Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 1 (2006), p. 181

Technology’s dilemma, according to this book, is that it is rooted in science but must remain aware of the needs of its users. Consequently academic technologists must pay attention to both, and the balance is not easy to maintain. Should they, for example, conduct a trial to determine which of two fertilizers has the greater impact on the yield of a specific crop, or carry out a programme of experiments to determine the basic physiological characteristics of crop plants and the ways in which they are affected by nutrient availability? The first will almost certainly be quicker, easier, and cheaper to carry out, and produce immediately usable results; the second may take a lifetime, but save endless repetitions of the first kind of experiment. The first will appeal to farmers and fertilizer firms who want quick answers to practical questions, but they will do little for the experimenter’s professional reputation. The second will enhance scientific status but receive few thanks from commerce.

Harwood’s contention is that technical education establishments, and especially those agricultural ones with which he is most concerned, will tend to specialize in one direction or the other, but that the more p ractical institutions will, over time, tend to be more academic, or exhibit ‘academic drift’. The danger in their doing so is that their graduates will lack practical skills and that their staff will lose contact with the concerns of the farmers and ancillary industries that will eventually employ the graduates. He elucidates the process with an explanatory ‘model of institutional dynamics’: the staff in such establishments will want to enhance their academic status, and in consequence will strengthen their science orientation. The effort they apply to so doing will depend upon their institution’s rank in the status hierarchy, whether or not it is part of a university, and in which faculty, and whether it has an urban or rural location (more science is expected in urban locations). Success in status enhancement will depend upon the attitude of the government ministry (usually either agriculture or education) controlling the establishment and of local agricultural interest groups, who might work through formal political channels or attempt to achieve direct influence by funding research or teaching that is perceived to meet their needs.

The bulk of the book is concerned with validating this model through a study of agricultural education in Germany between the middle of the nineteenth century and the 1930s. Harwood describes the various academies, colleges and university departments and their student bodies, with their varying status hierarchies, funding sources, and responsible ministries over Germany as a whole. He then compares two institutions at the scientific end of the spectrum (Berlin and Halle) with three of the more practical (Breslau, Hohenheim and Bonn) as far as geographical location, formal organization, teaching programmes, staff and student backgrounds, advisory activities and research are concerned. Finally he compares Bavaria’s two establishments, Munich and Weihenstephan, from 1872 to 1934. His concluding chapter is mainly concerned with applying his model to the history of agricultural education outside Germany (specifically in Britain, the Netherlands and the USA), to the history of engineering, medical and management engineering, and to the present-day reform of technical and professional education.

The treatment of German agricultural education is detailed, and, as far as this reviewer can tell, expert and convincing. The principal strength of the book, and the reason why it is worth reading for those with no particular interest in either Germany or agricultural education, is the way in which it constructs its explanatory model and then uses it to make sense of what could so easily be a formless mass of detail. It fails, however, on its promise ‘to illuminate the history of agricultural science and education ... in Britain’ (p. 33), and this is a great pity, for status hierarchies, academic drift, differing objectives of sponsoring ministries, and the other components of Harwood’s model all have relevance to the history of agricultural education in Britain since the 1840s. But only a page of discussion, most of it derived from a single unpublished work, is devoted to the British comparison, and the plethora of college histories, doctoral theses and historical surveys that have emerged in the last ten years is completely ignored. The irony is that, on the whole, they validate his model just as well as his German examples. Harwood also bemoans the lack of a book-length treatment of the agricultural sciences, thus neglecting not only recent work, but also Russell’s classic A history of agricultural science in Great Britain, published forty years ago. The problems of this book therefore arise from the author’s apparent unfamiliarity with British sources, and British historians should not make the corresponding mistake of ignoring his theory and his work on Germany. Agricultural historians have much to learn from historians of science and technology, even if on some points the traffic might profitably pass the other way.