60 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



other states, whose imperishable monuments are the schools themselves, 

 permit me to mention what seems to me to be the cause of much of this 

 seemingly unfriendly criticism. In the language of the physician, let us 

 make a careful diagnosis of the case and then prescribe. 



Teachers are intellectual workers. Their life work is in the realm of 

 mind. Their tastes are literary. They have clean soft hands and unbrowned 

 faces. They do not bear about them the odor of the barn, nor the marks of 

 frequent contact with the soil. They take Turkish baths, perfume their 

 handkerchiefs and live in homes, if not luxurious, at least elegant. They 

 are surrounded with books, paintings and music. There is an air of refine- 

 ment and culture which pervades their homes and their school rooms. And 

 all this is well. We would not have it otherwise. But the boys— who are 

 they ? What will be their life work ? A few will follow the example of 

 their master and teacher and will choose their life work in the realm of in- 

 tellect. It is quite natural that many more should desire to do this because 

 he is their master and teacher. But the great majority will toil with their 

 hands as well as with their heads. In the schoolroom, before the teacher 

 who is himself a gentleman of refinement and culture, skilled in the various 

 kinds of intellectual labor, sit the boys who will decide either deliberately 

 or from the force of circumstances to sweat; the boys whose shoulders must 

 bear the heavy burdens ; the boys whose hands will be grim and callous and 

 crooked and cracked with toil ; the boys who will cultivate our soil ; harvest 

 our grain ; dig our wells; build our chimneys; shoe our horses; make our car- 

 riages and our harnesses; build our houses; and make our coflSus, 

 and dig our graves. Does the teacher— can the teacher— always re- 

 member the wide difference between his life work and the life 

 work of most of the boys before him ? His tastes are for purely in- 

 tellectual labor. In that work he gets his pleasure and his dollars. Even 

 his recreations are often of a literary character. But the boys will plow and 

 sow and reap and mow and feed and milk and skim and churn ; and from 

 such physical employments and such intellectual labor as will bear either 

 directly or indirectly upon these, must they get most of their pleasures and 

 their dollars. Now out of this divergence of taste grows much of that which 

 is criticized in our public school work, and this divergence has been greatly 

 intensified during the last quarter century by the growth in our midst of a 

 new profession, that of teaching. So long as our schools were in a large meas- 

 ure supplied with teachers fresh from the farm or the workshop, who taught 

 during the winter and labored at some trade, or on the farm in summer, 

 there was but little danger that the true interests of the agricultural classes 

 would be neglected in any greater degree than the other classes represented. 

 The schools of that time were, without doubt, much inferior to the schools 

 of this generation. But in the great advance that has been made, the educa- 

 tional interests of the industrial classes have been left far in the rear. Now 

 we have professional teachers— men who are skilled in the science of in- 

 struction. They have mastered mental and moral philosophy. They are 

 proficient in language. They know how to present truth to the child so 

 that it may be by him apprehended. They know how to teach better— shall I 

 say it— better than they know what to teach to the boy who will gain his 



