Farmers^ Week in Agricultural College. 89 



' ' The assumption that a woman cannot teach agriculture, cannot 

 teach the scientific truths about soil chemistry and plant physiology, un- 

 less she has been a field hand, is almost as illogical as the old negro 

 preacher's method of proving that every woman has seven devils in her. 

 You don't need to be a centenarian and a soldier in order to teach 

 history ; it is not required that a teacher travel around the world be- 

 fore teaching geography ; she need not have written a book before teach- 

 ing grammar; she need not have robbed graves and dissected corpses 

 before teaching physiology. AVhy argue then that she must have 

 broken steers and stemmed tobacco before teaching the scientific truths 

 about soil chemistry and plant physiology that have practical applica- 

 tion in the business of farming? You don't have to know how to hitch 

 a mule to a plow in order to teach why it doesn't pay to plow deep and 

 cut the corn roots in two at laying-by time ; you need not know how 

 to run a guano distributor in order to teach the effects of potash, phos- 

 phoric acid and nitrogen in plant growth ; you need not know how to 

 cure cowpea hay, to teach how nitrogen gathered by the cowpeas will 

 enrich the land ; you need not know how to shuck corn, to teach which 

 type of ear has been found the best for corn production ; you need not 

 even have milked cows in order to teach that the Babcock Test will 

 show which dairy cows are paying and which are not ; nor need you 

 have butchered steers in order to teach that with a Jersey cow and a 

 Polled Angus, the Jersey is better for the dairy and the Angus for 

 beef." 



Let's consider, then, some of the ways in which the self-instructed 

 teacher may use agricultural material for the benefit of her school and 

 of the whole community. In the first place, we must remember that the 

 common schools are not to teach the technics of the farm operations — 

 no more than they are to teach the technics of any other trade or occu- 

 pation. The boy can learn at home on the farm how to cultivate corn 

 or feed a calf better than any woman can teach him these things in the 

 rural school. The teacher is not required to put herself in the position 

 of assuming to tell the farmer how to run his own business ; but she can 

 teach the principles that explain the why of things that many a farmer 

 does not know, and she can ask questions that may fire the interest and 

 study of the w^hole community — questions for inflammation, if you 

 please. The point is that agriculture is to be used "as a means of edu- 

 cation, to explain the environment and to develop the student, and not 

 as a means of giving technical skill." 



And the great advantage of this mode of procedure is that the 

 teacher herself becomes educated in practical affairs of community life 

 along with her pupils. In most cases she is herself a product of the old, 



