THE NEW AGRICULTURE.- 53 



tion and the amalgamation of practice and science are not complete, 

 but the unifying process is already in progress and that is what I 

 choose to term our new agriculture. 



Along with this, and running so closely as to really constitute a 

 part thereof, comes a redirected education. As a nation we are 

 only beginning to realize that our system of education is a false one. 

 For centuries the subject matter, and even the process of education, 

 have been as thoroughly agreed upon as are the orbits of the planets. 

 It has been taken for granted that the education for a common man 

 is the knowledge of the three R's — reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic. 

 The favored few might bask in the drying sun of Latin, Greek, 

 and the so-called arts. 



Xow we are beginning to learn that all this training bears no 

 practical relation to success in actual life. The dunce at school and 

 the boy of a few winters at the district school have become the men 

 of keen judgment, remarkable initiative, and have the highest 

 esteem of their communities. If the past system of schooling should 

 assert its superiority in any direction more than another, it would be 

 expected in the realm of the literary world. Note that the great 

 genius, Shakespeare, had little school training; Bums and Bunyan 

 had less ; and it remained for Chaucer to cut loose from scholarship 

 before his best work was forthcoming. Our schools have failed to 

 touch the vital human characteristics of the soul of the child, of the 

 man. The system has worked against human nature rather than 

 with it. The school courses have catered to the head rather than to 

 the heart and the hand. But this well-meaning, though ill-advised 

 system of education, is being redirected and that is another point 

 bearing on our new agriculture. 



Various agencies are contributing to this redirected education. 

 There are the agricultural colleges, experiment stations, federal 

 department of agriculture, our schools, boards of agriculture, vari- 

 ous associations representing dairying, horticulture, livestock, etc. 

 There are our fairs, agricultural societies, boards of trade, and com- 

 mercial organizations, the grange, the church, and the press. The 

 work of our agricultural colleges has already been referred to 

 briefly and the campaign of our own institution at Amherst shows 

 that its applied knowledge reaches farther than the boys and girls 

 who happen to be at the institution. Its full-fledged normal depart- 



