Abstract
This paper reports the results of a survey of the teaching of courses in agricultural history in the seventy-four Land Grant institutions in the United States and its territories. It concludes with the expression of concern that the subject matter, agricultural history, is nearly a dying field, and only heroic measures will succeed in rescuing it.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Additional information
Monroe Billington is Professor of History at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he teaches a course entitled History of American Agriculture. His articles have appeared in over thirty historical journals, includingAgricultural History, Journal of Southern History, andNew Mexico Historical Review. His latest published book isSouthern Politics Since the Civil War (Krieger, 1984).
Standard works on Land Grant institutions and the teaching of agricultural education, some of which devote considerable attention to the evolution of the agricultural curriculum, by their silence support the assumption that agricultural history has essentially been ignored in the nation's agricultural colleges. See Alfred E. True,A History of Agricultural Education in the United States, 1785–1925 (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969); John Taylor Wheeler,Curriculum Making in Agricultural Colleges (Athens, Georgia: The McGregor Company, 1932); Whitney H. Shepardson,Agricultural Education in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1929); Frederick B. Mumford,The Land Grant College Movement (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri College of Agriculture and Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 419, July, 1940); Edward Danforth Eddy, Jr.;Colleges for Our Land and Time: The Land-Grant Idea in American Education (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956); George A. Works and Barton Morgan,The Land-Grant Colleges (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1939).
The following essays show concern for the state of agricultural history but they focus on research to the neglect of the teaching aspects: Harold D. Woodman, “The State of Agricultural History,” in Herbert J. Baas (ed.,The State of American History (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970); Wayne D. Rasmussen, “Forty Years of Agricultural History,”Agrucultural History, XXXIII (October 1959), 177–84. Wayne D. Rasmussen, “The Growth of Agricultural History,” in William B. Hesseltine and Donald R. McNeil (eds.),In Support of Clio: Essays in Memory of Herbert A. Kellar (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1958); Gilbert C. Fite, “Expanded Frontiers in Agricultural History,”Agricultural History, XXXV (October 1961), 175–81.
A shortened version of this article has appeared: “Teaching Agricultural History at Land Grant Universities,”OAH [Organization of American Historians]Newsletter, vol. 14, no. 3 (August 1986), pp. 12–13.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Billington, M. Teaching agricultural history in American universities. Agric Hum Values 5, 34–39 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02217646
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02217646