14 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[January, 
For the American Agriculturist. 
Shall we Teach Agriculture in Common 
Schools ? 
This question has been agitated, more partic¬ 
ularly in New-England, for the last few years, 
and from the multiplicity of articles upon the 
subject in the papers from this quarter, we 
see is still up for discussion. Manuals have 
been prepared and those who publish school¬ 
books and understand the engineering necessary 
to get them introduced to the school, are the 
busy advocates of this branch of agricultural 
reform. To show precisely what is aimed at, 
we quote the words of one of these reformers 
as given in an agricultural address. 
“ Botany, or the study of plants, grains aud 
vegetables, should be a prominent study in our 
common schools, commenced with the alpha¬ 
bet, and continued to graduation, so that every 
boy and girl 14 years of age, can not only tell the 
growth and food of every grain and grass and 
vegetable, but also what soil and season, and 
fertilizers are best for it. Chemistry also should 
be studied from the earliest period to the latest, 
as we now study arithmetic and geography. It 
is vastly more important for a person to know 
the prime gases than the prime numbers. Arith¬ 
metic, geography, and grammar, are studied to 
the neglect of other more important and attrac¬ 
tive branches of knowledge. Teachers should 
be trained in our Normal schools not in Algebra 
aud geometry only or chiefly, but in botany and 
chemistry, and meteorology.” 
If we understand this reformer aright, he 
would have all the natural sciences which have 
a bearing upon husbandry taught in the free 
schools, and have the children indoctrinated in 
these sciences, by the time they are fourteen. 
Botany is of no more use to a farmer than zool¬ 
ogy, entomology, geology, and perhaps we 
should add ichthyology and conchology. If it 
is profitable for him to understand the science 
of plants, it must also be useful for him to know 
something of the insects that destroy them. 
Fish and shells make excellent manure, and so 
would come appropriately under the young farm¬ 
er’s studies. But these are only the auxiliary 
sciences to the great study of husbandry, a bus¬ 
iness that requires more varied knowledge than 
almost any other avocation. 
The unreasonableness of the demand of these 
reformers is apparent, if we consider that chil¬ 
dren in the free schools have already more stud¬ 
ies than they can master in the brief period of 
attendance. It is not profitable or hardly safe 
to send a child to the drill of the school room be¬ 
fore he is seven years of age. Before this age, 
his best place is in the nursery and the open air, 
attending to physical growth. Surely, the seven 
years previous to fourteen are not too long a 
period to master the branches usually taught in 
the free schools. A farmer should know how 
to read and write well, or he might not be able 
to keep posted in the various branches of nat¬ 
ural science, after he commenced business. He 
should be ready at figures, or his pecuniary af¬ 
fairs might suffer loss. The farmer sustains cer¬ 
tain relations to society and is as liable as other 
men to be called to fill positions of trust and re¬ 
sponsibility. It is therefore important that he 
should know how to use good English, whether 
he get the “ prime gases” in due order or not. 
The natural sciences are appropriately studied 
in our higher schools and colleges. Men and 
women of adult years and with all the advan¬ 
tages of laboratories, collections of specimens, 
accomplished lecturers, and months if not 
years of study, are only able to get the first 
principles of these sciences. So little pro¬ 
gress is made in the ordinary college course of 
study, that unless a young man lias a peculiar 
taste for these studies and pursues them zeal¬ 
ously in his vacations, and after graduation, they 
are never of much practical value to him. They 
make him more intelligent, and the discipline is 
valuable, but he does not so far master these 
sciences in his college course, as to make them 
of much use, or to make him a fit teacher of 
them. How then can it be expected that a 
child of fourteen is to get knowledge enough of 
these sciences to be of great advantage to him. 
We have not the teachers of requisite knowl¬ 
edge to instruct children in these studies, even 
if it were desirable. Most graduates when called 
to teach any one of these branches as a spec¬ 
ialty, feel the need of extra preparation and 
training to fit them for their work. Much less 
then could it be expected of our common school 
teachers, to instruct our children in sciences they 
have never studied. It would take years of 
special training to prepare them for it, and when 
they were fitted they could not afford to teach 
at the wages now given in the free schools. 
Higher qualifications in the teacher, of course 
imply the necessity of higher remuneration. 
Then we have not the conveniences for teach¬ 
ing these sciences in our common school houses, 
and can not have them without a total change 
in our system of education. The teacher of 
chemistry needs his laboratory with some ap¬ 
paratus, lamps, retorts, blow pipes, jars, earths, 
metals, etc. All the natural sciences need ap¬ 
paratus and specimens, to be studied with pr-ofit. 
We can not have these in the school house, for 
it is not built for the purpose. Any effort to 
introduce these studies would naturally divert 
the minds of the children from the branches 
commonly taught, which are necessary for all 
classes. It would result in a smattering of 
knowledge without thoroughness in any thing. 
