AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

Waikato Times, Volume XVI, Issue 1381, 10 May 1881, Page 3

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

The man who expects that a four-years' course of study in an Agricultural College will fit him for a practical farmer is greatly mistaken, One of the most sensible statements on the subject that we have recently met ia one made by Col. C. S. Chase, at the Nebraska State Fair He said ; " Education in every branch of the arts and sciences, trades, and professions, is valuable only as it is pursued with the attention of acquiring knowledge for the actual benefits it ccnfers -the advantage it gives its possessor over those who have not secured it. The modern method of studying' farming through the medium of books, and by the aid of professors, so-called, is all well, provided the student has been a practical cultivator of the soil, so that he can appreciate the subject upon which his thoughts are engaged. And it may be of mucn service to the man who afterwards benomes, not in name only, but in fact, a farmer. For a mere graduate of an agricultural college to suppose, unless he has been a practical farmer, working with his hands, that he has gathered from books, or the training of tutors, the necessary knowledge to enable him to successfully conduct an ordinary farm, is simply preposterous. While he has acquired a knowledge of chemistry, and of the nature of soils and their relation to vegetable growth, and may have continued his researches until he can answer abstruse questions as to the affinities existing between vegetation and animal development, still he will find, if he concludes from this fact that he can run a farm, that he is sadly mistaken. Of all the callings to which man has ever turned his attention, farming requires the most actual practical experience. The custom in the New England States in the olden time, as it is said, of sending the dull boys to college and putting the bright ones to work on the farm, was a sensible one. A bby of ordinary mind can be educated to the standard of the so-called learned professions, or to follow the. routine of the professor's chair, but it takes a bright brain and an energetic hand to so manage the noil as to make it a willing profitable servant."— Chicago Tribune, quoted in the Nebraska Farmer, U.S.A. '