EDITORIAL. 907 



It has l)een an imrcasoiiahlc and uiiwiso expoctation that the a<^"iM- 

 fuhural colleges would turn out finished farmers, equipped at the 

 y~iune time with an cnhication such as the world ex))ects of a college 

 man. The attempt to meet this j)0j)ular expectation has imj^over 

 ished their courses in elements whicli develop the many-sided man, 

 and tended to make them simply training schools for technicians. 

 This does not meet th(> ])i"(>sent idea of education, technical or other- 

 wise. As one speaker ])ut it, "intensive knowledge of one subject 

 does not compensate for extensive ignorance of everything else. A 

 man's intellectual and social well-being must not be wholly subordi- 

 nated to his vocational skill.'' 



This broader conception of agricultural education was voiced by 

 the President in the statement that these colleges "seek to provide 

 for the ])eople on the farms an equipment so broad and thorough as 

 to fit them for the highest requirements of our citizenship, so that 

 they can establish and maintain country homes of the best type and 

 create and sustain a country civilization more than equal to that of 

 the city. . . . The education to be obtained in these colleges should 

 create as intimate relationship as possible between the theory of learn- 

 ing and the facts of actual life. . . . The ordinary graduate of our 

 colleges should be and must be primarily a man and not a scholar." 



And again he said : " We shall never get the right idea of educa- 

 tion until we definitely understand that a man may be well trained 

 in book learning and yet, in the proper sense of the word and in all 

 practical purposes, be utterly uneducated; while a man of compar- 

 atively little book learning may nevertheless in essentials have a 

 good education." 



President Wheeler voiced this sentiment forcefully in his state- 

 ment tliat "education inheres not in what you put into a man or 

 what you hang onto a man, nor yet in sterilizing him or shaving 

 liiiu down to a standard shape; l)ut in giving him, such as he is and 

 such as his life activities may l)e, the opportunity in and thi'oiigh 

 those activities of living his life fully and effectively and abundantly. 

 Such education will thei-efore address itself perforce to the real 

 doings and exercises of real life, and its definition will be: The 

 guided practice of life, to the end that men may live." 



()pi)osition to the college graduate in agriculture has very largely 

 disappeared. lie finds a ready market for the special qualificaticms 

 which his education has given him. It is now recognized that if 

 the college is not turning out finished farmers in the strictly prac- 

 tical sense, its courses are furnishing the material out of which fin- 

 ished farmers of superior type are made; that agricultni-al education 

 must be intellectual and must deal with facts and [)rinciples rather 

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