coFFMAx] SECOXDARV SCHOOL AGRICULTURE 91 



controlling, and has devised methods of control, ways of acting 

 which will give us control. These things we call subject-matter 

 and some of the best of them have been selected and put into 

 books to be taught to children, so that they will not have to learn 

 at first hand as the race has done." 



Perhaps you may be asking what this rather lengthy analysis 

 has to do with the question in hand. The answer is not far nor 

 hard to find. A study of the history of agriculture shows that it 

 has experienced the self-same evolution that has characterized 

 every other subject. For years its principles and methods have 

 been more or less consciously transmitted. As a result of changed 

 social and economic conditions, the followers of agriculture and 

 many who are intimately dependent upon it became aware of 

 certain serious maladjustments in its practice. And as a con- 

 sequence from somewhat different sources pressure has been 

 brought and is being brought to bear upon the schools to provide 

 instruction in agriculture. This pressure is but another specific 

 illustration of the intimacy of relation between social forces and 

 the school. 



One of the interesting generalizations of the history of edu- 

 cation and of educational sociology bearing upon this is that the 

 public schools have in recent times at least never taken on a new 

 subject of their own initiative, that is without being solicited or 

 coerced to do so. It is for this very reason that new types of 

 schools are constantly springing into existence under the guid- 

 ance of agencies or groups of people not connected with the 

 established school system. The very existence of any new type 

 of school under non-public school control is prima facie evidence 

 of the failure of the old types of school to meet the needs of 

 those who attend the new school. The only schools that are 

 being rapidly deserted by their constituencies are those that have 

 lost their plasticity or flexibility and are unwilling to be modified 

 so as to satisfy the newer demands. The implication of this 

 principle is that if agricultural high schools are fostered and 

 maintained here and there by commercial organizations, grange 

 societies, or by any other sort of private or collective endeavor 

 other than that lodged in the present public schools. — it is a 

 reflection upon the leadership of the public schools. It shows that 

 the leaders are not always sufficiently sensitive to community 

 progress and that they are. in many cases at least, so encrusted 

 by conservatism as to impair their general efficiency. Even w^hen 

 they do take up the new subject and put it into their old t>T)e of 

 schools, there is a very grave danger that it will lose its distinc- 



