Live Stock Breeders' Association. 303 



that the choice once made will be final, and the consequences well- 

 nigh irretrievable. I am one who firmly believes that within the 

 next ten years we shall decide for all time whether we shall reap 

 the full fruits of our thoroughly unique educational opportunities 

 in America, or whether we shall needlessly follow in the footsteps 

 of Europe, where social distinctions were established, and the 

 peasant classes fully fixed, long before the modern age of universal 

 education was thought of. 



Personally I do not believe in that philosophy of education 

 which would establish separate schools for the various industries 

 and occupations of life. I greatly prefer that theory of social and 

 industrial development which would establish and maintain a 

 single system of schools wherein the people of all classes should 

 be educated together, distinct courses being framed and conducted 

 for the benefit of each in so far as the interests differ from those 

 of the common mass or of other professions. My reasons for this 

 preference are briefly as follows: 



1. Separate schools can never be so good. This is axiomatic 

 for both economic and pedagogic reasons. No school designed to 

 minister to a single class of people and to a single line of interests 

 can ever be so well equipped in the fundamental arts and sciences — 

 in chemistry, biology, physics, history, literature, economics, and 

 the so-called humanities generally — no such school can be so well 

 equipped as can one designed to minister broadly to a variety of 

 interests. Indeed, even if the attempt is made and a wide range of 

 subjects taught, these same subjects will of necessity be studied 

 and taught from a comparatively narrow standpoint. Every teacher 

 knows and every investigator knows that in order to develop a 

 subject well, either for purposes of instruction or of research, it 

 is necessary to establish and maintain a favorable atmosphere for 

 that particular field of mental activity, and this atmosphere is at 

 its best only in the presence of students interested mainly in that 

 subject; that is to say, there is no such favorable place in which the 

 farmer may study chemistry as in company with others, not merely 

 of his own kind but of those who believe that chemistry is the great- 

 est thing on earth. There is no such place for the farmer to study 

 history, and to learn to see himself as others see him, as where he 

 studies history in company with those whose chief interest is not 

 in agriculture or in engineering or in teaching, but rather in history 

 itself, by which we study the true significance of world movements 

 of all classes, and come to know things, past and present, in their 



