No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 651 



In every one of these activities there lay a summons to skill, a 

 drawing- forth of faculty, a demand for adjustment. In addition 

 to these activities, there was the constant daily companionship and 

 mutual co-working of parents with children. Life on the farm, in 

 touch with the soil, furnished rare elements of education. In the 

 home of to-day hardly one of the old activities remains, and in 

 multitudes of homes, no new ones have risen to replace them. Work 

 is "done out," or given over to hirelings or to machines, companion- 

 ship is increasingly crowded out, instruction and even training are 

 incidentally given over to outsiders; the center of responsibility in 

 many cases falls outside the base of the home. The father who 

 once was teacher, priest and patriarch is now too often hardly even 

 father. "Doubtless the American home," writes one, "the very 

 heart of society, out of which are the issu< s oi life is falling further 

 short of its moral and reL ious opportunity than any other social 

 institution." But it does not follow that because home conditions 

 are unfavorable to education, that educational results are unsatis 

 factory. There are in the home of to-day conditions more promising 

 and more satisfactory than in the home of fifty years ago, because 

 there are so many equivalents and substitutions for the old activi- 

 ties. The American boy and girl has the power of acquiring an edu- 

 cation out of the most unpromising conditions. Moreover, because 

 home conditions are so different from what they used to be, it does 

 not follow, either, that they are necessarily worse. Adjustments 

 are possible and it is possible to produce a better type of home life 

 and a higher kind of education in the home of to-day than in that 

 of fifty years ago. 



There are two facts about the home that distinguish it, educa- 

 tionally: The amount of time during which it exerts its educative 

 influence and the unprofessional character of those who constitute, 

 so to speak, its faculty. In the first place, out of the first fifteen 

 years of life, six are usually spent at home and out of the 8,670 hours 

 which the children have to spend each year of the remainder, 7,760 

 are normally spent by them under the care and guidance of home; 

 fewer than 1,000 hours being usually spent in school. It is clear- 

 that upon the home there rests a heavy responsibility for education. 

 It is also (dear that home education will have to do with laying 

 foundations and with morality, taste and religion rather than with 

 intellectual training and knowledge. More briefly, the home accom- 

 plishes its ends, educationally, not mainly by preaching, still less 

 by setting lessons, but simply by giving old and young a chance to 

 live and learn together. To be rich, home life must be full of 

 activity and interests. It is evident that where there is nothing 

 doing at home, there can be no education through activity, but where 

 there is activity in which children can and do help there is created 

 an educational situation of high value. 



On the farm these situations are provided. Weaving, drawing, 

 modeling, making articles out of cardboard, wood and iron, paint- 

 ing, gardening, are all appropriate and educative for boys. So are 

 milking, churning, chopping, currying, fishing, tramping, camping. 

 The case of living creatures is of high value in a boy's education. 

 One had. rather that a boy grew up ignorant of many facts of 

 geography, of many rules in arithmetic, of not a few dates and 

 battles in history than that. he grow to manhood without having 



