carried to such an extreme in 

 the case of publicly supported schools as in private or denomina- 

 tional schools, where the underlying principles are often ignored. 

 In the matter of curriculum, we may find at one extreme no 

 cultural elements save a very limited amount of English, and 

 perhaps civics, and at the other extreme we find schools estab- 

 lished ostensibly as " agricultural high schools," or calling 

 themselves by that name, with the usual Latin-scientific courses, 

 with distinct agriculture running as a parallel course through 

 three or four years. With very few exceptions, this last-named 

 arrangement represents the most advanced position of the gen- 

 eral high school, and at this point the characteristics of the two 

 large groups overlap. While this was the case in some of the 

 Alabama district schools as shown by their catalogues but two 

 or three years back, we now find the position reversed, with 

 agriculture required of all for five semesters and an option of 

 substituting Latin for it during the last three semesters. This 

 course, outlined in Chapter VI, went into eflFect September, 1909. 



The Alabama state superintendent of education is revising the 

 high-school course of study so as to include the subject of 

 agriculture for county high schools established under the act 



