THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 1925. COURSES IN AGRICULTURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18965, 12 March 1925, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 1925. COURSES IN AGRICULTURE.

The inquiry into the needs and possibilities of education in agriculture, particularly with regard to the desirability of making further provision for its higher grades, is eliciting a variety of testimony. In that variety is revealed the diversity of aim with which the question is approached. Farmers want more profitable farming. Instructors under the Department of Agriculture want more promising facilities for their work. Directors of secondary and technical institutions want greater importance and inducement given to the study of agricultural science. The heads of university institutions want opportunity to enlarge their functions through addition to their means of offering instruction in agriculture. All are interested more or less in their own localities. It would be unfair to blame, these various enthusiasts for emphasising their own points of view. What is more natural than that each in his separate sphere should paint the thing as he sees it and as he hopes it may become, perchance for his benefit 1 Only in this way, perhaps, can the whole need be laid bare and the fullest possible improvement be made. It will bo for the commission to weld into one comprehensive recommendation whatever of good may appear to its mind as valuable suggestion, no matter whence it may come. The paramount consideration is better farming for the sake of the Dominion as a whole. It is a practical matter. Not education in agriculture so much as education for agriculture is the objective. Al! else must minister to that. Not the bank j balance of this or that farmer, nor I the circumstances of this or that agricultural instructor, nor the preferences of this or that technical school director, nor the advancement of this or that university college or locality, can rightly claim first attention. Better farming is the all in all. It will be the outcome of many factors—farmers, instructors,schools, colleges, and so on—and they arc but factors after all. In this connection, the farmer's view goes nearest to the objective. Education in agriculture is not an end, but a means. It is agriculture that matters. If the mere aggrandisement | of any educational institution or of any locality obtrude itself as a dominant motive, it should be given no quarter. Tested by that principle of the Dominion's need for better farming, the opinions so far tendered to the commission vary as much in value as in viewpoint. There has been someconfusion in the use of the term "school of agriculture." It has been employed to cover both the farm school, established for training in what one witness called the "craftsmanship" of farming, and the special division of a university college, organised for giving instruction in agricultural science by means of lectures and laboratory practice. The two have widely separable purposes and methods. The farm school aims at practical instruction based on approved technical knowledge ; the university "special school" or faculty aims at imparting technical knowledge without being directly concerned in the application of it to be made afterwards by students. The first teaches an art; the second gives instruction in a science. The confusion has been increased by the plea that a "school of agriculture" should be "in the. closest association possible with the university." If by this be meant, the "special school" or faculty of a university college, the pica idly requests what is inevitable, as if one should ask that li-h't appear in the closest possible association with the sun. If it mean the, farm school, then grave objection must be made. This instruction in practice may better be in the care of the Department of Agriculture. Why have such a department at all if this sort, of task be, taken .away from ill There may be found a way of utilising the farm schools for the purposes of university students, just as the workshops of the Railways Department have been used for the "workshop practice" of university students in engineering, without anybody being foolish enough to ask that the workshops should be transferred from the Railways to the Education Depart-

merit. The suggest ion that th«> Ruakura Experimental Farm' should function in connection with the university is practicable only in that limited way. In that way it may lie advantageously and economically utilised. To try to duplicate it at Orakei with anything like a largescale agricultural plot would be a mistake : for university purposes, especially concerned with scientific observation and research, broad acres are less essential than intensive and intimate experiment, and this can be got in a restricted area. In the main, the scheme of study proposed for agricultural courses at the Auckland University College is reasonable. Instruction for the agricultural degrees and facilities for scientific research are essential for this academic work, and the additional idea of a two-year course carrying a "diploma in agriculture," of lower tests and status than the degrees, is valuable. It would be better, however, if the University Senate made provision for a certificate of proficiency, applicable to the whole Dominion, in place of this diploma of merely local value and dignity. In the provision of the requisite staffing for the university schools or faculties, a way may be found of cooperation with the Department of Agriculture, by utilising the services of the more highly qualified instructors of that department. Theoretically, the university college faculties are to train that department's higher grades of instructional officers. For certain subjects involving short courses, the services of such instructors would meet all requirements. In this way, co-ordina-tion could be secured, without the authority of the co-operating departments being entangled. It is a method used profitably elsewhere in agricultural education and here in other domains of study. These details of organisation invite attention. Meanwhile, there is a comforting hope of something useful being undertaken ere long.