December 15, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



827 



dent as a private individual or as a citizen 

 of state or municipality. 



At the district headquarters will be 

 placed a superintendent, field organizers 

 and local teachers. The working plant will 

 include, in addition to offices for adminis- 

 trative purposes, class rooms, laboratories 

 and library facilities, conveniently situated 

 for the use of groups of students. 



The problem of finding a staff of exten- 

 sion workers possessing the very special 

 qualifications required of them is a serious 

 one, but extension teaching is itself assist- 

 ing in the preparation of suitable men and 

 women to carry on its work, and further- 

 more, with the introduction of new meth- 

 ods, extension has ceased to depend solely 

 upon a staff of lecturers who must combine 

 the qualities of public speaker, scholar and 

 philanthropist. An organization similar 

 to that outlined in the foregoing pages, so 

 differentiates and distributes the work that 

 there is no longer the necessity, as in the 

 older forms of university extension, to find 

 men who unite in their individual persons 

 a large number of qualifications. Never- 

 theless, it must be recognized that certain 

 qualities in the extension worker are of es- 

 sential importance. The district represen- 

 tative, for instance, must be selected with 

 the most painstaking care, and must com- 

 bine the tastes and training of a social 

 worker with business acumen, and accept- 

 able personality. His training should have 

 been sufficiently liberal to enable him to 

 understand conditions in his community as 

 they are affected by business relations. If 

 the leading industry of his district is agri- 

 cultural, he should possess some knowledge 

 of agricultural interests ; if manufacturing, 

 he should be more or less of an engineer ; if 

 commercial, he should be acquainted with 

 commercial processes. He is the represen- 

 tative for his district of all the specialists 

 of the university, and the knowledge re- 



quired of him is such as will enable him to 

 place at the service of the people with 

 whom he is related the resources of the 

 state educational center. 



Thus far, little has been said of the ac- 

 tual processes of instruction to be carried 

 on by means of the machinery so fully 

 described. Correspondence-study, debating 

 and informal discussion, lecture, informa- 

 tion and welfare service may be included 

 in its scope. 



It will not be possible in the short time 

 that should be consumed by this paper to 

 enter fully into description or even enu- 

 meration of the activities through which 

 the university may serve individuals or 

 communities in all parts of the state. 



Detailed description of correspondence- 

 study teaching may be omitted. Its proc- 

 esses are well known and for many years 

 were discredited. At present, it is coming 

 to be accepted as a valuable educational 

 method. In conjunction with weekly or 

 bi-weekly classes, in which the student is 

 brought into personal touch with the in- 

 structor, it serves usefully in teaching the 

 industrial employee, whose conditions of 

 life and training as a rule are not favorable 

 to close or unassisted application. "While 

 with the trained student, experience goes 

 to prove that correspondence-study may 

 present decided advantages. The testi- 

 mony of several teachers in The Univereity 

 of Wisconsin, where skepticism prevailed a 

 few years ago, may be of general interest 

 in this connection. 



From the head of the department of Ger- 

 man in the university : 



We have given correspondence courses in al- 

 most all branches of the work of the German 

 department — in grammar, reading, composition, 

 literature, philology and methods of teaching — 

 and these courses when pursued by students of 

 adequate general preparation and maturity have 

 regularly yielded very valuable results in the im- 

 parting of both training and knowledge. 



