354 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



ing does not lend itself to the usual state curriculum, or to any 

 prescribed methods. It is a profession, not a mechanical trade 

 where practice in routine acts brings skill, and one set of facts 

 illustrates all its principles. Young children may be able to 

 understand these general principles, but reciting long prescrip- 

 tions for soil treatment under theoretical conditions for crops 

 they have never seen, has no bearing whatever on their future 

 as farmers, and hinders their education as it takes time which 

 might be spent in worth-while work. 



If there is nothing educational in abstract lessons in agricul- 

 ture, engaging in agriculture with an open mind is an education 

 in itself. City and country teachers alike are agreed in testify- 

 ing to the value of real work in gardens for children of all ages. 

 The work is valuable because through it the children learn so 

 much about the commonest things about them, plants, earth, 

 water and sunshine, not because it teaches them processes which 

 will enable them to earn more money when they grow up. The 

 teaching method which looks to the environment of the child 

 to furnish most of the class-room material makes the teaching 

 of agriculture a necessity. When children learn to understand 

 the things around them and learn the possibilities and rela- 

 tionships of the local environment, there is no danger of train- 

 ing mere technicians, who are capable only of mechanical work, 

 nor yet of developing abstract theorists, whose contact with life 

 is confined to books and ideas. 



Using the world for a text-book insures the children's being 

 fitted to live in that world efficiently. Since the modern world 

 even in a simple farming district is much too complicated to 

 give one person a grasp of all its phases, the important thing in 

 education is to give every person a good working point of view 

 towards life. Mrs. Harvey believes that there are two essential 

 sides to this point of view, and that it is equally important that 

 pupils acquire them both in their school life. The first is suffi- 

 cient practical knowledge of the industrial and economic life 

 about them from the side of its underlying principles to insure 

 their being able as adults to control their material environment, 

 not to be at its mercy. This work should always be taught with 

 scientific principles and social relationships in mind ; because it 

 is no part of the duty of the public schools of a democracy to give 



