EDUCATION IN THE COMMON SCHOOLS 
conservatism of a social institution like 
our school system. There is danger, when 
professional educators take hold of 
a live and vital thing like agriculture, 
that they take all the real live inter- 
est out of it in order to teach it in a 
conventional way. When it becomes em- 
balmed in regular text books, perfunc- 
tory recitations, and periodical examin- 
ations, it fails of its true mission. If it 
would truly succeed, ways must be found 
to keep it alive, to keep it in touch with 
country life, to invest it with the realities 
of extracting a living from the soil. 
Teachers of agriculture are not yet 
bred. Hundreds of years have been spent 
in growing good teachers of mathe- 
matics, literature, language—let us not be 
run away with by the notion that we can 
build up an agricultural Rome in a day. 
It is necessary to have some foundation 
for any kind of building. It is highly 
desirable to instil a spirit of sympathy 
for agriculture into the minds of all the 
people and to bring them into actual 
contact with the agricultural life. For 
many generations everything in educa- 
tion has tended away from the farm. 
The district school never does one thing 
in all its curriculum to prepare the boys 
and girls for a living on their fathers’ 
farms. It heads them rather toward 
clerkly or professional pursuits in the 
town or city. 
The object of this article is to call at- 
tention to the fact that we must find 
something different from the traditional 
text book method of approach if we 
would really get the genius of agricul- 
ture into the public schools; to name 
two or three methods of approach that 
are different, and to suggest that the 
best plan for a school to undertake agri- 
culture is by finding ways to co-operate 
personally with the nearest agricultural 
industry, by actually entering into its 
spirit and its labors. 
A movement has started in the prune 
orchards of the Santa Clara valley, Cali- 
fornia, that bears directly upon these 
educational questions. The idea is to en- 
list the interest and the labor of the 
children and the people of the villages 
915 
and towns in the harvesting of perish- 
able fruit crops, paying them full mar- 
ket wages for their work, furnishing 
them safe and attractive camping places, 
facilitating their coming and going, and 
giving them a season of healthful, ac- 
tive outdoor life. This is a practical 
course of study in California agriculture 
that may well command the co-operation 
of the educational forces of the state. 
The school term may very well begin 
and close so that the children and their 
parents can take part in the chief in- 
dustry of the neighborhood. 
The raising of a school garden is a 
most delightful and practical method of 
approach. Not all teachers have the 
knowledge and sympathy that make for 
the highest success, but nearly all come 
of ancestry that lived by the soil; and 
if their minds are open, their hearts 
willing, the old interest will come back. 
Not all rural schools are adapted to 
gardening, but many of the most suc- 
cessful school gardens are raised at the 
homes of the children. 
Most of the things we now teach 
would group themselves about and grow 
out of this practical life—arithmetic, 
bookkeeping, nature study and science. 
And let us remember that the thing does 
not even need to be a commercial suc- 
cess in order to be successful education- 
ally. * * * Failure is as natural as 
success—probably more so. If the bugs 
get away with the crop, if neglect of a 
certain point cuts out the profit, if the 
season was unfavorable, if the frost came 
too late, was the enterprise then desti- 
tute of value, and a fair mark for clumsy 
and thoughtless wit? By no means. It 
is real life, and it is doing the work it 
set out to do, no matter whether the ac- 
tual returns were large or small. 
It is the experience of many states 
that the most efficient approach to agri- 
culture is by the organization of boys’ 
and girls’ agricultural clubs. These are 
formed for some specific and tangible 
purpose, as a competition under certain 
rules in the growing of wheat, or po- 
tatoes, or cotton, the raising of poultry 
or gardens, the baking of bread, the can- 
ning of fruit. New York is the pioneer. 
