teachers." Other States follow similar plans. One difficulty often reported is that speakers do not really give instruction in agriculture, but expand on the beauties of country life and on the means of keeping the boys on the farm.

(B).—THE REGULAR TEACHERS' INSTITUTES.

It is noticeable that even the regular brief institutes and teachers' meetings, held throughout the year, now are giving much attention to agricultural subjects, most often, perhaps, in their nature-study phases. These meetings may render the greatest help in putting teachers in touch with the most recent progress, new books, and new methods, although it should be distinctly understood that they can never of themselves give teachers sufficient training for any really effective teaching of agriculture. In their agricultural work, they are yet too prone to emphasize the extraordinary, the semisensational, and the wonderful, evidencing the fact that we are now in the exploitational stage of our agricultural education evolution. The teacher who is not well grounded may be led astray.

(c).—LECTURES.

One of the most useful recent movements is the interchange of speakers between teachers' institutes and farmers' institutes. The agricultural colleges are also called on for much lecture work on educational topics; this is good both for the people and the college. Farmers are being called on more and more to recite their experiences. The farmers' institute organization in Illinois has been able to create a strong sentiment in favor of teaching agriculture in the rural schools, being regarded by the Superintendent of Public Instruction as the most powerful agency in this work. In other States the institutes have exerted a similar effect by means of traveling speakers. Such work not only establishes a point of view in the people, but discovers the promising teachers here and there and gives them courage and support.

(D).—CORRESPONDENCE AND LEAFLET WORK.

This class of work has now assumed large proportions in some quarters, and has fairly passed the epoch of hostile criticism, although it has not yet passed its experimental stage. When it has fully passed this stage, much of its spontaneity and usefulness will have ceased. The correspondence and leaflet method does not make as strong impression on the teacher as good summer school work or other means of direct personal contact with a good teacher; but it is most effective in arousing a sentiment for better things, and it may be very useful to the individual teacher who wants to work

at his problem quietly and resourcefully. It produces the maximum result at the minimum expense. Various clubs are organized, and crop-growing and exhibition contests are arranged. Combined with an organized lecture system and visitation system, it is probably the most powerful single engine to aid the teacher of agriculture and related subjects in the rural schools. Its greatest danger is its tendency to hold too many names on the lists, thereby limiting its usefulness to each one. One of its greatest faults has been the issuing of publications that are too technical and too dryly agricultural. On the whole, no other agency has placed so many real helps before the teacher.

(E).-SHORT COURSES IN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES.

Many of the agricultural colleges have long been giving brief courses for farm youth. They are now beginning to adapt some of this instruction to the needs of teachers, and it is probable that the demand for such adaptation will increase. Some of the colleges are offering courses of one and two years' duration, but these partake of the nature of real normal departments and may be considered in a subsequent part of this paper.

In two or three States spring schools are held at the agricultural college. The schedule of such a school given by the North Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical College is as follows:

Four weeks' spring normal agricultural courses.

Common branches: Arithmetic, grammar, geography, reading, and history. 20
Methods of teaching..
School sanitation

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(F).—PERIPATETIC TEACHERS.

Following the city school plan of having a visiting teacher of music or manual training, some places have adopted a similar plan for rural schools. One teacher can visit several schools, either giving the instruction himself, or, what is better, supervising and directing the work of a teacher in each school. The former phase (the peripatetic

teacher doing all the teaching) may be worth the while in starting the new education, or in the lack of teachers. The second phase (the directing of other teachers) is very effective when the individual teachers are not themselves expert, and it should have a marked effect on the teacher. This plan has been tried in Canada, and one teacher there writes:

The teacher must be trained, and it may be by a graduate of a normal school or an agricultural college, or by a director or supervisor of nature study. I think the last way is a good one. It improves the instruction in the school at the same time that the teacher is being trained, and many teachers think they can learn to better advantage in a school of their own than at a normal school. Of course, normal training should come first, and further training in nature study can be given the teacher while at her work, by a director of nature study; but this director should be an educator and not a mere specialist in some branch of natural science.

In some places it may be possible for a teacher of agriculture in a high school to inspect and supervise the agriculture teaching in the elementary schools of the region. If he is himself well trained, he should be able to exert a great influence in putting the other teachers on their feet.

(G).—UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

Much of the work of the national Department of Agriculture is distinctly educational and is of great value to teachers; and the Office of Experiment Stations maintains an organization to aid schools, colleges, and teachers in their pedagogical work. This Office is able often to send speakers to teachers' institutes and elsewhere; it maintains a large correspondence with school men; it publishes bulletins of information and advice on school gardening and agricultural teaching; it collects data on both foreign and American school work for the purpose of keeping the public informed of the state of agricultural education; and in general it lends counsel and encouragement to those in need of it.

