AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOLS. 119 



suburbs in the rural section, but when you have done that you 

 have to all intents and purposes made a separate high school. 



It is also objected that if you have separate schools you break 

 down the present school system. It seems to me that in answer 

 to this we would say that separate work is a necessity for adequate 

 vocational training. We must organize agriculture as a vocational 

 subject of study by itself, related of course to other subjects, but 

 still a thing somewhat by itself, if you are to get real vocational 

 results. And this process logically will probably eventuate in 

 separate schools for agriculture. Furthermore, I do not see that 

 it is necessary to separate these individual agricultural high schools 

 from the public school system. It seems to me that we must main- 

 tain the integrity of our public school system, but I do not believe 

 that the mere fact of establishing an agricultural high school leads 

 necessarily to making that school something apart from the public 

 school system. |«^ 



It is also urged that separate schools make a cleavage of social 

 classes. On this point my feeling is this. It is better to have 

 cleavage within the schools than to have a cleavage between the 

 schooled who do not go into industries and the unschooled who do. 

 And that is precisely what has taken place in the days gone by. 

 Those who went through the high schools have largely gone into 

 professions. They have not gone into industry. And boys who 

 have gone into industry have not been educated in the high schools. 



If you put agriculture into the high schools, you attract those 

 who want to go into this field of industry. Sooner or later there 

 may come some cleavage in the school itself. If agricultural 

 education is introduced into the school and the school is made really 

 vocational, made really a finishing course, it will of course be marked 

 off necessarily from other educational training and from work of a 

 general type. But I foresee no serious danger from this. Vocations 

 do inevitably make social classes. I can't see that thorough training 

 for vocations, even in schools specially devoted to that purpose, 

 is likely to increase the tendency to stratification. It will rather 

 break it down because each occupation will be dignified by being 

 intellectualized. 



And finally, I object to the idea implied in the argument against 

 separate schools of agriculture, that a vocational course fails to 



