LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Gl FT OF 
 
 ^ 
 
 Class 
 
THE NEXT STEP 
 
 IN 
 
 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 
 
 OR 
 
 THE PLACE OF AGRICULTURE IN OUR 
 AMERICAN SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 E. DAVENPORT 
 
 Dean of the College of Agriculture and Director of 
 
 the Agricultural Experiment Station, 
 
 University of Illinois 
 
 URBANA, ILLINOIS 
 

 This address was read first at Illinois College, Jacksonville, 
 October 31, 1907, and after some alterations read, as here printed, 
 at Missouri State University, Columbia, January 9, 1908. 
 
THE NEXT STEP IN AGRICULTURAL 
 EDUCATION 
 
 OR 
 
 THE PLACE OF AGRICULTURE IN OUR AMERICAN 
 SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 
 
 The most significant fact in the educational world to-day 
 is the demand that agriculture be taught in the public schools. 
 
 This is a radically new movement in education. Twen- 
 ty-five years ago fifteen years ago it was unheard of. At 
 that time, had the proposition been made, it would have inter- 
 ested neither the farmer nor the educator ; the one would have 
 been indifferent, the other would have been horrified or 
 amazed, according as the humor of it might have struck him. 
 To-day it is a live problem in which both the farmer and the 
 educator are seriously interested, and it is one whose solution 
 concerns them both. 
 
 Thinking men of all classes are now agreed that in some 
 way and after some fashion agriculture must be taught in our 
 public schools, both primary and secondary ; meaning by agri- 
 culture not only the occupation of farming, but also the life 
 of the farmer and the genius and spirit of country affairs ; for 
 agriculture is not only a profession but it is a mode of life. 
 It is, of course, unnecessary to emphasize the peculiar impor- 
 tance of teaching the fundamental principles and practices 
 necessary to permanent systems of successful agriculture. 
 Other great industries are commonly controlled from central 
 offices, but every farmer must have knowledge sufficient to 
 make him intelligent concerning methods essential to perma- 
 nent agricultural prosperity. 
 
 1 
 
 166445 
 
Now, two radically different methods have been proposed 
 for meeting this new educational demand in the secondary 
 schools. The one method proposes a separate system of schools 
 for country people, to be known as agricultural high schools, 
 farm schools, etc., in which agriculture for boys and domestic 
 science for girls should be the leading subjects taught, assum- 
 ing that existing high schools in general shall be known and 
 considered as "city schools," whose business it is to minister 
 to the people of the cities and their concerns as the agricul- 
 tural schools should minister to the affairs of the country. 
 Several of these agricultural high schools have been already 
 established, notably in Wisconsin and Georgia, and a bill 
 which is now in Congress is designed to make the distinction 
 not only clear but permanent, as between agricultural high 
 schools that serve the people and interests of the country, and 
 city high schools that serve the people and interests of the city. 
 
 The other method proposes not one system of secondary 
 schools for the country and another for the city, but a single 
 system for both. It proposes, for example, that the present 
 system of high schools should not be denominated "city high 
 schools" with a narrow range of interests, but that they should 
 be so expanded in personnel and equipment, and so enriched 
 in courses, as to minister to the natural interests of their en- 
 vironment, whatever they may be, agricultural, mechanical, 
 commercial, literary, and what not; and that the present un- 
 graded schools in the thinly populated country districts shall 
 be condensed into larger and stronger units, meeting as they 
 are able the educational needs of their communities, and evolv- 
 ing naturally and ultimately into true secondary schools. 
 
 The one proposal is logically for as many systems and 
 types of schools as there are distinct interests and lines of 
 instruction ; the other is for a single system of education, with 
 highly differentiated courses taught in the same schools. The 
 one proposes to insert itself by main strength into the very 
 heart of our system of secondary education ; the other must of 
 necessity develop by gradual process. 
 
 This demand has assumed, therefore, serious proportions 
 so far as secondary schools are concerned, and in a very large 
 
sense we are at the parting ,of the ways in this matter. 
 The demand for education in agriculture has come to stay. 
 Indeed, it is but a part of a larger movement for industrial 
 education ; meaning by that, education with a view to 
 some form of useful service in the fundamental industries 
 as well as in the so-called learned professions. This demand 
 has not only come to stay, but it has the sympathy and 
 earnest support of the masses of the people and the very 
 large majority of our best educators. The only substantial 
 difference of opinion is as to the best method of procedure, 
 whether by a series of schools of as many distinct types as 
 there are occupations and interests, or by a single system of 
 schools with separate courses. Which shall be adopted as the 
 final American policy of education is a matter before us for 
 discussion and there is at present no deeper educational prob- 
 lem and more depends upon what we actually do now within 
 the next five years, than it can depend on what we think and 
 say and try to do twenty-five years -from now. 
 
 This issue is upon philosophies of education so widely dif- 
 ferent that the choice once rnade will be final, and the con- 
 sequences well-nigh irretrievable. I am one who firmly be- 
 lieves that within the next ten years we shall decide for all 
 time whether we shall reap the full fruits of our thoroughly 
 unique educational opportunities in America, or whether we 
 shall needlessly follow in the footsteps of Europe, where social 
 distinctions were established, and the peasant classes fully 
 fixed, long before the modern age of universal education was 
 thought of. 
 
