The Country-Life Movement in the United States Part 4

_Agriculture in the public schools._

Agriculture is now a school subject. It is recognized to be such by state syllabi, in the minds of the people, and in the minds of most school men. It is finding its way into high-schools and other schools here and there.

There is no longer much need to propagate the idea that agriculture is a school subject. It is now our part to define the subject, organize it, and actually to place it in the schools.

We must understand that the introduction of agriculture into the schools is not a concession to farming or to farmers. It is a school subject by right.

It is the obligation of a school to do more than merely to train the minds of its students. The school cannot escape its social responsibilities; it carries these obligations from the very fact that it is a school supported by public money.

The schools, if they are to be really effective, must represent the civilization of their time and place. This does not mean that every school is to introduce all the subjects that engage men's attention, or that are capable of being put into educational form; it means that it must express the main activities, progress, and outlook of its people.

Agriculture is not a technical profession or merely an industry, but a civilization. It is concerned not only with the production of materials, but with the distribution and selling of them, and with the making of homes directly on the land that produces the material. There cannot be effective homes without the development of a social structure.

Agriculture therefore becomes naturally a part of a public-school system when the system meets its obligation. It is introduced into the schools for the good of the schools themselves. It needs no apology and no justification; but it may need explanation in order that the people may understand the situation.

If agriculture represents a civilization, then the home-making phase of country life is as important as the field farming phase (page 93). As is the home, so is the farm; and as is the farm, so is the home. Some of the subjects that are usually included under the current name of home economics, therefore, are by right as much a part of school work as any other subjects; they will be a part of city schools as much as of country schools if the city schools meet their obligations. They are not to be introduced merely as concessions to women or only as a means of satisfying popular demand; they are not to be tolerated: they are essential to a public-school program.

_The American contribution._

The American college-of-agriculture phase of education is now well established. It is the most highly developed agricultural education in the world. It is founded on the democratic principle that the man who actually tills the soil must be reached,--an idea that may not obtain in other countries.

We are now attempting to extend this democratic education by means of agriculture to all ages of our people, and there is promise that we shall go farther in this process than any people has yet gone; and this fact, together with the absence of a peasantry, with the right of personal land-holding, and with a voice in the affairs of government, should give to the people of the United States the best country life that has yet been produced.

America's contribution to the country-life situation is a new purpose and method in education, which is larger and freer than anything that has yet been developed elsewhere, and which it is difficult for the Old World fully to comprehend.

The founding of the great line of public-maintained colleges and experiment stations means the application of science to the reconstruction of a society; and it is probably destined to be the most extensive and important application of the scientific method to social problems that is now anywhere under way.

_The dangers in the situation._

It is not to extol our education experiment that I am making this discussion, but to measure the situation; and I think that there are perils ahead of us, which we should now recognize.

There are two grave dangers in the organization of the present situation: (1) the danger that we shall not develop a harmonious plan, and thereby shall introduce compet.i.tion rather than cooperation between agencies; (2) the danger that the newer agencies will not profit fully by our long experience in agriculture-teaching.

An internal danger is the giving of instruction in colleges of agriculture that is not founded on good preparation of the student or is not organized on a sound educational basis. Winter-course and special students may be admitted, and extension work must be done; but the first responsibility of a college of agriculture is to give a good educational course: it deals with education rather than with agriculture, and its success in the end will depend on the reputation it makes with school men.

There is also danger that new inst.i.tutions will begin their extension work in advance of their academic educational work; whereas, extension and propaganda can really succeed only when there is a good background of real accomplishment at home.

There is necessity that we now reorganize much of our peripatetic teaching. It is no longer sufficient to call persons together and exhort them and talk to them. We have come about to the end of agricultural propaganda. All field and itinerant effort should have a follow-up system with the purpose to set every man to work on his own place with problems that will test him. We have been testing soils and crops and fertilizers and live-stock and machines: it is now time to test the man.

There is also danger that we consolidate too many rural schools in towns. If it is true that the best country life is developed when persons live actually on their farms, then we should be cautious of all movements that tend to centralize their interests too far from home, and particularly to centralize them in a town or in a village. The good things should come to the farm rather than that the farm should be obliged to go to the good things.

_The present educational inst.i.tutions._

We must first understand what our inst.i.tutions of education are. The extension of agriculture-education in inst.i.tutions in the United States (beyond the regular colleges of agriculture) is in four lines: as a part of the regular public-school work; in unattached schools of agriculture publicly maintained; in departments attached to other colleges or universities; in private schools. The last category (the private schools) may be eliminated from the present discussion.

The separate or special-school method is well worked out in Wisconsin (county plan), in Alabama and Georgia (congressional-district plan), Minnesota (regional plan), with other adaptations in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Michigan, Maryland, and elsewhere.

In New York, the movement for special schools has taken an entirely new direction. Two schools are connected with existing inst.i.tutions of higher learning of long-established reputation (being the only schools of this kind, state-maintained, attached to liberal arts universities) and one is unattached; none of them has a defined region or territory.

