RURAL SCIENCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17659, 24 June 1919, Page 6

RURAL SCIENCE

DR ANDERSON'S VIEWS. An aspa-et of tho subject of ieaclilhg rural science, wliich was not brought out during tho recent Agricultural Education Conferwas mentioned by Dr W. J. Anderson (Director of Education) to a Wellington <ft-, representative on Saturday. I' rom the point of view of tho University itsolf," said Dr Anderson, "it seems to me that a rural science ooursa, reaching as it necessarily does into tho domain of quite a number of sciences, and introducing the study of science in immediate conneotion with objects and operations in tho service of man, provides as good a foundation of general science as I can oonceive for tho purposes of matriculation in the university. Special professors have told us over and over again that to deal with special subjects effectively, what is required is not a preliminary study of that special subjact, but a general science training, which would givo tho student tho mental attitude, • the habit of laboratory practice, and the habit of inquiring into the reasons of things, whatever wore the operation of objects under observation. At the present time the university has not gone so far as to make elementary science a compulsory subject, though I hope that it will do so in the near future, or that, at all events, it will make elementary science so far oompulsory as to imposo the obligation of taking an additional subject upon those who are not prepared to offer elementary science as a subject for oxanpnation. According to the present conception, of elementary science, the various science professors, even where the compulsion is in existence, would have to bo satisfied under tho head of' elementary science 'with the preliminary study of elementary physics a.nd elementary chemistry, whereas if rural science were taken, students would make a preliminary study of various other sciences bearing upon agriculture instead of those two branches of science only. J.hus thoy would gain the best possible foundation for tho development of- any branch of science and that, too, in the best possible way in immediate relation to the utilitarian requirements which would secure the presence of a powerful stimulant of interest, without which any teaching must be seriously handicapped."