.M Z Hollinger Corp. pH8.5 531 12 opy 1 !^ WESTERN STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. Educational Agriculture. BY JOSIAH MAIN, (B. S. in Agriculture, A. M. in Education.) DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION, WESTERN STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, HAYS, KANSAS. Vol. II, No. 3. Issued Quarterly by the Western State Normal School. HAYS, KANSAS. September, 1910. Entered March 23, 1909, at Hays. Kansas, as second-class matter, under act of July 16, 1894. Wonoeno: Copyright, 1910, by JosiAH Main. All rights reserved. ©Ci.At> >> no nn m C} (/) >j Ki / c Wl £ in U) o i>. O > V o> c I r bO bO u. p. SCIENTIFIC Fig. 2. ilfalfi: Texas cattle tick x^*/^ this plan of organization in the case of nature study should be is a matter that has never gotten into the books, and some nature-study people insist that it never shall, since no two of them organize in the same way, and be- cause it is spiritual and embalming properly comes only after the spirit has departed; in other words, they do not want the subject killed by or- ganization, thus leaving it to each teacher to organize it according to the needs of each particular ^^ ^ case but agreeable to rec- /'''C^ ognized general principles. No further discussion of the organization on the cultural dimension will, - therefore, be essayed, other than to call atten- tion to the mathematical fact that this dimension is as important to the solid as is either of the others, . and the educational fact that if it be allowed to diminish to zero the entire volume becomes zero for educational purposes. It should also be noted that after the nature-study stage of development of the child is passed and the economic and scientific stages are in turn brought to the focus of attention the cultural purpose should be in- cidental. When the scientific aspect (fig. 2) is approached organization is spon- taneous and the whole mass crystallizes into perfect laminae with planes of cleavage at right angles to the scientific dimension in a manner com- >v OH o no o o >. o r N ,^ ^ q Fig. 3. Educational Agriculture. 11 parable to the behavior of the magnetic needle brought within the in- fluence of a current of electricity. On this aspect each lamina stands for one of the fundamental sciences, botany, zoology, chemistry, etc., the laminae together including the entire mass of the solid. ' Coming to the economic aspect (fig. 3), the making of agriculture a high-school subject means its organization on the economic dimension, since no attempt at organization in the grammar grades, before the details are studied analji;ically as pertaining to the fundamental sciences, can have more than temporary educational value. The latter economic organization has not yet been completed, some laminse having been early marked out, as horticulture or animal hus- bandry, while other planes of cleavage meet with such obstacles in the mass as to warp and bend and obstruct them, and some of the original laminae show a tendency to split into numerous subdivisions. The educational frontier. — This is now the educational frontier — the organization of agriculture as a high-school science on its economic di- mension after the analytic study of its materials in the work of the science classes. When so organized we will have a science of agriculture and every portion of the mass of the solid will lie in a distinct economic plane. As it is evident that a perfect organization will never be possible owing to the ramifications of certain subjects into other subjects — such, for instance, as the matter of fertility — the conception of agriculture as a science will always have to allow for inherent imperfections. This neces- sity does not obviate that other one of continuing the attempt at organi- zation, and science men who are used to the stricter conception of the term "science" may do well to tolerate the other usage. Aristotle must have had some such condition in mind when he said, "It is affectation to try to treat a subject more exactly than its nature permits." The function of science is organization, and it requires that everything else give way to that purpose. The function of agriculture in the schools must be economic, and for that purpose organization is to be regarded as a means rather than an end. The love of science may be such as to lead the student to abandon the economic purpose for the scientific at some place where the pursuit of the former leads to a point from which open out attractive fields of scientific study, which is frequently the case with students in the agricultural colleges. It is therefore much to be desired that the economic be given its due share of attractiveness in the high school, that a portion of its pupils be safely guided from the economic phase of the subject as presented in the grammar grades, through the analytic stages as considered in connection with the high-school sciences, to the synthetic treatment in the later part of the high-school work. Bringing materials within the solid for organization. — When com- pletely organized as suggested in previous paragraphs, the place of every fact, principle and organism is as definitely determined as may be the latitude, longitude and altitude of Mount McKinley. Thus organized, some things of high value in one aspect will be of low value in another. The art of directing the high-school work in agriculture and science is to utilize matter that is of high value in as many different aspects as pos- sible, taking care that such subjects as are of little value for one purpose have their existence in the work justified by a high value for some other 12 Western State Normal. purpose. And it will be necessary in the treatment of the different phases of this nature group of materials to utilize in the development of each phase of it certain matters that have no value whatever in the treat- ment of either one or both of the other phases. Thus Huxley's crayfish, which is a vertebrate turned inside out and upside down and hind end before, stands high in the scientific purpose as a means of distinguishing between the essential and the nonessential in animal structure, as an ex- ample of the success of a type of structure that contradicts erroneous ideas that may exist in the student's mind gained from the teachings of the ordinary texts on human anatomy and physiology. Our method of graphic representation would have to indicate such a fact as lying out- side the common mass of materials, though still in its proper place in the scientific plane. Similarly, the pussy willow and alfalfa, which may rank high in their respective cultural and economic planes, may be en- tirely outside the common mass. In such cases as these, correlation must give way to the needs of the particular subject under considei-ation. But these exceptions are not so common as teachers of high-school science have heretofore seemed to think. As an example of a compromise that illustrates the matter under con- sideration, no better illustration could be found than BoopJiilus annulatus, which, besides being typical of a large class of animals, is valuable scien- tifically for the study of its life history and as a typical parasite. Other examples may be as good for these purposes; but when we discover that B. armulatus is none other than the Texas cattle tick that costs the state of Tennessee eleven million dollars annually and the other Southern states correspondingly, such school as may procure this organism may do well to have regard for its economic significance by utilizing it for purely scientific study. Similarly, in the study of entomology, the corn plant alone furnishes good examples of five of the seven Linnjean orders, all of high economic importance. The same condition exists with regard to botanical types. While advanced students of pure science, to be true to the ideals of their calling, cannot have regard to the economic importance Intrinsically useful materials may just as successfully form the basis for the development of ideals as intrinsically useless materials. That the student of engineering or agriculture or commerce does not always acquire the ideals that mark the cultured and refined "gentleman" is not the fault of the subject-matter, but rather of the method. — Bagley: The Educative Process, p. 221. The nature of the mind determines what is essential in the educative processes, and this without reference to environment. . . . The nature of the mind does not determine the choice of material available as the source of stimuli for various forms of mental activity and control. Material may be employed as the source of stimuli to mental activity and be excellent for that purpose while having little or no other value. Other material may be employed of equal value for the same purpose and pos- sessing further value of a high order as usable knowledge. It is be- lieved that no one will take issue with the statement that whenever material of the latter kind can be employed that will fully meet the needs of the child by furnishing the proper stimuli for desired mental activities, it should be employed, and not displaced by that material that has a value solely as a source of stimuli but without value as usable knowledge. — N. E. A. Committee on Industrial Education in Rural Schools (1905), p. 19. Educational Agriculture. 13 of the forms studied, the high-school student of science will have plenty to do well within the economic limitation. On the other hand, the teacher who is committed to the teaching of the "practical" should not fail to ap- preciate the fact that no organism, however insignificant it may be eco- nomically, how rare numerically, or how aberrant structurally, but may help emphasize the essentials of structure of one that has economic significance or which may itself, by changes in environment, come to have gi'eat economic significance. Trouble with that third dimension. — Some further features of our rectangular solid are significant. It is evident that one may pass directly from consideration of any aspect of it to the consideration of either of the others, so the stv^dent or teacher may pass directly from the consideration of nature study to either science or agriculture, or may have an apprecia- tion of the latter two without having any conception of the cultural significance of the total. These possibilities, namely, the three single aspects and the three possible combinations of two of them, none of which is sufliicient, explain the diversity of views on the subject similar to those entertained by the "six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, • Who went to see the elephant (Though all of them were blind). That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. "And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long. Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong." Generally, that third dimension or its equivalent has been the stumbling block of every form of mental endeavor that calls for judgment, from the high-school student of solid geometry to the landscape painter who "lacks perspective." So general is this defect that the critic of any piece of work may fall back upon it when other criticisms are impossible, though, rightly conceived, it constitutes the finest test of the artistic tempera- ment. And in the case in hand it is a test which many a schoolman fails to pass because he can see only one face of the solid. There is no field or real knowledge which may not suddenly prove con- tributory in a high degree to human happiness and the progress of civilization, and therefore acceptable as a worthy element in the truest culture. — Eliot: Education for Efficiency, p. 47. So intimate are the relations of human beings to the animate and in- animate creation that it is impossible to foresee with what realms of nature intense human interests may prove to be identified. — Eliot: Education for Efficiency, p. 46. Any attempt to "cut out" the "impractical" parts invariably results in the inefficient functioning of the remainder. Short courses that aim to give only the essentials, fifth-rate colleges and normal schools that educate you while you wait, are sufficiently damned by their own prod- ucts. — Bagley: The Educative Process, p. 233. 14 Western State Normal. Limitations of the nature-study point of vieiv. — We sometimes see the nature-study people claiming to have the only correct point of view be- cause, as they see it, it is very plain that the whole subject of agriculture may be organized on the cultural dimension, and theirs being the first in point of time, they are loath to yield to any one else this popular field in which they have had such success in the elementary gi-ades. The progress from the nature-study stage to the complete organization in all three dimensions is a necessary metamorphosis through which some schoolmen seem unable to pass. One who cannot get away from the nature-study stage cannot organize his knowledge as general science, however much it accumulates. Organization implies science. Continued work in nature study may result in the accumulation of a vast mass of interesting ma- terials and the formation of encyclopedias, but its character as nature- study material precludes its unification into science. Its exponents and teachers should not and usually do not expect it to aid in the solution of the problem of high-school agriculture. Like Maggy in "Little Dorrit," it is destined to remain forever "just ten." "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I be- came a man, I put away childish things." Inadequacy of the economic point of vieiv. — ^We sometimes see the agriculturists claiming to have the only point of view from which to or- ganize this subject of agriculture in the high school, and they are a very formidable set of promoters to cope with, because they know the strength of the popular dissatisfaction with the high school and that the hopes of its reform are based, to a large degree, on their progress. They also have the art of achieving an early seeming success, which they attain by sub- stituting for the citizenship ideal — which is slow of attainment and demon- stration — the purely economic purpose, which measures the success of their plan by dollars and cents and requires just one season and one crop to demonstrate. Investigations concerning the doctrine of formal discipline have shown satisfactorily that unless a subject is consciously ideahzed during the period of training in it, by the enlightened enthusiasm of the teacher, such acquirements in neatness, accuracy, thoroughness, persistency, etc.. To describe without rising to the causes or descending to the conse- quences is no more science than merely and simply to relate a fact of which one has been a witness. — Guyot. There is a stage in mental development, above the empirical stage and below the philosophical, which may be called the scientific. — E. E. Brown: The Making of Our Middle Schools, p. 3. If a child at any particular epoch in his development is compelled to repeat any fixed form of action belonging to a lower stage of develop- ment, the tendency will be for him to stop at that point, and it will be difficult, if not impossible, to get him up onto a higher plane. . . . Thoroughness in the pursuit of any study in the elementary school may result in cessation instead of promotion of mental growth. — Harris: Educational Creeds of the Nineteenth Century, pp. 39, 40. Whenever the study of nature enters upon organization of the whole and the pigeonholing of facts in some general scheme it becomes science, and in our usage of the term ceases to be nature study. — Coulter and Patterson: Practical Nature Study, p. 17. Educational Agriculture. 