James W. Robertson

“ The wholesome fruits of culture are satisfying and nourishing only to those who follow a worthy course of action, careless of personal ease, for some important public good. To many of us who are working for the improvement of rural education, it appears that moral courage and intellectual enjoyments rest upon, and rise from, the basis of a people like Canadians, who are intelligent, capable, and disposed to work together for the good of all ”

“ In towns and cities the school garden will develop a desire in the rising generation to possess at least sufficient land for a garden. The city boy will spend more of his leisure on the home lot and less on the street. The city girl, who is now too much confined to the house, will develop a bodily vigour that can only be acquired in the sunshine and open air. The school garden will train the urban population to look toward the country. It will train the rural population to remain in the country. ”

“ What I have said regarding the part which education and organization have played in the advancement of agriculture refers mainly to what has been done for the adult population by Government agencies, voluntary associations of farmers and others, the agricultural press, lectures, and the example of excellent farmers. Not much has been done in the rural schools as yet to educate the children towards aptitudes, inclination, and ability for deriving satisfaction as well as material prosperity from the occupations of rural life. ”

“ Of the few that recognise the importance of the educational end, nearly all stop short at the acquisition of a certain amount of scientific information and the habit of careful observation. On the other hand, the Macdonald School Gardens, while designed to encourage the cultivation of the soil as an ideal life-work, are intended to promote, above all things else, symmetrical education of the individual. ”

“ The school systems and schools of the towns and cities of the Dominion are unquestionably excellent as compared with those of other countries. The opportunities for education in rural districts in Canada are not more meagre than they are in some other parts of the world, but they are not worthy of Canadians at this time in their history and prosperity.
The neglect of the rural schools has not been from the poverty of the people. Canada is increasing in wealth perhaps faster than any country with a similar proportion of its population depending upon rural employments. ”

“ Such teachers will be competent not only in ordinary subjects of school education, as accepted hitherto, but will be qualified to use these newer means of education known as Nature-study work, household science, and manual training. Those attending the teachers' college will not be required to take any work in the department of agriculture, but they will have the opportunity of doing so, if they desire to familiarize themselves with any part or detail of it. A staff fully competent to carry on the work of the teachers' college will be provided. ”

“ They do not aim at education to the exclusion of utility, but they seek education through utility, and utility through education. The garden is the means, the pupil is the end. The Macdonald School Gardens are a factor in an educational movement, and for this reason Professor Robertson sought to have them brought under the Education Department, and not under the Department of Agriculture, in each province. ”

“ The long courses for men and women will be very much on the lines that have been followed at the best colleges of agriculture. In planning for and carrying out assistance towards the improvement of rural schools in the five provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, it has been thought expedient to provide a teachers' college, primarily for the purpose of training men and women to be thoroughly qualified as teachers in advanced rural schools. ”

“ In addition to the long course of training which may be required when the teachers' college comes to its proper work, short courses will be provided for teachers already in the service who may desire to avail themselves of the opportunities and privileges which will be found for Canadian teachers at the Macdonald Institution. It has been felt all along that the teachers' college should be specially available and useful to teachers already in the service in the Protestant schools of the province of Quebec, and to others who may seek training to become qualified teachers in the province. ”

“ By competent authorities in England it has been estimated that the drainage in that country from November to March carries off to the sea a quantity of nitrates per acre sufficient for an average crop of wheat.
There have been many and great changes in the methods of agriculture during recent years. It has grown to mean more than the cultivation of land. In its primitive state, the practice was to disturb the bosom of Mother Earth, plant seeds, reap, and eat the crop. Muscular strength was its mainstay, and the constant exercise of rigorous self-denial almost its only economy. ”

“ An industrious lad will be able to earn as much on one of the farms as an apprentice, as will pay for his board in the college residence building when taking a course of instruction during the winter. The same will apply to women, who may become apprentices on the small-cultures farm in connection with fruit-growing, floriculture, dairying, or poultry-keeping. In the college department during the winter months such women could take courses in household science, including cooking, dressmaking and cutting, housekeeping, and the like. ”

“ One must bear in mind the limitations of production per acre over periods of more than fifteen or twenty years where wheat is the only or chief crop, without such a system of rotation of crops as will hinder weeds from taking full possession of whole districts. That turns one to regard with increasing confidence the capacity of the undeveloped agricultural resources of the older half of Canada (lying between the prairies, or, rather, between the great Lakes Superior and Huron and the Atlantic seaboard) to supply the larger share of the requirements of the United Kingdom for imported foods. ”

