24 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Puh. Doc. 



struction in a shorter time, nor yet in giving better instruc- 

 tion covering the same ground, that a technical school must 

 show its superiority to the school of apprenticeship ; but it 

 is in adding to the mere technical training such other instruc- 

 tion as shall better equip the learner for his place among 

 men. Industrial education must be more than learning and 

 teaching trades ; more, even, than adding to the develop- 

 ment of technical skill a certain ability to apply general 

 principles to the details of a handicraft. It must fit the 

 learner for life, — for the life a man must lead among 

 men ; and that is something more than the life a carpenter 

 must lead among carpenters, or a machinist among machin- 

 ists, or a farmer among farmers. This is vital in any con- 

 sideration of the nature, the purposes or the methods of 

 industrial education. And until we have found how the tech- 

 nical institution may best fit its students for the large relations 

 which they must sustain, always having in view the special 

 vocation and also the general human obligations, we shall 

 not have solved the problem of industrial education. 



This has its immediate bearing upon the relation between 

 agriculture and other departments of industrial education, 

 and in this way ; with such material for teaching as is now 

 available, there is no perspective possible in teaching agri- 

 culture. Arranging ditt'erent courses of study in a general 

 agricultural course is as nearly hap-hazard a process as any- 

 thing can be in matters of instruction. Coming fresh from 

 a convention of the so-called agricultural colleges of the 

 country, I am sure of my ground when I say that this is a 

 common fact in the experience of these institutions. Certain 

 text-books may be assigned to the senior year in one of these 

 colleges, with absolutely no reason why they should not have 

 been assigned to the freshman year, or, for that matter, to 

 some year of the preparatory school course. Where there 

 is any perspective, it is afforded by the dependence of agri- 

 culture upon some more definitely formulated scientific 

 study, as in the cases where an understanding of elementar}^ 

 chemistry is involved. In other words, teaching agriculture 

 gains the perspective of a pedagogical form only when it 

 adopts the form determined by some more precisely formu- 

 lated science ; and where no such other science is involved, 



