304 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



true perspective. That is to say, every man ought to be educated 

 in an atmosphere not especially prepared for him and his own kind, 

 but in an atmosphere and an environment much broader than his 

 own interests. In this country, if our democratic institutions are 

 to be preserved, and if our people are to labor together in peace 

 and understanding, all classes must be educated in an atmosphere 

 at least as liberal and as broad as all the interests of any single 

 community can make it. 



In saying this, I do not overlook the fact that the separate 

 agricultural school has certain distinct advantages. They are the 

 same advantages that are enjoyed by any other industrial school, 

 or even a theological seminary, arising from the comparative sim- 

 plicity of the educational contract they undertake. It is a fact, of 

 course, that any school founded, manned, and equipped to do a 

 single thing and minister to a single interest gains much in direct- 

 ness by its simplified problem, and by the direct methods it natu- 

 rally employs. But it loses in breadth and relative values, as has 

 been indicated and the best proof of it is that none of the sepa- 

 rate schools yet founded offer as much even in science as the nearby 

 high schools; and what they achieve is industrial training rather 

 than industrial education — the training of the operative rather than 

 the education of the citizen. 



Sir James Bryce tells us that the chief purpose in studying 

 history is to throw light upon our present action and future poli- 

 cies, because in a large sense history does repeat itself. In this 

 connection it is well to remind ourselves that agricultural and me- 

 chanical education started in this country in separate colleges. This 

 was necessary, because of the attitude of old line colleges of that 

 day concerning industrial education. But that attitude has entirely 

 changed, and today these two fundamental industries are strongest, 

 both in instruction and research — not in the separate agricultural 

 and mechanical colleges, but in our greatest universities, where all 

 forms of education are imparted, and where American energy and 

 American citizenship are trained in a cosmopolitan atmosphere. 

 Not only is this true, but the proportion of agricultural students 

 who return to the farm is greater from our universities than from 

 our separate agricultural colleges, to say nothing of the masses of 

 city boys directed countryward. 



So I return to my first assertion, viz., that both from the na- 

 ture of the case and from the experience of the past we may fairly 

 conclude that separate schools are inferior schools; that they lose 



