TEACHING OF AGRICULTURE.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14983, 2 June 1914, Page 8

TEACHING OF AGRICULTURE.

QUESTION DISCUSSED BY FEILDING FARMERS.

(special to "the tress.") FEUDING, June 1. In connexion with the proposed Agricultural High Schools, Mr J. H. Perrett, president of the Feilding A. and P. Association, suggested at the annual meeting of tho Association that the school should include residential quarters, -with class-rooms and outbuildings. Practical work ought to be done by the boys in cropping, dairying, and orchard work, and the breeding of pigs. Horses should be supplied for ploughing and general farm work. The instruction, iv fact, should include the practical cohrses in the growing of crops, fruit culture, stock work, carpentry, farm-smithing, and farm-plumbing, so as to enable students to effect repairs to farm tools and buildings.

Mr Perrett proposed and Mr F. Y. Lethbridge seconded:—"That, in view of the importance of agricultural teaching iti our secondary schools, and also the fact of the increasing demand for agricultural education, with greater facilities for teaching the subject, the time is now ripe for the establishment, at a suitable centre of this district, of a residential agricultural high school for the teaching of theoretical and practical agriculture."

Mr D. H. Guthrie, M.P., said the interest taken in agricultural education and the support given by the farmers of Feilding were noted all over New Zealand, and he frequently had members of the House asking him for information. The scheme proposed by Mr Perrett should certainly be sent on to the Board of Agriculture.

On being put, the motion was carried unanimously, and it was decided to forward tho suggestion to the Board of Agriculture.