278 ANNUAL UlOrOUT UF THE Off. Doc. 



get her iiiloriuatiou lliat the boy who intends to go to college has 

 to get Greek and J.atiu and he should demand it. I will agree with 

 you that culture is a good laclor in life. 1 will agree that the 

 ability to appreciate good music and works of art adds to the cul- 

 ture of the human soul. lUit that is not all of education. We can- 

 not live by culture. 1 should want to have something of what 

 may be called the utility factor of education as well as the cultural 

 side of education. How is this to be done? It will never come save 

 by the demands of the people most interested. Is the city book- 

 keeper the one most interested in this? lie is not interested enough 

 to do anything. Is the counting house man interested? No. You 

 are the ones. It will come precisely from the people interested in 

 agricultural affairs, in rural live. 



liut there is a preliminary work to be done. Suppose, to illus- 

 trate, we take the county superintendent. Suppose you go to him 

 and ask to set the examination questions for the next examination 

 for teachers and he permits you to do so. The first question will 

 be a question on soil testing; the next will be the value of nitrogen 

 in the soil; the next one of the growing of alfalfa; the next on 

 stock judging. How many of his teachers will pass that examina- 

 tion? The next question will be on the buying of goods so as to 

 test good fabrics; the next question will be hand work and basketry; 

 the making of hats, so that the girl who is going to be a house wife 

 can make these things herself. Probably ten teachers in the county 

 could pass that examination; and whoever passed it would depend 

 upon the general information he had found for himself. The difiS- 

 culty is to get the teacher who can teach these practical subjects. 

 We have got to begin at the bottom and teach the teacher first 

 and then the teacher will teach the pupils. I believe firmly and 

 fully that we are going to make a revision, but it must be done 

 gradually. We are going to introduce gradually into the country 

 schools of the State of Pennsylvania this very information that 1 

 am speaking to you abouf But not in an intensive way: we can't 

 set uj) a laboratory in every country school. Only the essentials can 

 be gained there. You cannot put up an experimental engine in 

 every school ; but you can teach the ])rinciples of rural engineering 

 there so that the farmer's hoy will know something of it. We 

 cannot teach every boy all the different kinds of fruit and budding, 

 etc., but we can get the principles established so that the boy will 

 recognize what is the matter with his fruit tree, so the girl can 

 recognize what is the matter with her rose bush and how to treat it. 



These things can be done and I believe will be done by first edu- 

 cating the teachers. In the second place, the utility of education, 

 so far as the college is concerned, faces a standing problem and that 

 has been in trying to get the information from the college to the 

 people. Yon and I know that the United States government is 

 spending hundreds of thousands of dollars over the United States, 

 giving upwards of |G0,000 to the Pennsylvania State College alone, 

 for the purpose of carrying on the experiments in agriculture. 

 How are we to get the results of those experiments to the people? 

 Y'ou are the medium largely. You carry out the information from 

 the centra] office to the distributing point. IJut the difficulty is, 

 barring your speaking to them, that we have been depending largely 

 on pam}>hlets. Now, the farmer does not go to the pamphlet 



