Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets: Being a selection, with revision, from the teachers' leaflets, home nature-study lessons, junior naturalist monthlies and other publications from the College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1896-1904New York State College of Agriculture
History
Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets: Being a selection, with revision, from the teachers' leaflets, home nature-study lessons, junior naturalist monthlies and other publications from the College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1896-1904
New York State College of Agriculture
Natural history; Nature study
Once it was thought that the agricultural college should be wholly
separate from any "classical" institution. The oldest of the existing
American agricultural colleges, the Michigan institution, is established
on this principle. So are the Massachusetts, Iowa and Pennsylvania
colleges and a number of others. It is natural that this should have
been the feeling in the original movement for the establishment of these
colleges, for the movement was itself a protest and revolt from the
existing education. Time, however, has put agricultural subjects on an
equal pedagogical plane with other subjects, and there is no more
reason why the agriculture should be segregated by itself than that the
architecture or law or fine arts should be. The agricultural colleges
connected with universities are now beginning to grow rapidly. This is
illustrated in the great development of the agricultural colleges at the
universities in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri,
Ohio, and elsewhere. It was once thought that the agricultural student
would be "looked down upon" in a university or in a college with other
departments. This was once true. It was true once, also, of the student
in natural science and mechanic arts. Pioneers are always marked men.
The only way to place agricultural students on an equality with other
students is to place them on an equality.
These remarks are made in no disparagement of the separate agricultural
colleges, but only to illustrate the character of the growth of
agricultural education. No doubt the separate colleges blazed the way.
They stand for an idea that we would not like to dispense with. Every
state and territory has one college founded on the land grant, and in
the Southern states there are two, one for the whites and one for the
blacks; in nearly half of the states these colleges are separate
institutions. But the fact remains that the college connected with the
university is to have the broader field in the future. Its very
connection dignifies it and gives it parity. It draws on many resources
that the separate college knows not of, unless, indeed, the separate
college develops these resources for itself. The tendency, therefore, is
for every ambitious separate college to develop the accessory resources,
in the way of equipment in general science, literature, the arts; for
agricultural education is constantly coming to be of a higher grade. The
separate agricultural and mechanical colleges are rapidly becoming
essentially industrial universities, giving general training but with
the emphasis on the technical subjects.
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