AGRICULTURE, DOMESTIC ART, AND MANUAL TRAINING WITHOUT FUNDS OR EQUIPMENT

E. C. BISHOP, DEPUTY STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, LINCOLN, NEB.

In the encouragement of agricultural education thru the public schools, the particular phase of the subject with which I shall deal in this discussion is so interwoven with manual training and domestic art that in order to properly discuss the one, the other two must be included.

I am reminded of a prevailing tendency in discussions which seek to settle the rural-school problem. After the usual recital deploring the conditions as to inadequate equipment, poorly trained and poorly paid teachers, small, irregular attendance, lack of interest in the school, etc., we close by declaring that the only safe, sure, and lasting remedy is in the consolidation of rural schools. And it is true that the consolidation of rural schools has done and is doing the good we have expected.

Where are we short? Not in the encouragement of consolidation; but in the absence of consolidation we are neglecting the means which are at hand for the betterment of rural conditions. Lack of proper state legislation and the common conservatism, which hesitates to sacrifice the old for the new, prevent the early widespread establishment of consolidation. It is coming, slowly, surely. But it is not our part to look, wait, and work for consolidation to the exclusion of action which will not only bring us nearer to consolidation but which will in the meantime provide better things for the rural youth, who in great numbers, even in some of our most favored sections, will grow to maturity, to old age, and pass away before consolidation becomes general thruout the country.

If we are to perform any service which will bring general relief to the rural conditions in this generation, we must, while encouraging consolidation, do those other things which can now be done without consolidation. It is easy to sum up all the ills of the rural school, to gather together all the possibilities for good and then proclaim consolidation as the great healer and the great benefactor. In time, we shall have our reward for all the good thus accomplished. But greater shall be our reward if we follow our "thus should it be " with a "thus is it" and a "thus must it be." The one-room rural school is yet a strong factor in many sections and in many other sections it is a weak factor, yet it is the only present means thru which better things can be reached. While we hold strongly for the consolidated school, let us utilize the one-room rural school until it is evolved into something better.

In due time the consolidated school with its trained teachers and adequate equipment will educate in agriculture, manual training, and domestic art in a degree worthy of the long-continued effort necessary for its establishment. In the meantime we should do what we can without such facilities in organization and equipment. This brings me to my subject.

Discussion of education in agriculture, manual training, and domestic art has been confined largely to special schools of agriculture, manual training,

and home economics, or to high schools provided with special courses of study, and necessary facilities for carrying on the work. But these schools are so few, and for several decades will be so few, that while one rural youth attends such a school, scores of his neighbors go no farther with their education than that. provided by the home school, where, from lack of proper facilities, education for the home life is neglected. The schools provided with agricultural laboratories, manual-training, and domestic-art equipment will continue to grow in favor and to increase in number. But for each one of such schools there are hundreds of rural, town, and city schools where this work, however much. desired, is not introduced because of lack of what is considered necessary funds and equipment and teachers especially trained for the work.

As in the consolidated-school proposition, we can wait and watch and work for ideal conditions and thus aim to shift responsibility, but the better course is to work for ideal conditions and at the same time make the best use of real present-day conditions.

I am reminded of a teacher who taught the rural school over in Floyd County, Iowa, where, several years ago, I occupied a pupil's desk and cultivated my ambition to achieve greatness. She could not utter a single musical note but she cleared the way and gave the school an opportunity to sing. And she discovered and brought to light more hidden music than any former teacher ever knew existed in the souls of that score of country boys and girls. Singing-books, charts, instruments, and singing-teachers seem to be necessary adjuncts to prescribed courses in musical training, but soul music and heart. expression should not remain bottled up because of a lack of these helpful agencies. Give the natural tendencies a chance to develop, then the need for devices and means for full development will be felt and proper provision made for supplying them.

Since the one-room rural school must for yet many years play an important part in the education of the people of rural communities; and since it must be the rural school and its co-operative agencies thru which a desire for better things can be created and where that desire will lead to action that will secure better things, our part is to bring to the rural school those influences which will reach into present actual conditions, do good along the way, and lead to better things.

