SCHOOL ESSAYS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3718, 6 October 1906, Page 2

SCHOOL ESSAYS.

' ♦" ' THK,school committee have asked us tolpublish six sheets of type-writ-ten foolscap setting forth the conditions under which two essays are to be written by boys and girls attending the local State school for prizes to be awarded by Mr John Stevens, member for this district. The essay for boys is to set out the best means of running a 200 acre farm. The questions Mr Stevens expects the essayists to answer are, to say the least, gigantic. They would tax the brain of a third year student at an agricultural college, let alone a sixth class State school scholar. He must have a knowledge of leasehold and freehold tenure, the best breed of draught and other horses, describe delects and true points, the best means of breaking in and educating horses ; the best breeds ot cattle and sheep, how to shear, class and roll wool, know all about pigs and poultry, grasses, crops, fencing, etc. etc. Mr Stevens surely labours under the impression that the Foxton schoolboy is a heaven-born genius —all head and 2-inch body. The girls are also set an enormous task, and would require to know the commercial value of furniture, how to balance accounts, and what it would cost to keep a family of six, including 2 boys and 2 girls ! With due defference to Mr Stevens we think that his ideas of the mental capabilities of the colonial youth—and of our local State School scholars are magnified several thousandfold. Anyhow, the task set the local scholars will have to be considerably modified if Mr Stevens desires them —in the words of Bill Adams —to take the job on !