15 as it affords the pupil will be of little value to him in the pursuit of other studies or exercises. The value of formal discipline thus inheres in the subject in which the discipline is given, and unless the personal virtues exercised in its pursuit are purposely dignified by the teacher such sub- ject is inadequate for the purposes of general education. This fact makes it incumbent upon the teacher who would make agriculture a culture subject, without which its educational value will be limited, to ideahze it. Were the purpose merely to impart valuable information and drill in correct practices, the instruction would not call for such idealization. In this matter the work in agriculture in the agricultural school may essentially differ from that of the regular high school, whose ideal is the highest type of citizenship. Thus it is that the culture factor must be carried along with the economic to the end of the course, and thus it is written that "man shall not live by bread alone." When the grammar grades have done their whole duty in the teach- ing of agriculture the only thing left for the high school to do in the matter is to raise it to the rank of a science. This involves the scientific consideration of every feature that is to have a place in the science of agriculture as the high school shall attempt to organize it. The only technical difficulties in the study of agriculture are scientific difficulties. This analysis is, therefore, best provided for in the regular science classes of the first three years of the high-school course. The advantage to the fundamental sciences of the utilization of agricultural materials is a matter of vital importance to the sciences themselves which will be dealt with elsewhere. Unless this scientific treatment of such features as are related to the fundamental sciences is done, agriculture can no more become a high- school subject than a stream can rise higher than its source, and its ex- tension into the high school will bring discredit upon it as well as upon the high school that attempts it, for no high-school student who has average mental powers and the average respect for them will be at- tracted by a subject that is kept in its elementary stage. But after an analytic treatment of details as a part of the regular science work this subject may be erected into a science by the synthesis of details, pre- viously treated analytically, with the general principles which involve the art of agriculture. Tyranny of the scientific point of view. — We sometimes see the scien- tists claiming to have the only possible system of organization because The most generally valuable elements of the environment having been introduced into the elementary curriculum, there is not as much need for a large body of prescribed elements in the secondary curriculum. The basic representativeness of the elementary course, more than the age and nature of the adolescent pupils, allows election in the high school. — Heck: Mental Discipline and Educational Values, p. 138. The highest type of spontaneous, whole-souled activity cannot be de- veloped about trifling or worthless things. — Hodge: Nature Study and Life, p. 23. It is . . . the business of secondary education to raise all subjects which it touches to the plane of science, by bringing all into the point of view of organizing principles. — E. E. Brown: The Making of Our Middle Schools, p. 4. 16 Western State Normal. that is the peculiar function of science — to organize. So much do the cultural and economic organizations suffer from comparison with the scientific organization that the passage of an economic plane of cleavage, for instance, at right angles to the scientific, has the effect of polarizing all the light from that aspect, resulting in diminished lucidity or even extinction. Through such incomprehensible masses as marketing, stock judging, silos, manures, or forage crops, their planes of cleavage refuse to cut. Such persons are, of course, not suited to teach the subject of agriculture in its synthetic form as an organized science. And when one considers the application to agricultural purposes and the use of agricultural materials that is intended to be a feature of the work in elementary physics, physical geography, botany, zoology, and chemistry, he will be forced to conclude that such insistence on scientific perfection is inconsistent with the use of such subject matter. For in all the high- school work the agricultural pabulum must consist largely of "rough- age," not only from local necessity but from preference as well, for roughage is a necessary concomitant of the "horse sense" which is a cherished object of agriculture in the high school. Concerning teachers. — By common consent the necessary preparation for the high-school teacher of any subject includes university or collegiate training in his specialty, and this necessity can in no other subject be greater than in the teaching of agriculture. The greatest fault peculiar to such teachers is apt to be the lack of appreciation of the cultural value of this subject, owing to the fact that culture is deep-seated and must antedate the collegiate training of the teacher. The greatest fault of the scientist will be his inability to gather to- gether into synthetic unity the dissociated bits of the subject, granted that he has done his duty by it in the regular science work preceding its organization. He may also be found unwilling to concede that the knowledge of nature as pi'esented in the high-school sciences is, first, for the purpose of improving on nature, and secondly, for the formation of a foundation for the superstructure of philosophy, and that both may be attained by one process. Sometimes it seems that scientists think that they have the right of way in the subjects which they espouse; but there is more than one way of interpreting nature. — Bailey: The Nature-study Idea, p. 94. The degree of scholarship required for secondary teachers is by com- mon consent fixed at a collegiate education. — Report of the "Committee of Fifteen," N. E. A., 1895. The teacher who is preparing for high-school work in agriculture has a fairly definite and limited field, and he can prepare himself con- cretely. The field is essentially a natural-science field. The high-school teacher of agriculture should be as well grounded in the science and practice of his subject as the teacher of physics or chemistry or botany is in his field. He should, in fact, have a deeper and broader training, since he must use physics, chemistry, botany and the like in his special agricultural work. For many years to come the natural-science teacher will probably be obliged to handle the agricultural work in many high schools that introduce the subject. . . . We may hope that eventually the teaching of the natural sciences may be so vital and applicable that these sciences may constitute a part of a real course in agriculture. — Bailey: Training for Teachers of Agriculture, p. 10. Educational Agriculture. 17 The disadvantage that the nature-study enthusiast will labor under as a teacher will be his inability to appreciate the whole subject as a high-school subject; to realize that no subject has ever gotten into the high school from below; that so long as the race is advancing and "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" educationally, subjects will, as here- tofore, be handed down from above. And the greatest fault of the teacher whose principal qualification for the agricultural work is that he was "reared on a farm" is that his stock of agricultural knowledge will usually be found largely composed of things that ought, for the good of agriculture, to have been forgotten long ago. 2— ED. AGR. Part II.— Organization. Chapter II. MOTIVES. A discussion of agricultural pedagogy properly begins with a con- sideration of motives. These might be classified as racial, moral (national) and economic (individual) — these divisions being indistinct and over- lapping. The most patent motive and the present strength of the move- ment for agricultural instruction in the schools is the last. Hence, as a reform, the propaganda has been largely in the hands of the agricul- turists. Educators should realize the great racial and moral significance of the reform and put it on a higher plane than the purely economic. The attainment of the racial and national motives will in no way interfere with the economic, and being of a higher order will aid in the idealization of the vocation as it should be idealized to be worthy of a place in an educational system. The racial need of this reform may be appreciated by one who con- siders the changed mode of life which we lead as compared with that which the race led during the ages when natural selection was molding the minds and bodies of our ancestors into the form which they have transmitted to us. The proper balance between physical and mental work should be restored, particularly with children of school age. Bodily preservation is of prime importance, as the most hopeless ruin is bodily ruin. School practices are often personally and racially dangerous, re- sulting in school-bred diseases and few offspring for what should be the best selected portion of each generation. Industrial education is the natural corrective for this condition, agri- culture being especially valuable as the oldest, most general and most permanent vocation. Artificially made exercises will always be inade- The senescence of the original American stock is already seen in abandoned farms and the infecundity of graduates.^ — Hall: Adoles- cence, p. xvi. I would pvit industrial education into the schools, not altogether be- cause it is demanded, but because it is an essential part of a system of education that aims at racial development. — Davenport: Education for Efficiency, p. 49. We must be willing to stop short of the highest possible scholarship in our American schools, if that last finish of scholarly excellence cost never so little of the real vigor of American life. The life is more than learn- ing. — E. E. Brown: The Making of Our Middle Schools, p. 454. It seems quite clear that luxury and "culture" lead almost invariably in a few generations to degeneracy. The history of this republic offers hundreds of conspicuous examples of this phenomenon. History teaches. (19) 20 Western State Normal. quate because they lack incentive. The economic motive, while not ranking highest with the educator, often makes the strongest appeal to the pupil and should be utilized until the higher may be inculcated. The national motive pertains to instruction in the conservation of natural resources, which will naturally fall to the agricultural course. As a nation of despoilers we have carried this habit over from natural wealth to the fields of business and politics, and it thus becomes of great moral significance. If our country is to remain prosperous and wealthy, as we all hope it may, we are in great danger of running the usual cycle of leisure, luxury, decadence and extinction — a series of causes and re- sults which summarize the history of many past nations. The best cor- rective of this tendency is a permanent connection with our sources of strength, through those vocations which are coexistent with racial progress. The success of the economic purpose insures us the necessary prosperity. The others should aim to put on the brakes, that prosperity may prove a permanent blessing. that the hope of a nation lies in the masses. If they are weaklings and degenerates, decay inevitably follows. — Carlton: Education and In- dustrial Evolution, p. 316. In the past nations and races have unceasingly passed through a cycle which led finally to degeneracy, decay and subjection to stronger, more virile, because more primitive, races. In the United States the enormous increase in wealth and the enlargement of the leisure class, especially in the case of the weaker sex, indicate that this nation is reaching a place in her national history which, if she is to follow the cycle traced by older nations, presages national degeneration. — Carlton: Education and In- dustrial Evolution, p. 17. A great need of modern industrial society is intellectual pleasures. — Eliot: Education for Efficiency, p. 39. The purpose of a vocation is to gain time for avocation; . . . the aim of labor is leisure. The things that our labor produces would not interest us indefinitely, or perhaps greatly, if they were not exchange- able for leisure or if they did not contribute to the enjoyment of leisure. . . . We do not ask a man to provide an economic basis for somebody else's leisure, for the exercise of someone else's powers of reflection and creation, but for his own. . . . Vocational training ought not to be included in the six years that are sufficient for the elementary school courses. — Butler: Training for Vocation and for Avocation, Educa- tional Review, December, 1908, pp. 471, 472. Chapter III. GENETIC PSYGHOLOGY AS AN AID IN ORGANIZATION. While the proper organization of the nature group of subjects, in- cluding nature study, agriculture and the natural sciences, is perhaps the most difficult educational problem of the generation, there is no new kind of pedagogy peculiar to agriculture. The same principles govern in the organization of this as of any other subject in the curriculum. The only way to find out what these principles are is by investigation into the development of the human mind from the earliest years until maturity, and this constitutes the science of genetic psychology. Broadly speaking, this order of development is relatively fixed with regard to the entire human species. Nerve centers have a well known sequence in the order of their development and appropriate exercise, and the ignoring of the latter constitutes the greatest waste. And these underlying laws are independent of our particular aim in education. Having determined what they are, the educator is subject to them so far as they apply in the utilization of subject matter, and hence may place nothing in the course of training arbitrarily. He may not always be sure what these principles are, but if there be science of education it is its duty to find them. Any blind devotion to traditional educational practices is a deliberate confession of our ignorance of the way in which the human mind develops. Genetic psychology is but a phase of the broader subject of evolution, which conceives man as having come up from the world fauna "out of great tribulation" and with the ineradicable marks of the struggle, se- lection, and survival upon him and his children. No race that has been able to evade the struggle has ever developed to a very high stage of civilization. And starting from a state in which he represents the The laws that underlie the educative process are largely independent of the ultimate end of education. — Bagley: The Educative Process, p. 40. Attention must be called to the fact that much of our devotion to traditional educational practices is nothing more or less than a deliberate confession of our ignorance of the way in which the human mind de- velops. — Judd: Psychology, p. 370. The former age, in which all thought that trades must be established by bounties and prohibitions; that manufacturers needed their materials and qualities and prices to be prescribed, and that the value of money could be determined by law, was an age which unavoidably cherished the notions that a child's mind could be made to order; that its powers were to be imparted by the schoolmaster; that it was a receptacle into which knowledge was to be put and there built up after the teacher's ideal. In this era, however, ... we are also beginning to see that there is a natural process of mental evolution which is not to be disturbed without injury; that we may not force upon the unfolding mind our artificial forms; but that psychology also discloses to us a law of supply and de- mand to which, if we would not do hai-m, we must conform. — Spencer: Education, pp. 89, 90. Man is also an animal. He has come up from the world-fauna. On his way he contended hand to hand with the other animal creation. He (21) 22 Western State Normal. physiological and psychological condition of his most remote ancestor, every child must pass through a series of formal stages that represent analogous periods of race history down to the present, thus arriving at his individual maturity and joining the ranks of his fellow men only after a long infancy fraught with perils to both body and soul. How easy it seems to influence the child; yet this formula of his development which he inherits is the most permanent thing in the world. This permanency is the one thing that makes a science of genetic psychology possible. Man is bound to his racial progenitors by chains of heredity that he cannot break. His environment, which limits his structure where heredity does not, is essentially the same as his ancestors', and heredity gives him the same set of vital organs. His muscular work may change with the progress of civilization, but heredity does n't recognize the changed needs and endows him with the same outfit that his hunting and fighting and dancing ancestors had, except where modified by natural selection. His spiritual needs may differ yet more, but still man "thinks with his muscles," and mental development, through the necessity of the killed from necessity of obtaining food. As he arose above his contest- ants, this necessity became less urgent. — Bailey: The Nature-study Idea, p. 108. This great process of subjugation, this hand-to-hand fight against nature, must have constituted the main line of human nature study for thousands, probably for tens of thousands, of years before language took form and written history began, and it has formed a large part of the work ever since. And how far have vermin, weeds, insects and microbes been brought under subjection even now? To what extent this phase of struggle and warfare should enter into the course in nature study must remain largely a matter for individual parents and teachers to decide, but that it has played an important part and fundamental role in development of civilization and formation of human character there can be no doubt. And it remains as true as ever that character can only be developed by struggle, by active, intelligent, patient overcoming of difficulties, the elements that achieved success throughout the ancient travail of the race. — Hodge : Nature Study and Life, pp. 2, 3. Students of biology consider the argument for organic evolution especially strong in view of the analogy between race and individual de- velopment. The individual in embryo passes through stages which rep- resent, morphologically, to a degree, the stages actually found in the ancestral animal series. A similar analogy, when inquired into on the side of consciousness, seems on the surface true, since we find more and more developed stages of conscious function in a series corresponding in the main with the stages of nervous growth in the animals; and then we find this growth paralleled in its great features in the mental develop- ment of the human infant. — Baldwin: Mental Development, p. 14. There are no finalities save formulae of development. — Hall : Adol., p. viii. Strange would it be, indeed, if intelligent and serious attention to what the child noiv needs and is capable of in the way of a rich, valuable and expanded life should somehow conflict with the needs and possibili- ties of later adult life. — Dewey: The School and Society, p. 71. It would be utterly contrary to the beautiful economy of nature if one kind of culture were needed for the gaining of information and another Educational Agriculture. 