148 Agricultural Instruction in tlie Public High Schools 



the special school ; on the one hand that the concentration of 

 interests in one place would make it more efficient, and that its 

 location should be in a rural environment (as many high schools 

 located at county seats are not) both for the sake of better 

 facilities and of an agricultural " atmosphere." On the other 

 hand, we hear that such schools will be undemocratic, that they 

 will set up (or down) "class distinctions, placing a hampering 

 barrier about those who are trained in them, and that their 

 students will be deprived of the culture they would gain in the 

 present high schools. But it is open to question whether many 

 of the cultural studies should be presented to students looking 

 forward to an agricultural career in the same manner as they 

 usually are now. Mathematics and the sciences are now taught, 

 and are treated in the texts, if we may believe the teachers and 

 authors, very largely as cultural subjects. Indeed these persons 

 often seem jealous of the standing of history, literature, and the 

 languages as being cultural subjects. A pertinent suggestion 

 has been advanced by State Commissioner Snedden of ^lassa- 

 chusetts that while segregation of agricultural instruction may 

 not be advisable as a permanent policy, the special schools may 

 be much better able to work out a suitable treatment of the 

 entire range of cultural studies by themselves than may the 

 general high school hampered by its traditional standards. Such 

 a development might call for the introduction of material on 

 the history of industrial interests, for the study of political 

 economy and the physical sciences with special reference to 

 agriculture, and for a reconstruction of secondary-school mathe- 

 matics. As yet only a few signs are visible that this is really 

 happening in the present technical schools of agriculture. It 

 takes a man of broader learning to reconstruct the humanities 

 along these lines than the special schools are yet attracting. The 

 agricultural high schools occasionally list " agricultural " botany, 

 chemistry, or physics. It seems necessary at present for most 

 of them to use a standard text supplemented by some technical 

 reference work. In two or three cases the instructor is making 

 his own text-book. Only one or two of the many catalogues 

 at hand show anything but the regulation 'courses in algebra and 

 plane and solid geometry. The exceptions are efforts to intro- 



