Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF TEACHING AGRICUL

TURE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

JOSEPH CARTER, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, CHAMPAIGN, ILL.

I

N discussing this topic only the rural schools, and the schools of those villages and towns whose people were farm reared and whose interests are still largely agricultural, are considered. In these schools, containing about 70 per cent of the public school children of our country, it is believed the teaching of agriculture would be of great practical value.

Perhaps to a considerable part of the remainder agricultural teaching, correlated with nature study, would add to the educational value of nature study by giving it greater definiteness of purpose, but no consideration is given in this paper to that phase of the subject.

AGRICULTURE DEFINED.

Agriculture is the art of raising products from the land. Its chief contribution to the wealth and welfare of the world is the production of food-corn and wheat and rice and potatoes from the farm; grapes and berries and melons and beans and radishes, and apples and peaches and pears from the garden and the orchard; cattle and sheep and swine from the pastures; milk, butter, and cheese from the dairy; eggs and fowls from the poultry yard. Besides food, clothing is a product of agriculture-leather and wool and cotton and silk. To agriculture belongs forestry; the raising of trees to build our houses, make our furniture, adorn our parks and beautify our homes. To agriculture also belongs floriculture the growing of plants for their flowers.

Agriculture in its wider sense means not only the production of all these things, but their preparation for the market and the marketing of them. It is both an art and a business. As an art it is probably closely related to a greater number of sciences than any other vocation. It deals with physics on a hundred lines; its foundations rest on geology; it depends upon many branches of biology-botany, zoology, entomology, and physiology, both of animals and plants. Chemistry does it mighty service; for it

climatology must be understood, and bacteriology seems to be at its origin.

IMPORTANCE OF AGRICULTURE.

But is agriculture of enough importance to entitle it to a position on our school program? It would be a waste of time to tell this department of the vast importance of agriculture, for all know that thru agriculture is the world fed and clothed. This is the foundation of all prosperity. When the agriculturist prospers men laugh as they toil, women sing as they work, and happy children grow into robust manhood and womanhood; long railroad trains cross the continent loaded with the products of his labor, and mighty ships plow the briny deep as they carry these products to other lands; when he is prosperous thousands of factories give employment to millions of men whose wages build happy homes and opulent cities.

Nor do you need to be told that were our agriculture to fail, that were the earth and the air and the sky and the plant and the animals to fail to respond to the skill of the husbandman, the myriad streams of commerce would stop their beneficent flow, ships would rot at their docks, locomotives would rust in their round houses, the walls of cities would crumble and the land become a desert or a wilderness. You know that the world empires have risen only where food and clothing were abundant, and that when these have failed desolation and barbarism have returned to the land. You have heard that the shipment to foreign countries of a thousand millions of dollars worth of agricultural products annually is giving this United States a foremost position among the nations of the earth. This has changed the balance of trade and is giving this nation wealth beyond the dreams of Avarice. The greatness of America is in her agriculture.

AGRICULTURAL TEACHING NEEDED.

Do you ask, if we are doing so well why try to do better? Why teach agriculture in the schools? History admonishes us to do this. The valley of the Euphrates was once as fertile as any of our lands, but for two thousand years it has been a desert. The corn of Egypt fed the conquerors of the world, but neglect and ignorance of agriculture brought its husbandmen to the verge of starvation centuries ago. The history of the Aryan race admonishes us to do this. The root of the word Aryan is the same

as the root of the word Arable- plowable. We are the race that plows. We soon exhausted the fertility of our Asiatic home and also the soil of the Mediterranean peninsulas - Greece, Italy, and Spain. A few hundred years were ample time for us to make the life of the agriculturist stale and unprofitable in the British Isles. We thrust our plowshares into the rich soil of the valleys of Virginia and the name planter became a synonym for opulence; but now these lands are too sterile to repay cultivation. In spite of all his thrift and industry the land of the Yankee has its abandoned farms. In many other states of this, the greatest of all agricultural lands, there are vast areas that yield to the husbandman constantly diminishing returns for his toil. It appears that this Aryan race, during the centuries, crossed the continents like a mighty swarm of locusts, alighting on fruitful fields, from which it extracted the fertility, and passed on leaving poverty and barrenness in its track, or as if it had trod with hot feet across the continents, burning out the fertility of the soil. If the teaching of agriculture can lessen this blighting effect who can doubt that it should be given in the public schools.

SOIL STERILITY NOT A NECESSARY RESULT OF CULTIVATION.

