A pamphlet published by the Kansas State Agricultural College on "School Credit for Home Work: The Laboratory of the Rural School," makes these practical points:--
Could there possibly be a more favorable condition for teaching Domestic Arts than in the rural school from which the girl goes every evening to a busy home where she is needed to take part in the actual work of housekeeping? It is here that the girl has a chance to put into actual practice the things she has learned at school. Here the home has the chance to realize immediately upon the investment it is making in the education of the girl. If sanitation, ventilation, sweeping and dusting, care of the sick, preparation of foods, care of milk, water supply and uses, bathing, care of health, sewing, proper clothing, etc., are taught in our schools, and if the laboratories are in the immediate neighborhood, and the girls and boys must go into them to stay overnight, they should be used. Likewise, the vegetable gardens at the homes should be made the experimental plots for the school, after the best seeds have been selected, best methods of preparing, fertilizing, and planting the soil, best-known methods of cultivation and maturing the crops, have been taught. The actual experimental work should be carried out in the home gardens by the boys and girls. Proper records can be kept, and the boys and girls will be anxious to get back into school, after the out-of-doors summer experiments, to compare reports, and renew another phase of their educational work.
In agriculture the fields, stock, buildings, etc., about the schoolhouse should be studied and used. These are the real agricultural laboratory. The real problems of actual farming are present, and the methods of work and the ways of handling the fields and the stock are the available resources of the school as a part of its actual laboratory. In this connection study the dairy cows, the feeding of cattle, hogs, and horses, types and breeds of farm horses, cattle, hogs, and sheep. In every community there are many opportunities for type studies--such as fields of alfalfa or wheat or corn; a dairy herd; valuable and well-bred horses; beef cattle; hogs or sheep; a silo, or types of farm machinery, and farm buildings.