_Agricultural Education._
No cause has more retarded the progress of education in the
agricultural part of the community than a mistaken opinion, in regard
to the use that can be made of it.--That the advantages of learning,
in every state of society, should not be appreciated by the grossly
ignorant, is not to be wondered at; but that men well informed on many
subjects, should fall into the vulgar error of denying the advantages
arising from extensive knowledge is really surprising.
We hear it frequently observed by farmers, who have sons to educate,
that they intend such a one to follow his own occupation; and it will
be necessary that he should be taught to read, write, and cypher
to the "Rule of Three." Now it is believed with these _extensive_
acquirements, a farmer will be able to keep his accounts tolerably
decent; to estimate the amount of any number of bushels of grain, at a
given sum per bushel: but I shall forbear to mention all the advantages
which this kind of knowledge may confer. The intelligent farmer well
knows it has a boundary, and a very limited one too. To endeavour
by force of reason to induce this class of farmers to abandon their
errors, would be time spent to little purpose; their minds are not
recipient for truths which lie beyond the narrow boundary of their
learning.
It is to the enlightened and public spirited yeomanry of our
country, that we are to look for a change in the education of our
youth.--Change, did I say? Rather an entire new system of education.
I ask this class of farmers if they have any such a thing as an
agricultural education among them. I mean an elementary, a systematic
one: we train our youth (at school) for the counting-house, and not
for the farm. We teach them the mysteries of the _cent per cent_; all
the dark intricacies of annuities, all the crooks and turns, and all
the advantages of barter, discount and fellowship. While of Natural
Philosophy, Chemistry, Botany, Mineralogy, Geology and other sciences,
directly or indirectly connected with agriculture, they remain as
ignorant as if they never were to apply any of the principles to
practice. Can it then be wondered that agriculture has advanced so
little? Ought we not rather to wonder that it has advanced so much as
it has, since so little pains are taken to qualify our youth to make
improvement in it? As an art it is perhaps more capable of improvement
than any other, because the sciences on which it is founded, are more
numerous and more extensive in their nature.
By whom are improvements to be made? by men whose knowledge of the art
has never deviated from the beaten track which their forefathers had
trodden, and this knowledge was bequeathed to them with this condition,
"thus far shalt thou go and no farther?" Common sense answers in
the negative. Do we expect important improvements in our present
systems of agriculture, from men who have been educated merchants
or schoolmasters? Their minds cannot be sufficiently interested in
such subjects to pursue them either with ardour or with profit. They
have never acquired a taste for those studies which would render the
different operations of farming a series of philosophical experiments.
In too many instances, farmers' sons, who have been educated as
above described, lose all relish for their occupation, and engage in
some mercantile business. In many instances they contrive to worry
through life without deserting their calling, though they receive
little pleasure from any part of it, except counting the money which
it yields. The source from which we have received our new systems of
farming lay in quite a different quarter. Inhabitants of cities, or men
who have been educated for some learned profession, are our teachers
in the rules of husbandry. We will suppose these men to be well
versed in the sciences above alluded to. But have they ever learned
their application to agriculture? If not, as well might they adduce
principles on that subject, as a person to attempt solving an abstruse
problem in surveying, who has only learned the elements of geometry.
When I spoke of an _agricultural education_, I did not confine my
views to the sciences above specified. _Practice_ is an indispensable
part of this education. The chemist may sit in his laboratory and
give us a system of agriculture, stolen from European treatises, and
may occasionally sprinkle it with some hard words of his own; but
it is only the _practical and scientific farmer_ that can draw from
this heterogenous mass, all that is valuable and applicable to his
own purpose, and nothing more. The principles he receives from books
must be tested by experiment. To make important deductions from these
experiments, unwearied patience must be exercised, in order to sift
real conclusions from those which are only plausible. Let him not sit
down supinely, after having ascertained a rule, for general rules in
this science as in most others have their exceptions, and an accurate
knowledge of these exceptions will require much time for discernment,
and investigation. If agriculture, then, is an art of calling forth all
the faculties of the mind, why is it not taught like other arts by a
regular and systematic education?