The Underlying Training of a People
This, then, is the landsman’s obligation, and his joyful privilege. But it must not be supposed that he alone bears the responsibility to maintain the holiness of the divine earth. It is the obligation also of all of us, since every one is born to the earth and lives upon it, and since every one must react to it to the extent of his place and capabilities. This being so, then it is a primary need that we shall place at the use of the people a kind of education that shall quicken these attachments.
Certainly all means of education are useful, and every means should be developed to its best; and it is not to be expected that all the people shall pursue a single means: but to the nation and to the race a fundamental training must be provided.
We are now in the time of developing a technical education in agriculture, to the end that we may produce our land supplies. Already this education is assuming broad aspects, and we begin to see that it has very important bearing on public policies. It is a new form of exercise in natural science,—the old education in this great realm having become so specialized and departmentalized as to lose much of its value as a means of popular training.
It is a happy augury that in North America so many public men and administrators have taken the large view of education by means of agriculture, desiring, while training farmers or those who would be farmers, to make it a means of bringing the understanding of the people back to the land. The Americans are making a very remarkable contribution here, in a spirit of real statesmanship. In the long run, this procedure will produce a spirit in the people that will have far-reaching importance in the development of national character, and in a relation to the backgrounds of which very few of us yet have vision.
It will be fortunate if we can escape the formalizing and professionalizing of this education, that has cast such a blight on most of the older means of training the young, and if we can keep it democratic and free in spirit.
We shall need to do the same in all the subjects that lie at the foundations,—in all the other crafts; all these crafts are of the earth. They support the physical man and the social fabric, and make the conditions out of which all the highest achievements may come.
Every person in a democracy has a right to be educated by these means; and a people living in a democracy must of necessity understand the significance of such education. This education should result or function politically. It is not sufficient to train technically in the trades and crafts and arts to the end of securing greater economic efficiency,—this may be accomplished in a despotism and result in no self-action on the part of the people. Every democracy must reach far beyond what is commonly known as economic efficiency, and do everything it can to enable those in the backgrounds to maintain their standing and their pride and to partake in the making of political affairs.