AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15518, 28 January 1914, Page 8

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

I As agriculture becomes so evidently the main source of our national prosperity more attention is being paid to the question of practical agricultural education. In New Zealand it is far easier for a lad to obtain technical training as a plumber or an engineer, an * accountant or a cabinetmaker, than as a farmer, although the need for good farmers is the greatest need of all. There is abundant room in this Dominion for a progressive policy in fitting boys for a country life. New, Zealand is destined to become a country of small holdings, and the small holding demands scientific intensive cultivation. Thus a practical course of agricultural education should be insisted upon in all our high schools. No such course, however, is likely to do much practical good so long as the instruction is left to teachers who have had no special training in agricultural subjects and who are thoroughly ignorant of the work of a farm. Owing to the farcical way in which the pretence of giving a practical course in agriculture is kept up in the majority of our country secondary and district high schools the subject has fallen into disfavour even among farmers themselves. No doubt, however, when the Agricultural Board is elected and organised, it will be able to make recommendations that will place the teaching of agriculture on the same satisfactory basis as in Denmark, Holland, and Ireland, in which countries the application of scientific methods to small holdings has brought about an agricultural revor lution, and has raised the once ignorant peasant to the position of an independent and invaluable member of society. Our New Zealand yeomanry should have at least as good opportunity to obtain scientific training as is available in countries we generally regard as much lees progressive.