THE RUSH TO THE TOWNS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 97, 18 January 1919, Page 8

THE RUSH TO THE TOWNS

A SOLUTION

FARMER TEACHERS AND SCHOOL FARMS

(For The Dominion, l, y p. L. Combs, M.A.)

The feverish eagerness of our civilisation for the artificial excitements of town life contains an element of biological perversion. There are even morbid symptoms connected with it. Tho inborn instincts of tho child, the lusts of his eye, the eager responses of his ear aro to the sights and sounds of nature. Scopo- for his free activities is given by the wider spaces and looser restrictions of the country. No child reared in the country will in early years—before the malignant lure of the "mud lioney : of town" has infected him—willingly consent to remove to a city. His primal nature, like, that of the Goths, revolts at the thought of its cramped areas and dingy skies.

Why Then Centripetalism? What, then, is it that divorces him from the enrivonment endeared by early associations und tho instincts of the race? There.is room here for only one reply. To a great extent it. is due to the artificial pabulum of the school. Antiquated arithmetic, dry-as-dust chronology, science taught with a little sulphuric acid and a few test tubes kept in a poky cupboard, the growing of onions and radishes in 'serried rows in plots the size of a tablecloth —these neither illustrate nor explain those quivering, palpitating activities of the community about him which excite and baffle his nascent curiosity »'i.e., dawning intellect). Just as his baby brother needs humanised milk, so does he need a humanised, an environmentalised instruction. That this instruction among other tendencies should have an industrial basis only the fevered idealist too lost in thought to even feed himself would deny. The problem then becomes how to correlate (abused but useful word) the country school to the community. The solution is obvious. ' '

Tho Fprm School. The school should grow out of, emanate from, the surrounding locality as naturally, as inevitably, as ' wool from a sheep's back, or grass from a prairie. It is clear that such a school, a replica of rural life, cannot be placed 011 a half-acre site or left in 'charge of a teacher wise in Latin ■though ignorant of pastures, and then produce. Cabbages may be inspired in audi a backyard, but progressive farmers never. What' is wanted i» $ farm school and a teacher-farmer. Both are easy to obtain. How? Let me proceed orderly. (1) The Teacher.—Ho has never joined a correspondence school or crammed in December for his D pass what he "will succeed in forgetting in January. Ho went first to a normal agricultural college—a sort of government house on 300 acres of land. He was given, needless to say, sound instruction in a general culture up to at least the present—not very exalted— B.A. standard. ..But he was also taught thoroughly the science and practice of elementary agriculture. He drove the plough afield, milked the kine,' 6hore sheep, harvested crops, maaiaged and fed farm animals, and marketed _ produce. In the library ho steeped his mind in the economics and humanities of his subject. From Virgil's "Georgics" to "Fr'eame on tho Soil" ho ranged freely, solecting what assorted with his tastes and abilities. In one, of a dozen practice schools in the vicinity lie was put through a normal courso in 6chool-keeping under expert supervision. Ho came to feel it his mission to make four blades of grass grow where onlv one grew bofore, to sprout a hundred interests in field and forest—fauna wild and tame, flora native and exotic—where previousmF a anc ' loutish ignorance existed. i!'- e ® c ' loo '- - This teacher passed on to his (not a) rural farm-school, eucouraged_ to take with him a teacherwife trained in feminist pedagogics, tho thing is not difficult. Teacher cum teacher marriages if not the rule are not tho exception.' The farm with an annual value of £30 per annum, and an area according to land quality, he would organise as his open book tor Nature and agriculture study, tins copse would harbour a scoro of researches into rural , biology (insect cycles, etc.), and, wild plant growth, it would be playground and class room 111 one. The neighbouring field would run a small flock of sheep, with perhaps—on loan • from a ■ State farm—a purebred animal or so. In the 1 vicinity of the residence would' be a model byre and sanitary piggery, both under easy observation. Tho road frontage might compriso half a dozen experimental plots half a square chain (not a square yard) sown down perhaps m,trial crops by the Agricultural Department. A plantation near by could contain experimental growing's of species of shade trees and fencing tim-

. make. way for such concrete and vivid demonstration of the life tho pupils were to lead, partnership, sums and parsing (daring suggestion) might fall off the tree of State knowledge, lhey are rotten ripe for their debacle. J hey might be replaced bv farm bookkeeping, record taking, etc., the general statistics of our national primary production, and the commercial eco'no"»os of home and oversea markets. ' Ihe cultural side of such ruralised specialisation is too obvious to need suggestion. English prose and poetrv novel essay and epic, abound to exce'ss m exquisite reflection of tho panorama of the countryside. From ?. dn ! b rejlism of Crabbe to the marvellously felicitous, the magically pictorial verse of Tennyson, from Burns and \\ordaworth to our modem minor poets, there is a plethora of nature depicture unequalled in any other lan."flllcnce of such authors skilfully introduced will cast a refilling and enduring charm over those early associations of the landscape so powerful in themselves to attach the young mind to the vale of its nativity Space precludes a fuller development el the subject here and now Only one further aspect, that of the teilcher can be alluded to in conclusion. 4

No Mora Quick Removals. At prosent he (or she) is a bird of passage, hardly loilg' enough in the school to get to really know anyone but the storekeeper and the committeo chairman. Placed on a bare acre or half-acre of ground, without means of transit—sometimes without meat or "j'lk —without a local interest except the expensive one' of current gossip is it any .wonder the tencher fails to 'attach himself, let alone his pupil to their native soil. For a metropolitan vacancy there are urgent hosts of applicants—to country schools must often be appointed unqualified persons —from the enthusiast, eager but crude and vague, to the drifter at, otTds with bis previous vocation.

Tho scheme outlined will no ± n „jj. (jive environmenlalised teachers to eiivironmentaliseil si'hools. it Will keep the right man in Ill's rhjhl. place, nrov/>»K on and iiiLo Iho soil of his inst-nr't!-lion, affiliating (ho might, tin'id hint, oven become n cimnt.v councillor or a .1.1'.) himself over two generations to tho community which had como to know, to believe, and to further his national mission and purpose.

Instead of a diwon transplantations in twenty years, with their wilting and 1 stunting effect upon his exfoliating sympathies and aptitudes, would be one ever-continuing, ever .expanding, over deepening attachment to the soil of his native land.

Can a hide-bound Department, which has' on occasions refused to facilitate such obvious and workable proposals, be got to establish really rural schools, with really rural teachers? To this end the hints herein given have been penned.