By W.H. Barton, County Agricultural Agent
Now come one “Dr. Hubert M. Poteat, Professor Latin at Wake Forest College,” and causes the mountain to bring forth a mouse: “I want to say with all possible emphasis that vocational education in the high schools is a tragic and criminal mistake,” says Dr. Poteat.
For God’s Sake!
Since when did it become a crime to teach children how to work? Since when has it been a crime to inspire youth with aspirations for the development of the great common things that God has placed at his door for the economic “healing of the nations?”
Since when has it become tragic for the State to attempt to thus open the eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf? Some of the prominent Latin writers did not regard such teachings as either a tragedy or a crime, and I dare say that the same writers would have rejoiced at the opportunity of having the farmers of their day taught vocational training in t their youth.
They advised the farmers of their day to sow and turn more clovers, vetch and lentils for the sake of the soils of a waning agriculture, but their advice was not adopted; else we should not have the record: “their lands were no longer productive.”
North Carolina has more poor land than people, and more people than she is feeding with home products.
The people of the United States owe a total debt of over $100 billion in notes, mortgages and bonds alone; and agriculture, the basis of all prosperity and progress, is waning as never before in the history of the country, as indicated in her farm mortgage, and other indebtedness.
In view of all this, is it “a tragic and criminal mistake” to attempt to relieve this situation by teaching that in our public schools that would tend to right this condition?
The Power to Think
I agree with Dr. Poteat that “the power to think and the power to aspire distinguish men from the beasts of the field,” BUT I submit that the “power to think and the power to aspire” may be just as thoroughly developed by studying plant roots, et. al., in a living, burning, up-to-date science like agriculture; as by studying Latin roots and dealing with the dead past.
What the youth of today needs is to be waked up to the wonderful possibilities buried in his father’s back yard and back-field—INSPIRATION, first, is what he needs; and that comes only thru INFORMATION concerning the miraculous possibilities lying all around him but hidden from his view.
Since when did it become “a tragic and criminal mistake” to attempt such a revolution among the steady yeomanry of America by giving vocational instruction in our public schools!
The day has passed for attempting to make only one kind of educational grist from all kinds of grain. It can’t be done, and shouldn’t be done if it were possible.
From the front page of the Rockingham Dispatch, June 26, 1924
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