 Personally, I do not believe in that philosophy of education 
 which would establish separate schools for the various indus- 
 tries and occupations of life. I greatly prefer that theory of 
 social and industrial development which would establish and 
 maintain a single system of schools wherein the people of all 
 classes should be educated together, distinct courses being 
 framed and conducted for the benefit 'of each in so far as the 
 interests differ from those of the common mass or of other 
 professions. My reasons for this preference are briefly as 
 follows : \ 
 
I. Separate schools can never be so good. This is axio- 
 matic for both economic and pedagogic reasons. No school 
 designed to minister to a single class of people and to a single 
 line of interests can ever be so well equipped in the funda- 
 mental arts and sciences in chemistry, biology, physics, 
 history, literature, economics, and the so-called humanities 
 generally no such school can be so well equipped as can 
 one designed to minister broadly to a variety of interests. 
 Indeed, even if the attempt is made and a wide range of sub- 
 jects taught, these same subjects will of necessity be studied 
 and taught from a comparatively narrow standpoint. Every 
 teacher knows and every investigator knows that in order to 
 develop a subject well, either for purposes of instruction or of 
 research, it is necessary to establish and maintain a favorable 
 atmosphere for that particular field of mental activity, and 
 this atmosphere is at its best only in the presence of students 
 interested mainly in that subject; that is to say, there is no such 
 favorable place in which the farmer may study chemistry as 
 in company with others, not merely of his own kind but of 
 those who believe that chemistry is the greatest thing on 
 earth. There is no such place for the farmer to study history, 
 and to learn to see himself as others see him, as where he 
 studies history in company with those whose chief interest is 
 not in agriculture or in engineering or in teaching, but rather 
 in history itself, by which we study the true significance of 
 world movements of all classes, and come to know things 
 past and present in their true perspective. That is to say, 
 every man ought to be educated in an atmosphere not espe- 
 cially prepared for him and his own kind, but in an atmos- 
 phere and an environment much broader than his own 
 interests. In this country, if our democratic institutions 
 are to be preserved, and if our people are to labor together in 
 peace and understanding, all classes must be educated in an 
 atmosphere at least as liberal and as broad as all the interests 
 of any single community can make it. 
 
 In saying this, I do not overlook the fact that the separate 
 agricultural school has certain distinct advantages. They are 
 the same advantages that are enjoyed by any other industrial 
 
school, or even a theological seminary, arising from the 
 comparative simplicity of the educational contract they 
 undertake. It is a fact, of course, that any school founded, 
 manned, and equipped to do a single thing and minister to a 
 single interest gains much in directness by its simplified prob- 
 lem, and by the direct methods it naturally employs. But 
 it loses in breadth and relative values, as has been indicated, 
 and the best proof of it is that none of the separate schools 
 yet founded offer as much even in science as the nearby high 
 schools; and what they achieve is industrial training rather 
 than industrial education the training of the operative rather 
 than the education of the citizen. 
 
 Sir James Bryce tells us that the chief purpose in studying 
 history is to throw light upon our present action and future 
 policies, because in a large sense history does repeat itself. 
 In this connection it is well to remind ourselves that agricul- 
 tural and mechanical education started in this country in sep- 
 arate colleges. This was necessary because of the attitude 
 of old line colleges of that day concerning industrial educa- 
 tion. But that attitude has entirely changed, and to-day these 
 two fundamental industries are strongest, both in instruction 
 and research not in the separate agricultural and mechanical 
 colleges, but in our greatest universities, where all forms of 
 education are imparted, and where American energy and 
 American citizenship are trained in a cosmopolitan atmos- 
 phere. Not only is this true, but the proportion of agricultural 
 students who return to the farm is greater from our universi- 
 ties than from our separate agricultural colleges, to say noth- 
 ing of the masses of city boys directed countryward. 
 
 So I return to my first assertion, viz., that both from the 
 nature of the case and from the experience of the past we 
 may fairly conclude that separate schools are inferior schools ; 
 that they lose more in breadth than they gain in directness, 
 and can never rank in real service to that other type which 
 ministers to many interests and gains directness by its dis- 
 tinctly separate courses. 
 
 2. Separate schools will tend strongly to peasantize the 
 farmers. To undertake to train the children of farmers 
 
in a system of inferior schools, such as these must inevitably 
 be, with little knowledge of and less regard for the affairs of 
 other people such an attempt, if it succeeds, will peasantize 
 the farmers in America more rapidly and more certainly than 
 they were peasantized by other causes in Europe generations 
 ago. 
 
 To segregate any class of people from the common mass, 
 and to educate it by itself and solely with reference to its 
 own affairs, is to make it narrower and more bigoted genera- 
 tion by generation. It is to substitute training for education 
 and to breed distrust and hatred in the body politic. Knowl- 
 edge is necessary to a just appreciation of other people and 
 their professions and mode of life; with this only can a man 
 respect his own calling as he ought and love his neighbor as 
 he should. We cannot segregate and make an educational 
 cleavage at the line of occupations except to the common peril. 
 
