Problems of Instruction in the Secondary School 145 



or the English-scientific course, commanding more respect from 

 the authorities than the average commercial course, from both 

 the vocational and the cultural standpoint. Whether the usual 

 public high schools can do such work as well as special schools 

 is a matter for the future to decide. 



The Effect of Establishing Special Schools 



The exponents of the special agricultural school urge that this 

 is an age of differentiation, of .specialization, and that an agency- 

 devoted to one purpose can fulfil that purpose better than one 

 that scatters its energies. The opponents urge, on the other 

 hand, that the existing high-school system is sufficiently elastic 

 to do this work as effectively as it has accomplished other new 

 lines of work delegated to it, and that if the same state or 

 national aid is granted to these schools as is proposed for the 

 special schools not yet created, they will accomplish the same 

 results, and without duplication of plant, of administrative ma- 

 chinery, or of teaching force in such lines as will inevitably 

 be taught in both kinds of schools, — such studies, for example, 

 as English, history, civics, mathematics, and possibly modern 

 languages. The opponents of the special school further urge 

 that the creation of such schools exclusively for rural pupils 

 will take away much needed support from schools now doing 

 good work, but which depend for their success upon the com- 

 bined support of the village and the surrounding township. They 

 point to the successive annual reports of the state departments 

 of education to show how rural high schools that were in the 

 third grade are now in the second grade, and how others in the 

 second grade are now classed as first-grade high schools, and 

 claim that this advancement would have been impossible had 

 there been special agricultural schools of secondary rank nearby 

 to draw off this important clientage. Reference to the figures 

 given on the first page of Chapter II will help one to see that 

 there may be some force in this contention. It should be re- 

 membered that the total there given includes the data from many 

 city schools with a low percentage of attendance from rural 

 districts. 



