COLLEGES AND AGRI CULTURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13202, 13 June 1906, Page 7

COLLEGES AND AGRI CULTURE.

the POSITION of farmers.

A WASTE OF ENERGY. Evert year New Zealand in proportion to its population spends an enormous sum of money on education, and of this enormous sum farmers contribute by far the largest share. Do farmers receive under tho present educational system anything like the attention they deserve? Their industry, creates more wealth than all other industries put together. It is capable of immense expansion. It offers the greatest, possibilities j for scientific knowledge and research, | and yet of all the brilliant schoj lars turned out of our colleges there' is not one who can find a position in which he is able to give farmers the bem.it. of his learning, or find in agricultural science scope for his special abilities. However we may dispute as to the best system of education, we all agree t!>«t its ultimate object is to make good and useful citizens. However we may disagree regarding the method of scientific instruction, we must, acknowledge that tho real purpose of such learning is to improve the conditions of human life. Unfortunately the same idea prevails in New Zetland as is common in the old homelands, that merely to supply our youth v.'ijh a knowledge of general principles is the end and aim of all educational institutions; but this idea, however well it may have worked in bygone flays, now results in an enormous waste of time and intellectual energy. Society is now so highly organised and 'industry so highly specialised that the .higher education at least must move along particular channels. Agriculture alone offers a. large number of subjects, any one of which requires' the full power of individual concentration. Analysis of soils, manuring soils, the breeding of plants, insect pests and fungoid diseases are but a few out of many subjects which the students of our universities could specialise on. The importance of agriculture, however, is not recognised as it should be by the University Council. It offers more encouragement to the study of law, of theology, of political •economy, and such-like subjects than it otrcrs to those on which our greatest national industry rests and op. which the whole future of our country depends. Vegetable diseases alone cause a loss of hundreds of thousands of pounds annually, but, New Zealand has not any encouragement to offer its professors with a special knowledge of pathology, nor does the Stale open to its young men who have qualified in such work any inducement to pursue such studies. Every intelligent farmer realises how important it is that there should be men able to diagnose the chief plant diseases. Time is frequently of supreme value in checking such attacks, and immediate treatment might stamp out a, newly-introduced pest, which, if allowed to go 011 unchecked, might devastate great, areas of agricultural crops or ruin hundreds of acres of fruit trees.

Wo recognise' that- wo have in our universities professors of botany and of biology possessing the highest attainments, but we also recognise that the work of such professors and the work of their students is hampered because its immense value to the country is not fully realised. No proper acknowledgment is accorded to this class of work, and how can it, bo when college councils and similar governing bodies believe that dead languages are of more importance to the country than practical knowledge, and offer great, inducements to those who will study political economy and nothing to those who study agricultural science? It, is time that the farmers of New Zealand awoke to the fact that the great educational institutions of the country offer them little or nothing in return for tire vast sums which they contribute for education. They should demand their proper share of representation on all our educational boards and councils, and not leave such work to lawyers and theologians and literary pedants. The Minister for Education' should not bo a mere official title, but a living, practical head of a great Department, capable of recognising the vast importance of education in all our industries and able to realise how much education can do for the greatest of all our industries—Agriculture. _ From an economical point of view it is simply shameful that the most brilliant and intellectual of our youths should be prevented from turning their knowledge to account in industrial spheres. Our universities give nearly all ther attention and their rewards to medicine, law, . theology, . languages, mathematics, and the consequence is we have more doctors, more lawyers, mor# theologians than the country needs, while absolutely nothing is clone to encourage those who might tell us how to increase the production of our fields and pastures_ and add millions of pounds to our national wealth; how to combat fungoid diseases and save great areas of crops from ruin; how to increase the fertility of soils ; how to improve the quality of butter and the thousand other things open to scientific exploration in agricultural industries. It is not a question of revolutionising present institutions, of increasing- public expenditure, of importing new teachers—it is simply a question of utilising our present educational machinery in a more profitable manner. If the public of this country really think that schools and colleges are for the express purpose of turning out a superabundance of lawyers, parsons, and teachers, then nothing more need bo done, for our educational institutions are performing ..his viork in a most vigorous manner. If, ■ towever, the industrialists of New Zealand, and particularly farmers, who are the most numerous aijd important of all our producers, think that they deserve some return for the huge sums they contribute for the maintenance of education, then some alteration is necessary. There can "be no doubt that farmers are thinking in this direction. They realise that potato Wight and wheat rust and leaf curl and all the numerous fungoid diseases which wreak such immense damage every year can be practically annihilated when once men possess the necessary knowledge to combat them; they know that when once the true science of manuring is mastered farm crops can lie increased and fertility accumulated instead of wasted; they know or at least some of them know, that given the proper knowledge of plant-life it may be possible to make cereals and fruit trees immune against many diseases just by supplying them with the proper constituents for their full and healthy growth. They can go further than this, and believe that scientific methods of feeding will not only bring all kinds of crops to their fullest development, but that such crops fed in proper proportion to farm animals will make them, too, immune against many diseases and bring them to perfection much more rapidly and economically than even a greater expenditure of more unsuitable foods. The possibilities open to scientific research in agricultural fields are too vast to bo treated fully, nor is there need to pile argument: on argument in favour of turning our educational forces into these channels. The faet we wish to make plain is. that agriculture, the greatest and most potent of all our industries, is practically ignored in our col.leges, and that it is much more important to train our youths for special branches iu this industry than it is to train them specially as lawyers, doctors, parsons, or to other similar professions.