SCHOOLS AND FARMING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22349, 21 February 1936, Page 10

SCHOOLS AND FARMING

Only one boy in ten is taking the rural course at Gisborne High School and an even smaller proportion of the girls has enrolled for the home course. This neglect of the primary essentials of life invites reflection. Ninety per cent of the girls of the Gisborne and every other school will spend most of their later life in the practice of housewifery, but in their formative years most of them give no time to home 'science. In this neglect may reside a main cause of the frequently deplored decay of home and family life. On the boys' side the proportion pursuing agricultural studies is also disturbingly low, especially in a school based on a great pastoral district and no doubt drawing many of its pupils from farming homes. Not that Gisborne is unique in this respect ; with a few notable exceptions the neglect of agriculture in New Zealand secondary schools is most marked. That bodes ill for a country whose prosperity rests largely on the land, and i's likely to do so in the fufure. Pointed attention to this dead spot in the educational body was drawn by the Atmore report and some methods were recommended by which it was hoped to effect a real improvement. These included the raising of the whole status of the subject of agriculture in secondary schools. More time was to be allotted to its study and a high scale of marks allotted to the subject in examinations. These reforms would create a demand for a higher standard of teaching, which should be supported by the provision of enlarged facilities and equipment in the schools. As the new Minister of Education has decided to base his policy on the Atmore report, some if not all of the recommendations may soon be put into practice. That will be something gained, but more is needed, namely, a fundamental change in the popular estimate of farming as a career, and of country as opposed to town life. Just after the war all the hoys and young men wanted to go farming, not only because farmers were prosperous, but also because life on the land was considered the best life. Tf that attitude of mind can be restored, and capitalised in the schools, trained recruits for farming will not be lacking.