23 kinaesthetic factor, is conditioned upon muscular activity. These con- ditions being enforced by nature, it behooves the educator to lay hold of them and utilize them in his task of developing to their fullest the in- herited faculties of the child, for they are the only endowments which nature provides the individual for any kind of human achievement. But while racial heredity is unalterable except by the slow process of natural selection in the case of man — the race having never maintained a permanent policy of selective mating — there is one place in which heredity leaves a loophole. This loophole, being itself a matter of heredity in which man differs from all other species, is the plastic con- dition of the nervous organization of each infant whereby it may be molded to suit the changed intellectual needs of each generation. Plas- ticity and lack of an imposed stock of fixed mental reactions not only makes education possible and necessary, but at the same time prevents the educational acquirements of one generation, which in the total make up its civilization, from being transmitted to the next. Each infant starts in life with a "clean slate," and it is only by virtue of a prolonged infancy, the natural faculty of imitation and the assistance of others, that he approximates the average of his generation in intellectual at- tainments. And if- after spending a good part of his life in furthering the cause of civilization he perhaps aids in advancing it ever so little, his success but increases the educational task imposed upon the next generation. The task of education in the promotion of civilization is therefore an increasingly difficult one. A civilization, according to this conception, cannot be inherited. But if its purposes agree with the physical good of the species it may become a selective factor resulting in an increasing of the inherited nervous plasticity upon which education and civilization depend. That such seems to be the case is optimistic, and the increased nervous plasticity is evidenced by an increasing capacity for education and a lengthening of infancy in which to educate. Precocity, or early maturity, is therefore usually an indication of low organization. Genetic psychology recognizes these facts and has marked out dis- tinct stages of physical and mental development through which all chil- dren must pass to reach maturity. These correspond, more or less accurately, with ancient periods of racial development that required un- told generations for their completion. In his passage through these stages the child revives many of the ancient feelings and activities that the race had during the corresponding stages, and the wise educator puts himself in sympathy with the child by recognizing that the pleasure of any experience is proportional to its hereditary directness, and that were needed as a mental gymnastic. Everywhere throughout creation we find faculties developed through the performance of those functions which it is their office to perform ; not through the performance of arti- ficial exercises. — Spencer : Education, chap. I, "What Knowledge is Most Worth?" The mind of a child, in analogy with the physical embryo of an ani- mal, recapitulates in a few years the slow evolution of the race, for just as the embryo of one of the higher animals in its unfolding is known to pass through all the essential stages of development manifested by lower orders, so the child in his mental development may be conceived 24 Western State Normal. the pleasurable quality is always necessary to the learning process. The art of education consists of selecting, adapting and applying means suitable to the various stages of development of the child, and the entire regimen of the school should be in recognition of the fact that as function precedes structure in the race history it must precede it in education; that when the impulse of growth is upon an organ is the time to develop or counteract it. But since man has elected to be a civilized being he is often com- pelled to go against heredity where the tendencies of heredity and the ideals of civilization are at variance — to head upstream — and this necessity creates most of the educational difficulties. It is incumbent upon education to develop acquired interests in addition to native ones. Here genetic psychology is of no less value in giving the educator a knowledge of what he has to overcome. Though civilization cannot itself be transmitted by inheritance, it is based upon hereditary peculiarities — the characteristics of plasticity, insatiable curiosity, extreme imitative- ness and prolonged infancy. These peculiarities make it possible to counteract heredity. The most definite thing that can be said about any child is his age. The most important thing to consider in prescribing for his educational needs is his stage of development. As the latter has a somewhat definite relation to the former it is customary and convenient to speak of the age when the stage of development is in mind. With this understanding, and allowing for individuals who develop at a rate sometimes differing several years from the normal one, the relation of age to the most distinct stages of development will be shown. Genetic psychology recognizes three distinct stages of development that come within the legal school age from six to twenty-one. The first of these, the transition stage, includes the first two years of school life, from the sixth to the eighth birthday; from the eighth to the twelfth birthday, approximately, or the third to the sixth grade, inclusive, is the development or formative stage; from twelve to the close of legal school age is included in the period of adolescence. In other terms, the transition stage corresponds to the two primary gi-ades, the develop- ment stage to the intermediate gi-ades, and the adolescent stage to the grammar and high-school grades. In terms of educational purpose, the first stage is when the child acquires his environmental equilibrium, and the first two years of school life are required to teach him his insignifi- cant place in the world and to put him in possession of his faculties. In to have passed throvigh in a short space of time all the great culture epochs that have marked the race evolution. — De Carmo: Principles of Secondary Education, vol. I, p. 179. As structure follows function, experience of function must have been first in race history. — Baldwin: Mental Development, p. 64. The childhood of the race was very long, and we shovild not wish to force its period, brief at best, in the life of the individual. The weather- ing of rock and the formation of soil aflFord interesting lessons in modern geology; but men dug and planted and established fruitful relations with Mother Earth thousands of years before geology was even dreamed of. — Hodge: Nature Study and Life, p. viii. Educational Agriculture. 25 the second he should acquire facts, experiences and habits, and in the third he organizes his acquirements into principles and ideals, and armed with them he faces his future. The accompanying chart shows the relation of age, development, grade, and educational purpose, with agriculture projected below so as to show the corresponding development of the subject. It will not be the purpose herein to further consider that portion of the subject that pre- cedes the high-school work. Chart I. Age. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Grade. I II Primary. Ill IV V VI VII Intermediate. VIII Gram- mar. IX X XI XII High school. Stage. Transition. Formative. Adolescent. Educational purpose. Environ- mental equilib. Experiences— facts- utilities— habits. Principles— system— science— ideals. Phase of subject. Nature study— school garden- incidental agriculture. Local agriculture. Analytic agr. Sciences. Synth. agr. 1 Genetic relation. Past. Present. Future-present. Character. Cultural. Economic. Scientific-economic. The period of adolescence represents the best time for the develop- ment of ideals. — Bagley: The Educative Process, p. 223. Neither you nor I, however specialized our knowledge, know anything really worth knowing the substance of which cannot be taught now if we have pedagogical tact. — Hall: Ideal School, p. 485. Little children are primarily interested in the common objects of the world because of what they can be used for or what they can do; only later in life do they become actively interested in the qualities of objects, and then only gradually. Among these other attributes they are first interested in movements, then in what the thing is made of, and then in the parts of which it is made. — Earl Barnes: Studies in Education, first series, p. 210, "A Study on Children's Interests." Experiences that are gained incidentally in the course of the indi- vidual life are much more effective in modifying adjustment than ex- periences gained formally for this express purpose. — Bagley: The Educative Process, p. 24. When we think that nature has thus built up the human brain to the level at which civilization was possible, we begin to see the true impor- tance of her tuition and to realize that a plan of education that leaves "the Old Nurse" in the background is quite likely to fail in laying the solid foundations of intelligent human character. It is in danger of posing as a system of elementary education with really elementary edu- cation left out. — Hodge: Nature Study and Life, p. 25. Chapter IV. THE KINESTHETIC FACTOR IN APPERCEPTION; REACTION AND INHIBITION. Among lower organizations, every stimulus causes a motor reaction, and "thought is motion." Such motion is automatic and invariable. Vital functions among higher organisms are similarly initiated and controlled. The spinal cord has such a function of receiving incoming sensory stimuli and reflecting them outward toward the muscles as motor impulses. But the cord may transmit unusual stimuli onward toward the brain — an organ which lower organisms do not possess. The result of such stimulation will be, normally, an outward, or motor, impulse. With infants this is very variable and results in random muscular adjustments. From the muscles and tendons involved in these random movements other (strain) stimuli reach the brain while the original sensory stimuli which caused the movement are continuing. Some of these random movements result in pleasure to the infant by gratifying a need. Where such random movements continue, the pleasur- able adjustment may recur, and by repetition come to be associated with their cause. The ability to bring about a desired adjustment is the first evidence of intelligence, and the strain sensations resulting from the adjustment constitute "the kinaesthetic factor" in apperception. Its fusion in the brain with the sensation from the organs of touch, sight, etc., the original cause of the muscular reaction, constitutes apperception. Considering the entire process, the incoming sensory, the outgoing motor and the conscious or intellectual central member constitute a unity which should be retained in education of the young, as the muscles The ability to receive impressions and the ability to respond to im- pressions by movement have ... all through the animal kingdom a parallel development. — Judd: Psychology, p. 18. We are acquainted with a thing as soon as we have learned how to be- have towards it, or how to meet the behavior which we expect from it. Up to that point it is still strange to us. — James: The Will to Believe, etc., p. 85. Every mental state is a fusion of sensory and motor elements, and any influence that strengthens the one, tends to strengthen the other also. — Baldwin: Mental Development, p. 440. Directly or indirectly, all incoming nervous impulses are transmitted to the active organs of the body after being more or less completely redirected or partially used to produce structural changes in the nervous organs. . . . The sensory, central, and motor processes cannot be sharply distinguished from each other; they are all phases of a single continuous process, the end of which is always some muscular activity. — Judd: Psychology, p. 22. James, Hall, Dewey, Mosso, Wundt, Baldwin, and others, are preaching a new gospel. They are saying that the child's thought is never dis- sociated from his muscles; that every idea has a motor aspect; that mind is in one sense a middle term between the senses and the muscles; that it (26) Educational Agriculture. 27 have the important function of vivifying thought by supplying the neces- sary kinaesthetic factor, and the natural tendency of all sensations and ideas is to work themselves out in action. In recognition of the necessity of the kinaesthetic factor, the school should provide the child with the most valuable stock of motor ex- periences, to be used in after-life as interpretive of all matters trans- mitted to the brain from whatever source. The purpose of elementary education should be to stimulate and direct appropriate reactions. In- stead, the mistake has often been made of unduly suppressing where it should have directed them. The value of industrial education in this- connection is to supply the pupil of the lower grades with this kinassthetic factor in the making of useful adjustments and in learning the nature of the common things functions for the purpose of guiding conduct; that an idea is not complete until it is realized in action. — O'Shea: Dynamic Factors in Education, pp. 27, 28. The activity is a unit, and the group of eye, ear, and tactual sensa- tions become inextricably bound up in the act, and perhaps come to be sjrmbolic of it; the reinstatement of one of the sensations serving to call UD the images of the others as it sets up the activity for which it stands. The unity in the reference of the sensations comes in on the side of the act. . . . If it were not for the connecting activity, there would be absolutely no ground on which the senses could be brought together in their reference and thus become more than mere undefined modifications of the general tonus of consciousness. . . . It is only as something is done with the object, and the various senses cooperate in the doing, that their unity of reference appears. . . . The child's first objects are really certain possible activities that are symbolized by certain sensations involved in performing the acts. — King: Psychology of Child Develop- ment, pp. 36, 37. Every sensory impression shall find its adequate expression not only through the vocal organs in speech or song, but also through the hand in writing, drawing, moulding, or in the use of tools, apparatus, and utensils. In other words ideas must not only be clear, but must also become vivid through the appropriate use of the motor system of the physical organism; we must have not knowledge alone, but also the skill that comes from its application. — PROFESSOR James : Talks to Teachers, pp. 33-38. Vividness of mental processes is produced by an intensification of the motor elements accompanying the process. . . . An increase in the intensity of the appropriate motor adjustments increases the stability of mental processes. . . The inhibitory effect which the suppression of motor activity has upon consciousness ... is general. . . . Inhibition of the motor ele- ment tends to inhibit consciousness. — Breese: On Inhibition, Psycho- logical Review, Monograph No. 11, May, 1899, p. 58. Knowing an object requires kinaesthetic as well as auditory or visual data concerning it. Indeed, to be precise, knowledge in the true sense comes in the back stroke. . • . . Motor activity furnishes consciousness with the most impoi'tant elements for psychical development. . . . One knows what a thing is after he has reacted upon it, not before. The mission of eye and ear is to give us second-hand or inferential knowledge, to reinstate former experiences; they cannot give us original, first-hand knowledge of many of the vital situations of life. — O'Shea: Dynamic Factors in Education, pp. 31, 32. 