The Farm.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 13, 24 June 1893, Page 11

The Farm.

the boy the father of THE FARMER.

(From the Queenslander.)

Perhaps nothing touches these ■colonies, and Queensland in particular, so closely as the question of ' education for the purposes of land settlement. Our boys and girls need the right influence at the right time to fit them for a place upon the broad acres of Queensland. While so many will argue that an agricultural college is what we most need, there are shrewd and sensible men who can see that our primary schools might very easily be made efficient in this direction. It is admitted on all sides that a larger proportion of the youth of the colony should become farmers and general dwellers in the •country. The general effect of much of our public school life is to turn into quilldrivers the very material we want behind the plough and the harvester. The question of agricultural education, as it affects the adult, need not be allowed to hamper the investigation as it concerns the -children. We shall succeed best as we begin at the light point, and a tree is often saved by the straightening it gets as a twig. With this in view it may be asked how our public schools are to assist us in solving this difficult question. In the first place, a child’s education should not be viewed from the “ cram ” standpoint. Boys and girls should be taught to think, not to gorge their memories with facts and figures. Every farmer is better for a good groundwork of fact, of course, but the best farmers are those who have -been taught the value of alert cornmen sense. Then with the good foundation for a general education should be laid the first courses of instruction in manual work. There must be a handicraft welded upon the opening years of a young" man’s life if he is to succeed upon the land, and our public schools might very well provide the rudiments of a technical education. Logically our system of public instruction is top heavy. The training needed by most of our boys and girls is not that which will fit them for colleges and sedentary work, but such as will make them love the open air and muscular exertion. If we spend our money upon the filigree of education the massive basement must be neglected. The primary schools should be the rallying point of an education most suited to the needs of the many. It has been pointed out very pithily that the agriculturist needs a good sound general education to begin with, and all classes must start from this. But the truth of agriculture, ts general principles, the practical part of farm work, must come from actual experience and not from massive text-books. If our schools fire instruction into boys like a charge of shot there is little wonder if they show aptitude for nothing". But when there is a concentration of

general and technical education our country lands will be occupied by men whose training began at the right end.