A colleague from another Land Grant Institution recently asked about some founding literature within Extension. I remembered that I had written about this a long time ago :), and surprised myself by finding the documentation. You may find this blog post interesting – whether you are new to Extension or, like me, you have been around this work a long time and still love what we do. Enjoy!
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During the Spring of 2012, I participated in a Directed Readings program with Dr. Scott Peters, Associate Professor of Educational Studies at Cornell. I did this because in the role of Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) Program Development and Accountability Specialist I have an opportunity to help shape the way CCE Associations and staff handle program development, reporting, and communications. And although I’ve worked for CCE for twenty years – in varying capacities – and have participated in a variety of professional development efforts, I am a biologist and engineer by training and have not had any formal instruction in the field of education. Given those things and the fact that a number of senior CCE Administration staff will soon be retiring, I was feeling the need to enhance my own understanding of the history of non-formal education – the educational theories that shaped our system and the social pressures and tensions that inspired the formation of the cooperative extension system. I wanted to understand the language to describe the educational theory.
My interest was in answering the questions: What were the social and educational influences that inspired the (Cornell) Cooperative Extension system? My hope was that understanding the formative educational philosophies and the history might help me to be able to better articulate not just the historical dates and facts of extension history, but the significance of the extension system. My initial question was – “What is the spirit of our organization – in the beginning, now? And is it being reflected in the principles and practices being carried out?” I was particularly taken with the idea that the initiation of the Extension Movement – following the Transcendentalism movement, Chautaquas, and Farmer Institutes (happening during the middle 19th century) – was not about disseminating information but was about bringing common people to a place where they had hope, training folks to see and consider varied options and make decisions for themselves and their communities. I have grown over the years to consider Extension to be a fantastic enrichment for families and communities.
Some of this foundation can be found in the readings – including:
For Bailey, the improved farmer was the “awakened” farmer. “Every farmer should be awakened,” he proclaimed in a USDA bulletin on farmers’ reading courses published in 1899. “Being awakened” combined sympathy with nature, a love of country life, and a scientific attitude, expressed by a habit of careful observation and experimentation. Bailey theorized that newly awakened farmers would build a “new day” in the countryside that was not predominantly about the establishment of a more productive and profitable agriculture. Rather, it was about creating a “self-sustaining” agriculture, brought into being by an intelligent class of self-dependent farmer-experimenters who would gain the greater part of their happiness from their interactions with nature rather than the size of their bank accounts.
“Every Farmer Should Be Awakened” Liberty Hyde Bailey’s Vision of Agricultural Extension Work – Scott Peters
The ideas expressed from the very beginning of the Extension movement include ideas of awakening, “improving the farmer, not the farm”, enriching everyday lives through observation and science, and the use of research…represent the spirit of our organization in a way that it isn’t often spoken about today. Looking at the CCE success stories, however; these ideas and principles are very much alive still. On the topic of Organizational Practice – Ruby Greene Smith’s history of Cornell Cooperative Extension provided great insights into the work, personalities, and politics that happened to shape our organization. M.C Burritt’s The County Agent and the Farm Bureau might have been the first practical guide to program development that was used in Cooperative Extension – in New York State and nationally.
Both books include descriptions of Extension work including a campus-county connection. The description in Ruby Greene Smith’s book characterizes the need for the partnership between campus and county to go both ways:
“There is a vigorous reciprocity in the Extension Service because it is with the people as well as “of the people, by the people and for the people.” It not only carries knowledge from the State Colleges to the people, but it also works in reverse: it carries from the people to their State Colleges practical knowledge whose workability has been tested on farms, in industry, in homes, and in communities. In ideal extension work, science and art meet life and practice….Thus the Extension Service develops not only better agriculture, industries, homes, and communities, but better colleges.
From: Ruby Green Smith (1949), The People’s Colleges, A History of the NYS Extension Service in Cornell University and the State, 1876-1948
For a more complete look at resources/suggested Documents: https://cceconferences.wufoo.com/reports/documenting-the-spirit-of-cce/
Malcolm Gladwell is a British-born Canadian author of five New York Times bestsellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath.