Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions

by George S. Boutwell

Agriculture is not to attain to true practical dignity by the borrowed lustre that eminent names, ancient and modern, may have lent to it, any more than the earth itself is warmed and made fruitful by the aurora borealis of an autumn night. Our system of public instruction, from the primary school to the college, rests mainly upon the public belief in its importance, its possibility, and its necessity. It is easy on a professional holiday to believe in the respectability of agriculture; but is it a living sentiment, controlling your conduct, and inspiring you with courage and faith in your daily labor? Does it lead you to contemplate with satisfaction the prospect that your son is to be a farmer also, and that your daughter is to be a farmer's wife? These, I imagine, are test questions which not all farmers nor farmers' wives can answer in the affirmative. Else, why the custom among farmers' sons of making their escape, at the earliest moment possible, from the labors and restraints of the farm? Else, why the disposition of the farmer's daughter to accept other situations, not more honorable, and in the end not usually more profitable, than the place of household aid to the business of the home? How, then, can a system of education be prosperous and efficient, when those for whom it is designed neither respect their calling nor desire to pursue it? You will not, of course, imagine that I refer, in these statements, to all farmers; there are many exceptions; but my own experience and observation lead me to place confidence in the fitness of these remarks, speaking generally of the farmers of New England. It is, however, true, and the statement of the truth ought not to be omitted, that the prevalent ideas among us are much in advance of what they were ten years ago. In what has been accomplished we have ground for hope, and even security for further advancement.

I look, then, first and chiefly to an improved home culture, as the necessary basis of a system of agricultural education. Christian education, culture, and life, depend essentially upon the influences of home; and we feel continually the importance of kindred influences upon our common school system.

It will not, of course, be wise to wait, in the establishment of a system of agricultural education, until we are satisfied that every farmer is prepared for it; in the beginning sufficient support may be derived from a small number of persons, but in the end it must be sustained by the mass of those interested. Other pursuits and professions must meet the special claims made upon them, and in the matter of agricultural education they cannot be expected to do more than assent to what the farmers themselves may require.

An important part of a system of agricultural education has been, as it seems to me, already established. I speak of our national, state, county, and town associations for the promotion of agriculture. The first three may educate the people through their annual fairs, by their publications, and by the collection and distribution of rare seeds, plants, and animals, that are not usually within reach of individual farmers. By such means, and others less noticeable, these agencies can exert a powerful influence upon the farmers of the country; but their thorough, systematic education must be carried on at home. And for local and domestic education I think we must rely upon our public schools, upon town clubs or associations of farmers, and upon scientific men who may be appointed by the government to visit the towns, confer with the people, and receive and communicate information upon the agricultural resources and defects of the various localities. It will be observed that in this outline of a plan of education I omit the agricultural college. This omission is intentional, and I will state my reasons for it. I speak, however, of the present; the time may come when such an institution will be needed. In Massachusetts, Mr. Benjamin Bussey has made provision for a college at Roxbury, and Mr. Oliver Smith has made similar provision for a college at Northampton; but these bequests will not be available for many years. In England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Belgium, Prussia, Russia, Austria, and the smaller states of Europe, agricultural schools and colleges have been established; and they appear to be the most numerous where the ignorance of the people is the greatest. England has five colleges and schools, Ireland sixty-three, while Scotland has only a professorship in each of her colleges at Aberdeen and Edinburgh. In France, there are seventy-five agricultural schools; but in seventy of them—called inferior schools—the instruction is a compound of that given in our public schools and the discipline of a good farmer upon his land, with some special attention to agricultural reading and farm accounts. Such schools are not desired and would not be patronized among us. When an agricultural school is established, it must be of a higher grade,—it must take rank with the colleges of the country. President Hitchcock, in his report, published in 1851, states that six professors would be required; that the first outlay would be sixty-seven thousand dollars, and that the annual expense would be six thousand and two hundred dollars. By these arrangements and expenditures he contemplates the education of one hundred students, who are to pay annually each for tuition the sum of forty dollars. It was also proposed to connect an agricultural department with several of the existing academies, at an annual expense of three thousand dollars more. These estimates of cost seem low, nor do I find in this particular any special objection to the recommendation made by the commissioners of the government; any other scheme is likely to be quite as expensive in the end.