 Reduced to its lowest terms, one of the present proposi- 
 tions is to transfer bodily the European peasant school to 
 American country soil, the inevitable consequences of which 
 are not difficult to foresee. 
 
 We may one day need the real trade school in agriculture 
 the form of instruction that aims at training rather than edu- 
 cation ; at information rather than development ; at mediocrity 
 and below rather than mediocrity and above. This time may 
 come, but it is not here now, and our greatest present need in 
 agriculture is to educate the land-owners rather than their 
 hired operatives; to educate a class of people upon the land 
 that are in every way the equal of their compatriots in the 
 city or anywhere else. 
 
 The European peasant belongs to a class whose economic 
 and social status was fixed generations ago by a variety of 
 causes, mostly political; and when the problem of universal 
 education came up for solution there the only way in which 
 the benefits of education could be approximately enjoyed by 
 all the people was to found a system of peasant schools which 
 should secure results with a maximum of manual training and 
 a minimum of mental education. How difficult of achieve- 
 ment was even this step, will be appreciated by any student 
 
of Irish industrial history, or by any one who has read Sir 
 Horace Plunkett's "Ireland in the New Century." 
 
 When these times come to this country, if they ever do, 
 I fervently hope that by that time our secondary schools will 
 have become so well organized and so broadly equipped as 
 to handle the trade school together with that higher form of 
 industrial education which now engages our attention. 
 
 The American farmer is not a peasant. He has never yet 
 been peasantized, and I fervently hope he never will be peas- 
 antized. He belongs mostly to the ancient and honorable 
 Puritan stock descended from that great middle class of Eng- 
 land that came to this country to establish and maintain, not 
 aristocratic, but democratic institutions. This is the stock 
 that first felled trees, then built churches and school-houses, 
 and prepared to govern themselves and to found a nation 
 and a race whose institutions should rest on the intelligent 
 activity of all the people. 
 
 This stock has never been exceeded, not only for hardi- 
 hood and industry, but for its appreciation of the benefits of 
 higher education and of the better things of life. This people 
 held three things to be cardinal virtues to labor, to go to 
 church, and to go to school. This is the people that founded 
 Harvard College in the wilderness. It is from stock of this 
 sort that the typical American farmer is descended, and I 
 would see him so trained and so educated as to remain true 
 to his type for all time. This will require a training and an 
 education that cannot be imparted by any form of European 
 peasant school, however modified; but it will require the 
 best that modern human ingenuity can devise. This great 
 need will be met, when it is met if ever, not by old, but by 
 new systems of education, and they must be wrought by our- 
 selves to meet conditions here. 
 
 3. To educate the children of different classes separately 
 is to prevent that natural flow of individuals from one pro- 
 fession into another which is in every way desirable both 
 from the public and the private standpoint. If the children 
 of farmers are systematically put into schools where only 
 agriculture is taught, many a good lawyer and many a good 
 
citizen will be spoiled to make an indifferent farmer. Boys 
 do not necessarily inherit the father's profession. In a very 
 large sense their natural faculties come from that common 
 stock of human characters that constitute the heritage of the 
 race, and the individual has a right to an education that is 
 broader than the occupation and the narrow environment in 
 which he was born. True, he should be educated through and 
 to a large extent by means of his environment, because that 
 is the compass of his own experience ; but if we educate him 
 within his environment, we dwarf him in the process, and we 
 do not truly educate him. 
 
 Again, many a boy, city born, has the instinct to get back 
 to Nature. He should have at least a fair chance to do so. 
 Because a girl is born in the country is no sign in America 
 that she should be a farmer's wife; nor if she is born in the 
 city is it a sign that she should not. My plea is, in the name of 
 common sense and American citizenship, educate all these 
 people together in one school, with a curriculum varied enough 
 to fit for more than one occupation and more than one mode 
 of life, to the end that a man may follow the occupation of his 
 father or may change it, as he pleases ; but whether he follow 
 or whether he change he shall do so intelligently, and for a 
 reason, and in either case he shall have some knowledge of 
 and sympathy for the occupation and the life of his neighbor. 
 
 It is said that if you give a bright boy a good education 
 and broad associations, he will leave the farm, and the only 
 way to keep him there is to train him to be contented with a 
 humble life. That false theory of education was exploded 
 long ago. Experience has abundantly shown that education 
 does not necessarily result in taking people out of the country 
 except when that education is one-sided and faulty, as witness 
 the graduates from some of our greatest universities. I have 
 no sympathy with the plan of keeping boys on the farm by 
 the blindfolding process. 
 
 There was a time, now happily past, when the schools 
 ignored not only agriculture but all industry. Then unthink- 
 ing teachers advised bright boys and girls to "get an educa- 
 tion so they would not have to work." This sort of doctrine 
 
9 
 
 found fertile soil in the young of hard-working, self-denying 
 pioneers, and it was not strange that most young men who 
 had much contact with the schools were lost not only to the 
 farm but to industrial life. Then it was that men saw the 
 best of the young crowding into professions already over- 
 crowded, and they noted with sorrow and regret that edu- 
 cation served principally to draw men away from the useful 
 callings and to pile them up like salmon in the spawning sea- 
 son where they were not needed or wanted, and where little 
 awaited but their own destruction. 
 
