24 LAND REFORM 



satisfaction to the ratepayers, but cribbed the powers 

 of the teacher and were injurious to the child. 



It was an error to assume that the agricultural 

 labourer of that day was an uneducated oaf. It is 

 true he had no book-learning, but he had a shrewd 

 common sense, while his knowledge and powers of 

 observation with regard to crops, weather, seasons, 

 and all other things that came within the narrow 

 range of his hard and dismal life, were marked and 

 hereditary. In rural schools the true educational 

 method should have been (besides the three R's) to 

 lay hold of and develop the inherent capacity in the 

 children, and by appropriate teaching to train them in 

 the knowledge of the "how and the why" of the 

 natural objects by which they were surrounded. As 

 Lord Bacon says, " Certainly custome is most perfect 

 when it beginneth in young yeeres. This wee call 

 education ; which is nothing but an early custome."^ 



There is on the part of the young no natural anti- 

 pathy to country life. On the contrary, their inborn 

 tendency is to love it. That tendency could be 

 developed and made lasting by a suitable system of 

 education and training. 



The teaching of agriculture (agriculture in its widest 

 sense) and a study of the phenomena connected with 

 the mystery of growth, is the one teaching that can 

 be made interesting and even fascinating to the minds 

 of children. As Professor Carroll (Report, 1902) 

 states : " In no other subject of education are there so 

 many details within which may be found matter of 

 disciplinary value in training the minds of the young. 

 . . . In agriculture there exists ready in its every 

 phase and varied in its extent, matter for useful in- 



^ " Essay on Custom and Education." — Arber's Reprints. 



