Farmers^ Week in Agricultural College. 75 



The work of education in the schools — the common school, the 

 high school, the college and the university, — has changed greatly and 

 agriculture is beginning to be taught. If v:q can teach agriculture 

 as we have been teaching it, teach it better than we have been teaching- 

 it, and go on with book knowledge, with lectures, with class room 

 work and laboratory work, and keep it up for another fifty years, we 

 will place our profession of farming higher than the profession of the 

 law, of medicine or of theology. These have had the advantage of 

 centuries of education, of universities and colleges and text books. 

 But we are coming into our own and will raise our profession of farm- 

 ing higher than any of them. I call it the profession of farming be- 

 cause I believe it is truly a profession, and I believe that each prac- 

 tical farmer ought to be called a professor. He is a professor. Just 

 as soon as he takes up the work of the fann he professes farming, does 

 he not? I realize that the title "professor" is not a very high one in 

 some instances. AVe have professional boot-blacks, hair cuttei-s and 

 horse trainers, and so in this country the title professor does not rank 

 as high as it does in the old world. But if we take up this idea that 

 farming is a true profession, and that every man who takes it up is 

 a professor, perhaps we shall bring honor to the name and the farmers 

 may be pleased to have us who are now called "professors" included 

 in their clas.^. We hope they will not exclude us. 



In the great work of introducing agriculture into the schools, as a 

 subject to be taught to the children, we are almost at a standstill. AA^hy? 

 Because the teachers in the schools are not prepared to teach agricul- 

 ture. The papers advocate it, the people welcome it, the pupils are 

 ready for it, — everybody is prepared for it except the teachers. Many 

 of the teachers are willing, but they say "I don't know how to go at 

 it." How many times I have heard a teacher say. "I would f^'ladly 

 take up the subject of agriculture and teach it to my boys and girls 

 if I only knew how!" Well, how is a teacher to take hold of it. when 

 in her school district there are perhaps fanners who would laugh at 

 her, if she would midertake to tell the boys how to farm, or the girls 

 how to work in the farm home. Therefore my sympathy goes out to 

 the teacher who is not prepared. It is not the teacher's fault that he 

 is not prepared, when the normal schools, which turn out teachers, do 

 not prepare them to teach agriculture. It will not do to blame this 

 and that one, because we are all at sea, and do not know yet how we 

 will develop this subject of agriculture so as to include it in our school 

 curriculum. But gradually light is coming ; by experience we are learn- 

 ing to teach agriculture. I believe that the two most important things 

 to consider today in regard to these teachers who ought to be teaching 