 The country is, and always will be, the great breeding- 
 ground for the nation, and the consequence of this insane 
 movement cityward of the choicest men and minds could have 
 had but one final effect to put the brains in the city and the 
 brawn in the country. It was not strange that under con- 
 ditions such as these thinking men first denied higher educa- 
 tion to their young because of its inevitable consequences, 
 and then came to demand a form of education that should 
 really serve the needs of industrial people as well as those 
 of professional people. In this way arose the separate indus- 
 trial schools, but later experience has shown that one extreme 
 is as bad as the other that industrial training without edu- 
 cation is but little better than education without industry, 
 and that both will inevitably result in a most unfortunate 
 sorting process ; both alike will prevent that natural flow from 
 one profession or mode of life to another, so essential to meet 
 the natural desires of individuals, and to secure that homoge- 
 neousness of population with which only institutions such as 
 ours are safe, or even possible. 
 
 Though it is true that educators did not lead in the move- 
 ment for industrial education, it is true that they were quick 
 to see its significance, and to-day it is our greatest educators 
 and our best teachers who are the most earnest disciples of 
 the doctrine that a system of universal education should fit 
 for all the needful activities of a highly civilized race, to the 
 neglect of none and to the prejudice of none. 
 
 And this is a perfectly stupendous problem. Think of its 
 new complications ! In the old days all that was necessary was 
 
10 
 
 to maintain whatever schools could win support and teach 
 the things most easily taught without much regard to the 
 consequences. Now in these days of universal education we 
 must teach what the world needs to know for all its essential 
 activities, and we must so conduct our schools as not to 
 greatly disturb the economic or social balance of things; so 
 conduct them that the overflow from one occupation or class 
 shall be naturally compensated by a corresponding inflow of 
 equally desirable individuals from others all of which is 
 necessary if universal education is to be an unmixed blessing. 
 
 4. Secondary schools devoted solely to agriculture would 
 of necessity cover so much territory as to require the students 
 to board and room away from home. This for students of 
 the high school age is unthinkable. Every boy and every girl 
 in the early and middle "teens" should sleep every night under 
 the father's roof, and this can be if a community establishes 
 a single school capable of catering to all its needs, and does 
 not insist upon educating one class here and another there, 
 compelling long journeys to get to the right school. A single 
 agricultural school in ten counties, or in five counties, or in 
 one county think of it! 
 
 The problem of secondary education is very largely the 
 problem of the fourteen-year-old, and we should never rest 
 easy till every farmer's boy and girl may go to the nearest 
 high school, and there find instruction not only in agriculture 
 but in the other industries and professions which concern the 
 community, and after having lived the day in an atmosphere 
 broader than their own studies go home again at night to 
 dream of what a great thing the world is and to wake with an 
 intelligent appreciation of the place in it which they propose 
 to occupy. 
 
 5. Agriculture not only needs contact with other interests, 
 but they need contact with agriculture. Every one who has 
 had experience with the introduction of agriculture into our 
 state universities will bear witness that the benefits of asso- 
 ciation are mutual. 
 
 In the university which I have the honor to serve, our 
 agricultural students not only get a training and a breadth of 
 
11 
 
 vision which they could never get in an institution devoted 
 solely to their own interests, but their presence on the campus 
 is of distinct advantage to the other students. Their direct- 
 ness and their practical methods of work are wholesome to 
 the institution, at least they are so declared by the non-agri- 
 cultural professors and students alike. In every way, as I 
 see it, much is lost and nothing gained by separating the stu- 
 dents of different classes and educating them apart, each in 
 the occupation of the father. 
 
 Nor would I put all the so-called industries in one class of 
 schools and the professions in another. In a large sense all 
 study is professional, and in a very large sense, indeed, it is 
 also industrial. Some portion of the training of every indi- 
 vidual should be industrial, even manual, and another portion 
 of the training of every individual should be distinctly mental, 
 until habits of thought are formed quite independent of material 
 activity. For these reasons, which are fundamental, I would 
 not separate industry from any of our schools. I would make 
 it an integral part of every curriculum, its proportion and 
 character depending upon the prospective profession of the 
 individual; but above all I would have the essence of all 
 occupations, or at least of as many as possible, represented 
 in the same school. 
 
 My point is, if all these subjects and professional points of 
 view are offered in the same school with more than one avenue 
 into life, then the opportunity is presented for the individual 
 to acquire professional knowledge and skill without becoming 
 narrow as a man. If farmers and lawyers and editors and 
 engineers and artists and merchants are educated separately 
 they will either hate or despise each other, or both; if they 
 are educated together, each will acquire, besides proficiency 
 in his own line, a sympathy for others that comes so easily 
 with that partial knowledge and acquaintance through daily 
 association in the school age, and that comes with so much 
 difficulty in any other way. A farmer at our university is a 
 little different man because law and economics and engineer- 
 ing and Greek are well taught in neighboring buildings, even 
 though he never take one of the courses laid down in the cat- 
 
12 
 
 alogue. The very fact that they are taught, and that he asso- 
 ciates with those who do take them all this has its effect, 
 and in a thousand ways a man absorbs something out of every 
 activity that is going on about him. My point again is that 
 this is the only adequate atmosphere in which to educate an 
 American citizen, whatever his occupation is to be. 
 
