No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGraCULTUKK. 277 



Skylark, if the lad should ever hear one, would make him a better 

 ploughman. Does that lead the boy back to the farm? How much 

 is there in the reading lesson of the smell of the soil? How much 

 of the dew of the grass, of the odor of the cows coming in at milking 

 time. 1 claim we ought to have a ditrerent education for the boy on 

 the farm from the boy in the city, but thus far I have been on the 

 minority side, ilost of the teachers seem to think that education is 

 only for soil-culture and that whatever develojis mental powers pre- 

 pares for the future. Do you suppose that at the State College we 

 give the same course of study to the boy who is going to be a forester 

 that we give to the boy who is going to be a mining engineer? Yet 

 that is what we do in the lower grades. 



Let us first lind out if possible w^hat the boy intends to do. Let 

 us start on the presumption that the boy intends to live on the farm 

 and the girl intends to stay on the farm. 1 will not deny the attrac- 

 tiveness of the city. I heartily endorse everything a previous speaker 

 said on the subject. The city has the advantage in comparison with 

 the country; the live cent theatres and the show windows, the music 

 and the liglits, all the temptations as well as the legitimate attrac- 

 tions naturally lure bo;\s from the farm. We ought for that very 

 leason to make the country life appear more attractive. Take the boy 

 who graduates from the country schools. He has liuishcd his course up 

 to the eighth grade of the average country school, or, go further, and 

 say (ini.siied the townshij) high school, lie wants to be a farmer and in- 

 tends to be a farmer. He has found the blessed ideal of wanting to 

 be a farmer. Pie knows arithmetic and algebra along the line of 

 mathematics and is going to use his algebra on the farm. How will 

 he use a- + a- on the farm? Will be a better farmer on account 

 of his algebra? Perhaps he has acquired a taste for good reading; 

 blessed is that boy if he has gotten that taste. But how will the ap- 

 preciation of good literature conduce to judging a horse or a cow? 

 He has studied geography and he knows^ where the ^Mountains of 

 the Moon are. IS'ow he proposes to go out and spray an orchard 

 with that information. So far as the school course is concerned 

 he goes out into the oi-chard and he does not know whether to SDray 



The girl when she gets through school has no idea how to dres>. 

 herself properly; she has no preparation to match colors; and if she 

 has to make a dress she goes and borrows a pattern from a neighboi 

 and fits it to her jjroportions. If she goe.s into the store to buy 

 goods, she has to depend upon the honesty of the clerk. ''Will 

 these colors run? Is that Mimsy or shoddy?" She cannot tell and 

 judge these things as she could do if she had studied domestic art 

 in the school room. In her house she puts pictures of all kinds in 

 all places and she builds a house with a Queen Ann front and a 

 Mary Ann back. That would all be corrected if she had some learn 

 ing in domestic art. 



Are we giving the boy or girl who intends to live on the farm a 

 fair chance in the schools? Here is a boy who has finished his 

 course and can j)arse from A to Z, but he has not an idea how to 

 put a machine together or take it a})art. He could not put up a 

 wind mill. So far as the soil is concerned he cannot tell acid from 

 alkili. Whatever infornmtion of that kind he has gotten he has 

 picked up outside of school. The country boy has the same right 

 to get this information and the country girl has the same right to 



