Scientific Education for Agriculture

Abstract

At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth century the Dutch academic system was fundamentally revised and agriculture became one of the issues to be taken up in the new curriculum. The courses in agriculture the universities offered from 1816 never attracted many students and in another major reorganisation of the Dutch academic system in 1876 agriculture disappeared from the university curriculum. Nevertheless, several university professors showed a clear interest in agriculture during the nineteenth century and most of them were members of an agricultural society. These societies put much pressure on the government to make legal arrangements for agricultural education and to subsidise agricultural schools. The legal arrangement came early 1860s when a new element was added to the Dutch education system, covering various sorts of schools, including agricultural schools. Scientific education for agriculture was part of this new structure too, resulting in a situation that scientific education was offered at schools that did not belong to the system of higher education. That situation was highly disputed and continued to be a major force in the definition of scientific education for agriculture. The national education system not only determined the status of agricultural education but also to a large extent the education programme. Nevertheless, school managers, teachers and professors had various opportunities to steer the programme, and especially the subjects of teaching, in a direction they considered appropriate. Moreover, several other persons, with little direct control over agricultural education, tried to influence the ideas and organisation of scientific agricultural education by making arguments in public, and by other means.