Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1904-09-09
Reform in Education.


cal reform in our school system. One of
the things that should be reformed is out
lined in the following article from the
N. E. Farmer:
serted farms in Vermont and the diff
Guilty experienced in obtaining help upon
those which are being worked has led
to much discussion as to why native
born Nermonters do not stay upon the
farms, but prefer to seek other occupa-
tions III the cities. Studying the situa-
ton, some have become quite grounded
in the conviction that young Vermont
has loaiing tendencies and that the
states natural industries must gradually
ayithrough neglect There have been
desperate efforts to brighten up the UNI
fashionable old calling farming with
attractive side lines. trout-rasing, the
cultivation of willows, etc., in the hope
of beguiling wandering Vermont boys
back to their ancestral acres. But this
is IA superficial treatment of a great sub
Iceland utterly futile.
1--WE of New England have only our
own ignorance and misjudgement in
the past to blame for these conditions.
Agriculture, one of the grandest and
most dignitied of occupations, involving,
as it does, all the strangely simple yet
deeply intricate secrets of earth and
sky,-natures first principles-we have
dressed up in clowns clothing and Carl
catured As calling for the ignorant
and unframed to follow; and then we
have established an educational system
that Grams our children's heads with
little of every thing in the world ex-
cept knowledge. of 1.-The. principles of
agriculture, We train their taste and
impulses towards New York and Boston,
and then wonder why they leave the
farms. There is no other business a.
mOng those from which we expect our
sons to choose which we should not
prepare them, by special training, to
enter. We fit them with great care
for any of the different forms Of struggle
with human conditions; but the farmer
who wrestIes for his blessing with the
mighty clements of Gods creation, is
expected to enter the fray quite unpre-
pared-wOrse than that, because weak
ened for it by his superficial schooling.
Its another case OF Punchmello ana
sweet COlumbine lie was the truest.
most uneelhsh lover she had, but she
did not know it-she only saw his cap
and bells, his antics and grimaces. Old
agriculture is the best and surest re-
source for most of our New England
boys, but they don't know it-they only
see the overalls and the dung-fork, the
tumble-down barns and unkempt door
yards.
And so many of them go away to
seek fortune in the cities and become
pale, etfeminate clerks, languid book
keepers, or stenographers with wierd
conceptions of photography, punctuation
and capitalization. Their fathers hire
Norwegians or Polanders to work for
them on the farms, or else do the work
themselves until they wear out or give
up the farm in despair And there we
are.
There is no use in putting any sort
of frills or furbelows on to staid, old
agriculture, thinking to make it the
fad and plaything of idle frivolity. It's
masqueraded too long, already. Give
it chance for recognition. Only strip
off the Reuben makeup and let it appear
to the coming generation in its real
Observation-Disclosures, dependable, dig
nified, honorable, abiding.
Then teach the children how to
grasp its opportunities and gain its re-
wards