Cultivating the Country's Best Crop Developing Youth Through 4-H in the 20th Century
Presented by: Amrys O. Williams
Date: November 14, 2011
In a talk at Mann Library presented on November 14, 2011, Amrys Williams, the 2011 Recipient of the History of Home Economics Fellowship Award at the Cornell College of Human Ecology, provides a look at the history of 4-H clubs and their relationship to the developing ideas about rural culture, community and modernity in 20th century U.S. 4-H clubs—the youth phase of agricultural and home economics extension work—were central to the USDA’s program for rural modernization in the early decades of the 20th century. Cultivating “the country’s best crop,” as these young people were often described, was a matter of culture as well as agriculture, and 4-H club work sought to revitalize rural society alongside rural livelihoods. The biological metaphor of development—of crops, children, communities, and civilization—was central to these efforts, and 4-H’s work with rural youth in rural places illuminates a strand of thinking about development that relied on growth, guidance, and nurture to cultivate modernity on rural terms.
Lecture video also available on Mann Library's YouTube channel.