342 FAEMERS' INSTITUTES. 



Our system of education, as provided by the laws of Michigan, furnishes 

 every child an opportunity to acquire a certain amount of learning. A long 

 time ago the idea became prevalent that there must be no sectarianism taught 

 in schools. The idea in practice has gone beyond what was intended. It 

 has gone so far that it has even left all good morals out of our system of educa- 

 tion. Now, there are certain principles of human conduct that underlie 

 every man's actions, principles which all good men agree are right, princi- 

 ples that may be safely taught, even though it may not be purely intellectual 

 education. Go through our schools, listen to the addresses delivered at the 

 gatherings of our educators during the educational conventions, and you hear 

 little spoken of except pure intellectual development. Knowledge is power, 

 but the devil has a great deal of knowledge. If you give a bad man knowl- 

 edge you make him powerful for evil. You must give a direction to power 

 or that power had better not exist. If you give a proper direction to that intel- 

 lectual development you have thereby benefited those who are intellectually 

 -developed, and by benefiting the individual you have benefited everybody 

 with whom that individual comes in contact through life; but if you give a 

 person intellectual development without giving it a proper direction he is 

 just as likely, perhaps, to go wrong as to go right, and that is one of the 

 troubles of the times. I say our common schools are defective in that 

 they fail to teach good morals as much as they should. Perhaps I might go 

 further. The primary place for all education is at home. Every father and 

 every mother should be careful to see not only that their children are prop- 

 erly developed intellectually, but that that intellectual development has a 

 direction given to it which shall make them better and wiser, and make 

 the world wiser because they have lived in it. 



I agree with Prof. McLouth, in his definition of education. As he gave it 

 it is not a very common one but it is a very excellent one: " Education is that 

 training which best fits an individual to till his station in life with credit to 

 himself and with profit to the community in which he is called upon to live." 



Industrial education is that which enables us to do what we have to do with 

 less cost to ourselves — cost in the way of physical labor, in the way of time, 

 etc. It has long been my opinion, and I think you will generally agree with 

 me, that among the farmers throughout the country one-half of their phys- 

 ical labor is actually Avasted for want of proper direction and for want of not 

 being done at the proper time. One of the most difficult things to do with 

 men that I have had to work for me upon the farm is to make them believe 

 and appreciate that they could kill twenty weeds one inch high just as easy, 

 and, in fact easier, than you can kill one weed twenty inches high. If, when 

 those weeds are just showing themselves above ground, there is to be a circus 

 somewhere, and you let the weeds go, the first you know, the weeds are so high 

 you must give more than double the labor you would have required if the work 

 had been done at just the right time. If farmers will do their work at the 

 right time they will get better results with the same amount of physical 

 labor. 



In regard to industrial education as a specialty, I think it would be an 

 excellent thing for the State if it had more attention ; if our primary schools, 

 as they are called by the statutes, instead of developing into universities in 

 every considerable village or city throughout the country, each had its branch 

 of manual labor connected with it. If I had the power to make a law for the 

 University of Michigan I would enact that every student in the Univer- 



