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Given in order of county, town, superintendent and date of contest.
Sioux, Harrison, A. F. Becker--September 23.

Hitchcock, Trenton, Bess V. Crews--September 23.
Clay, Clay Center, Edith Lathrop--September 28.

Valley, Ord, Eva B. Shuman--September 28.

Keith, Ogallala, Mrs. Gehevieve Richmond-September 28.
Rock, Bassett, Chas. G. Ammon--October 5.

Boyd, Butte, Meyer Brandvig--October 7.

Adams, Hastings, L. H. Willis--October 11.

Perkins, Grant, Helen Hastings--October 18.

Red Willow, McCook, Elizabeth Bettcher--October 26-27.
Harlan, Alma, Jas. T. Anderson--October 28.

Furnas, Beaver City, C. F. Stilwell--October 29.

Greeley, Greeley, James Pelley--November 3.

Hall, Grand Island, Dorothea Kolls, November 4.

Polk, Osceola, Lillie M. Cole--November 5.

Fillmore, Geneva, John E. Ray--November 5.

Lincoln, North Platte, Wm. Ebright--November 18.

Deuel, Chappell, Vera L. Yockey--November 9.

Phelps, Holdrege, Huldah Peterson--October 10-15.

Cheyenne, Sidney, Edith H. Morrison--November 10.

Kimball, Kimball, Nellie M. Crandall--November 11.

Banner, Harrisburg, Mrs. Mertie M. Belian--November 11.

Wayne, Wayne, Mrs. Elsie Littell--November 11.
Burt, Tekamah, Eda C. Nelson--November 12.

Scottsbluff, Scottsbluff, Agnes Lackey--November 15.

Morrill, Bridgeport, Mary E. Walford--November 16.

Merrick, Central City, Frances S. Kelley--November 25-26.

Lancaster, Lincoln, Rilla T. Ferguson--November 26.

Jefferson, Fairbury, Clement R. Harriss--November 25-26.

Seward, Seward, W. H. Brokaw--December 1.

Boone, Albion, Hannah C. Johnson--December 2.

York, York, Alice Florer--December 2.

Hamilton, Aurora, S. C. Stephenson--December 3.

Butler, David City, F. A. Stech--December 10.

Gage, Beatrice, Jessie B. Pyrtle--December 9-10.

Pawnee, Pawnee City, Lulu S. Wolford--December 26-30.

Garfield, Burwell, J. L. Jenkins--January 3.

Washington, Blair, John A. Rhoades--January 2-6.

Otoe, Nebraska City, R. C. King--January 11-12.

Sherman, Loup City, R. D. Henrickson--February 15.

Cuming, West Point, Emma R. Miller--March.

Dodge, Hooper, A. E. Hildebrand--December 16-17.

     This is the last of the series of bulletins issued this year in the interests of the boys' and girls' clubs. The management takes this opportunity to express appreciation for the interest, co-operation, and material assistance given during this and the past five years by all the agencies which have united with us in our efforts to emphasize a phase of education which is most important in its bearing upon the ideals, habits, and education of the young people.

     This work has been under the direct management of the State Department of Public Instruction and the Department of Farmers' Institutes of the University of Nebraska.

     The co-operation and financial assistance of the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture has contributed largely to the success of the work.

     We are also indebted to the Nebraska Corn Improvers' Association for their work with us, both in financial support and in co-operative assistance. The Nebraska Farmer, the Twentieth Century Farmer, the Nebraska Teacher, and the Nebraska School Review have been very helpful in their co-operation. The state press has also been a large factor in promoting the interests of the work. County farmers' institutes, women's clubs, and other organizations have united with county and city superintendents, and teachers generally, to carry out the work in their respective localities. We are also indebted to a large number of citizens, business organzations, and commercial clubs throughout the state for material assistance in providing for local and state conventions and contests.

     Over 32,000 Nebraska boys and girls are now enrolled in the state, county, and school district clubs and in various lines of work in agriculture, domestic science, and manual training. Many of the young people who took up this work with us nearly six years ago have completed their education in rural, graded, and high schools, and a large number have finished state normal and university courses and are now numbered among our teachers, business men and women and are helping others who are younger and new to the work.

     The action of numerous boards of education providing for regular courses in agriculture, domestic science, and manual training, in the public schools of the state, is appreciated as a recognition of the efforts of the Nebraska boys' and girls' clubs to secure that training which has been too long neglected as a part of public school education.

F. C. BISHOP,           
Superintendent of Public Instruction.     
VAL KEYSER,           
Supt. of Farmers' Institutes, University of Nebraska.     

     To give a correct idea of the present status of agricultural education in the public schools, a general survey of the growth of the movement is necessary. The limitations of this paper permit only a very brief review.

