WHAT KEPT THESE BOYS AND GIRLS ON THE FARM
Palmer, W. C.
What Kept These Boys and Girls on the Farm By W. C. PALMER Agricultural Editor. North Dakota Agricultural College ADVOCATING that the hoys and girls stay on the farm, and at the same time...
...If they are not educated for it then it will be drudgery...
...They will see more in them than in things they know less about...
...The will to do springs from the knowledge that one can do...
...home making will be drudgery...
...The way to keep the boys on the farm is to teach about things they have to deal with...
...This changing an almost unanimous desire of leaving the farm to an almost unanimous desire to stay on the farm seems almost miraculous, yet it was done through making a little change in the course of study...
...After agriculture and home economics had been taught for three years the same question was asked in the same schools...
...They live in an agricultural and home economics laboratory...
...One likes to do what one can do well...
...Educational Trains" More than a million people took advantage of the "educational trains" sent through the rural districts last year by the state agricultural colleges of thirty-one states, according to figures compiled by P. B. Jenks, of the United States Bureau of Education...
...Most girls will manage homes...
...The diagram illustrates that better than words...
...The knowledge that they have when they come to school is on these two subjects so that education to be the most effective must begin with what the children know, and not as Professor Minard says—"take them from where they aren't to where they don't want to go...
...Another Governor for Suffrage Woman suffrage was urged in the inaugural address of West Virginia's new governor, Henry D. Hatfield...
...If the hoys and girls are taught one thing, they cannot be expected to want to do something else, even if 1 hey are advised to...
...Again, agriculture and home economics are the things that boys and girls are the most interested in to begin with...
...It will be noticed that of the 164 boys, 157 wanted to leave the farm, and 163 of the 174 girls wanted to do likewise...
...The Oklahoma institution takes the opportunity to attach to the train a car containing moving-picture views of college activities, thus cleverly attracting the attention of the farm boy to the possibilities of an education at the state college...
...Their interest will be developed in the things they are taught...
...He said: "I solicit the support of the good women of West Virginia, and permit me to say here that I am an advocate of woman suffrage, and feel that the time is near at hand when they will be accorded the same privileges at the ballot-box as male voters have today in West Virginia...
...North Dakota Agricultural College ADVOCATING that the hoys and girls stay on the farm, and at the same time teaching city subjects in the rural schools, is contradictory...
...If it is desired to have them leave the farm, then keep agriculture and home economics out of the course of study...
...That is what makes the school irksome, that causes the boys, especially, to want to leave schools...
...It is simple, however, for hoys and girls will want to do the things that they have been taught how to do...
...Most boys must enter productive work...
...The educational train usually consists of three to ten coaches, well supplied with exhibits and demonstration apparatus, and in charge of practical men who can talk interestingly on the farmer's real problems...
...If they are not taught for it...
...In this way the colleges have brought knowledge of improved methods of farming home to many who would probably never have been reached in any other way...
...I am looking to the women for assistance in my many responsibilities for civic betterment, which is in accord with the upward trend of all nations...
...Four state colleges— those in Texas, California, Louisiana and Oklahoma—report attendance at the stops of these educational trains of a hundred thousand or more during the season...
...So it is in the power of the schools to make either enthusiastic workers or drudges of the boys and girls...
...Doing work that one doesn't understand is drudgery...
...This time 162 of the 174 boys wanted to stay on the farm, and 161 of the 178 girls...
...The question was asked the hoys and girls in 34 schools in Wright County, Iowa—"What do you want to do...
...The stops made by these trains range from two hours to half a day...
Vol. 5 • March 1913 • No. 13
