NATURE STUDY AND AGRICULTURE 3 



not so likely afterwards to acquire a permanent and en- 

 thusiastic interest in agriculture. 



In planning the lessons, the children rather than the 

 subject must be given first consideration. They, rather 

 than the subject, are to be taught. There is evidence that 

 the enthusiasm of some leaders in agricultural instruction 

 has tended to obscure this principle. Children must be, 

 met upon their own ground, along lines of their own inter- 

 ests. The problems they are set to working out must be 

 problems that appeal to them; not necessarily problems 

 that appeal to adult farmers. Lacking this consideration, 

 the very purpose for which agriculture is being introduced 

 into the schools will be defeated. Instead of keeping boys 

 on the farm we may drive them away from it. 



The work should begin no later than the intermediate 

 grades and should be guided along lines of investigation 

 and problem solving as fully as the training of the teacher 

 permits. Nor is such training difficult to attain if serious 

 effort is made. It must be a study of real objects; not a 

 study about objects. It must include doing things, work- 

 ing with hands and tools as well as minds, v/lt should lead 

 to familiar acquaintance with the important natural ob- 

 jects of the environment, to observation of relationships, 

 to some knowledge of plant growth and propagation, to 

 recognition of friends and foes among insects and birds, to 

 some understanding of weather, etc. 



By the time children have reached the seventh and 

 eighth grades they are ready to take up the applied 

 lessons in nature directly connected with agriculture as an 

 industry. Thus the value of such preliminary training is 

 twofold; the pupils gain a fund of useful knowledge as a 



