AGRICULTURAL COURSE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 August 1938, Page 6

AGRICULTURAL COURSE

* PRACTICAL INSTRUCTION AT PENROSE. DEVELOPMENT SUGGESTED. The scheme under which pupils of the Wairarapa College agricultural class are able to receive practical instruction at the Wairarapa Training Farm is making good progress. It is felt that the experience gained by the boys under these conditions will be of inestimable value and it is the desire of the College Board of Governors to see the scheme extended and the agricultural class developed, so that every farmers’ son would be a student at the College and a learner at Penrose. At present there are only 30 agricultural students on the roll out of 500 pupils attending the college. This, it is felt in some quarters, is not a fair proportion for a district such as the Wairarapa and. some scheme should be launched to secure more students in agriculture at the college.

The recent addition of 15 acres to the college grounds in Masterton has resulted in a scheme of practical commercial farming being adopted, in which the boys are to manage and control the sheep already placed.on the area.

Another suggestion that has been made is that an area of forty acres of Trust Lands Trust property,. situated in Pownall Street adjacent to the First Hatchery should be acquired and a hostel erected thereon for the Maori boys of the district. If this scheme were proceeded with these lads could become students at the college arid eventually be associated with the Penrose scheme. The linking up of agricultural education with the Young Farmers’ Club movement and the co-ord-ination of college and university would, it is claimed, also tend to build up a strong agricultural class.

It is considered that if more interest could be stimulated an increase in the number of pupils taking the course would result. One suggestion that has been made to the college authorities is that the recently acquired area of 15 acres should be brought into cultivation and grass plots established, so that every lad, by the time he had finished his college course, would be able to distinguish the different varieties of grasses and clovers to be found in the various pastures of the Dominion.