120 THE FARMER AND THE NEW DAY 



racy, but they cannot be leaders unless they know the 

 issues at stake. Instinctively, we all know that the 

 great aid given by education to the farmer consists in 

 helping him to work out his human problem how to 

 take and keep his place in society and yet we are 

 short-sighted enough to call the students of these sub- 

 jects theorists, and we continue to demand educational 

 results merely in terms of bigger crops. 



EDUCATION IN A RURAL DEMOCRACY 



All these suggestions do not after all reach the main 

 issue. They have been made merely to indicate some 

 of the most important steps that should be taken. But 

 we must go down to much more fundamental things. 

 We must gain a new conception of the part education is 

 to play in building up our rural democracy. Education 

 is the very life blood of democracy. Democracy can- 

 not be efficient, indeed, it can hardly exist apart from 

 education. A democratic education, however, is not 

 achieved merely by compulsory attendance at school; 

 Germany did all that. Schools easily become mechan- 

 ical. Our whole system of rural education now needs 

 vitalizing. Education should become the main concern 

 of our democracy. The statesmanship of education is 

 vastly more important than that of any other one fea- 

 ture of democratic society except that of international 

 relationships, and even the latter is founded on genuine 

 and widespread education. The problems of educa- 

 tion are little understood by our law-makers. They 

 are incidental in the thinking of our people. Educa- 

 tion is given too narrow a definition, confined to the 

 idea of schooling for the youngsters. 



The New Day calls not only for the development of 

 a comprehensive program based upon an adequate na- 