     Public-school agriculture began with the school-garden movement in Germany more than eighty years ago. Forty years later, when Austria and Sweden gave financial encouragement to the establishment or school gardens, they sprang up all over Europe--more than 100,000 of them. And now we find gardens and instruction in agriculture in nearly every country of Europe, in the colonial dependencies of England--India, Canada, New Zealand, Australia--in growing Japan and in South American republics--in every country which is alive to the educational needs of her people.

     The movement has grown from the school-garden idea to more definite and advanced agricultural instruction. The laws and requirements vary in different countries. Instruction is sometimes optional, sometimes required, with a tendency to require it in agricultural districts. Sometimes it is found only in secondary schools; sometimes it is required in every grade, running through nature study, object-lessons, elementary science, and finally reaching the more advanced and technical agriculture. As in the United States, agriculture is often made secondary to or the outgrowth of, nature study and science; then, again, as in Denmark, the entire elementary-school system is woven around this subject where it is already recognized as of vital importance to the prosperity and happiness of the people.

     That nations feel such instruction is essential to the development of the people and to the prosperity and welfare of the country is shown in the numerous provisions made for giving national aid and financial encouragement to schools giving practical agricultural instruction. To teachers who excel in the work, and to students taking special courses in practical agriculture, free tuition and board are sometimes given.

     School gardens in Europe have been very much more extensive than what we have termed school gardens. Some years past. Russia reported 11,000 fruit trees, 22,000 forest trees, and 1,000 hives of bees connected with her school gardens.

     In various ways the problem of making the work practical to those who most need it is being solved. Japan has 500 supplementary industrial schools, with 23,000 children, most of whom work on the

land of their parents. The schools are in session evenings, Sundays, and holidays to accommodate those who cannot attend the regular school sessions.

     In France and some other countries, there are apprenticeship farms; and, what seems to be more profitable, demonstration farms run by the government where practical and scientific instruction is given. We find short courses and itinerant instruction given to meet the needs of farmers and their families.

     Agricultural instruction in the public schools of the United States is of very recent growth although its value was recognized as early as 1824. It was then urged that "agriculture and the gospel are the two great instruments of divine providence to check the voluptuousness and exercise the virtues of man." Our first school garden, planted in Boston in 1891, was for nine years only a flower garden. Since 1900, when kitchen vegetables were first planted in the garden, the advancement of agricultural education in public schools has been very rapid.

     The greatest growth in our agricultural colleges has been within recent years. Nearly all of their extension work has developed within the last ten years. We have no statistics for farmers' institutes for 1897, but there was but little interest at that time. In 1908, 14,000 agricultural meetings were held for farmers. Now our agricultural colleges are giving short courses, reading-circle courses, correspondence courses; sending out millions of pamphlets, many of which are adapted to public-school use; conducting innumerable schools and demonstration farms, not only in connection with the college, but in other localities. This has had a great influence in creating a demand for agricultural instruction in the public schools.

     School improvement leagues, observance of Arbor Day, boys' and girls' nature-study clubs, corn-growing contests, and the like, have all aided in strengthening the movement.

     For the purpose of securing definite information on some phases of the status of agricultural education a questionnaire was sent to the state superintendents, the presidents of normal schools, and presidents of agricultural colleges in the United States. Forty-six states and territories were represented in the responses. The information given Is based on the respective opinions received from these three sources.

      Some replies were incomplete, on account of lack of information on the part of those responding.

     In 1897 none of the states report giving agricultural instruction in rural schools; the recent data show forty-four states giving such instruction. Fourteen of these have laws requiring it to be taught in the rural schools; twelve require it in the graded schools; Texas designates schools with less than 300 scholastics as being required to teach it; ten states require it taught in the high schools; eleven more states are planning to pass such laws. In some of the states there is no specific law, but authorities are free to introduce the subject..

     Twenty-eight states have laws that permit agriculture to be taught. While agriculture is said to be taught in the elementary schools of these forty-four states, only thirteen claim that instruction is at all uniform throughout the state. Five others report "fairly so." Eighteen publish courses in agriculture for rural schools, and ten publish courses for high schools.

     In 1897 there was but one agricultural high school; now there are about one hundred; seventeen states report having such schools.

