Dealing in Futures *l 



Minnesota Educator Declares Greatest Need in Agriculture 

 Is For Intelligent, Informed Followership 



J. 0, OHSISTIANSON 



^,TF AGRICULTURE is to maintain 

 ••I itself on an equality with other 

 groups, there must be a definite 

 recognition of the needs of specialized 

 training of our rural youth to carry on 

 at home on the farm," J. O. Christianson, 

 Superintendent of the School of Agri- 

 culture, University of Minnesota, said in 

 his address "Dealing in Futures" before 

 the annual banquet at Quincy, Jan. 30. 



"I would urge 

 every person inter- 

 ested in the welfare 

 of agriculture in 

 their respective 

 states to demand the 

 estab lishmentof 

 great vocational ag- 

 ricultural schools for 

 the rural young peo- 

 ple of their state; 

 not technical degree 

 courses, as already 

 prevail, but essen- 

 tially^ humanitarian courses clothed in 

 vision and rural application, directed at 

 all times back to the home communities. 



Open the Doors 



"I would urge you to go to your edu- 

 cational authorities and demand that the 

 existing agricultural facilities in the 

 universities be opened to all farm young 

 people over 17 or 18, that they might 

 come in during the winter months for 

 organized courses in agriculture, not 

 training for degrees and the mere ac- 

 quisition of credits, but training es- 

 pecially for the purpose of going back 

 into those home communities. 



"I would ask that these youth be given 

 a program of flexibility, not a rigid pro- 

 gram of required courses. Give to your 

 rural youth such training and you will 

 be investing in more successful farm or- 

 ganization, through greater power of di- 

 rection and understanding. You will have 

 trained co-operators back there at the 

 grass roots. Your farm people will be 

 able to distinguish between leadership 

 which is sincere and constructive and 

 that which is insincere and destructive. 

 In asking for the establishment of these 

 schools of agriculture, you are not ask- 

 ing for the building of new institutions, 

 but rather for a greater use of institu- 

 tions which already exist. 



"More and more, progressive educa- 

 tors are getting away from the idea that 

 in the ipere acquisition of extra scholas- 

 tic credits we have the difference between 

 the person who is educated and the one 

 who is not educated. It is possible that 



J. O. Christianson, principal of the 

 School of Agriculture at University 

 Farm, is head of the oldest and largest 

 school of its kind in the United States. 

 Created in 1888, the School of Agricul- 

 ture offers practical training in agricul- 

 ture and homemaking to every boy and 

 girl in Minnesota, 17 years of age or 

 older. During its 43 years, more than 

 19,000 young men and women from the 

 farms of Minnesota and other states and 

 countries have attended. More than 86 

 per cent of the School's graduates are 

 engaged in agricultural work. 



It is Mr. Christianson's belief that if 

 agriculture is to maintain itself on an 

 equality with other groups, it must give 

 as good a training in agriculture and 

 homemaking to those who remain on the 

 farm, as it gives in other lines of work 

 to those who leave the farms. 



in our educational policies throughout the 

 country we have spent so much energy 

 watching credit requirements and cur- 

 ricular prerequisites that we have failed 

 in character building and constructive 

 citizenship. We spend so much time 

 teaching and yet give so little prepara- 

 tion for life. We talk of government, 

 new deal, old deal and a great many 

 other kinds of deals, yet we must not 

 lose sight of the fact that the very suc- 

 cess or failure of any deal or of any 

 government depends upon the intelligent 

 participation in that government by all 

 of the people. 



Civilizations Fail 



"The eventual success of America de- 

 pends upon the ability of our rural cit- 

 izenry to participate intelligently in gov- 

 ernment. Thfese agricultural problems 

 which confront us are not new problems. 

 They have been the downfall of six great 

 civilizations before ours, the Chinese, the 

 Roman, the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the 

 the Hebrew and the Persian. In every one 

 of these civilizations there was a growth 

 in power and wealth up to the point 

 where the tiller of the soil called for 

 equality with other grroups. Failing to 

 get it, there was a steady decline in that 

 civilization until it became merely a mat-', 

 ter of historical record. 



"In China, 1100 B. C, we had in force 

 the essential features of the McNary- 

 Haugen bill. Each of these civilizations 

 tried to 'fix' things for agriculture, recog- 

 nizing the importance of maintaining an 

 agriculture on an equality with other 

 groups, and yet each one failed, not 

 necessarily because the plans and the 



"We most not have a doctrine of 

 despair in agriculture but a doctrine 

 of hope. We must perpetuate a na- 

 tional policy which will make it pos- 

 sible for the young people on the 

 farms today to see something of the 

 future — some possibility in the busi- 

 ness of farming that will be as at- 

 tractive as the glittering possibilities 

 they hear about in the city. Too long 

 we have followed the policy of sacri- 

 ficing our rural youth upon the altar 

 of ignorance." i 



.:■ V. 



programs were unworkable, but essen- 

 tially because they were given to an un- 

 organized, uneducated, illiterate rural 

 group, without vision, unable to partici- 

 pate and to understand. In order to un- 

 derstand the forces that affect our every- 

 day welfare there must be greater ap- 

 preciation of world relationships as they 

 are and as they should be. 



"The situation in which the nations of 

 the world find themselves today is a 

 man-made situation. There has been no 

 mysterious visitation of the wrath of 

 the gods, no witch-craft, but merely the 

 activities of man himself, his own blind- 

 ness, treachery, greediness and worship 

 of power. We must have the will and 

 the determination to undertake important 

 changes in the very reorganization of 

 social life, including the economic and 

 the political order, rather than the pur- 

 suance of the policy of drift. No longer 

 must we be mere caretakers of a sys- 

 tem, educational or governmental. We 

 must be pioneers, courageous, aggressive, 

 eagerly striving to understand the chang- 

 ing times and to fit our educational sys- 

 tem better to interpret changing con- 

 ditions. There will always be campaigns 

 of wrong against right, and right can 

 prevail only if it is supported by an un- 

 derstanding and courageous following 

 able to distingruish on the basis of factual 

 information that which is for the best 

 interest of the greatest number. 



For StudenU' Benefit ' -' 



"Schools should be run essentially for 

 the benefit of students. The main idea 

 in education should be the development 

 of those '^ho seek such education. The 

 most important asset of a state or nation 

 is not its wealth or its material goods, 

 but its hum^h souls filled with hope and 

 ambition, courage and understanding — in 

 them lies the hope of our nation — our 

 agriculture — and our homes. The enemies 

 of organized agriculture are just as ac- 

 tive 'as they have ever been, and there 

 will continue to be insidious attempts 

 made to cripple programs which are for 

 the benefit of the greatest number of 

 people. To combat the opposite there 

 must be developed a vigorous, courageous 

 agricultural followership among oar 

 (Continued on page 24) 



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L A. A. RECORD 



