FARMERS OF TO-MORROW

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4896, 28 October 1925, Page 1

FARMERS OF TO-MORROW

EDUCATION IN DENMARK. MENTAL & SPIRITUAL TRAINING. In Denmark youngsters leave the primary school at fourteen. They work on the farm for four years, and then, at eighteen years of age they go back to school. The Danes claim that when a boy has reached eighteen year's of age he has begun to appreciate what education is and is ready to receive. If the New Zealand farmer were to send his boy back to school, at eighteen years of age, for two or three years, or, as the Dane sends his boy, for a five months’ residential course each yeah for .three or foui years, he would want his boy taught .carpentering or blacksmithing, the use of the Babcock test, or the method of treating aliments of. dairy cows. ■ Not so the practical Dane. The Dane, who has led the world in dairy science and in dairy practice foil a great many years now, unhesitatingly turns down such subjects. He wants his boy educated in literature .and music in Danish history, in mathematics, ■ and he wants him taught anbther language, generally English. He wants him to study geography and physics, sociology and economics. He wants him to learn for, and to work for, his own mental ■ and spiritual development. He wants the boy’s interlec- ( tual curiosity aroused. He wants him th learn that there ig a world of ideas to be reached through discussion, and through books.- He wants him to be taught to observe and .to think, to generalise for himself, to apply the result to. the life around him.- He wants him to learn to fit himself in with people' with whom his life will be . spent. He wants to have him imbued with the spirit to .go forth and work for his fellows and for the ends of the community. ■ He can teach hits boy practical agriculture at- home. At school.. he wants him to aim at a broader culture. One of .their teachers, writing of his wonk at school,, says that no satisfaction can be found . in living only to get the wherewithal ( foresting and drinking; in being an ordinary man who will one day dis-. appear and leave no trace behind him of anything he has done worth while. ,