DEFENCES AGAINST LOW PRICES OF FARM PRODUCTS. 
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often regarded by the teacher as so many asperities which it is the 
principal office of the educational machine to smooth down at any cost. 
This, from the standpoint of industrial life, where originality and 
acuteness count for so much, is peculiarly unfortunate. 
(2.) The most important of all the lessons of childhood — the 
habit of work, the disposition to work with the hands — has no place 
in the curricula of the schools. On the contrary, the tendencies have 
set powerfully in the opposite direction ; holidays are multiplied 
inordinately, and more play, in the shape of additional immunity from 
work, is the recognised reward for all forms of meritorious conduct in 
the schools. In view of these facts, which I believe will not be 
questioned, the universal distaste of colonial youth of the better sort 
for industrial pursuits ought not to surprise us. In the meantime, 
and despite the hard times and the numerous unemployed, all forms 
of amusements — the various clubs, games, races, sweeps, and lotteries 
— receive wholesale patronage; and we have to-day the spectacle of 
the entire nation holding its breath over the outcome of a game of 
cricket. It is a question worthy of our thoughtful consideration 
whether with all of our great and unquestioned natural advantages we 
can maintain industrial competition with a people like the Americans, 
say, who do not know the meaning of the phrase " half-holiday, 1 ’ 
whose week is always six days, whose day’s work is never less than 
ten hours, and who have only three holidays in the year, and know no 
national game to speak of. It has been said that the battle of 
Waterloo was won in the numerous cricket matches played in rural 
England. I venture to say that it will require something more than 
a knowledge of cricket and polo, or that peculiar mental vision which 
enables the gifted few to “ pick the double,” to win the industrial 
Waterloo that must be fought in the near future. 
(3.) The ultimate destination of our school population is not the 
learned professions. I take it that few, even of the pupils of our 
grammar schools and colleges, will be doctors, lawyers, ministers, or 
bank clerks. These students of to-day are, for the most part, the 
farmers, squatters, miners, and business men of the future. Is, then, 
a knowledge of the humanities, so called, a mastery of the properties 
of the parabola or of the Greek hexameter likely, more than any other 
class of knowledge, to help these young people over the hard places 
in life ? This colony lias recently, it is presumed as a matter of 
necessity, imported men versed in certain industries — dairying, meat- 
preserving, tobacco-growing, and general farming — in order that our 
colonists may benefit by their advice and instruction. Meanwhile our 
high schools and colleges are busy with the work of making experts 
in the knowledge and methods of the ancients. The lessons they 
strive to inculcate concern, not the wonderful natural and exotic 
products of the colony, and the modern and scientific methods by 
which these may be made available to man, but the thoughts and 
languages of nations who died and were decently interred hundreds 
of years ago. These peoples perished thus untimely, presumably 
because they were unable to meet the competition of more vigorous 
and enterprising nations. It is not my purpose here to enter that old 
discussion anent the old and the new in education. It is sufficient 
here to point, with a note of triumph, to the results of this famous 
controversy, as seen in the ninety- seven agricultural colleges and 
