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Show EDUCATION FOR FARMERS. To the average mind the word education is limited in its definition to what one learns at school, but that is altogether too narrow. Education means growth, culture, development, as well as the acquisition of knowledge, and knowledge again is not monopolized by the schools, indeed, one who knows only what he learns at school is much more justly entitled to the epithet of ignoramus than he who, having no opportunity to attend school, has been a diligent student of nature and of men. There were wise men before letters were invented, or schools established. Schools, good schools, are excellent auxiliaries to education, but they are nothing more. It is admitted by all that no amount of book learning will suffice to fit a young man for the duties of a physician, a lawyer, or a clergyman, and the idea that it would fit him for the profession of agriculture is absurd. Yet each profession has its literature, which can be reached only through the portal of the school or the aid of private instructors, and the literature of each profession is of prime importance to those who would pursue successfully a profession. The literature of a profession, farming, for example, conserves the wisdom of the past and records the experiments of the present. But the wisdom of the past preserved in books is like wheat before it is winnowed, mixed with the chaff of ignorance and the cheat of prejudice. So, also, is much of the scientific knowledge of the present. They are both misleading and injurious to him who accepts them without question. But they are great helps to him whose mind has been trained to criticise all things, and who accepts only that which stands this crucial test. Colleges confer degrees, yet these are often misleading; the young man with A. M. or M. D. after his name is not necessarily a master of arts or of medicine. He is only prepared to enter upon a career of practical experiment, which, if he possesses the talent, the industry, and the perseverance necessary to the completion of his education, may ultimately make him worthy of the title conferred upon him prematurely by the school. No amount of theoretical training will fit a man for the successful pursuit of agriculture; yet, without theoretical training, a man rarely rises to the dignity of an intelligent farmer. Farming is a profession in the same sense that the practice of law or of medicine is a profession; hence the youth who is destined to become a farmer should be educated with reference to that profession. The public schools of this country furnish the facilities for all the literary training absolutely needed, and, in the larger cities, the scientific branches are taught as well as they are in our colleges, and these are important. While it were a waste of time to study the dead languages, the prospective farmer should become familiar with the elements of natural history, botany, chemistry, geology, and natural philosophy. These branches of science have a direct relationship to his future business, and the young farmer who enters the profession versed in them will and that he is not only prepared for a larger measure of success, but that his mind is fitted for communion with nature, whose secrets, hid from others, are constantly revealed to him, affording and inexhaustible source of pleasure as well as profit. To him every expanding leaf or opening flower has a beautiful significance, and every phenomenon involved in the growth of plants has for him a meaning unknown to the ignorant plodder. All nature to him is one grand illustrated encyclopedia filled with lessons of wisdom, from the pen and pencil of the original author and artist of the universe. To the educated farmer the rocks present their own history, written in unmistakable characters by the finger of God. The soil whispers to him of its fertility or complains of its poverty in language perfectly intelligible, and the treasures of Flora, Pamona and Ceres are shown, in rich abundance, at the feet of him who wields the magic wand of intelligent labor.-National Farmer. |