1919] AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 795 



Prices and supplies of gi-ain, live stock, and other agricultural produce in 

 Scotland {Agr. Statis. Scot., 5 (1916), pt. 3, pp. 80-109). — Information previously 

 noted (E. S. R., 40, p. 194) is continued for 1916. The prices of fertilizers and 

 feeding stuffs are shown for the first time. 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 



Materials for a policy of agricultural education, H. M. Leake (Agr. Jour. 

 India, 14 (1919), No. 1, pp. 1-20). — Continuing a previous discussion (E. S. R., 

 40, p. 601), proposals are outlined for constituting a scheme for providing for 

 the educational needs of the largest section of the community in India. This 

 the author thinks will suffice for the main educational function, namely, 

 that of fitting the average youth for a useful and contented life in the condi- 

 tions under which he was born. 



He finds that education in India fails in two directions, viz, practicality 

 and accuracy. In the government grants for educational development, which 

 are largely devoted to the erection of new school buildings, too much attention 

 is given to the number of schools teaching a standard curriculum and too 

 little to that improvement of the pay and prospects of teachers, which alone 

 will attract a better class to the profession and thus remove the necessity 

 for that rigid standardization which stultifies individual initiative. 



Two aspects of the educational problem in India are considered, namely, the 

 insignificance of the system as compared with the individual and the provision 

 of a ladder by which those intellectually qualified can rise. In discussing the 

 functions of the agricultural college the author states that these will be 

 fulfilled only w^hen the main source of recruitment is the zemindar class, 

 ^ class relatively small, perhaps, but numerically large and potentially powerful. 

 The college must also supply the agricultural teachers for the secondary schools. 



For the education of the masses there is found to be need for a cheap form 

 -of secondary education, complete in itself and complete within the limits 

 provided by the age at which the average boy leaves school. The primary 

 object of such a school will be to raise the receptivity of the younger genera- 

 tion of agriculturists, and the method of attainment must be through 

 education under conditions which retain the association of the land. The 

 author describes his conception of the oi'ganization of such a school in its 

 environmental and educational aspects. 



The school is represented as a village, the unit of communal life, composed 

 of families, the unit of private life. The school will have approximately 

 sufficient land to provide for each " family " of five students an area, roughly, 

 equal to the average holding of the locality. The teacher will assume the 

 role of the zemindar and his agents. This organization is compared with one 

 of the few existing vernacular agricultural schools, in which the form of 

 education provided is deemed too expensive and the admission requirements 

 too high for the mass, and which also attempts Instruction suited to collegiate 

 students. 



Attention is also called to the difference between the proposed type of school 

 and vocational schools whose main function is to impart technical skill 

 and in which theory is taught only in so far as it bears on the particular 

 trade. In the former, subjects bearing upon the education may be taught 

 but only for their internal value as a means of edi;cation, and the practical 

 application is left to be drawn by a process of natural inhibition in the daily 

 life. It is here, the author thinks, that the efforts which have been made to 

 introduce agriculture into existing schools have failed. The practical diffi- 

 culties, not the least of which is the lack of qualified teachers, are such that 



