502 State Board of Agricultuke, &c. 



your schools without interference. See to it that your chil- 

 dren are taught to a better advantage, and in a more practi- 

 cal manner. Demand a better class of text books, and a 

 better training for teachers. Exact a good article, and be 

 * willing to pay for it. 



It must be understood that in what I have said about 

 colleges and the collegiate method of teaching, I do not seek 

 to arraign individuals, but a system ; a system for the exist- 

 ence of which no man now living can be. held responsible, 

 but which has come down to us from the dark ages, from 

 the time when it was believed to be of Divine ordinance 

 that a few men should be born into the world, booted and 

 spurred, to ride upon the backs of the rest. 



Far from desiring to condemn individuals for accepting, 

 without due thought, a system so seemingly sanctified hj 

 time, I would, on the contrary, offer honor to the verj^ con- 

 siderable number of college professors and college bred men 

 who have recognized, more or less fully, the errors of the 

 system under which they have been bred, liave seen its 

 unchristian and anti-republican features, and are now earn- 

 estly laboring for its reform. It is particularly among the 

 teachers of natural science, who are brought in these days 

 so closely into relation with the class of manual laborers, and 

 who are, indeed, themselves manual laborers of the highest 

 class, that we find those who are working most earnestly and 

 hopefully to bring about the necessary changes in the 

 method of both popular and high class education. Among 

 them we must rank such professors as the late and the pres- 

 ent Secretaries of this Board, who have shown themselves 

 ready t(» give their time and talents for a pitiful stipend ; to 



