[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Snt,—A great many people have been writing lately on the difficulties of farmers, but no one seems to have realized one very great difficulty which the education authorities unwisely impose upon them.
Put briefly, the fact is this. If you keep a country boy at school after twelve, you ruin him for work or real education on the land. If he can pass an exam. in the three Rs. at that age which frees him from going to school on condition that he goes to work on the land, he will pass proudly, and will enter on an education far superior to anything that he can learn from books. By the time he is fourteen he generally cares for nothing but cigarettes and kinema shows, and has lost all interest in country life or real work. This cannot be helped in the towns, but why are not our lads in rural areas allowed a chance ?
Is there anything more foolish than to make the same schedule a hard and fast rule all round ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
A COUNTRY WOMAN.
Previous page
