The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1916. EDUCATION IN AGRICULTURE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 49, 25 September 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1916. EDUCATION IN AGRICULTURE.

Agricultural education, in the United States, says Mr Clifton, rises from primary school to university, where it is capped with a degree in agriculture. This should serve as a reminder that the recent report of the New Zealand Council of Education is not a document to be simply admired and shelved the Wellington Evening Post remarks. It is a very important attempt to systematise in New Zealand that class of education which a primary producing country (with an urban drift) vitally needs, and which up to the present has been undertaken only in a spasmodic manner. Tinder the Council's proposal the elementary instruction of the primary schools would be fallowed by an intermediate course in agriculture, lasting two or three years, at a secondary school (district high, or technical high, or high school). From the intermediate course would emerge students desiring to be either teachers in agriculture or farmers, and, for these, further training at a State experimental farm is proposed. Beyond that again comes a higher research course at another State experimental' farm for the training ci : scientific experts. This instructional edifice does not culminate in a degree in agriculture, but it provides the skeleton of a scheme for training experts, teachers in agriculture, and plain farmers. No doubt the proposal means money, and the monetary outlook is not good, but agricultural education has claims superior to those of much of the current expenditure.