So long as the people are led to, or are permitted to, cling tenaciously to the three R's to the exclusion of other educative influences, the rural school in its old form, will remain in the background of modern development. The rural community can and will have as good a school as it wants. The spiritualization of the rural school has its beginning in the changing of the attitude of the people toward their need. To see the way to supply such need is not only the battle begun, but the battle won.

The teaching of agriculture in rural schools has not brought the results hoped for and confidently expected. There are two strong general reasons for this. First, too many farmers do not feel the need of such instruc

tion; second, too many teachers are not prepared to properly teach agriculture.

A teacher properly supplied with knowledge, and the power of right application can in one year make the study of agriculture the most popular educational work in the community. Another teacher can in less than one year, by attempting to teach agriculture, cause it to become unappreciated as an educative force, unpopular as a subject, and despised as a task.

The unsuccessful teacher of agriculture generally makes one or more of the following mistakes:

1. He fails to have the pupil and the patron approach the subject with the proper kind and degree of interest.

2. He fails to begin to teach and to continue to teach in proper order, the right subdivisions of the subject as applied to the community.

3. His lack of knowledge of the subject or of skill in its presentation invite confusion and failure.

4. He fails to utilize the means at hand for doing the things that can be done in the particular locality at the particular time.

What I have said and shall say applies as forcibly to domestic art and to manual training as to agriculture, and recognizes general conditions, the conditions which must be considered in a general discussion of the subject.

Since the farmer is not interested in agricultural education we must awaken such interest, tho it is not always necessary to call such effort agricultural education, a term sometimes not popular with some people. Since teachers are not properly prepared to teach agriculture, we must take the teachers as they are and help them to do the things which they can do. Since teachers and members of the community fail to utilize the means at hand for doing things that can be done, we must help the teachers and help the community to see and to do.

For reasons already mentioned, agriculture, domestic art, and manual training have not become generally established as recognized parts of public-school work. Special schools of agriculture, home economics, and manual training, as now existing in university, college, and high-school organizations, have, within their respective fields, done a good work. Well-equipped departments in one or more of these arts are in successful operation in some high schools, some grade schools, and in some private schools. But such schools are too few, too little known, and too distant from the people whom they should serve. To reach more than a very small percentage of our young people we must in a measure bring these schools into the home if we would reach the great mass of the people.

Any new agency for doing good must show its power for good before it will be accepted and supported by the public. If we wait for Congress, for state legislatures, and for boards of education to make appropriations and provide the means for doing this work where there is greatest need for it to be done, this generation shall pass away without seeing much accomplished. In this democratic country of ours, before legislative bodies take action and before

boards of education establish changes in courses of study and equipment for carrying out such courses, there must come a desire from the homes of the people for action.

Let us first enter the home. We must bring these industrial schools into the home if we would reach the people and thru them establish public measOur young people are the entering wedge to the home. When we cannot lead the father and mother we can sometimes lead the child, who in turn leads the father and mother. Measures which lead the boy and girl to a keener interest in the home, to a better appreciation of home life, and to the cultivation of a greater degree of individual efficiency as a factor in the home and in the community life-these are educative in the highest sense and represent a necessary part in the proper development of the civic, moral, and industrial life of the nation.

The boy who carefully cultivates and studies the growth of a patch of corn, sugar beets, potatoes, wheat, or other plant will gain a new interest and a better appreciation of the value of careful thought applied in the study of seed selection, soil fertility, and the intelligent culture of plants. Further, he will become interested in the best methods of marketing, and of the use of these plants as food for man and animal. This will direct him to study, to discussion, and to investigation, leading to a knowledge of systematic feeding and caring for live stock, to a study of animal adaptation and needs, and to a careful consideration of the financial and social problems involved. This is education.

The girl who learns by actual experience to successfully cultivate one flower, one vegetable; who learns to bake a loaf of bread, to prepare an edible dish for the table, to can a jar of fruit, to make an apron for the use of herself or a member of the family, to neatly darn or patch a garment-if she seeks to know and to perform these simple yet important duties the best way, combining with her work cheerfulness, careful thought, and intelligent study-is being educated.

