62 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



neglect to place thereon such condiments as will make it relish with the boys 

 who will till the soil. Therefore they consume so little that their mental 

 stomachs are never called into vigorous and healthy action. Digestion be- 

 comes impaired and they are at length confirmed mental dyspeptics. My 

 farmer friends, is it not high time that we should look after the " nutritive 

 ratio " of the food that goes upon our public school tables ? 



Our public schools are high enough for the present— make them broader. 

 Our public school system seems to me to be a stairway, consisting of some twen- 

 ty steps, broad at its bottom and narrow— very narrow— at its top. So broad 

 indeed is it at its bottom step that all the little six-year-olds in the State can 

 get upon it. They deserve to get there. They do get there. Eager, jostling, 

 crowding, delighted with the new sights that come before their mental vision 

 they clamber to the top of the fifth step. Then the interest begins to abate. 

 Many leave the stairway and step out upon the highway of life. It 

 is quite true that the indifference of ignorant parents, poverty, sickness, and 

 death account in part for the absentees. But large numbers leave the stair- 

 way simply because they do not believe that the higher departments of the 

 school are for them. They do not believe it would pay to remain. You and 

 I do not agree with them ;— but they go. The sixth step can be narrower and 

 yet accomodate all the pupils who can be induced to stand upon it. The 

 farmers are the first to leave;— then the mechanics; afterward the merchants. 

 Each succeeding step may be narrower than the one before it, and when the 

 twentieth step is reached not five per cent of those who stood upon the lower 

 step will be found thereon. And who are these upon the upper step ? They 

 are the future preachers, the lawyers, the doctors, and the teachers. Few 

 merchants, a less number of mechanics, and scarcely any farmers will be 

 found thereon ;— and this in an agricultural State. 



The leading teachers in the land are demanding higher high-schools. Let 

 those who have the public weal at heart demand, first broader low-schools. At 

 a meeting of the school principals of Northern Illinois' recently held in 

 Aurora it was unanimously resolved that the elimination of Greek from the 

 curriculum of certain high- schools is a step in the wrong direction, the ten- 

 dency of which is to illiberalize the schools, etc. 



Teachers on all sides are endeavoring not simply to hold the high-school 

 grade where it is ; but to make it higher. Would it not be well to expend 

 some of our energy and some of our money in a well directed effort to raise a 

 larger per cent of our pupils up to the high-school grade ? Is it not of vastly 

 more importance to the State that ten pupils should be raised one degree than 

 that one pupil should be raised ten degrees ? Moreover, the one pupil who 

 has within him the desire and the ability to become a lawyer can get there 

 without help from anybody . And if perchance he should fail the sun of j ustice 

 would not forever be veiled in thick clouds. It is the other ten that need the 

 fostering care of the State ; and it is the earnest intelligent effort of the other 

 ten that the State most needs. I suppose lawyers are a necessary evil, but it 

 is to be hoped that the State will not engage in the business of manufacturing 

 them to the extent that its agriculturists will not be able to produce corn 

 and pork and butter and cheese enough to feed them. The State should spare 

 no effort— it should use the public schools and every other instrumentality at 



