SCHOOL FARM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 290, 8 December 1933, Page 12

SCHOOL FARM.

PUKEKOHE'S PROPOSAL

TECHNICAL COLLEGE COMMENT.

Comment on a proposal from the Pukekohe Technical High School board of managers for the establishment of a school farm on an educational endowment area of 322 acres at Mauku was made by the principal of the Seddon Memorial Technical. College, Mr. G. J. Park, at a meeting of the board of managers.

"I have considered the proposal of the chairman of the Pukekohe Technical High School Board that city boys should be. induced to attend an agricultural high school to be established in the vicinity of Pukekohe," said the principal. "Proposals of this sort have emanated from Pukekohe over a considerable period, and the same answer might well be given now as has been given previously, namely, that in the opinion of the board of managers of this school the difficulty of transporting boys 25 or 30 miles is too great.

"I am strongly of the opinion that in the first two or three years of postprimary education, boys intending to take up farming should be, and are, very fully occupied in gaining an elementary knowledge of the sciences, physics, botany, chemistry,, zoology, etc., which go to make up agriculture; secondly, in the engineering, woodwork and. farm mechanics, which are of the greatest value in the practice of farming, and in English, arithmetic, history, bookkeeping as an extension of their general education. When a timetable 13 made up, and • these .subjects are given the time, which is necessary for reasonable progress in' their study, there is very little time left for practical work in agriculture, and in this school this time is being given to first-year boys in garden, horticultural, poultry work, etc., on an • area. of two to three acres.

"In second and third years boys are conveyed rapidly to the farms of Messrs. Miller'and'Jones, at Glen Eden. These farms are well stocked and successfully conducted by business men of long experience. In my opinion this system is greatly superior to the proposals of the Pificekohe Technical High School Board that an" area of 322 acres "should be conducted as a school farm, and that boys from this college should be sent there for their practical work in agriculture.''