144 Agricultural Instruction in the Public High Schools 



ing in agriculture on the elcMiientary teacher's certificate has 

 roused many high schools to the necessity of making as great 

 an effort to help their graduates to " pass " in this subject as 

 they make in the other common branches by the so-called " re- 

 views." In certain southern states this has been, in the ordinary 

 high school, merely book work of the most formal type. In 

 such states as Nebraska and ^Michigan, where 150 or more 

 high schools have normal training classes, the preparation in 

 agriculture is often of a grade that will compare favorably with 

 the preparation to teach the other subjects, and has in it a large 

 observational and experimental element. In New York state 

 the same forces are beginning to exert a strong influence, though 

 probably not yet resulting in such efficient work, on the average, 

 in the forty or more training classes that have undertaken to 

 give some work in agriculture. 



Aside from the question of the efficiency of agricultural teach- 

 ing in particular, there are probably 200 or 300 small high 

 schools with not more than two teachers each, mostly in Mis- 

 souri, Nebraska, and Ohio, in which agriculture is taught as 

 well as any of the other sciences in the same schools. Conse- 

 quently any criticism of the agricultural work in these schools 

 must lie against the school as a whole and not against the 

 subject. Furthermore, in Nebraska there is a large number of 

 first-class, well-equipped high schools, in which agriculture is 

 probably taught as well as the other sciences that pass muster 

 with the university inspectors, and better than it is in many 

 normal schools. The work of these schools and of other more 

 widely scattered cases in New York, Indiana. Michigan, Minne- 

 sota, North Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Utah, and California, demon- 

 strates conclusively that agriculture can successfully take its place 

 as a year or as a half-year study with the other branches of 

 the high-school curriculum. 



The work of township schools, like those of Petersham. IMass., 

 Waterford, Pa., North Adams, Mich., and the John Swaney 

 School in Putnam County, 111., and such county public high 

 schools as those at Calvert, Md., Panora, Iowa, and Dillon, Mont., 

 has shown conclusively that agriculture can be made the core 

 of a four-year high-school course, on a par with the classical 



