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A Rational Program for Rural Education 547

are in a measure preventing the sane development of rural education by their advocacy of impossible theories. Not a little confusion exists in the minds of many country people as to the steps they ought to take for the betterment of their school facilities. Rural education in éach community and state stands in need of an avowed program of progress, a program that will recognize in the first place existing deficiencies and will state attainable standards. The people need to be told the truth of their schools. The country people who have been told so often that by its product the little red schoolhouse has proven its superiority over other schools are the conservative souls who are willing to keep it both little and red-or indeed to let it go without paint altogether on the theory that its efficiency will increase in the ratio of its humility. The program must indicate in specific terms the needs that must be met if the country school is to become as efficient in its place as other schools in their places. For example, the one outstanding fact in the present rural school situation is that the funds available for its support are inadequate in much greater degree than in other schools. The remedy for this or one remedy-lies in the adoption of a more general tax for school support. One does not need to discuss at this late day the justice of the principles underlying this more general levy. It was recognized when, for the sake of a better social state and a higher grade of citizenship, the first tax of any kind was levied for public school support. Only those who hold that the district, township, or county limit is to mark the bounds of a people's responsibility for the state's welfare should argue for an educational tax assessed and distributed within these respective lines. The educational, and hence the civic, material, and social welfare of all the people calls for the kind of a school levy which will assess wealth and property where they exist, creating a school fund for the education of children wherever they may live.

How the Curriculum May Better Meet
Present Day Social Needs

Abstract from contribution to the discussion on "Vitalizing the
Rural School Curriculum.”

BY WILLIAM D. HURD, DIRECTOR OF THE EXTENSION SERVICE, MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE.

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ASSUME that if we were to analyze the elements of a curriculum of study which would fit our social and economic needs, we would find one in which were taught thrift, industry, respect for law and authority, right relationships and balances between social institutions and economic forces, and one which carried with it a good deal of what is called * cultural training, whatever that rather elusive and indefinite thing may be.

The measure of success of such a curriculum may be found in its apparent effects on the lives of people and of nations, in their ability to become self-sustaining, self-respecting citizens, as individuals, and collectively, in the stability of the state which is made up of them.

I am aware that many lines of subject matter may be injected into a curriculum of study to meet our social needs. We are discussing today Rural Education, and I shall try to confine what I have to say quite closely to the field of agriculture .

The events of the last few weeks and months, the conditions in which our country finds itself in regard to food supply, gives one justification for making what might otherwise seem a digression from the subject under discussion, but I shall try to show before I have finished that there is, or ought to be, a very close relationship between a curriculum of study and the every day life industries and habits of a people.

Until very recently our country has been at peace with European nations. In this time of peace and "great" prosperity we

have suddenly found ourselves facing a shortage of food, due to short crops and increased exportation without thought of what the consequences would be to ourselves. Food riots have taken place in cities. Strikes, boycotts and disorder have been of common Occurrence. Speculation and greed are having full sway over such necessities as coal, breadstuffs, sugar, etc. Our transportation facilities have been practically paralyzed, our farms drained of their labor and young men, food prices in some instances are even higher than at the time of the civil war and are still rising, and we face a season of planting and harvest with little labor, a small amount of fertilizer materials, and a diminished supply of seeds. We are constantly reminded of the sentiment expressed in Kipling's poem: "A fool there was and his goods he spent."

Over the country as a whole the population has shifted until | there are less people on farms than in cities. In New England there is today 43% less land cultivated than was the case fifty years ago. This has occurred during a period when many of our industrial centers have increased in population 300 to 400%. From a nation known to the world as a great exporter of wheat, corn, wool, beef, and other staples, statistics show that we have become not only less than self-supporting in many of our food products, but that we are actually one of the big buyers in the world's markets.

Our production of wheat per capita dropped from 7.5 bushels in 1914 to 4.1 bushels in 1916. Our supply of live stock dropped from 2.4 head per capita in 1900 to 1.5 head per capita in 1916. Our per capita production of potatoes fell from 4.1 bushels in 1914 to 2.7 bushels in 1916.