 6. To establish separate schools for agriculture is to 
 injure the development of existing high schools. These 
 schools are not "city schools" in any proper sense of the term. 
 The great bulk of them are located in small towns and vil- 
 lages in a distinctly rural environment. To denominate all 
 these as "city schools," to be devoted solely to the interests 
 of city people, is as absurd as it is unjust to them. These 
 schools like all others have the natural right to minister to 
 their constituency; but if now agriculture is to be put off into 
 a separate system of schools just because the high schools 
 have not yet taught the subject, then it will be easy, later on, 
 to cleave off another industrial slice, and again another until 
 the remnant that remains will be suited to nobody's need, un- 
 worthy alike of the school and the community it was estab- 
 lished to serve ; and instead of an organized system of effect- 
 ive education we shall have an incongruous medley of separate 
 and independent schools, each serving its little clientele in 
 a narrow way without much regard to the public good all 
 of which is against the true spirit of universal education. 
 
 The American high school is a new institution. It has 
 arisen from our determination to make education truly uni- 
 versal. Now, universal education means that all the people 
 shall be educated, and in such a way that all the activities 
 necessary to a highly civilized race may develop and go for- 
 ward. Only a small per cent of the people will ever go to 
 college and the experiment of universal education will be tried 
 out in the field of the secondary schools. These, more than the 
 colleges, will prove to be the agencies by which the masses of 
 the people will get their training and their trend. For this 
 reason the future welfare of these schools is to be specially 
 safeguarded; but every subject and interest that is taken 
 away from the high school in the present stage of its de- 
 
13 
 
 velopment lessens by that much its power to serve the com- 
 munity, and by that much it is a menace to its life and 
 efficiency and a check if not a bar to its further development. 
 
 7. Separate schools in agriculture will check the exten- 
 sion of high schools into country communities. High schools 
 started first in the cities it is true, but they are making their 
 way rapidly out into the country, a tendency that is to be 
 encouraged, more especially as they are showing a remark- 
 able disposition to respond to their environment. If the 
 interests are not divided it is entirely possible for any com- 
 munity, without going beyond driving limits, to throw all its 
 energies into a school of secondary grade and make it capable 
 of truly reflecting all its varied interests. This has been 
 found impossible where secondary education is primarily 
 under ecclesiastical influence; it will also be found impos- 
 sible if interests are to be divided and as many separate 
 schools established as there are interests to be served, but if 
 they will stay together and solve their problems as a unit 
 it is possible for every prosperous community to give its 
 young people at their very doors what is to all intents and 
 purposes a college education. 
 
 8. It is unnecessary to found separate schools in order 
 that agriculture shall be taught, and well taught. I am 
 enough of a partisan for agriculture to demand what is 
 needed for its development : to advocate, if necessary, separate 
 schools for this purpose, even if they should result in reducing 
 the scope and curtailing forever the full and possible develop- 
 ment of the high school. But it is unnecessary to resort to 
 this expedient in these days. It was necessary to do so in 
 an early day because of the indifferent, not to say unfriendly 
 attitude of the schools of the time, all of which were organ- 
 ized and conducted on the classical basis in order to fit for 
 the so-called learned professions. Such schools had little 
 knowledge of and less sympathy for industrial education, and 
 to get a start at all it was inevitable that separate schools 
 should be established to do what existing schools would not 
 in those days undertake. 
 
 But conditions are changed. We are living now in a new 
 
14 
 
 age in an age which recognizes that the highest purpose 
 in education is to get ready to live; that real education is 
 active, not passive; and that its fruitage is service, not per- 
 sonal gratification. We are living in an age which recognizes 
 that all forms of useful activity can be made yet more useful 
 by the knowledge and the graces of education; and that the 
 man himself is bigger than his occupation bigger than that 
 narrow avenue of public service through which he obtains his 
 livelihood and discharges the ordinary debts to Nature. We 
 have all learned this lesson, and by this time we ought to 
 have learned it well. It is true that education for industrial 
 people, and after that education in and for industry, arose 
 from the masses and was forced upon the schools. I do not 
 forget all this, but I beg to call your attention to the fact that 
 that early demand was a selfish one, a righteous selfishness, 
 it is true, but yet selfish. The masses wanted education for 
 their own purposes, and it caused no little jolt to the edu- 
 cational juggernaut when they proceeded to get it. But when 
 they had time to recover their breath, educators real edu- 
 cators began to take stock of the situation, and they have 
 commenced in these days a new policy of education in the 
 world ; a policy which if followed out will develop all our 
 resources, both industrial and intellectual ; a policy which will 
 take care of your personal needs, and mine, and yet which 
 is as broad as humanity and all its activities. This new 'policy 
 is working successfully in our great state universities where 
 men of all classes, aims, and prospects are educated together 
 from the standpoint not of private interest but of the public 
 good. The same policy has commenced its work in our sec- 
 ondary schools, and I am anxious above all other consider- 
 ations that these schools should solve this whole problem for 
 their communities; besides, I know educators well enough to 
 believe that they will earnestly undertake to do it if they are 
 entrusted with the duty, which is also a privilege. 
 