The homes of which such boys and girls are members and the communities in which such homes are located will soon demand for all of the young people that kind of training which has been shown by actual demonstration to be truly educative.

The problem stated is this: Without funds, equipment, or sufficient state or community interest, what method of procedure will bring about the necessary interest in these lines of industrial education and what action will lead to measures which will provide the necessary funds and equipment for giving this work its proper place in the public schools?

The introduction to this paper is concluded. The introduction includes most of what I have to say.

The Bancroft Plan.-The Bancroft school is an eighth-grade ward school of Lincoln, Nebraska. Courses in cooking and in manual training have been maintained for the past four years in some of the ward schools of Lincoln. In schools where such courses were established, efficient teachers and proper equipment have been provided for doing

the work in a most satisfactory manner. As the funds and inclinations of the board of education have permitted, these courses were extended to different ward schools. The Bancroft school is so situated and equipped with building facilities that the day seemed far distant when cooking and manual training departments could be added. The school grounds were too limited in extent to permit school gardening. Miss E. Ruth Pyrtle, principal of the school, had faith in the virtue of training in domestic art, manual training, and elementary agriculture.

The Bancroft school building stands between the North Western and Burlington railway tracks on the west and north, the University of Nebraska on the east, and the crowded city on the south. The pupils come from homes as varied as the character of the surroundings indicate. There was no extra room, no funds, and no equipment for this work.

Work began in agriculture. In the study of seeds and of plants the pupils in all grades were led to a desire to know, by seeing and doing, the wonderful processes of germination, leaf and stalk development, budding, blooming, and ripening of the seed. A local seed firm sold, by request, small packages of flower and vegetable seeds for one cent each. Each pupil purchased such seed as he desired, spaded up his own back yard or front yard or neighboring vacant plot, planted his seed, cultivated his plants, watched their development, reported results, brought samples of flowers or vegetables to his teacher, and escorted his teacher and other visitors out to his little experimental plot when occasion permitted. The work in folding, paper cutting, sewing, molding, and water color in the primary grades, evolved into needle-work, in making the simpler forms of wearing apparel and house ornament, by the girls, and in whittling out models of ladders, swings, tables, and chairs, in the making of broom-holders, towel racks, coat-hangers, knife boxes, pencilholders, match safes, spice boxes, and other articles for the home, schoolroom, or business desk.

This work was done at home with whatever tools or equipment the pupil could secure. Results were brought to school and showed to teacher and schoolmates. Originality and skillful workmanship were encouraged.

The eighth grade had lessons in cooking. Once each week a recipe was written on the board or read to the pupils, who copied it. These recipes were secured from the School of Domestic Science at the University. The teacher first tried the recipe and presented only what she had proven with her own hands to be practical with the beginner in cooking. During the week each pupil, unaided, in his own home, cooked the article, as many times as desired, and reported, with sample of cooking when practical, at the regular time of the lesson the following week when free discussion was participated in by all members of the class. The cooking was done on stoves with fuel of gas, coal, wood, cobs, or trash, and with utensils varying from the most simple and undesirable to the most expensive and best adapted cooking-vessel. These varied conditions brought experiences interesting to hear and profitable to know.

Before the close of school in the spring, patrons' day was observed. A part of the forenoon was spent in placing on the walls and on the seats across which boards had been laid, specimens of the work in each room. This included the various kinds of regular schoolwork and results of work in the industrial lines before mentioned.

In the afternoon the pupils of each room, in charge of their respective teachers, passed thru the various rooms viewing the work of the other grades. Patrons were permitted to examine any of the work in any of the rooms at their leisure. While the results in the regular schoolwork attracted the usual attention, it was the work in cooking, sewing, and manual training that excited the greater interest and attention of the visitors.

At the noon hour a temporary table was arranged in one of the primary rooms and the eighth grade served luncheon to their teachers and some invited guests, the cooking and serving being done entirely by members of the eighth grade. Even the boys were proud to have a hand in it. The lessons given in cooking had not been restricted to girls.