The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1903-08-18

1 uiA4uS III
more than 10 any other, perhaps. Is due
the backwardness Of education IN agri-
cultural States. The school has not taken
hold on farm hfe. Plants. soils, ANIMALS.
| insects. flowers. the weather. the forests
and the sky-from al these things 1t has
stood apart. while 1t has babbled OF sub
jects unfamiliar and uninterestIns TO the
country-bred child. All rural education
has been hacked and hewed 10 III the Pro
crustean bed or - ~,y model.
AIstrikng protest against the present
irrational policy l. found n a private
letter now before me, written by one OF
the mort efficient American professors OF
| agriculture:
statistics show that IN this State each
yeal sixty young men cake up the ministry.
Sixty-six law and seventy-two medicine.
while Is, 900 annually take up agriculture
IS 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 viii not
be as meaningless az Greek to adult farm
| ers. Let nature-lore give freshness to
orr reading-books and the mass OF coun-
try boys viii not be SO blind TO the
everyday life about them. Let our arlth-
metics apply addition. subtraction, per
centage and common fractions to agrl-
cultural problems, and the farm Toy viii
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, 1t
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 tall-
ure of the farm life. The inexhaustible
charm and resource of the country have
no part IN this teaching
This is a severe indictment of our pres
| cnt methods, but it is not a whit too Sc
we're. To find proof you nave only to ex-
| amlne the textbooks IN use IN our 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 in agricultural work.
On the contrary, the natural and logical
| inference from our 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.
Take, for example, the first study men
toned by Doctor Brooks-arithmetic. Pick
up any high-grade arithmetic 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 di~gnity-not even n schools that
will furnish five times as many recruits
for the farm IS for the city. Moreover,
you will find special departments for com
nor mechanical misunderstanding, stone
work, carpentering, and even gauging and
lumber measuring, subjects quite as diff
fcult to teach or to understand as the
rules for compounding feeding %rations,
or mixing fertilizers. But in no school arr
thmetic have l 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 blighted and brutalized
Mlllets 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 arithmetics give some exam
amples 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
making 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:
"Calculate the value of a ton of fertil-
lzer containing 2 per cent. n~itogen, s
per cent. phosphoric acid and . per cent.
potash; nitrogen being worth IA cents a
pound, phospAoric acid 4 cents, and potash
5 cents
Two dairy cows produce each 5000
pounds OF milk a year. The butter-fat
test OF No. l Is 4.6 per cent, and of No.
=, 63 Per cent. Butter selling for %
cents a pound, how much greater is the
yearly income from No. 2 than from No.
|? (Note-One pound of butter-fat IS
equivalent to l 1-6 pounds butter"
Calculate the nutritive ratio in a feed
ing ration supplying 9 pounds protein. /
pound fat and IA pounds carbohydrates
The analyses of cotton seed meal, mrri-
ate OF potash and phosphoric acid being
given, IN what proportion shall we mix.
using the necessary filler, to get a fer
%tllzer with 8 per cent. phosphoric acid.
5 per cent. nitrogen and 3 per cen
pOtash?'
There IS nothing impractical or extreme
IN sucii problems as these; .hey might
well be given in any arithmetic IN use IN
rural schools. To the larger number OF
pupils they would be of immensely greater
practical value than examples based on
commercial affairs, while as intellectual
gymnastics the agricultural problems
EWould be as good. Of course, the farm