The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. FRIDAY, JULY 29, 1921. MAKING DULL BOYS.

Southland Times, Issue 19289, 29 July 1921, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. FRIDAY, JULY 29, 1921. MAKING DULL BOYS.

The extremist is always dangerous, intemperance is a fault no matter what form it takes. It is as injurious to a man’s health to overwork it is for him to be lazy. Too much indulgence in sport is harmful, but work without some play is equally so. These things, most people will •ay, are too well known to be worth utterance and yet we find well meaning but much mistaken folk \ advocating extreme measures for the purpose of meeting present day problems. For instance at the Council of Agriculture, Mr A. Stewart of Marton enunciated the doctrine of no sport, less education and more work for the making of farmers. The actual words used by Mr Stewart were: Too much attention is paid by the youth of this country to sport, and if sport could be cut out and the boys placed on the farms at an earlier age and given less education 'they would make more practical farmers. It is possible that the yOUth of this country do give a great deal of attention to sport, but that they give too much to it is another matter. Men who have had long experience in the management of large staffs of workmen have discovered that there is*a point beyond which no man can go without a loss in productivity, that long hours have the effect of reducing the output per man. Some of the great employers of labour have discovered that the eight-hour shift gives greathr production over a long period of time than does a ten-hour shift. Men who are working under modern conditions must have leisure and if they can be induced to spend their

spare moments in outdoor sport it is all the better for them. The development and encouragement of sports in the rural areas is more likely to attract men to the land than a prospect of unremitting toil. Cut out sport and the farmer would find it more difficult than ever to secure labour. If boys are to be deprived of education the country in the long run will suffer. It may be that our primary education system should be given a more decided bias in the direction of rural requirements, but it cannot be argued for a moment that a farmer can be a better tiller of the soil because he has had a skimped education. Many of the men who went on the land in the old days worked long hours and won their skill in husbandry in the hard school of experience, but as each generation comes cn the responsibility to be borne is the increase of production from the soil. The application of science to agriculture is recognised all over the world as one of the prime necessities for the future of the race, and it should be obvious to everybody that the educated farmer is what the world requires. Instruction in agriculture and in subjects having a direct bearing on farming should play an important part in the education of our young people. Many boys who receive secondary school and university education turn away from the land, but many of them become successful farmers, and the loss sustained by the land is probably occasioned by unsuitable education rather than by too much education. The greatest enemy of the farm is the attractiveness of town life, and the pleasures offered by the towns are not part of the education system of this country. No one can hope to succeed with the argument that clods are required for the land. The farmer is of such importance to the nation that he needs to be equipped with the best and most suitable education the State can give him. The farmer earns the right for leisure, though be does not get it in sufficient quantities, and he realises that it is better to lose an hour or so of labour every now and then than to have himself and his men worked into dullness. We can never see the force of the argument that education should be skimped. Life in the country should be made as attractive as possible and one of the ways to do this is education, while another is properly organised snort. The cutting out of sport would react on the nation far quicker than Mr Stewart realises and the result would not be better farmers, or better men. This theory is also fallacious and is completely opposed to modern ideas of life.