These inst.i.tutions are established on a more liberal financial plan than the special schools of other states, standing somewhat between those schools and the agricultural college type.

While much publicity has been given to the unattached-school plan, the main movement is the adding of agriculture-education to the existing public-school systems. Only eight or ten of the states have entered into any regular development of separate or unattached schools, whereas in every state the movement for agriculture in the public schools is well under way. The public schools are of definite plan; the unattached schools are of several plans, or of no plan; and in some states an intermediate course is developing by the establishing of public high-schools (one to a county, a congressional district, or other region) in which instruction in agriculture and household subjects is highly perfected.

Aside from the foregoing particular inst.i.tutions, many general colleges and universities are introducing agricultural work in order to meet the increasing demand and to keep up with educational progress.

Agricultural work is proceeding in nearly all the states under the auspices of the United States Department of Agriculture, some of it distinctly educational in character; and there is agitation for the pa.s.sage of a national bill to further secondary or special agriculture-education in the states.

State departments of agriculture, the indispensable experiment stations, veterinary colleges, departments of public instruction, farmers'

inst.i.tutes, voluntary societies, are all attacking the country-life problem in their own ways; and the powerful work of the agricultural press, although not coming within the scope of this paper, should not be overlooked as an educational agency.

In the meantime, the colleges of agriculture are growing rapidly and are approaching the subject from every side, and are a.s.suming natural and inevitable leadership.

_The need of plans to coordinate this educational work._

There is no doubt that all these agencies are contributing greatly to the solution of the rural problem, and there is now probably very little inharmony and little duplication of effort. In the newness and enthusiasm of the effort, good fellowship holds the work together in all the states or at least keeps it from collision. But the situation is inherently weak, because there is no plan or system, and no united discussion of the grounds on which the work rests. I have been in correspondence on this question with public men in every state in the Union, and I find a general feeling that the present situation is fraught with danger, and that there is great need of organization or at least of federation of the forces within each state; and ultimately there must be federation on a national basis. The work should be cooperative rather than compet.i.tive.

What is to be the policy of the state in agriculture-education? Where is the headship to lie? What are to be the spheres of the different inst.i.tutions and agencies? What board or agency is to correlate and unify all the parts, to insure a progressive and well-proportioned program?

_Outline of a state plan._

A general law should define the state's policy in education by means of agriculture and in the development of rural affairs, and outline methods that it proposes to follow, so that the work may be coordinated throughout the state and that a definite plan may be projected. The duties of all the cla.s.ses of inst.i.tutions should be defined and relations should be established between them. The people should know to what they are committing themselves.

This law should not, of course, be designed to suppress the activities of any inst.i.tution. It might not place any inst.i.tution under the domination of any other inst.i.tution. The schools, colleges, and other inst.i.tutions for the betterment of agriculture should have their own autonomy and responsibility, and they should be developed to the highest point of efficiency in their respective spheres.

The fundamental consideration in such a law should be to develop the agriculture and advance the country life of the state by organizing the work of all the agencies on a systematic plan, so that an orderly development may be secured. Such a recognized general policy should do much to insure each inst.i.tution in the system its proper state support.

It is probably too much to expect that a fundamental state law could be projected abstractly. Laws are gradually built up to meet urgent needs as they arise; but if the principles are kept in mind, the making of separate and special laws might be so guided as to produce a harmonious result.

Some of the particular points that I think should be desired in such a law or series of laws are these:

1. It should propound a policy in the development of country life;

2. It should name the cla.s.ses of inst.i.tutions that it proposes to utilize in the execution of this policy;

3. It should define the functions of the different cla.s.ses of inst.i.tutions;

4. It should state the organic relationships that ought to exist between them all;

5. It might provide an advisory council to guide agricultural education and advancement in the state. I think that the directors or responsible heads of such inst.i.tutions established for the betterment of agriculture throughout the state should const.i.tute such consulting body, to which questions of policy and procedure should be referred and which, of course, should serve without remuneration. This council might include also the commissioner of agriculture and the superintendent of public instruction. It might be well to have one, two, or three other persons appointed by the governor. The council would const.i.tute a natural conference of the parties that are immediately responsible for this work, without taking the management of any inst.i.tution out of the hands of an existing board. The idea of such a body is to further the coordination by conference, rather than to have plenary power. Its moral influence ought to be all the greater because of its lack of conferred power.

_A state extension program._

As soon as a state has produced strong inst.i.tutions for research and education in agriculture, it will need to provide an agency for utilizing the results. A state extension program, on a coordinating plan between all the inst.i.tutions but proceeding from one educational center, and which all the inst.i.tutions would have a right to use for the spread of their work among the people, could accomplish vast benefits. It should comprise inst.i.tutes, utilize the state system of fairs educationally, afford an organ for the making of agricultural surveys and demonstrations, spread an educational propaganda on the agricultural law, collect and collate the experience of the farmers of the state. It could a.s.sort and apply the information that the state, at great expense, acc.u.mulates through its various separate agencies. It could utilize the students, whom the state provides with free tuition. The germ of such an enterprise already exists in most of the states.