The last
point is of great importance because of the comparative absence in
country communities of opportunity near at hand for _good_ high-school
training.

Agricultural education is distinctively technical, not in the restricted
sense of mere technique, or even of applied science, but in the sense
that it must be frankly vocational. It has to do with the preparation of
men and women for the business of farming and for life in the rural
community.

Agricultural education should begin in the primary school. In this
school the point of view, however, should be broadly pedagogical rather
than immediately vocational. Fortunately, the wise teaching of
nature-study, the training of pupils to know and to love nature, the
constant illustrations from the rural environment, the continual appeal
to personal observation and experience, absolute loyalty to the farm
point of view, are not only sound pedagogy, but form the best possible
background for future vocational study. Whether we call this early work
"nature-study" or call it "agriculture" matters less than that the
fundamental principle be recognized. It must first of all _educate_. The
greatest difficulty in introducing such work into the primary school is
to secure properly equipped teachers.

Perhaps the most stupendous undertaking in agricultural education is the
adequate development of secondary education in agriculture. The
overwhelming majority of young people who secure any agricultural
schooling whatever must get it in institutions that academically are of
secondary grade. This is a huge task. If developed to supply existing
needs, it will call for an enormous expenditure of money and for the
most careful planning. From the teaching view-point it is a difficult
problem. Modern agriculture is based upon the sciences; it will not do,
therefore, to establish schools in the mere art of farming. But these
agricultural high schools must deal with pupils who are comparatively
immature, and who almost invariably have had no preparation in science.
Nor should the courses at these schools be ultra-technical. They are to
prepare men and women for life on the farm--men and women who are to
lead in rural development, and who must get some inkling at least of the
real farm question and its solution. The agricultural school, therefore,
presents a problem of great difficulty.

A perennial question in agricultural education is: What is the function
of the agricultural college?