EDUCATION FOR THE AGRICULTURAL CLASSES. 489- 



"with physical toil. He is so constituted that he has intellect, heart, social 

 tendency, taste and imagination, as well as bones and muscles, and no educa- 

 tion is complete which attempts to educate one at the expense of the other. 



President Eliot of Harvard has said that the fruit of a liberal education is 

 not learning, but the capacity and desire to learn ; not knowledge but power. 

 Accepting his definition the important question for our consideration is, 

 how shall we acquire this capacity and desire to learn ? The answer in our 

 opinion is, by a continued, systematic and well directed discipline of the 

 mind, pursuing such a course of study as shall contain a large element of 

 those departments of learning which are most useful in the vocation where 

 we are employed. 



With the highest regard for general culture, and with the belief that it 

 should form a factor in all education, we yet realize that this life is too short 

 for any individual to attain eminence in more than one direction, and that 

 he who attempts to spread himself out over the whole field of learning is in 

 danger of becoming too diffuse to be effective in anything. Steam must be 

 confined before its power is apparent. 



The present is preeminently the age of specialists and the highest success 

 comes to those who make a life work of their chosen vocation. True educa- 

 tion, then, cannot be measured by the number of studies pursued, but rather 

 by the amount of discipline which the mind has received. Dr. Channing has 

 said, " A man brought up to an obscure trade, and hemmed in by the wants 

 of a growing family, may in his narrow sphere, perceive more clearly, dis- 

 criminate more keenly, weigh evidence more wisely, seize the right means 

 more decisively and have more presence of mind in difficulty, than another 

 who has accumulated more book knowledge and enjoyed greater advantages. 

 Many a man who has gone but a few miles from home understands human 

 nature better, detects motives and weighs character more sagaciously, than 

 another who has traveled over the known world and made a name by his re- 

 ports of foreign lands. Such men have risen to their intellectual eminence 

 by self-culture and self-discipline, not by accident. Their success shows that 

 it is possible for some men to rise in opposition to circumstances, but while 

 some succeed many fail to rise, who under better educational advantages in 

 early life might gain such an impetus that final ascendancy would be assured. 



The great majority of people reqeive their start in education in our district 

 schools. The hope of our future, then, depends upon the excellence of these 

 schools, and they are not receiving that substantial aid from the agricultural 

 classes which they merit. The dignity of the teacher's position is not fully 

 appreciated, and the great responsibility of training the rising generation in 

 the ways of wisdom and truth and virtue is not always committed to proper 

 hands. Too many of our district fathers, especially in the agricultural sec- 

 tions of our country, consider cheapness as the first and most important 

 qualification of the school teacher. They seem to forget that with cheap 

 teachers, as with other cheap articles, the quality usually corresponds with 

 the price. We do not know of any relation in life where a lack of good 

 leadership is more disastrous than in the school room. An inefficient teacher 

 not only spends his own time to no purpose, but that of his pupils, and in the 

 days when they should be acquiring a substantial basis for future usefulness 

 and a taste for culture which may be developed in years to come they are 

 really acquiring a distaste for study and abandoning their higher and nobler 

 aspirations. 



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