10(> BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pul). Doc. 



should develop that power. I do not care so much whether 

 the training comes in merely what we call practical direc- 

 tions. I do not care whether the particular insect the school 

 takes up is the potato bug, or an insect that has no such 

 economic properties, if only he gets the power of arriving 

 at the information first hand, — getting it for himself. 



Sixth, to connect the school with real life, and to make 

 the value and need of schooling the more apparent. Schools 

 should not be exotic. The land grant colleges established 

 on the proceeds of the land grant of 1862 have gone through 

 a long experimental era, and I fear that for many years 

 many of them did not connect themselves with real life ex- 

 cept in a theoretical way. And the reason why these agri- 

 cultural colleges are now growing so rapidly is because the 

 people feel that they are articulating with the real problems 

 of the people, and are getting hold of the real conditions 

 in life. 



Seventh, as an avenue of communication between the 

 teacher and the pupil, it being a field in which the pupil will 

 likely have a larger bulk of information than the teacher, — 

 almost heresy ! — but which the teacher can help to more 

 exact knowledge. This is the question of co-operation be- 

 tween the teacher and the pupil. 



I am wondering whether those categories do not impress 

 you with the fact that is accepted by Superintendent Bayliss 

 of Illinois, — that the agricultural work is not valuable, and 

 is not put in the schools merely for the purpose of turning 

 out farmers or for the purpose of developing special agricul- 

 tural schools for such training? I more and more feel that 

 this new type of teaching is never going to come so long 

 as we have "rural" schools. I am wondering whether the 

 rural school is not a passing institution ? The country mill 

 has largely ceased to exist. Wliat the country mill did as 

 a separate entirety or organization now ma}" be done a good 

 deal better, more economically, more quickly, as one small 

 part of a larger organization in city or country. I am won- 

 dering whether the one-teacher country school is not a pass- 

 ing institution, and whether, if we were to differentiate our 

 schools in order to take up different lines of work, the 



