The School of the Future 107 



knowledge and ability. He can "do" things. 

 City boys are likely to deal with pictures and 

 models and descriptions, and with made-up ex- 

 ercises. The farm boy must overcome his 

 own difficulties for himself. Every day brings 

 him a hundred of these natural problems. He 

 tips over with a load of hay ' in the back lot. 

 Does he go to the village to consult an expert 

 or to the library to look up references ? 



He lives close to the raw materials, deals 

 first-hand with them, and his methods, although 

 sometimes primitive, are short and effective. 

 I am impressed with the indirectness and ex- 

 pensiveness of much of the work in cities, 

 those who do public work especially seem 

 usually to be killing time, and the methods by 

 which they are employed seem to a country- 

 man to be political and circuitous and to involve 

 a great waste of efficiency. 



(2) The farm boy is trained to be indus- 

 trious. If he turns out to be lazy, he finds no 

 system of political patronage to float him along. 

 It is commonly thought by outsiders that the 

 farm boy's life is hard. It is true that it is 



