436 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— L. 



employers, that promising recruits should be allowed one or two half-days 

 each week during working hours in order to attend technical classes. The 

 existing technical school buildings in England could without extension 

 accommodate about 150,000 additional students, each attending on two 

 half-days a week. 



Afternoon. 

 Visit to Rossall School, by road. 



Tuesday, September 15. 



Joint Discussion with Section M (Agriculture) on Education for rural 

 life {Section L Room) (10.0). 



Sir John Russell, O.B.E., F.R.S. — Education for rural life. 



It has long been recognised that education for rural life must proceed on 

 very different lines from education as developed in the town schools. The 

 country child has a background of experience that the town child lacks, and 

 he lives in surroundings rich in material of high educational value. The 

 difficulty hitherto has been to find the teachers who could adequately 

 exploit these natural advantages. Fortunately enterprising rural teachers 

 have developed a good educational technique : first Nature Study, then 

 Local Surveys and the School Garden, and now comes the reorganisation 

 of rural schools : the provision of Rural Senior Schools to which scholars 

 are transported daily as soon as they are eleven years of age. These schools 

 are at present free agents and have not yet tied themselves either to text- 

 books or to examinations, and it is to be hoped they will retain their freedom. 

 Their fundamental task is to utilise the local surroundings as the basis of 

 the education, and this demands a far greater degree of flexibility than is 

 possible where the examination schedule rules the courses. 



The purposes of the work are : 



(1) To train the child's intelligence and give him a sound basis of know- 

 ledge of the ordinary things of the countryside. 



(2) To give him some elements of culture so that he may use well the 

 considerable amount of leisure he will have when he starts work. 



The course should help the child if he elects to follow a country calling, 

 but it is not its purpose to anchor the child to the land either as farm worker 

 or in any other capacity. 



The necessary appliances are : 



(1) Adequate ground around the school. Suffolk already provides 1-2 

 acres and it is hoped that larger areas will be available. This should give 

 a garden — which should be laid out on decorative lines — a playing field, and 

 a School Estate that can be run properly. All this forms the basis of the 

 work. 



(2) Provision for a local survey. — The necessary flexibility can be attained 

 only if the teachers are in touch with living sources of information that can 

 help them in the numerous problems that arise. B.B.C. talks, and summer 

 refresher courses, can do something, but some definite linking with the 

 Colleges and Experiment Stations, such as the scheme in use at Rothamsted, 

 seems necessary in order to ensure the proper working of the scheme. 