(2).—THE TRAINING OF NEW TEACHERS.

We now come to the real question before us-where the agriculture teachers of the future are to be prepared.

Seven types of institutions or organizations are now beginning to train teachers for agriculture: (a) State normal schools; (b) local normal schools; (c) high schools and training classes; (d) separate agricultural schools; (e) special detached foundations for industrial work; (f) education departments of colleges and universities, and teachers' colleges; (g) agricultural colleges. It is not the purpose of this report to make any full discussion of these categories, unless perhaps the last one, but only to indicate what seems to be the most

promising field for each group of institutions. The agencies comprised in the above categories are not always distinct from some of those that aim chiefly to aid the present-day teachers (see page 25). These two groups merge, some of the shorter-course agencies often being conducted by the organizations mentioned in the present list. The purpose of the division into the two groups, however, is not to classify organizations or agencies, but to clarify the discussion by calling attention to the two main lines of effort. In general, an organization that maintains a continuous course of work for at least one school year is placed in this second group. It is not the object, in either of these groups, to make a complete list of the subclasses of institutions or organizations, but only to indicate the leading types. It may probably be taken for granted that in the end adequate preparation for the teaching of agriculture in the secondary schools, special industrial schools, and normal schools can be secured only in some kind of professional institution organized for the training of teachers; but the serious work of training teachers for agriculture in the schools is only begun here and there, and adequate systems are yet to be worked out.

(A).—STATE NORMAL SCHOOLS.

Nearly all the correspondents who have contributed suggestions to this report express the opinion that the regular normal schools should train teachers for agriculture. Theoretically this may be true, but the normal schools, as other institutions, face the practical conditions under which they exist. In a western State where cities are few and small, where agriculture is the dominant industry, and where normal schools are new, the educational problem is very different from what may obtain in one of the easternmost States. In the Eastern States the normal schools are taxed to their full capacity to supply teachers for the cities; the cities pay good wages for teachers; the normal schools are likely to be located in cities and without farm land; their energies are consumed in a line of work for which they have become adapted by years of effort. In such cases good agricultural work can not be added without a new and radical type of extension of the school; and it then becomes a question whether it would be better for the State to make such extension or to establish a new kind of training school elsewhere. It is a question, also, whether the normal method, as developed in some of these schools, is sufficiently elastic and adaptable to render good agriculture teaching possible. At all events, one can not look to all the existing normal schools in the older States, or even to any considerable part of them, for the training of teachers for this kind of work.

In the Middle West and in the newer States many of the normal schools are beginning to train in agricultural subjects. Heretofore the courses in these subjects have been largely adjuncts to the natural science teaching, but the work is now being differentiated. In Georgia it is expected that the State normal school will train teachers of agriculture for the elementary schools. "No one is given a diploma who does not take the prescribed work in agriculture. There is a regular professor of agriculture and he has about 20 acres under cultivation." Such courses, the correspondent thinks, "will assure a constantly increasing number of trained teachers for the elementary. schools." For the most part, however, the regular State normal schools, particularly in thickly settled States, will probably train teachers for graded town and city schools rather than for elementary rural schools. Public pressure may force such of them as are most advantageously situated to establish special courses or classes to meet the needs of the rural schools, in much the same way that agricultural colleges have been obliged to organize short courses for farm youth.

In some States a special effort is made to interest the country boys and girls in the normal-school training. In Illinois, for example, a law was passed in 1905, called the "Normal school scholarship law," which provides that one pupil from each township in the State, selected by competitive examination, shall annually be awarded free tuition in one of the five State normal schools for four years. This makes it possible for each, of the 1,887 townships of Illinois to have in the normal schools four pupils who at any one time are taking advantage of these scholarships. These boys and girls are from the common schools, graduates of the eighth grade, and, as the law is now working, 95 per cent of them come from the country districts. Having been born and bred on the farm, they are familiar with farm conditions, and have sense experience of farm life. These persons' go into the normal schools for one term, two terms, or a year of work, and then return to teach in the country schools, coming again, it may be, to the normal school to do further work. It is expected that this plan will supply many energized teachers for the rural schools.

(B).-LOCAL NORMAL SCHOOLS.

The inability of the regular normal schools to supply teachers for rural elementary work has led to the establishing of county and other normal schools. In Wisconsin there are sixteen county institutions, and four more in process of organization. The sole purpose of these Wisconsin schools is to train teachers for the rural communities. The diploma is a three-year certificate, permitting the holder