     Twenty-three states now report high schools giving agricultural instruction; probably there are several thousand of them. The total of figures given was 1,200, but a number of states simply reported "many" without giving exact figures. The government report shows that two years ago there were only eighteen high schools reporting such instruction. The course has also been added to numerous county normal training courses. The agricultural high schools have more or less extensive farms and are equipped with buildings, with animals and machinery, and give courses in all farm practices. Some inquiry was also made concerning nature study. Sixteen states require such teaching; fourteen others report that it is strongly urged. Twenty-six states report giving nature study and agriculture. In many countries of Europe this tendency is also very strong. There seems to be a tendency to teach agriculture as a separate study. Thirty-eight states report such a method. Of these twenty-four also report correlating agriculture with nature study in the grades and with science in the high school, The report from West Virginia is significant because of its statement, "Nature study with agriculture." We have been accustomed to saying "Agriculture with nature study. The normal-school men of New Mexico say that the state board of agriculture urges agriculture rather than nature study, and Georgia reports "agriculture rather than nature study." The following states report correlating nature study with geography: Georgia, Missouri, New York, South Dakota, Illinois (in the normal school at Macomb), Nebraska, New Mexico State Normal, and Washington State Normal at Ellensburg.

     The new Nebraska course of study for the elementary schools, issued May 5, 1909, provides a course in agriculture correlated with the course in geography as a science branch running through the eight years of the elementary course. In the first two grades the work is outlined under the heading "Nature Study." In the third grade the work is continued under the heading "Oral and Observational Work in Nature Study and Geography," with a decided turn toward home and industrial geography. Beginning in the fourth grade and continuing through the fifth, sixth and seventh grades the work is outlined under the heading "Geography," with the work in agriculture well correlated. In the eighth grade the work is outlined as "Geography and Agriculture of Nebraska."

     The correlation of agriculture with the common branches should go further than geography and nature study. In the regular work in arithmetic, problems should be provided which involve the actual working-out of real arithmetic problems connected with the work of the farm and the home. This should be continued in the work in bookkeeping. The course in history and civil government should give attention especially to the development of agriculture and other industries in the country, with special application to the home state.

     The study of physiology and hygiene should not be limited to that of the human body. It should include the physiology and hygiene of farm animals, with especial reference to physiology and hygiene as related to the care, feeding, and use of farm animals, and the utilization and disposal of products therefrom. When properly presented these become a very interesting and profitable education in home economies of as great value to the girl as to the boy.

     The course in reading should include selections from our best authors which emphasize attractions of country life and of home life generally. Picture study should give attention to the study of pictures which find a responce (sic) in the daily home life of the pupil. The pictures on the walls of our rural-school buildings should represent in proportionate number and artistic value the degree of interest the child should have in home scenes and home life, in comparison with the interest he should have at this time in his education with the ruins of Athens and Rome, and other far removed subjects, which so often monopolize the space on schoolroom walls to the exclusion of life breathing subjects which educate in more than mere art, and at the same time give art its best recognition.

      The course in grammar and composition should be vitalized by providing for the reproduction, in written and oral statement, of the associations of the child in his play, his work, and other home and school relationships. The proper use of nouns and verbs will then come to the child as a necessary accomplishment for the expression of his own thoughts which are a delight to him in both meditation and expression. Such work will help to eliminate the terrors of written composition and oral recitation.

     The technical study of agriculture should not come before the high school and should be technical in only the agricultural high school. The whole problem in elementary industrial education is one of adaptation to the environment of the schools.

     Any form of industrial education which is closely related to the development of the broader life of the child and which can be correlated with the regular work of the public school should become a part of the general education of the child.

     The boy and girl educated in the city should receive in their education such introduction to agriculture as will acquaint them with the importance of agriculture as our great national resource, and give them a vision of rural life which will furnish an outlet for their ambition to find a place in the business and social world outside of the bounds of

their community life when they arrive at the time of choice of vocation. The child of the city school has as much a right to demand an insight into country life as has the country child a right to demand an insight into the city. For that reason agriculture is a study which should not be entirely omitted from the course of study in the public schools of any state or community in the United States.

      Thirty-nine state superintendents report that there is more or less of a demand for agricultural education in their states; seven question whether there is such a demand. Reports from agriculture colleges whether there is a demand for agricultural education, but that such demand is now vague and unorganized, and that the first task is to create an understanding of the work and an interest in it.

     The reports asking for the source from which the demand comes indicate that the demand comes very largely from normal schools, agricultural schools, and superintendents rather than from pupils, parents, teachers, and farmers, Except in the most progressive farming communities, the demand for agricultural education will yet continue to come for some time from educators, rather than from the farmers themselves, or from their children, or from the teachers who teach their children. This is one of our greatest problems in promoting agricultural education.

     Fourteen states report organizations known as boys' and girls' clubs which have for their purpose some line of agricultural education This is one of the newer features of the work, and one which has done a great deal toward stimulating interest in the study of agriculture and home economics. The movement encouraging boys' and girls' clubs has exerted a strong influence in the establishment of agriculture, home economics, and manual training as parts of the public-school curriculum'.

