Education oe the Farmer. 44 ( J 



coming familiar with the great thought of literature hut shall the 

 farmer gain a greater uplift of mind and heart and a greater 

 blessing in his life work, from these than from the thoughts of the 

 Creator as read from Nature's page ? 



Doubtless those who magnify the utilitarian side of school train- 

 ing will be accused of catering to the commercial spirit of the 

 present time and of degrading education to the dollar standard. 

 It is unfair so to characterize the study of science. To be sure 

 science is useful and why should it not be \ Men must live and 

 it is better and easier to live in harmony with law. Besides, 

 study with utilitarian ends in view may also lend itself to mental 

 culture and refinement of thought. 



But right here comes another objection. We are told that the 

 present most prominent subjects of study are the ones best adapted 

 to the development of the intellect — that no such efficient peda- 

 gogical instruments can be substituted for them. It is also im- 

 pressed upon us that the chief end to be accomplished is the train- 

 ing of the mind. But our intellectual salvation does not rest with 

 a few out of the many departments of knowledge which are im- 

 portant. Any dignified subject, organized into logical relations 

 and severely pursued may be the means of intellectual culture. 

 Language and numbers are not our only resources for mental 

 training. Kightly presented the complex problems of chemistry, 

 or of physics and the wonderful lessons of biology have in them 

 great training value. ■ 



No man is wise enough to divide the field of human knowledge 

 into the useful and the useless for intellectual culture. On what 

 tables of stone has the Almighty written the commandments of 

 education that they may not be changed, and where are the 

 prophets who have stood in the mount of inspiration and delivered 

 these fiats of omniscience to the people! Let us be rid of the 

 nonsense that as man's range of thought widens and his relations 

 to the material world and to society change he must cling to the 

 same old subjects as a means of mental development. 



I more than half suspect that the church is not alone in harbor- 

 ing dogmatism and professionalism. It was not long ago that the 

 department of public instruction in a great State turned a cold 

 shoulder toward a university effort to promote the study of rural 

 science. It is a department which holds in its grip the school 

 experience of thousands of children and by its mechanical and 

 inelastic system and its examinations which are the terror of 

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