Civic Learning Through Agricultural Improvement

A volume in Studies in the History of EducationSeries Editor: Karen L. Riley Auburn University at MontgomeryHow do people use education to respond to change? How do people learn what is expected of good citizensin their communities? These questions have long concerned educational historians civic educatorsand social scientists. In recent years they have captured national attention through high-profile educationreform proposals and civic initiatives. The historian who reviews the relevant literature however will discoversomething odd: most of it focuses on schooling despite the fact that prior to the middle of the twentiethcentury formal schooling played only a small (but significant) part in most people's lives. What other educational forces and institutions bringcivic ideals to bear upon minds and hearts? This question is rarely raised. At issue is a conceptual problem: we today tend to equate education withschooling.Do county fairs and farmers' associations have anything to do with civic education? Drawing insights from debates at the time of the founding of thehistory of education as a branch of modern scholarship this author asserts that they do. Using the life of county fairs farmers' associations and farmers'institutes as its central thread this book explores how prominent town-dwellers and leading farmers tried to use agricultural improvement to growtowns and to shape civic sensibilities in the rural Midwest. Promoting economic development was the foremost concern but the efforts taught farmersmuch about their place as good citizens of industrializing communities. As such this study yields insights into how rural people of the nineteenthcentury came to accept the ideal that town and country were interdependent parts of the same community. In doing so it reminds educators andhistorians that much education and learning - particularly of the civic sort - takes place beyond theschoolhouse.