20 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



educational methods and purposes ; while another class 

 clamors, with equal vehemence, for such development of the 

 newer methods and such definition of the newer purposes as 

 have been gained for the older education only by the ex- 

 perience of centuries. To clearly understand this double 

 strain is to get at the heart of the difficulties in the way of 

 industrial education ; and to get at the heart of the difficulty 

 is at the same time to gain an understanding of the position 

 of industrial education, in this country as in other lands. 



Industrial education, which may be defined as education 

 having in view immediate application in some of the pursuits 

 and professions of life, is at present involved in some neces- 

 sary confusion in this country, because of the difficulties it 

 has met on either hand. It was inevitable that so great an 

 innovation as that embodied in the changes from the tradi- 

 tional and time-honored methods of education should, for its 

 definite development, require much more time than has yet 

 elapsed since the first institution for industrial training was 

 established. An expression used by Dr. William T. Harris, 

 the United States commissioner of education, in a recent 

 address, will be found useful in maldng this fact clear. In 

 that address * he spoke of a " pedagogical form " as a neces- 

 sity in teaching any subject. And by the phrase "pedagogi- 

 cal form " is meant a series of lessons so arranged that they 

 shall be actually progressive. In mathematics, to use the 

 illustration Dr. Harris himself used, there is a definite pro- 

 gression in which each lesson plainly follows the lesson 

 before it, and demands that the preceding lesson shall have 

 been mastered. In mathematics and the classics the " peda- 

 gogical form ". has been developed by long trial, and is es- 

 sentially fixed. There may be changes in text-books ; it 

 may be questioned whether or not Caesar shall follow the 

 lessons in easy Latin, the fables and short historical extracts ; 

 but the teachins: form is not therebv affected. One who has 

 to teach mathematics has no difficulty in deciding which 

 place in the course shall be held by analytical geometry, for 

 instance. He has only to decide what text-book will best 

 suit his classes by being best adapted to the requirements of 



* Before the American Association of Agricultural Colleges and Experiment 

 Stations, Washington, D. C, Nov. 14, 1891. 



