Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

In general the short courses in agriculture aimed (1) to prepare persons not in school to engage in agricultural pursuits, (2) to increase the knowledge and improve the practices of persons engaged in agriculture, (3) to acquaint the students with the personnel, equipment, and other facilities of the colleges for aiding them in their vocations after they returned to their homes. Special directors of short courses were employed at a number of the land-grant institutions.

The character and variety of the short-course work are evidently being affected by present day educational movements of various kinds. There is, for example, a widespread feeling that the large investment of funds in the buildings, equipment, and faculties of the colleges is not justified unless the plant and personnel of these institutions are being used to the fullest extent. Then there is the prevalent notion that mature persons engaged in particular pursuits are greatly benefited by even a short stay at the institutions where they may receive intensive instruction or information from experts. Thus we have what are called unit courses of various kinds for doctors, teachers, butter-makers, poultrymen, fruit growers, automobile chauffeurs, metermen, plumbers, and home makers (499).

The committee felt that the colleges should make a definite effort to organize their short-course work so that it would not interfere with the proper performance of the research, long-course teaching, and extension work. They believed that the demand for short courses would continue to increase and that the present-day outlook in education favored the use of such courses. It was therefore desirable that the colleges should agree on standard definitions of short courses and employ uniform terms in stating their duration and character. To aid in this matter the committee made suggestions, as follows:

(1) A short course is a course of systematic instruction in a given subject or group of subjects of shorter duration than a 4-year college course and not leading to a degree. Obviously a course of systematic instruction can not be given in a few unrelated lectures within a period of a few days.

(2) Extension meetings, farmers' weeks, and similar meetings for a few days, having a miscellaneous program and no really systematic instruction, should not be called short courses but conferences or institutes.

(3) Short courses may be classified according to their duration as years' courses, months' courses, or weeks' courses and should be designated by their duration rather than by the general term "short course." For example, instead of announcing a short course in dairying, occupying six weeks, the college should announce a 6-weeks' course in dairying.

(4) Full consideration should be given by the colleges to whatever informational or instructional work is being done by their extension departments, by the special secondary schools, or by the ordinary high schools, and they should so limit and organize short courses as to give them a definite place in the college program without duplicating the work of other agencies (499).

Unit courses based on job analyses of special agricultural enterprises were advocated. These should be especially suited to agricultural conditions within the State where the college is located and should be planned for mature persons engaged in or expecting to engage in farming or other definite pursuit.

GENERAL STATUS OF THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES

Since 1915 the work of the agricultural colleges in the United States has been greatly broadened and strengthened. The organization of these institutions has also been more sharply defined so as to make the major lines of work distinct as (1) research (mainly

through experiment stations), (2) resident graduate and undergraduate teaching, and (3) extension work. In all these lines the work has gone beyond that which relates to agricultural production and now includes a considerable range of subjects in rural economics and sociology.

The general character of these institutions as public agencies for the promotion of agriculture and country life has also undergone considerable modification. This is shown not only by the recent Federal and State legislation affecting them financially or otherwise but also by the closer and wider relations which they have with the Federal Government, State organizations, local communities, and great numbers of individuals in all parts of the several States.

The assumption of the duty of training teachers for the secondary schools has affected the agricultural colleges favorably in several ways. It has greatly broadened the interest of the college authorities and teachers in the problems of agricultural education and the application of pedagogical principles to the teaching of agriculture. It has opened a new vocational outlet for a considerable number of graduates from the agricultural courses of these colleges. It has given these colleges more prominence in the thought of the pupils in many high schools and brought a considerable number of them to the colleges for long or short courses. It has fundamentally affected the relation of these colleges to the public-school system of the several States and made them more fully an essential part of this system. Since the United States has only begun to develop a comprehensive system of vocational education, it may be expected that with the accelerated progress which such education will make the colleges standing at the head of the agricultural division of this system will have an increasingly important part to play in its development and maintenance.

Resident teaching in the agricultural colleges has been greatly strengthened and diversified in recent years. About $10,000,000 is now annually spent for agricultural instruction in the land-grant colleges. The courses in the various branches of agriculture have in general become more highly specialized and technical. Strong emphasis is now being placed on courses in rural engineering, rural economics, and sociology. Special attention is being paid to better organization of the curriculum, the adoption of a group system of electives, provisions to meet the needs of individual students according to their interests and capabilities, promotion of better teaching, and recognition of the importance of expert supervision of the educational work as a whole by the appointment of directors of resident teaching or similar officers.

Graduate courses for investigators, teachers, and experts in agricultural specialties have increased, particularly in the stronger colleges or universities where agriculture and related subjects are taught.

A considerable number of the graduates of the agricultural colleges engage in general farming. Scattered throughout the States, such men are often leaders of agricultural progress in their several communities. Others pursue agricultural specialties, such as breeding of improved seeds or types of livestock, orcharding, forestry, greenhouse culture of vegetables, flowers, etc. Many become adminis

trative officers or teachers in colleges and schools or investigators in experiment stations or the United States Department of Agriculture. Others hold administrative offices in Federal and State departments of agriculture or other public services.

There are now many lines of business in which such graduates are employed. Social workers and even missionaries are being trained in our agricultural colleges. More than a hundred occupations are open to graduates of these colleges.

