REV. E. C. CROSSE CONDEMNS AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18946, 17 December 1929, Page 5

REV. E. C. CROSSE CONDEMNS AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

False Logic To Suppose That Country Could Decide Boys' Future Careers

Maintaining that it was not the duty of an educator to give a twist to education, the head master of Christ’s College (the Rev E. C. Crosse) last night condemned agricultural education in schools.

In the course of his annual address, Mr Crosse said that it would be fitting if he said something on the subject of agricultural education at school. He believed that it was false logic to suppose that a country could decide the future careers of boys _at school by giving education a particular twist in any direction. It was not the business of the educator to give any sort of twist. In the long run it was economic, not educational, considerations which decided -what vocations boys would adopt. If every sort of boy was educated to be a shoemaker, it would not increase the shoemaking industry by a single apprentice, because the plain fact was that even though every New Zealander were a qualified shoemaker, people would continue to buy English shoes if they were the better and the cheaper article. UNPROMISING PROSPECTS. If a Government really wanted to encourage boys to go on the land, continued the speaker, they should begin by .making farming a more profitable occupation. The chief trouble at the moment < was not that boys did not want to go on the land; but the fact was that for most boys, at any rate, the prospects seemed to be unpromising. They had welcomed the Education Committee representing the present Government a week ago and had found them helpful in every way. It was not his business to take sides in presentday politics, and as a school master, he hoped he would never have to do so niiiitiifiiiiiiiisiiniiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiinniiiiiiiaKiiuiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiHiiuimiimiiiuiiuiii

Though he did not think that very much could be done to coax boys on to the land by teaching them actual agriculture, he agreed that they ought to bear in mind that some, and it was to be hoped, an increasing number of their best boys would take up farming. FOUNDATIONS. The speaker believed that the best training was to attempt to build the foundation rather than the superstructure. More benefit would be derived from learning one basic scientific subject like chemistry really well than by cramming any amount of information, undigested and half understood, on the subjects of the properties of soils and so forth, which was forgotten almost as soon as it was learned. If people only realised that in after life they forgot the details of almost everything they learned at school, he thought that less would be heard of the demand for utilitarian education. What mattered was not that a boy should have learned at school all the information he would require—that was impossible—but that he should have fashioned the weapon of his mind so that it could hope to do its work properly. In business the ability to write a good letter was worth more than a mere knowledge of book-keeping, and for a farmer’s life he believed that a sound scientific training plus the habit of industry was the greatest asset a boy could acquire. Lest it might be thought that they w'ere just pig-headed in shutting the door to what thoughtful men in the country felt to be a real need, the speaker said that the college would gladly teach botany if there were someone prepared to teach it, and he admitted that there was some justification for teaching bookkeeping.