CHAPTER VII 



PROBLEMS OF AGRICULTURAL INSTRUCTION IN 

 THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 



Agriculture and the Existing School System 



To insure an efficient general system of agricultural education 

 of the secondary type, it is necessary to adopt a policy that shall 

 be adequate and far-reaching, and which shall remedy the defects 

 of our schools as they exist to-day without diminishing their 

 usefulness. If we may judge by the discussion now going on, 

 the determination of such a policy is a matter of considerable 

 difficulty. 



We have at the outset, in order of time, the proposition to 

 make the teaching of agriculture in the elementary schools 

 compulsory. This has not proved as satisfactory as its pro- 

 ponents had hoped, and would probably be no more so in the 

 existing high schools. 



Instruction in manual training has been given a decided 

 impetus in some states by state appropriations, especially where 

 made dependent upon the amount of the local expenditure. It 

 seems reasonable to suppose that some such stimulus would 

 greatly promote industrial work of the pronounced rural type. 

 While it has not done so to any considerable degree in Maine,^ 

 it has been very successful in Minnesota and Virginia. The 

 most notable application of this principle of state encourage- 

 ment has been the aid given to the special agricultural schools, 

 where different localities in a congressional district have com- 

 peted with each other in offering land and money to furnish 

 the plant of a school for the district, and where counties have 

 continued to share the running expense of county schools in 

 order to insure their continuance. The requirement for a stand- 



* See Chap. II, p. 21. 



