SHOWS AND EDUCATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 2818, 18 March 1908, Page 6

SHOWS AND EDUCATION.

A proposal which should receive unanimous and active support from all who are interested in agriculture and education is that which was adopted at the last meeting of the Otago A. and P. Society, asking the Minister of Agriculture to arrange> that a- holiday granted to schoolchildren to enable them to attend an agricultural show should not be included in the number of holidays specified by the new education regulations. The memorial should also be addressed to the Minister of Education, though no doubt Mr M'Nab will be able to secure his- colleague's sympathy in the matter. Visits of schools to agricultural shows have, become more frequent of recent years, and the offer of prizes to the scholars for accounts of what they saw have brought out some interesting essays. The scholars derive great pleasure and a good deal of instruction from their visit, and there has been no complaint that it interfered with the regalar school work. The agricultural fi-ocieties, however, assume a responsibility in making their request : they are under the implied obligation to make their shows instructive or educative to the visitors whom they desire to attract. It must be admitted that at present they do say little in this direction. A visitor, young or old, may give his whole attention to the show during all the time it is open, and at the close be without information regarding the reason for a single award (the factory butter and cheese classes are an exception, the points cards affixed to the exhibits stating the degree of merit of each). In this respect 6hows have made- no progress, and farmers and others are made little the wiser by the awards. It is time there was a forward movement, and the judges be required to give the reasons for their awards, and point out where one animal excels or is inferior to another. This is the rule at the principal (if not at all) Canadian shows, and the explanations or demonstrations of the judges are the most popular feature of the gatherings. There could be do better method of teaching the points of tho highest class of stock, and it is certain that, besides being instructive to the onlookers and auditors, it would lead to more satisfactory judging as well as to greater satisfaction with the judging. It may be said that judges who would give the reasons for their awards could not be obtained, but a judge who cannot or will not give his reasons is unfit to act. The question is periodically raised at Home, and is revived by th© publication of Reports of the Ontario winter show, held last December. A leading agricultural paper improves the occasion by making a grave indictment of the leading shows. It declares that these, as educational institutions, are a failure — a weariness to the flesh to the man who wants to—" know something concerning stock. The local and parish shows, it is asserted, are of greater value than the great central shows, there being at _ the former greater hope of seeing stock judged on its merit than at the open shows. At the latter, the evidence of bias on the part of the judges is not awanting, and ,he who would follow and learn from the movements within the ring is sometimes grievously disappointed. What society in Britain, it is asked, will have the pluck to first adopt the Canadian method. Hitherto it has been regarded as the ideal for the judge in Britain not to give his reasons : at the Ontario show a judge who would not give his reasons had made his last appearance on the judging bench. These pointed remarks were, very probably incited to some extent by the remarkably contradictory awards at the fat stock shows which had just concluded in the Old Country; but who will say that New Zealand shows are free from contradictory judgments, or that reasons for awards are not as badly needed here as they are there? The majority of New Zealand farmers, indeed, are more in need of instruction in the points of stock than are their brethren of the United Kingdom ; and the society which invites them and their children to visit its shows for the purpose of obtaining instruction is unquestionably under an obligation to provide the instruction. It would mako the events more educative and more popular, both to exhibitors and to visitors.