the direction of literature and art, and of science and history, but it
can be made more practical by focusing it upon the problems connected
with the agriculture and manufactures of the district.

This indicates a career of usefulness for the ambitious teacher of a
rural school. There is a large field for the discipline of the directive
power open even for the humblest of teachers in the land.

These books of Colonel Parker, if read by the school children, and
especially by the elder youth who have left school, will suggest a great
variety of ways in which real mental growth and increase of practical
power may be obtained. The ideal of education in the United States is
that the child in school shall be furnished with a knowledge of the
printed page and rendered able to get out of books the experience of his
fellow-men, and at the same time be taught how to verify and extend his
book knowledge by investigations on his environment. This having been
achieved by the school, nothing except his indolence, or, to give it a
better name, want of enterprise, prevents the individual citizen from
growing intellectually and practically throughout his whole life.

W. T. HARRIS.

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 12, 1897.




AUTHOR'S PREFACE