1908.] Suggestions on Rural Education. 



753 



afford a balance in educating powers of mind and body and to 

 provide means for illustrating mathematics and the sciences. 



In the elementary school a foundation of nature-study will 

 have been laid upon which the study of science can be built. 

 In the rural secondary school, it is suggested that chemistry and 

 physics should be dealt with as branches of natural science — 

 that is to say, a knowledge of experimental science should be 

 built up by a progressive practical study of air, of water, of 

 mineral substances, of the products of animal and vegetable 

 life, those reactions and substances being used a knowledge of 

 which is important in rural industry. 



Mathematics should be correlated with (a) practical sur- 

 veying in the field, (b) woodwork from scale drawings, which 

 might be chiefly devoted to making the apparatus and appli- 

 ances required in the science work indoors and out, and (c) 

 mechanics, which should be illustrated by reference to the con- 

 struction of farm implements and buildings. Book-keeping 

 and correspondence would advantageously deal with the 

 ingoings and outgoings of the experimental field, the orders for 

 manures, tools, seeds and sale of produce. Geography, history, 

 literature, a foreign language and drill will complete the 

 curriculum. Such a course should be graded to the capacity 

 of boys of 12 to 15 or 16 years old, for at 15 or at latest 16 the 

 boys who are to follow rural pursuits will usually begin business 

 life. 



Higher Agricultural Education. — The boy who shows such 

 ability as to give promise of a successful career in agricultural 

 science may wisely also leave the secondary school at 16. The 

 next two years may profitably be spent as pupil upon a farm, 

 provided that each winter the pupil attends an agricultural 

 short course, and it is after this that he will enter the agricultural 

 college or university department with the greatest profit. 

 Or again, in lieu of the two years' pupilage on a farm, a year 

 or two years may be spent at a school or schools of rural in- 

 dustry. No county can be held to have a properly organised 

 scheme of agricultural education which does not provide 

 scholarships to enable promising boys with an agricultural 

 bent to mount the educational ladder from the rural elementary 

 school to the agricultural department of a university. 



(3iio) 



