PROPOSED FARM SCHOOL

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 555, 6 August 1920, Page 2

PROPOSED FARM SCHOOL

CENTRE OF FRANKLIN. Recently the secretary of the Pukekohe School Committee (Mr. J. Patterson), which is a dual purpose committee, attending to the interests of both the primary and the technical school, wrote to the Minister for Education (Hon. C. J. Parr) pointing out the advantages of the establishment of a farm school in connexion with the new Franklin Technical High School. The Minister's reply, wich is very favourable in tone, reads as follows:

In further reply to youl letter of the 22nd ult., drawing attention to the claims of Pukekohe as a centre for the establishment of a modern farm school, 1 desire to state that the question of the establishment of such schools will doubtless form an important subject of consideration at a conference which is being arranged, at the instance of the Minister for Agriculture, between the Departments of Education and Agriculture.

In the view of my Department the tendency to utilize technical schools for the purpose of providing practice in the ordinary operations of farming by attaching thereto farm.* of considerable size, represents an entire misconception of the proper functions of a technical school, and is in consequence not to be encouraged. The true function of a technical high school or ordinary high school in relation to agriculture should begin and end with the training in agricultural science, which is necessary to enable the pupils to take up at a later stage practical farming, or a special course in a farm school. The establishment of such farm schools is properly the function of the Department of Agriculture. The provision, however, of a few acres of land in connexion with a technical school or country high school for the purpose essentially of a field laboratory supplementary to the ordinary school laboratories would be quite in accordance with my Department's view of the functions of such schools in relation to agriculture, especially if the pupils were also enabled to do observational work on neighbouring farms, and, if possible, on experimental farms established by the Agricultural Department. Much advantage in the latter case would accrue from the close association of the school with the experimental work conducted by* the Agricultural Department for its own purposes, from the provision of full information to the school of the nature and results of the experiment? conducted, and from lectures in connexion therewith by the experts of the Agriculturtl Department. Hence, it is clear that, to make an agricultural science course effective, there is no necessity whatever for the management of a high school or tech-

nical school to burden itself with tl.e control of a farm of substantial area, and to do so would merely imperil the general purposes for which the school is established without effectively discharging the functions of an essentially different institution. In the case of Pukekohe the technical high school site would probably provide sufficient area for field laboratory experimental work, and the question of access for observational purposes to neighbouring farms and to an experimental farm conducted by the Agricultural Department should not be Ifound insoluble.