AGRICULTURAL INSTRUCTION.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 1273, 15 July 1925, Page 7

AGRICULTURAL INSTRUCTION.

POSITION OP FEILDING HIGH SCHOOL. MINISTER ACCEPTS CORRECTION At last evening’s meeting of the Board of Managers of the Fcilding Agricultural High School, reference was made to a, statement by the Minister of Education in regard to the falling off of students taking the agricultural course at the Feilding High School, and the committee sot up to go into the matter reported that a letter had been sent by the chairman drawing the Minister’s attention to the report of a, speech made in New Plymouth, in which ho said that the proportion of boys taking the agricultural course at Fcilding had fallen from 50 per cent, three years ago to 20 per cent, to-day. The chairman’s letter pointed out that both these statements were incorrect and asked if the speech had been correctly reported. Th© Minister had replied that the report was substantially correct and that the information had been given him when h 0 visited Feilding in December last.

The chairman of the Board had replied convoying the director’s emphatic denial of the statement attributed to him and pointed out that 76.5 per cent, of farmers’ sons were taking the agricultural course and that instead of 20 per cent., 37 per cent, last December, and 4 0 per cent, now, of the boys, were taking the agricultural course; while of now entrants, over half took it. There was a lower proportion of boys in the third and later years, due to the fact that matriculation candidates must, and town boys generally could, stay longer than country boys. The Minister replied accepting the Board's figures, adding: "The school was designed for a special purpose, which, I regret to say, has not been accomplished. I. regret that the Department’s view in- establishing the school was that it was to b e essentially different from other high schools. It was to be a school in which the grrat majority, ♦ if not all the pupils, should take agriculture. It is my firm belief that wo should encourage, and indeed require, as much as possible, that the town child, as well as the farmer’s son should, instead of matriculation, take a liberal course of technical training such as is given by the agricultural course. The complaint is all too general and I fear all too well founded, throughout Now Zealand, that our system of free high school education is giving the child a bias away from the farm and in the direction of the office and the desk.”

The Board replied last week while admitting in general the justice of the Minister’s hopes in regard to the pupils taking agriculture, and explaining (a) that the school’s success in attracting agricultural pupils was really considerable, as witness Fending, 40 per cent., while the average of other country technical high schools was 15.4 per cent, (b) the general nature of the difficulty of popularising the agricultural course, owing to the belief of parents that professions are better paid for loss work, business docs not require so much capital and appears to give better returns; the high price of land: the difficulty of getting a start, and ignorance on the part, even of farmers, of the real nature and purpose of agricultural education: (c) need for propaganda dealing with these points and for bursaries enabling city boys to attend at Feeding, (d) and the school’s own special difficulties and needs in the shape of chemistry, laboratory and more land.