146 Agricultural Instruction in tlie Public High Schools 



Many readers will recall that this argument has been advanced 

 against the normal school's giving academic instruction of sec- 

 ondary grade. Under certain circumstances this would seem 

 to be a valid objection to the special secondary school. The 

 strength of the objection will depend somewhat on the following 

 two conditions : Whether pupils are to be able to enter both 

 schools with the same preparation, or possibly able to enter 

 the special school with less previous schooling, and whether the 

 two types of schools enter into active competition for students 

 in the same territory by reason of the special school offering 

 as wide a range of studies as the high school ; for a few do so 

 even now. It has been pointed out by Dr. Thorndike- and 

 others that the small high school could do much better work 

 by concentrating its energies on two years of good work instead 

 of spreading them over four years of work very indifferently 

 done. With the same thought in mind a very sane proposal 

 has been outlined in detail by Assistant Secretary Hays,^ of 

 the U. S. Department of Agriculture. He urges that when the 

 ungraded district schools shall have consolidated they shall offer 

 two years' work above the eighth grade, that shall be of a 

 general nature, and include agriculture in its more elementary 

 phases. Thus these schools will provide communities with two 

 years of high-school work that previously have had none, and 

 will not exhaust their resources by trying to maintain too pre- 

 tentious a course. This has already been done in many rural 

 districts. The scheme further provides that the next two years' 

 work shall be given in a central school for a large district, say, 

 of ten counties, amply equipped to do strong work along special- 

 ized lines, namely, agriculture, manual training, and home 

 economics. While no definite suggestions have appeared as to 

 means of preventing a competition disastrous to these two-year 

 high schools, such central agricultural schools could control it 

 without friction by refusing to admit pupils into corresponding 

 grades who come from townships provided with such ten -grade 

 schools, except under exceptional circumstances. This would 



* A Neglected Aspect of the American High School, Ed. Rev., March, 

 1907. 



' Education for Country Life, OHice of Experiment Stations Circu- 

 lar 84. 



