The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-08-16

by city people 4or city people. and the
country school finds it second hand, i'll
fitting and unattractive. To this fact
more than to any other, perhaps. Is due
the backwardness of education In agri-
cultural States The school has not taken
insects, flowers. the weather. the forests
and the sky-from all these things it has
stood apart, while it has babbled of sub
jects unfamiliar and undressing to the
country-bred child. All rural education
has been hacked and hewed to fit the Pro
Crustean bed of tay I-Cy model.
A striking protest against the present
irrational policy is found n a private
letter now before me, written by one of
the most efficient American professors Of
agriculture:
statistics show that in this State each
year sixty young men take up the ministry,
siXty-siX law and seventy-two medicine,
while 10000 annually take up agriculture
as a gainful pursuit But our school
books are written for the few, not the
many. Put such words as phos-
phate, protein and nitrogen prominently
IN our spelling books, and they will not
| be as meaningless as Greek to adult farm
ers. Let nature-lore give freshness to
orr reading-tooks ard the mass of coun-
/ try boys will not be so blind to the
everyday life about them. Let our arith-
metics apply addition, subtraction. per
centage and common fractions to agri-
cultural problems, and the farm boy will
see the need of education as preparation
for his own life work. At present, how
ever, the entire curriculum leads away
| from the farm"
Nor is it in the West and South alone
that this evil exists. Doctor John Graham
Brooks, of Cambridge Massachusetts,, has
! said:
Look with me into an average Massa
chusetts schoolhouse. Its arithmetic, its
geography, its penmanship. its book
keeping and it's reading book appeal to the
Imagination of the farmers child are still
dominated by clerk and trading point of
view. AS one listens to the teaching, it
is as if the one object We're to create dis
content with the country life, to make
every bright child hate his surroundings
The instruction seems to assume the fail
ure of the farm life. The inexhaustible
charm and resource of the country have
no part In TINS teachlng
This is severe Indictment of our pres
ent methods, but it Is not whit too Sc
we're. To find proof you nave only to ex
anime the Textbook in use in cur rural
schools. Apparently they have been writ
ten solely for city children, sons and
daughters of clerks, merchants, bankers
and traders. They do not even suggest
| to the farmers child the possibilities of
science and training n agricultural work.
On the contrary the E-tpl Il and logical
| inference from cur general scheme of
rural instruction Is that education is not
indispensable to the farmer, but is intend
ed chiefly for The commercial and profess
sional classes.
fake, for example, he first study men
toned by Doctor Brooks-aIithmetic. Pick
up any high-grade rithmetc in use in the
rural schools and you will find no lack
of attention to banking and commissions
and foreign exchange and commercial af-
fairs generally. But agriculture rises to
no such dignity-not even N schools that
will furnish five times as many recruits
for the farm as for the city Moreover,
you will find special departments for com
mon mechanical -plastering stone
work, carpenterng, and even gauging and
| lumber measuring, subjects quite as diff
fcult to teach or to understand as the
rules for compromising feeding rations,
or mixing fertilizers. But in no school ari-
thmetic have | ever found one reference
to either of these important forms of ag-
ricultural mathematics You would never
learn from these textbooks that farming
calls for anything more than the dull
drudgery that blghted and brutalized
Millet's MAN With the Hoe" Shall we
marvel, then, that the boy who expects
to farm finds little to encourage regular
attendance on such schools, and his tax
paying father little to encourage more lib
eral support?
True the arithmetcs give some exam
smplcs based on farming, but there are
comparatively lew of these, and there are
practically none that illustrate the pos
sibilities of applied science as a profit
Fmaking factor in agricultural work Your
class of bright farmer boys, for example
may have learned all the mathematical
formulas relating to stocks insurance and
banking, but it is not at all improbable
that nine-tenths Of them have never seen
arithmetic applied to agriculture in such
practical problems as the following;
|
izer containing per cent. nitogen, 8
per cent. phesphorie acid and per cent
potash; nitrogen being worth IA cents a
pound. phosphoric acid cents, and potash
3 cents"
1.-TWO dairy cows produce each 5000
pounds of milk year The butter-fat
test of No. is 4.6 per cent and of No.
p, 6.3 per cent. Butter selling for %
cents pound. how much greater is the
yearly income from No. than from No
Il? (Note-One pound of butter.fat is
equivalent to 1 1-6 pounds butter
Calculate the nutritive ratio in feed
ing ration supplying 3 pounds protein,
pound fat and IA pounds carbohydrates.
| ''The analyses of cotton seed meal, muri-
ate of potash and phosphoric acid being
given, in what proportion shall we mix,
using the necessary filler, to get a fer
tilizer with 9 per cent. phosphoric acid,
5 per. cent. nitrogen and 8 per cen.
| potash?"
There is nothing impractical or extreme
in such problems as these; hey might
well be given in any arithmetic n use in
rural schools. To the larger number of