Agricultural history in New Zealand. Herd testers. Alex Henderson

By Dr Clive Dalton

Alex Henderson

Alex Henderson was born on the family farm, called ‘Barelees’ near Forde in Northumberland, 30 miles from the Scottish Border where he worked as a shepherd for four years after he left school. To earn some money, as farmers’ sons only got their keep but never proper wages, he went to work for six months on the dairy farm run by the Edinburgh University Veterinary School, milking their herd of 40 Ayrshire cows. 

  

He didn’t like the dormitory arrangements living with the young students, so he got a job at Market Weighton in the East Riding of Yorkshire, on a farm milking a herd of Jersey cows. 

Alex was 24 by this time, and had a desire to travel.  Canada was a possibility, but a friend who had moved there advised him to go elsewhere, as the winters were cold resulting in long periods without work.

Herd testers needed in NZ 

While in Yorkshire he saw an advertisement in the British Farmers Weekly for herd testers in New Zealand.  He put in an application which was successful, subject to the required health tests which he had in Leeds.  All went well, and when he wrote home to tell the family that he was leaving for New Zealand, he had the one and only letter from his father (which he still has) asking if he realised how far away he was going!

  

The Captain Cook

Farewell from Glasgow

So on  July 13 1954, Alex set sail from Glasgow for New Zealand on the ‘Captain Cook’ with 1000 immigrants aged 17-30, segregated on board, with females forward and males aft.  But Alex remembers that this didn’t stop them having a good trip!

There were 42 other single men going to New Zealand as herd testers, all of them from farming backgrounds.  They all had a memorable voyage, sailing from the Atlantic into the Pacific via the Panama Canal, and a memorable stop at Pitcairn, where the ship stood off while the visiting passengers were landed in longboats.

Wellington arrival

They arrived in Wellington at 8am on 17 August 1954, with only those going to local jobs being allowed off the ship. Those going North had to remain on board till 4pm when it was time to board the ‘overnight limited stopping train’ to head north leaving at 6pm.  Alex said that the authorities must have taken this precaution incase any new arrivals did a runner. Alex remembers that the train was packed, and it was a fight at stops like Taumarunui where passengers were got off to get a pie and cup of tea before the train moved on.

The biggest group of future herd testers got off at Frankton Junction to work for the Auckland Herd Improvement Association, but Alex and his six herd testing mates stayed on the train for Auckland, arriving there at 6pm on Friday 18^th August.

They were allowed a day to recover, spending a night crammed into small hotel, and finally arrived by bus at Whangarei to be met by Mr Taylor who had arranged their accommodation in a local boarding house.

Start work in Northland

Because the herd-testing season had already started in Northland a few weeks before the new staff arrived, there were no jobs available, so Alex and the others got work on local dairy farms. Alex worked on a farm at Kaiwaka where part of the condition of employment was that he had the morning off when the herd tester arrived, to get some practice using a pipette to learn how to suck up (by mouth!) Sulphuric acid and amyl alcohol for the Gerber butterfat test, and see what was involved in the process.

Kawakawa

Alex stayed on that farm until the 1^st of November, when a herd testing vacancy became available at Kawakawa.  He was met there by a supervisor and taken to a farm for the first night to start testing where the 30 cows all had names. He tested the herd evening and morning, and had his work checked by the supervisor who had also stayed on the farm. He decided Alex was competent so was to be on his own.

Horse and cart 

Horse and cart ready for the day's action

Alex collected his horse, cart with rubber wheels, and all the gear needed, before he went on his way to the next farm. The gear included buckets, lids, a hand-cranked centrifuge, Sulphuric acid and amyl alcohol in large containers, butyrometer tubes for fat testing, scales, bottles for samples, crates and much more. A cover was provided for all this gear in the cart, but not for the driver Alex said.

After the first test on his own, Alex was told not to tip the next morning’s milk as the supervisor returned to check the work. Everything was found to be in order, so he was given a map and list of 26 farms for the month.  He never saw a supervisor for the next 2 years, and only contacted him by phone if necessary. As it was November, Alex worked through until December 23^rd, and then had time off until January 3^rd. From then on, work was continuous until the end of March as February was a short month.