Then it would inevitably provoke the jealousy 
of other classes not engaged in farming. The 
shoemaker and the blacksmith would be afraid 
that the children of farmers would have more 
than their share of the teacher’s attention, if 
the study were optional; and if it were compul¬ 
sory, it would breed a rebellion, and oust the 
teacher or school committee. Every one who 
has had much experience in the management 
of these schools, can see that the thing would 
not work. It is a common school, and only for 
those studies which are the common want of all. 
We want as a preparation for entrance to ag¬ 
ricultural schools, pupils well drilled in the 
branches now taught in the common school, and 
the time now allotted to these studies is none 
too long. Farmers should stand upon a level 
with other classes in these studies, as well as 
have special knowledge of their own business. 
This will have to be learned in schools special¬ 
ly devoted to agriculture, and upon the farm. 
Though .Wilis will not be so well for manufac¬ 
turers of school books, we have no doubt it will 
be better for farmers. A New-Englander 
Remarks on tiie Above. —It appears to us 
that in the above article the writer has taken 
rather too strong ground, though probably right 
in the main. The common branches, reading, 
writing, spelling, arithmetic, and geography, 
should certainly be the first studies, and be well 
mastered. But along with these, partly as a 
recreation perhaps, may well be introduced 
easy primary lessons in chemistry, in what is 
termed Natural Philosophy, in botany, physiol¬ 
ogy, and geology. The teacher is poorly fitted 
for his or her sphere of labor who can not give 
to a whole school at least some “ talks ” on these 
branches. If not prepared to do so, he should 
omit some evening parties and “study up.” 
Fifteen or twenty minutes time in the school 
room daily devoted to a short talk on these 
branches, will scarcely retard progress in other 
studies, and will afford a pleasant relief to both 
scholars and teachers. A little knowledge of 
the elements, of physiology or the care of the 
body, of the first principles of natural philoso¬ 
phy, of botany or the structure and growth of 
plants, of geology or the way soils are made 
up and arranged, will awaken interest and in¬ 
quiry, cultivate a taste for these studies, and be¬ 
get an important habit of observation—to say 
nothing of the practical utility to the future citi¬ 
zen, of even a little such knowledge. The trite 
saying, that “ a little knowledge is a dangerous 
thing,” is false as a rule. The great mass of chil¬ 
dren will never get any idea of these useful and in¬ 
teresting sciences , if it he not got in the common 
school before the age of fourteen. A few ideas 
inculcated there, will lead to useful reading, 
thought and investigation, afterward—to the 
less reading of trashy, exciting novels.-Not 
much apparatus is required. A few very sim¬ 
ple experiments are enough to awaken interest, 
and explain the first principles. The best chem¬ 
istry class we ever examined was one of boys 
and girls in a common school, from 13*to 16 
years old. The teacher expended on simple ma¬ 
terials, $8, contributed by a few individuals. 
The first electrical machine we ever saw (and a 
very effective one it was), we made while yet in 
the public school, with materials found wholly 
on the farm, except a single glass jar for the 
main cylinder. For a guide we had an old 
Comstock’s philosophy sent as a present by an 
Eastern friend.—O. J. 
Profit of Sheltering Manure. 
It is now pretty well settled by the experi¬ 
ments of intelligent agriculturists, that manure 
protected from the weather is much better than 
that which lias lain for six months or more in 
the open yard. Every farmer who has cleaned 
out under his stable floor where there was no 
cellar, or has used the manure made on the floor 
of the sheep barn or shed, has had occasion to 
suspect as much. Crops fertilized with such 
protected manure started with great vigor, show¬ 
ing a dark green color, and pushed on rapidly 
to maturity. There must be something in such 
manure that the unsheltered article loses. 
An English experiment shows that manure 
which was kept covered by nine inches of earth, 
produced several bushels more of grain per acre 
than the same amount of manure applied to the 
same extent of land, but which had lain exposed 
to the weather during the Winter. Another 
experiment shows a difference of about four 
tuns or nearly one hundred bushels, between 
the produce of two acres in potatoes, the one 
of which had 30 loads of covered, and the other 
30 loads of uncovered manure. 
A gain of fifty bushels of potatoes to the acre, 
just from the difference in the quality of the ma¬ 
nure, is worth looking after. It will be seen 
that this is nearly all clear profit. There is no 
more expense for seed, for handling manure, or 
for tillage. The only additional item would be 
the increased labor of harvesting. The convic¬ 
tion that the housing of manure is good econo¬ 
my is pretty general, and yet not a fourth part 
of our farmers pay any attention to it. The 
open yard without a barn cellar, and even with¬ 
out sheds, is still a very common spectacle. 
The best substitute for lack of cellar is a cov¬ 
ering of earth, or muck, for the manure, as fast 
