THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 355 



trade training. It is their duty to teach so that every one can 

 approach a trade with general skill and critical faculties de- 

 veloped so that he can learn the trade as a whole, not simply one 

 process of it. This involves for a school in an agricultural com- 

 munity, not only theory and practice in gardening and farm- 

 ing, but general book work which will enable the pupil to under- 

 stand the business aspects of farming, its place in national life, 

 markets, buying and selling; the relations of the farmer to the 

 rest of the world. 



The other side to this point of view is the understanding of 

 the rest of the things in life, which is just as important in a 

 democracy as the ability to earn a living. Every child should 

 have a chance to learn how to think for himself ; how to under- 

 stand national and social aims, how to appreciate beauty and 

 wholesome pleasure, how to be healthy, self-reliant and cour- 

 ageous, and how to find out things for himself. Real work pre- 

 sented in the right way promotes both these phases of efficient 

 social equipment. It no longer becomes necessary to argue the 

 advantages of vocational versus cultural teaching; the teacher 

 can devote her entire time to giving her pupils an education. 

 No demonstration is necessary to prove the place of agriculture 

 in the curriculum of a school which sets out to educate farm 

 children. It belongs there just as much as an adjustment of 

 the program to the climate, or of the seating capacity to the 

 number of pupils. 



The results of a curriculum made up and starting from the 

 child's environment are sure to be both vocational and cultural. 

 The difference between teaching a trade in school and using the 

 prevailing industrial conditions for 'education, can be demon- 

 strated by a description of Mrs. Harvey's methods of using 

 agriculture in the curriculum of Porter, better than by a more 

 theoretical discussion. From the very first she saw that the 

 children could be brought up to adopt the best farm methods 

 as a matter of course, if their intelligence could be enlisted at 

 the outset. She selected the vegetable and flower gardens as the 

 best point of attack for the school. Owing to conditions in the 

 corn belt little attention has been paid to the garden on the indi- 

 vidual farms. The farmer, busy with the planting, cultivation 

 and harvesting of the larger crops, had come to feel that he 



