in agriculture. The biologists, especially, are gravitating toward the use of the familiar things with which agriculture must deal.[1]If the agriculturists do not take advantage of this it will be their own fault. For if the scientists are to assume that part of the burden for the sake of the sciences, such "loss of jurisdiction" over their subject should not be taken amiss by the agriculturists, who may rest assured that the others have no means of cheating so as to achieve their "disciplinary" results wthout thereby doing that which is best for agriculture. Only in making the two phases of work complementary is agriculture securing a permanent place in the course. It may be that keeping the two interests uncorrelated will not only result in the continued decadence of high school science, but will also keep the subject of agriculture pedagogically outside the course of study, however much pains may be used to print it in.[2] Agriculture in the high school will bear one of three relations to the fundamental sciences, namely, it will be taught before the related sciences are taught, or while they are being taught, or after they have been taught.
The success of agriculture in the high school depends upon its being made of such dignity as to challenge the powers of the better students.[3]And the better students will not be attracted to a subject that is long kept in its elementary stages.[4] There is more to lose than to gain in
- ↑ "I often wish that the phrase 'applied science' had never been invented. For it suggests that there is a sort of scientific knowledge, of direct practical use, which can be studied apart from another sort of scientific knowledge, which is of no practical utility, and which is termed 'pure science.' But there is no more complete fallacy than this. What people call applied science is nothing but the application of pure science to particular classes of problems. It consists of deductions from those whose general principles, established by reason and observation, constitute pure science. No man can safely make these deductions until he has a firm grasp of the principles; and he can obtain that grasp only by personal experience of the operations of observations and of reasoning on which they are founded."—Huxley, "Science and Culture," Chap. IV.
- ↑ "In every case correlation has been successful, when the instructor was sufficiently versed in his own subject and the kindred subjects to know when and how to bring the two together to the best advantage."—Abbey, "Normal School Instruction in Agriculture," p. 29.
"Relate the school to life, and all studies are of necessity correlated."—Dewey, "The School and Society," p. 107.
- ↑ "The highest type of spontaneous, whole-souled activity can not be developed about trifling or worthless things."—Hodge, "Nature Study and Life," p. 23.
- ↑ "If a child at any particular epoch in his development is compelled to repeat any fixed form of action belonging to a lower stage of development, the tendency will be for him to stop at that point, and it will be difficult, if not impossible, to get him up on to a higher plane. . . . Thoroughness in the pursuit of any study in the elementary school may result in cessation instead of promotion of mental growth."—Harris, "Educational Creeds of the Nineteenth Century," pp. 39-40.
