and homemaking, public interest runs high. 4-H club work meets these requirements and therefore has won much public acclaim. Popular interest gives an organization's activities news value. It has been inevitable that 4-H club work should occupy a prominent place in the mouthpieces of publicity. The publicity value attendant on the club work has undoubtedly been a factor in interesting commercial groups and organizations in offering prizes, but not infrequently the prizes are so valuable that winning becomes more important than the learning that should accompany the activity. Competition, instead of serving as a motivating device, becomes paramount; unethical practices creep in, jealousies result, and more harm than good comes from the outside. support. Leaders in the club work have become increasingly conscious of these dangers in recent years, but they are still all too conspicuous. One of the most striking illustrations of promotional work in the club field is furnished by the National Committee on Boys' and Girls' Club Work at Chicago. This organization sponsors an annual national show and contest at the time of the International Livestock Exposition. The activities of the Committee are financed by commercial organizations. The Committee works through the official 4-H club leaders in each State, but it is not itself an official 4-H club organization. 92 In addition to the 4-H club work developed under the stimulus of the Department of Agriculture, there has been organized a somewhat similar movement in connection with the federally aided program of vocational agriculture under the sponsorship of the Office of Education. This organization, with a membership of approximately 150,000 in January 1938, is known as the Future Farmers of America. Membership is limited to pupils enrolled in the federally aided classes and as in the 4-H clubs, the principal emphasis is upon the conduct of projects by the members of the local clubs. Attempts by the supporters of this movement to justify this separate and to a certain extent competing organization are made on two bases: (1) Vocational teachers of 92 Information supplied by the U. S. Office of Education. For a further discussion of this organization, see John Dale Russell and associates, Vocational Education, pp. 146–8. agriculture are not authorized by law to cooperate in the leadership of 4-H clubs, particularly those including boys under 14 years of age (It should be pointed out, however, that they are not by law prohibited from participation in such leadership.); and (2) boys of high school age in vocational agriculture desire a specialized national organization of their own. In some areas there has been considerable friction between extension workers and teachers of vocational agriculture, principally because of competing interests in connection with club work. In other instances there has been excellent cooperation. Extension workers have assisted in the development of Future Farmers clubs, and teachers of agriculture have acted as local leaders for 4-H clubs. Relationship of the Extension Service to Farm Organizations The work of the Extension Service requires that it establish and maintain a variety of relationships with other services and organizations. Although these relationships are necessary for the success of extension work, they are often the cause of misunderstandings. The Extension Service is closely related to farm organizations, especially the Farm Bureau. The laws in 17 or 18 States at present name the county Farm Bureau as the agency in the county to cooperate with the Extension Service in its educational program. This arrangement is a carryover from the period of the World War when county farm bureaus were created by the extension services in the several States as local arms to carry on extension work in the counties. The federation of these county farm bureaus into State and national organizations and their entrance into commercial and political activities has created a problem for those administering the Extension Service and the Farm Bureau Federation. An attempt to set forth the relationship that should exist is presented in a memorandum of understanding between the United States Department of Agriculture and the American Farm Bureau Federation, which was agreed upon in 1920. (See Appendix D.) It seems entirely proper for the Extension Service to aid farm organizations through education. It might properly teach the following subjects: 1. History of farm organizations. 2. Description of present organizations. 4. Principles which must be observed by farm organiza- It seems clear that extension workers should be free to point out to farmers the advantages of organization, but it is equally clear that they should not become the protagonists of any particular organization as such. They should not hold office in these organizations nor solicit memberships, and farm organizations should not administer the work of county agents or public funds raised for extension purposes. CHAPTER V SOME FINAL CONSIDERATIONS The Without doubt the land-grant colleges as a group have exerted an influence on American life out of all proportion to the size of the Federal grants that have been made toward their support. At the time of the passage of the First Morrill Act only a few States had established colleges of agriculture although there had been a great deal of agitation looking toward the development of instruction in agriculture and other practical subjects.1 The influence of the classics was dominant in higher education at the moment. founding of the land-grant colleges gave a great stimulus to the inclusion of the sciences in the program of higher education. With the lapse of time, science would undoubtedly have assumed larger proportions in the offerings of colleges and universities than it did prior to the first five or six decades of the nineteenth century; but the movement toward increased offerings was unquestionably greatly accelerated by the establishment of the land-grant colleges with their great emphasis on practical education. The inclusion of agriculture and the mechanic arts in the programs of the land-grant institutions, although attended by ridicule and scorn from some of the older institutions, was another means of bringing them in touch with the lives of large numbers of persons who had little or no direct contact with higher institutions of the classical type. Much of the instruction in agriculture and mechanic arts in the early days of the land-grant colleges was of a rudimentary character, but in time and with the development of science in its relationships to agriculture, mechanic arts, and home economics, instruction in these subjects has been raised to the college level. 1 Isaac L. Kandel, Federal Aid for Vocational Education: A Report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Bulletin No. 10 (New York: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1917), pp. 73-9. 94 Writing for the Survey of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, Dr. Eugene Davenport, for many years Dean of the College of Agriculture of the University of Illinois, and a pioneer in the development of collegiate instruction in agriculture, said: Perhaps the greatest single service rendered by the colleges in the early days was a sympathetic nursery for science and for the scientific spirit; that is, the inductive method of study. Sometimes I have spoken of these colleges as wet nurses for science when nobody else would harbor the foundling, and the language is hardly too strong. The colleges stood like a stone wall for the education of all classes and for putting knowledge at work for the direct betterment of society in all its interest, farmers particularly, as against the idea of an educated minority constituting an aristocracy of learning and leadership. That such public-supported institutions are by nature publicservice institutions gradually developed as logic corollary to the reason for their existence. The idea that research, education, even formal, is mainly for the public welfare in which the student, instead of being the end product of all educational effort, is a means to an end, gradually evolved as the logical, if not the inevitable consequence of publicly supported institutions of higher learning. 66 This general idea in the early period was often expressed as the 'new education," a composite term intended to include science, education at work as applied to all the affairs of man, and the education so far as possible of all classes, trades, and professions. I will not say that all of these points stood out at the time, in fact, none of them did very clearly, except actual studies in science. But as I now see the perspective, these were the eventualities whose foundation was laid back there.2 The inclusion of science, agriculture, and mechanic arts in the program of higher education was a decisive step toward its democratization. But it does not encompass all that the land-grant institutions achieved in this direction. From their inception they had as one of their avowed purposes the opening of their doors to the "industrial classes." These persons constituted an economic group that even in democratic America had not been able to avail itself of higher education to any great degree prior to the middle of the nineteenth century. The land-grant colleges were expected to be hospitable to the "industrial classes." They were, 2 U. S. Office of Education, Survey of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, vol. I, pt. I, pp. 22-3. |