Do you ask, "Is not sterility the inevitable result of cultivation. and of the dwelling of great numbers of people on any land?" Not at all. The plains of China from the early dawn of history have maintained more than one fourth of all the human beings who dwell upon this globe. And all their food has been produced by the ground upon which they live.

Besides this great example it has also been demonstrated that an ideal system of agriculture maintains itself. That it is able to thrive forever upon the same land and from its own resources. The land becomes more productive with time, and this without the aid of any fertilizing material except that produced by the land, or with comparatively little else. What could be of greater practical value than to teach to those who are to become the farmers of America this ideal system of agriculture? All over this country, with rare exceptions, agricultural work is carried on in a more or less wasteful and neglectful and destructive manner. The fertility of the soil- the accumulations of vast periods of time is being recklessly exhausted, in some places has already been exhausted by destructive methods. Fungus parasites, thru

1

ignorance, are permitted greatly to reduce the yields of our cereals. Insects, destructive to berries and fruits are permitted to multiply till those necessities to health which should be for all are only within the reach of the few. Forests that held a rich soil upon the hillsides are destroyed, and the soil washed away never to be replaced. Native grasses valuable for grazing are destroyed and no others can be found to take their places.

A few years ago it was not know how to remedy these and other errors, but recently there has been vast additions to human knowledge along all lines pertaining to agriculture. Probably in no other field of man's endeavor has there been as great progress as here. Experts and students at the various State and United States agricultural experiment stations, and in similar institutions. in other countries, and thoughtful, patient, and careful men and women in their orchards, dairies, gardens, and homes, have made. many discoveries and established many facts which in the aggregate constitute an immense mass of valuable, useful, and interesting knowledge. These facts relate to nearly everything pertaining to house and farm life, the cultivation of various crops, the feeding and care of animals, the destruction of insect enemies, the preservation of insect friends, and the like. These facts are accessible and should be carried to the people. better or more suitable means are there than the public schools? For instance: It is said that the coddling moth and the curculio damage our apple crop to the extent of millions and millions of dollars annually, and that, taken at the right time, all this loss can be easily prevented. What could be more practical than to teach the children to destroy these pests? Near by nearly every schoolhouse is an orchard, and a spraying apparatus would cost less, and would be quite as educative and as easily manipulated as many of the gimcracks found in some schools.

HIGH PEDAGOGICAL VALUE.

What other or

No other teaching squares more nicely with accepted pedagogical ideas. It deals with those things with which the farm-reared child is already familiar. It is largely a training of the senses. It enters consciousness by every avenue to the soul - hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, feeling. It deals with things and not with words alone. It relates to what is near and not to that which is afar. Its lessons are on the lawn, in the treetop, in the shower,

and by the roadside. It does not deal with abstractions, but with concrete, living, growing things; with the flowers and plants and colts and lambs and birds that are growing with the child, tor growing together is the meaning of the word concrete.

Agriculture is preeminently the study that cultivates the habit of observation, that keeps the pupil on the lookout with his senses wide awake and keen for whatever is presented. It teaches him to see what is worth observing, and not to overvalue what is simply odd or curious. It teaches him that effects follow cause, that we live under a reign of law; that all phenomena have a natural cause, that all things exist for a purpose, and that "nothing vain or useless is." It prevents the growth of superstition and gives freedom from groundless fears and baseless hopes. When studied in garden and field and forest, as of course it should be, agriculture gives full play to all the motor activities.

WILL IMPROVE THE FARMERS.

The teaching of agriculture in the rural schools would have its highest value in its effect upon the farmer, for while it is important to improve the farm it is more important to improve the farmer. Farmers are more than farms, souls more than soils. A fuller knowledge of agriculture would greatly change the farmer. It would broaden his mind and deepen his way of thinking. His vocation would appear to him in a new aspect. Instead of walking blindly among the great forces of nature, as he now too often does; instead of looking upon nature as a great puzzle, that only perplexes or bewilders or discourages him-he would see order and beauty and law that would clarify his thinking and encourage him to more successful doing.

Teach the children the lessons of the soil. Tell them the wonderful story of its origin, or, better still, let them tell you what they have seen in the field, and by the brook, and then you give them the charming explanation. Tell them why men plow, and what are the reasons for cultivating the soil, and what methods of cultivation are beneficial and what are decidedly injurious. Tell them how the physical condition of the soil may affect its fertility; and tell them what elements have been taken from the soil when it is worn out, and how to replace them. Tell them the marvelous story of the important discovery of modern times, a discovery which places in the hands of every farmer a means, completely

« AnteriorContinuar »