28 Western State Normal. with which he must deal all of his life and whose names and attributes, used metaphorically, are the only vehicles of higher intellectual ideas. Throughout life the kinjesthetic factor continues to be the unifying element in thought. But with the accumulation of a stock of experi- ences, the tendency to interpret new sensations or ideas in the light of the old of similar character makes the resulting adjustment more ap- propriate though frequently less prompt. This change occurs through- out adolescence, but the inhibition of the tendency to prompt reaction by_ no means obviates the necessity that every idea issue in some kind of action. Nor should the appropriate inhibition be destructive of the kinaesthetic factor, since the latter may result from the strain sensation due to muscular tonus even when there be no actual motor adjustment. The act of attention is always accompanied by such muscular tension. Ability to receive and ability to respond always go together, unless by excessive enforced inhibition knowledge getting tends to become mere word accumulation. When words, rather than deeds, are made the goal of education, the student is in danger of becoming a "learned in- competent." The optimum amount of inhibition for the adolescent to practice is a difficult matter to prescribe, much less to regulate, since civilization demands that the individual inhibit many activities which heredity transmits and nature seems to warrant. The sex function and many social delinquencies are examples of necessary inhibition in which strength of normal heredity often increases the task of education. Modern psychology sees in muscles organs for expression for all efferent processes. . . . Every change of attention and psychic states generally plays upon them, unconsciously modifying their tension so that they may be called organs of thought and feeling as well as of will. . . . Habits even determine the deeper strata of belief, thought is re- pressed action, and deeds, not words, are the language of complete men. The motor areas are closely related and largely identical with the psychic, and muscle culture develops brain centers as nothing else demonstrably does. . . . For the young motor education is cardinal, and is now coming to due recognition, and for all, education is incomplete without a motor side. — Hall: Adolescence, vol. p. 132. If there is one form of incompetence more hopeless than all others, it is that form which arises from bad schooling. — Davenport: Education for Efficiency, p. 46. Motor activity does not always manifest itself in the form of move- ment. — Judd: Psychology, p. 183. No serious thought is possible without some voluntary effort, and no emotion ever arises without inducing some form of action. — Judd: Psy- chology, p. 66. Truly spontaneous attention is conditioned by spontaneous muscle tension, which is a function of growth. . . . Muscles are thus organs of the mind. — Hall: Adolescence, vol. I., p. 183. Considered from the neurological standpoint, inhibition of an action is secured mainly by using up in other ways the energy which is needed for its suppoi't. — O'Shea: Dynamic Factors in Education, p. 13. Civilization and culture tend to modify and refine the expression of the motor innervation accompanying thought. — Breese: Inhibition, Educational Agriculture. 29 There is great moral danger on the other side as well. We admit the fact in such maxims as "Actions speak louder than words," "Hell is paved with good intentions," and latterly in recognizing the virtue of one who "keeps still and saws wood." The moral danger which comes from usable knowledge drying up for want of expression is increased by modern changes and inventions which tend to relieve the individual from many essential experiences, whereby children may grow to maturity in a protected life. With young children, the highest ideals are impossible of apprecia- tion. Habits are formed in the preadolescent period before ideals can l)ecome effective. Character, on analysis, proves to consist mainly of the sum of the individual's methods of reacting to ordinary stimuli, each adjustment of which is utilitarian. When ideals become effective, as they do in adolescence, they find their power expression through utili- tarian channels. Utilitarian education therefore contributes to the highest character by inducing useful activities and affording them ex- pression. The central organs of the nervous system receive stimulations, not for the purpose of merely absorbing the energy which these stimulations bring to them, but rather for the purpose of transmitting the energy, -after redistributing and reorganizing it, to the motor system. — Judd: Psychology, p. 134. The high standard of moral and intellectual discipline for which our schools and universities have been distinguished has not been lowered, nor has the pursuit of literary and historical studies been checked by the inclusion in the university curriculum of those scientific studies, ■especially of those branches of applied science for which such ample provision has now been made. — Remarks of King Edward VII at the University of Leeds, July, 1908. Chapter V. A PROBLEM IN ADJUSTMENT; POSITION OF THE VARIOUS SCIENCES. The subjects in the present high-school curriculum most concerned in the introduction of agriculture are the sciences, and agriculture will not be an integral part of the high-school course until its relation to the sciences is satisfactorily adjusted. The science of education, if it have any value, should afford some means of solving the problem. It is a common mistake to suppose that agricultural materials have inherent qualities which determine the appropriate place in the course for each fact or principle. Instead, each object concerned has phases suited to all grades, while the only difficulties in the study of agriculture are scientific difficulties, and as such are best considered in connection with the appropriate sciences. The proposition is sometimes made to teach agriculture as a second- ary subject without any regard to the fundamental sciences. So taught, the subject must remain elementary, for its elevation depends upon its being made scientific by the utilization of the fundamental sciences. There is no permanent good to the reform in leaving all of the difficulties out of the study in an attempt to popularize it. Ambitious students pre- fer subjects of sufficient dignity to challenge their powers. It is sometimes proposed to defer the teaching of agriculture until after the sciences are presented. Such postponement would be at the risk of starving the vocational interests that are nascent in adolescence and which it is the chief purpose of vocational training to cherish at this the time most favorable for their nurture. The limited number of high- school students who can profit from a course in unapplied, or pure, science will not, on the completion of such a course, look with favor upon the necessity of abandoning a more perfect organization in order to re- organize with the grosser materials which agriculture affords. And the severity of the selection has meanwhile eliminated the more practical who might have been interested through agriculture. There is such a unity and mutual dependence between the subjects of agriculture and science in the high school that simultaneous presentation is necessary. Agriculture is not supplementary, but complementary, to The admixture of technical and academic work will give better results than either alone (referring to domestic science). — President Eliot: Ed. Review, Feb., 1908, p. 124. It is a grave error to set vocational training and liberal training in sharp antagonism to each other. The purpose of the former is to pave the way to some application of the latter and to provide an economic basis for it to rest upon. The equally grave error of the past has been to frame a school course on the hypothesis that every pupil was to go for- ward in the most deliberate and amplest fashion to the study of the products of the intellectual life, regardless of the basis of his own eco- nomic support. — Butler: Training for Vocation and for Avocation, Edu- cational Review, Dec, 1908, p. 474. (30) Educational Agriculture. 31 the science work, and in the course presented on a later page it should be understood that the agricultural topics are constantly used in the teaching of the correlated sciences, excepting the case of elementary chemistry, in which the nature of the subject requires that it be intro- duced by means of its own materials rather than the grosser and more complex materials of agriculture. But there are many phases of agriculture that have no relation to the fundamental sciences. They pertain to peculiar skills, practical lore and vocational experiences in production. These may be provided for sep- arately, either as formal subjects in the program or as extra-program or collateral exercises in the home or elsewhere in the locality. This divides the subject of high-school agriculture into the three distinct phases, namely, formal as correlated with the sciences, formal and uncor- related, and extra-program or collateral. The only difficulties in the study of agriculture are scientific difficul- ties, and it is a reproach upon science-teaching to assume that they may be better dealt with apart from the science teaching. The correct se- quence of high-school sciences has not been agreed upon and the making of the formal agricultural course awaits such agreement. The most authoritative statement on this subject thus far is the report of the Com- mittee of Ten of the National Education Association, made in 1893, though in many respects their recommendation is not adhered to in practice. The position and sequence of the various sciences have been determined heretofore not so much by the needs of the student as by certain external circumstances, such as the preparation of the teacher, the cost of equip- ment, the requirements of the law in the teaching of hygiene and in the certification of teachers, and the relative recency of the different sciences to the course — each normally coming in at the upper end of the course as passed from the college, and the more recent having not as yet ex- hausted their downward tendency. The real test — educational values having been determined upon — should probably be partly the diminishing necessity during adolescence of the actual motor adjustments in response to stimuli whereby is produced the kinaesthetic factor, for the necessary strain sensation may come from muscular tonus which involves no motor adjustment; and in addition to this is the corresponding change, during the high-school period, from coarser to finer muscular adjustments. These two tests, rather than any necessary logical sequence, should deter- mine the time of presentation; for wherever there is a dependence of one science upon another the dependence is mutual, and argues as strongly for one order as for the other. Any enlightening principle is best taught It is vital, too, that principles be taught with processes and illustrated by them.— Butler : Training for Vocation and for Avocation, Educa- tional Review, December, 1908, p. 473. Subsidiary claims to superiority based on temporary conditions, such as the ease with which a subject can be taught, or the superior quality of teaching that may at any time be manifest, have no lasting validity, for if a subject is hard to teach so as to secure good educational results, all we have to do is to learn to teach it properly. — De Garmo: Principles of Secondary Education, p. 35. 32 Western State Normal. at the time when the student is made to feel the need of it, and there is nothing worth teaching- in any science which may not be taught the adolescent by a competent teacher. The position of the sciences thus determined, the correlated agricul- tural topics may be placed in the course. In this correlation the sciences represent more of the sensory-intellectual end, and the agriculture rep- resents, in a measure, the intellectual-motor end, of the process. Agri- culture may be so utilized in the teaching of the sciences to students whose interest is mainly in the sciences. Until the time of election of vocation, which may be late in the course, the work of the science student and that of the agricultural student need differ but little. With the election of agriculture in the latter part of the course, the phases of the subject, treated disconnectedly as portions of the funda- mental sciences, are gathered and related to the subject as a whole, and this synthesis should include much other matter that cannot be treated in connection with the sciences. The unification of this matter on its own economic foundation constitutes the science of agriculture. This affords a chance to idealize the vocation, as every subject should be idealized to be worthy of a place in the high-school curriculum. Elsewhere the writer has treated the matter of the course at consid- erable length and somewhat definitely formulated that portion which per- Vocational training is to be postponed as long as possible. It is to rest upon the most extended general schooling which the individual can get. — E. E. Brown : The Making of Our Middle Schools, p. 459. With children, the temptation is to have too much rather than too little continuity. . . . The higher the grade the more the topics may be correlated and coordinated. — Bailey: The Nature-study Idea, p. 132. In every case correlation has been successful, when the instructor was sufficiently versed in his own subject and the kindred subjects to know them and how to bring the two together to the best advantage. — Abbey: Normal School Instruction in Agriculture, p. 29. The past is fairly united, as is the present, in the proposition that secondary education should be more general than special, that it should serve as the prolegomena for future study, laying a sure foundation of knowledge and skill for subsequent specialization. — De Garmo: Principles of Secondary Education, p. 29. The human plant circummutates in a wider and wider circle, and the endeavor should be to prevent it from prematurely finding a support, to prolong the period of variation to which this stage of life is sacred, and to prevent natural selection from confirming too soon the slight advantage which any quality may temporarily have in this struggle for existence among many faculties and tendencies within us. The educational ideal is now to develop capacities in as many directions as possible, to indulge caprice and velleity a little, to delay consistency for a time, and let the diverse pi-epotencies struggle with each other. — Hall: Adolescence, vol. II, pp. 88, 89. Agi'icultui-e as a science is dependent upon many more fundamental sciences, such as chemistry, physics and botany; it could not develop or reach a scientific basis until the latter were also placed upon a firm foundation. — Carlton : Education and Industrial Evolution, p. 206. Educational Agriculture. 33 tains to class instruction. The plan of the course there set forth is briefly indicated by the following synopsis: Chart II. The High-School Course in Science and Agriculture. IX. X. XI. XII. The fundamental sciences taught with an economic application and by means of agricultural materials. Analytic and unorganized with regard to agriculture. Organized from the aspect of the fundamental sciences. Agricultural and science students in the same science classes. The subject of agriculture organized as a science, includ- ing materials treated analyti- cally the previous threeyears. Vocational ideals inculcated. Science work continued inde- pendently. Applied science. General Agriculture. Elem. physics. Geography. Botany. Biology. Chemistry. Zootechny. Specialization, diversification, rotation. Farm equipment. Comparative agriculture. Improvement by selection. Rural economics. Soils. Mechanics. Tillage. Weather. Economic plants. Field crops. Horticulture. Economic insects. Diseases. Fertility. Foods and rations. Formal and extra-program agriculture ( vocational electives.) Farm animals, manual and technical arts, assumed services, home projects. Only the course as planned for the agricultural student is shown here, though much of it is in common with the regular science course. Those schools which, for lack of funds, time or faculty, are compelled to give a briefer course, will ordinarily find it more convenient to alter the work of the third year as here given and cover the work of that and the last year in one year, thus leaving the first two years intact. Further, the economy of time may be accomplished in the smaller high school by the alternation of the first two years of the course. 