Putting College Students on Farms 

An article about Madison education appears in a national magazine

Putting College Students on Farms 

By M . Bessie DeGraw in the January 3, 1934, Survey

“Students of the Nashville Agricultural Normal Institute participate in the management of the school and its agencies, and work under conditions similar to those of the people with whom they must live and work when they leave the school. . . . The constant practical combination of study, work, and spiritual devotion in normal living gives these young men and women self-reliance, self-control, hardihood, practical ability, and power of leadership.”—P. P. Claxton, Former U.S. Commissioner of Education under Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Warren Harding

A new note to college life was added this summer," said the Literary Digest in the issue of September 16, 1933, "when 65 students and instructors of New College, a training school for teachers affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University, opened a farm community in North Carolina as a regular part of the college course." Attention of Survey readers has already been called to this new educational effort.  The significance of the movement, however, is stressed by Dr. Clarence Linton, secretary of Teachers College who is quoted by the Literary Digest as saying: 

"New College seeks to discover superior young men and women and interest them in education as a professional career. Special emphasis is placed on a broad cultural foundation which is promoted by a professional viewpoint. To this end each student is urged to have as many contacts with life situations as possible. In the farm community (in the mountains of North Carolina, near Canton) students and instructors are learning firsthand what rural life is like in the attempt to establish a community life with an educational program." 

Dr. Thomas Alexander, the prime mover in this new project on an 1800-acre farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains, approximately 35 miles from the city of Asheville, was in Europe at the time the article appeared in the Digest. Since his return he writes Dr. Sutherland something more in detail concerning the purposes underlying this new effort in teacher training. Under date of Dec. 17 he says: 

"You ask me what we are trying to do. Let me say to begin with that many of the ideas I am trying to work out were stimulated by your own institution, but it will be a long time until we do things as well as you do—I mean, bring about a realization of life's problems by active participation upon the part of students." 

In Dr. Alexander's earlier experience his home was in Nashville and he was a member of the faculty of George Peabody College for Teachers. At that time he watched with interest what many educators have looked upon as an experiment being worked out on the school property of the Nashville Agricultural Normal Institute. In these days of financial stress this educational problem assumes larger proportions than might be expected because it is found to fit into a great economic problem which for years we faced but recognized only dimly.

Returning to Dr. Alexander's letter. In these words he outlines the purposes or aims of New College as they hope to work them out on the college farm in North Carolina: 

Its purposes are: 

1. Community living and education through it; 

2. Close relation of theory and practice; 

3. Insight into rural life and work problems (all of our students are city folk); 

4. Participation in rural life and work; 

5. Education through the problems of production and consumption; 

6. Natural science instruction;

7. Problems of health, food, exercise, living.

As one reads this analysis of this great educational effort he cannot but feel that Dr. Alexander in his seven points covers very largely the objectives held always before us in the development of Madison and its related rural units in the South. We at Madison have always felt that the establishment of our work in the South was providential. Developments of recent months strengthen that conviction. We have only to cite the government development in the Tennessee Valley to illuminate this idea—the TVA. Again, as new efforts are put forth by such an outstanding educational institution as Columbia University, we recognize the centering of national attention on the principles of Christian education which it has been our privilege for many years to demonstrate, little realizing, however, the way in which these principles would be broadcast.

Following the seven purposes of the community work of Columbia University in North Carolina Dr. Alexander adds:

"All of these you (at Madison) have worked out yourself."

We ourselves cannot put it in quite such a broad way but we do feel thankful that at Madison we have the privilege still of contributing something to the development of an educational system of which the world today recognizes its need. 

That article referred to in the Literary Digest describes the daily life of Dr. Alexander's city folk who are "urged to have as many contacts with life situations as possible," in these words:

"Most of the work of the community is done by students and faculty. Students having household arts plan menus, purchase, prepare, and serve the food. All cooperate in planting, cultivating, and harvesting the garden and field crops and in caring for the chickens, pigs, and cows which furnish food for the group. Others cut and bring in the wood which is the chief fuel for cooking, while some assume care of the buildings and grounds."

Ask any member of the Madison family how the work in his own institution could be more graphically described. 

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