THE SCHOOL AND THE LAND.
DISSATISFACTION with the results of teaching in the village is appearing in a double-headed form, in view of the new Education Bill. Neither side quite does justice to the motives of the other. Those who look on education as an end in itself blame the country authorities for not enforcing attendance, and accuse them of desiring to establish an inferior caste, instructed only in agriculture and its needs, for the benefit of the farmers. The latter, with many of the best class of country proprietors, are anxious to prove that agriculture ought to become a branch of State- aided education, of a progressive kind, and a strong com- mittee, with Sir W. Hart-Dyke for chairman and Mr. Henry Hobhonse for secretary, is being formed to urge this view before the new Board of Education is organised.
The existing system of village education has a great claim on oils regard. It taught the new generation in the village the elements of a general education. They knew how to read, to write, and to use figures, which are the credentials of general employment in towns. When the long agricultural crisis came education made agricultural labour transfer- able, for the first time in the history of this country. It knew enough to get work elsewhere, and there were no congested districts. But the landed interest has now in some measure recovered late disasters, and thinks that education might provide something more than a means of escape from the village. It is said, perhaps with more reference to results than to the subjects learnt, that while it withdraws the boys' interests from the active life of the country by ignoring it in school it practically leaves them with a bias towards other forms of employment.
It is difficult, and would be rash, to accept this conclusion merely because there has been a steady disinclination on the part of the younger generation of villagers to become agricultural hands. Wages determine the choice of work in nine cases out of
ten, and while the rate of the labourer's wages remains as low as it has been, and the returns from farming forbid the ex- pectation of better pay, a great proportion of those who are free to choose will continue to seek other work. On the other hand, the attraction of higher wages is not "net." Early marriage keeps, and always will keep, a large propor- tion of the young men in their native village. Add to this, custom, ties to parents, dislike of change, and the hope of gaining some of the better-paid posts on a farm, and the percentage of those who will remain on the land will be considerable, if not sufficient to meet the present demand for their services. What the advocates of improved rural educa- tion wish is, not to rear a stock of specialised labour for the use of the landed interest, bat to equip the percentage which will in any case remain on the land with special knowledge while boys which may make them better workmen, worth a higher wage, and later to provide instruction in continuation classes which may give them an insight into the immense range of the recent half-scientific, half-commercial expansion of agriculture and agricultural business. The latter is not the less important. There is no form of manufacture in this country in which the man at the bottom who uses his hands, and the men at the top who buy, sell, and organise, are at such an impossible distance as in agriculture. A Lancashire weaver may rise to own a mill, or become a prosperous agent, or transact business on 'Change, or trade with half-a-dozen foreign capitals. He can, if he likes, in time acquire the complete purview of the cotton business. But between the labourer and the agriculturi at transacting busi- ness on a great scale, as contractor, fruit-raiser, or manager of a great joint-stock farming company, there are gaps of ignorance and distance which prevent the young country labourer from forming even a conception of what are the possibilities. As a rule, he does not know that agriculture offers him any, beyond the chance of becoming a peasant-proprietor, or the scarcely less laborious lot of the small tenant. Before either can begin time must be found to teach the additional subjects. This preliminary must be settled by agreement. If any change is made it will probably take the form of school in winter and employment on the farm in summer. The time of learning will then be ex- tended beyond the present minimum age at which boys are allowed to cease learning altogether, while the range of their capacity will be widened. The question, then, narrows itself into what knowledge bearing on agricultural work can be taught to boys of from twelve to fifteen, who are—and this is part of the hypothesis—already spending part of their time in work on the farms. It is there that they will learn to plough, reap, dig drains, mend fences, milk, build stacks, harness and look after horses, in the ordinary course of farm work. To teach this is not the business of the school. The instruction provided must be something which will aid them to do agricultural work with more profit and satisfaction, and with a chance of advancement.
Looking to the example of all other education, it should have some relation to what is going to be taught later, in County Council classes, continuation schools, and agricultural colleges. There will be the secondary schools and the universities of agricultural teaching, for which the schools must prepare so far as they can.
