Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1908-05-07
FARM BOY HAS BEST OF IT
VIII Be Most Useful Man OF
His Time and Will Excite
Admiration.
BY CLINTON NJ. sHu1rz.

generation. He will be the most useful
man of his time and his environment
and condition will excite universal ad-
miration.
The most remarkable movement in
the progress of education to-day is
the training of the farm boy. He is
being taught all the sciences of farm
Ing and is learning the secrets of the
soil which his father and grandfather
were never able to solve. He is being
taught how to increase the worlds sup
ply of food by the application of prac-
teal scientific knowledge; what the
soil can be made to produce by the
Intelligent selection of seed and the
right cultivation of crops. He is learn
Ing how to develop to the highest stand
ard every animal that is raised on the
farm; he is being taught how to make
use of the by-products of the farm; he
is learning that things which have been
allowed to go to waste can now be
turned into money by the application
of scientific knowledge.
Heretofore the education of the farm
boy has led directly away from the
farm. He learned little at the district
school that would be useful to him in
his fathers business. His education
brought to his mind no conception of
the profits of scientific agriculture or
the pleasure and independence of farm
life, and in many cases caused unrest
discomfort and even contempt for the
life of a farmer
. As soon as he was through with his
home school he was sent to the high
school of the village or the preparatory
school of the college, where he quickly
lost what little remaining interest he
possessed in farm life. Naturally he
went to the cities and towns to earn a
living, because he had never been
taught of the farm. To him life on
the farm was hopeless drudgery-dull
uninteresting, narrow, sordid and re-
pulsive. He has been forced out of the
home life and to-day stands behind
desks in offices and stores in the cities,
poorly paid and elling out a doubtful
existence, while behind him lies the
home farm that possesses all the ele-
ments of wealth, happiness and indie
pendence.
But it must be remembered that the
proportion of farm boys who ever get
beyond the confines of the rural school
house is pitifully small. No more
than one in every thousand ever adj
vances to the work in the high schools
and rot more than one in 10000 ever
reaches the university from the high
school. These proportions are start
ling, but they are true. and emphasize
vividly the necessity for a complete
revolution of the present system of
education in tie country
Tie great majority of boys who leave
the farm for cities are totally united
by the hleager education they have re-
ceived TO enter into business and in
dustrial life, except in the humblest,
way. They are mt only for common
labor. They must commence at the
bottom, and having no special advan-
tages of education and being entirely
without business experience or train
ing are terribly Handicapped in the
race for success, and invariably remain
in the lowest strata of commercial life.
The result is seen in the overcrowded
labor market and the general unsatis-
factory conditions that prevail among
the uneducated classes in all large
cities.
1t is true that the life blood of the
cities is drawn from the farm. The
most notable men of our times have
come from the country. 1t is stated on
the highest authority that 80 per cent
of the successful business men Of Bos-
ton. New York, Chicago and other large
cities are country bred boys. But they
are boys who have had the advantage
of college education. They are not
the boys who have stopped at the coun-
try school. 1t is the college bred coun-
try boy who succeeds in the cities.
The rush of the uneducated from the
farm to the city must be checked. The
farm boy must first be interested in
his home life. Then he must be taught
the possibilities Of money making on
the farm. His eyes must be opened
to the beauties of nature and his mind
must be uplifted and inspired with the
Independence, dignity and intellectual
enjoyment of farm life.
Education is not all book learning.
Education is the knowledge of life, a
perception of relations, and the boy
who knows most about the visible man
ifestations of life as expressed in the
work of insects, the growth of trees,
the development Of wild and domestic
animals, is better educated than the
boy who learns nothing but books.
In the city there are schools of man
nal training, chemistry and the arts of
rvery branch Of business. The city boy
Is taught how to make money in the
city, but the country boy is to-day alb
solutely without the means of learn
Ing the very things of the life into
which he was born. There are 10000
farmers to every 1000 merchants or
professional men, but while the latter
class receive the highest training for
their work in life the 10000 farmers
are left alone to struggle through life
without help and without hope.
Because there are no schools for the
10000 farm boys they are forced by
their ambition, their love Of freedom,
their desire for better things to enter
professional or commercial life. 1t fol-
lows that the great majority Of these
boys are totally untitled by tempera-
ment, inclination and capacity to sue
coed along these lines. That is why
there are so many square pegs in round
holes. Give these boys the educational
opportunities and advantages in scien-
tif1c farm work and they will be
brought to that dignity, that perfection
and independence to which the parasit-
zeal class can never attain and thus
they will become the uncrowned kings
pf creation.
Happily. the tide is turning in the