Cook: City and Country 



II^^ 



normal environment of the child, while 

 the senses and judgment are trained by 

 sharing the varied work and responsi- 

 bihty of the farm. The capable mind 

 reflects the diversity of nature, and 

 gradually takes over the accumulated 

 experience of preceding generations. 

 Knowing comes largely from doing. 

 The hand is the instrument of intelli- 

 gence that teaches the brain the rela- 

 tion of cause and effect, which is the 

 basis of practical thinking and of 

 scientific progress. Thus agriculture 

 has fundamental educational values 

 that are entirely overlooked in urban 

 institutions. 



Although the importance of agricul- 

 ture is admitted by every thoughtful 

 person, the conventional attitude of our 

 "educated class" is negative and aloof, 

 like the Chinese literati who think of 

 farming as "coolie work." Literature 

 has flourished in China for many cen- 

 turies, but the wonderfully specialized 

 systems of agriculture have not been 

 appreciated or described. "People 

 who know about agriculture don't write 

 •books, and those who write books 

 don't know about agriculture," was 

 the explanation that an eminent Chi- 

 nese scholar gave me. Chinese litera- 

 ture and art reflected a higher apprecia- 

 tion of nature and out-door life several 

 centuries ago than in the present age of 

 urban degeneration and decay. Neither 

 have the literary and educational tal- 

 ents of our race been applied to agri- 

 culture. Works of reference we have, 

 but few books that can be read for 

 pleasure or contemplation of ideals. 

 The synthesis of intellectual and agricul- 

 tural life is still to be made. 



WHERE IS THE "HIGHER EDUCATION"? 



False notions of the educational 

 "advantages" of cities are among the 

 most effective forms of urban propa- 

 ganda, and lead thousands of families 

 every year t J leave their farms. Short- 

 term rural schools are assumed to be 

 inferior, without considering the value 

 of farm conditions for normal develop- 

 ment of children. Urban environ- 

 ments tend to dehumanize by leaving 

 many of the normal instincts unsatis- 



fied and energies suppressed. A nar- 

 roiv urban existence is a privation of life 

 that no child should suffer, and that no 

 parents ivould inflict, if the facts were 

 appreciated. Those who grow up with- 

 out the experience of farm life are not 

 at home in the world. No amount 

 of urban education can take the place 

 of farm contacts in the development of 

 constructive intelligence. 



That town children are kept in 

 school ten months in the year is no 

 reason why farm children should be 

 herded together or shut up with books 

 for the same length of time. The 

 urban need of sending even the very 

 young children to school to keep them 

 out of the streets does not exist in good 

 country homes. The theory of division 

 of labor is carried to many injurious 

 extremes in the city schools, as though 

 the object were to restrict the abilities 

 of the children to a low average of 

 mediocrity. The factory system dom- 

 inates the school system, and "higher 

 education" is still "semimonastic." In 

 order to be made intelligent we become 

 inept, through long periods of seclusion 

 from work and tangible responsibility, 

 in our so-called "institutions of learn- 

 ing." Shorter periods of formal in- 

 struction, not breaking our contacts 

 with life, nor surfeiting our minds, 

 would leave us with better appreciation 

 of practical knowledge and more con- 

 structive social interest. 



Instead of people being educated 

 apart, to serve in institutions or to live 

 by their wits, the arts of production 

 should be as highly developed and as 

 much appreciated as the arts of expres- 

 sion and exploitation. Little has been 

 gained as yet by adding courses in 

 agriculture to our system of formal 

 instruction. Even our professedly 

 agricultural colleges are training the 

 students for urban occupations, rather 

 than for farm life. To judge from the 

 present agricultural courses, farmers 

 are supposed to have only a narrow 

 and casual interest in the world at 

 large, whereas the intelligent farmer, 

 living a normal life and raising a normal 

 family, usually has a more active inter- 

 est than the urban business man in 