 These modern schools must have a fair chance. They are 
 new institutions; they have hardly been in the field a half 
 century, and how they have grown ! There are literally hun- 
 dreds of them that aje giving a better education than colleges 
 
15 
 
 gave a generation ago, and they have only commenced to 
 serve the people. If they have not yet solved all the problems 
 and taught all the subjects the people need, it is no sign that 
 they cannot or that they will not, and they should be given 
 the chance. Every new addition to an educational institution 
 not only serves a new public need, but it enriches all that was 
 before. All the modern secondary school needs in order to 
 serve us perfectly is men and money, and time to learn how. 
 
 There is no longer an "issue" in education certainly not 
 concerning the fundamental industries. I am told that in 
 certain remote sections of the country some people are still 
 fighting the Civil War, but most of us know that it is over. 
 The old issues are settled and dead and left behind. New 
 ones have arisen to command our attention, and it is un- 
 worthy of ourselves to expend our energies on lines of effort 
 long since rendered obsolete. 
 
 Yes, the old issues between the classics and the industries 
 are dead and the sooner they are forgotten the better. I have 
 been through this educational conflict myself and I know what 
 it is; but even the old soldier who insists upon fighting the 
 Civil War over again, to-day, will get no audience. New prob- 
 lems have arisen with the new generation, and this generation 
 proposes to stand on whatever has been gained before and 
 expend its energies in forward movements. We do well to 
 imitate its example in this matter. The new issues are con- 
 structive. 
 
 9. This demand that agriculture be taught in the public 
 schools is but part of the great modern movement for indus- 
 trial education. Whoever has lived close to the great heart of 
 the common people and has had his hand upon the pulse can- 
 not fail to have felt the throbbings of this new impulse for 
 more than a generation, or to have detected its first feeble 
 flutterings an hundred years ago. And whether he has had his 
 ear to the ground or not, whether he has lived close to the 
 heart of things or away in the upper atmospheres, no man can 
 now be ignorant of the great fact that a change is coming over 
 the spirit of the times regarding educational ideals ; a change 
 that is fundamental, and whose shadow or whose light, which- 
 
16 
 
 ever it may be, is full upon us and can no longer be averted or 
 ignored. 
 
 When each community had but one or two educated men 
 the domine, the doctor, and perhaps the lawyer, it did not 
 greatly matter what their education might be like; but when 
 everybody learned to read, and to think, which was inevitable, 
 they quickly saw that the system and the subject matter of 
 an education suited to the office and the study were ill-adapted 
 to fit men for the farm and the shop, but exceedingly well- 
 adapted to unfit them. They, before the educators, learned 
 that the benefits of education were capable of being extended 
 to all the affairs of life, material as well as intellectual. 
 
 But, as has been repeatedly noted, educators soon caught 
 the true spirit of the new demand and were quick to respond. 
 They have responded so well as to discover that in the last 
 analysis there is an intellectual basis to all industry and an 
 industrial basis to all education that is safe for everybody to 
 use; they have shown that the names of various occupations 
 are but names for different forms of activity and service ; that 
 all fundamental occupations are learned professions, and that 
 any form of education that fits for nothing in particular is 
 worse than useless, even dangerous. 
 
 So we must look at this matter broadly. Our problem is 
 but a part of a more general one ; moreover, this general prob- 
 lem of how to educate for all the useful activities is the very 
 problem upon which all educators are busily at work, and 
 they are solving it inch by inch and day by day. It is for 
 us to stay with the crowd and be in at the finish. 
 
 The American high school is a form of secondary educa- 
 tion that has arisen, or more properly speaking is arising, to 
 meet this new demand for universal education. Agriculture, 
 and industrial education generally, have found their true 
 place in the universities. The next step is that they should 
 find their true place in our secondary schools, where, after 
 all, our attempt at universal education will render its greatest 
 service. 
 
 And so reasons might be multiplied indefinitely, showing 
 why it is wiser to go forward meeting our educational neces- 
 
17 
 
 sities together but they would all be of the same general 
 tenor; viz., that our educational problem is after all a single 
 problem complex, puzzling, and all that; but it is a single 
 problem after all, and we should stay together and solve it. 
 
 If the high schools were as indifferent and as antagonistic 
 toward industrial education to-day as the colleges were fifty 
 years ago, I would raise my voice loudest for a separate sys- 
 tem of agricultural high schools. But they are not indifferent, 
 they are interested; they are not antagonistic, they are ex- 
 ceedingly friendly. Agriculture has found its place in our 
 American system of education, so far as colleges are con- 
 cerned, and its place is in most honorable company. It 
 remains to find its place in the high schools, and when that 
 place is found, may it be equally honorable and equally favor- 
 able with the place it occupies in our great universities where 
 it has done so well. 
 
