The Country-Life Movement in the United StatesBailey, L. H. (Liberty Hyde)
History
The Country-Life Movement in the United States
Bailey, L. H. (Liberty Hyde)
Country life
As soon as a state has produced strong institutions for research and
education in agriculture, it will need to provide an agency for
utilizing the results. A state extension program, on a coördinating plan
between all the institutions but proceeding from one educational center,
and which all the institutions would have a right to use for the spread
of their work among the people, could accomplish vast benefits. It
should comprise institutes, utilize the state system of fairs
educationally, afford an organ for the making of agricultural surveys
and demonstrations, spread an educational propaganda on the agricultural
law, collect and collate the experience of the farmers of the state. It
could assort and apply the information that the state, at great expense,
accumulates through its various separate agencies. It could utilize the
students, whom the state provides with free tuition. The germ of such an
enterprise already exists in most of the states.
_Special local schools for agriculture._[2]
I am committed to the idea that there should be strong local centers of
interest in rural communities, for thereby we develop local pride and
incentive. There are several ways, on the educational side, of
developing local institutions and interest.
[2] See "The State and the Farmer," p. 150; "The Training of
Farmers," p. 167; "Cyclopedia of American Agriculture," IV, p. 474.
The first way is to make it possible and practicable for the existing
public schools to introduce agriculture and domestic economy. I suggest
that many or most localities would do better to develop the country-life
work in the existing schools than to ask the legislature for a separate
special school. We have only begun to understand what such redirected
and expanded schools may accomplish.
Another means of securing local knowledge and developing local interest
is by the establishing of demonstration farms and field-laboratories. It
is doubtful whether a permanent demonstration farm in a community is
desirable; in general, the demonstration may be temporary, depending on
the presence in the community of some special difficulty. In some
circumstances, the enterprise may amount to a local testing station.
Enterprises of this sort are bound to take on great importance in the
redirection of country life.
Local societies and organizations may be encouraged to take up
educational and experiment work.
Departments of agriculture will probably be added by colleges or other
educational institutions, and these will serve as local centers at the
same time that they reach the larger field.
Again, a winter school or short-course of, say, a month's or two months'
duration may be held in different parts of the state. The localities
should coöperate in the expenses, thereby becoming partakers in the
enterprise.
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