Agricultural Education
By H. A. Washburn
As mentioned in our last article, the effects of debt upon our school work have been such as to cause us to feel that it must be shunned like the leprosy. This necessitates the management of our school work in such a way as to make it self-supporting. In providing for the expenses of the school, it is found that the principal items are the salaries and the food supplies. If these can be lessened, or new resources developed to meet them, a great burden will be lifted in the financial management. It is the experience of families who have lived both in the city, where all food supplies must be purchased, and in the country, where a large portion of the food could be grown in the garden, that there is a great difference in the financial maintenance of the family. The same is true of our schools. Large sums of money are paid out for supplies of food when it is purchased, and a vast saving is effected when most of the food is produced on the school farm. Just such a means of support has been pointed out in the instruction from the Lord: “Our schools should not depend upon imported produce, for grain and vegetables, and the fruits so essential to health.” It is in this connection that we are told that study in agricultural lines should be the “very first work entered upon.” From the first our schools should raise, as far as possible, the food required for the students. As the work develops, all the possibilities of the soil should be illustrated. “The young men should learn to cultivate the soil, and to raise whatever the land will produce. No one can tell what can be done with the soil until he has studied, planned, and experimented.” “There should be orchards, and every kind of produce should be cultivated that is adapted to the soil.” If all the food supplies of the school were provided in this way, not only would much money be saved, but possibly the rates charged to the students could be decreased. But not alone should all the food required by the school be raised, but the garden and farm should be made a source of income. “There should be sufficient land for the raising of the fruit and vegetables required by the school, and also some for sale. Agriculture should be made a financial benefit to the school.” Such an additional source of income would be a great blessing to our schools, in providing needed facilities and improvements. Some gratifying results have been seen from work of this kind in the school with which the writer is connected. We had no improved land to begin with, but every acre had to be cleared out of the forest. We are still working amid the stumps. Among other things, we early planted some of the small fruits, from which we have derived an important revenue. The strawberries of course produced a crop the next season after planting, and from the small amount of land set to this fruit, we have received several hundred dollars annually, as well as canning at times nearly one thousand quarts for use in the school. A goodly sum has been realized from the sale of plants as well as fruit. As the work of digging, sorting, trimming, and packing the plants was being done by the teachers and students during the afternoons, after school work in the forenoons, attention was called to the fact that in this way we are approaching a method followed in the schools of the prophets. We are told that “many of the teachers also supported themselves by manual labor.” As our schools “must be more like the schools of the prophets,” we should be looking to see if the expense for teachers’ salaries may not be partially met in some such way as suggested above. This work of the teachers was bringing in financial returns to the school, so that they were really partially supporting themselves by manual labor. While our schools should cultivate all the produce adapted to the soil, there are special crops and industries for each locality which will be of special financial value. In some places the growing of nursery stock can be conducted, in others high-grade poultry may be raised, etc. Special methods will suggest themselves in the various localities. In our school we have found the keeping of bees to be both instructive and profitable. When such plans as suggested above are outlined for our schools, with the “extensive lands for cultivation,” it may be said by some, “But this means a great deal of work!” True; but this is only another reason why we should do thus. A great need in our schools, as mentioned last week, is sufficient profitable work to enable students to be self-supporting while in school. Both the school and the students will be greatly assisted. “And the lesson of self-help learned by the student would go far toward preserving institutions of learning from the burden of debt under which so many schools have struggled, and which has done so much toward crippling their usefulness.” Another query to the point may be: “How can we do this work when we do not have the students in school during the summer?” To this we answer, Make the school year coincide with the agricultural season. Get the students in school during that time, by having the course of study cover that period of the year. There are difficulties, consideration of which must be deferred to another article, but a general movement on the part of our schools would lead our people to see its necessity, and secure their co-operation.