Page:The education of the farmer.djvu/15

 independent classes and the members of the liberal professions, who are reasonably expected by all ranks to maintain as the characteristic of English gentlemen a generous disregard to mercantile profit in their transactions with their neighbours. From these considerations we may draw the conclusion that the farmer's education should take its character rather from the circumstances which attach to business in general than from the peculiarities of agriculture.

The chief peculiarities of the farmer's business are, that he can only produce his goods at certain seasons, and that the powers of nature which he deals with are affected by the vicissitudes of weather; from which the inference is that he has the greater need for vigilant observation, attention to details, and patience. Special scientific knowledge will avail little against the seasons if these qualities be wanting.

Another element, however, must be taken into consideration which has much effect in determining the character of the education which it is possible to give to any class, and that is the element of Time. The period of education may be divided into three portions,—those of childhood, boyhood, and manhood. For convenience sake we may take the ages of ten and eighteen as the extreme points at which the second is separated from the first and the third. Speaking generally, the education of the labourer terminates with the first period; that of the middle classes rarely reaches the limits of the second.

At or before the age at which university life commences the youth who is destined for trade or agriculture passes from book-learning to a more practical or probationary training. It is this circumstance more than any other which gives its peculiar character to middle-class education. The classical training of the grammar school, as generally understood, is preparatory to university study. Much of the time of the public schoolboy is therefore spent, and wisely spent, in laying up materials for future scholarship, and in acquiring facility in the use of language and other instruments of thought, the value of which will not appear until he has passed through the philosophical training of his maturer powers and stepped out into the arena of public or professional life. To give the middle-class boy this long preparatory discipline would be to misapply his time; it would prevent him from receiving the training and gaining the information which will be called into play by his business as soon as he leaves school, and, what is more important, would increase