112 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



assigned to it. I venture the hope that with enlarged resources 

 it may do more than it is now expected to do, and that without 

 trespassing on the proper field of other institutions. 



Let me speak a little more particularly of the part of this 

 program which falls to the education office of the general govern- 

 ment. It can do its best work, I think, as a co-ordinating 

 influence. It can bring to the notice of the less favored institu- 

 tions information concerning the experience of more advanced 

 institutions. It can call attention from time to time to the 

 relation of agricultural education to general education. It can 

 survey the educational field and possibly point out dangers to 

 be averted or weak places to be strengthened. It can, finally, 

 discover things that need the doing and are not attended to by 

 any other agency, and can see that some part of such lack is 

 supplied. So much as this I hope the Bureau of Education may 

 be able to do for our agricultural education. And so much as 

 this I may say it will undertake to do as far as its resources ^vill 

 permit. 



Just at this time, a survey of the field seems to show that the 

 paramount need is the need of a supply of qualified teachers. 

 Arrangements have already been made for the publication in 

 the fall of an issue of the Bulletin of tJie Bureau of Education 

 devoted to the present condition of the agricultural and mechani- 

 cal colleges, and particularly to the ways by which teachers may 

 be trained in those colleges to meet the needs of high schools 

 and normal schools in which agricultural subjects are taught. 

 A preliminary account of the history and present condition of 

 agricultural education throughout the world is to appear in the 

 near future, in another issue of the Bulletin, which will, it is 

 hoped, be of help in such training of teachers and a help to those 

 teachers who are already in the field. 



In conclusion, the view cannot be too strongly stressed that 

 all of this agricultural education is a contribution to the general 

 education of the American people and to the betterment of 



