The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-08-18

High School committee have been in accord In carrying out what is be- lieved in the end will be a magnii- cent thing for the boys and girls ot Newtown.
 In the New York Times of Sunday we find this timely comment on the question at issue:
 Thus the scientific farmer is edu- eating the farmers of the country and
 every year increasing the output ot
 crops. Soon there is to come a Fed
 eral system of agricultural education
 It is under discussion and on the way
 It means the consolidation of the lit
 tie knowledge boxes, called district
 schools into high schools where agri-
 culture may be taught. At each such
 school there will be a graduate from
 some agricultural college and a small
 library. One teacher will keep in
 touch with his neighbor a few miles
 away, and from time to time the pro-
 fessors of the State agricultural col
 leges and the experiment stations and
 the lecturers of the State Farmers
 Institute will visit the schools and de-
 liver lectures, the result of it all be-
 ing the schooling and development of
 four or five millions of practical and
 scientific farmers, who will manage
 their farms in a way to make them
 produce the largest yields of wheat,
 corn, alfalfa, cotton, and live stock,
 and we shall lead the world far on
 in the future as we have in the past
 and are now.
 AS the Saturday Evening Post
 points out:
 ''The folly of educating a country boy away from the farm and then ex- pecting him, willingly to go back to it is now, happily, generally recogniz- ed. The increasing effort now is to teach the children-in the rural schools, at 1east-that country life, in telligently and skilfully directed of fers health, independence, and more of comfort and even luxury than most city people ever attain, that on the land a man has limitless opportunity for hard and productive work, and that there he may enjoy the full fruits of his own labor
 Out in Page county they have learn ed that the greatest crop that an az rfcultural country can produce is a crop of good farmers and that sue cessfully to raise such crop the work must begin early. This is a lesson that is being taken to heart all over the country-most of all in the fat farming States of the Middle West. Agricultural education in the United States is more than 50 years old-and yet it has just begun. There are now 49 1and-grant agricultural colleges in the country, and many of them have been in existence for near ly half century. They have done a great and important work, but as means of making agricultural educa- tion anything like universal they have been a failure. In constructing either a skyscraper ior a system of education it is always a mistake to begin with the top story. The col leges appealed only to young men and women of adult age. Meanwhile the been caught by the lure of the city and had given up any idea of sticking to the land. Tn bringing agricultural eduction down to the mass of the people, Wisconsin has been a leader. Ten years ago it's Legislature passed a law establishing secondary agricul- tural and domestic-science high schools in various sections of the State. There are now six such high schools in operation and several more are in process of establishment. An average of 50 boys and girls attend each of these schools during the win ter months, while the summer course attracts three times that number. asricultpre is also taught in every rural schocs in the State and an agricultural course is also provid- cu III IlldHy LII IHc I6S An amusing, yet very inn portant, result followed the teaching of scientific agriculture to school in Wisconsin-and that State is not at all peculiar in this regard. Farmers are generally supposed to be extremely conservative and reluctant to adopt new plans and methods For that matter, it has been generally ob- served that it is extremely hard to pry a new idea into the head of any man who is over 40 years old At any rate, when schoolboys first began to come home and talk about seed corn germination boxes, cross fertil- zation and all manner of new ard un- systems of cultivation, their wise old dads were inclined to sheer md scoff. Presently the boys, work | ng perhaps for a prize, selected their ,wn seed, planted it and went to work llong new-fangled lines. When they got crops that made fathers best old l ashioned efforts look foolish, the old | nan would occasionally stroll by cas- la1ly when son was at work and ob- | erve what he was doing. Next sea- on he might, without saying any hing about it, adopt some of these l methods himself. greatly to his own | ,rofit.