AGRICULTURAL INSTRUCTION.

Evening Star, Issue 12766, 20 March 1906, Page 8

AGRICULTURAL INSTRUCTION.

TRAINED MEN FOR THE SOIL. [Special to the Stab,] CHRISTCHURCH, Alarch 20. Air AI. Alurphy, the editor of the Canterbury A. and P. Association’s magazine, and recognised all over New Zealand as a high authority on agricultural matters, has made public his views on the question of agricultural instruction in primary schools. He holds, he said, that the colony would certainly benefit to .a great extent if public school teachers were able, to teach elementary agriculture as a prominent subject in the schools’ daily routine. Teachers should be encouraged to make themselves qualified to undertake that work. To do that they should attend lectures ,on farm botany, the nature of soils, biology, gardening, agricultural chemistry, and nature study, as well as the natural history of all kinds of farm animals, and the methods of treating them. Teachers could not be expected to acquire expert knowledge in all these subjects. A good, sound elementary training was all that would be required. Satisfactory passes in the subjects named should be supplemented by a reward. For instance, all other things being equal, those teachers who passed should be entitled to preferment in the rural schools, and their qualifications in that respect should have considerable weight with applicants for town positions as well. It might be asked “How is this training to be secured?” He would reply: “ In the same way as it is imparted in America and Canada; that is, by teachers taking courses in their college.’ The system could be adopted at Lincoln College and at the Government farm stations throughout the colony. The latter, of course, would have to b© equipped “for the purpose. Teachers who attended Lincoln College would have to be treated as outdoor students, as all the available accommodation was occupied by the present students, and fresh ones were waiting for an opening. He had no doubt that many young men would avail themselves of the opportunity to attend the courses on reasonable terms. Teachers who did not do so would have to be content with inferior positions, and in time they would find that there was no room for them in a progressive educational system essential to the colony’s welfare. W:th a view to encouraging town boys and girls to turn their .attention to life in the country, schools of instruction might be established in all the large centres. There were no finger-posts at present to point the way to country life. They all pointed to the workshop, the factory, and the office stool, which were' good enough in their way, but were sadly' overdone. Those schools of instruction would be continuation schools, keeping youtbs in band until they were old enough to attend a training college or go on to the land straight or as a cadet. Itinerant instructors in agriculture could do very useful work, such as inaugurating school gardens, holding classes for teachers in outlying districts, and giving practical lessons us opportunity offered. A very simple and effective means of imparting useful instruction was the use of well-executed diagrams of typical farm animals, cereals, grasses, weeds, injurious insects, useful insects, and farm implements. The diagrams would be

bang on the walls of the schools,, and lessons could be given two or three times a week on the objects represented. Before very much could be done, however, thesyllabus of school instruction would have to be remodelled. Agriculture would have to have first consideration in the minds of those who undertook the task of ■ revising. -Agriculture .must,, for an indefinite period be the main- occupation of the people of this colony.