304 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
SHOULD RURAL SCHOOLS INTRODUCE AGRICULTURE, 
CHEMISTRY, AGRICULTURAL BOTANY OR ARBORI- 
CULTURE ? 
BY ERGRAFF DE KOVALEVSKY, DELEGATE OF THE MINISTER OF PUBLIC 
INSTRUCTION OF RUSSIA. 
THE great agricultural crisis of these last years has forced the European 
governments to support the agriculturists by every means, and to propa- 
gate right notions as to gardening and farming among the rural popula- 
sions. The elementary schools have taken part too in this movement, and 
1 certain countries instruction in agriculture has been introduced in the 
course of the rural schools. 
In Europe there are several types of primary elementary schools, which 
are distinguished from each other by the number of and duration of the 
courses. In the most of them the instruction continues from three to four 
years; these are the schools with an elementary and middle course. Their 
purpose is not to teach the pupils an independent branch of any science, 
considering that there are admitted only children from seven to eleven 
years of age; it is enough that the pupil leaving the establishment is 
able to read well, to write without too many mistakes, and to perform the 
four operations of arithmetic. In the other elementary schools, with a 
course of five to six years, the pupils receive during the last two years— 
that is, in the superior course—some notions of geometry, history, and 
geography ; to these are added lessons in drawing, gymnastics, singing, 
and, at present, manual training. So there remain, at the utmost, two 
hours weekly for instruction in natural science and agriculture. 
We will only examine the primary elementary schools, without touching 
the superior primary schools. Several governments have introduced agri- 
culture in the programme of the primary schools as an obligatory subject. 
This information often gives very small results, which is in part due to 
chis, that the instructors, too little familiar with their subject, give the 
pupils little hand-books or agricultural catechisms, which they learn 
almost by heart. This kind of instruction only overburdens the memory 
of the children without contributing to their intellectual development ; so 
“his method is anti-pedagogic. Reading the description of the tools and 
agricultural machines of rural operations, the enumerations of all sorts 
of varieties of plants and of animals, notions about zodlogy, in short, de- 
scriptions of objects or of agricultural processes which the pupils have no 
opportunity to see themselves—this is only to them a combination of words 
ind numbers which does not leave behind lasting traces. 
What now must the system of the agricultural teaching in the element-