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
However, it is yet largely an unsolved problem with the
agricultural colleges as to just how the stirring business side of
farming can be sufficiently correlated with the courses of study to keep
the student in touch and sympathy with affairs. With the passing of
compulsory student labor there has no doubt been a reaction in the
direction of too little utilization of the college farm in schemes of
education; but we shall now get back to the farm again, but this time on
a true educational basis.
Nothing is more significant of the development of the agricultural
colleges than the recent splitting up of the professorships. From
agricultural chemistry as a beginning, in one form or another, there
have issued a dozen chairs, first one subject and then another being
separated as a teachable and administrative entity. Even the word
"agriculture" is now being dropped from the professorships, for this is
a term for a multitude of enterprises, not for a concrete subject.
Horticulture was one of the first protuberances to be lopped off; and
even this must very soon be divided into its component parts, for there
is little relationship between the effort that grows apples and that
grows orchids or between the market garden and landscape gardening. Even
the chair of agronomy, the newest department of the colleges, must soon
be separated into its units. Forty years ago mechanic arts was
undivided. Who then would have prophesied such professorships as
experimental engineering, electrical engineering, marine engineering,
railroad engineering, naval architecture, machine design? The progress
of the dividing up of the mechanic arts and civil engineering marks the
rate of our progress, in the terms of the Land Grant Act, "to promote
the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the
several pursuits and professions in life." All trades, classes and
professions are to be reached with a kind of education that is related
to their work. One by one we are reaching persons in all walks and all
places. Socially, there are centuries of prejudice against the farmer.
When education is finally allowed to reach him in such a way as to be
indispensable to him, it will at last have become truly democratic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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