Mrs. Bonner seemed unprepared for the question, and sat for an instant mute. Mrs. Peterson interposed her attack while Mrs. Bonner might be recovering her wind.
“We people that have had a hard time,” she said in a precise way which seemed to show that she knew exactly what she wanted, “want to give our boys and girls a chance to live easier lives than we lived. We don’t want our children taught about nothing but work. We want higher things.”
“Mrs. Peterson,” said Jim earnestly, “we must have first things first. Making a living is the first thing—and the highest.”
“Haakon and I will look after making a living for our family,” said she. “We want our children to learn nice things, and go to high school, and after a while to the Juniwersity.”
“And I,” declared Jim, “will send out from this school, if you will let me, pupils better prepared for higher schools than have ever gone from it—because they will be trained to think in terms of action. They will go knowing that thoughts must always be linked with things. Aren’t your children happy in school, Mrs. Peterson?”
“I don’t send them to school to be happy, Yim,” replied Mrs. Peterson, calling him by the name most familiarly known to all of them; “I send them to learn to be higher people than their father and mother. That’s what America means!”
“They’ll be higher people—higher than their parents—higher than their teacher—they’ll be efficient farmers, and efficient farmers’ wives. They’ll be happy, because they will know how to use more brains in farming than any lawyer or doctor or merchant can possibly use in his business. I’m educating them to find an outlet for genius in farming!”
“It’s a fine thing,” said Mrs. Bonner, coming to the aid of her fellow soldiers, “to work hard for a lifetime, an’ raise nothing but a family of farmers! A fine thing!”
“They will be farmers anyhow,” cried Jim, “in spite of your efforts—ninety out of every hundred of them! And of the other ten, nine will be wage-earners in the cities, and wish to God they were back on the farm; and the hundredth one will succeed in the city. Shall we educate the ninety-and-nine to fail, that the hundredth, instead of enriching the rural life with his talents, may steal them away to make the city stronger? It is already too strong for us farmers. Shall we drive our best away to make it stronger?”
The guns of Mrs. Bonner and Mrs. Peterson were silenced for a moment, and Mrs. Bronson, after gazing about at the typewriter, the hectograph, the exhibits of weed seeds, the Babcock milk tester, and the other unscholastic equipment, pointed to the list of words, and the arithmetic problems on the board.