EDUCATIONAL TRAINING FOR 

 OVERSEAS LIFE. 



Report of Discussion at a Joint Meeting between Sections L (Education) 

 and M (Agriculture). Ordered by the General Committee to be printed 

 in extenso. 



Sir Thomas Holland, F.R.S., who presided, opened the proceedings 

 with the observation that the discussion had been arranged mainly to 

 consider the results of an inquiry made by a committee appointed by the 

 Association in 1923. The committee, under the chairmanship of Dr. 

 Gray, had published two reports, based on answers to a series of questions 

 issued to some 500 heads of secondary schools, supplemented by informa- 

 tion obtained from education authorities. The committee started with 

 the accepted theorem that the congested state of the professions in Great 

 Britain and the opportunities that existed in the Dominions for the riglit 

 sort of young men and women offered opportunity for deA'elopment in 

 education. They concluded that the bias given to the curriculum at 

 .school very often determined a boy's choice of a career, and they had 

 obtained evidence to show that opportunities for practical work on the 

 land, supplemented by manual training, did not necessarily interfere 

 with ordinary school work. On the contrary, it was found that boys 

 became more self-reliant, more observant, and developed in character 

 in ways which improved their interest in school work. If it be true that 

 field work on school farms was in itself of educational value, apart alto- 

 gether from its influence in selecting a neglected vocation, it was well 

 to discuss methods for removing the difiicidty, which now prevented a 

 niore general adoption of field and farm education. The subject was one 

 in which, as they realised from the Presidential Address, His Royal 

 Highness the President was deeply interested, and no member of the 

 Association had had the same opportunities for ascertaining the way in 

 which the Empire could be developed by migration of the right sort of 

 boys and girls from the congested to the sparsely populated areas. Lord 

 Balfour called attention to the fact that two previous meetings addressed 

 by non-specialists in Science were followed quickly by epoch-marking 

 advances in Science, and he predicted something of the sort as the outcome 

 of that meeting. The remarkable address given the previous night fore- 

 shadowed two such developments — the organisation and the correlation 

 of research activities by the super-councils which had been set up in each 

 of the Dominions ; and this would have its effect indirectly on migration : 

 it woidd affect, in the first instance, university students, and through 

 them the secondary school boys. At the Imperial College most of the 

 qualified graduates in biology were booked for scientific work in the 

 Colonies. Graduates from the Dondnions were also coming to us for 



