The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., June 25, 1910, EDUCATIONAL SPECIAL, Page 453, Image 9

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

Image provided by: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

                
fwHAT THE SOUTH CAN LEARN FROM NEW ENGLAND.
CLARENCE POE.
I PROMISED LAST week that by way of round
ing out my impressions of the Middle West, I
might say something this week of what I saw
on a recent trip from Virginia to Massachusetts.
This subject, it happens, is especially adapted to
our “Educational Special,” not only because of
what I saw in Massachusetts, but because I first
went to the University of Virginia where 1 had
been asked to make an address on agriculture in
the schools.
The authorities of the University of Virginia
are greatly interested, as all educational leaders
should be, in the development of rural life. A
"Rural Life Week” is now a regular feature of
the University Summer School for Teachers, and
during this week speakers from all over the
South and from the National Department of Agri
culture, are present to make speeches, the object
being to interest the teachers in agricultural edu
cation and in nil the problems of rural develop
ment
It is to be regretted that every university in
the South does not show a similar interest In
adapting education to the farmer’s needs. When
one goes to the bottom of the whole matter. It ap
pears that a re-directed system of education is the
fundamental need in the whole problem of rural
progress anyhow. I talked with an editor-farmer
from New York State not long ago and he told me
• Ka* In onltn nf f*.w*<l rmi Ic rtirnl mall flnlivftrv
rural telephones, etc., the drift to the towns in
central New York was still marked.
"And It Is bound to continue,” was his remark,
“until the schools themselves recognize the dignity
of farm life and begin to teach the hoys and girls
in the formative period of their lives that knowl
edge and skill may be applied to farm work as
well ns to other work. So long as the objective
point of our rural educational system seems to be
n town Job, so long will the drift to town con
tinue.”
I believe that this theory is correct. I recall
that when myself a pupil In a country school, one
of my deskmates came to me one day and said,
"I am not going to school any longer ns 1 have
decided to bo ft farmer," nnd his decision was
the natural and logical result o fthe misfit scheme
of Instruction In force In all our rural schools.
It Is high time. Indeed, for us to develop a se
ries of text-books and a complete educational sys
tem which will train pupils for farm life ns well
as for town life.
ji
It Is also especially fitting that this subject
should he emphasized at the University of Vir
ginia, for as Dr. Chas. W. Eliot has recently
pointed out, It was Thomas Jefferson, the pioneer
In so many other things, who was also the pioneer
ndvocnte of agricultural education In America.
Hardly any modern writer would express the mat
ier more forcibly than JefTerson did In a letter to
his friend. David Williams. November 14, 1 803:
"The schools, instead or storing tneir pu
pils with a loro which the present state of
society does not call for, converted Into
schools of agriculture, might rcstoro them
| their graduates] to thnt great calling, quali
fied to enrich and honor themselves, and to
Increase the productions of the nation instead
of consuming them.”
ja
There was another thing in which Jefferson was
deeply Interested to which 1 wish to call attention,
an idea. In fact, which was the one great unreal
ized ambition of his life. This was his anxiety to
establish in the South the township Bystem of gov
ernment which has been such a tremendous fac
tor in the development of New England. At the
first session of the Virginia Legislature, he tells
us. his bills abolishing entails and primogeniture
"laid the axe to the root of pseudo-aristocracy."
"And had another which I had prepared
been adopted by the Legislature, our work
would have been complete. It was a bill for
the more general diffusion of learning. This
proposed to divide every county into w'nrds of
five or six miles square, like your townships;
to establish in every ward a free school for
reading, writing, and common arithmetic; to
provide for the annual selection of the best
subjects from theHo schools, who might re
ceive, at the public expense, a higher degree
of education at a district school; and from
these district schools to select a certain num
ber of the most promising subjects, to be
completed (in education) ut a university,
where all the useful sciences should be
taught. My proposition had, for a further
object, to impart to these wards those por
tions of self-government for which they are
best qualified, by confiding to them the care
of their poor, their roads, police, elections,
the nomination of jurors, administration of
justice in small cases, elementary exercises
of militia; in short, to have them little re
publics, with a warden at the head of each,
for all those concerns which, being under
their eye, they would better manage than
the larger republics of the county or State.”
On aaother occasion, JefTerson declared that
there were two measures which he proposed to
fight for as long as he had breath In his body—
“general education to enable every man to judge
for himself what will secure and endanger his
freedom”—and secondly, this ward or township
method of government. These two measures he
regarded as absolutely indispensable to the de
velopment of a pure democracy in the South.
Largely because of the sparseness of population of
the Southern States, however, and partly because
of the aristocratic spirit which prevented the
slave-holding element from meeting the non-slave
holders on equal terms, Jefferson’s great idea has
never been worked out in the Cotton States. And
without his scheme a democratic government is
forever incomplete.
m
It was something of a co-incidence that I went
almost directly from Monticello, where I visited
Jefferson’s home, leaving with this thought of his
township government in my mind, on to Massa
chusetts where I found the system in practical op
eration.
And this township system of government In
