ON EDUCATIONAL TRAINING FOR OVERSEAS LIFE. 335 



it not true that the pupils who are thorns in the flesh of the Form Master often prove 

 in after-life to be the very ' salt of the earth ' ? Among the men who have built our 

 Empire — the pioneers, administrators, business men, &c. — men gifted with insight, 

 initiative, organising capacity, &c., there are hundreds and thousands to whom the 

 book and pen made little appeal. 



If the school is to do its work thoroughly, it must recognise that the word 

 ' ability ' has a much wider meaning than is often granted to it, and must make 

 provision for the ' practical ' type of boy no less than for the fellow who is destined to 

 shine in ' book ' work. 



The writer claims that for a country school a curriculum with a marked ' rural ' 

 and, in a limited sense, ' agricultural ' 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 the 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 unique 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, &c., 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 countryside — ■ 

 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 ' accommoda- 

 tion ' land ; the effect of weather on prices, &c. — has a great attraction for the average 

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

 the wise teacher will not fail to make full use of 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 imemployment 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, buisiness. that must bring him into daily 

 ■contact with farmers and other landworkers.a curriculum on the lines favoured above 

 ■jnust prove directly helpful both in increasing hie love for, and sympathy with, rural 



