1921.] " Rural Bias " in Secondary Schools. 



143 



"RURAL BIAS" IN SECONDARY 

 SCHOOLS: 



THE WORK AT SEXEY'S FOUNDATION SCHOOL 

 IN SOMERSET. 



S. L. Ben susan. 



At first sight there is little remarkable about Sexey's Founda- 

 tion School. The buildings that compose it are perhaps more 

 than ordinarily attractive and certainly the situation is quite 

 out of the common. Sexey's stands rather high on land 

 overlooked from a distance by the Quantocks, the Mendips and 

 the famous Dunkery Beacon. From the upper rooms of the 

 School House one con glimpse the Islands of the Severn Sea. 

 The school itself is remote from all great centres of life and 

 action, though within touch of places boasting the most interest- 

 ing associations. Cheddar is some five miles away, Glastonbury 

 ten, Wells about as far, and the first thought that strikes the 

 casual visitor is that those who teach and those who are taught 

 must admit that their lines are cast in pleasant places. But 

 Sexey's could hardly claim the attention of agriculturists if it 

 were merely an attractive and well-placed secondary school; 

 the special interest lies in the fact that it is one of the few 

 centres in England in which secondary education is associated 

 with what is known as a " rural bias." 



There are many agriculturists in this country who feel very 

 strongly that the development of husbandry would be furthered 

 considerably if secondary education took more note of our 

 greatest national industry. They would like to see children 

 who have a natural aptitude for land-work encouraged to 

 develop rather than forced to suppress it, and they believe 

 that there is no more important problem before statesmen 

 to-day than the repopulation of rural areas, with the great 

 resultant stimulus to the production of home-grown food. They 

 feel that, while in the old days the training that the boy or 

 girl of farmer or farm labourer received was adequate to the 

 demands that the future would make, the conditions have been 

 altered entirely by the development of scientific investigation, 

 by the advent of machinery, by the acquisition of precise 

 knowledge and above all by the pressure of the economic 

 situation. The State has recognised that pressure; it is 

 spending considerable sums of money in the quickening of 

 sound production, and consequently it is of first importance 



