RURAL AND AGRICULTURAL

EDUCATION

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IN this Review for January 19071 it was suggested that upon the answers to certain inquiries the future of agricultural education would largely depend. The points there raised were exhaustively dealt with in the Report of Lord Reay's Departmental Committee, which furnished ample data whereon a national policy might be based. As a first step towards effective organisation, the Committee unanimously recommended that the duty of promoting and controlling agricultural education should remain vested in the Board of Agriculture-in other words, that all agricultural instruction provided by universities, university colleges, agricultural colleges, farm institutes, winter schools, and special classes or courses of lectures should be under the direction of that Board. This is in accordance with the practice of other countries, and with the wishes of the entire agricultural community. From causes as to which speculation is no longer necessary, the Board of Education declined to adopt this view, and endeavoured to deprive the Board of Agriculture of almost all the educational functions with which it was entrusted on its establishment in 1889, with the result that matters have remained practically at a standstill for the past three years, to the prejudice of the farmer and the annoyance of every local authority. The whole episode reflects little credit upon the ways. of English administration. Wiser counsels have happily now prevailed, upon which both Mr. Runciman and Mr. Pease are to be congratulated. The responsibility for farm institutes is transferred to the Board of Agriculture, and the Circular 778 issued by the Board of Education with respect to aid from the Development Fund for those institutes is cancelled. It is not yet quite clear how much the expression farm institutes' comprises. In the absence of any precise definition, it may be hoped that it is temporarily intended as a sort of generic term to include all grades of technical instruction in agriculture and kindred subjects below that of the advanced colleges, and distinct 'Agricultural Education in the United Kingdom.' 2 Cd. 4206, 1908.

from anything taught in primary and secondary schools, or such evening schools as are in direct continuation of the education given in primary schools.

Two fundamentally different problems await solution. The first, which is purely educational, concerns elementary and secondary schools, and the training of teachers; the second is technical, and relates to the provision of appropriate institutions and classes for those intending to farm, or already engaged in farming. It is a common tendency, from which the Board of Education has not been altogether exempt, to confuse the two problems and to imagine that some drastic modification in an agricultural direction of the curricula in ordinary schools is essential to the satisfaction of the needs of the future labourer, farmer, or small-holder. Such is emphatically not the case, and most of the proposed changes could only prove detrimental to the proper function of the schools, and are worthless from an agricultural standpoint. The constant use of the words 'agricultural bias is mischievous, and calculated to convey a wrong impression. A well-balanced curriculum has no bias of any kind. It would be just as reasonable to say that each urban school should have an urban bias, every school in a seaport town a nautical bias, and so on ad infinitum. One principle, and one only, holds good in all elementary schools. The instruction must be suitable to the circumstances of the children and the neighbourhood. The children should be familiarised with the facts of the life about them, and with the natural and physical phenomena of their environment. The cardinal fact to be remembered is that the school has to educate irrespective of the subsequent careers of the pupils, not to prepare for any specific industry. That elementary schools do not as a rule turn out lads endowed with intelligence, adaptability, resourcefulness, and self-reliance is undeniable, but reform will not come from tinkering with the programme of studies in the supposed interest of any particular class. Improvement must be looked for from the adoption of more enlightened methods of teaching, and from more regard for the practical side of education. The failure of the old methods is beyond dispute. The Poor Law Commissioners advocated a thorough reconstruction of the timetable and curriculum, as well as of the aims and ideals of elementary education'; and they reported further that it is not in the interest of our country to produce by our system of education a dislike for manual work, and a taste for clerical and intermittent work when the vast majority of those so educated must maintain themselves by manual labour.' What little information and knowledge the children may have acquired at school are rapidly forgotten, and it is asserted with apparent truth

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that the number of uneducated persons in the villages is actually increasing, many grown-up men and women being unable to write their own names. This startling statement received some corroboration from Mr. F. D. Acland, who, when Financial Secretary to the War Office, declared in the House of Commons in 1909 that 69 per cent. out of 235 recruits were no further advanced than the third standard, and that 11.22 per cent. were altogether illiterate.

The lines upon which the village school might be reformed were indicated in the NINETEENTH CENTURY of November 1907, and it would be superfluous to repeat the suggestions then made. A few additions only are necessary. Afforestation is to-day so universally recognised as a national necessity that it would be desirable in schools near to woodlands to incorporate lessons on the various kinds of trees and their value as timber, the fungi that are harmful to forest growth, injurious insects, the diseases to which trees are liable, and how to prevent or remedy them, the children being, of course, taken to the woods for instruction. During his recent visit to England, Dr. J. W. Robertson, formerly Commissioner of Agriculture for the Dominion of Canada, explained how greatly agriculture had been benefited there by encouraging children to collect the largest heads from the sturdiest wheat and oats from their fathers' farms for the school gardens. Commencing in this modest way, he had demonstrated to every Canadian farmer the advantage of sowing selected seed. A similar course might be adopted here. While Dr. Robertson acknowledged the excellence of many isolated village schools here, he lamented that he could only discover them in spots.' It is this absence of any uniform progress which is so disquieting a feature of the existing situation, and it cannot be remedied without more systematic efforts to secure an adequate supply of properly qualified teachers. At the same time, he expressed his disappointment at the comparative stagnation in English rural education, especially since ten years ago he had used certain of our schools as models when inaugurating the Macdonald scheme, and he frankly stated that he had observed signs of actual deterioration. This is unfortunately the case with Nature-study and school gardens. Few people have advocated the great value of both these instruments of education more strongly than the present writer, but their extreme popularity is a source of danger. Nature-study is tending to become a set subject, taught from text-books, and to be thus deprived of all its significance.