the last hundred years has only justified increas
ingly the tribute paid it by JefTerson in 1816 when
he declared it to be “the wisest invention ever de
vised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of
self-government and for its preservation.” In
the South we have had. unfortunately, no active,
vital system of government below the county—I
almost said below the State, for the counties have
done little besides administer justice and collect
taxes. How much further advanced our whole
Southland would be if we had had township meet
ings at least once a year, gathering all the people
together to discuss roads and schools and taxes,
and health matters and public improvements, etc.,
etc., and everything looking to public progress
and the public welfare. This is what New Eng
land has done for generations, and her material
progress is largely due to it; this is what the
South has not done, and our backwardness is part
ly due to our not having done it.
Once a year there is the regular annual “town
meeting in eacn rural eownsnip or civil aisirici
in Massachusetts: that is to say, all the voters of
the town or civil district meet together and all
the business of the township or district is ar
ranged for. The township school committee is
elected; selectmen (whose duties for the town
ship correspond to those of county commissioners
for the county) are chosea: they transact all the
general legislative business fer the township.
Assessors are named. Certain ether citizens are
named as overseers of the poor. Other men are
named ns road commissioners. Other men com
pose the board of health, or the duties of this
hoard may be left to the selectmen. Registrars
are elected by the same meeting. Numerous oth
er smaller positions are filled bo that some man
of the township is designated for nearly every
public duty: for instance, one man is named as
"fence viewer,” and instead of two farmers having
an expensive law-suit about a line fence, this
man judges the matter and settles it once for all.
J*
Not only are all these officers named for the
routine work of the township, but any question
bearing upon the public welfare of the community
may be brought up and settled. This meeting has
entire authority as to what the expenditures and
the tax rate of the township shall be; it debates
and decides upon the public improvements; it de
cides what road improvements shall be made, etc.
etc. If any new matter comes up or new interest
develops in some old subject, a certain percentage
of the voters may call another meeting, provided
the selectmen and regular officers do not handle
it satisfactorily.
The tremendous Influence that New England ha:
(Continued on page 466.)
| “ What’s The News?” |
'*7 The Week's Happenings.
THE SENATE has passed the bill providing for
the admission of Arizona and New Mexico as
States. The conference committee’s report
on the Railroad Rate bill has also been adopted,
on the Railroad Rate Bill has also been adopted,
the House bill have been retained, the “long and
short haul” clause has been incorporated, the pro
vision permitting the pooling of rates has been
left out and the powers of the Interstate Com
merce Commission increased. The bill in its final
form is more of an “Insurgent” than an Adminis
tration measure.
A dispatch from Washington announces the in
teresting results of a religious canvas, covering
cities of 25.000 and over. “In every 1,000 inhab
itants there were 469 church members, while for
the area outside these cities there were 363, and
for the entire country there were 391. As com
pared with 1890 the report shows a gain of 90
communicants in each 1,000 of population for the
principal cities, and a gain of 51 outside of them.”
This item from the Springfield Republican de
serves attention: “In the debate on the two Dread
naughts, Senator Hale made the stunning predic
tion that each ship completed would cost nearly
$18,000,000. It is very possible, come to think of
it. And, at this rate, the $50,000,000 battleship
will arrive in about 10 years.”
Charles R. Helke, former Secretary of the Su
gar Trust, has been convicted in the sugar-weigh
ing cases of conspiracy to defraud the United
States Government, and will probably be sentenced
J
to the penitentiary. A former branch superinten
dent, Ernest Gerbracht, has also been convicted.
The “regular” Democrats in Tennessee have re
nominated Governor Patterson for a third term
and endorsed Benton McMillin for United States
Senator. The platform favors the repeal of the
State-wide prohibition law.
The House has adopted a new rule providing
that a bill may be recalled from a committee at
any time by a majority vote. The former control
of measures by the Committee on Rules and the
chairmen of other committees is thus completely
broken down.
The Louisiana House of Representatives has
voted in favor of adopting the Income Tax Amend
ment to the Constitution, but the Senate opposes
it, and no action is likely to be taken at this ses
sion.
Richard Parr, the detective who unearthed the
sugar-weighing frauds in the New York Custom
House, will received a reward of $100,000.
Glenn H. Curtis has broken all aviation records
in America by flying from Albany to New York,
150 miles, in 2 hours and 46 minutes.
Governor Gilllett, of California, announces that
the Jeffries-Johnson prize fight will not be per
mitted in that State.
The recent Democratic State Convention In Ar
kansas was controlled easily by Governor Don
aghey and his friends.
New Orleans is actively pushing its plan for a
great exposition to celebrate the completion of the
Panama Canal.
There is a remarkably good wheat crop in Mis
sissippi.
Mr. Roosevelt is back in New York.
a Thought for the Week
EVERY BOY in this nation must be taught to
work, and to desire to work, and in the de
gree in which the home neglects this part
of his education, the school must, whether it
would or not, take it up and carry it to comple
1 tion. And so in the future the problem of the
teacher will not be a mere problem of instruction;
> it will be the infinitely larger problem of making
men and women capable of doing their share of
1 the world’s work in the best possible way.—Fas
eett A. Cotton.