AGRICULTURE IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS. 65 



old ones refusing to make room for them, is a very crowded 

 curriculum. When anything new is introduced no time 

 allowance is made for it, but the teacher is expected to accom- 

 plish just as mucli as ever with everything else. Special 

 instruction is called for in many things, which involves special 

 fitting on the part of teachers, until they come to wish to 

 avoid every new subject. In education, however, as in every- 

 thing else, there is a competition of ideas, and the fittest will 

 survive. Wherever the farmers in rural districts unite in 

 the desire for such special instruction as I have outlined 

 above, to be given in the rural schools, they will get it. They 

 can in most cases get it to-day, without legislation or the aid 

 of any one. There is a keen competition among teachers to 

 get schools, and any school in most states whose officials let it 

 be publicly known that they will employ no teacher who does 

 not bring a certificate from the State Agricultural College,* of 

 competence to teach tlie elementary science underlying hus- 

 bandry, will get such a teacher as is desired. Any consider- 

 able demand of this kind would at once make the subject 

 prominent in all normal schools, and within a short time 

 teachers will be as competent to teach "agriculture" as any- 

 thing else. 



It is a fact, however, that such teaching as I have outlined 

 requires excellent ability. It is not every one who can do it 

 successfully. The teacher must have decided power over a 

 subject to be prepared to teach it orally. If a teacher has 

 learned to distinguish a cottony cushion scale, and a child 

 brings a specimen which, under the microscope, proves not to 

 be that scale, the next question will be, " What is it?" and if 

 tlie teacher can not answer, there is a certain embarrassment. 

 For this reason, and also owing to the fact that proper prepa- 

 ration for the oral teaching of elementary natural science is 

 really beyond the reach of many teachers, systematic instruc- 

 tion in these subjects should usually involve the employment 

 of special teachers who will go from one school to another. 



*0r any university or norniul school in wliich husbandry and the applica- 

 tion of nature study thereto are properly recognized in the courses of instruc- 

 tion. 



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