FAR-SIGHTED MOVE.

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 3, 26 August 1931, Page 2

FAR-SIGHTED MOVE.

| \ In its endeavour to introduce an agrieultural bias into the currieulum of the Rotorua High School, the Board of Governors of the school has taken a move which should reflect the future policy of New Zealand, if this Dominion is to restore its prosperity and place the emphasis upon agrieultural training and education which should rightly be applied in a primary producing country. It is a move which deserves the undivided support both of the eommunity and of the educational authorities, for it has in its objects potentialities which must be of the greatest possible value in promoting the future of the district, and in applying a correetive to the dangerous indiiference to primary production activities which has arisen in this country of late years. It is, of course, a move which concerns more particularly the Rotorua and Bay of Plenty districts, but in its wider application it is one which deserves every support which the Government can alford it. On whatever points of policy the different political parties are divided, they are agreed in one thing — the necessity for promoting closer settlement and utilising the great stretches of undeveloped land which only to-day are beginning to be recognised as New Zealand's strongest bulwark against the difiicult -times which are ahead. It is significant that one ameliorating elfect of the present depression has been to stem, to some extent, the ominous drift of population from the rural areas towards the towns, and direct it in the opposite direction. This tendency has already been clearly demonstrated in many of our rural areas, and in its diffused effeets will undouhtedly do something to eounteract the stringencies of the present position. The Rotorua High School Board is not pioneering the necessity for increased agrieultural education but it is adding itself to the body of those who have had sufficient foresight to see beyond the ends of their noses. In New Zealand, almost wholly dependent as it is upon its primary producers, the education system has too long heen modelled upon the ideas and conditions of older countries, instead of assuming its own individuality. The Board has recognised that hefore New Zealand can develop its latent primary resources, the manhood of coming generations must be trained to regard the development of those resources, j not as an avenue of employment when professional avocations fail, but as a professional avocation in itself, which holds for them promise of suceess and prizes "more rich than any other occupation. The Board has wisely sought guidance from schools which have already placed emphasis upon the agrieultural side of their curricula, and at present is finalising the preliminary steps in a scheme which will* require a great deal of hard work and organisation to perfect. But the scheme is one which should not he left to the Board and the staff of the school alone; it deserves the undivided support of the district as a whole and of the Government. If the Board's hopes are realised, the Rotorua High School will be able to develop a comprehensive practical farming course by means of which boys attending the school will be able to ohtain the benefits of a very valuable initial training. The Rangiora High School and the Feilding Agrieultural High School, on whose scheme the Board's proposed organisation will be largely modelled, have both demonstrated what can be achieved in this direction and if the Rotorua school can attain the standard which either or both of these schools have set, it will undoubtedly become the centre for agrieultural training over a wide district. No area in New Zealand has the same potentialities for land development as has Rotorua and the Bay of Plenty, and that development will be materially assisted if, hy the Rotorua Board's efforts, a training ground is provided for the farmers of the future who will reap the benefit of that district and all that it might be made. __J