The continuation and technical classes will teach mainly the intelligent modern management of the dairy, garden. ing, raising crops, and the use of agricultural machinery. The colleges will make a speciality of explaining the business side of collecting, selling, and distributing produce, the methods used abroad, and the progress of agricultural co-operation. How can the boys at school, and after they leave school, be climbing the lower rungs of the ladder of knowledge which fits a man to be at work a good workman, and at best a successful agricultural employer, or a consummate breeder and exporter of pedigree stock ? In the future improved and cheap machinery must play an important part in all agriculture. The smart farm-hand will need to qualify to work it. Drawing will train his eye and hand. Boys soon learn machine drawing and the use and structure of machines. This can be began in the schools, and go on in the continua- tion classes. The " theory of agriculture " sounds above the beads of boys. As a matter of fact, much of it is not, but is taught from dull books. They need not know the exact chemical constituents of soils and plants; but they can learn the reasons why particular crops should follow each other, why it pays to sow mustard on a stubble and plough it in again, and the comparative yield of milk and butter given by a Jersey and a Shorthorn. They will have some equipment for judging
whether it will pay better to sow clover or lncern on a certain soil, and be able to suggest to a city employer stocking his villa dairy what breeds and how many cows will keep his house in milk. And if the pupil knows this, he knows more than many farmers of to-day. Country boys are extremely AP " sharp" at these facts, and anxious to learn. Skilful gardening or dairy management cannot be taught at school, but the ideas which lead to good gardening or dairying later can be suggested, and some of the achievements of recent work put before them. So can the sanitation of farms, of which scarcely one farmer in twenty knows anything. There is no reason why village Councils should not even provide a garden plot in which both boys and men might receive practical instruction. At present the great houses are the technical schools where lads learn to become skilled gardeners. In districts where the great houses with their acres of glass and fruit gardens are scarce, this very natural and well-paid evolution of the agri- culturist does not take place. Who does not remember the boy Cobbett's walk from Farnham to Kew to see a really good garden and get work there ? If minds like Cobbett's could be trained in a village school anywhere, as he trained his for himself in spite of astonishing difficulties and with no sort of aid or organisation from outside, to do anything like what he did, and to grapple with agricultural difficulties as he delighted to do, we should get something of the kind of product which our landowners and farmers dimly desire. We are speaking now, not of Cobbett the politician, but of the farmer at Botley, the tree planter, the importer of acacia trees, of swede turnips, the author of Cobbett's " Gardening," the promoter of cottage industries, of straw plaiting, the encourager and clever adapter of new ideas, the clear interpreter of the finance and practice of agriculture, and the eon of a Farnham labourer. Books and travel taught Cobbett. School classes and the modern methods to be seen at the Agricultural Show and model farms and gar- dens of the great proprietors may give our rustic boys ideas and practical instruction. But it is certain that in the schools such general education as an elementary school can give must not be shelved for a narrow, special training. The latter in nearly every case is a subsequent failure if the three " R's" and some- thing more have not been mastered. It is also probable that, as in selecting stock for a farm it is generally best to take the local breed if there is one, so in settling the technical training given in the continuation classes strict regard should be had to the local products in which the district excels. Instruction and encouragement are more easily come by out of class when this is the case. Where a local factory makes agricultural machinery this might be made a feature of the training in the neighbourhood; where first-class dairies, or creameries, or plantations, or hop or fruit farms are a " staple," these might be the text, if not the main subject, of the teaching. But in the school itself too much must not be attempted. To suggest ideas, to teach a few leading principles of agriculture, with striking examples, and to stimulate the sense of curiosity about this, the greatest and most varied industry of the world, and follow it up by a little good, practical teaching on any branch, provided it is well done, is about the limit in practice. Agricultural machinery and its uses are always safe subjects, even to the very young ; and in any case drawing, the best of all manual training, should be encouraged by every means.
Bat perhaps the most effective teaching would be to ex- plain the prestige which may attach to agriculture itself. To do this, something more than platitudes about the country life are needed. No one teaches Latin or Greek without giving some idea of the merits of the great classics. Something of the same kind should be done with regard to farming. If boys were taught how the great sheep-farm on the Dee Marshes, where five thousand sheep are over- looked from a watch-tower, is worked, or how Lord Leicester reclaimed his marshes and planted his sandhills, or the scale of Lord Wantage's gigantic farm in Berkshire, or the management of the Queen's farm at Windsor, the pros- pect of working on the land would be brighter and more attractive.
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