Walk-through milking shed

Walk-through sheds

Milking was done in double-up walk-through sheds, and on his first farm there were 120 Jersey cows to be milked and recorded.  This was a much bigger farming operation than Alex had worked on in England, and he said that he was amazed at the large amount of milk produced which had to be weighed, sampled and tested for butter fat night and morning with the two tests added together.

The milk was separated on the farm, where the cream went to the factory and the skim milk was fed to pigs, which were kept on all dairy farms and added greatly to their income.

Alex says he worked one week each month on a back block at Mototau with no telephone, and sometimes no power, so the herd was milked by hand. These were mostly Maori farms and again, and Alex said they couldn’t do enough for you – welcoming the tester into their home and Alex was treated as one of the family. He worked in the Kawakawa group for 2 years which stretched from Towai in the south to Kaikohe in the north, Kawakawa being the centre.

 Challenges of roads and weather

Transport challenges facing herd testers

 Alex said it was mostly metal roads and has travelled them since by car wondering how he did it, but others were similarly employed. There were floods in the spring and droughts in the summer. Alex’s largest herd was 120 and the smallest 20 cows – all of them making a living and raising a family. It was the people he met who made the job.

Alex left herd testing to work on a dairy farm at Maromaku, (near Towai) for two years – again, the family made the job so satisfying, and treated me as their immigrant son. He remained in contact with them during all his years in NZ, spending every Christmas with them, and now continues in contact with their extended family.

Alex remembers the home-made pikelets for afternoon teas, and he knew that once he started on his round of 26 farms, he’d have 25 roast dinners ahead of him for the month.  Some farmers took the opportunity when the herd tester arrived for them all to go to the movies in the local town.  One night he remembers telling the farmer’s wife who was helping with the milking that he was going to the movies at 7.30 with a neighbouring farmer. So she rushed home to cook an early tea, and even ran a hot bath for him!

No TV

There was no TV in those days, so Alex played cards every night, with 500 being the most popular game.  The farmers and their families always enjoyed a bit of new company so there were plenty of late nights.  Herd testers were a key part of the farming community and their social life included most events including Christmas parties. Lifelong friendships were made.

Alex did two seasons at Kawakawa and then worked on farms before going back on the Rangitoto to England in 1958 for one year, returning to New Zealand on the Rangitani in May 1959 where he got a job as a builder’s labourer at Pukekohe for six weeks. 

Alex then started herd testing again on the 1 August in the Pukekohe Group where he did 1959/60 in Pukekohe, 1960/61 in Pokeno/Mangatauwhiri, 1961/62 in Orini, 1962/63 in Te Kawa, 1963/64 in Piopio, and 1964/65 in Waihi.   Alex said that he certainly saw a real variety of sheds and farmers – all of whom provided memorable hospitality.

Herringbone sheds

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When Alex left for the UK in 1965 there were no herringbone sheds, but by the time he returned in 1966 there had been massive changes away from walk-through to herringbone sheds. Herringbone milking sheds had been developed at Gordonton, and had become very popular and made the job of milking and herd testing much easier for all involved. They spread rapidly through the country and after 1979, Alex noted big changes where herds were increasing in size; farmers could no longer make a good living from 20-120 cows on a 100-acre farm. 

  

After Alex returned to New Zealand in 1966, he returned to the Mark family in Ngaruawahia (where he’d had a base since 1959) and worked for the Hurricane Wire Company in Te Rapa, Hamilton. During this time he met Ken Stone of the Auckland Herd Improvement Association in Hamilton at the Te Rapa racecourse, who invited him to return to herd testing. Alex was interested in training for the newly expanding Artificial Breeding (AB) side of dairy farming, but Selwyn Sheaf the AHIA manager was keen to have Alex back herd testing. 

