Preparation and Salaries of Teachers in High Schools 113 



may elect courses in the agricultural college. While many of 

 the courses are technical, some are designed especially for pros- 

 pective teachers of the subject. The teachers' college of the 

 University of Missouri offers similar agricultural courses for 

 teachers. The " course for teachers " is becoming less and less 

 (except in summer schools) one of subject matter and increas- 

 ingly one of methods, as the former kind of course is supplanted 

 by groups of more or less technical courses in agriculture. 



It is highly significant that nearly all the high-school teachers 

 who reported having received some training in agriculture, other 

 than that gained by practical experience, took courses in summer 

 schools. They were about equally divided between summer 

 sessions of colleges and normal schools. The efficiency of the 

 high-school courses in agriculture of one year or less will doubt- 

 less depend for some years upon help the summer schools are 

 able to give science teachers, high-school principals, and village 

 superintendents. 



The efficiency of these summer courses is probably increasing 

 more rapidly than their enrollment. This was practically at a 

 standstill in 1908 and 1909 in the twenty-one institutions in 

 United States and Canada most prominent in this work, being 

 about 1,135 each summer. The sessions lasted from two to nine 

 weeks. Five continued four weeks and six ran six weeks each. 

 The registration in agriculture varied in 1908 from 7 to 166. 

 In 1909 the number of summer schools registering less than 25 

 students fell from eight to four. Over one-third of the students 

 were registered in courses in which the nature-study idea, as 

 commonly understood, was very prominent. About one-half 

 were enrolled in separate agricultural colleges, about one- fourth 

 in the agricultural colleges of state universities, and the rest 

 in the summer sessions of colleges of education or of arts and 

 sciences. 



The number of distinct courses along agricultural and nature- 

 study lines offered in each school varied in number from i 

 to 19, and were often only one-half or one-third the length of 

 the entire session. In 1908 but three summer schools offered 

 courses restricted to high-school teachers. The exact number 

 of the teachers enrolled in these courses is not available. The 