3— ED. AGR. Chapter VI. FORMAL DISCIPLINE AND ITS TRANSFER. In the making of this course the validity of the recent teaching that formal discipline is of less general application in education than has often heretofore been recognized in practice, and that such transfer of training as may be made from one field of work to another is due to an identity of elements or an idealization of the abstract virtue or faculty common to both, is admitted. The course aims to satisfy at once the needs of both the agricultural student and the general science student, whose aims may be very different. This economy is justified by such experiments as have been made in the teaching of science for its own sake through an economic appeal, incom- plete and meager though those experiments have been. The union of both classes of students in the same group for instruction is a great adminis- trative economy, and it is believed to have the virtue of properly bal- ancing the work so as to make it more valuable for either class than if the classes were segregated, as it insures a x-eal economic "struggle-for- existence" motive for the science student such as his aim does not fur- nish, while to the agricultural student it insures a "scientific" science rather than what might otherwise be a makeshift. The "identity of procedure" is thus relied upon to make possible the transfer from one purpose to the other. The union of classes is further justified by the selection of material for this common study, as far as may be, from such as has a value to either if taught separately. This may be readily done in biology without destroying its unity, while in physics, selection is made of necessary principles, leaving the greater portion of that subject to be treated independent of the agricultural needs. Geography is regarded as not being properly susceptible of dif- ferent treatment for the different aims, if it be made "humanistic," as it and all other high-school sciences should be, while elementary chemistry, But what is more serious is the generally recognized fact that pupils who excel in school are often beaten in professional or business life by fellow-pupils who ranked below them in class standing. The school abilities acquired through school activities are not in these cases carried over into the envii'onmental activities outside the school. This is due to the difference between the matter and the method of the two activities and to the conseqvient inability of the pupils to make success in the one issue into success in the other. If there were such a transfer of acquired ability as the doctrine of formal discipline implies, there would not be such a difference in the ranking of individuals in the two activities. — ■ Heck: Mental Discipline and Educational Values, p. 44. The doctrine of formal discipline assumed that the mastery of a cer- tain subject gave one an increased power to master other subjects. It is clear that there is a certain amount of truth in this statement, provided that we understand very clearly that this increased power must always take the form of an ideal that will function as judgment and not of an unconscious predisposition that will function as habit. In other words, unless the ideal has been developed consciously, there can be no cer- (34) Educational Agriculture. 35 from its nature, is a science that cannot be compromised to suit special needs, however much its teaching might be improved. There is thus achieved an "identity of substance," an "identity of pro- cedure," but no "identity of aim" — the difference of aims being provided for by the vocational and other electives. tainty that the power will be increased, no matter how intrinsically well the subject may have been mastered. — Bagley: The Educative Process, p. 216. It is not denied that elements and relations not directly useful in them- selves must be included as a preparation for elements directly useful. — Heck: Mental Discipline and Educational Values, p. 118. Chapter VII. HUMANISTIC SCIENCE, APPLIED SCIENCE, AND AGRICULTURE. The exact scope of each of these three phases of the combined science- agriculture group is not well defined. All science should be taught with a humanistic motive; though with the adolescent the stricter economic appeal, since it makes his attitude that of an active controlling agent rather than a mere passive observer, is often the stronger, while agri- culture furnishes the readiest materials for the teaching of applied sci- ence. Considered in the order indicated and as hereafter developed, there is a gradual transition in the formulation of the subject from psychological to sociological demands which should establish an intimate dependence between "the school and society." Lying on the more formal or psychological side, high-school sciences have not succeeded as educational subjects to the extent that their early advocates hoped and expected. Among various reasons assigned for this, it is generally conceded that they have been presented too much as pure science, and the proposed remedy is to make them "humanistic" by relat- ing them more to man's life and needs, spiritual as well as physical. The humanistic motive should be strong in the teacher's mind. Only by taking a hand in the making of knowledge, by transferring guess and opinion into belief authorized by inquiry, does one ever get a knowledge of the method of knowing. Because participation in the making of knowledge has been scant, because reliance on the efficacy of acquaintance with certain kinds of facts has been current, science has not accomplished in education what was predicted for it. — Dewey: Science as Subject-matter and as Method. It seems to be a fact that the sciences, although dealing in knowledge of matters of the greatest immediate interest, and although concerned with the most elemental of all trainings . . . are still of mediocre efficiency as factors in general education. — W. F. Ganong, Presidential Address, Botanical Society of America, Boston, December, 1909. An interpenetration of humanism with science, and of science with humanism, is the condition of the highest culture. — John Addington Symonds: Culture. I cannot help feeling . . . that we have not yet succeeded in so organizing the sciences as instruments of general education as to fulfill the high expectations which some of us formed for them nearly a quai'ter of a century ago. There can be little doubt that the sciences of nature and of man, properly organized and presented as educational instru- ments, are destined to be classified as true humanities. — President Butler's address of welcome to the American Association for the Ad- vancement of Science, 1906. (Quoted in A^ Y. Independent, July 8, 1909, p. 85.) Our science teaching would be better if our teachers trusted less in the abounding merits of their subjects and more to the qualities which personally influence young people. . . . There is no consistency be- tween these things and the preservation of the scientific quality of the (36) Educational Agriculture. 37 The difference in pedago^cal method between pure and applied science is due to a difference in the teacher's apparent motive rather than his real ultimate motive, in which they are educationally identical. Ap- plied science is more readily appreciated by the adolescent and arrives at the same goal by a way that may carry more students with it. The application of science to something utilitarian necessarily involves the arts, notably agriculture, which includes the rudiments of many arts and sciences. Hence this subject becomes most valuable for the teaching of the sciences. The subject agriculture proper is divisible into a number of distinct fields. As shown in the course of study, the subject of "general agri- culture," a vocational elective which is intended as a synthesis of all previous agricultural lore, hitherto given in fragments and now organ- ized into the "science of agriculture," is assigned to the last year. In the utilization of knowledge in this science of agriculture there is danger of neglecting quality for quantity. The amount of useful knowledge which will have accumulated incidentally in connection not only with the ap- plied science but with such vocational electives as agricultural arts, stock judging, assumed services and home projects, all of which are con- tinuous throughout the course, is so great as to easily obscure the more important purposes of broadening and liberalizing the subject and of in- culcating vocational ideals. teaching. It is simply a question of the presentation of science in a manner which is humanistic. — W. F. Ganong, Presidential Address, Botanical Society of America, Boston, December, 1909. As our schools grow more national they should also grow more human- istic. The older humanism was devotion to ... an abstract ideal. The newer humanism of the schools cannot well dispense with the best that the older humanism had to offer. But it will cease to be abstract. . . . The best that the school can do to guard them (youth) against self-centered commercialism is to awaken their enthusiasm for some ideal good which has power of appeal to the imagination. . . . We may look to see ... a new humanism, leaning more and more on science, mindful of the past, patriotic in the present, and looking hope- fully forward to the larger human interests. — E. E. Brown: The Making of Our Middle Schools, p. 463. It is generally agreed . . . that the initial study of a science should be from its economic, or human, side. The child should be introduced to facts and principles in their relation to his life, to his needs. — Bagley: The Educative Process, p. 232. Agriculture is evidently to be a pioneer in this business of the adapta- tion of science to the common affairs of life in the schools that are at- tended by the masses, and if this be true, its incidental service may be even larger than its direct. — Davenport: Education for Efficiency, p. 146. That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowl- edge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it does. The miserable fraction of science which our united mankind, in a wide universe of nescience, has acquired, why is not this, with all diligence, imparted to all? — Car- LYLE : Sartor Resartus. Learning a business really implies learning the science involved in it. . . . A grounding in science is of great importance, both because it 38 Western State Normal. The vocational electives represented as running throughout the agri- cultural course will include the subjects of agricultural arts, in which training may be given formally in the school or by excursions, and the extra-program subjects of animal husbandry, assumed services and home projects, all of which will be considered in that order in the succeeding pages. prepares for this and because rational knowledge has an immense supe- riority over empirical knowledge. — Spencer: Education, chap. I, "What Knowledge is Most Worth?" Education for efficiency must not be materialistic, prosaic or utili- tarian; it must be idealistic, humane and passionate, or it will not win its goal. — Eliot: Education for Efficiency, p. 29. In the order both of time and of importance, science as method pre- cedes science as subject-matter. — Dewey: Science as Subject-matter and as Method. Only the gradual replacing of a literary by a scientific education can assure to man the progressive amelioration of his lot. — Dewey: Science as Subject-matter and as Method. Science is the most precious achievement of the race thus far. It has made Nature speak to man with the voice of God, has given man previ- sion so that he knows what to expect in the world, has eliminated shock, and, above all, has made the world a universe coherent and consistent throughout.— Hall: Adolescence, vol. II, p. 544. The future of our civilization depends upon the widening spread and deepening hold of the scientific habit of mind; and the problem of prob- lems in our education is therefore to discover how to mature and make effective this scientific habit. — Dewey: Science as Subject-matter and as Method. This recognition of science as pure knowledge, and of the scientific method as the universal method of inquiry, is the great addition made by the nineteenth century to the idea of culture. I need not say that v/ithin that century what we call science, pure and applied, has trans- formed the world as the scene of the human drama, and that it is this transformation which has compelled the recognition of natural science as a fundamental necessity in liberal education. — Eliot: Education for Efficiency, p. 37. Agriculture should be introduced into the high school for its educa- tional value. It will then constitute a good groundwork for later training in education in a training class or elsewhere. — Bailey: Train- ing for Teachers of Agriculture, p. 33. I often wish that the phrase "applied science" had never been in- vented. For it suggests that there is a sort of scientific knowledge of direct practical use which can be studied apart from another sort of scientific knowledge which is of no practical utility and which is termed "pure science." But there is no more complete fallacy than this. What people call applied science is nothing but the application of pure science to particular classes of problems. It consists of deductions from those general principles, established by reason and observation, which con- stitute pui'e science No man can safely make these deductions until he has a firm grasp of the principles, and he can obtain that grasp only by personal experience of the operations of observations and of reasoning on which they are founded. — Huxley: Science and Culture. Items of knowledge that have little or no significance in the practical affairs of life . . . may nevertheless be necessary to a system of knowledge. — Bagley: The Educative Process, p. 233. Chapter VIII. AGRICULTURAL ARTS; HABIT VS. JUDGMENT. American education has been very deficient in the character of train- ing intended to establish correct habits in pupils. From the extreme posi- tion of regarding the aim of education as merely a matter of information and understanding, progress is being made toward the inclusion of drills, whereby useful manual and mental operations are reduced to the plane of automatisms. The recognition of the value of the formation of correct habits in all kinds of work is a great step in advance. Character itself has been defined as the sum of all the habitual responses of an individual to ordinary stimuli. That the repetition of a process may have further value after it has become fixed in habit is now being claimed with some show of truth. Certainly the new education will recognize the educative neces- sity of habit formation more than did the old. Manual skills tend to differentiate workers from the great unskilled class and to make specialists of them. When any operation becomes important enough through frequency that it is profitable for the operative to perfect his skill in it we have a new trade or profession and he passes from the ranks of the unskilled class. Where this law is free to operate, as in industrial centers, it tends to result in an intellectual and social stratification, leaving the less gifted in a permanent unskilled class com- posed of transient individuals from which a democracy should provide each generation an opportunity to pass. And the opportunities will be as many as the education of each generation provides, since mere human strength may always be supplanted by natural forces if there be some skilled worker to direct them. These facts condition the character of industrial education for urban populations. But the case of agricultural education in America is very different, since the number of manual operations peculiar to general agriculture worthy of being drilled into the stage of automatism is relatively small compared with the number of cases where judgment rather than habit finds application. It is true that skill in the performance of an opera- tion is as valuable in agricultural as in other industries, but the great variety of necessary agricultural operations, the infrequency of occa- sions for their exercise during the year, and the relatively small number of them that will ever be susceptible to conventional treatment in the school, are factors which