No. 4.] AGRICULTURAL EDUCATIOX. 119 



Dr. W. PL Jordan (Geneva, X. Y.). AVc have from the 

 first prejudiced our case with educators and with a hirge por- 

 tion of the public by the application of a class name to 

 knowledge and education that has the broadest application. 

 What we wish to do is to teach the boys and girls their rela- 

 tion to themselves, to their environment, and to give them 

 power of momentum in particular directions. In teaching 

 the sons and daughters of rural people, we are teaching those 

 who will be farmers, physicians, merchants, lawyers, states- 

 men and even politicians, and we want to bring them in 

 touch with life. When you have brought a boy in touch 

 Avith life, so that he sees dignity in common things, then you 

 have o-iven him a momentum over the farm, if that is where 

 he belongs, and you have given him a momentum possibly 

 in other directions. 



Mr. Henry Whittemore (State Normal School, Fram- 

 ingham). I want to enter very heartily into sjnipathy with 

 what Professor Bailey has said. If we people who have con- 

 trol of education should take all the things that people want 

 us to in the public schools, there wouldn't be anything left of 

 the public schools. There is one thing I am very sorry to 

 see, and that is, the almost utter ignorance of the farmers of 

 the common school and what it is doino-. We are teachinof 

 all phases of agriculture, as I understand it, in the common 

 schools of Massachusetts. We have voluntarily entered into 

 all the questions of analysis of soil, the discussion of seeds, the 

 healthy and unhealthy plants, animals that are good for the 

 farmer, and those things that help to make good crops, — 

 all those things. We are fighting for the school gardens, 

 which is the beginning of teaching, not only on the question 

 of agriculture, but going back to the great economic ques- 

 tion of correct living in towns of this size and towns of a 

 larger size. We are all in symj)athy, Mr. Chairman, with 

 this question of teaching agriculture. 



It seems to me that education should have some breadth 

 to it. No institution should look simply at one point of 

 view, whether it is the work on the farm or in the machine 

 shop. There is a breadth of view that we people who have 

 charge of schools attempt to include in our schools for these 



