17© Agricultural Instruction in the Public High Schools 



of training, although many, no doubt, were conscious of their 

 own lack of preparation. Two objected that the teachers were 

 city girls. 



The Time Problem 



Superintendents complain of the lack of suitable teachers, 

 and of the unsympathetic attitude of the science teachers, which 

 is serious enough. Such teachers could help wonderfully in 

 solving the time problem. In some cases the botany has been 

 absorbed by the agriculture, with the result that all the necessary 

 botany was given as before, and there was a freedom and 

 elasticity in the year's work that was lacking when the agri- 

 culture was supposed to have the right of way for only 12 or 

 18 weeks. The secondary course in agronomy, outlined in Cir- 

 cular "jy of the Office of Experiment Stations, contains so many 

 topics that are purely botanical, in the sense of being included 

 in all the high-school texts, that it would seem that the course 

 would require to be expanded but little to include about all the 

 botany a high-school course need embrace ; or else that the botany 

 should be strengthened in several of its evident weak spots, 

 throwing out certain superfluities, and so include practically all 

 of the projected course in agronomy. In the East and South, 

 more than in the West, botany seems to mean plant analysis ; 

 and in order to get any study of plant functions we must ap- 

 parently inject a new study into the curriculum. For many years 

 the West has included all this in its high-school botany work, 

 due to the influence of Professors Coulter, Barnes, and others, 

 and to the Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. 

 What they have lacked is the agricultural viewpoint rather than 

 new botanical content to make their work symmetrical. 



Some of the administrative difficulties mentioned were peculiar 

 to the subject; as, determination of its place in the curriculum, 

 laboratory work hard to organize, no definite outline to work 

 from, or having city children in the school. These difficulties 

 will disappear as theory and practice crystallize, or at least are 

 better understood. Such troubles as lack of practical work, 

 difficulty to get the pupils to do experiments, to observe, to apply 