     The most significant item in the present status of agricultural education is the attitude toward it. My investigations show that even yet the demand for education in agriculture comes as a whole more from educators, business men, and others looking toward the better development of our country and the proper education of our people than it comes from the average farmer.

     The day is rapidly passing when the farmer asks to be let alone to provide for himself, maintain his home, and live his life apart from the related business, educational, and social world. The advanced price of labor has led to the combination of head and hand work which gives the strong pair of hands increased effectiveness in results. The advancement in farm values has opened the farm arithmetic to the pages which ask for solutions of problems concerning the necessity of increased returns coming by means of proper seed selection, better cultivation, and more economical practices in disposal of farm products. The question of plant development, soil tillage, selection of feeds, care of farm animals, and other questions relating to the production end utilization of farm products in the most economic manner has led

to the recognition that agricultural education pays as a business investment. The gaining of knowledge concerning agriculture has led to the development of a science and an art, which offer to the student a most fascinaating (sic) study, an intellectual development, and a moral uplift which places agriculture in the foreground as a basic science and in its higher degrees of development, as an art.

     In Nebraska we now have more than four hundred high schools offering courses in agriculture. In establishing these courses we worked from the generally accepted idea that agriculture is so dependent upon geography, geology, botany, physics, chemistry, and zoology, that a fair knowledge of these subjects is necessary before the student is in the right attitude and position to take up the study of agriculture. This yet applies in considering agriculture as a technical science. But in considering agriculture as related to primary and secondary education, it is my opinion that agriculture should be the introductory or basic branch in elementary science. With the proper introduction and correlation through the study of elementary agriculture, our boys and girls will approach the study of botany, geography, physics, physiology, chemistry, domestic science, geology, zoology, and civics with a degree of interest and an attitude of love and intensity that will bring from these various branches results which cannot be secured from the child who approaches these subjects without such introduction, and to whom these subjects too often appear as dry, dead matter yielding only mental discipline and class credits. Elementary agriculture properly correlated opens the way through the known and experienced to the unknown fields of investigation in the other sciences.

      Why should not the study of botany begin with that of a plant with which the child is or should be familiar, a plant associated with his home interests, one which he can see with his eyes and feel with his own hands, which brings a message through the senses of taste and smell--a plant which means beauty in the home, food for the table, and a product for the market, and credit at the bank?

     Shall we first stimulate the interest of the child and help him properly to value the beauty and utility of the known plants about him, or shall we force him to learn intricate parts, with distressing names, of plants beyond his field of observation and without his atmosphere of interest? Shall we in the corn belt teach him first of the beautiful and useful corn plant, or force him to analyze, classify, dissect, make drawings of and deliver orations on the liliaeeae, primulaceae, leguminosae, rosaceae, and eompositae? Shall his introduction to zoology begin with the chimpanzee, the boa constrictor, and the graffe, or shall he learn first to know and love the cow, the hen, the horse, the pig, and the sheep?

     The analysis of a chicken can be made as profitable as that of an oyster or a lobster. We have the chicken. Why not consider the health of the cow, the vigor of the horse, the disposition of the hen, the nervousness of the sheep, the self-satisfaction of the pig, and the

temper of the dog; how these animals are constructed; how their health is guarded; how their exercise is regulated; how their bodies are trained into forms of beauty, service, and sale? Are not these phases of physiology and zoology which will help the pupil to a better understanding of the science o human physiology, and lead him to an intelligent interest in the domestic animals about him?

     Knowledge of the mechanics of farm and household machinery mattes an excellent beginning in the study of levers, pulleys, and the foot pound. The action of heat, water, and air on soil; drainage of the yards, fields, and roads; erosion, seepage, road-making, fence-building, irrigation, soil composition, bread-making, fruit-canning, care of milk and its products, preserving and curing meats, vegetables--I need not enumerate further-are these not fitting introductions to the study of physics and chemistry? And are not all the doings on the farm and in the home truly educative when properly conducted? Are they not fascinating when properly presented? And will they not open and create an inviting way to the formal study of the other sciences?

     Our greatest encouragement is in the rapidly changing attitude toward agricultural education. Agriculture bids fair to become soon our most popular science in elementary and secondary schools. Its value as a practical subject, appealing to the everyday business and social life, is exceeded only by its value as a disciplinary study and as an ethical training second to no other.

     When agriculture becomes properly established in the courses of study in the public schools from the kindergarten to the twelfth grade inclusive, through its correlation with the sciences, language, and history work, the student will find a satisfactory relation between his school work and the home life which will cause him not only to have a greater degree of contentment, interest, and intelligent activity in all duties and relations of the home, but his work as a student will be intensified and vitalized by the interest acquired therein through the associated knowledge and experience which his home and community bring to the work of the school.

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© 2003 for the NEGenWeb Project by Ted & Carole Miller