370 



THE AGRICULTURAL NEWS, 



November 22, 1913. 



principles, and yet, in the school garden, fail to 

 apply them. He will proceed, for instance, to deter- 

 mine the area of a bed which is, in form, a paral- 

 lelogram, by the same rule that he would use to 

 calculate the area of a rectangle. This, of course, is 

 partly due to innate carelessness, and to the mistaken 

 idea that it is only necessary to be accurate in the 

 schoolroom. That it is not always due to careless- 

 ness is shown by the frequent occurrence of similar 

 misapplications of geometrical knowledge even amongst 

 adults engaged in agricultural practice who might 

 be expected to know better.'. If, in teaching men- 

 suration in a rural school, the diagrams drawn upon 

 the board were stated to represent so many garden 

 beds, and the imagination of the students sufficiently 

 warmed to think of the forms as beds, they would 

 be taught not only the rules of mensuration, but also 

 that these rules have a very useful application in 

 agriculture. Another matter of importance in the 

 same connexion is the question of appro.ximation. 

 A sound idea of approximation is of the very greatest 

 importance in agriculture. By this is meant a proper 

 realization of the degree of accuracy required in differ- 

 ent operations and of the limit of experimental error. 

 This should be taken into consideration also, in the 

 teaching of algebra ami arithmetic. 



We now come to languages, and the Classics may 

 be considered first. In the tropical Colonies where 

 one may say all secondary schools have to consider 

 agricultural education, the study of Latin and Greek 

 should on no account be entirely dispensed with. It 

 must be remembered that the Tropics comprise new 

 countries: they possess at present few well built towns, 

 no national monuments of science, art, war, or religion to 

 excite the youthful pride, or traditions, to inculcate 

 high ideals and public spirit. Most of this, like the 

 food we eat, has to be imported, and some of it, at 

 least, should come in the form of (Jreek and Latin. 

 But as well as their value in the above respect, the 

 dead languages afford disciplinary training, assistance 

 in the study of biological terms, and also, incidentally, 

 most instructive lessons in the agriculture of ancient 

 times. 



To call n]nm the modern languages to assist in 

 educating agriculturally is, af course, a necessity; for 

 whilst the study of classical literature in these lan- 

 guages is to be encouraged, there is, it is maintained, 

 little reason why the pupil's vocabulary should not be 

 extended to include the French and (Jerman or even 

 Spanish e(iuivalent3 for English agricultural and 

 scientific terms. This, in after-life would enable, 

 foreign scientific literature to be read and sought 



after. Ability to do this is, as is well known, a neces- 

 sary requirement in many of the higher examinations 

 in science. 



(Geography is t9 be regarded of the highest value 

 in a liberal agricultural education. It enables the 

 student to compare his own surroundings with those 

 of others; he sees the advantages of transport and 

 communication and learns what are the centres of 

 production of raw material and the markets for 

 the same. The inJiuence of climatic conditions can 

 be studied, and the changing distribution of capital 

 and labour carefully followed. He finds eventually, 

 that his father's estate and the nearest market is not 

 the whole world, but a unit in a huge system of pro- 

 duction and consumption. 



There seems little more to be siid except from the 

 headmaster's pomt of view. Before considering this side 

 of the subject, it may be well to summarize the views that 

 that we have attempted to express in the foregoinor para- 

 graphs. In secondary schools.situated in agricultural com- 

 munities, it is not sufficient to educate agriculturally by 

 means of agricultural science alone, but through the 

 medium also of the whole curriculum. This does not 

 mean that a change in the present syllabus of work 

 would necessarily have to be made, but simply in its 

 form of presentation. There should, however, be 

 no essential dirt'erence in such a school bet'Aeeii an 

 'agricultural' boy and a boy not denominated by this 

 term. The education should be sufficiently liberal in 

 a rural school to allow of a boy in after years taking 

 up an urban occupation, for which by nature he may 

 be especially fitted: and similarly che education in an 

 urban school should be liberal enough to ec|uip a boy 

 for a country life, if he turns out to be particularly 

 adapted for it. Hence, from the headmaster's point 

 of view, the only difficulty should be in obtaining 

 a staff capable of instructing along the lines wo 

 have suggested. This difficulty seems in no way in- 

 superable, provided the want is properly advertized and 

 the instruction that is demanded, adequately paid for. 

 The adoption of the above suggestions would be greatly 

 stimulated by a slight modificatiou in the form of 

 the questions set by examining bodies, and it is hoped 

 that within a reasonable period of time, examining 

 bodies like the Cambridge University Syndicate will 

 see fit to take the above principles into account in the 

 presentation of questions, and even to some extent in 

 regard to a general uioditication of the syllabuses, par- 

 ticularly for Coloniai schools, just as this admirahlia 

 examining body made, ten years ago, the syllabus in 

 botany harmonize with existing tropical conditions. 