 And now after having argued, even pleaded for the pres- 
 ervation of the integrity of our system of secondary educa- 
 tion, there are two points on which I wish especially not to 
 be misunderstood: 
 
 The first one is this : When I speak of teaching agriculture 
 in our high schools, I mean agriculture. I do not mean Nature 
 study, nor do I mean that some sort of pedagogical kink 
 should be given to chemistry or botany or even geography 
 and arithmetic. Let these arts and sciences be taught from 
 their own standpoint, with as direct application to as many 
 affairs of real life as possible; but let chemistry continue to 
 be chemistry; let agriculture introduce new matter into the 
 schools and with it a new point of view. Nor should this new 
 matter be "elementary agriculture." In some ways I could 
 wish the phrase had never been coined. What is wanted in 
 our high schools is not elementary agriculture, but elemental, 
 fundamental agriculture. For this purpose we should select 
 out of what is taught in our colleges those phases of agri- 
 culture that are adapted to use in the high school and yet 
 that strike at the root of farm life and its affairs something 
 
18 
 
 that will appeal to real farmers and that will serve to actually 
 educate their boys for the business of farming soil physics, 
 soil fertility, laboratory fields in crop production, the use of 
 farm machinery, and the classification and principles of feed- 
 ing of live stock. 
 
 As I see it, every high school that has a natural agricultural 
 constituency of any considerable importance should put in a 
 department of agriculture on the same basis as its depart- 
 ment of chemistry, and proceed to offer at least one year of 
 real technical agriculture taught from the standpoint of the 
 farm, accompanied by such collateral instruction in the arts 
 and sciences as shall provide a suitable course for such of its 
 pupils as find their interests in the country and on the farm. 
 
 The other point on which I would be particular is this: 
 I am not arguing that the high schools in their present con- 
 dition are doing, or are able to do, what is needed for agri- 
 culture. My contention is that they can get ready to do it, 
 and that right speedily; and that if they will proceed to get 
 ready, they should have the chance, for it is their opportu- 
 nity and their privilege; and if they do not propose to serve 
 agriculture and her people as faithfully and as well as they 
 are serving or intend to serve other interests, then they 
 should be compelled to do it. That is my thesis in a few 
 words; but my conviction is that they are for the most part 
 fully ready to turn both their brains and their tremendous 
 efficiency loose on our problem if we will let them. 
 
 I am glad to say that we have a perfect understanding on 
 this whole matter in Illinois. The schools are not yet ready 
 to teach agriculture, but they will get ready. I would better 
 say, they are ready but not equipped. We do not yet 
 possess text-books and courses of study, but they are being 
 prepared. We do not yet have competent teachers, but they 
 are coming along and the demand will bring the supply. The 
 schools look directly to the colleges of agriculture to furnish, 
 out of their experience, the most suitable material for these 
 courses and to train the first supply of teachers. This they 
 are fully able to do and I am prone to believe that together we 
 can work out this problem, and in the near future if we are all 
 
19 
 
 wise and persistent we can provide as good a home education 
 for the farmer as for other classes of our people. 
 
 And now if there should be high schools which prefer to 
 go along in the good old way and not to trouble with the 
 newer educational needs and demands, I have a word to say 
 to them. 
 
 What our educational development is to be rests largely 
 with existing schools. They can be quick to catch the spirit 
 of a new order of things educational and enlarge both their 
 conceptions and activities; or the new demands will be met 
 by a new system, to the lasting disadvantage of both parties, 
 as I see it. 
 
 We cannot afford to break in two at any point; least of 
 all can existing schools afford to see our educational effort 
 divided. The logic of the situation is all against it. The new 
 ideal is that education should fit for something instead of 
 fitting for nothing, and this ideal will prevail among a prac- 
 tical people like ourselves. Educators can take hold of this 
 natural bent for practical activity and cultivate it until as a 
 people we shall be both efficient and cultivated. If they do 
 not do this the efficiency will develop by itself and we shall 
 all come short of our highest possibilities. 
 
 The new demand upon the schools is that they should not 
 only picture life as it was in the past, but also as it is now; 
 that they should assist the student in understanding modern 
 life into which he must plunge, and whose responsibilities he 
 must shortly assume. The student feels the right to demand 
 that some portion of his educational career and some part of 
 his school curriculum should be devoted to making application 
 of the wisdom of the ancients and the philosophy of life to 
 the conditions of modern existence. 
 
 Reduced to the lowest terms and pushed to the last an- 
 alysis, that is all this new movement means in any of 
 its forms agricultural or other ; viz., that the school hold up 
 a true picture of life in all its activities, and that teaching be 
 conducted from the standpoint of living, not merely of mental 
 development ; that the school shall be a true mirror of human 
 life, modern as well as ancient, and of what men do as well 
 
20 
 
 as of what they think and say. In other words, that a system 
 of universal education shall universally educate, not in art 
 without industry; not in industry without art, but in both 
 art and industry so joined as to make possible the highest 
 civilization and the greatest development of which the human 
 race is capable. To this end may agriculture, like every other 
 form of useful activity, find its place in our existing system of 
 education, and may that place be one that comports with the 
 importance of the profession, the mode of living of its fol- 
 lowers, and the philosophy of life on which our great social 
 structure rests ; for after all, the greatest thing in the world 
 is to live a full and perfect life. 
 