determine a very different treatment for this from other vocational education — a feature in which American agricul- ture differs quite markedly from that of those European states whose agricultural schools some of our educational reformers, whose vision rarely goes farther countryward than the suburbs, would have us adopt as a solution of the problem of agricultural education in America, and implying a danger which the success of the other form of industrial education but increases. The success of industrial education should be judged by its product. Outside of certain special suburban forms of agriculture, this must em- (39) 40 Western State Normal. phasize citizenship as well as material goods. Hence the Old World agricultural education, which is better suited to our suburban than to our rural population, and is much like industrial education for the manufac- turing population, cannot be adopted for the agricultural masses with the same prospect of success that we may copy their technical schools for other industries. The ideal agriculture emphasizes diversification rather than speciali- zation, both for economic and sociological reasons. As a natural corol- lary the ideal rural society does not recognize a distinct social stratifica- tion. These facts go to the root of the question of the proper education for a democratic rural citizenship such as the Old World does not know, and involve too much discussion to be further pursued at this place. Considered from the purely economic point of view, the proper training for diversified agriculture aims at managerial skill in which judgment in- volves dollars where habit involves dimes. The most important form of manual training for the future agriculturist will not differ very mate- rially from that provided by the wood and metal work of the best manual- training courses of the strictly urban schools. Of the strictly agricul- tural skills worthy of being taught in a formal agricultural course most belong below the high-school age, whjen habits are acquired with greater facility and permanency. These facts do not negative the importance of a proper amount of in- struction in correct methods of all kinds of manual operations in connec- tion with the assumed services and home projects, under the best psycho- logical conditions for their teaching — the immediate need of instruction. These are considered in the next chapter. Chapter IX. COLLATERAL OR EXTRA-PROGRAM AGRICULTURE. The formal side of agricultural education is a matter easily appre- ciated by the schoolman trained on the usual academic lines, as it con- cerns matters readily formulated into courses and programs. But this formal portion involves mainly the sensory-intellectual side of the learn- ing process, which should be supplemented by the intellectual-motor ingredient. And in the grammar grade and high-school period, coinci- dent with adolescence, there is born the vocational interest, which should be fostered lest it starve to death during this nascent period. These needs are supplied by extra-program activities of an informal character. The vitality of the high-school agricultural course will be drawn from its extra-program phases which distribute themselves throughout the course, constituting the source and end of its interests. Its variety and informal character preclude definite formulation, but it is covered by the three fields of animal husbandry, assumed services, and home projects. The work of animal husbandry is supplemented by the zootechny of the fourth year of the formal course. It aims at perfecting skill in stock judging, but in addition gives especial attention to the care of Beauty must come back to the useful arts, and the distinction between the fine and the useful arts be forgotten. — Emerson : Art. All our industries would cease were it not for that information which men begin to acquire as best they may after their education is said to be finished. — Spencer: Education, chap. I, "What Knowledge is Most Worth?" From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school in any complete and free way within the school itself; while, on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning at school. That is the isolation of the school — its isolation from life. When the child gets into the schoolroom he has to put out of his mind a large part of the ideas, interests and activities that predominate in his home and neighborhood. — Dewey: The School and Society, p. 89. The strictly vocational courses succeed nowhere else so well as where intimately associated with the nonvocational. This association is good for all parties. It not only adds culture and refinement to the vocational, but it adds directness and initiative to the cultural, thus turning back to the community a product whose individuals are highly schooled in specialized activities and therefore likely to succeed, yet by association have learned to be broadly sympathetic with all activities and with all classes of eff'ective people. — Davenport: Education for Efficiency, p. 48. While vocation should neither be the end nor the means of the educa- tional process, yet it should be its inseparable concomitant. — Davenport: Education for Efficiency, p. 28. The application in some form should always follow the generalization. The pupil should learn from the start that knowledge as it exists in the form of laws, principles, rules, or definitions is utterly valueless, unless, directly or indirectly, it can be carried over into the field of practice. — Bagley: The Educative Process, p. 303. (41) 42 Western State Normal. animals, a matter which the formal work cannot successfully do. The work is by excursions, with group instruction and without regard to the pupil's grade or rank, thus affording a chance for the stock genius, who may be compelled to accept a very humble place in the usual academic discussions, to come into his own. The school must depend upon the locality for its materials for this work and the availability of stock is such as to prevent this becoming a formal subject. Reviews before and after the excursion are the best means of counteracting the great depreciation in value to which work of this character is liable. Assumed services have the peculiar merit of developing social useful- ness, in addition to their value as a means of instruction. Such services should establish the most helpful relationship between the school and the community. They may be regular and definite, such as the testing of all articles bought, sold or px'oduced in the community, or emergency services of all degrees of irregularity. The school so imbued will make this the field for much real missionary work. The peculiar merit of the home project is the occasion it affords throughout the course for real vocational experience, instead of deferring the application of class instruction until its close, as is usually done in school work. The project should be appropriate to the home farm, since it is only there that the essential factors of ownership and responsibility may be given exercise. The school instruction should aim to enlighten the tasks which the student is compelled to perform in a proper domestic distribution of work, and so enlightened such task may become a project. Once selected, a project should be continued to its logical close, which is normally with the production of something of market value. It thus becomes the student's thesis and capable of development, by the training in the scientific method it gives, into a thing of great value to the student and the school, and possibly as a contribution to the stock of knowledge which alleviates the world's hardships. The project gives the student his best opportunity for applying the principles taught in the formal This is why many teachers do not know the subject-matter or method they teach; in knowing the elements apart from the environment which gives them value they really do not know what their value is. This is probably the weakest point in our teaching forcp — the ignorance of teachers regarding the environmental relations and values of school studies. Their training should be more in practical sociology and less in hypothetical pedagogy. — Heck: Mental Discipline and Educational Values, p. 117. The instincts of property which, as early as four or five, found a primitive expression in aimless and trivial collections now takes a rational and human form (in adolescence). — Bagley: The Educative Process, p. 198. The worst gift, perhaps, that an evil genius has made to our age is knowledge without training in efficiency. — Pestalozzi. The outside environment must be made into the meaningful school environment of the pupil, and there is no need why, in this process, the elements of the outside environment should be misrelated or misvalued. On the other hand, it is only in so far as these two environments are similar that the child lives in school a life that has functional value outside. — Heck: Mental Discipline and Educational Values, p. 120. Educational Agriculture. 43 side of his work, makes him a sponsor for the school, and disseminates science to the community. It can never be developed by a school that keeps its students away from their homes. It is incapable of measuring by "credits" as to its informational, much less its vocational, value, but its preparatory value is unquestionably very great. Until some system for the recognition of such work is devised it may automatically receive partial recognition as affecting the quality of the student's knowledge. To education generally, its value is as a corrective of the natural tendency of academic knowledge to grow obsolete. We really retain only the knowledge we apply. — Hall: Adolescence, vol. I, p. 173. Actively to participate in the making of knowledge is the highest pre- rogative of man and the only warrant of his freedom.— Dewey : Science as Subject-matter and as Method. Properly thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working; the rest is all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued in schools, a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic vortices, till we try and fix it. — Carlyle : Essay on Labor, p. 185. One has, however, only to glance at the history of any specific educa- tional system to recognize that in its inception each system was intended to fit the pupil for some special form of life, and in this vocation the studies offered really had a place. . . . Fortunate the child who is brought up in a system which affords him ideas fitted to his own day and generation instead of those appropriate to the times and conditions of his great-grandparents. — Angell: Psychology, p. 220. There is an American notion of long standing . . . that special training for any particular service is a reflection on the brightness of the person trained. . . . This crude conceit is now passing away. . . . Teaching still lags in this respect but is trying to catch up. — E. E. Brown : The Making of Our Middle Schools, p. 459. In order to insure well-rounded development, mental and manual work should fall to the lot of every man and woman, irrespective of all arti- ficial class distinctions. . . . The monastic ideal of education is now obsolete; education should be an integral part of life. In order to better prepare for future usefulness of the students, school work and practical work should be drawn closer to- gether. Coordination of theory and practice, both as to time and place, is desirable. The customary wide separation of the two is the cause of serious waste of human energy. . . . The world needs the doer and the thinker united in one individual. — Carlton: Education and Industrial Evolution, pp. 91, 92. Emerson . . . taught that the acquisition of some form of manual skill and the practice of some form of manual labor were essential ele- ments of culture. This idea has more and more become accepted in the systematic education of youth. — Eliot: Education for Efficiency, p. 37. The vital knowledge, that by which we have grown as a nation to what we are, and which underlies our whole existence, is a knowledge that has got itself taught in nooks and corners; while the ordained agencies for teaching have been mumbling little else but dead formulas. — Spencer: Education, chap. I, "What Knowledge is Most Worth?" Chapter X. THE SEASONAL ORDER OF PRESENTATION. The motive of agriculture as a high-school subject is often assumed to be merely economic. Previous discussion herein has been intended to show a much wider value in its racial and national motives as well as its educational function in the teaching of the sciences and its sociological significance to the school and society. But while agricultural science covers a much wider field than that of economic production, it by no means covers all that is necessary for success in that field. The ability to "hustle," more than the knowledge of science, will contribute to economic success; and to insure practice for this necessary element to success, the school should observe the order of the seasons in the presentation of agricultural instruction, anticipating coming farm activities and making them subjects for school consideration when they are at the high tide of interest in the students' homes. Each agricultural topic will have its best time for presentation within the school term, and this agricultural calendar should be worked out by each state or distinct physiographic region. What the pupil is unable to use at any time cannot be taught him most economically and efficiently at that time. — O'Shea: Dynamic Fac- tors in Education, p. 41. Chart III. Agricultural calendar for a high school September. October. Effects of field mulches. November. December. Soil work in laboratory. Erosion and drainage, field observations. Identification of common-plant families. Seed srathering. Legrumes. January. Weather. Role of Wheat, oats and corn; quality and variety. I Corn kernel: structure and composition. Pot culture of wheat and legumes plant foods. Fruits and fruiting habits. Insects; systematic and economic. Destiny of crops. Food princi- ples; rations. Judging fat stock. Horse; external points and defects. Dairy cow compared with beef. Breeds and care of stock. Meat and milk. (44) Educational Agriculture. 45 Courses of study in agriculture for secondary schools betray a marked neglect of this vital factor, placement often being contrary to the dictates of the season. This distribution throughout the year does not affect the gradation of the subject by years, and the fact that the correct time and sequence for agricultural topics is identical with that which is best for the correlated sciences further demonstrates the unity of the combined subject. One unfamiliar with the agricultural materials and principles is not competent to make the appropriate calendar for his school. Observing the seasonal order keeps the science work in something of a flux, which the devotees of formal education regard undesirable. But with the high school it is really a great merit, as it perfects the best relation between the school and the locality. The schools need more of applied sociology, and in being compelled to go to the local agriculture for a cue for the formal instruction, the school becomes indentified with the interests of its patrons and those who pay its bills. Therefore it is of prime importance that the class catch the step, even though it may at first be able to do little more than mark time in the march of the seasons. No attempt has been made to show in the course of study on a previous page the seasonal distribution of the agricultural work. A complete course for a "corn belt" high school would show a distribution of subtopics agreeable to the course as given and the accompanying agricultural calendar: (forty degrees north latitude), covering several years' work. February. Soils of the state, humus. Leaching. Cover crops. with soluble Corn belt; pop- ulation and industries. Bulletin assignments. Yearbook statistics. State experi- ment station work. Poultry. March. April. May. Effects of slope, color, drainage and texture on temperature. Erosion and drainage. Implements of cultivation; mulches. Legumes, manures and fertilizers. Vacation. Precipitation record. Seed purity and viability. Pruning, grafting, spraying. Farm records. Corn-breeding plots. School garden and demonstra- tion plots. Contour, soil, equipment, crops and rotations of local farms. Chapter XI. OTHER CORRELATED SUBJECTS. The psychological moment for presenting a subject for study is when the student realizes the need of it. Much of the elementary work is done with other incentives. The subject in which the agricultural student will be found most deficient in preparation is arithmetic, and though it is not regarded as a high-school subject its general importance and the lack of ability of the average high-school student to use it should be