The Next Step in the Education of the Farmer. 



By W. H. Jokdan, Director New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 

 Delivered at meeting of New York State Dairymen's Association at Wateitown. 



This is a convention of dairymen. The primary object of your 

 meeting together is for the discussion of those facts and condi- 

 tions which are important to your special lines of business. But 

 this is also an assemblage of farmers who sustain broad relations 

 to agricultural pursuits and who as husbands and fathers and 

 citizens who have, or should have, great concent about the in- 

 tellectual and social status of our rural people. You will do 

 well if you go back to your homes with clearer views of agricul- 

 tural practice, but you will do better if you carry with you at 

 the same time a broadened understanding, and an inspired purpose 

 concerning the manward side of the farm. 



It may be accepted as a trueism that we must first produce a 

 better man in order to produce a better farmer, and that if our 

 fields and dairies are to show evidence of more intelligent methods 

 we must begin by cultivating their owners. More than this, we 

 are never to forget that man himself is the object of first con- 

 sideration, and that the farm is to serve him and not he the 

 farm. It is for such reasons as these that we are intensely inter- 

 ested in the problem of education. How shall the work of the 

 school and the college best meet the needs of agriculture for 

 knowledge of a special kind, and at the same time aid in con- 

 serving for us those intellectual and moral qualities which must 

 be our defense against business and social disasters, is a question 

 of the highest importance and is pertinent to this occasion. 



I shall present two propositions for your consideration at this 

 time. The first one, and certainly not a new one, is that public 

 education should take account not only of what man is but of 

 what man is to do. I have little sympathy with the creed of 

 the closest philosopher who holds that the culture of the mental 

 powers fulfills the whole purpose of the classroom. Many of 



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