34 



Do not think that I would have college divorced from the 

 effort of extending knowledge in a popular way. Indeed, I 

 regard it as wise that extension teaching is being placed more 

 and more under the direction of the agricultural colleges, be- 

 cause there is coming rapidly a profound change in the means 

 and methods of such teaching. The old farmer's institute, that 

 useful agency that has been the arena of much speaking and 

 little real demonstration, is bound to pass away and the day 

 of object lesson instruction is coming, a method that requires 

 the services of technically trained men. Over twenty agri- 

 cultural colleges have established extension teaching depart- 

 ments, or their equivalent, and if the bill now before Congress 

 becomes a law the object of which is to aid the colleges by 

 federal appropriations to enlarge their extension work, such 

 teaching will undoubtedly pass into the hands of college depart- 

 ments organized for that purpose. 



But we should make no apologies for the past. The means 

 and methods of agricultural education are being developed 

 through experience that is inevitably attended by mistakes. 

 Nevertheless, since our crude beginnings a half century ago 

 we have attained an epoch-making success that is exercising a 

 profound influence on the policy of all educational institutions 

 from the primary school to the university. We shall be wise 

 if in all the readjustments through which we are passing, we 

 hold fast to the one ideal that has exalted all education worthy 

 of the name, the cultivation and perpetuation of those attributes 

 of human character that are the most precious fruit of a Chris- 

 tian civiHzation and are the ultimate defence of all our inter- 

 ests both material and social. 



