FARMING BY COLLECTIVE EFFORT 149 



opportunity now denied. It is essential to the 

 proper working of these large farms that our 

 educational system should be drastically im- 

 proved and democratised. Agricultural techni- 

 cal schools must be established which shall be 

 open to all capable of profiting from their 

 courses. In preparation for these schools the 

 rural children's elementary education should be 

 conducted with at least as much belief in its 

 value as is evinced in the most enlightened 

 urban centres. No longer must the years 

 devoted to school be regarded as years filched 

 from the profit-making routine of a calling in 

 which the child of the cottage is always 

 doomed to the subordinate positions. 



The rural teachers must be as well qualified 

 as he, and especially as she, who teach in 

 urban schools. We must secure the abolition 

 of the supplementary teacher from the country 

 school. It is no longer possible to engage her 

 in urban areas. Why, then, should the children 

 of the agricultural worker be left to the tender 

 mercies of the woman, who, having attained 

 the mature age of eighteen, qualifies to teach 

 in the school by alleging that she has been 

 successfully vaccinated^ I never yet heard of 

 an Education Authority insisting on seeing the 

 outward visible signs of that peculiar method 

 of proving the existence of the inward spiritual 

 graces of the fully equipped educationist. 



The teacher of the rural school should be in 



