i6o The State and the Farmer 



nature-teaching. Yet they are hkely to follow 

 the tendency of the time and to produce a 

 class of teacher that is dominated by the for- 

 mal laboratory. I cannot help feeling that the 

 greatest professors of agriculture or agronomy 

 or horticulture or animal husbandry will be of 

 the field-naturalist type. Laboratory-teaching 

 may be pedagogically just as incorrect as 

 book-teaching. 



It is not necessary to have an entirely new 

 curriculum in order to redirect the rural 

 school. If geography is taught, let it be 

 taught in the terms of the environment. Geog- 

 raphy deals with the surface of the earth. It 

 may well concern itself with the school - 

 grounds, the highways, the fields and what 

 grow in them, the forests, hills and streams, 

 the hamlet, the people and their afi^airs. We 

 are now interesting the child in the earth on 

 which he stands, and, as his mind grows, we 

 take him out to the larger view. A good part 

 of geography in a rural community is, or 

 should be, agriculture, whether so called or 

 not. 



