Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1912-03-15
Education and Culture for Rural
Life,

Life.
In the current number of the Bulletin
of the Vermont Library Commission,
Principal Morrill, has some very sensible
remarks on rural education. He pune
lures the fallacies of those who would
give the children of farmers an inferior
education under the guise of special
education for the farm. His article is
in part as follows:
believe that the best antidote for the
ills and discomfort of country life is true
culture of body, mind, and spirit and
that one of the best means of mind and
spirit culture is comradeship with good
books.
The proposition that enlightenment
should be withheld from any class or
condition of people is unthinkable to the
American mind Bismark once eX
pressed fear of the educated prole
tariat" and would keep the poor, as
we'll as the vicious, uneducated, as one
would keep an over-frisky horse with
out oats. We are free from such heresy!
But we need not look far abroad to find
that we are not so free from another
kind of educational heresy namely:
That the sons and daughters of rural
people should be educated differently
from those of urban people. Under
such policy education would be pro-
cess of emphasizing and widening dis
tinctions between groups, rather than
softening differences and obliterating
barriers.
Our educational system should surely
provide opportunities for training in
scientific agriculture; the application of
the arts and sciences to agriculture
should receive as serious attention as
their application to the so-called pro-
LESSONS. But, as professional training
requires foundation of broad and gen.
eral culture, so must agricultural edu-
cation, to be efficient, have the same
foundation. To provide this is the work
of the public schools; to nourish it and
so keep alive interest in and sympathy
with the affairs of ones fellow men, is
the province of the public library.
If the future of Vermont lies in the
development of agriculture, then its flu
ture destines depend upon those who
occupy its farms, and in the last analy-
sis, who shall occupy the farms will be
determined by the attractions of farm
life. Without question, the best way to
make farming attractive to intelligent
men is to teach men to farm intelligent.
ly. But, when education is a factor in
the development of agriculture, it must
be remembered that to educate for the
farm is one thing, while to educate tC
the farm may be a far different thing
| The first means conservation of rura
life, the second means conservation OF
rustic life.
When education, culture, social sym
patty, and liberality of spirit become
common in any calling, men of thes,
qualities are bound to be attracted t.
that calling. Hence the true educa
tional policy of an agricultural state il
to see that her rural children are trained
in the best qualities of manhood anC
womanhood, and to beware of the fal
lacy that these may be inculcated by
teaching merely agriculture. "Mor,
young men and women on the farms
is an excellent sentiment, but "bettel
young men and women on the farms" il
a more inspiring sentiment. The frs
may fairly be called an industrial prob
lem; the second is surely an educationa
problem.
The application of science to farming
so that farming without brains no longe
pays, and the clearer knowledge of tn
close relation of agriculture to tn,
worlds prosperity and progress, mean
that the farmer of the immediate flu
ture must be, in the best sense, maj
of the world. All the so-called "bes
farming methods" will not save him i
he tries to live a life of isolation ant
self sufficiency. He will need to be il
touch with other things besides the ex
pertinent station and the weather bu
reau; for they alone can not make thu
modern farmer. And his value will b.