RURAL EDUCATION.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18408, 15 June 1925, Page 3

RURAL EDUCATION.

AN EDUCATIONIST'S "COMMENTS. •

In responding to the toast of "Itural Education" at the smoke concert held by the North Canterbury Dairymen's Association at Ohoka on Friday, Mr J E. 3traohani headmaster of the Rangibra' High School, said the toast list was apparently designed upon somewhat unique lines and divided into three sections; the most important being the cow, the others being placed merely in "front of the cow or behind the cow;.he noticed the schoolmaster occupied the latter place, though as previous speakers had noted, the cow did.not bulk largely among the topics of the poets, yet it did play a large place in the ideas of ancient peoples. The cow was venerated among Eastern peoples, and put in the forefront of their, religions, where it was looked upon almost as the basis of life; Among the ancients ho cow was, put among the constellations, but her mate Taurus, the bull, was given a place there. Two thousand years ago, when, our ancestors were barbarians, wandering the earth behind their flocks and herds, little did the members of tb» effete civilisations such as Egypt and Babylonia imagine that the descendant of these barbarians would dominate the earth when they were almost forgotten. Tho Aiyan raco might almoat be said to ■ hang on their heads and our. Strength, vitality and vim might he traced back to the qualities bred in those followers of flocks and herds. Again from the Latin world, they had the word pecuniary (from pecus, a cow), which referred to a phase of thought much in evidence to-day, so it might well be said that language had immortalised the cow. Coming to education, Mr Strachan said that the older idea was that the town boy, needed education, but not so the country boy. Thought had now veered round in favour of the country boy,and the masters now thought education should be arranged for the benefit especially of country children, and the authorities were gradually becoming to think that children's education should be arranged to run alongside tho interests of the community in which they resided. He gave instan- I ces of theoretical problems often set that did not interest children in the slightest, and then of practical ones that absorbed their thoughts. It was by finding out these phases of their life and giving special weight to them that the teacher was able to educate children on lines that would make them useful to the community. Tho problems of agriculture were fundamentally scientific and economic ones, and when times were bad it was not wise to try to get improvement by any endeavour artificially to raise priwss and thus conflict with the eternal laws ol supply and demand, but to increase production. The chief aim of life should not be the making of money and working for that, but the getting of the best out of life. To get this there should be a donstaiit endeavour to improve the conditions of the country. It had been found that most of the great, workers in poetry, art and literature had been inspired «by close contact with Nature. By this association with and delight in Nature one was relieved from the constant strain of looking for artificial means of amusement, as in the towns. He had great respect for the potentialities of the human being when one loked back 2000 years and saw the state of mental terror in which the inhabitants of the Stone Age lived as compared with those of to-day, when oujr engineers controlled most of Nature's forces for our benefit, one I saw the long distance through which I human nature had travelled in that time, and on© imagined there were I vistas of greater improvement, yet ahead. Every girl and boy should be given the chance of living the fullest life The aim in schools should be to trv to train children so that they would delight to go out in the countrv and teach others. Then we might have teachers Who understood rural conditions, and who would associate themselves with country life and thus enable the steady use of improvement in country conditions to go on at an increasing rate.