The yield per acre of corn, wheat, potatoes, hay, cotton, the average weight per fleece of wool, and of our other staple crops has not appreciably increased since 1870. This is a direct challenge to our system of agricultural education of the past.

In purchasing power $1000 placed in a savings bank twenty years ago, with compound interest accumulations, would not be worth as much in the shops and stores of Worcester today as it was in 1897.

Over the country as a whole, we have been trying to meet an ever increasing demand with an ever diminishing supply.

In our own commonwealth we have been content to allow our

selves to fall into a condition of dependency on outside sources for food materials, on distant regions for raw materials for our manufactures, and we are at the mercy of an inadequate system of transportation for both.

We have let Massachusetts agriculture decline until we are cultivating less than 23% of our land, until we have fewer farms than we had in 1900, and at the same time our population has grown until we have more than 400 people to the square mile (only exceeded by Rhode Island in this country), 92% of whom are non-producers of food products.

We have disregarded our opportunities to produce fruits, vegetables, poultry products, bringing these perishable commodities from the Pacific Coast, from Florida, and even from foreign countries. We import more than $300,000,000 worth of agricultural products into this state every year.

During the fifteen years 1900 to 1915, the number of dairy cows in this state decreased from 209,000 to 145,000, or 45%. In the same time our population increased 65%. You know the story of the present milk situation as well as I do.

We produce less than one-fifth of the agricultural products which we consume. Can you imagine what would have happened to Massachusetts four days ago if the railroad strike had been declared? Or if for any reason transportation facilities had been put out of commission at New York City, Albany, or at the Hoosac Tunnel?

The other day when potatoes were selling at $4.25 a bushel in Boston, they were selling for $1.95 in England.

This is not war talk, it's preparedness for peace talk. A program looking toward relief from this situation should have been started twenty-five years ago in Massachusetts, and throughout the country at large. Back of the men in the trenches, back of the men in our industries, back of the women and children and the men who remain at home, stands food. No matter how much is said about military preparedness, naval preparedness, or industrial preparedness, there is nothing of greater importance than agricultural preparedness. Our nation's security today rests on her agriculture. The folly of depending on someone else, perhaps some other nation, for food, may be driven home to us pretty strongly any day.

Governor McCall realized the general lack of foresight and training in these fundamental things the other day when he appointed the Committee on Public Safety. Among its important sub-committees is one on Food Supply and Conservation. This committee intends by the use of already existing agencies, such as the club work system, the county farm bureaus, the grange, the public school system, and industrial concerns to stimulate production on farms, so far as staple crops are concerned, gardening in back yards, on vacant lots and on land secured by the owners of large industrial concerns. Later on a thorough-going campaign of education is to be carried out in all parts of the state on the value of foods not commonly used, the possibility of substitutes in the place of staples selling at inflated prices, the elimination of waste, both in raw materials and in prepared foods-and in canning and preserving foods by any of the various methods commonly practiced in the earlier history of this country. All of this is to be followed by a thorough study of our storage and marketing facilities, with special reference to securing better transportation, fairer rates, and a lessening of the cost of distribution of farm products. The farm labor and seed shortage situations are to be relieved by committees appointed expressly for this pur

pose.

An organized effort such as this, in which practically all of the state-supported and voluntary agencies are to take part, coming at a time when every individual, be he rich or poor, is feeling the pressure of unbalanced economic conditions, may well receive the careful thoughtful support of every citizen who has the future welfare of this commonwealth at heart. And every person may well pause, too, and consider whether we should not strive to introduce into our educational system some more effective and efficient methods whereby the present situation might have been averted.

Perhaps you feel that I have gone far afield from the topic assigned for discussion, and that I have launched out on an argument for preparedness in our agriculture uncalled for at this time. If I have done so, it has been with the hope that I might find a proper setting for the presentation of one phase of our rural education which in some cases has been developed as a part of our school curriculum, and in others as a subject almost ex