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Show following are listed simply as examples of citizen organizations working in the field of public edu- cation for resource use; their number could well increase: the National Committee on Policies in Conservation Education, the League of Women Voters, farm and labor organizations, Friends of the Land, the Future Farmers of America, the 4-H Clubs, the American Planning and Civic Association, Garden Clubs of America, the Izaak Walton League of America, American Forestry Association, Boy Scouts of America, Girl Scouts of America, Camp Fire Girls of America, Amer- ican Wildlife Institute, and the Conservation Foundation. Out of all of this recent vigorous development in the field of education for conservation no highly coordinated program has emerged as yet, nor is it perhaps desirable that it should emerge. For in a country as large as the United States, with its variety of regional and local problems of resources use, and with the time-honored exercise of authority by each State in regard to instruc- tional methods in the education of its citizens, varied programs to suit a variety of needs are logical and wise. Teaching Afield It is vital that we train teachers, perhaps all teachers, to understand and to teach conser- vation. Cooperation between State or local teacher-training schools and the well-trained technicians of the Departments of Agriculture and Interior, who are both scientifically skilled and who are aware of the practical problems of conservation as they confront the farming people, ranchers, and lumbermen, should be continued and developed. Some of our best teaching is being done by these men of the land-grant col- leges, the Soil Conservation Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Forest Service, as they conduct workshop classes in the fields and woods of America. Invited by the colleges to con- duct field trips and class demonstrations, they are doing a vital job. Such work must be ex- panded to include in the teaching roster experts responsible for pollution abatement, river con- trol projects, and for the marketing of power. Pioneer educational workshops of this kind are using the fields and forests, the soils and streams as laboratories. They should also include first- hand experience with the transformation of deserts by irrigation, the construction and opera- tion of multiple-purpose reservoir projects with their power plants, and the transformation of farm life by low-cost electricity. It is not enough that the teachers of children understand in theory only the problems of erosion control, of building a permanent agriculture and forestry; they should see these problems as they exist in nature and in the works of river basin engineers. The picture of a soil profile does not impress itself on the mind as does taking a shovel and exposing a profile on a roadside bank. Here one not only can see but can feel the changes in soil structure from the topsoil down through the layers or horizons. An impressive way of visualizing man's effect upon soil resources by misuse is to walk with a group that is taking soil auger tests, down some slope where crops have been unwisely planted over the years. Near the crest of the hill the top- soil is gone-that.soil which can produce growth, new plant life. This fact is clear as you see a core of earth pulled out by the auger and as you feel the soil with your hands. Farther down the hill there is less erosion and at the bottom, in the muck land too poorly drained even for pasture, the topsoil from the hillside now lies below the subsoil, having come down first during the long years of erosion. The teachers of children can learn best in these field and farm and forest laboratories about the processes of erosion and their cause. And it is well that more and more of them do learn, not only about the technical problem but also about the social problem which lies behind it-poor land, poor people; cut-over forests, floods and wash-outs in the streams below; a reckless plow- ing of grasslands, the dust bowl and human mis- ery. For it is largely through these teachers, as they work with the youth of the land, that we will in time develop attitudes toward resources use that will lead to stability and permanence. But there is more for the teachers to learn than the processes of erosion and the possibilities for 274 |