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X. 



AGRICULTURE AS A PHASE OF LIBERAL EDUCATION IN 

 THE HIGH SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



It is appropriate that something should be said in this report 

 with respect to the study of agriculture as a part of the program 

 of the so-called liberal education, to which our school system 

 has been for the most part devoted. 



There is an active movement in secondary education looking 

 to more effective organization of subject matter and method for 

 the purposes of liberal or cultural education. In this movement 

 it is natural that many persons should look upon agriculture as 

 a promising and attractive field of secondary school study, 

 especially for rural high schools. For this purpose it presents 

 several aspects. 



1. Agricultural Lands and People. In the economic life 

 of all the centuries, agriculture has played an important part. 

 The control of the fertile lands in the great valleys and plains 

 has made and unmade nations. Political organization has in 

 all times been greatly affected by the ownership of land and by 

 the kind of agriculture practiced. 



In our own century territorial division of labor plays an 

 important part, with the result that one kind of farm industry 

 monopolizes the lower half of the Mississippi valley; another, 

 the warm valleys of California; another, eastern Asia and still 

 another, the plains of Canada. 



To the student of the play of social forces, the distribution 

 of population along agricultural lines is a fascinating theme. 

 One can read with intense interest of the effects of occupations 

 on the social life of the peoples of the prairies and the tropics, 

 of the inhabitants of the great steppes of Russia and of the 

 small cultivators of France and Italy. 



2. Agricultural Science and Invention. Especially inter- 

 esting as themes for study are the transitions which the nine- 

 teenth and twentieth centuries have brought into agriculture. 

 The inventions of science and the evolution of machinery, sub- 

 stituting animal strength and natural forces for human brawn 