sufficient to warrant some attention to it, whether agreeable to the pedagogical fashion of the day or not. Although arithmetic does not appear by name anywhere on this course of study, no course devoid of agriculture could, by giving arithmetic a distinct place, provide more valuable practice in all applications of that subject than may one of this kind. Moisture determinations, seed testing, milk testing, soil analysis, and the physical laws pertaining to liquids, gases and machines involve all of the applications of percentage, proportion and analysis; agricultural statistics form a distinct and here- tofore neglected phase of arithmetic, including the making and reading of curves and diagrams; while fertilizers and rations of the third year and problems in farm equipment of the last year involve every chapter of arithmetic, from the simplest mensuration to the long forgotten sub- ject of alligation. Arithmetic presented in this way is vital, and contributes to the agricultural work in such a way as to pay for the time and space it takes by requiring a precise knowledge of the agricultural or scientific principle involved. Ability to understand and solve the problem is the only guarantee that the principle is understood. The lack of correlation between such concrete needs and the mathematical processes in which they are involved constitutes one of the greatest defects in the teaching of both mathematics and exact science. And what has been said about the application of mathematics to this subject is equally true regarding insti'uction in drawing, a regularly graded course in which may be made in connection with the science and agricultural work. (46) Chapter XII. RETARDATION; ADMISSION, GRADUATION, AND ACCREDIT- ING OF STUDENTS. Studies in retardation of pupils in the elementary schools indicate that when a pupil is once retarded it is usually very difficult to regain the lost grade or, frequently, to continue without further retardation unless the degraded pupil be removed from the class of younger pupils into which his deficiency casts him. The most successful treatment of such cases has been to place the retarded pupil in class with children whose physical stage of development is similar to his own, which is, normally, not affected by the cause of the scholastic retardation. Such studies also show that better intellectual progress is made where the studies in which the deficiencies exist can be presented along with some form of industrial training. In admitting students to high-school work such as is indicated by the foregoing course of study, in the light of our present knowledge, the physical stage of development should enter more largely into consider- ation and the scholastic requirements be less rigid than is usual with high schools. The high school is not founded on the elementary grades but should stand on its own foundation, else it will not only continue its present tendency to grow aloof from the community which pays its bills but will violate this truest standard of admission of students. While there must, of course, be some test other than the physical, adoles- cence, being a rebirth, should provide the student of good parts and intentions and suitable age, but who has been unfortunate in previous school work, another chance to get what the school may offer toward making him a more efficient citizen, by admitting him to what he feels to be the appropriate companionship of his equals. To make such a plan practicable, some preparatory work in English and mathematics may be found necessary to repair such lack in the rudiments as would impair good high-school work. The teacher may sometimes be surprised to discover how little difference there is between students with good elementary records and those having none, when it comes to utilizing their supposed acquirements. Similarly, the student's ability to "do good work," rather than his success in getting "good grades" merely, should determine his satisfactory completion of this subject, considering that his nonagricultural branches afford appropriate opportunities for checking up his scholastic attainments. Graduation is usually determined largely by the acquisition of a re- quired number of "credits," each representing a somewhat definite amount of work as determined by authoritative educational committees. Secondary agriculture, never having been either standardized within the school nor made uniform throughout any system of schools, suffers some- what as a preparatory subject. The various distinct phases of the sub- ject differ so widely in character as to make it necessary, in a just estimation, to deal separately with each division. The formal side of the agricultural work offers few difficulties in the (47) 48 Western State Normal. way of estimation according to the rules observed for other subjects. The poi-tion correlated with the sciences and designated together as "applied science" should readily pass as an essential part of the cor- related sciences. The portion designated "general agriculture," and re- ferred to as the "science of agriculture," while readily measured in time units for the purposes of the school, wants an authoritative recognition and definition before it will get its deserts as a preparatory subject, though some state colleges and universities are compelled by their own preaching to recognize the practical loi^e included therein in admission to agricultural courses. The real essence of the subject, which best appears in the operative side, as represented by the extra-program group, rather than the speculative side, defies estimation by the present methods, and its unquestioned value as a complement to the preparatory work in the sciences calls for such a sympathy between the secondary school and the higher institution as will insure the respect of the latter for this work when pi"operly done, and fairness in the former in evalu- ating and vouching for students' work. It is not the agricultural. work as such that constitutes the best preparation for college, not even the agri- cultural college, but the right kind of science work which only the cor- related agriculture insures, that has prepai'atory value. The question of college entrance requirements is a question of rela- tionship between institutions, each having its separate responsibility to the public. The college should set the secondary school the example of considering both terms of this relationship with perfect fairness. — E. E. Brown: The Making of Our Middle Schools, p. 443. It is time the high school served the interests of the community first of all; and if they will do that thoroughly, the colleges will manage to connect with them on some terms mutually satisfactory. If that is im- possible, then let the high school faithfully discharge its natural functions to the community that gives it life and support, and leave adjustments to the universities. — Davenport: Education for Efficiency, p. 26. It is a bad state of things when the question whether students pre- paring for college should take one study or another in the secondary school, could be decided by a compromise between rival college depart- ments, represented in a faculty meeting, without a moment's consideration of what might be intrinsically best for the students themselves at this stage of their schooling. — E. E. Brown: The Making of Our Middle Schools, p. 442. The purpose of a well-considered accrediting system is ... to en- courage and build up real educational institutions of secondary grade. . . . It has given communities the means ... of discovering the deficiencies and likewise the excellencies of their schools, . . . has quickened the intellectual life of schools and of whole communities, by the immediate touch of university ideals.— E. E. Brown : The Making of Our Middle Schools, p. 376. Educational Agriculture. 49 Chart IV. A High-school Course in Agriculture and Related Sciences, Showing the place of industrial and vocational electives. 'The nemesis of all reformers is finality."— Huxley, Science and Education, chap. VI. I. Elementary Physics and Geography. Mechanics of liquids (ocean). Matter, force, cavity. Mechanics of gases (atmosphere); barome- ter. Heat, thermometer. Meteorology. Earth structure ; minerals ( land forms) . Weathering ; erosion. Principles of machines. Moisture control in the field. Soils ; laboratory and local. Daily weather map. Soils of state and physiographic regions of U.S; climate and agricultural products. Soil temperature and texture ; methods of control. 3 II. Botany. Structure and function of flower ; science of sex. Recognition of chief economic families. Fruit and fruiting habits. Cross and minute structure and function of root, stem, and leaf. Plant physiology. Seed structure, composition, and germina- tion (economic). II. Industrial. Ag. horticulture and field crops. Dom. sci. Manual training. Illa. Chemistry (first half year) . General chemistry ; text, theory, and laboratory." Industrial ( second half) . Ag. feeds and fertilizers. Dom. Sci. — : Manual training and technical. — 7 III6. Biology (first half year) . Insects ; ecology, life history, injury, structure, repression, collection, classification. Fungi, bacteria, and protozoa ; germ diseases of plants and animals, repression. Use- ful forms ; inoculation. 8 Invertebrate Zoology (second half) . Cell structure and division. Additional invertebrate types. Humanistic zoology. Systematic zoology. 9 IV. Vertebrate Zool. and Physiology. Animal tissues. Skeleton and musculature of man. Dissection of type vertebrates. Nerves and sense organs. Comparative anatomy and evolution. Variation and selection. Racial welfare. Vocational. 10 Ag. The science and vocation of agricul- ture. Dom. sci . Technical . Required. Recommended. Ag 1. 2, 3, (4), 5, (6), 7, (10), Dom. sci 1, 2, 3, (4), 5, (6), 7, (10). Man. and tech... 1, 2, 3, (4), 5, (6), (10). Gen. sei 1, 2, 3, 5, (6), 7, 8, 9. Elective. ^ Toted years. 8, 9. 8, 9. 7. (4). ,:.:. r 4V^ . 4% 4V3 4— ED. AGR. Part IIL— Equipment Chapter XIII. THE LABORATORY. "When they come into the school we do not put them into books; we take them into our laboratory. For instance, every boy and girl is put into the chemical laboratory and the physical laboratory, where they get the first principles of these things, so that they shall know something about air and water and soil. Then they begin to write about these things, and they begin to talk about them, and then gradually we introduce them to books; but we put the doing of the thing first all the way through." — H. B. Frissell, Hampton Institute. Quoted from Carlton, Education and Industrial Evolution, p. 195. In the smaller high school, where there is little likelihood of conflict of classes, as where one teacher has charge of most of the science work, the use of one large room as a combined laboratory and recitation room is preferred. Besides the actual saving of space and in nonduplication of apparatus, there is a saving of the instructor's time and work. And there is the added advantage of a tendency to unify the sciences and to keep all science classes in touch with each other's work, past and pro- spective — a result severely guarded against by the usual method of segre- gating classes and subjects. The use of agricultural materials in the teaching of the sciences will contribute to this purpose and emphasize the fact that sciences in the high school are of value chiefly as one knows their application, and the only way to know their application is to see and practice it. The class should see the setting up of each "experiment" and have a clear idea of what it is intended to demonstrate. And all work prepared and demonstrated at the expense of considerable time and labor should be seen by and ex- plained to all classes regardless of rank. Then .there is another pedagogic advantage in keeping the student in the presence of the demonstration, or at least of the apparatus, whereby the tendency of the recitation or review to become a mere verbal presenta- tion of what the text says may be avoided. This plan tends to facilitate the making of drawings and notes, thus keeping the textbook subordinate to the science. It may not be amiss to say that, since agriculture deals with gross and variable materials, the laboratory work in agriculture may easily be made more technical and exact than the occasion warrants. The teacher should remember that demonstration rather than experimentation is the purpose of the laboratory work. And in the sciences a similar mistake Some school laboratories are so perfect that they discourage the pupil in taking up investigations when thrown on his own resources. Im- perfect equipment often encourages ^ngenuity and originality. — Bailey: The Nature-Study Idea, p. 40. (51) 62 Western State Normal. is made by prescribing work from a printed laboratory guide which the student is unable to translate into action without great loss of time. The teacher would much better have a hand in the first presentation of every demonstration than to risk the loss of interest and time for the sake of teaching the "scientific method" by the more exact or technical sciences. After manual demonstration of the principle by the teacher the student may profitably repeat it for his own satisfaction and at his own expense of time. The science room should be near the ground, with easy access to out- doors, to a greenhouse, and to another room suitable as a storeroom, a shop, and a place for work with grosser materials. The accompanying plan (fig. 4) shows such a room with the details of furniture, the base- ment beneath it serving as the shop and storeroom. SCIENCE ROOM FOR A SMALL HIGH SCHOOL. vertical and horlroninl beams looker for apparatus sink — coarse balance.. ^ soil table and stock so I Is ^ blackboard - - - dwnonstra- tor's table . -chairs with wriiix)^ arms Green-| basement — - - nooo. oh Imney - -|h ctiewLcal sirpplies s'ink - shelves Chemiatry ^ table \ fine s 'blackboard open shelves for \ balance ^\ chefliical reagents laboratory de&k& Fig. 4. The requirements and equipment for tlie various Ijinds of worli will include the following: Biology: Plenty of north light, chairs, long table, individual drawers and shelves, museum, sink, instructor's blackboard. Chcmifiir^j: High desks with individual spaces, drawers, lockers and supplies, fine balance, sinks, reagent shelf, supply cupboard, table, hood. Soil Physics: Ignition hood, table, soil bins, blackboard, coarse balance, sink, upright and horizontal beams, proximity to chemistry and physics. Physics: Locker for apparatus, upright and horizontal beams, coarse balance, sink, demonstrator's table, blackboard. Oreenhoiisc: Light, heat, water, doors to laboratory, basement and outdoors. The chimney is so placed as to provide flues for the hood, the greenhouse and the basement. Its" necessitv is independent of the regular system of heating. Where gas may be had it should be provided, otherwise alcohol and gasoline may be used. The accompanying list of apparatus includes provision for both systems but con- templates the 'omission of such as is not needed, depending upon the availability of gas. Educational Agriculture. 53 For recitation purposes, chairs (with writing arms) sufficient to seat the largest class are placed in the open space facing the demonstrator's table and blackboard. This end of the room also contains maps, charts, library and museum. Some of the other features of furniture are shown in the accompanying figures. Fig. 5. The details shown In figure 5, In order from left to right, consist of: (a) hood for ignition, enclosing flue, cost, $7; (b) open shelves for chemical reagents, cost, $3; (c) shelf above sink for siphoning standard solutions, cost, $2.50; (d) draining board at end of sink, cost, $1.50; (e) shelf for fine balance, cost, $2. The figure also shows horizontal and vertical beams. No attempt is made to show these features in their proper relation as indicated In the previous illustration (fig. 4). Fig. 6. 