40 



culture to students of university age who do not have the 

 requirements for admission to college. In addition to the 

 students who come to Davis because they do not have the 

 requirements to enter college, there are high school grad- 

 uates who desire to spend only two years in further study 

 and who find the last two years at Davis upon which they 

 can enter better suited to their needs than the first two 

 years at Berkeley. Every effort should be made to meet 

 the needs of this class of men. The minimum age of 

 entrance at Davis should be raised to 18 years, first, be- 

 cause the student should be induced to exhaust his local 

 agencies of education before entering the farm school, and 

 second, because when he has completed his three years ' work 

 he should be mature enough to enter upon business for 

 himself. 



Emphasis should be placed upon the fact that the train- 

 ing offered at Davis has nothing to do with the introduction 

 of agriculture into the high schools. This should be done, 

 but it is a wholly different thing. The high school system 

 should be so arranged that every boy and girl between 

 the ages of 15 and 18 can sleep at home. The boys and 

 girls between these ages need their parents, and equally 

 important, perhaps, the parents need the children. Eight- 

 een is the accepted age for breaking home ties. From 18 

 to 22 is that transitional period during which the young 

 man or woman gets adjusted to his or her surroundings. 

 A student enters college a boy and leaves it a man. In 

 some ways this is the most important fact concerning his 

 university career. If this view is acepted, it will at once 

 become apparent that the University Farm School at Davis 

 is not a local institution. It may be just as useful to the 

 young man who lives in Imperial Valley or in Butte County 

 as to one born within five miles of Davis. 



Unless the ranches of California are to be abandoned 

 or are to be cultivated by foreigners, there are in Cali- 

 fornia at this moment more than 8000 young men between 

 the ages of 18 and 21 who will some day occupy the land. 



