ii8 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



that our man, when he has passed through the regular 

 curriculum, may be taken to be fairly well grounded in 

 agricultural knowledge. 



However, in dealing specifically with technical agricul- 

 tural education, — which seems the natural and most con- 

 venient course — we have really been anticipating. For 

 one of the most valued and weighty lessons that experience 

 has taught us in the matter during the past century is this, 

 that agricultural education, that is, the fitting of the man 

 for rural life and agricultural pursuits, is really best served, 

 not by technical, but by general education, cast in an agri- 

 cultural mould, so as to make it suggestive of, and prepara- 

 tory for, the learning of superior Agriculture, as contrasted 

 with what Mr. Prothero has called " the vulgar methods of 

 Agriculture," by observation, practice and reading, out of 

 school. Such education must, as a matter of course, be 

 applied before technical education can be thought of. It 

 must, in fact, take a specific, suitable shape. Its object 

 must be, as in all education, to prepare and capacitate the 

 young mind for the assimilation of and the spontaneous 

 search for further knowledge and at the same time to 

 create in the mind what Mr. Brooke Hunt has well called 

 a " rural atmosphere," distinctly and powerfully disposing 

 the young person taught for agricultural pursuits and rural 

 life, with all its own peculiar pleasures, trials, prospects and 

 occupations markedly differentiating it from life in towns 

 and occupation in factories. This is the point on which 

 we more particularly fail ; and we see the result. Under 

 the teaching dealt out under Whitehall rules our rural 

 population grows up with an instinctive, involuntary, but 

 powerful bent for the choice of other than rural or home 

 occupations. That effect is reinforced by the more or less 

 degrading, or at any rate shackling, condition under which 

 rural Labour has up to now found itself employed — utter 

 dependence, poor remuneration, want of dwelling accommo- 

 dation producing a " sense of inferiority," as Mr. Prothero 

 has called it. However, education has played its part in the 

 process. Except where an innate love of Agriculture — 

 under more equitable conditions than prevail here — prompts 



