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
To teach agriculture merely by giving a new direction or vocabulary to
botany, chemistry, geology, physics, and the like is not to teach
agriculture at all, although it may greatly improve these subjects
themselves. To put a school of agriculture in the hands of some good
science-teacher in a general college faculty with the idea that he can
cover the agricultural work and at the same time keep up his own
department, is wholly ineffective (except temporarily) and out of
character with the demands of the twentieth century (but in high-schools
a good science teacher may handle the work, or an agriculture teacher
may carry the science). To suppose that "agriculture" is one subject for
a college course, to be sufficiently represented by a "chair," is to
miss the point of modern progress. To give only laboratory and
recitation courses may be better than nothing, but land-teaching, either
as a part of the institution or on adjacent farms, must be incorporated
with the customary school work if the best results are to be secured. To
make a school farm pay for itself and for the school is impossible
unless the school is a very poor or exceedingly small one; and yet this
old fallacy is alive at the present day. To have a distant farm to visit
and look at, in order to "apply" the "teachings" of chemistry, botany,
and the like, falls far short of real agriculture instruction. To
develop a "model farm" that shall be a pattern to the multitude in exact
farming is an exploded notion: there are many farmers' farms that are
better adapted to such purpose (the demonstration farm is the modern
adaptation of the idea, and it is educationally sound).
To teach agriculture of college grade requires not only persons who know
the subject, but an organization well informed on the educational
administration that is required. There must be a body of experience in
this line of work behind any teaching on a college plane that shall be
really useful; when this body of experience does not exist, the work
must necessarily grow slowly and be under the most expert direction. The
presumption is still against successful agriculture work in the literary
and liberal arts institutions, because such teaching demands a point of
view on education that the men in these institutions are likely not to
possess. Agriculture cannot be introduced in the same way that a
department or chair of history or mathematics can be organized; it
requires a different outlook on educational procedure, a different order
of equipment and of activities, and its own type of administration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account