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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 85

Agricultural Education

Agricultural Education.

As stated at the commencement of this report, your commissioners did not think that an inquiry into the instruction of the industrial classes would be complete unless it included some notice of the instruction of the large and important class of agriculturists.

We were unable ourselves to conduct this branch of the inquiry, except partially in regard to Ireland, but we trust that those who read the report on agricultural education of our subcommissioner, Mr. H. M. Jenkins, the secretary of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, submitted herewith, will think that we have been well advised in placing the inquiry in his hands. As supplementary to his report, your commissioners refer to the Irish evidence in the appendix and to the narrative of their visits to the Royal Albert College, at Glasnevin, to the Munster Dairy School, and to parts of the south and west of Inland. We have not inquired into the state of agriculture, as an art, abroad and at home; to have done this would have lengthened the inquiry beyond measure, and it was the less needed, as this branch of the question has been incidentally treated in the recent report of the royal commission on agriculture. It will, however, he seen from the report of our subcominissioner that those best able to form an opinion attribute a great and beneficial influence upon the progress of agriculture to the agricultural schools of various grades of the continent, and more especially to those like Hohenheim and Grignon, in which practice is combined with scientific teaching.

At a time like the present, when cheap railway and water conveyance of agricultural products from distant countries has completely changed the economical conditions of successful agriculture in Great Britain, it is of the greatest importance that those who are interested in the cultivation of the soil, whether as proprietors or as tanners, should not simply he familiar with existing practices at home, important as is such a familiarity, but that they should understand also the reasons which have caused these practices to prevail, in order to he able to decide to what extent they should continue to be pursued. They should likewise be acquainted with the nature and mode of cultivation of crops, the rearing and feeding of cattle, and the dairy practice of other countries.1

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Higher aqricultural schools.—To impart knowledge of this description is the proper function of the agricultural school. In Great Britain the agricultural department of the normal school of South Kensington, the Royal Agricultural College of Cirencester, and the College of Dnwnton are the only institutions for higher agricultural education, the former principally for training teachers, the two latter for the education of land owners, land agents, and farmers. The first of these has been so short a time in existence that no definite judgment of its results can be formed by the test of practical successor failure. But we agree with our subcomissionerin thinking that the complete course of four years at the normal school is inconveniently and unnecessarily long, that at least all students who propose to become associates should on entrance prove that they possess the amount of practical knowledge of agriculture which can be acquired by a year's residence on a farm, and that visits to farms and factories connected with agriculture during the recess should be encouraged and rewarded by scholarships to those who have profited by them. Our subcommissioner considers that colleges like those of Cirencester and Dowuton do not require " propping" by the state, but taht scholarships tenable at those colleges might be given by the government to deserving students in the agricultural divisions of county schools.

Secondary agricultural schools.—These agricultural divisions which are intended by our subcommissioner to provide secondary agricultural instruction have still to he created. Mr. Jenkins proposes that farms should be attached to county schools, in which the pupils in the higher forms should be taught the principles and practice of farming and should take part in farming operations and the management of stock. The experience of schools of this kind on the continent and of some Isolated attempts in this country shows that they cannot be self supporting. He proposes that the locality (the county) should equip the school and, we suppose, the farm attached to it, and that the government should contribute as liberally to the buildings as to those of schools of science. We can see no objection to the latter proposal, and we approve of the suggestion that the governing bodies of counties should have the power of establishing and maintaining agricultural schools or contributing there to under proper conditions; we should be glad to see this power conferred on them by the proposed measure for reorganizing county government. But it would also appear to us that an active participation in the encouragement of secondary agricultural schools would bean object well worthy of our great national agricultural societies. Their funds have hitherto been devoted mainly to the encouragement by premiums of improvements in cattle breeding and in agricultural machinery. The commercial demand for animals of a high class and for implements of the best construction is now so great that any other than an honorary recognition of merit seems to be no longer required; and, if a portion only of the money now distributed in prizes were offered in aid of local subscriptions for the addition of an agricultural department to the existing and in many cases nourishing county schools, it is probable that sO desirable an experiment as that proposed by our subcommissioner would very soon be carried into effect.

We are aware that the fact of the number of competitors for the Royal Agricultural Society's junior scholarships having been small may not encourage that great society to increase its efforts in the direction of agricultural education, but we believe with Mr. Jenkins that the fault lies in a great measure with the want of competent teachers, a want which is now in the course of being supplied by the Normal School of Science and otherwise. With respect to the classes in the " principles of agriculture" in connection with the Science and Art Department, which properly come under the head of secondary instruction, Mr. Jenkins is of opinion that " the attempt to teach the principles of a subject without first teaching its facts and phenomena is very much like trying to build an actual castle in the air." We quite agree in this opinion, and we consider it essential, even if it should involve some change in the program of the department, that the examiners should so arrange their questions as to ascertain as far as possible from his replies that the student is acquainted with facts to which the principles are applicable, just as in chemistry, for instance, the examiner would not be satisfied with a mere knowledge of the laws affecting the combinations of chemical elements and compounds, but would expect the student to be acquainted with the nature and properties of the substances entering into combination. Unfortunately, there is not the same room for a practical examination in agriculture as that which is now very properly required by the department in other sciences. On the whole it may be expected that young men following the profession of farmers and acquainted with farming practice will derive advantage from the classes in the theory of agriculture which are held in county towns.

