The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1904-08-02
AGRICULTURE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

there was little reason for teaching agriculture i'm
the schools when this was the case. But now we
have found out a good many things about the
principles underlying agriculture in just the same
way we have found out about the truths funda-
mental to arithemetic, grammar and other studies
in our common school courses. This being the
case, the time has come then to teach agriculture
in the schools. In fact, our government has been
one that recognizes the public schools as a means
of getting facts before the people, and of educat-
ing them. The most of us get all of our funda-
mental knowledge in the schools. We gain expert
ence out of the school, but we get fundamental
knowledge when we are boys and girls in the
school-room. So with agriculture. We have
found out a good many things about this, the
greatest of all industries, and if we have learned
anything of value, then where is a better place to
bring those facts and the knowledge they suggest
than in the school?
Do you ask why are our boys leaving
the farm? 1t seems to me that this is the answer:
The farmers child enters our public school. He
is taught to read, write and spell. He is then
taught arithmetic and grammar. If he shows
a special desire for knowledge, and his father
can spare him from the farm, he may be given in
struction in Greek, Latin, English literature, and
modern and ancient history. 1t is then thought
IudG ue Has 0uOuSu GuuCdIlOu W d dTIucT
and he is taken from school and put to work on
the farm. He has spent fourteen or eighteen
years of his life studying a smattering of every
thing in the educational calendar, except the one
industry, the special knowledge of which is large
ly to determine his success or failure in life. This
boy watches the corn plant from day to day as it
grows to maturity, but he is altogether ignorant
of the method of it's growth. He can tell you
the name of every Roman that ever spoke in the
Roman Senate, but to save his life he cannot
explain how the plant takes its food from the air.
and carries it to the leaves and there converts
it into available plant food. He can relate to
you in an interesting way the retreat of the ten
thousand, but he cannot tell you how to stop the
advance of an army of bugs across his fathers
potato patch. He is no block-head. lie can take
a pencil and paper and draw any figure and prove
any problems in geometry, but with all his book
learning he cannot tell you how the soil can be
better titled in order to better conserve the mois-
ture through the coming drought. He sees his
school chums go off to college and study law or
medicine, or business, and he is at home on the
farm as ignorant of his occupation as the day he
began it. He is Disguised with the farm and
farm life, because nothing in his education has
ever suggested a way for him to solve problems
with which he is confronted, and thus disguised
he leaves the farm ana goes . lnCo IHe clCy' ahu
we occasionally hear of him there making a sue
cess, but the ninety and nine-no glowing report
is heard of them. This boys education has driven
him from the farm. The moment you give him an
agricultural education you have solved the ques-
ton of keeping him on the farm.
Nor do l think instruction in agriculture in
our schools should be merely confined to the farm
er bow. 1t does not matter what profession a
Young man follows in name, he is more or less di-
rectly interested in agriculture. If he is to be a