Chapters in Rural ProgressButterfield, Kenyon L. (Kenyon Leech)
Science
Chapters in Rural Progress
Butterfield, Kenyon L. (Kenyon Leech)
Agriculture -- United States
The agricultural college must also lead in a more adequate development
of extension teaching. Magnificent work has already been done through
farmers' institutes, reading courses, co-operative experiments,
demonstrations, and correspondence. But the field is so immense, the
number of people involved so enormous, the difficulties of reaching them
so many, that it offers a genuine problem, and one of peculiar
significance, not only because of the generally recognized need of
adult education, but also because of the isolation of the farmers.
It should be said that in no line of rural betterment has so much
progress been made in America as in agricultural education. Merely to
describe the work that is being done through nature-study and
agriculture in the public schools, through agricultural schools, through
our magnificent agricultural colleges, through farmers' institutes, and
especially through the experiment stations and the federal Department of
Agriculture in agricultural research and in the distribution of the best
agricultural information--merely to inventory these movements properly
would take the time available for this discussion. What has been said
relative to agricultural education is less in way of criticism of
existing methods than in way of suggestion as to fundamental needs.
THE ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS PROBLEM
Wide generalizations as to the exact moral situation in the rural
community are impossible. Conditions have not been adequately studied.
It is probably safe to say that the country environment is extremely
favorable for pure family life, for temperance, and for bodily and
mental health. To picture the country a paradise is, however, mere
silliness. There are in the country, as elsewhere, evidences of
vulgarity in language, of coarseness in thought, of social impurity, of
dishonesty in business. There is room in the country for all the ethical
teaching that can be given.
Nor is it easy to discuss the country church question. Conditions vary
in different parts of the Union, and no careful study has been made of
the problem. As a general proposition, it may be said that there are too
many churches in the country, and that these are illy supported.
Consequently, they have in many cases inferior ministers. Sectarianism
is probably more divisive than in the city, not only because of the
natural conservatism of the people and a natural disinclination to
change their views, but because sectarian quarrels are perhaps more
easily fomented and less easily harmonized than anywhere else. Moreover,
in the city a person can usually find a denomination to his liking. In
the country, even with the present overchurched condition, this is
difficult.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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