78-01-A3
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American Farm School I[edit]
Transcript[edit]"Give a hungry man a fish and he'll be hungry tomorrow. Teach him how to fish and he'll never be hungry again." Unfortunately that ancient maxim has not always guided us in our efforts to help others through foreign aid. But today I'd like to tell you about a program that does meet that test. A few months ago friends of mine in San Francisco told me of their interest in helping something called the American Farm School. Thanks to them, Nancy and I were visited by a young lady who works out of an office at 380 Madison Avenue, New York City. The sign on that big city office door must seem a little strange to native New Yorker is--"American Farm School." If they'd drop in and ask a few questions they'd learn as we did from our charming visitor that the American Farm School is about 20 minutes from downtown Thessaloniki in northern Greece. It is an agricultural and technical training center on 400 acres, with a girls' school featuring home economics and crafts and a boys' school with specialties in Farm Machinery, Animal Husbandry, and Horticulture. It was founded in 1904 and owes its existence to one man who had a dream he made come true. John Henry House, a Congregational minister, was a missionary in the Balkans for 30 years. During that time he became increasingly aware of a sociological trend. Village boys had learned to despise village life and made their way to the cities. Reverend House believed a change in education could result in a new or perhaps a revived belief that it was not degrading for educated people to work with their hands. Rev. House had that rare combination of the practical and the visionary. He dreamed of founding an educational institution that would develop "the whole man, the head, the heart and the hand." He believed that a school patterned after Hampton Institute in Virginia, Tuskeegee in Alabama and the Penn School for girls in South Carolina could train young people to be leaders, modern farmers and make them content to stay down on the farm--down on the farm in Macedonia. Rev . House was 60 years old in 1902 when he and two missionary friends bought 53 acres of parched, waterless land in a bandit - infested part of northern Greece. If they were to convince their students to-be, they had to start with land as poor as that of the poorest farmer. House had raised the money for the project himself. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions did not share his vision and considered it outside the scope of the missionary endeavor for which he'd been sent to the Balkans. Rev. House was not a man to give up on a dream. He took his wife to see the land he had chosen for his venture. Standing on the 53 windswept barren acres she asked, "Whoever will you get to live in this place?" He answered, "You, my dear." And live there she did. Thus was started the Thessloniki Agricultural and Industrial Institute which was to become the American Farm School . I'll continue this in my next broadcast and I'm sure you'll be a little more proud of America the Beautiful. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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