THE EDUCATION OF THE LANDOWNER 67 



landowner, if he is to retain his position, must become 

 the leader of his tenants and the entrepreneur of his 

 property. His very kindness, his acceptance of non- 

 economic rents, his easiness towards unprogressive 

 tenants in difficulties, has injured rather than helped 

 the industry as a whole. The root of the evil lies in the 

 owner's want of technical knowledge of the land ; he 

 leaves school and university without any education 

 directed towards his future position, with a certain 

 inherited sense of public duty but with no means of 

 applying it to his immediate powers and obligations. 

 It is true that there are now Schools of Agriculture both 

 at Oxford and Cambridge, but as yet they have been 

 but little utilized by the land-owning class. At both 

 Universities the curriculum is primarily based upon 

 science ; the schools aim mainly at training agricul- 

 tural experts and officials, to a less extent practical 

 farmers. The schools enjoy no social consideration in 

 the Universities ; the course of instruction, which at 

 the outset involves a considerable measure of work in 

 the laboratory, is somewhat repellent and abstract 

 to the student whose previous upbringing has been 

 literary and classical, and whose sole agricultural asset 

 is some personal acquaintance and sympathy with the 

 life of the country-side. If he came up from school 

 with a reasonable knowledge of the elements of chem- 

 istry and botany his entry into the subject would be 

 facilitated ; he would, as it were, know the language in 

 which his technical instruction has to be given. But the 

 real objection to the current types of education lies in 

 the fact that the working landowner need neither be a 

 man of science nor a practical farmer, valuable as the 

 knowledge of either might be to him ; he has to become 



