The Marietta journal. [volume] (Marietta, Ga.) 1866-1909, 1900-03-01
EDUCATE THE FARMER
A LOGICAL ADDRESS BY STATE
SCHOOL COMMISSIONERS
G..tNN.
AGRICULTURE IS IDENTIFIED.
HON the B-auty and Power
of the Fields.


Agricultural Department invited the
attention of his excelleRcy to the i'm.
portance of introducing in our schools
nature studies. agricultural industrial
education, 80 the end that young men
who intend to become farmers might
eAjoy to some extent the practical.
special training for their work which
ID afforded those seeking the professions.
A short time after this School Com.
missioner G. r Glenn delivered an
address before the Cotton States Asso.
cation of the Commissioners of Agri.
culture in Atlanta. Believing this ad-
dress should have the widest possible
circulation, it is furnished to th> press
& the State for publication
COMMISSIONER GLENN's ADDRESS.
The country boy leaves the farm
because he has learned at school that
ether fields Of human activity offer
higher rewards The country boy is
abitious TO rise and to move up and on
IN the world. His teacher has fred his
heart with stories Of what men in the
learned professions have accomplished.
He is attracted by the laurels that men
have won in the pulpit, at the bar. on
the hustings, on the battlefield, and ON
the deck of fighting ship. The courae
Of study that the schools have prescribed
for the boy tell him that to be great in
the eyes of the world he must preach
great sermon, or write great poem, or
make great GRAFTON, or lead grand
charge, or command feet of warships
from bridge of a flagship in naval
battle. How to win conquests from the
soil of mother earth. how to make the
f1elds blossom and ripen into fruitage
OF golden harvests, has been up to this
tame, no part of Of the training of the
boys in our schools. The book learning
of the academies has led away from the
hard and exacting manual toll on the
farm. In case where the boy has had
no learning at all, we have had the
stolid picture of the man with the hoe
"the emptiness of ages in his face,"
ga thing that grieves not and that
never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, brother to the
OK
Millet's picture and Markham's poem
arraign with terrific emphasis the
wrong education, or the lack of all edu.
cation, that for ages past have been the
lot of the children on the farm. Not
until recent years has the world come
p recognize that agricultural pursuits
esquire as high form of development,
and as large a degree of intellectual
power, as may be required in any other
department of human endeavor.
The country boy will never stay ON
the farm until he has been taught at
home and at school how to find the
beauty and the profit and the power
that reside in the fields as they are to
be found nowhere else. We are late in
learning, but are nevertheless learning
at last, that it is the business of the
school to train the children for the life
they are to lead after they have left the
school.
INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS ARE NUMEROUS.
In recent years every State in the
Union has estab lished, somewhere with.
in the confines of the common wealth. a
technical school of agriculture and
mechanic arts. This is we'll; but it
does not go far enough. We must put
into the public schools, the primary
schools for the masses, such elementary
branches of study as will be immedi.
ately and directly helpful in the train.
ing of our children for agricultural
pursuits. AT least two thirds of our
school population in the South must of
necessity spend their lives on the farm.
Nature studies. the elements of biology.
the elements Of chemistry, how plants
grow. how soils are enriched and i'm.
poverished. how lands may be terraced.
and a thousand forms of elemental
instruction can be taught in the schools
with infinitely greater results so far as
intellectual development goes, than by
The continued use of many branches Of
study that have come down to MS by
tradition from the monks ind the mo.
nasteries of ages past
The dead languages are good in their
way and no intelligent man will sneak
lightly of their educational value. Init
there are living languages in plants and
blades of grass, and soils and stones.
and streams, and birds, and flowers.
that appeal with infinite delight and
foster unmeasured gre 18th Ia the heart
OF child. The great minds who have
done the most and the best for this
world, even in literature. in art and in
science have come from the very heart
OF nature, and mature never vet he.
trayed the heart that loved her." The
Bard of Avon even, who tuned our
English tongue to higher and sweeter
notes than e'er before were heard, nut
his ear close to the meadow land and