100 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pul^. Doc. 



school as a profession, expecting to follow it all their life. 

 They were enthusiastic and professional pedagogues. I 

 wonder how man}^ of the young men and young women 

 Avho go into the rural schools of America expect to follow it 

 all their lives, or whether it is not merely a makeshift? In 

 one place I know that the school teachers are engaged some- 

 times for a period of ten weeks, and some of them for even 

 a less time, and a majority of them are not engaged for 

 rural schools for a longer period than one school year. 



The teacher ! It is the teacher's business to impress the 

 child. The child puts itself in the hands of the teacher for 

 the pur})ose — unconsciously, to be sure — of being impressed 

 and guided ; and the teacher's influence, therefore, is tremen- 

 dous. And the teachers in our schools — I am not criticising 

 our schools, because it is a condition that has gone through 

 a long evolution — the teachers in our schools have very little 

 touch with rural afiairs. The teachers have been trained 

 very largely from the town and city point of view, and are 

 very often town and city i)ers()ns. And the ordinary prob- 

 lem of the school books, — are they problems of the farm, 

 or are they problems of the city? I wonder whether the 

 problems of arithmetic, the problems of partnership, are 

 given as often in the terms of the environment of the child 

 as they might be? I wonder wh}^ they should not refer to 

 the thousand and one things that pertain to the real life of 

 the child, as well as those things which have to do with city 

 conditions, with which he may have almost nothing to do? 



Some two or three years ago Professor Barnes made inquiry 

 of all the children in two agricultural counties in New Jersey 

 as to what tlwy expected to do when they were grown. At 

 seven years of age, 26 per cent of all those asked said they 

 were to follow some occupation connected with the country. 

 He asked those at the age of fourteen years, of which 2 per 

 cent said that they expected to follow some occupation con- 

 nected with the farm. Between seven years and fourteen 

 years the difference between 20 per cent and 2 per cent ! 

 What influences were at work all those years to turn the 

 young minds from the farm? Professor Barnes says in this 

 })articular case he thinks it was due in a large part to the 