My chief objection is, that such a plan is not comprehensive enough, and cannot, in a reasonable time, sensibly affect the average standard of agricultural learning among us. The graduation of fifty students a year would be equal to one in a thousand or fifteen hundred of the farmers of the state; and in ten years there would not be one professionally educated farmer in a hundred. We are not, of course, to overlook the indirect influence of such a school, through its students annually sent forth: the better modes of culture adopted by them would, to some extent, be copied by others; nor are we to overlook the probability of a prejudice against the institution and its graduates, growing out of the republican ideas of equality prevailing among us. But the struggle against mere prejudice would be an honorable struggle, if, in the hour of victory, the college could claim to have reformed and elevated materially the practices and ideas of the farmers of the country. I fear that even victory under such circumstances would not be complete success. An institution established in New England must look to the existing peculiarities of our country, rather than venture at once upon the adoption of schemes that may have been successful elsewhere. Here every farmer is a laborer himself, employing usually from one to three hands, and they are often persons who look to the purchase and cultivation of a farm on their own account; while in England the master farmer is an overseer rather than a laborer. The number of men in Europe who own land or work it on their own account is small; the number of laborers whose labors are directed by the proprietors and farmers is quite large. Under these circumstances, if the few are educated, the work will go successfully on; while here, our agricultural education ought to reach the great body of those who labor upon the land. Will a college in each state answer the demand for agricultural education now existing? Is it safe in any country, or in any profession or pursuit, to educate a few, and leave the majority to the indirect influence of the culture thus bestowed? And is it philosophical, in this country, where there is a degree of personal and professional freedom such as is nowhere else enjoyed, to found a college or higher institution of learning upon the general and admitted ignorance of the people in the given department? or is it wiser, by elementary training and the universal diffusion of better ideas, to make the establishment of the college the necessity of the culture previously given? Every new school, not a college, makes the demand for the college course greater than it was before; and the advance made in our public schools increases the students in the colleges and the university. We build from the primary school to the college; and without the primary school and its dependents,—the grammar, high school, and academy,—the colleges would cease to exist. This view of education supports the statement that an agricultural college is not the foundation of a system of agricultural training, but a result that is to be reached through a preliminary and elementary course of instruction. What shall that course be? I say, first, the establishment of town or neighborhood societies of farmers and others interested in agriculture. These societies ought to be auxiliary to the county societies, and they never can become their rivals or enemies unless they are grossly perverted in their management and purposes. As such societies must be mutual and voluntary in their character, they can be established in any town where there are twenty, ten, or even five persons who are disposed to unite together. Its object would, of course, be the advancement of practical agriculture; and it would look to theories and even to science as means only for the attainment of a specified end. The exercises of such societies would vary according to the tastes and plans of the members and directors; but they would naturally provide for discussions and conversations among themselves, lectures from competent persons, the establishment of a library, and for the collection of models and drawings of domestic animals, models of varieties of fruit, specimens of seeds, grasses, and grains, rocks, minerals, and soils. The discussions and conversations would be based upon the actual observation and experience of the members; and agriculture would at once become better understood and more carefully practised by each person who intended to contribute to the exercises of the meeting.

Until the establishment of agricultural journals, there were no means by which the results of individual experience could be made known to the mass of farmers; and, even now, men of the largest experience are not the chief contributors.

Wherever a local club exists, it is always possible to compare the knowledge of the different members; and the results of such comparison may, when deemed desirable, be laid before the public at large. It is also in the power of such an organization thoroughly and at once to test any given experiment. The attention of this section of the country has been directed to the culture of the Chinese sugar-cane; and merchants, economists, and statesmen, as well as the farmers themselves, are interested in the speedy and satisfactory solution of so important an industrial problem. Had the attention of a few local societies in different parts of New England been directed to the culture, with special reference to its feasibility and profitableness, a definite result might have been reached the present year. The growth of flax, both in the means of cultivation and in economy, is a subject of great importance. Many other crops might also be named, concerning which opposite, not to say vague, opinions prevail. The local societies may make these trials through the agency of individual members better than they can be made by county and state societies, and better than they can usually be made upon model or experimental farms. It will often happen upon experimental farms that the circumstances do not correspond to the condition of things among the farmers. The combined practical wisdom of such associations must be very great; and I have but to refer to the published minutes of the proceedings of the Concord Club to justify this statement in its broadest sense. The meetings of such a club have all the characteristics of a school of the highest order. Each member is at the same time a teacher and a pupil. The meeting is to the farmer what the court-room is to the lawyer, the hospital to the physician, and the legislative assembly to the statesman.

