94 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [s:4-apk., 1909 



moving. The chances are that the boy who is kept on the farm 

 will not make a good farmer, and we want good farmers rather 

 than more farmers. There are enough farmers now; there will 

 always be enough. But there are too many poor farmers. What 

 we need in this country is not more farmers, but better farmers. 

 What we expect of the rural schools is not that they shall make 

 farmers, but that they shall stop unmaking farmers; not that 

 they shall attempt to improve farmers or farming per se, but 

 that they shall open the boy's mind to see and understand him- 

 self and to see and understand the natural and social environ- 

 ment in which he lives. In that environment nearly all of the 

 country boys will spend a few of the best years of their lives, and 

 many will take up their life work there. It is a function of the 

 rural public school to bring about a proper adjustment between 

 the country boy and his environment, not primarily that he may 

 be kept in it, but that he may understand and enjoy it, that it 

 may afford him the highest possible degree of pleasure and 

 comfort and profit. 



It is quite generally recognized in theory, at least, that educa- 

 tion should proceed from the known to the unknown, from the 

 concrete to the abstract, and that the mastery of books is but a 

 means to education, not education itself. An individual may be 

 versed in the classics and have an intimate knowledge of the 

 sciences and arts and yet be uneducated^nothing more than an 

 intellectual monstrosity. No man is truly educated until he is 

 able to know and control himself, to support himself and family, 

 and to take his place in the social organization of which he is a 

 part. He must be a producer. He must contribute something to 

 the progress of the race. 



Another generally accepted proposition is that normal develop- 

 ment comes only with the constant and active use of all the 

 faculties and powers of mind and body. Hand, head, and heart 

 should be trained symmetrically and at the same time. 



If now we are agreed that education should adjust the individ- 

 ual to his natural and social environment, that it should begin 

 with familiar, concrete things, that it should encourage and help 

 him to be a productive member of society, and that it should 

 constantly contribute to the symmetrical development of all his 

 faculties, — if we agree upon these premises, we shall not draw 

 widely divergent conclusions concerning the functions of the 