The agricultural colleges, through their research, teaching, and extension work, have attained a broad leadership in agricultural progress, and their influence is increasingly felt in all parts of the United States. They have in large measure made successful farming an occupation requiring not only skill, thrift, and good business ability, but also a knowledge of scientific principles and their direct and proved application to farm operations. The value of such knowledge has been more broadly demonstrated than ever before during the recent economic depression of agriculture, due to world-wide causes over which individuals had no control. In this difficult situation there have been many farmers whose knowledge of improved practices, gained directly or indirectly from our agricultural colleges, has enabled them to weather the storm and keep their business going with a measure of success unattainable by their more ignorant neighbors. This is why the farming people have held on to the extension forces of the agricultural colleges and have led the legislatures in many States to increase the personnel and equipment of these institutions for resident teaching and experimental work. Particularly have the farmers asked the colleges to strengthen their teaching and research on subjects within the field of rural economics. Appreciating the great benefits that have come to agriculture from the work of these institutions relating to agricultural production, the farming people are hopeful that when these institutions are strongly engaged in economics work they will be able to do much toward giving agriculture a sounder and more stable economic basis.

Part 7. SECONDARY EDUCATION IN AGRICULTURE,

1862-1925

DISAPPEARANCE OF AGRICULTURE FROM SECONDARY SCHOOLS,

1862-1880

When the college land grant act of 1862 was passed agriculture had almost entirely disappeared from secondary schools. After the Civil War the public high schools increased rapidly in number and attendance, but their courses of study were literary and scientific and were very largely determined by the requirements for entrance to colleges, though very many of their students did not take or complete such preparatory courses. Such academies as survived competition with the high schools made their courses conform closely with those of the public schools.

In 1876 considerable interest in manual training was aroused by the exhibit of the Russian system at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Under private auspices the establishment of manual-training schools was begun soon thereafter in New York City and St. Louis, and somewhat later in Chicago, Toledo, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. A public manual-training school was organized in Baltimore in 1884 and very soon thereafter in Philadelphia and Omaha. This movement grew rapidly after 1890 and some work in manual training was undertaken in many high schools. In 1894 the Bureau of Education received reports from 15 manual-training schools, with 3,362 students. In 1913, 1,677 schools were giving such instruction to 183,571 students of secondary grade.

When the land-grant colleges were established it was very generally supposed that they would meet the need for agricultural education. In many States they admitted students from the common schools and maintained preparatory departments. Some elementary and informational instruction in agriculture was early given in these colleges, in some cases even to preparatory students, and farm labor was required or encouraged. It has been seen, however, that as these colleges developed the tendency more and more was to confine the direct teaching of agriculture to junior and senior years and to lay the foundations for this instruction through the teaching of fundamental sciences in freshman and sophomore years, with more or less attention to their agricultural relations. The result was that very many students who had enrolled in agricultural courses in these colleges prior to 1900 left college without having received any instruction in agriculture as a distinct branch of knowledge.

It was soon apparent that of the masses of farm children only a small number would go to these colleges at all and that very few of those who did go would receive any considerable amount of agricultural instruction. The colleges might do much for agriculture by training experts and leaders and through their research and exten

sion work, but they would have to be supplemented by lower schools in which agriculture was taught if ever the real need for agricultural education was to be supplied in any large measure.

It has been seen that economic and educational conditions in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century were unfavorable to the development of agricultural instruction even in the land-grant colleges. It is therefore not surprising that comparatively little was done to organize such instruction in secondary schools between 1862 and 1880. During that period individuals and agricultural societies here and there urged the importance of teaching agriculture in the public schools.

BEGINNING OF A NEW MOVEMENT FOR AGRICULTURE IN
SECONDARY SCHOOLS, 1881-1900

THE STORRS AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL IN CONNECTICUT

The Storrs Agricultural School was established in the town of Mansfield, Conn., in 1881. This came about from the offer made by Augustus Storrs, a native of that town, to donate a farm of 170 acres, with several buildings, for such a school. His brother Charles also offered $6,000 for equipment and improvements. The State legislature accepted these offers and passed an act establishing the school and granting it $5,000 annually for maintenance (104). An active participant in this movement was Theodore S. Gold, secretary of the State board of agriculture and former principal of the agricultural school at Cream Hill, Conn. (p. 38), which he had felt obliged to close in 1868.

The organic act stated that the Storrs school was to be "for the education of boys, whose parents are citizens of the State, in such branches of scientific knowledge as shall tend to increase their proficiency in the business of agriculture." The school was to be managed by a board of trustees, six of whom were to be chosen for a term of four years by the State senate and one by the State board of agriculture. The director of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station was made a trustee ex officio, and the governor was president of the board. As secretary of the board Mr. Gold had much to do with its organization and management. S. W. Johnson was the representative of the experiment station on this board. The school was at first housed in a building on the farm, which had been constructed for a boys' boarding school and afterwards had been used for a number of years by the Soldiers' Orphans' Home.

To enter the school students must be at least 15 years old and pass examinations in English, arithmetic, geography, and American history. A 2-year course of three terms of 12 weeks each was organized, with the long vacation in the summer. The subjects taught were general and agricultural chemistry, natural philosophy, botany, zoology, geology, animal physiology, mineralogy, farm mechanics, surveying, theoretical agriculture, stock breeding, and English composition. The first year was given to the natural sciences, and agricultural science was taught in the second year. The students were expected to "acquire dexterity" on the farm and were required to labor three hours a day in the fall and five hours in the spring.

« ПредишнаНапред »