 Sixty years ago Professor Turner wrote: "All civilized 
 society is, necessarily, divided into two distinct co-operative, 
 not antagonistic, classes : a small class, whose proper busi- 
 ness it is to teach the true principles of religion, law, medicine, 
 science, art, and literature; and a much larger class who are 
 engaged in some form of labor, in agriculture, commerce, and 
 the arts. For the sake of convenience, we will designate the 
 former the Professional, and the latter the Industrial class; 
 not implying that each may not be equally industrious; the 
 one in their intellectual, the other in their industrial pursuits. 
 Probably in no case would society ever need more than five 
 men out of one hundred in the professional class, leaving 
 ninety-five in every hundred in the industrial; and, so long as 
 so many of our ordinary teachers and public men are taken 
 from the industrial class, as there are at present, and probably 
 will be for generations to come, we do not really need over 
 one professional man for every hundred, leaving ninety-nine 
 in the industrial class. 
 
 "The vast difference, in the practical means, of an appro- 
 priate liberal education, suited to their wants and their des- 
 tiny, which these two classes enjoy, and ever have enjoyed 
 the world over, must have arrested the attention of every 
 thinking man. True, the same general abstract science exists 
 in the world for both classes alike, but the means of bringing 
 this abstract truth into effectual contact with the daily busi- 
 ness and pursuits of the one class does exist, while in the 
 other case it does not exist and never can till it is new created. 
 
 "The one class have schools, seminaries, colleges, univer- 
 sities, apparatus, professors, and multitudinous appliances for 
 educating and training them for months and years, for the 
 peculiar profession which is to be the business of their life; 
 
21 
 
 and they have already created, each class for its own use, a 
 vast and voluminous literature, that would well nigh sink a 
 whole navy of ships. 
 
 "But where are the universities, the apparatus, the profes- 
 sors, and the literature, specifically adapted to any one of the 
 industrial classes? Echo answers where? In other words, 
 society has become, long since, wise enough to know that its 
 teachers need to be educated, but it has not become wise 
 enough to know that its workers need education just as 
 much." 
 
 Professor Turner was pleading for an Industrial Univer- 
 sity to serve the educational needs of the 95 per cent as those 
 of the 5 per cent were served by the then existing colleges. 
 
 His "dream" is realized and more than realized. In every 
 state there is now at least one institution of college grade 
 ministering directly to these higher needs of industrial life. 
 And what a change they have wrought in the few years of 
 their activity! How the industries of life are developing un- 
 der the benign and stimulating influence of higher education 
 and systematic thought. How the people themselves are im- 
 proving as their occupations develop and take honorable place 
 among men! 
 
 All this has come about. But since Professor Turner wrote 
 the words I have quoted, an entirely new system of schools 
 has sprung up all over the country a kind of schools un- 
 known in his day and which does not exist elsewhere than in 
 America. 
 
 I refer, of course, to the high school. Equipped as it is to 
 give what is in effect a college education, this institution of 
 the people is the most powerful modern agency for shaping 
 American life. The high schools of the country touch all the 
 people of all classes, and their influence is beyond compu- 
 tation. 
 
 And now, I ask the final question: Is this new system of 
 schools to serve only Professor Turner's 5 per cent as did 
 the old time college, or are they to serve the full 100 per cent ? 
 Are the high schools to serve the people on the same broad 
 plan of modern colleges, or are they to restrict their attention 
 and their service to the few favored occupations? 
 
22 
 
 These great schools can serve all classes and all interests 
 if they will. It is merely a question of organization. Do I 
 hear the objection that their courses are full then I will say, 
 make others. Do we have no material? The material lies all 
 about us, in the present-day activities of men and in the great 
 body of scientific truth that is rapidly accumulating. Are our 
 teachers unprepared? Then let them prepare themselves; for 
 as sure as time passes, this matter is upon us, and this ques- 
 tion will press for its solution. 
 
 If the existing high schools cannot or will not serve the 
 interests of agriculture and her people, then just as certain 
 as the sun rises and sets, a system of schools will be founded 
 that will do it. The farmers of this country are bent on good 
 secondary education that will fit for country life, and if they 
 are obliged to found a new system of schools to get it, then 
 they will do that and insist upon a fair division of the revenues. 
 
 Let me be not misunderstood. It is not upon an endowed 
 institution to teach agriculture, unless it chooses to do so ; un- 
 less it sees in the subject large educative possibilities within 
 the chosen line of its activities and for which it is endowed. 
 
 It is different with the high school. This is a public 
 school, supported by public funds, and its obligation is to 
 serve the public well in all its interests to put its service 
 on the same plan as that of the state colleges and universities, 
 and the temper of the public mind is such as to force the issue, 
 if necessary. If it becomes necessary to found a separate sys- 
 tem of schools to do this work it will be the worse for all of us 
 and the better for none. If we go on together and our high 
 schools serve agriculture and her people as faithfully and as 
 well as they serve others, then all will be well. 
 
 This then is the place of agriculture in our scheme of edu- 
 cation that it shall become an integral part of our educa- 
 tional system, to the end that all great interests shall be 
 served equally well by a single comprehensive system of 
 schools; and the next step is to see to it that agriculture shall 
 attain the same important and honorable place in our high 
 schools that it has already attained in our universities. 
 
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