mccready] agriculture AND HORTICULTURE 219 



Why Attempts to Introduce Agriculture Failed 



With these favorable conditions made for the introduction 

 of the subject seventy years ago one naturally asks why in this 

 year, 1915, the matter still remains as an educational problem in 

 Ontario. Surely in that period of time, the subject should have 

 become as fixed and acceptable as Arithmetic or History! The 

 chief reason for its non-acceptance appears to be that there has 

 never been any demand for it from farmers. There appears to 

 have been little or no positive interest in it; if any interest at all, 

 almost always antagonistic. Farmers have not believed in educa- 

 tion for themselves as farmers. Education for people in the coun- 

 try has meant, and means yet largely to them, a schooling prepara- 

 tory to employments apart from the farm. The burden of the 

 manual part of the farming has obscured, and will continue to 

 obscure for many, the advantages of a training of the youths' 

 intelligence in terms of farm work and country life. 



Ontario's experience in this is not unique, I believe. Through- 

 out America in other Provinces and States the problem has been 

 similar. The problem of securing the teaching of Agriculture 

 resolves itself largely into country people wanting it. When 

 farmers want Agriculture taught, it will not be difficult to find 

 means to help the teachers to teach it. 



Subsequent Efforts 



Though these earliest attempts to secure a place for Agriculture 

 in our schools were not successful, the matter has never been 

 dropped by the Department of Education. Other schemes have 

 been tried. We have had special text books prepared and author- 

 ized or prescribed for use in the schools. The first was by Ryerson, 

 issued in 1870; the second by Mills and Shaw, issued in 1890; 

 the last by James, issued in 1898. At one period when there 

 seemed to be a more than usual interest in the project, special 

 teacher-training classes were held at the Ontario Agricultural 

 College, Guelph; this was in 1893 and 1894. In 1899 the subject 

 was included amongst the obligatory subjects of Grades 7, 8 and 9 

 in rural schools and remained as such for a few years. About that 

 time the world-wide agitation for the introduction of Nature- 

 Study developed and with the introduction of that subject new 

 plans and efiforts came into operation. 



