The Starkville news. (Starkville, Miss.) 1902-1960, 1909-07-30
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC EDUCATION
STATE OF MISSISSIPPI.

Board of Supervisors: Gentlemen:
| The time is approaching when you
will fix the tax levy for another year.
| l hope you will pardon me, if in this
connection, take the liberty of making a
plea for better opportunities for the
children and for the development of the
agricultural resources of your county.
The State Department of Education be-
lieves that the establishment of an Ag-
ricultural High School In each county
will 60 far towards solving our rural
school problem. The State gives 81 900
annually toward the support of one such
school in. each county. The remainder
must be raised by local taxation sup
plemented by the usual amount the
School District, in which the Agricul-
tura High School is located, receives
! from The State and County. A very small
tax levy in most of the counties Will be
suffic cient to maintain such a school.
| l submit that these schools are no
longer experiments. Massachusetts,
whose agricultural resources are ex-
tremely limited, maintains twenty such
schools. The people of Wisconsin,
where there are mum bers of such schools,
have developed their agricultural re-
sources and are educating their children
in these schools. Numbers of western
and northern states are dotted with ag-
ricultural high schools. The interests
of the people of Mississippi are more
| largely agricultural than in any other
state in the Union. Shall we not devel-
op her resources? Shall we not give
our children better educational advan-
/ tages? Can you afford to make this
levy? Is 1t not better to spend money
to make strong, earnest, influential men
and women than to sacrifice children to
save money? Do you want the rural
schools in your county to be timulated
and encouraged? If so, provide this
school in order that the boys and girls
may have better opportunities to look
forward to when they complete the
course of stndy in the rural schools.
You will appropriate money for
bridges, good roads, courthouses, jails,
courts, ETC., and this is right, but why
not appropriate money to be invested in
the childhood of your county? You be-
lieve with all Thoughtful people that the
only intelligent and logical system of
education is that which carries the best
school advantages to all people. Will
you not help develop such system.
Are we not educating our people away
from the life around them? Are we not
training our children to become lawyers.
doctors, preachers, school-teachers, or
ators, politicians and statesmen only?
More that eighty per cent of our people
are engaged in agriculture. Would you
reach the many as we'll as the few. Do
| you not think the time has come to give
the intelligent direction to the hand as
well as the mind? Do you not think we
ought to give dignity to labor? Shall
we not develop our agricultural resour-
ces through these schools as other states
are doing? Finally, SHALL NOT THE
CHILDREN OF MISSISSIPPI HAVE
OPPORTUNITIES EQUAL TO THOSE
IN ANY OTHER STATE?
beg that you will give this matter
the serious consideration it merits, and
if your county has not already establish
ed such a school, will you not use the
Influence at your command and the
power placed in your hands to give tt
the struggling children Of your county
a better chance in life?
Fifteen counties have already takeI
advantage Of the splendid opportunity
the State offers. Why not yours?
/ Very respectfully,
j. N. POWERS,
State Supt. Of Ed.