28 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



moment still divided. In continental Europe generally opinion still 

 goes against the importation of such technical subjects into the 

 ordinary curriculum, although of late room has not improperly been 

 made in not a few quarters for filtering a knowledge of co-operation, 

 as an aid to agriculture, into young minds. In country districts the 

 teaching of co-operation almost naturally takes an agricultural shape. 

 But otherwise in most European countries it is held preferable — 

 just as in the higher schools and universities, so far as practical 

 agriculture comes into question there — to keep the two subjects 

 distinct. And that, to a considerable extent on Liebig's urging, on 

 the same cogent ground on which, in America, one-room schools have 

 been made to give way to better staffed "consolidated" ones— for 

 the reason that a narrow programme of teaching permits a more 

 eclectic selection of teachers, ensuring superior quality on each, and 

 accordingly promising better results in the taught. However, in 

 such countries the exclusion of agriculture from the index of subjects 

 is accompanied by much greater latitude than prevails among our- 

 selves in respect of the employment of school children in agricultural 

 labour out of school time. In the potato-growing districts of 

 Germany school children are in effect turned loose wholesale on the 

 potato fields at lifting time, as a help to agriculture, which in such 

 districts is mainly based upon potato growing for the distilling of 

 industrial alcohol and the securing of the schlempe, or refuse, for the 

 feeding of farm stock. And such agricultural work to all appearance 

 does not in the least hurt the children employed nor retard their 

 intellectual progress. 



In America, where of course agriculture occupies a much more 

 commanding position among callings practised than it does among 

 ourselves, as being the stand-by of immense districts, instruction in 

 the elements of agriculture is being made more and more a stock 

 subject. Such instruction is now given in the majority of rural 

 schools in the United States. And under the impetus which Mr. 

 D. F. Houston has, while Secretary of Agriculture, imparted to 

 the movement, new schools are constantly being added to the 

 particular roll. 



That naturally suggests another really very important point. 

 Education in our present, really rather extended sense — as designed 

 to infuse knowledge and inspire a love of rural life, and impart 

 instruction on the agriculture calling — wants, in truth, to begin long 

 before the rural infant is sent to school. It ought to be made to be 

 drawn in practically with mother's milk. The child's very leading- 

 strings and go-cart, figuratively speaking, should be " rural," with 



