The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., June 25, 1910, EDUCATIONAL SPECIAL, Page 452, Image 8

About The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette. (Starkville, Miss.) 1910-1920

Image provided by: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

                
Published Every Saturday at
RALEIGH, N. O. STARKVILLE, MISS.
COMMUNICATIONS REGARDING ADVERTISING OR SUBSCRIPTIONS
MAY BE ADDRESSED TO EITHER OFFICE. ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS
MATTER AT THE POSTOFEICE AT RALEIGH, N. C., UNDER THE ACT OF
CONGRESS OF MARCH 8, 1879.
bnder the Editorial and Business Management of
TAIT BUTLER and CLARENCE POE.
Prof. W. F. MASSEY.Associate Editor.
E. E. MILLER.Managing Editor.
JOHN S. PEARSON.Secretary-Treasurer.
Advertising Representatives: Fisher Special Agency, New
York: Albert H. Hopkins, Chicago; S. M. Goldberg, St. Louis
and Kansas City; J. L. Mogford and C. F. Koonce, Field Repre
sentatives.
We Guarantee Our Advertisers.
WE will positively make good the Icee sustained by any subacriber
vv as a result of fraudulent misrepresentation made in oar col
umns on the part of any advertiser who proves to be a deliberate
swindler. This does not mean that wo will try to adjust trifling
disputes between reliable business houses and their patrons, but in
any case at actually fraudulent dealing, we will make good to the
subscriber as we have just indicated. The condition of this guaran
tee is that the claim for loss shall be reported to ns within one
month after the advertisement appears in our paper, end that the
subscriber must say when writing each advertiser: T am writing
you as an advertiser in The Progressive Farmer and Gasette. which
guarantees the reliability of all advertising that it carries."
Average Weekly Circulation for Six Months Ending
March 31, 1010, was 00,521.
SUBSCRIPTION RATES:
One year, $L60; six months, 65 cents; three months. SO cents.
To Indues new subscriptions, ons mom subscriber and one old
subscriber map both pet (he paper one pear for SI .SO.
Editorial Gleanings.
THE PROGRESSIVE Farmer and Gazette pre
pares the way for almost every agency of
progress in rural betterment. Mr. M. J.
Hendricks, Cana, N. C., a demonstration agent,
writes: “I find as I travel over the county that
the farmers that have been reading your paper are
enthused over farming and are ready to enlist in
the demonstration work, and are the ones that
are doing the best farming.” Of the same tenor
is this remark of Mr. A. H. Rabalais, Plancheville,
La.: “I think if every farmer of my section
would read The Progressive Farmer and Gazette
my task as a demonstration agent would be very
light.” Mr. C. J. Hughes, Yorkville, S. C., also
writes: “Where the farmers read your paper, I
fiiftpn't have any trouble with them.”
mKp About the most commanding educational
l^llgure in Mississippi,” said a thoughtful clti
® zen the other day, “is Henry Whitfield, of Co
lumbus. No man in the State is doing more
to bring education into harmony with actual life.
He is making his school practical—which bo many
normal schools are not. The girls under him not
only know the classics, but they know about hy
giene and sanitation and cooking and housekeep
ing, and they will carry this spirit to the common
schools of the State with results too far-reaching
to over-estimate.”
*
Tennessee now has a good law requiring that
no county shall spend less than $700 a year for
a county superintendent. Some counties spend
over $2,000. It is just as wasteful to pay out
our big school funds to a miscellaneous lot of
teachers, many inexperienced, without providing
effective supervision, as it would be to hire a lot
of laborers, many absolutely new to the work,
without providing an overseer. No county can
get what it ought to get from its school fund un
less it has a county superintendent who giveB his
whole time to the work.
Says an exchange: “The fourteen-weeks’ short
course at the College of Agriculture of the Univer
sity of Wisconsin closed last spring, after one of
the best sessions in the history of the course. The
total attendance this year was 461.” When we
begin having short courses in the South with 400
or 500 in attendance, the agricultural revolution
will really have come.
The Educational Demands of Our Time.
WE HAVE TRIED in this Educational Spe
cial to bring home to every reader two
thoughts. The first of these is, his or her
individual responsibility for the educational prog
ress of the community, and the second is the fact
that education is not a mere matter of the teach
ing of children in a school house, but is a vital
process which must go on continually in the life
of every person, young or old.
The one great problem of the South to-day is
education,—the fitting of the boys and girls for
their life’s work,—for this is what education real
ly is. Nor need this training be confined to the
boys and girls. The men and women need it just
as much as do the children, and in the new day
which is coming will have almost as good a chance
to get it. The farmers’ institute is as truly an
educational institution as the public school or the
college, and is one for which there is just as real
need.
For years now we have read and heard much
about practical education,—that is, the sort of
school training that directly prepares the pupil
for some trade or profession. It is high time,
too, that this should be so. It is because we
Southern farmers are. as a class, uneducated that
our fertilizer bills increase faster than our average
crop production per acre, and that we throw out,
year after year, thousands of acres of land which we
have made too poor to pay for cropping any long
er. If we do not want the next generation of
farmers to continue to wear out the Boils of our
Southland, we must give them what this gen
eration did not have—practical education along
the lines of farm work.
To do this, however, we must convert the
speeches and the editorials of the politicians, edu
cators, and newspaper men into action. There Is
going to be no notable progress along educational
lines until the farmers of the South realize the
need of the work and take hold of it themselves.
There is going to be no progress worth mention
ing in your community until you and your neigh
bors get down to business, decide what needs to
be done for your own boys and girls, and then
