Davenport, E: Next Step in Agricultural Education or the Pla - pocketboek

Excerpt from The Next Step in Agricultural Education or the Place of Agriculture in Our, American System of Education an Address

Now, two radically different methods have been proposed for meeting this new educational demand in the secondary schools. The one method proposes a separate system of schools for country people, to be known as agricultural high schools, farm schools, etc., in which agriculture for boys and domestic science for girls should be the leading subjects taught, assuming that existing high schools in general shall be known and considered as "city schools," whose business it is to minister to the people of the cities and their concerns as the agricultural schools should minister to the affairs of the country. Several of these agricultural high schools have been already established, notably in Wisconsin and Georgia, and a bill which is now in Congress is designed to make the distinction not only clear but permanent, as between agricultural high schools that serve the people and interests of the country, and city high schools that serve the people and interests of the city.

The other method proposes not one system of secondary schools for the country and another for the city, but a single system for both. It proposes, for example, that the present system of high schools should not be denominated "city high schools" with a narrow range of interests, but that they should be so expanded in personnel and equipment, and so enriched in courses, as to minister to the natural interests of their environment, whatever they may be, agricultural, mechanical, commercial, literary, and what not; and that the present ungraded schools in the thinly populated country districts shall be condensed into larger and stronger units, meeting as they are able the educational needs of their communities, and evolving naturally and ultimately into true secondary schools.

The one proposal is logically for as many systems and types of schools as there are distinct interests and lines of instruction; the other is for a single system of education, with highly differentiated courses taught in the same schools. The one proposes to insert itself by main strength into the very heart of our system of secondary education; the other must of necessity develop by gradual process.

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