JEWl.^lL COLONIZATION IN PALESTINE 433 



Tlie next generation also needs to be educated without losing its 

 contacts with the life of the family and the farm. Otherwise the young 

 men will go to Egypt to find employment as clerks or emigrate to 

 Europe or America in searcli of better commercial opportunities^ as they 

 are now beginning to do. Ordinary school conditions are in the nature 

 of a training for commercial life, but there is no corresponding training 

 for agricultural life. This deficiency may be a more serious hindrance 

 to agricultural progress among the Jews because of their stronger 

 parental instincts. The greater the stress that is laid on the formal 

 education the stronger the tendency to develop urban habits of school 

 life in the children. To what extent this educational propensity may 

 have interfered with the success of agricultural movements among the 

 Jews would be difficult to determine, but it is evidently a factor at 

 the present time. Though commonly considered as a non agricultural 

 people, the Jews have clung to their agricultural traditions with won- 

 derful tenacity and have made innumerable attempts to place them- 

 selves on an agricultural basis. It would be important as well as 

 interesting to determine what has held them back. 



The difficulties of agricultural education are not peculiar to Pales- 

 tine. The same limitations to human progress are being encountered 

 even in countries that have elaborate provisions for agricultural educa- 

 tion. More practical methods must be found, that is, more truly 

 human methods if the full possibilities of any country or any people 

 are to be realized. The issue seems more acute in Palestine, in the 

 presence of a people who have fled from the urban civilization of 

 Europe, as their ancestors escaped from Egyptian bondage. Urban 

 educational ideas must be left behind if the permanent deliverance is to 

 be attained. If a solution could be found, in spite of the extreme diffi- 

 culty of the problem, no movement of our times would command a 

 wider interest. The world would owe a new debt to the Jew, and 

 Palestine would become more than ever the historical background of 

 our civilization. 



VOL. Lxxxnr. — 30. 



