J 1 - American Horticultural Society. 



THE EDUCATIONAL NEEDS OF THE AMERICAN FARMf:R. 



BY PROF. F. \V. HIUiAKl), uK CAMI-ORNIA. 



The cry for " iii(liistri;il cdnpation " has, within the lat<t twenty years, 

 become ahnost univcrt^al throughout tlie oivihzed world. The ustonibliing 

 progress made in the arts through the application of scientific principle?, 

 the powerful influence exerted by technical science in the improvement of 

 old industries and in the development of new ones, and last, hut not leaet, 

 the awakening of the laboring an<l industrial clashes to their claims to some- 

 thing more than the position of hewers of wood and drawers of water, have 

 made that cry penetrate to the innermost recesses even of the most conserv- 

 ative educational institutions. From the kindergarten to the university, the 

 justice of the demand for something beyond the old scholastic training and 

 methods is admitted, and the question is not now whether the long-neglected 

 training of the senses shall form a part of all education, but only how and to 

 what extent it shall be done. I can not doubt that the audience here assem- 

 bled is a unit on the main issue; but it may not be amiss to discuss some- 

 what the detailed application of the idea of industrial education to agricult- 

 ure, concerning which there still exists a great variety of opinion and prac- 

 tice. Such a discussion is the more timely, as the establishment of experiment 

 stations in or out of connection with the previously estal>lished agricultural 

 colleges has once more brought the merits and demerits of the latter prom- 

 inently before the public. 



What, then, are the educational needs of the American farmer? I say 

 advisedly his needs, »xiA not his demands, for in my view the two differ not 

 immaterially in many points, if the utterances of some of their prominent 

 spokesmen may be Uiken as guides. And in saying this I mean nothing 

 derogatory to either the intentions or the intelligence of these men, < r of 

 those whom they represent. What can be accomplisheil by education out- 

 side of the paternal home, and what can and should be its metlu)ds, are not 

 matters of common note to be intuitively perceived by every one. On the 

 contrary, these are extremely complex technical questions, and to be found 

 uninformed in respect to their details is no greater reproach than it would 

 be to say that the i)roper mode of constructing a steam engine can not be 

 intuitively known. What our farmers do perctive intuitively is that there 

 is evidently something wrong al>out the old educational system ; that it does 

 not teach their children nuuh that bears directly upon their life-pursuit, 

 and that on the whole it seems to have a tendency to alienate them from the 

 farm. 



Now, in so far as the school or college omits from its course the training 

 of the senses and perceptive faculties, and the principles that underlie and 

 are called into daily requisition on the farm, the farmer's complaint is well 

 founded. But when by way of remedy he demands that, in order to prevent 

 a diversion of the boy's mind from the f.irm, he j-hali be Mirrounded by a 