54 Western State Normal. The locker for apparatus (fig. 6) is made of pine, witti flat top, base enclosed all around, dust-proof joints and doors, and coated with an oil stain. It is designed to accommodate all of the physics apparatus and the larger pieces of chemical appa- ratus; cost, $26. The remaining chemical apparatus, together with the glassware and chemicals, go into the cupboard of chemical supplies. Supplies peculiar to biology are accom- modated in the shelves and lockers of that department, while supplies peculiar to agriculture, as well as the tools, should be provided for in the basement, excepting such as are needed for the more careful soil work. In the selection of all of the equipment, a minimum cost, such as the smaller high school must consider, was constantly kept in mind. No school should expect to reduce this estimate and be able to do the char- acter of work contemplated. Instead it will probably be found necessary to provide more liberally for the duplication of apparatus where the in- dividuals of the class are assigned the same experiment. In the enumer- ation which follows, the lists are made complete, but where the same pieces may be used for several departments the price is given but once — in the list to which it most properly should be charged. Chemicals. ($35.78). Price. Sulphuric acid c. p., 4 lbs $0 75 Hydrochloric acid c. p., 6 lbs 85 Nitric acid c. p., 7 lbs 1 10 Acetic acid, glacial, 2 lbs 1 02 Oxalic acid, commercial, 1 lb 12 Ammonium hydrate, 4 lbs 76 chloride, 1 lb 34 nitrate, 2 lbs 90 alum, 1 lb 08 Potassium alum, 1 lb 08 hydrate, 2 lbs 60 " carbonate (pearl ash) , 1 lb 15 " sulphate crystals, 2 lbs 30 " iodide cryst., pure, 2 oz 60 " nitrate c. p., 1 lb 37 " chloride c. p., 1 lb 37 " permanganate c. p., 1 lb 70 chlorate, cryst., 2 lbs 30 Potassium, Vi oz 45 Sodium, 8 oz 70 " carbonate, crystal, 2 lbs 25 " hydroxide, sticks, 3 lbs 75 " nitrate c. p., 2 lbs 60 " chloride, 2 lbs 10 sulphate, 1 lb 10 " sulphite, crystal, 1 lb 10 Calcium chloride, anhydrous, fused, 3 lbs 60 fluoride, 1 lb 10 " sulphate, gypsum, 1 lb 10 " sulphate, plaster of Paris, 5 lbs 15 " oxide, quicklime, 3 lbs 30 " carbonate, marble chips, 5 lbs 25 Magnesium sulphate c. p., 1 lb 34 " ribbon, 1 oz 60 Ferrous sulphide, 1 lb 10 Ferric chloride, 4 oz 15 " sulphide, 5 lbs 35 Iron filings, 2 lbs 10 Copper foil, 1 lb 90 nitrate, 8 oz 25 Educational Agriculture. 55 Copper oxide, 8 oz $0 35 " sulphate, 5 lbs 50 Barium chloride, crystals, 2 lbs 25 " peroxide, Vz lb 35 Lead nitrate, 1 lb 18 " peroxide, 1 lb 36 Red lead, 1 lb 12 Mercury, 6 lbs 4 80 Red oxide of mercury, 3 oz 30 Mercuric oxide, 4 oz 40 Silver foil, Vz oz 60 " nitrate, 1 oz 50 Carbon bisulphide, 1 lb 20 Manganese dioxide, 95 per cent, 5 lbs 25 Granulated tin, 1 lb 60 Antimony, powdered, V2 lb 25 Strontium chloride, 1 oz 10 Bismuth, 1 oz 30 Iodine crystals, pure, 2 oz 75 Red phosphorus, 1 oz 15 Yellow phosphorus, 8 oz 50 Borax, 1 lb 18 Zinc granules, 2 lbs 32 Flowers of sulphur, 1 lb 08 Roll sulphur, 5 lbs 25 Bleaching powder, 1 lb 10 Litmus, 1 oz 10 Phenolphthalein, 1 oz 65 Cochineal, 2 oz 16 Alcohol, wood, %- gal 50 " ethyl, 95 per cent, V2 gal 1 50 " denatured, 2 gal 1 50 Gasoline, 2 gal 40 Corn starch, 1 lb 10 Cane sugar, 2 lbs 20 Bone black, 2 lbs 15 Rosin, 1 lb 10 Paraffin, 1 lb .- 15 Tallow, 1 lb 15 Beeswax, 1 lb 65 Chemical Apparatus. ($52.72). Bunsen burners, 2 $0 66 Gasoline burner. See "Agriculture." Spirit lamps, 4 oz., side tubulation, 4 1 20 Asbestos mat, 24 x 18 x %6 66 Wing tip for Bunsen burner 18 Desiccator, 6-inch, with porcelain bottom 1 00 Hessian crucibles, large 5's, 1 nest 18 Royal Berlin crucibles with covers, 41 mm., 1 doz 2 00 Pipe stem triangles. No. 4, 8 50 Brass crucible tongs, 9-inch, 1 pair 48 Tripods for spirit lamp, 2 50 Pieces wire gauze, 5x5 inches, 2 30 Copper retort, 2 pints 2 85 Test tube holders, brass, 2 pairs 22 Platinum wire, 4-inch, No. 26 30 Blowpipe 20 Deflagration spoon, 12 mm 11 Sand bath, 6-inch 22 Iron ring stands, 3 rings each, 2 1 10 56 Western State Normal. Porcelain evaporating dishes, No. 7, S^^-inch, 8 $1 20 Steel forceps, 6-inch, 1 pair 15 Balance, "Kistler" 1 eg. to 100 g 12 00 Brass weights in block, 1 eg. to 100 g., 1 set 1 35 Brass forceps, 1 pair 16 Test tube racks for 24 test tubes, 2 80 Test tube brushes, with sponge, 3 25 Test tube brushes, small, 3 12 Lead dish, 3-inch 22 Mortar and pestle, Wedgewood, 3-inch 44 Wash bottles, complete, stopper and tubes, 24 oz., 2 1 00 Gas generating bottles, complete, 3 1 50 Calcium chloride tubes, 150 mm., 2 24 Funnel stands, 4 holes each, 2 1 30 Pneumatic trough 1 10 Chemical thermometers, 10° to 110° c, 6 4 20 Chemical thermometers, 20° to 200°, 2 2 00 Earthenware slop jars, 3 gal., 2 60 Asbestos wool, % lb 20 Glass wool, fine, 4 oz 1 36 Drying oven (at tinners) 3 50 Horn scoop, 3 x 3% 22 Horn spoon, 6-inch 18 Piece magnetized clock spring, 6-inch 10 Mohr's clamps, small, 2 22 Mohr's clamps, medium, 2 30 Hoffman's pinch cocks, 2 44 Triangular file, rattail file 25 Litmus paper, red and blue, 4 sheets 32 Filter paper, 600 4-inch, 200 6-inch, 8 pkgs 1 00 Corks, regular length, as follows: one doz. each Nos. 3 to 16 and 18 and 20, 16 doz 2 54 Cork borers, 1-6, 1 set 80 Rubber tubing and rubber stoppers. See "Elementary Physics." Dropper bottles. See "Biology." Glassware, ($28.16). Test tubes of following sizes: 5 x 8, 50 cents; 6 x %, 56 cents; 7 xVa, 80 cents; 2 doz. each $1 86 Beakers 1 to 4, 6 nests 2 10 Flasks 8 oz. and 16 oz., 3 each 1 02 Erlenmeyer flask 6 oz., 4 72 Thistle tube funnels, 4 27 Funnels 60° 2% inches, % doz 54 Funnels, 3-inch, 4-inch, 6-inch, 2 each 1 52 Glass tubing, 3 ft. long, assorted, following sizes: %6» V4, ^Ae', 6 lbs... 2 40 Watch glasses, 3%-in., 4 37 Retorts, 8 oz. with receivers, 2 74 Square blue glass, 3x3,1 doz 91 Stirring rods, 1 doz 16 Burettes 50 cc, 2 2 20 Pipette 25 cc. volumetric 25 Pipette, Mohr's 10 cc. graduated 40 Cylindrical graduates 100 cc, V2 doz 2 40 Cylindrical graduates 25 cc, % doz 1 20 Bottles wide mouth, "prescription," 32 oz., 8 oz., 4 oz., 1 doz. each. . 2 35 Bottles "tincture" mushroom stopper, 32 oz., 16 oz., 8 oz., 1 doz ea., 4 35 Bottles "salt mouth" mushroom stopper, 32 oz., 1 doz 2 40 Educational Agriculture. 57 Elementary Physics. ($30.65). Spirit level $1 25 Model lifting pump 1 65 Model force pump 2 00 Meter sticks, brass tipped, % doz 1 40 Lever holders, 3 1 20 Universal weights, 1 set 2 00 Brass pulleys with hooks, V^ doz 1 00 Spring scales, % to 5 lbs. % doz 1 40 Balance and weights. See "Chemical Apparatus." Capillary tubes, 1 set 95 Hydrometer, paraffined stick 25 Hydrometer. See Quevenne lac, "Agriculture." Hydrometer jar, 15x21/^ 40 Thermometer. See "Chemical Apparatus." 3-scale thermometer, F. R. C 80 Hypsometer 3 00 Protractor, metal ' 60 Barometer tube with bend and bulb 55 Boyle's law stand 2 00 Hall's pressure gauge 95 Glass tubes. See "Glassware." Rubber tubing, white, as follows: 12 ft. *A inch, 6 ft. %6 inch — 18 ft 2 10 Rubber tubing, red antimony, %6 inch, 6 ft 54 Rubber stoppers as follows: 4 each 2-hole, Nos. 7, 8, 11 2 01 4 solid. No. 6 35 1 2-hole, No. 12 30 Cork stoppers, flat, as follows: 1 doz. each, diameter 1%, 2, 2^^, 2V2 inches, 4 doz 1 45 Cork borers and cork stoppers, regular length. See "Chemical Apparatus." Sheet lead He inch, 5 lbs 64 Mercury. See "Chemicals." Shot, No. 5, 5 lbs 40 Assorted rubber bands, 1 box 80 Copper wire. No. 18, %lb 33 Iron wire, soft. No. 28, 1 lb 18 Spool each, silk thread, linen thread 15 Biology. ($109.26). Microscopes, 2 $70 00 Bell glasses, 14-inch, 2 gal., 2 3 30 Tripod magnifiers, 1 doz 4 80 Dissecting microscope 1 00 Slides, 1 oz. cover glasses, 1 gross 1 90 Razor 1 00 Insect pins, 3 sizes, 300 39 Dissecting sets (scalpel, scissors, forceps, 2 needles), % doz 5 00 Formaldehyde 40 cents, ether 75 cents, potassium "cyanide" 45 cents ; V2 lb. each 1 60 Wide mouth, 8 oz. bottle. See "Glassware." Carbon bisulphide and potassium permanganate. See "Chemicals." Granite pans, 9 x 12, shallow, 1 doz 4 00 Medicine droppers, 1 doz 45 Dropper bottles, glass bulb, V2 doz 1 20 Petri dishes, 10 3 00 Agar-agar, 1 lb 1 00 Chloroform, 1 lb 75 Benzole, 6 oz 50 Glycerine, 6 oz 20 58 Western State Normal. Rochelle salts, 8 oz $0 10 Battery jars, 9 x 12, 2 gal., 2 2 00 Battery jars, 6 x 8, 1 gal., % doz 2 00 Specie jars, gal., % doz 2 52 Window glass, 10x10, 1 doz 1 00 Lantern globes, % doz 1 00 Assorted rubber bands, %, lb 80 Gummed labels, 2 sizes, 2 boxes 25 Silk thread, linen thread, flat corks, rubber tubing, rubber stop- pers. See "Elementary Physics." Thistle tubes, cork corers. See "Chemical Apparatus." Mosquito bar, white. See "Agriculture." Agriculture. ($102.90). Bucket spray, "Success" $7 00 Extension rod, 8 ft 2 50 Extension hose, 15 ft 1 50 Nozzles, conical, "Vermorel," 50 cents, and "Mistry," $1 1 50 Nozzle, flat, "Bordeaux" 35 Pruning saw, adjustable 1 25 Pole attachment for adjustable saw 75 Piiming shears (grape), 50 cents, pruning knife, 50 cents 1 00 Pruning shears, "Buckeye" 50 Grafting chisel 50 Mallet 15 Budding knives, 2 doz 3 60 Paris gi'een, copper sulphate, sulphur, lime 2 00 Resin, beeswax, tallow. See "Chemicals." Centrifuge milk tester, 8 bottles 8 00 Milk bottles for tester, 1 doz 1 50 Cream bottles, 1/2 doz 1 00 Skimmed milk bottles, V2 doz 3 00 Acid measure 15 Pipette 17.6 cc 20 Quevenne lactometer 50 Hydrometer jar. See "Elementary Physics." Sulphuric acid, sp. gr. 1.83, 27 lbs 2 40 Corrosive sublimate tablets, 1 lb 1 25 Soil auger 2 00 Iron mortar ( V2 gal.) and pestle 1 00 Sealing jars, "Lightning," quart, 1 doz 1 65 Sealing jars, "Lightning," pint, 1 doz 1 50 Farm level 15 00 Rod 5 00 Gasoline burner 2 75 Soil capillarity tubes, glass, 5 ft. x 1% inches, V2 doz 3 00 Di-ying oven 100° C, ci'ucibles, desiccator, slop jars, Bunsen vapor lamp, thermometers, brass tongs, balance. See "Chemical Ap- paratus." Percolators, qt., 2 1 00 Small tin grocers' scoop 10 Cylindrical gi'aduates. See "Glassware." Coarse balance (grocers') with weights % oz. to 4 lbs 3 00 Small granite pans, circular, % doz 90 Iron pans and troughs (at tinners) 3 00 Sand, sawdust, muslin, cheesecloth, mosquito net, cotton thread. ... 1 00 Specie jars. See "Biology." Shot, spirit level. See "Elementary Physics." Sample soil 28, 1 set 1 50 Economic seeds, 1 set 1 50 Weed seeds, 1 set 1 50 Smooth dinner plates, 1 doz 1 20 Educational Agriculture. 59 Vials, 2 drachms, 85 cents, stoppers, 15 cents, 1 gross $1 00 Brass gauze sieves, 5 sizes, 1 set 5 50 Tripod magnifiers, 1 doz. See "Biology." Flower pots, % gal., with saucers, 2 doz 1 70 Steel tape, 50 ft 2 50 Muriate of potash, acid phosphate, ground rock phosphate, bone meal, lime, limestone 5 00 Magnesium sulphate, potassium sulphate, ammonium sulphate, ferric chloride. See "Chemicals." Tools. ($6.87). Hollow handle tool $1 12 Vise, small 75 Hatchet 50 Saw 1 30 Brace and bits 1 00 Square 30 Combined pliers and wire cutters 85 Pincers, small 25 Whetstone 45 Iron wire, No. 24 and No. 18, 1 lb each 35 In the selection of materials for laboratory use the appropriate ma- terials in agriculture will, of course, be such as represent the agricul- tural interests of the locality. It is apparent to any one that a practical course demands this. But in the teaching of the fundamental sciences a change from former methods may not be so readily acceded to by science teachers. The ideal herein conceived is, that since the best method of illustrating any unknown fact or principle is by means of familiar rather than unfamiliar materials, and since with the majority of students, famihar materials are agricultural materials, economy dic- tates the use of what the rural environment affords so far as possible in the teaching of all sciences, and no science should be attempted that cannot be demonstrated by some means. Or, stated from the practical point of view, since the science of agriculture depends upon all of the fundamental sciences, the only way to put agricultural instruction on a safe, rational basis, is to correlate it with the underlying sciences and teach them together, without attempting to draw any very sharp line to indicate when we pass from the cultural to the industrial use. Where agricultural needs are made the sole criteria for the admission of principles or materials for the teaching of the fundamental sciences certain portions of those sciences remain incomplete. With more ad- vanced students, whose interest may be mainly scientific, other things must be introduced to supplement the purely agricultural. Such need should be less frequent during the first half of the high-school course. Physics is a science which has developed to such dimensions by natural growth that no high school can do in one year all of the work outlined in the average text and which is recognized as secondary in character. It has, at the same time, become more quantitative, involving application of the mathematics of the high school, thus being forced into the latter part of the course. Certain elementary phases of physics are essential to an understanding of the other sciences. For this reason elementary physics is provided for in the preceding list of apparatus, using the needs of physical geog- 60 Western State Normal. raphy and agriculture as criteria of what to admit and deferring the remainder of the subject to the latter part of the course in mathematics. This puts the subject of advanced physics outside the purposes of this treatment. But since, in a consideration of the laboratory, it is ap- propriate to allow space for the equipment for this subject, the appended list of apparatus is given to indicate what the subject may call for in the smaller schools. It is given with the understanding that the expense, while severely minimized, is in no way chargeable to the purposes of agriculture. Advanced High-school Physics. ($73.13). Jolly balance $6 00 Rotator 6 65 Ring chain and cylinder 85 Acoustic and color disk 3 00 Dynamo and motor 3 35 Tuning fork; A, 20 cents, small C, 20 cents. ... 40 Medium C 75 Sonometer 7 50 Clock spring 10 Zinc and copper strips 05 Concave and convex mirror, 75 mm 50 Triangular glass prism, 6-in . 50 Plane mirror 25 Six-inch bar magnets, 2 60 Horseshoe magnet, 4-in 20 Dry cells, 3 90 Electro-magnet 1 50 Demonstration battery 1 00 Copper wire, cotton insulated, 2 oz. No. 26. . . . 36 1 oz. No. 30 ... . 27 Dissectable dynamo 2 50 Gravity cell, crowfoot Cu. and Zn 90 OPTIONAL. Air pump $35 00 Chapter XIV. PLOTS AND GROUNDS. "By every legitimate means 7ve should develop and fix local attach- Tnents. We have almost come to be a nation of wanderers and shifters. We are in danger of losing some of our affection for particular pieces of land." — Bailey: Training of Teachers of Agriculture, p. 11. "In past conceptions of democracy the idea of rewards has had no place." — Dr. Aldrich : A Redefinition of Democracy. In presenting the following plans for school grounds and plots, certain needs and conditions of general application are taken into consideration. The lack of attachment to particular pieces of land is fatal to the ideal- ization of agriculture as a mode of life. The lack of continuity of tenure is a serious impairment of all school work, and will especially be true of all agricultural work. The most vital period in the care of plots comes in the ordinary summer vacation period. The lack of respect for public property is characteristic of the average American, and often amounts to a feeling that what belongs to the public may be despoiled with im- punity by any member of the public. The feeling of individual ownership and prospect of financial reward for care and labor bestowed are essen- tial factors in the success of any economic enterprise. The agriculturist of the high school should not simply be an employee of the community, but should be a citizen, and thus be in an attitude to both give and receive information and neighborly assistance. He should be provided a home on the school grounds, with sufficient space to con- duct horticultural work profitably during the summer vacation, the proceeds to be his own, the lessons to be the property of the community, and no demonstration to be considered complete until its ability to pro- duce a profit is tested. His employment should be by the year and his wages in twelve monthly payments. He should be held for vacation service and pay rental on his home. His private grounds should be open to the public at stated hours and always display lessons worthy of their attention, while the line marking his boundaries should be respected at all times. Such grounds afford the means of demonstrating the best horticultural practices, including the use of hotbeds and cold frames, the kitchen garden, small fruit, varietal merits, seed selection, decorative and landscape planting, and poultry husbandry. School gardens belong peculiarly to the elementary grades. Where the high school is associated with the elementary grades, the agricul- turist may be called upon to supervise such work on the grounds. No attempt will here be made to discuss that grade 6f work. For the high- school student, work of a similar character is included under the term "home projects," where it will be found discussed. However, room for The school building has about it a natural environment. It ought to be in a garden, and the children from the garden would be led on to sur- rounding fields, and then into the wider country, with all its facts and forces. — Dewey: The School and Society, p. 89. (61) 62 Western State Normal. Series I. Rotation and Fertilizers, suited to latitude 36°. A" f?ange "B" Ksng9 "C 'Ran^e "P" Kang* M ' me $ nothing, lyoad off ; ? off off i 10 n 12 Tnanvire off " B\W^;>.WS,";' NPK off ni tfAte no th r ne off ^ road • > >^. .,^.J t : i,w,vv».vvv< tVVVVVC^vV; -.J ^^VVVVkVVV I2ftl 1-5 rodi pvvvvvvv^ ^vv<..