t lacking in the liberal culture studies. It
includes the following: _First Year_, English I, Algebra, Physiology,
Agronomy I or Latin, Household Science or Manual Training, Physical
Geography, Horticulture or Latin. _Second Year_, English II, Algebra,
Geometry, Zoology, Ancient History, Botany, Animal Husbandry or Household
Science, Drawing and Music. _Third Year_, English III, Chemistry,
Agronomy II or Latin or Household Science, English History, Animal
Husbandry. _Fourth Year_, English IV, Physics, Household Science or
Agronomy III, American History, Bookkeeping, Arithmetic and Civics. The
farm laboratory work is in charge of experts from the Illinois Experiment
Station.
[Illustration: Domestic Economy Rooms, Macdonald Consolidated School,
Guelph, Canada.]
[Illustration: Manual Training Department of the Same School.]
[Illustration: Manual Training in a Small Rural School, Edgar County,
Illinois.]
As Dr. Warren H. Wilson states so well, "The teaching of agriculture is
not for the making of farmers, but men and women. It must be more than a
mere school of rural money-making. The teaching of agriculture needed in
the schools is for the purpose of training in country life. The country
school must make the open country worth while. It will teach agriculture
as the basis of an ideal life, rather than as a quick way of profits."
However, though this is strictly true of the boys who study agriculture,
if they can actually become proficient enough to give their fathers
points, the evident "practical" value of the modern school will appeal so
strongly to the farmers that its future support is assured. The farmers
cannot be blamed for having little love for the school which alienates
their children from country life; but schools which really train for rural
citizenship will be appreciated by the country folks. And in time there
will be more John Swaneys, men who will show their love for a real school
for country life by endowing it after the manner of the old New England
academies.
_Elementary Agriculture and School Gardens_
To delay the teaching of agriculture until the high school years would be
to lose its most strategic value. It should be a regular course in all
rural schools, beginning before the natural rural interests have been
turned to discontent. As a rural educator says, "Let them early learn to
know nature and to love it, and to know that they are indigenous to the
soil; that here they must live
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