Farm apprentice schools.—Of our subcomnissioner's suggestions in regard to lower agricultural education in Great Britain, that which recommends the apprenticeship of youths to selected farmers is very important if it can he carried out. There can be no doubt that, if competent farmers can be found willing to receive boys and girls as apprentices (the girls in the dairy), and to allow a part of their time to he spent in continuing their school instruction, us is suggested by Mr. Jenkins, there could page 55 be no better training for the pupils. The French fermes-ecoles and German Acker-bauschulon are examples of this kind of training.

Instruction in agriculture in rural elementary schools.—His recommendations in reference to elementary schools in rural districts are more definite. We agree with him in thinking that instruction in the theory and practice of agriculture should, in Great Britain, as it already does in Ireland, after suitable introductory object lessons, form in the upper standards a part of the ordinary elementary subjects of rural schools, and should not he relegated to "class subjects;" and that, if time cannot otherwise be found for them, which we scarcely anticipate, some of the elementary subjects, such as the higher branches of arithmetic, should be transferred from the former to the latter category; and, further, that encouragement should be given, by way of grants, to practical work on plots of land attached to such schools. One good result of this would probably be that children, taking a more intelligent interest in farm work, would be less anxious to migrate from the country into the larger towns.

It is probable that, if a demand existed for a practical knowledge of agriculture on the part of teachers in rural schools, some of the farmers' sons who at present unhealthily increase the competition for farms would qualify themselves to become elementary teachers.

Agricultural education in Ireland.—The subject of agricultural education, which is of national interest in Great Britain, is a question of life and death for Ireland. We are happy to find that this is thoroughly felt both by the government and by the people. There is progress in all directions. The Albert Agricultural Institution at Glasnevin, near Dublin, no longer confines itself to the instruction of young men who intend to become farmers or land agents, but is training teachers who will disseminate a knowledge of sound theory and likewise of successful practice throughout Ireland; for the Glasnevin farms, the 6-acre as well as the 100-acre, are pecuniarily successful. The Minister Agricultural and Dairy School, especially its dairy department, as will appear from the evidence given before us, is ascertained and acknowledged by all classes to be rendering eminent service to the farmers of the county of Cork. Every elementary teacher in Ireland is required to pass an examination in agriculture, and the science and practice of agriculture are taught, to all boys in the three upper standards (or classes, as they are called in Ireland) of all rural schools. Last year nearly 45,000 boys were examined in this subject. Small farms are attached to some of these schools, and special grants are made for proficiency in practical agriculture as tested on those farms. What is most encouraging is that the authorities of the national board themselves are not satisfied with what is being done. They are anxious that more encouragement should be given to the patrons of schools to furnish them with small example farms; they admit that when this is done results cannot be effectively gauged by their single agricultural inspector, Mr. Carroll, in addition to his duties as head of the Glasnevin institution. Your commissioners believe that the board would gladly see the successful experiment of the Cork Dairy School repeated in other parts of Ireland, each such school being established, as at Cork, by local effort, conducted by local managers in accordance with the wants of the locality, and supported in part by local subscriptions. Your commissioners trust that the treasury would see its way clear to encourage and aid such schools by giants out of imperial funds.

The evidence shows that the members of some boards of guardians are not satisfied with the prevailing absence of agricultural instruction for the children in the Irish workhouses. They desire that the plots of laud attached to the workhouses should be more generally used than they now are, for this instruction.

At the same time the faults of the past are acknowledged. It was stated in evidence before us that the failure to introduce the cultivation of flax in the south of Ireland was due in a great measure to the ignorance of the instructors and to their having persuaded the people to grow it on unsuitable land, with the result of stunted crops, badly prepared, and scarcely fit for the commonest tissues.

That some of the instructors were ignorant we cannot doubt; but the example of Flanders and other countries shows that flax can be grown on the poorest soils, provided that they are liberally manured and receive such painstaking and assiduous cultivation as the peasants of those countries bestow on them. Failures, however, like that of flax culture in the south of Ireland will induce the promoters of agricultural education in that country to proceed with caution, and not to raise a prejudice against it by schemes for which the teachers are not qualified and the learners are not ripe.

1 The practice of growing beet roots for the manufacture of sugar has been attended with most beneficial changes in continental agriculture. This cultivation is carried on in countries varying remarkably in the conditions of climate in regard to heat and moisture. Should the recovery of ammonia in the manufacture of coke and from the raw coal used in the blast-furnace be attended with the success which there is every reason to anticipate, the cheapening of nitrogenous immures may indicate some considerable changes in the agricultural practice of our own country.