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CHAPTER IV 



EDUCATION AND AGRICULTURE 



- - - HE subject of paramount importance 

 in our correspondence and in the 

 hearings is education. In every 

 part of the United States there 

 seems to be one mind, on the part of those 

 capable of judging, on the necessity of redirect- 

 ing the rural schools. There is no such unan- 

 imity on any other subject. It is remarkable 

 with what similarity of phrase the subject 

 has been discussed in all parts of the country 

 before the commission. Everywhere there is a 

 demand that education have relation to living, 

 that the schools should express the daily life, 

 and that in the rural districts they should 

 educate by means of agriculture and country life 

 subjects. It is recognised that all difficulties 

 resolve themselves in the end into a question of 

 education. 



" The schools are held to be largely responsible 

 for ineff"ective farming, lack of ideals, and the 

 drift to town. This is not because the rural 



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