No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 239 



sible. Too many of our fairs are colored by the events and the men 

 who go from one fair to another, and which have no particular rela- 

 tion or connection with the development of the community that the 

 particular fair represents. I am not opposed to horse-trotting as such, 

 but if I had it I should want it to have some relation to the develop- 

 ment of the horse types and welfare of the community or the State. 



Now about the schools. It is most interesting that the schools do 

 not represent the localities in which they exist. Our schools are yet 

 male. The schools are attended by girls, but the studies are the old 

 boys' studies. The centre of our civilization is the home, and no school 

 in any community can rise to its possibilities until the home and 

 family are the centre of its effort. The object of education is to teach 

 persons how to live, if that is the proper definition, then the schools 

 of the community must have direct relation to the welfare of the com- 

 munity. It must have relation to good cooking, to good housekeeping 

 of all kinds, to sanitation, as well as to farms and business. A person 

 said to me a few days ago: "Do you think a person can be an edu- 

 cated man or woman unless he has had Latin?" The person first took 

 the precaution to ask whether I had Latin, and I had confessed I had. 

 I wished then I had not had it, to have seen what the line of argument 

 would have been. If the definition of an educated man is one who 

 has had Latin, then it is easy enough to determine whether a man is 

 educated, — we may ask him. I would not eliminate Latin or Greek. 

 1 would have a great deal more of it. My point is that no one subject 

 is the exclusive means of education. Persons may be taught to think 

 just efl'ectively by study of farm-management as by the study of ma- 

 thematics or Latin, if it is equally well taught. It has not been so 

 well taught in the past, we must admit. The older subjects are better 

 organized and solidified; but I contend that in themselves they have 

 no greater or unique educational power. I had in my office for a long 

 time a placard on which was a remark dropped by Dean Hunt: "Teach- 

 ing, not telling." This is the core of education. It is not merely fill- 

 ing up on facts. I would not have our common schools merely inform 

 the children about farming. That would not be education. But 1 

 would develop a system whereby the schools could teach the common 

 activities of life for the purpose of training a person how to live, and 

 to procure the mental training and application of it at the same time. 

 I should not eliminate the prevailing subjects from the schools. Pro- 

 gress must come by a gradual process of evolution. The schools are 

 teaching in an elementary way the things that colleges and universi- 

 ties have taught, I mean to patch the new ideas on and on, until 

 finally the patch will be the larger part of the garment. If we were 

 to begin the schools all over again, of course, we should begin with the 

 localitj' and the affairs of it and let the children grow out to the other 

 affairs as they develop. The school should represent its place and its 

 station, and then the exterior subjects should come as fast as the child 

 has the ability and the school has the reach. I would not eliminate 

 mathematics. They come as part of the process. The study of arith- 

 metic is not an end in itself. It is merely a means of working out 

 some of the conceptions of life. 



But I wish to say something about religion. It is on my mind be- 

 cause the demands from churches and religious bodies, young men's 

 Christian associations and other organizations is now very great. 

 They are beginning to feel the call to more than they have done for the 



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