158 Agricultural Instruction in the Public High Schools 



Difficulties of the Curriculum 



Relation of Agriculture as a Branch of the High School Curricu- 

 lum to the Sciences Already Present 



By far the larger part of elementary agriculture, as judged 

 by the amount of space given in text-books and syllabi prepared 

 by the school authorities, is made up of the plant phases of 

 the subject. Crops and soils, forage crops and feeds, the garden 

 and the orchard, these are the things that are mostly considered. 

 Undoubtedly most of these lend themselves more easily to field 

 observation and laboratory study than do such topics as breeds 

 of animals, farm buildings, or good roads. The scientific prin- 

 ciples underlying these dominant topics are largely the under- 

 lying botanical principles of plant structure, plant nutrition, 

 variation of seedlings, and inheritance of characteristics. The 

 line of pure science taught in the colleges that comes into closest 

 relation with public school agriculture is botany, probably much 

 more so than its close competitor, chemistry. The attitude of 

 the heads of the departments of botany in the leading universities 

 of the rich agricultural states, is not only of interest ; it is of 

 importance. As might be surmised, the most cordial sympathy 

 is found mostly in those state universities with agricultural de- 

 partments, the most conservative note in the universities of states 

 maintaining separate agricultural colleges. The following ques- 

 tions were asked of the professors of botany in a number of 

 the universities : 



" Would botany be acceptable (for entrance) that laid a great 

 deal of stress on such agricultural topics as corn judging, seed 

 selection, production of new varieties by selection and cross 

 breeding, pruning, and grafting, plant diseases and their treat- 

 ment, experimentation with fertilizers and soil treatment to 

 determine effects on plant growth, weeds, etc.? Reference is 

 made, of course, to such work as deals with these topics in the 

 laboratory, field and orchard, not to book work. Do you con- 

 sider such work as mentioned desirable in the general botany 

 course in a village school ? " 



The answers are all more or less tinged by various concep- 