proceed to do it.
We are giving in this issue some advice from
men and women distinguished aB educators as to
the lines along which this new educational work
should be directed, and what is more to the point,
we are giving a few specific instances of what
vw.uh.uiuuvd ui uiumuudi men ana women can
accomplish. These are the features to which we
would especially direct attention. It is well to be
Bure you are right before going ahead, but no
matter how Bure you are that you are facing in
the right direction, you will never get anywhere
until you put your own muscles into action. Up
on the general proposition that the training of
country children has in the past been sadly de
ficient along the lines of work which they will
naturally expect to follow, and has devoted too
little time to the things with which they are direct
ly concerned, and too much to matters which have
very little connection with their lives, we are
practically all agreed. As to Just what specific
changes are necessary, and as to how the details
of our new system are to be worked out, there is
yet much to be learned—much, indeed, that can
be learned only by actual experience. Having
agreed upon the main proposition, that we must
have more efficient schools, schools that train
more directly for the practical work of life und
that use the things with which the child is ac
quainted, rather than thingH of which he haB
never heard before, to develop the power of
thought and the capacity for action—which are
the ends of all education—and having agreed, too,
that every boy and girl in all this Southland of
ours must be given the best possible chance to
secure such training as this, tlie thing that presses
upon every one of us now is to get to work and
see that in his own community these opportun
ities are given and this new idea of education put
into effect.
Nor can we limit this work of education to the
children or to those in school. Because a man
has reached middle age, because a woman is busy
in the home, is no reason why his or her intel
lectual development should cease. The work of
the colleges and universities, the best thought and
the most advanced knowledge of scientists and in
vestigators, are now being carried in most States
—and must be in all—to every person who is
willing to hear; and it is as much the privilege
and the duty of the fanner and the farmer's wife
to see that their own training for their life's work
goes on as it is to provide for the education of
their children.
If every reader of The Progressive Farmer and
Gazette will constitute himself a committee of one
to work for the advancement of the public schools
of his own community, and to insist upon the
giving to every child of his acquaintance the best
training which that child is capable of receiving,
there will, within the next five years, be such an
improvement in our public school system and In
the whole rural life of the South as will excite
the admiration and wonder of the entire nation;
but until some such spirit as this takes possession
of our hearts and puts us to work, however much
educators, statesmen, and editors talk and write,
our progress will be slow and the light of knowl
edge will be denied to thousands of unfortunate
children who must continue to walk in the dark
ness of ignorance or in the twilight of that In
efficiency which proper training would have pre
vented.
Mississippi School Text-Book Commis
sion.
THE SCHOOL Text-Book Commission of Mis
sissippi has been in session during the past
ten days and before this appears in print
will probably hate completed Its work.
There has been a great cry coming up from cer
tain newspapers of the State that few changes
should be made In the books now In use. This
Is naturally encouraged by the publishers who al
ready have adopted books. It also appeals to thn
politicians, as they know anything that looks like
economy Is a strong card with the masses of the
people.
There are lust two things which should con
trol in such matters—the fitness and quality of
the books, and the price, and we have no hesita
tion In stating that the latter Is of minor impor
tance. The child is devoting, say. a year of val
uable time to a book, and a difference of live or
ten cents Is a small matter compared with the
difference between a suitable and nn unsuitable
book. The argument of economy is one that ap
peals to those who know nothing of the quality
of books and is used by the politicians and pub
lishers of cheap bookB and those who already
have adoptions for much more than It Is worth
A book thut Is not suitable is exceedingly ex
pensive at any uric©. Morwunr uinm it%«
books are largely worn out and are taken In ex
change for half price when a new book la adopted,
there Ir little added expense In making a change
Indeed, If the new book la obtained even at a
trifling reduction from the price paid for the old
one, there In a financial saving by tho change dur
ing the five yeara during which nn adoption runs
The newspapers have generally insisted on a
change in the arithmetics, and to a leas extent a
change of physiologies. There may be good
ground for the chnnges. but It la scarcely poaal
ble that there la any greater cause for change In
these than In the geography, for Instance. The
one In use In antiquated, unnatural and unteach
sble to a degree which should cause a change.
There la an opportunity for the School Book
Commission to put Into effect the oft-declaimed
nnd truthful contentloa of its chairman, Superin
tendent Powers, that the public school work
should be made more practical and brought Into
f lover touch with the work and home life of the
l uplls. In fact, there has been much tnlk In re
cent years about fitting the rural school work to
the life, work and understanding of tho pupils
nnd the action of the Mississippi Text-Book Com
mission will go far towards disclosing whether
this talk, so far as this shall be concerned, Is the
expression of a real sentiment, or Is for political
or some other effect.
I^t us hopo for the good of the future gener•
at ion of Mississippi men nnd women that the
Text-Book Commission will do Its work carefully
and well, uninfluenced by considerations of tho lo
cality from which the publishers and authors may
come. There Is but one matter worthy of serious
consideration, the book that will do the beet for
the school children of the State.