Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1879-12-17
Tinkham on Education.

We are glad TO see our friend Tinkham
at last discussing the question of industrial
education with an appearance of serious
purpose, rather than wasting ink in reflec-
tions upon those who favor it. In one
of his recent articles he says:
1--WE have schools supported by the people,
the rich the educated, the professional, the liter
airy classes as well as the working men, to which
the child OF the poorest is just as welcome, and
where 1t will receive just as great advantages as
the child of the richest or most thoroughly edu-
Gated Of the upper classes, and that with no
cost to them. In our academies normal schools
and colleges are free scholarships Tor poor stu
dents Have these schools been established, these
scholarships founded, these advantages Tor an
education for the children of the poor been Sc
cured in the face of determined, bitter, deep
rooted opposition Of those educated in literary
colleges, the professional classes and educated
men p
Well, we should rather think not. We
do not hear that Archbishop Williams OPP
poses Father Scully's parochial schools;
but he, aud all the Catholic clergy, do show
determined, bitter deep-rooted opposi-
ton " to our public schools. So we do not
expect opposition from the friends of CLASH
cal education to the academies, normal
schools and colleges !" but we do find the
more narrow-minded among them opposing
industrial schools and the introduction of
science-teaching in public schools, and mourn
ing because our town high schools and the
upper departments of our graded schools
are killing out the classical academies. That
is the point, but it is as hard to make Mr..
Tinkham see it as to get an owl to look at
the sun. He goes on to say
"That there has been some opposition to the
agricultural colleges, as operated, we cheeriully
admit and further, we think 1t just and merited,
and still further we think that criticism has had
its foundation in the fact that the colleges afore-
said have not been conducted to the intellectual
advantage and profit of farmers or any one else
except those who have received the money And
of those criticised, we believe those deserve 1t
least who have applied the funds intrusted to
them in making more thorough and complete
scientific course.
Ahem Scientific course" Let us see.
Medicine is a science, though some deny
that. Civil engineering is an applied branch
of the science of mathematics. Then there
are moral science and metaphysics An ag-
ricultural college that teaches these sciences
and has chairs of Latin and Greek, but no
professor of agriculture, of horticulture or
of veterinary science, that has no farm and
declares that it don't want any, deserves crit
icism less than such agricultural colleges as
those of Iowa, Michigan, Massachusetts,,
Maine and dozen other states, where APP
piled science is taught upon large and well
r.. IL, arln
ows, titled fields and forests, all made use
full for purposes of practical instruction
We have long ceased to look for any ap-
proach to consistency in our amiable and
versatile friend, but vino would expect to
find in the next column to the above the fol-
lowing;
GAN AGRICULTURAL CoLLEGE.-A writer in
the New England Farmer, speaking of Mr. Gro
zier's farm and its management, thus remarks:
Mr.. Crozier's influence in his neighborhood has
been good. Ten years ago he said nine OF his
neighbors, only demanded service from his thor
oughbred bulls; this year he had eighty-three
cows, at five dollars head and this paid fol the
rent of the home farm. The reporter noticed that
some of the farm hands possessed more than or
binary intelligent countenances, and asked the
reason. Mr. Crozier replied: | keep kind of
farm school here. Gentlemen pay me three hum
dred dollars "a year to teach their sons my method
of farming. lput them right at hard work. clean
ing out hog pens or milking cows. II they don
like it, they don't stay, and II they can't stand
that part of the work. there is no need of them
trying to make farmers Of themselves They gem
orally have the pluck to stick through few years.
and then 60 with them to help buy their farms
and start them right As n rule, they have been
remarkably successful farmers. had, a few
years ago, a young Englshman graduate Of
Cambridge, ile staid several years with me, and
is now one of the best farmers in Georgia.
And at the bottom of this Mr.. Tinkham
says "And that's our idea of how man
must learn farming, right on the farm, and
if he does that, he will not be incapacitated
from learning it by having been through a
literary course at college or scientific one
either"
Now won't our friend tell us what his OBJ.
lection is to having that scientific college
"right on the farm" instead of off in an
other town or city? We believe that the
theory and the practice are best learned to-
gether, and we want farm and practical
teachers for an agricultural college, just as
we want hospital and surgical operating
room attached to medical school. OuI
University is justly elated at and advertises
widely the fact that the Mary Fletcher hos
pital is great gain to its medical depart
ment. We like to see a little consistency
in these as in other things, and we canno
but ask whether, if there were az much yea
to improve the agricultural as the medica
school at Burlington, it would not now hav'
farm, teacher of agriculture, and at leas
few scholars, actually entered in its agri
cultural course2 And when, after twelv
years of trial and the expenditure of 800
600 in cash, it has yet to graduate its frs
student from that course, does it not requir
most childlke faith to see in such an agr
cultural college "less cause for criticism
than in those others which, while they ma
not be and probably are not perfect, are ye
sending out large classes of well traine
scholars, and are improving in their method
as rapidly as experience and means enabl
them to do so ?