However gratifying, moreover, it may be to note the remarkable increase in a number of school gardens, the fact cannot 'The Village School.'

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be disguised that very many of them have no connexion with the rest of the curriculum. They afford healthy exercise and inculcate habits of order and neatness, but they are not serving the purpose for which they were originally designed. The instruction in them should form an integral part of the whole. school course, and be definitely co-ordinated with it. Nor should gardening be forced on an unwilling teacher. Reaction will inevitably follow, and many a rural teacher to-day, who has no taste for gardening, is utilising Nature as a vehicle for education without suffering in the least from the want of a garden. The wisest plan is to allow the teacher to devise his own methods in accordance with his inclinations and capacity. He should be encouraged to display originality, but local education authorities have some ground for complaining that the Board discourage and thwart any new departure. From what Mr. Pease has already said, it may be inferred that this unreasonable and vexatious. attitude will no longer characterise the Board.

The immediate need is for more practical instruction to accustom a boy to the use of tools and to impart some skill in handicraft. Concrete examples of how this may be done are worth reams of suggestions,' no matter from what quarter they may emanate; and it would be an obvious advantage to have detailed accounts of the methods adopted in schools of different sizes under varying conditions. An interesting experiment was made at the Brimscombe School, near Stroud, in 1906. Half the time was given to some form of manual training, and pupils from the neighbouring schools attended from the age of twelve to fourteen. The various wood industries of the locality were grouped together, including carpentry, joinery, cabinet work, wood-carving, inlaying and marquetry, wood-staining and imitaton marquetry. A boy on leaving school was thus able to enter any of these industries with a fair knowledge of what to expect and what would be expected of him. Similar methods were adopted for the metal industries. The manufacturers of the district at once appreciated the value of such a school. They gladly selected lads as apprentices, and afforded facilities for them afterwards to combine technical instruction with work in the factories. Central schools of this type ought to be organised in each county for groups of villages. The advantages are manifest. The attitude of pupils towards their lessons quickly changes, and the natural instincts of every boy to be doing or making something are guided into useful channels. Parents are anxious for their children to remain longer at school because they know that their wage-earning capacity is being increased. The indifference or hostility of the employer is overcome, for he regards the school as a place of true education, where lads are

trained in such a way as not to unfit them for industrial occupations.

Much also may be learnt from the school at Ednam, a small village in Roxburghshire of about five hundred inhabitants. All pupils over twelve years of age receive two hours' practical instruction daily in either woodwork, gardening, dairying, cookery, or dressmaking; both boys and girls take gardening, cookery and dairying. That boys should learn how to cook a plain meal is decidedly beneficial. Most men have no idea of domestic duties, and are helpless when their wives are incapacitated from providing for them. All the instruction is given by the ordinary staff. Pupils who have been for not less than six months in regular attendance in the highest class and are certified by their class-master and the headmaster to be efficient in their work may be enrolled in a supplementary course subject to the approval of the inspector. The school possesses its own cow and separator, and except in winter there is no difficulty in getting an abundant supply of cream from neighbouring farmers, as they find the butter made at the school better than they can make it at home. It is, in fact, so good that it commonly sells for threepence or fourpence a pound more than the butter of the district. At the Edinburgh and Midlothian Butter-making Competition in 1908 the pupils carried off the first, second and third prizes, as well as the silver cup.

Schools similar to the above are precisely what is required. But local authorities literally have not the funds for the necessary rooms and equipment owing to the continuous imposition of new burdens upon them. The time has arrived when there should be some fixed ratio between national and local expenditure on education. Both Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George have admitted that national and local taxation must be put upon a solid foundation, and have promised that the Government will make a serious attempt to grapple with the whole problem. But we cannot afford to wait until the Government have completed a very complicated task, which may be relegated to the Greek Kalends. Financial aid should be at once forthcoming, either as proposed in the Bill annually presented to Parliament by Mr. Jesse Collings, or by additional grants from the Board for supplementary courses and higher elementary schools. At present the Code contains no special provision for supplementary courses, and the grants for higher elementary schools are totally inadequate, although the syllabus for such schools is infinitely more suitable for the average country boy or girl than that of a struggling secondary school, where they rarely take the full course. In this respect England is placed at a great disadvantage compared with Scotland. Here the grants offered are only 30s.