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(4) Impress upon the public, and particularly the rural population, through 
the press, from the platform, and in every other effective way. not only the great 
advantages of technical training in agriculture; bul also the freeiimn and 
pleasures of country life. 
We should remember that it has taken many, many years to develop The 
strum,' sentiment which prevails everywhere in favor of higher education. The 
pulpit, the press, and every Intelligent force has heen emphasizing the advan- 
tages of higher education for centuries It may take many years to develop 
among the farmers of this country a strong sentiment in favor of agricultural 
education. We should feel encouraged with the results so far. What other 
greal educational movement has made such rapid strides? The outlook is 
hopeful. Let us not grow weary in welldoing. 
E. Davenport, of Illinois. It is pretty well understood, and has been f<>v a 
good many years, that the technical portions of the courses in our agricultural 
colleges are not quite so interesting to students as some other subjects taught. 
This has been due in many cases to the lack of men to properly develop the 
subject of agriculture, although the idea that the difficulty of giving good 
instruction in agriculture is due to the nature of the subject has not entirely 
passed away. The organization lists of the land-grant colleges show a tre 
mendous difference in the number of instructors in agriculture, the figures 
varying from two-thirds of a man to over 20 men in different institutions. 
So far as I know the interest in agriculture in these institutions on the part 
of the student is about in proportion to the number of men who are teaching 
the subject. Excluding household science, which is hardly in the field we 
are discussing, the college of agriculture of the University of Illinois offers 
73 courses in agriculture. Of these, 67 different courses are actually taught 
this year. The proportion of technical to nontechnical work has some- 
thing to do with the interests of the student. I think we ought to con- 
sider whether a student should spend one-half or one-fourth of his time in agri- 
culture. In our institution we expect him to spend one-half his time in this 
subject, but our object is to teach subjects, not to conduct students through set 
courses, the student making up his course of study out of courses of instruction 
offered by the institution. The students demand these specialized courses, and 
are demanding that they shall be still more specialized. We used to have a 
subject we called stock judging, in which the student was to judge horses a 
while, then cattle, then sheep, and then hogs, and we thought that was a proper 
unit. We learned that some students were especially interested in one kind 
of animal and not in the other kinds, and so we divided the subject. We put 
the light horses in a class different from the heavy horses, the beef cattle 
different from the dairy cattle, and we separated the sheep and hogs. We 
have men following each subject. To a man who is to be a producer of beef 
or a breeder of beef cattle information about dairy cattle is the veriest rubbish. 
Technical instruction to be of any consequence or interest to the student must 
he directly applicable to the business in hand. The student ought not to be 
required to waste his time with the kind of technical instruction which is of no 
nse to him. It is our purpose, therefore, to so shape the courses that each 
student shall get the particular kind of technical instruction he wants or needs 
for a definite line of work. The problem before all of us is to so man the agri- 
cultural departments that we can not only teach the stock knowledge we have 
in hand at the present time, but can develop new sources of information. The 
unit is the subject to be taught, and not the numbers to be taught. If the agri- 
culture is simple it takes fewer men. but if it is mixed it will take many men. 
It will take men enough to develop the subject, irrespective of the students. 
^Ve now have more teachers of agriculture than we had students five years ago. 
And the contention was then we did not need any instructors until we had more 
students. I said, we will never have more students until we have more instruc- 
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