HOW TO EXTEND EDUCATION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 992, 6 March 1891, Page 20

HOW TO EXTEND EDUCATION.

While on the subject of agricultural educa tion we may quote the following suggestions from a pamphlet on the subject recently published by Professor McConnell, of Edinburgh : 1. Classes held at elementary schools or elsewhere under the Science and Art Department should be encouraged by giving money prizes to the pupils earning the highest marks, and by subsidies to the teachers; and other schools should be induced to take the subject up. 2. Local prizes or scholarships should be offered to pupils in the higher schools to induce them to study this subject, and to be open to all under, say, seventeen years of age. 3. Exhibitions or scholarships of at least £SO per annum should be offered locally, open to all young farmers between eighteen and twenty-five years of age, and who have worked on a farm for at least two years, to enable them to prosecute a course of scientific study at some recognised college. 4. Chairs or lectureships should be founded in existing institutions in preference to erecting new colleges or arranging for * college farms ’; but no steps should be taken in this respect until a sufficient number of students are likely to turn up. 5. Earmers* societies should organise meetings for lectures, discussions, reading papers, &c., at the centres within their districts, on the lines successfully followed by the American Farmers’ Institutes. 6. Universities generally should consider the advisability of including agriculture among the subjects qualifying for their degrees, and especially the two great English universities of Oxford" and Cambridge should take the lead in this matter, as they have practically the training of the great majority of the landlords of the United Kingdom, and any scheme of agricultural education which leaves them out of account’will defeat its own ends.