SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— L. 437 



Mr. H. Morris (10.30). 



The need of rural England is for a cultural and recreational life of its 

 own which will release a frustrated countryside from dependence on the 

 large towns (which themselves have not solved their own cultural problem 

 and are largely at the mercy of a fruitless commercialised amusement). 

 Can this be done ? Yes ; in terms, however, not of the individual village, 

 but of the rural region comprising a number of villages served from a centre, 

 which may be either a large village or a small country town. The principle 

 of centralisation, which modern transport makes easy in practice, has 

 already become national policy in the education of the older children in 

 rural senior schools ; a similar logic applies not less cogently to rural adult 

 education and recreation. But the senior school conceded merely as an 

 evening class centre is less than an amelioration. The countryside requires 

 community centres on a generous scale and including accommodation set apart 

 for adults which, in addition to housing the senior school in the daytime, 

 will in addition provide a theatre for the habituation of the whole adult 

 population beyond the school-leaving age in Science and the Humanities 

 and in Health and the corporate life. 



Prof. N. M. Comber. — Universities and education for rural life (10.50). 



1. University courses in agriculture have generally been regarded as 

 suitable training for those who wished to seek technical or commercial 

 appointments in the sphere of agriculture. Shorter and more elementary 

 courses, with what has been called a ' practical bias,' have been regarded 

 as more appropriate to those who are going to farm and earn their living 

 on the land. The prestige and dignity of farming surely demands that 

 those who are to pursue it should be given the fullest educational facilities. 

 Moreover, it is eminently desirable that the education of the practising 

 farmer should not be restricted, as it tends to be, merely to those matters 

 of obvious utilitarian and financial significance to him, but should equip 

 him to take his place in the cultural, social and recreational life of the 

 countryside. 



2. The proper developments of British agriculture and of the social life 

 of the countryside are in large measure dependent upon the interest in and 

 understanding of farming and country affairs by the nation as a whole, 

 Universities with Departments of agriculture should, as a national duty, 

 endeavour to place some appropriate agricultural course at the disposal of 

 others than those who are going to farm. Particularly in the training of 

 teachers does it seem very desirable to develop some understanding and 

 appreciation of rural life and of the conditions of British farm homesteads. 



Mr. T. S. Dymond. — Raising the school-leaving age (11. 10). 



The attempt to adapt rural education to rural needs by introducing 

 handicrafts and gardening into the curricula of rural schools has not arrested 

 the decline in rural craftsmanship except in isolated cases. Raising the 

 school-leaving age to fifteen is likely to accentuate the decline unless the 

 schools are so reorganised that classroom teaching in senior schools can be 

 progressively replaced by individual work, so that the children can learn to 

 depend more and more on themselves and develop their individual apti- 

 tudes. Even so there are occupations into which certain children should 

 be allowed to enter at fourteen, provided arrangements are made for some 

 form of school continuation. 



