"Extension work is not exhortation. Nor is it exploitation of the people, or advertising of an institution, or publicity work for securing students. It is a plain, earnest, and continuous effort to meet the needs of the people on their own farms and in the localities"
About this Quote
Bailey draws a bright moral line at a moment when “helping the public” was becoming a crowded brand category. The insistence that extension work is not “exhortation” rejects the pulpit model: expertise delivered as scolding, conversion, or virtue-signaling. He’s after something less theatrical and more destabilizing to institutions used to being admired from a distance - professionals showing up, listening, and being judged by whether life on a farm actually improves.
The list of what extension is not reads like an early-20th-century prebuttal to predictable abuses: using rural communities as a lab (“exploitation”), as a marketing funnel (“advertising,” “publicity”), or as a recruiting pipeline (“securing students”). Bailey is signaling that the university’s interests and the people’s interests do not automatically align. That’s the subtext with teeth: public service is a posture institutions love to claim precisely because it’s hard to audit. He tries to make it auditable by relocating the work “on their own farms and in the localities,” where outcomes can’t hide behind speeches or brochures.
Context matters. Bailey helped shape the land-grant ecosystem and the emerging Cooperative Extension idea, built to translate agricultural science into practice. The era was thick with Progressive reform energy, but also with paternalism - experts parachuting in with “uplift” and leaving local knowledge flattened. Bailey’s language pushes against that, framing extension as continuous relationship, not a campaign.
Even now, the quote lands like a warning label for any outreach program: if it mainly produces institutional glow, it’s not extension. It’s PR wearing boots.
The list of what extension is not reads like an early-20th-century prebuttal to predictable abuses: using rural communities as a lab (“exploitation”), as a marketing funnel (“advertising,” “publicity”), or as a recruiting pipeline (“securing students”). Bailey is signaling that the university’s interests and the people’s interests do not automatically align. That’s the subtext with teeth: public service is a posture institutions love to claim precisely because it’s hard to audit. He tries to make it auditable by relocating the work “on their own farms and in the localities,” where outcomes can’t hide behind speeches or brochures.
Context matters. Bailey helped shape the land-grant ecosystem and the emerging Cooperative Extension idea, built to translate agricultural science into practice. The era was thick with Progressive reform energy, but also with paternalism - experts parachuting in with “uplift” and leaving local knowledge flattened. Bailey’s language pushes against that, framing extension as continuous relationship, not a campaign.
Even now, the quote lands like a warning label for any outreach program: if it mainly produces institutional glow, it’s not extension. It’s PR wearing boots.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
|---|
More Quotes by Liberty
Add to List
