288 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE, ETC. 



and, in a limited sense, agrictiltural, bias, and which gives generous opportunities for 

 so-called practical work in many directions, provides a much better training for life 

 for the average child than an education that is almost wholly bookish. 



There are, of course, drawbacks to such practice. The requirements of the Lower 

 School Certificate Examination present some difficulties, but examining bodies now 

 look much more sympathetically than of yore on the claims of teachers to determine 

 what they shall teach. After the Lower Certificate stage difficulty in this direction 

 vanishes. Indeed, it would appear from the evidence the writer has — an amount 

 too small, however, for any sweeping generalisation — that far better work, both in 

 quantity and quality, is obtained at this stage when pupils have worked for some 

 years previously through a course with a marked rural bias. This is no doubt largely 

 because rural work — in science especially — affords a imique training in patient and 

 persistent observation and experiment over long periods of time, and discourages 

 entirely the spasmodic and bitty work that is not infrequently characteristic of 

 pupils with high ability. Again, as probably the majority of teachers will agree, 

 success in academic work of Higher Certificate standard or in the work of any 

 business or profession, depends in the main on the individual's capacity and desire 

 to map out and master his tasks without constant help from teacher or employer. 

 It is comparatively easy to spoon-feed the average pupil through the Lower 

 Certificate stage, but almost impossible to carry him much farther by such means. 



Now the intensity of interest that is secured when ' local ' colouring is constantly 

 given to lessons, when there are opportunities for clever practical children to illustrate 

 geography, history, and science lessons by models, apparatus, etc., made in the 

 workshop, and when there is proper correlation between the various subjects of the 

 curriculum, affords a training in initiative and self-reliance that is of the greatest 

 value in the later years of the child's school career. In the early years of training 

 method is everything. The content of the curriculum is then not nearly so 

 important. 



The whole matter, however, is too big to argue out in a short paper, but it is 

 beyond question — in the writer's opinion — that pupils intending to take higher 

 certificate and scholarship examinations are not at all handicapped in Science or 

 Arts because they have worked on the lines indicated up to the Lower Certificate. 



Experienced teachers will have little difficulty in appreciating the extent and 

 directions in which mathematics, geography, and craftwork can be made more vivid 

 and living by the application of rural bias. The economic life of the coimtryside 

 —the weekly transactions in the local market ; the periodical sales of cattle and 

 sheep : the trade of cake, seed, wool, and corn merchants ; the letting of ' accom- 

 modation' land; the effect of weather on prices, etc. — has a great attraction for the 

 average country child. He often, too, displays an amazingly full knowledge of 

 details of which the wise teacher will not fail to make full use as starting-points in 

 many lessons. 



History, again, is a subject made all the stronger in its appeal to the country 

 child if taught with a strong rural bias. 



Thus, in dealing with the Tudor Period and tracing out the causes which, through 

 the increased importance of sheep-rearing and a reduction in the amount of arable 

 land, led to distress and unemployment among agricultural workers and to the Poor 

 Laws of Elizabeth and of later years, one passes naturally and convincingly to a 

 comparison with present-day conditions when cheap grain from abroad increases 

 the area under grass at home, and displaces labour from the farms. 



And, as with all the subjects mentioned specifically above, there is no subject of 

 the curriculum that does not lend itself naturally and profitably to ' rural colouring.' 



From the point of view of the pupil intended for life on the land, or for some 

 occupation, such as accountancy, banking, business, that must bring him into daily 

 contact with farmers and other land workers, a curriculum on the lines favoured 

 above must prove directly helpful both in increasing his love for, and sympathy 

 with, rural life, and in making him technically more efficient. Yet it is of the utmost 

 importance to remember that much evidence is accumulating in this and other 

 countries to prove that the same curriculum affords also the best possible training 

 for any child living in the country, no matter where or what his future work may be. 



It only remains to give some particulars of the practical work attempted in 

 connexion with the science course. 



Over two acres of land are under cultivation, and much of the actual manual 