Moot courts alone will not make skilful lawyers; the manikin is but an indifferent teacher of anatomy; and we may safely say that no statesman was ever made so by books, schools, and street discussions, without actual experience in some department of government.

It is, of course, to be expected that an agricultural college would have the means of making experiments; but each experiment could be made only under a single set of circumstances, while the agency of local societies, in connection with other parts of the plan that I have the honor diffidently to present, would convert at once a county or a state into an experimental farm for a given time and a given purpose. The local club being always practical and never theoretical, dealing with things always and never with signs, presenting only facts and never conjectures, would, as a school for the young farmer, be quite equal, and in some respects superior, to any that the government can establish. But, it may be asked, will you call that a school which is merely an assembly of adults without a teacher? I answer that technically it is not a school, but that in reality such an association is a school in the best use of the word. A school is, first, for the development of powers and qualities whose germs already exist; then for the acquisition of knowledge previously possessed by others; then for the prosecution of original inquiries and investigations. The associations of which I speak would possess all these powers, and contemplate all these results; but that their powers might be more efficient, and for the advancement of agriculture generally, it seems to me fit and proper for the state to appoint scientific and practical men as agents of the Board of Agriculture, and lecturers upon agricultural science and labor. If an agricultural college were founded, a farm would be required, and at least six professors would be necessary. Instead of a single farm, with a hundred young men upon it, accept gratuitously, as you would no doubt have opportunity, the use of many farms for experiments and repeated trials of crops, and, at the same time, educate, not a hundred only, but many thousand young men, nearly as well in theory and science, and much better in practical labor, than they could be educated in a college. Six professors, as agents, could accomplish a large amount of necessary work; possibly, for the present, all that would be desired. Assume, for this inquiry, that Massachusetts contains three hundred agricultural towns; divide these towns into sections of fifty each; then assign one section to each agent, with the understanding that his work for the year is to be performed in that section, and then that he is to be transferred to another. By a rotation of appointments and a succession of labors, the varied attainments of the lecturers would be enjoyed by the whole commonwealth. But, it may be asked, what, specifically stated, shall the work of the agents be? Only suggestions can be offered in answer to this inquiry. An agent might, in the summer season, visit his fifty towns, and spend two days in each. While there, he could ascertain the kinds of crops, modes of culture, nature of soils, practical excellences, and practical defects, of the farmers; and he might also provide for such experiments as he desired to have made. It would, likewise, be in his power to give valuable advice, where it might be needed, in regard to farming proper, and also to the erection and repair of farm-buildings. I am satisfied that a competent agent would, in this last particular alone, save to the people a sum equal to the entire cost of his services. After this labor was accomplished, eight months would remain for the preparation and delivery of lectures in the fifty towns previously visited. These lectures might be delivered in each town, or the agent might hold meetings of the nature of institutes in a number of towns centrally situated. In either case, the lectures would be at once scientific and practical; and their practical character would be appreciated in the fact that a judicious agent would adapt his lectures to the existing state of things in the given locality. This could not be done by a college, however favorably situated, and however well accomplished in the material of education. It is probable that the lectures would be less scientific than those that would be given in a college; but when their superior practical character is considered, and when we consider also that they would be listened to by the great body of farmers, old and young, while those of the college could be enjoyed by a small number of youth only, we cannot doubt which would be the most beneficial to the state, and to the cause of agriculture in the country.

An objection to the plan I have indicated may be found in the belief that the average education of the farmers is not equal to a full appreciation of the topics and lectures to be presented. My answer is, that the lecturers must meet the popular intelligence, whatever it is. Nothing is to be assumed by the teacher; it is his first duty to ascertain the qualifications of his pupils. I am, however, led to the opinion that the schools of the country have already laid a very good basis for practical instruction in agriculture; and, if this be not so, then an additional argument will be offered for the most rapid advance possible in our systems of education. In any event, it is true that the public schools furnish a large part of the intellectual culture given in the inferior and intermediate agricultural schools of Europe.