This week the Friday Footnote travels to Nebraska. We start our Nebraska journey in 1913 by asking five questions:
- What is a Shumway Act School?
- In addition to agriculture, what two other vocational subjects were to be taught in Shumway funded schools?
- How many books about agriculture had to be in the Shumway School library?
- For how many months did the agriculture teacher have to be employed in a Shumway School?
- Who in Nebraska determined the qualifications to be an agriculture teacher in 1913?
The history of agricultural education in Nebraska started several years before the passage of the Smith-Hughes Act with the passage of the Shumway Act of 1913.
The Shumway Act
Figure 1. Headlines from the Independent Farmer and Western Swine Breeder (Lincoln, Nebraska), September 24, 1914.
The Shumway Act passed by the Nebraska Legislature in 1913 provided state aid to high schools for the teaching of agriculture, manual training, and home economics. Schools that accepted the provisions of the act had to provide classrooms, textbooks, and laboratories to teach these subjects (Stimson & Lathrop, 1942). However it should be noted that a few high schools in Nebraska were teaching agriculture prior to this.
The Shumway Act required that the instruction be practical and deal with soil, crops, fertilizers, drainage, farm machinery, farm buildings, breeds of livestock, live stock judging, production of milk and cream, manufacture of butter, cheese, horticulture, gardening, plants and other topics having a direct relation to the business of farming (The New Teller. York, NE, August 20, 1913).
There had to be at least seven students in each class. A library of not less than five volumes for each subject (agriculture, manual training, and home economics), exclusive of state and government reports, had to be provided (Weeping Water Republican, August 14, 1913)
The schools selected for the four year Shumway agricultural courses were Alliance, Alma, Aurora, Beatrice, Blair, Crete, Fairfield, Gothenburg, Hastings, Holdrege, Kimball county high school, O’Neill, Pawnee City, Red Cloud, South Omaha, St. Paul, Stromsburg, Tecumseh, Wahoo and York (Nebraska State Democrat, September 18, 1913).
Shumway Act schools had to buy or lease at least five acres of land for demonstration or experimental purposes. The work was to be performed by the agricultural students. One might consider this to be a forerunner of the supervised practice provision of the Smith-Hughes Act.
The agriculture teacher had to have a state teaching certificate which required two years of college training. The agriculture teacher had to have 24 hours of agricultural courses but there was no requirement for any teacher education courses. The person selected to be the agriculture teacher in a Shumway Act School had to be approved by the Dean of Agriculture at what is now the University of Nebraska. The agriculture teacher was to be employed for the calendar year (12 months).
Figure 2. The benefits of having a teacher with a 12 month contract was described in an article from the Fairfield (NE) Independent, January 1, 1915.
Schools selected to be “Shumway Act High Schools” were to receive $1,250 to support the program. However, the legislature appropriated only $15,000 for this purpose for the biennium (two year period) and 20 Nebraska schools qualified, so the money was split among the schools which meant each school received $400 to $500 dollars. This money was then split between manual training, home economics and agriculture at each of the schools.
One unique aspect of the legislation was that any rural school (typically a one or two room school house for the lower grades) that taught agriculture, home economics and manual training and who became associated with a Shumway Act High School would receive $50.
Figure 3. Left image -From the Webster County Argus, September 16, 1915. Right image – From The Harvard (NE) Courier, January 17, 1914.
Figure 4. Home Economics and Manual Training Students in a Shumway affiliated school. This district school was affiliated with the Pawnee City High School. Image from the Independent Farmer and Western Swine Breeder (Lincoln, Nebraska), September 24, 1914.
Harry Bradford, professor of agricultural education at the University of Nebraska and the principal of the “University School of Agriculture” (this was a high school on the campus) supervised the Shumway Schools and made two visits a year to the schools.
Figure 5. The Beatrice Daily Express, September 10, 1913
At some of the schools using the five acres of land was a problem. The schools did not own horses or machinery and thus had to borrow or hire farmers to do some of the agricultural work. And the boys left school at the end of the day and did not hang around to work on the land. This left the agriculture teacher to do the work.
However, some teachers made good use of the land and knew how to engage the students in the farm work. S. L. Clements of the Alliance High School assigned a small plot of land to each student to use as the student saw fit. In addition to the student plots, in 1914 milo was growing on the land with plans to plant potatoes in the future. Sixty boys and girls were enrolled in agriculture classes. See Figure 6.
Figure 6. From the Alliance Herald, October 15, 1914.
The composition of the students in the agricultural classes was interesting. Some students were farm boys while others had never lived on a farm. Many of the agricultural classes were attended by girls who were as interested in agriculture as the boys.
The state legislature made smaller appropriations to support Shumway Schools in 1914 and 1916. Thus the local districts had to assume that responsibility. By 1918 most of the Shumway Act Schools had stopped teaching agriculture because of the lack of funding. After the passage of the Smith-Hughes Act no more appropriates were made to support Shumway Schools, thus they were discontinued. However, many of the schools could then apply for Smith-Hughes funding.
In case you are curious, the Shumway Act was sponsored by Herbert P. Shumway, a state senator. To call him a farmer might be an understatement. The Rock County Leader (July 11, 1918) stated that:
H, P. Shumway was extensively engaged in farming and the stock business in this section for many years and accumulated large tracts of land in northeastern Nebraska and South Dakota. He also had extensive business interests in Wakefield and elsewhere in this part of the state.
Before becoming a legislator, he served on the local board of education for more than 25 years. In 1916 he unsuccessfully ran for lieutenant governor but was defeated. His campaign literature touted the fact that he sponsored the act leading to the teaching of agriculture at the high school level.
Figure 7. Image from the Nemaha County Republican (Auburn, Nebraska), April 6, 1916.
Lessons Learned
Some readers might respond to this Footnote by saying “Why do we need to know about the Shumway Act? It has no relevance for today.” I would beg to differ. Some of the lessons to be learned are:
- State legislatures can pass legislation benefiting agricultural education. It was done in Nebraska in 1913 and can be done in our home states today. For example, here in North Carolina our state legislature has passed legislation in recent years:
- Upgrading and building new facilities at the state FFA Camp,
- Enabling the move of the teacher education program in agricultural education at North Carolina State University from the College of Education to the College of Agriculture where it has flourished.
- Adding two new positions to the state Ag Ed staff
Many more examples in North Carolina and across the country could be listed. What legislation is needed in your state for agricultural education?
- It is beneficial to have state staff visit schools. That was required in the Shumway Act. For the past fifty years there has been a major erosion of state level staff in agricultural education in numerous states. Perhaps it is time to stop that trend and get the state leadership out of the state house (or wherever they are located if they exist) into the schools.
- Agriculture could be a part of the elementary school curriculum. The Shumway Act provided support for this. Other than Ag in the Classroom what is your state doing?
- The Shumway Act required laboratories and land where students could get hands-on-learning. Time has not erased this concept.
- Financial support is needed for a quality program. In Nebraska the Shumway schools died out because the state appropriations were inadequate. It is hard to operate a quality agricultural education program using duct tape and baling wire. We must explore all options for securing adequate financing for out programs.
- Shumway school agriculture teachers were on a 12 month contract. With the additional duties today for agriculture teachers, it would appear 12 month contracts could easily be justified.
References
Agricultural Training in the High Schools of Nebraska (1913), Department of Public Instruction, Lincoln, Nebraska.
Stimson, R. & Lathrop, F. (1942). History of Agricultural Education of Less Than College Grade in the United States. Vocational Division Bulletin No. 217. Federal Security Agency. U. S. Government Printing Office.