Ladysmith news-budget. [volume] (Ladysmith, Rusk County, Wis.) 1907-1927, 1914-06-19
WOULD WORK WELL HAND IN HAND
The Agricultural Representative and
the Teachers Training School

III COuHIlSS equipped as is RuSk
county with a county training school
for rural teachers the agricultural
representative plan finds highest
usefulness. In such counties he in
structs during portion of the year,
possibly during two quarters, in such
agricultural education as can best
be worked out in rural schools. For
some years in Wisconsin it has been
a statute requirement that agricul-
ture should be taught in the rural
schools. But this statute has been
ignored or the instruction has for
the most part been a joke. Teach
ers have not been prepared to do
such work. There has been no one
to prepare them. Those who have
been preparing teachers have been
educated in Latin, Greek or German
and know little or nothing about
agriculture. Rural teachers have in
most cases come from town high
schools, have been town girls and
|
Holsteins from Jerseys, or had any
rural community notions at all and
consequently the rural schools have
been diluted city and village schools.
If any agriculture was taught at all
it was learned word by word from
some brief text about agriculture and
the pupils many times knew more
than the teacher and the teacher on
| ly knew what the pupils were recit-
ling by following closely the book as
the pupils repeated the words of the
book. Great work this! And yet pub
lie money of taxpayers has been used
and is used to perpetuate such folly.
Agriculture in the rural schools
should take on the form of instruct
| ing we'll in few concrete tasks
which find real use and application
in the industrial life of the neigh
borhood in which the rural school
finds itself By concrete tasks is
meant things done with the hands.
Now some of the concrete tasks in
which the students of the training
school are instructed by the agricul-
milk, skim milk and cream with the
Babcock test, how to keep track of
the production of COWS with the milk
scales and the milk record sheet,
thorough study of potatoes, select
ing, curing, judging and testing seed
corn, a study of clean milk prOduc-
ton, study of the common CONNER
cial seeds of the farm, study of
the common weeds and how to Grad
icate them, a study of the breeds
of dairy cattle and how to feed them
balanced ration. Teachers prepared
to do these things in the rural
schools are ready to fit rural school
children to do lot of the most es
sential work for better farming.
The Babcock test is going into the
schools of the counties where there
are agricultural representatives and
farmers are having their cows and
separatOrS tested out at the school
house by the school children. Teach
ers and pupils are testing out clo-
yer and timothy seeds and other
seeds, rural school pupils are learn
ing how to figure out balanced ra-
tions for dairy cattle, the rural
schools are studying clean milk pro-
duction and the production of clean
milk is at the bottom of high priced
dairy products in Wisconsin If Wis
consin is to dead the world in dairy
products it must produce clean milk.
How different then. is such in
struction in agriculture in the rural
schools from no instruction in ag-
riculture or word study in agricul-
| ture from a text book about agricul-
ture With such work as the con-
crete work mentioned above being
! done in the rural schools the schools
will commence to mean something
| to the people of the rural communi
| ties and children will be educated to
remain upon the farms and make
successes rather than to move of. to
the cities and live in easements and
| tenements.
Rusk county is splendidly equipped
| to do this work. It's county teachers
| training school is right at the coun-
| ty seat where the agricultural repre-
sentative would have his headquar-
ters. About $10O would equip the
school to do the work mentioned
above. This work would be carried
on in the winter. At the same time
farmers boys short course of six
or eight weeks could be carried on
as in counties having agricultural
representatives.
Thus the agricultural representa-
tive way is the cheapest and best
way to get real agricultural work
and instruction going on among the