NATIONAL TEAM SPIRIT.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4813, 20 February 1925, Page 3

NATIONAL TEAM SPIRIT.

DENMARK’S ADVANCE. WORLD’S BEST CO-OPERATORS. An instructive and interesting address on “Some Lessons from Rural Denmark” was delivered by Mr Frank Tate, the Director of Education for the State of Victoria, at the Wellington Rotary Club luncheon on Tuesday. Mr J. Caughley (Director of Education) presided, and among those present were the Minister for Education (Sir James Parr), and the Chancellor of the New Zealand University (Professor Macmillan Brown).

Mr Tate said that Denmark had foi years been an object lesson of great interest to students by reason of its advanced social legislation, including land legislation, and of the steady progress of its people from a condition of ignorance and poverty to one of widespread culture, comfort, and prosperity. Natural conditions in Denmark were hard, but a highly developed body of rural workers had by intelligent methods reaped wonderful success in adapting scientific and business methods to farm problems. The Danes were the world’s best cooperators, and the national genius for co operation had resulted in doubling and trebling their output of dairy produce in a brief time and in securing for them the most favourable marketing conditions. Of all farmers in the world they could claim that they receive for themselves the greatest proportion of the price paid by th? foreign consumer for their produce. PEOPLE’S HIGH SCHOOLS. It n ight be thought that the remarkable success of rural industries in Denmark was the direct result of a tine system of agricultural and technical education. Nothing could be further from the truth than this, although it was certain that agricultural education in Denmark was developed to a high degree. At the root of the matter was the system of liberal cultural education largely availed of by young men and women between the .ages of eighteen and twen-ty-five years. This education was 'given to the young men during five winter months and to the young women during three summer months in remarkable institutions known as the People’s High Schools. These schools were adult schools working for short courses only.

The young farmers who went to the People’s High School in “the winter did not go there to' improve their practical knowledge of farming, but to receive a general and stimulating mind training. One principal ha:l told him (Mr Tate) that the purpose of .the People’s High School was to make these young men good citizens ; to show’ them what their country stood for, and how they could fielp in its progress ; to open their minds and give them intellectual interests ; and, above all, to develop in them the feeling of gcod-will towards their work and co-workers, so that they would reaidly finite as a team for a common end. the High School the young men returned to their farms with awakened intellecutal curiosity an:l with the power and the deisre to acquire knowledge .for themselves by means of books. They might go next winter for another course at the same or at « different high school, or they might go on to a similar institution known as the People’s Agricultural School. Here the work was more distinctly vocational, but it was worth pointing out that even in the agricultural schools a large portion of the work was cultural, and that in these schools also an hour a day was given to community singing. TRAINING OF EXPERTS. it was thus that the rank and file of the agricultural army in Denmani were trained. Those who wishe’d to. take positions in co-operative societies as' graders or sub-managers of creameries or as herd testers often took special intensive courses in these agricultural schools and were granted special certificates. But tsuch an education as had been described would not produce the highgrade experts who could control and direct such an army. There was in Copenhagen a very efficient agricultural and veterinary college of university rank. In this institution were trained the real agricultural experts. The students before entering had Received an advanced secondary education, and had had two years’ experienc2 in farming. After four years’ training, when they graduated, they went out —some as teachers, some as assistants in experimental stations, and very many sought appointment as counsellors in the employ of co-opera-tive societies and farmers’ associations.

Agriculture in Denmark, therefore, rested upon the work of a body of producers of very high average education. Their operations were controlled and directed by a skilled scientific corps and by high-grade business men associated with .the cooperative •societies. The widespread u a of co-operation h<v« nad a very great cffeci in educating the Danish faimvrs.

Su? 11 nq up, Mr Cate .-aid that education had undoubtedly helped a .•oui' cctietry of few n.iti:;.u advai- ;■) become rich .bid p •cspe;jus. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the Danisli ,’urdl. workers were sti.i serfs; to-lay tber were among the most intelligent workers in the world. They had developed one great national spirit, and a spirit cf good-will towards their co-workers which expressed itself in co-opera-tion. Their system of adult education realiged that the practical end of education was to fit boys and girljs for efficient citizenship, expressing itself in efficient service with good-will to all.