BACK TO THE LAND.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 January 1929, Page 6

BACK TO THE LAND.

The report of the chief inst.uctor hi agriculture to the primary schools in Taranaki (Mr. R. G. Rklling) is an important review of the efforts made during the past year. On the whole Mr. Ridling is able to report progress. There has been, he reports, an undoubted ‘‘awakening of an agricultural sense among all the people and an .insistent clamour for further facilities for agricultural education.” As he points out, the majority of Taranaki children do not go forward to secondary schools and it is important, therefore, that “the instruction given in the primary schools should have a practical' bearing and yet should be comprehensive enough to open up avenues by which pupils may approach more closely to the knowledge required for various branches of work on the farm.” Following recent remarks of the chief inspector of schools (Mr. N. R. McKenzie) that under the new syllabus it was hoped primary school teachers would abandon the firmly held opinion that only academic proficiency really counted in the appraisement of a. teacher’s work, there seems some hope that the real value of teaching agriculture will be recognised. Mr. Ridling admits that methods of teaching have been reorganised and he complains of a lack of suitable agricultural reading matter. Present-day teaching is aimed, he says, at opening the minds of the pupils to the simple scientific principles employed in Nature and by practical work in such matters as gardening, root crop growing, and the rearing of ytmng rtock to ehpw liow those principles . rc-

act upon the economic success or failure of farming operations. The most hope•ful feature in Mr. Ridling’s report is that a close association between home and school has been developed. The problems tackled at school are in the same class as those on the home farm, and the sympathy between parents and teachers, which, though often inarticulate. generally exists, has found means of expression in the efforts made to make pupils readers and thinkers upon the agricultural subjects that .are in so many eases closely interwoven with their home life. Educationally and politically there are signs of a “back to the land” policy having the fqree oi public opinion behind it. . In their insistence upon , proper training for the .farmers of the '.hire,, the primary .schools can add materially to the chances of such a policy solving some of the economic problems which at present beset the Dominion. : .l