We must first understand what our institutions of education are. The extension of agriculture-education in institutions in the United States (beyond the regular colleges of agriculture) is in four lines: as a part of the regular public-school work; in unattached schools of agriculture publicly maintained; in departments attached to other colleges or universities; in private schools. The last category (the private schools) may be eliminated from the present discussion.
The separate or special-school method is well worked out in Wisconsin (county plan), in Alabama and Georgia (congressional-district plan), Minnesota (regional plan), with other adaptations in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Michigan, Maryland, and elsewhere.
In New York, the movement for special schools has taken an entirely new direction. Two schools are connected with existing institutions of higher learning of long-established reputation (being the only schools of this kind, state-maintained, attached to liberal arts universities) and one is unattached; none of them has a defined region or territory. These institutions are established on a more liberal financial plan than the special schools of other states, standing somewhat between those schools and the agricultural college type.
While much publicity has been given to the unattached-school plan, the main movement is the adding of agriculture-education to the existing public-school systems. Only eight or ten of the states have entered into any regular development of separate or unattached schools, whereas in every state the movement for agriculture in the public schools is well under way. The public schools are of definite plan; the unattached schools are of several plans, or of no plan; and in some states an intermediate course is developing by the establishing of public high-schools (one to a county, a congressional district, or other region) in which instruction in agriculture and household subjects is highly perfected.
Aside from the foregoing particular institutions, many general colleges and universities are introducing agricultural work in order to meet the increasing demand and to keep up with educational progress.
Agricultural work is proceeding in nearly all the states under the auspices of the United States Department of Agriculture, some of it distinctly educational in character; and there is agitation for the passage of a national bill to further secondary or special agriculture-education in the states.
State departments of agriculture, the indispensable experiment stations, veterinary colleges, departments of public instruction, farmers' institutes, voluntary societies, are all attacking the country-life problem in their own ways; and the powerful work of the agricultural press, although not coming within the scope of this paper, should not be overlooked as an educational agency.
In the meantime, the colleges of agriculture are growing rapidly and are approaching the subject from every side, and are assuming natural and inevitable leadership.
The need of plans to coördinate this educational work.
There is no doubt that all these agencies are contributing greatly to the solution of the rural problem, and there is now probably very little inharmony and little duplication of effort. In the newness and enthusiasm of the effort, good fellowship holds the work together in all the states or at least keeps it from collision. But the situation is inherently weak, because there is no plan or system, and no united discussion of the grounds on which the work rests. I have been in correspondence on this question with public men in every state in the Union, and I find a general feeling that the present situation is fraught with danger, and that there is great need of organization or at least of federation of the forces within each state; and ultimately there must be federation on a national basis. The work should be coöperative rather than competitive.