Sacramento daily record-union., 1881-07-09
AGRICULTURAL.
MATTER PREPARED SPECIALLY FOR
THE "REcnRD UNION"
Practical Industrial Observation-Disclosures
ment in Agricultural knowledge
Plums and Pears.

anu HAS tUO ntllc VI pLdSbiS1A Al I've Inv
practical education OF nearly all classes IN
our country commences when they leave the
schools and enter into business. Whatever
that business may be it opens up to the
school-graduate new and unanticipated field
for practical education. From fifteen to
twenty years has been spent in the school
room learning and forgetting theories in
grammar, mathematics, philosophy. rhetoric,
etc. and hardly an hour Of that
time has been devoted to the ap-
plication of the knowledge obtained
to the practical business likely to be followed
by the student in after life. If any of the
learned professions are to be taken up by the
school graduate, what groundwork has been
laid for these professions in the fifteen or
twenty years spent in the school-room: Do
the schooI-books used lead to anything prac-
tical or valuable to the student of law or
medicine? Are the fundamental principles
of governmental the relations of the gov
ernment to the governed or the governing
of man to man under the government; of the
rights of man and his relations to property,
OF any of these practical questions that are to
engage the time and become the business OF
the future lawyer-taught or practically ex-
emplifed in our common schools? Does the
future physician learn anything of the physi-
ology Of man or the lower animals, of the laws
Of health or the causes of disease, in his whole
school life? What practical lessons in me-
chanics, in the application of the rules that
govern the physical world, does the future
mechanic who is to build our houses, our
steamboats,, our railroads and steam engines
our suspension bridges, and our agricultural
and economical machinery, generally receive
in the common schools of our country as now
conducted9 Does the farmer who is to feed
the world by his skill in the cultivation of
the soil and in his application of the rules of
production and reproduction OF the articles
adapted for the food of man and beast re-
ceive any lessons Of practical value to him
in having one fourth of his life spent in the
schoolroom? OF what practical value is the
education of our girls in the common schools,
as now conducted, to the future women of
our country in whatever capacity they may
be called upon to perform the duties of
women? What do they learn in the schools
that will be of practical use to them as wives
or mothers, in the kitchen or drawing room,
on the farm or in the city? Their school ex
perience covering at least one-fourth of their
lives-from childhood to womanhood-does
not give them even an idea of what their
future lives may require of them. Their
school life is ideal, their after life is often
painfully practical. We dream away our
early lives in the schoolrooms, and spend the
balance of our days in regrets that the
dreams Of our school days do not come to pass.
All play and no work spoils the child, and all
work and no play ruins the man and woman.
Our system of education is such as to con-
vince the youth that when they leave the
schools they know everything, while practi-
cal life afterwards brings the man and woman
to realize that until they had lett school and
began life and experience in earnest they
knew nothing. The difficulty arises in the
separation of theory and practice, in disioin-
ing the ideal and the real in lie. The de-
fects of our education are attributable more
to the defects of the system than to the short
comiRgs of our teachers: but our teachers
are but the exenplihcation of the defects of
the system. Ii the teachers are not qualified
to impart a moro perfect and practical sdu-
cation to their students it Is because the sys-
TEN in which they themselves have been
taught has not qualified them for the higher
standard Of teaching. Our teachers generally
have too much education and too little learn
ing, and this same defect is handed down to
bIelE sluAcubSs anu iS iullGEl1En nun BCAclA-
tion to generation. It is true the world has
made great advancement in knowledge
within the last century. but to what is
this advancement mostly traceable, to the i'm
provement in the methods of teaching in our
schools, or to the more practical turn life has
taken after the school days are ended? We
do otclose our eyes to the greatimprovements
in the schools within this period, but the means
of correct, practical education have appar-
emily more than kept pace with the methods
of teaching-the plans of teaching have out
run the teachers; but we do not claim that
the world of practical people, after entering
upon the avocations and callings of life, have
advanced much more rapidly than the schools,
and the schools are to-day the conservative
part of the available means Of learning open
to the people. A few years ago the standard
school books were about the only source of
obtaining scientific knowledge, and there were
no recognized channels, except the established
schools, through which a knowledge of the
general arts and sciences could be obtained
II one had failed in the schools he was ac-
counted failure through life OF late
years things have greatly changed in
this respect There is now no department
of practical art or science that has not its pub
lie educators in the form of a journal or jour
mails devoted to that partic liar art or science.
These journals are not mere teachers of theo
ries, but live, practical teachers each in the
particular line of knowledge to which it is de-
voted. They keep up with the most advanced
improvements and discoveries, and make q
record of the practical application of princi-
pies to practice in every department of knOwl-
edge and life. Thus we have general scien-
tihc journals that embrace the whole field Of
advanced knowledge and discuss and exem-
plify the arts aud sciences generally for the
general student and reader. And then We
have journals devoted to special branches Of
arts and sciences and knowle lge-as engineer
ing milling, iron and steel manufacturing,
manufacturing OF the textiles, as wool, cot
ton, hemp and fax; lumber manufacturing,
and last and most important, agriculture in
all its specialties and branches. These jour
mails are now in every important locality in the
country, aud taken all in all embrace a great
educational system available to all classes.
Their sphere is that of practical educators
Of the masses, and while they are performing
a great good and filing a great space much
needed to be filed, their practical utility is
somewhat limited from the fact of the i'm
perfect educational system pursued in our
common schools. An effort has been made
by the national Legislature to bridge over or
supply the wanting link in practical educa-
tion, by the establishment OF mechanic art
and agricultural colleges in every State in
the union. These colleges have up to the
present time not met public expectation, and
have not become as popular or as useful as
was anticipated by those most active in their
organization. The failure is probably attri-
butable principally to two causes The i'm
possibility to find teachers who can sufh-
GENTLY divest themselves of the evils of the
old system to which they owe their own
education, and the failure from the same
cause to comprehend the proposed plan by
those to whom their management generally
has been intrusted.
Agricultural Improvement
The era Of general agricultural improve
ment and advancement in this country, and
indeed in the world, dates from the era Of
the establishment of agricultural journals
and agricultural associations. From the
downfall of Rome to the feudsl system
E..o,a he of Et,o