TRAINING OUR FUTURE FARMERS

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28701, 26 September 1958, Page 13 (Supplement)

TRAINING OUR FUTURE FARMERS

By

L. W. McCASKILL

Our contributor, Professor L. W. McCaskill, M.Agr.Sc., Dip. C.A.C., is associate professor and head of the department of rural education at Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln.

Tj'ARMING in Canterbury may be at another crossroads today; we may e aced with a long period of low prices ahead; we may fear for a reduced standard of living.

I cannot see any reason why our educational aims should alter, except perhaps that we should intensify our efforts to ensure that rural persons have the same opportunities and reach the same standards of attainment as do those in urban occupations. To help the rural individual develop and consequently fit him to produce the maximum of agricultural produce at the lowest possible cost, consistent with the maintenance of the asset, education should aim at many things.

It should develop an appreciation of the countryside, engender a love of the land and pride in rural vocations, and impress the fundamental importance and dignity of the work in which

people are engaged. It should train to think and to develop the personal qualities and outlook which engender

happiness and contentment. It should inculcate standards of integrity and an appreciation of

values. It should be cultural and liberal, as well as technical, so that people may become wise rather than clever.

The traditional pattern of rural life is a family unit on a farm tilling the land it owns, and taking pride in its stewardship of the soil. It provides an intimate association between parent and child to which there is nothing comparable under urban industrial conditions.

The ideals inculcated by rural parents today will influence tremendously the quality of the farming in Canterbury tomorrow. As a basis for formal education in the primary school, we cannot overrate the advantages of being so closely associated with nature that come to the child reared in rural surroundings. He has a knowledge of wild and domestic animals, of crops, of cultivation, oft rain and of wind, of ensilage and of hay, of weeds and of grasses; he has already experienced the inescapable relation of cause and effect, of effort and reward.

Although the rural child has a rich background for understanding the physical and biological aspects of life, he has fewer opportunities for social contacts to stimulate his reaction and to develop his personality and his understanding of human relationships.

The rural child is very dependent on his teacher for the knowledge and experience which are so

essential if he is to understand and accept his responsibilities and privileges in a democratic society. In the past our rural teachers have done a wonderful job: they could have done a better one if they had been trained specially for rural teaching. Throughout our educational history in New Zealand, teacher training has looked to the city child; our future teachers have had little opportunity to prepare for the vastly different problem of the rural child in the rural environment. I believe that the future of farming in Canterbury will depend to a considerable extent on the amount of special preparation we give dur teachers who wish to teach in the country. In the modern world, postprimary education is accepted widely as a necessary preparation for life and for earning a living. Because of an almost-traditional lack of interest in academic studies, it is often difficult to keep country boys at a postprimary school for the three or four years necessary to attain to the School Certificate.

But many boys will stay, almost willingly, if they can take agriculture in their course.

The school is not the place for the teaching of practical or vocational agriculture but I am all in favour of post-primary courses in agriculture for those intending to go farming. That is provided these courses have a basis of efficient teaching of the physical and biological sciences and that they are closely associated with local farming and its problems. The future of farming in Canterbury will be influenced by the quality of the agricultural courses offered in all our post-primary schools.

As regards advanced instruction in agriculture, I look forward to the time when the majority, if not all, of those farming in Canterbury will have takdn a degree or diploma course at • n agriculture college, or failing that, will have attended a series

of short courses in the type of farming they are practising. Modern farming has become so complicated that the open mind, which the university tries to cultivate, together with basic scientific knowledge, is becoming essential for continued success. I look forward, too, to a complete reorganisation of the system of agricultural extension.

We have developed an elaborate organisation under a Department of Agriculture. As befits the welfare state, agricultural advice, like social security medicine, is free. Use of the services, as with medical benefits, requires no responsibility on the part of the farmer. I believe that farmers should share with the taxpayer in the cost of the services provided and that they should participate in planning extension programmes which should be based on accurate information about the structure organisation and needs of the rural community. Sharing of the cost may be through membership of farm-im-provement clubs such as now operates in the Lauriston district to the material benefit of the members.

It may be by subscription to a diagnostic and testing centre at Lincoln where the resources of the college, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Department of Agriculture are integrated to provide specialist advice and service to extension officers living and working in a rural community. These extension officers must no longer be separated into two divisions—one working with animals and the other with soils, crops and pastures.

The farm is a whole: extension services must look on it as a whole soil, plant, animal and farm family.

With the development of Lincoln as a centre of co-ordin-ated activities of research, teaching and specialist services and, as the headquarters of a rejuvenated and reorganised extension service, adult education in farming in Canterbury could be. based so soundly that we could lead the world in results.