ILLIKOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 5Q 



The iron horse is a wonder. He snorts to some purpose. We all agree 

 that his advent was the dawn of a new and glorious day in the world of ma- 

 terial progress. But there are those who do not forget that the monster 

 wastes more than seventy-five per cent, of the black food that goes into his 

 fiery and capacious maw. We must fully realize this fact before we can 

 make earnest effort to produce such improvements in the locomotive as will 

 check his voracious appetite without in any degree reducing his strength. 

 Indeed, you would not call the inventor of the air-brake an enemy to im- 

 proved locomotion. 



Our public schools are good. They are excellent. They are magnificent. 

 They are indispensible. They are our safety, our bulwark, our glory, our 

 pride. We honor, as did Jupiter of old, the man who is not a poet, not a 

 lawyer, not a preacher, not a statesman, not an artist, but the teacher of all 

 these ! " Crown ^him, crown him I " said the father of the gods and king 

 of men, *' and give him a seat at my right hand." Our schools are a power 

 for good that no one would wish to cripple. But may it not be true that 

 there is some fuel wasted ? That an air-brake applied to some depart- 

 ments of our schools might result in safer and more satisfactory mental 

 locomotion ? 



I do but voice the thought of a large body of intelligent men and women 

 when I say that there is something wrong— fundamentally wrong— in our 

 public school system. Business men feel it ; farmers feel it ; teachers who 

 have abandoned the profession, who have come up out of their books and 

 have gone out into the busy, struggling world to meet men face to face, feel 

 it. The press is no longer silent. Scarcely a periodical of prominence but 

 admits to its columns unfavorable mention of modern methods of instruction 

 or courses of study. All these critics seem to agree that there are imperfec- 

 tions, but as to their exact nature or the proper remedy there is a wide di- 

 versity of sentiment. One writer pleads for " half-time in schools," another 

 for full time and compulsory attendance. The Scientific American speaks of 

 the " failure of the public schools to shape their work to meet the practical 

 wants of the multitude." Another periodical refers to the " dissatisfaction 

 of business men with the boys from the public schools." One writer says, 

 *' we educate them (the boys) in such a way as to make them discontented 

 with their condition." Says a Kew England clergyman, " Look among the 

 high school graduates in any of our large towns, count up the half-starved 

 clerks and would-be teachers, the lawyers without briefs, the doctors patient- 

 less, the clergymen without pulpits, and have the candor to admit that the 

 great number of these tell the story of a pernicious public sentiment as to 

 the courses of study in our public schools." " Is it fair," asks the editor of 

 a farm journal, *' to shape the course of study in our country schools wholly 

 in the interests of the few who will go to the higher schools, not making any 

 special provision for the boys who are to stay at home on the farm ? " Says 

 the Rev. Dr. E. E. Hale in a recent number of the North American Beview: 

 *' The children educated under the new system have no experience with 

 tools, no ability with their hands, and but very little knowledge of practical 

 life." 



With due deference to the opinions of the leading educators in this and 



