General Index of Tables for Part 1. Table A. Showing the Date of the Establishing of Extension Service in Agricultural Colleges. Table B. Showing the Increase in Extension Appropriations for a Number of Years. Introduction. "When agricultural education was first introduced," states Prof. John Hamilton, Farmers' Institute Specialist of the Department of Agriculture," educators of the old school regarded it with a greater or less degree of contempt; later, as it developed, they viewed it with jealousy, and now it is generally commended and the principles which it has advocated have been adopted to greater or less extent by every educational institution in the land. This has all taken place in the past 1 fifty years." Agricultural extension, a phase of agricultural education, has been compelled to go through about the same kind of an ordeal,subject perhaps to even more criticism, because of the many instutitions and organizations of a commercial nature that advocated agricultural extension for the profits they reaped thereby. Even the colleges regarded it at that time, as a form of education that was hardly in keeping with the dignity of the institutions of learning, a primitive sort of a method of education that might be proper enough, under some circumstances, for local farmers in affording them an opportunity to get together. But as far as being reconciled to the idea of using this most effective method of teaching agriculture and developing the community, in cooperation with the more scientific and " college " methods of class room work, it was absolutely out of question. Fortunately this state of affairs could not endure very long. Daily experience was teaching the college professors a 1. Office of Exp.Sta. Bull. no. 231. page 21. |