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reason for supposing he is a good teacher. In fact, some of the best and some of the 

 poorest institute lecturers I have ever known have been college and station men. 

 Not one in lifty of tiie best farmers makes a good institute lecturer; then why should 

 we expect all college and station men to be a success at institute work? The simple 

 fact is that institute direi'tors have been very unwise in the choice of institute lec- 

 turers, and tliey have recently been paying the penalty. The (]uestion is not how 

 the man has obtained his information, but has he the right sort of information and 

 does he present it in an acceptable manner? It is a man, a teacher, that is wanted; 

 and if the lecturer gives the right sort of stuff in the right way he will interest and 

 instruct and win tiie confidence and respect of his audience, and when he does that 

 he is a successful institute lecturer. We hear nuich about the practical and the 

 scientitic man, as if the practical man could not be scientific nor the scientific man 

 practii'al, when in reality good science is goo<l in practice and good practice is good 

 science, or, in other words, if a proposition is not ])ractical it is not scientific. Let 

 us be done with this nonsense; a fact is always fact; the difference is in the man; 

 therefore, since it is the man we want, let us apply common-sense business principles 

 in his selection. 



It will perhaps be to little purpose for me to attempt a detailed description of my 

 ideal of an institute lecturer, but before we can intelligently lay plans for securing 

 or educating suitable lecturers we must arrive at a more uniform and definite under- 

 standing of what is most desirable. 



The nistitute lecturer must, first of all, be an educator. The day of the agitator 

 should have passed long ago. It is education, not agitation, that is demanded. The 

 information given must be specific and definite; generalities are no longer of value 

 in institute work. The institute lecturer must be accurate in the sense of correctly 

 stating the consensus of the best opinion, but he need not regard minute accuracy as 

 so important that he is afraid to make a definite and decided statement. It may be 

 permissible that he be not always minutelj' accurate from the standpoint of the 

 scientist, but he must always be safe from the standpoint of the farmer. 



At this point please pardon me while I digress to the extent of saying that one 

 common fault of the college and station workers as institute lecturers is that because 

 of their custom of being accurate they confuse with too many exceptions and qualifi- 

 cations. For example, it is better by far to state that 30 jier cent of the fertilizer 

 value of a cowpea crop is left in the roots and stubble than to say from 25 to 33^ per 

 cent, although the latter statement would be more nearly correct from a scientific 

 standpoint. On the other hand, the chief fault I have to find with the so-called 

 practical farmer as an institute lecturer is that he insists on giving only his own 

 results and opinions instead of a definite statement of the average results of the best 

 authorities, interpreted by his own experience or observation. No man's experience 

 is sufficiently varied and extensive to make it a safe guide for the teacher, and this is 

 especially so if, as is usually the case with this class of lecturers, his experience is 

 interpreted Ijy guessing, instead of by measuring and weighing. The experience of 

 no man is sufficiently broad nor his judgment so accurate that he can afford to disre- 

 gard the work of others if he is to be a safe teacher. The teacher must even avail 

 himself of the aggregate knowledge pertaining to his subject. This the so-called 

 practical farmer frequently can not or will not do in his institute lectures. 



The institute lecturer must also be a pleasing and interesting speaker — that is, he 

 must have a terse, incisive, forcible, and attractive way of presenting his facts. To 

 instruct his hearers he must first interest them, l^ut to my mind the man who must 

 resort to funny stories and anecdote to interest an institute audience is to just that 

 extent short of an ideal institute lecturer. Of course, illustrations by word, oliject, 

 chart, and blackboard are of the greatest value, because they add to the force and 

 accuracy of the impressions conveyed, but the tricks of the stump speaker lower the 

 force and dignity of an institute lecture. 



Since the most important part of an institute is the questions and discussions, the 

 lecturer should be quick tcj correctly see and interpret the force and import of a ques- 

 tion. Many an otherwise good institute worker fails simply because he is unable or 

 unwilling to look at a question from the view point of the one who asks it, and con- 

 sequently his answers are irrelevant and unsatisfactory. If an answer is attempted 

 it should be direct, crisp, and polite. 



Not infrequently have I heard institute directors say they wanted at least one man 

 in each institute party who could answer all reasonable questions. Deliver us from 

 this sort of man, I say, in or out of institute work. I want my men to be able to 

 answer all reasonable questions in their particular lines (or to be honest enough to 

 say they do not know), but the field of agricultural knowledge is too large for any 

 human mind to cover. accurately. You know this and so do the intelligent farmers 



