Live Stock Breeders' Association. 305 



more in breadth than they gain in directness and can never rank 

 in real service to that other type which ministers to many interests 

 and gains directness by its distinctly separate courses. 



2. Separate schools will tend strongly to peasantize the 

 farmers. To undertake to train the children of farmers in a system 

 of inferior schools, such as these must inevitably be, with little 

 knowledge of and less regard for the affairs of other people — such 

 an attempt, if it succeeds, will peasantize the farmers in America 

 more rapidly and more certainly than they were peasantized by 

 other causes in Europe generations ago. 



To segregate any class of people from the common mass, and 

 to educate it by itself and solely with reference to its own affairs, 

 is to make it narrower and more bigoted generation by generation. 

 It is to substitute training for education and to breed distrust and 

 hatred in the body politic. Knowledge is necessary to a just ap- 

 preciation of other people and the professions and mode of life; 

 with this only can a man respect his own calling as he ought and 

 love his neighbor as he should. We cannot segregate and make an 

 educational cleavage at the line of occupations except to the com- 

 mon peril. 



Reduced to its lowest terms, one of the present propositions 

 is to transfer bodily the European peasant school to American 

 country soil, the inevitable consequences of which are not difficult 

 to foresee. 



We may one day need the real trade school in agriculture — 

 the form of instruction that aims at training rather than educa- 

 tion; at information rather than development; at mediocrity and 

 below rather than mediocrity and above. This time may come, 

 but it is not here now, and our greatest present need in agriculture 

 is to educate the land-owners rather than their hired operatives; 

 to educate a class of people upon the land that are in every way the 

 equal of their compatriots in the city or anywhere else. 



The European peasant belongs to a class whose economic and 

 social status was fixed generations ago by a variety of causes, 

 mostly political; and when the problem of universal education 

 came up for solution there the only way in which the benefits of 

 education could be approximately enjoyed by all the people was to 

 found a system of peasant schools which should secure results with 

 a maximum of manual training and a minimum of mental educa- 

 tion. How difficult of achievement was even this step, will be ap- 

 preciated by any student of Irish industrial history, or by any one 

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