It is sometimes said that most farmers who get an agricultural education cannot be trained in the colleges. Doubtless this is true. Probably a very small proportion even of educated farmers can or will graduate from a full course in an agricultural college. Many will do so. There is no reason why a large proportion of the graduates of our college courses in agriculture may not go to the farm. I have no sympathy with the idea that those courses are too elaborate for those young men who want to farm. It must be recognized, however, that even if our agricultural colleges shall graduate hundreds and thousands every year who return to the farm, it still leaves the great majority of farmers untouched in an educational way unless other means are devised. But there are other means at hand.
We have first the agricultural school. The typical agricultural high school gives a course of two or three years, offering work of high-school grade in mathematics and English, with about half the time devoted to teaching in agriculture. Many young men want to get an insight into the principles of modern agriculture, but cannot afford time or money for college work. This course fits their need. A splendid school of this design has been in successful operation in Minnesota for more than a dozen years, and has nearly five hundred students. In Wisconsin there are two county schools of agriculture for a similar purpose. Other schools could be named.
The agricultural colleges also offer shorter courses of college grade, perhaps of two years. These are very practical and useful courses. Not only that, but nearly all the colleges give special winter courses of from ten days to fourteen weeks. These are patronized by thousands of young men. So in many ways are the colleges meeting the need. We all agree that it is desirable for a young man to take a full college course, even in agriculture. But it is better to have a half-loaf than no bread. Yes, better to have a slice than no bread. The colleges furnish the whole loaf, the half-loaf, and the slice. And young men are nourished by all.
One reason why agricultural education has not made more rapid progress is because the children of the country schools have been taught in such a manner as to lead them to think that there is no chance for brains in farming. Both their home influence and their school atmosphere have, in most cases perhaps, been working against their choice of agriculture as a vocation. It therefore becomes important that these children shall be so taught that they can see the opportunity in farming. They must, moreover, be so trained that they will be nature students; for the farmer above all men must be a nature student. So we see the need of introducing into our rural schools nature-study for the young pupils and elementary agriculture for the older ones. This is being successfully accomplished in many cases, and is arousing the greatest interest and meeting with gratifying success. We shall within ten years have a new generation of young men and women ready for college who have had their eyes opened as never before to the beauties of nature and to the fascination there is in the farmer's task of using nature for his own advantage.
But when we have increased the attendance at our agricultural colleges tenfold; when we have hundreds of agricultural schools teaching thousands of our youth the fundamentals of agriculture; when each rural school in our broad land is instilling into the minds of children the nearness and beauty of nature and is teaching the young eyes to see and the young ears to hear what God hath wrought in his many works of land and sea and sky, in soil, and plant, and living animal—even when that happy day shall dawn will we find multitudes of men and women on our farms still untouched by agricultural education. These people must be reached. The mere fact that their school days are forever behind them is no reason why they shall not receive somewhat of the inspiration and guidance that flow from the schools. So we have an imperative demand for the extension of agricultural teaching out from the schools to the farm community. The school thus not only sheds its light upon those who are within its gates, but sets out on the beautiful errand of carrying this same light into every farm home in the land. This work is being done today by thousands of farmers' institutes, by demonstrations in spraying and in many other similar lines, by home-study courses and correspondence courses, by co-operative experiments, by the distribution of leaflets and bulletins, by lectures at farmers' gatherings, by traveling schools of dairying. These methods and others like them are being invoked for the purpose of bringing to the farmers in their homes and neighborhoods some of the benefits that the colleges and schools bestow upon their pupils.
We have seen something of the need of agricultural education, of the kind of education required, and of the means used to secure it. Does not this discussion at least show the supreme importance of the question? Will not the farmers rally themselves to and league themselves with the men who are trying to forward the best interests of the farm? Shall we not all work together for the betterment both of the farm and of the farmer?