coFFMAx] SECOXDARV SCHOOL AGRICULTURE 93 



greatest educational value which have the greatest number of 

 identical situations with life." Facts apart from that environ- 

 ment which gives them value are not significant. There is much 

 ignorant teaching because teachers do not know or see school 

 studies growing out of and functioning in environmental re- 

 lations. School work is thorough when it has functional signif- 

 icance in life outside the school. Those elements of subject- 

 matter that are repeated over and over and over in the environ- 

 ment outside are the most important for the school. 



Partial critics may say that in this program and statement 

 of principles, I have ignored the distinctively cultural phases of 

 education. To these I would reply with our Director of Educa- 

 tion here at the University that "intrinsically useful materials 

 may just as successfully form the basis for the development of 

 ideals as intrinsically useless materials. That the student of 

 engineering or agriculture or commerce does not always acquire 

 the ideals that mark the cultured and refined 'gentleman' is 

 not the fault of the subject matter, but rather of the method." It 

 is almost if not quite an educational truism that the mastery of 

 useless materials leads to mechanical memorizing, while the 

 mastery of useful materials because of their consequent great- 

 er concreteness leads to the development of serviceable ideals and 

 attitudes. And again, I would reply that utility is not used in any 

 narrow bread and butter sense, but rather in the sense of social 

 service. Social service clearly demands vocational efficiency, 

 training in which is becoming more and more one of the distinc- 

 tive problems of the secondary schools. It also demands that 

 training which affords ideals and standards for achievement and 

 social betterment and which provides those cultures and refine- 

 ments that are the sources of comfort and pleasure during the 

 distinctively leisure periods of life. It is this latter aspect that I 

 sometimes fear we are neglecting in our mad haste to completely 

 vocationalize the high schools. Any definition of utility that fails 

 to take all of these into consideration is inadequate. 



Now so far as my reading and observations go. none of the 

 critics or advocates deny the validity and application of the fore- 

 going arguments to agriculture. It trains in a large number of 

 habits and gives possession of much information that is now more 

 than ever imperiously demanded. The demand for such training 

 and instruction is indicated (1) in the drift of rural population 

 from country to city. (2) in the rapid increase of tenant farmers, 

 and (3) in the per cent of increase of consumption over the per 



