44 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



which brain work alone is required. Comparatively fe^y young men are 

 learning trades, and scarcely any are making the effort to fit themselves for 

 intelligent agriculturists— and all this in a couutry in which half the people 

 are tillers of the soil, and skillful mechanics command most tempting remu- 

 neration. 



Bat are the schools responsible for this state of affairs ? Certainly not 

 wholly— perhaps not in the main. But may they not, at least, be one of the 

 important factors that produce this unfortunate result ? 



The good book tells us that we may judge a tree by its fruits, and I know 

 not what may more properly be considered the ripened fruit of the public 

 school system than the graduates of the public high schools. Where are 

 they ? I answer, in the professions. Nearly eighty-five per cent of the male 

 graduates of any high school, with whose history i am familiar, are either 

 attempting to gain a livelihood by professional labor, or, having attempted 

 it, have failed. 



This fact alone, which can easily be verified, would seem to prove conclu- 

 sively that the tendency of the public school system is towards professional 

 life. In the primary school the pupil is prepared for the grammar school; in . 

 the grammar school, for the high school ; in the high school, for the profes- 

 sional schools. He who stops short of the high school, and becomes a farmer 

 or a mechanic, is simply an abortive specimen, and should not be taken in 

 evidence of the tendency of the schools. Indeed, I can call to mind a score 

 of young men who, years ago, entered high schools with the avowed inten- 

 tion of preparing themselves for mechanical or agricultural pursuits. But 

 while in the school their ambition was changed. They have either completed 

 the course and become lawyers or doctors, or they have abandoned it and be- 

 come farmers and mechanics. Those who have completed a high school 

 course and become handicraftsmen are marked exceptions to a general and 

 almost universal rule. 



But let us inquire why this is true of the schools. What is there in the 

 CQurse of study or in the surroundings of the pupils that diverts them from 

 an original purpose of becoming intelligent farmers, and awakens within 

 them a desire to earn their bread by the wielding of tongue or pen ? 



First: The teachers themselves, for the most part, have this desire. 

 Were it otherwise, they would not be in the school-room. Here, then, is a 

 difiiculty in the very nature of the case itself. At the head of our theological 

 schools are men who have succeeded in an eminent degree as preachers. 

 Their pupils imitate them and become preachers. At the head of our medi- 

 cal schools are men eminently successful as physicians and surgeons. Their 

 pupils imitate them and become physicians and surgeons. At the head of our 

 public schools are teachers. Their pupils imitate them and become teach- 

 ers, and use their profession as a stepping-stone to medicine, law, or theol- 

 ogy, as their teachers, earlier in life, perhaps, desired and intended to do. It 

 is only by the most strenuous, constant, and watchful elfort that the teacher, 

 whose life is spent in the school-room and among books, can so far come out 

 of himself, as it were, as to enter mto a warm and helpful sympathy with the 

 boy who is to become a farmer. Without this effort he will, unconsciously, • 

 perhaps, lead his pupil to strive to occupy a higher plane, not as a farmer, 

 but by abandoning the farm. 



