The Editor's Outlook. 



AGRICULTURAL 

 EDUCA riON. 



T 



HE RECENT celebration at 

 Cornell University in honor of 

 the prosperity of the College of 

 Agriculture outlined clearly and boldly the policy 

 of agricultural education in that institution. There 

 are two distinct theories of agricultural education 

 in the land, although they do not appear to have 

 been clearly comprehended by educators. The 

 older and general theory endeavors to make farm- 

 ers of its students ; the other, having secured the 

 farmer's son, aims to educate him. The one aims 

 to train mere tradesmen or handicraftsmen ; the 

 other desires to give the farmer a broad education, 

 and to fit him for the best citizenship, as well as for 

 farming alone. It is the difference which exists be- 

 tween the trade school and the university. 



The common conception of an agricultural edu- 

 cation supposes that farming as a trade can be 

 taught at college. But this supposition is untrue. 

 Probably there are few educators who seriously 

 hold this idea at the present day, and certainly no 

 one who has made the endeavor to teach the com- 

 plete trade to students can believe in it. It is little 

 more than a pleasant deceit. The place to learn 

 the common farm operations is on the farm, and if 

 it is the purpose of our colleges to teach these op- 

 erations as a prescribed part of their courses, they 

 are, by so much, necessary failures. The college 

 cannot take the place of the farm. Its purpose is 

 to supplement it and ennoble it. If the student 

 who seeks an agricultural education is not already 

 familiar with common farm operations, he should 

 first acquire them, or he should spend one or more 

 of his vacations on a farm. In other words, like 

 all other students, he must prepare for college be- 

 fore he enters it. Many farm operations can, of 

 course, be learned at college, but everyone familiar 

 with the subject knows that much of the college 

 farm labor is little more than a travesty, even when 

 directed, as it usually is, in the utmost seriousness 

 and earnestness. 



This opens up the whole question of compulsory 

 paid student labor. It was a noticeable fact that 

 three of the professors who took part in the Cornell 

 celebration had been connected with institutions 

 in which the compulsory student labor system was 

 maintained, and all of them are now opposed to 

 the system. Having known both sides of the ques- 



tion, their opmions should carry some weight. The 

 compulsory labor system steals the student's time. 

 One cannot afford to go to college, at an expense of 

 ^150 to $300 a year, for the privilege of doing com- 

 mon farm labor for eight or ten cents an hour. He 

 can do the same work at home without expense, 

 and receive fifteen cents an hour for it ; and the 

 chances are all in favor of his learning more care- 

 ful methods at home, when pressed by necessities, 

 than in the half-comic gang labor at college. When 

 the student has acquired the common operations, 

 and has obtained the money, let him go to college. 

 An education is supposed to teach one to think, 

 rather than to work ; and even were it otherwise, it 

 is nevertheless true that no amount of perfunctory 

 labor under surveillance can make an industrious 

 man out of a drone. All industry, energy and effi- 

 ciency are conceived in the mind : give the student 

 the motive for work, and work he must. 



We believe in teaching the student farm opera- 

 tions in college, but we cannot believe in the com- 

 mon perfunctory labor. The labor required of the 

 student should be purely educational — laboratory 

 work — and like all laboratory work, should be with- 

 out pay. There are very few institutions which 

 have facilities for conducting true laboratory work 

 in farm and garden practice. It is the boast of the 

 compulsory labor colleges that the work they re- 

 quire of students is educational, but such is only 

 infrequently and incidentally the case ; and even 

 if true, it is a strange philosophy which requires 

 the institution to pay for teaching a student ! So 

 long as the student is paid for his labor, so long is 

 his work necessarily measured by the pay he re- 

 ceives, and so long must there be an endeavor to 

 make him earn his money, whether he is learning 

 anything or not. The money standard is not the 

 true measure of the student's endeavors. The 

 paid compulsory labor system is fundamentally 

 wrong, and there is no law in the philosophy of 

 pedagogics to sustain it. 



There are two other pleas for compulsory labor 

 which were mentioned at the celebration in ques- 

 tion. One is the assertion that it keeps the students 

 in health ; but a comparison of the students of labor 

 colleges and others shows no superiority in the 

 former in this respect. It is also said that com- 

 pulsory labor keeps the student in sympathy with 