“ The fault has been in the lack of appreciation of the real worth of education to the community. That apathy has left the rural schools in 80 per cent. of the cases in the hands of young women comparatively inexperienced as teachers. There are in round figures some 746,000 children from five to fourteen years of age in the rural districts, and about 450,000 of the same ages in incorporated villages, towns, and cities. ”

“ The people of the province of Quebec were generally supposed to be far behind those of Ontario in education and cooperation as applied to dairying and agriculture generally. The returns in the census of 1901 revealed some of the results of the educational campaign. Ontario made great progress, but Quebec made much more. The following table is indicative in part of what was accomplished:
The development of this industry, which has increased the desire and capacity of the rural populations to cooperate in other ways, is traceable directly to education and guidance towards organization. ”

“ A widespread feeling exists that something more ought to be done to bring rural schools into closer touch with the practical needs of country life. A large number of us believe that the public schools of Canada have played a great part in raising the general level of intelligence to a comparatively high plane. ”

“ After the department of research has advanced any discovery far enough to make it applicable to ordinary agriculture, its practicability in regard to profit-making, etc., will be tested in the department of farms before any new method is commended to the farmers. ”

“ College of Agriculture.—In connection with the College of Agriculture proper, there will be three main departments—the department of farms, the department of research, and the department of instruction. The department of farms will consist, primarily, of demonstration or illustration farms, each fully equipped and self-contained. These will be managed for profit, and also for illustrating the best-known methods of agriculture. There will be a dairy farm, with several breeds of dairy cattle ”

“ Each competitor was required to operate a seed-plot consisting of not less than one-quarter acre during each of three consecutive years, and each year to select from the ripened standing crop of the seed-plot enough large heads of wheat or oats from the most vigorous and productive plants to provide well-developed seed for the seed-plot of the succeeding year. ”

“ Little attempt has been made to reform or enrich the course of study or the methods of training at rural schools, which are admittedly less efficient for the needs of the time than they were twenty-five years ago. ”

“ Department of Instruction.—In the department of instruction provision will be made for short courses for farmers and farmers' sons in such subjects as live-stock, improvement of seeds, improvement of soils, fruit culture, dairying, poultry-keeping, etc. There will also be a women's department, and short courses will be offered to farmers' daughters in sewing, cooking, dress-making and cutting, millinery, housekeeping, and so on. There will also be short courses for women in dairying, poultry-keeping, bee-keeping, and fruit culture. ”

“ The climate, on the whole, is warmer in summer and colder in winter than in corresponding latitudes in Europe. It has a land surface nearly twenty-nine times larger than Great Britain and Ireland, or seventeen times larger than France. If the area of the whole of Europe be represented by twelve, then the area of Canada would be eleven. Large tracts in the northern Arctic regions are uninhabitable, and entirely useless for the production of foods ”

“ These comparisons indicate roughly the enormous capacity of Canada for the production of foods. The soil has been found fertile. That of Manitoba and the North-West territories is rich in the constituents of plant food to a degree that surpasses nearly all the soils of Europe. The freezing of the land in winter, which at first sight seems a drawback, retains the soluble nitrates, which might otherwise be drained out. ”

“ Each farm will have a speciality, and it will also include live-stock and equipment for other branches of farming. For instance, the dairy farm will also have swine and poultry, and the beef farm will carry sheep, a few dairy cows, and poultry. ”

“ The export commerce of Canada in farm products is growing very fast. The following table shows the value of the exports of Canadian agricultural and animal products in three years, typical of the expansion in the last twenty:
Canada has still large areas of unoccupied wheat lands of great fertility. ”

“ The outside walls of the main buildings are to be of buff-brick, trimmed with stone, and the roofs are to be finished with steel and concrete structure, covered with tiles. It is anticipated that the buildings, with their setting, will constitute as fine a group as has been seen in connection with any agricultural institution on the continent. ”

“ Sir William Macdonald's direction in the matter is that the buildings are to be the best of their kind for the purposes for which they are intended, due regard being had to economy for original cost and maintenance. ”

“ Its chief difficulties seem to have been of a similar character to those which Adam experienced after his Paradise was lost. In the growing of crops, unfavourable weather, weeds, insects, and fungous diseases, are called blessings in disguise. ”

“ In this department, while the research work will be very helpful to the advanced instruction carried on in the college, original investigations will be undertaken and carried on for the benefit of agriculture in the Dominion at large. The question of the bacterial contents of soil and its fertility is one which is very alluring, and pregnant with great possibilities of service and benefit to the farming population. In every field problems await solution, and it is expected that the staff in the department at St. ”

“ Residences for the Students.—Besides the instruction building and laboratories, there will be a residence for men and another for women. There will be dining-hall accommodation, and separate gymnasiums for men and women. ”