34 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



happy; the two things must go together. So I say that the liberal and 

 general education of the masses of our people is what has helped to make 

 our country great and prosperous. 



"I want to dwell a little longer upon this idea of the usefulness of 

 education as combined with the culture value of education. It is pos- 

 sible that we may over emphasize the useful. As Dr. Adams has remarked, 

 we ought to put equal emphasis on the culture value of education. So 

 many people in this world live only up to the neck. We want happy 

 homes as well as useful homes. We want the useful because we have no 

 need of the millionaire tramp any more than of the pauper tramp. I am 

 a thorough believer in a practical education, but we must train the boy to 

 be a good thinker as well as a good actor. Some people say, 'why should 

 my boy study geometry and algebra and all that sort of thing, he will 

 never use it?' The question is not so much what the boy will do with it, 

 but what it will do with the boy. We need men who can think logically 

 and clearly. Most of us are lazy in our thinking. We want our thinking 

 done for us. We don't reason well. A good deal of reasoning is like that 

 illustrated by the idea that at Kalamazoo they have an insane asylum 

 and also grow celery. Up at Newberry they have an insane asylum and 

 also grow celery; therefore, wherever they grow celery is a good place 

 for an insane asylum, and wherever is an insane asylum is a good place 

 to grow celery. This looks like an exaggeration, but lots of thinking is 

 just as reasonable. A student properly trained has the power to think, 

 has the habit of tliinking, and it is this habit of thinking that is practical. 

 It does not make any difference how the boy acquired this power, whether 

 it was through geometry or agriculture ; the power to think is the great 

 end of education. I am glad that I have a strong right arm, but now it 

 does not make any difference to me how I got that strong right arm, 

 whether it was hoeing corn or rowing a boat. If I had my way, I got it 

 by rowing a boat, if my father had his way, I got it by hoeing corn; but 

 the chief thing is that I have got it and I can use it for anything I want 

 to. So with the power to think. Thus while I like the idea that schools 

 must fit for bread and butter earning, they must go further than that 

 and give good broad training, and this broad training must be open for 

 every boy and girl in the land, poor and rich, and the poor especially. We 

 must have such educational advantages that the boy in blue jeans and 

 the girl with the checkered apron may have the opportunity for the best 

 and broadest education." 



Dr. Kedzie responded to a call for a few remarks by a characteristic 

 story. 