Photo shows modern (2013) herringbone miking shed, with 30 sets of cups.  After about 50 sets, farmers today would then opt for a rotary - with 80 bail rotaries now common on large 1000 cow herds 

 Alex returned to the LIC in 1966 and worked as a supervisor for 14 years, with trips home in 1969, 1972, 1978 and 1984. His last 10 years of employment were spent as Weigh Station Manager at Morrinsville.  This involved training new herd testers on the farm, keeping a check on their results based on the composite sample from each farm, and dealing with any issues that may arise.

Herd testers conference and ball 

Testers and AHIA staff all dressed up for the Conference

Each year, the Auckland Herd Improvement Association held its annual herd testers’ ball, followed the next day by the herd testers conference, held at their London Street office organised by Selwyn Sheaf. At the end of the conference, the new testing areas were handed out –which Alex says always created a lot of interest to see who got what.  Some testers wanted to swap clients as they had developed such friendships with them, but that was not allowed.

Women in dairy farming

Alex said that looking back, 1954-58 when he travelled Northland with a horse and cart herd testing were some of the best years of his life, due to the warm hospitality and the friendship he experienced on New Zealand farms.  He said that the calibre of the women in dairying was fantastic, and the hard work they contributed to the dairy industry, as well as running a busy house and rearing a family, was never fully appreciated.  They would even wash and iron the herd tester’s clothes!

Alex retired in 1990 and said that New Zealand was a country of great opportunity if you worked hard.  Alex died on 14 July, 2017 aged 88.

Agricultural education in NZ. Improving farmers' image of farmers

By Dr Clive Dalton

 NZ 2025 export targets

Fifty thousand new people needed for the agricultural industry to achieve our export targets by 2015 says the Minister of Agriculture and  Forestry by 2015.   He is quoted as saying that ‘we have got to get out and sell the primary industry story better than we have done.’  Indeed, we'd all agree but who are the ‘we’?

For a start, the bureaucrats and politicians should keep well out of it, as they couldn’t sell anything that would attract young folk into farming.  Look how they have gutted agricultural research, and offering scientists who move locations two years guaranteed salary. Isn’t that fantastic  - two whole years!

 School visits and careers' evenings

When at the Waikato Polytechnic (which now has no farming courses), I used to visit schools to talk to students about a farming career, and go to special careers evenings, along with other organisations pushing their barrows.

I learned one very clear lesson – the biggest problem getting in the way of promoting farming as a career is ‘FARMERS’.  Farmers criticise school careers teachers, who also handle problem students and slow learners.  I felt sorry for them, as in their tiny offices they had a wall full of box files starting with ‘Army’ and ending with ‘Zoo keepers’ – each organisation expected them to push their particular careers.  They had no resources and even less help.

I could pick farm kids arriving at careers evenings with their parents, and when asked if they were going to do some farm training, their guaranteed reply was that ‘farming sucks’!  When asked who told them that, they always said ‘Dad did’.  It was a losing battle, as I’d hoped these students would be good promoters of farming to their peers.  Now that idea did suck.

The Minister’s ‘we’ to find the fifty thousand had better start nutting out now how to change the farmers’ ‘image’ of themselves, as that’s where the problem starts and ends.  Forget everything else in the meantime.

 Draw a farmer

Ask any primary school child to draw a farmer, and you’ll see what I mean, and then work out where they got that image?  I bet the farmer is a he, and is not looking at his iPad in the paddock.  He’ll be in gumboots and a black singlet for sure. Fred Dag didn’t help, neither did Murray Ball, Edna or David Henshaw’s Jock.  Note the farmers in TV drench adverts during test matches, and the dirty udders cups are put on during TV news clips about dairying issues.

My biggest failure was trying to change some basic images with dairy students on our Polytech Herd Manager’s course, which was a cracker which we had to kill when the NZQA dumbing down Units came in.

The health food business

I started by banning the word ‘shed’, on the basis that sheds are where tractors and bikes are kept, calves are reared and rubbish stored.  Milk is harvested in a ‘farm dairy’ or even a ‘milking parlour’ because it’s a ‘human health food’ or ‘neutraceutical’. 

So ‘milkers’, (many in the Waikato are called ‘hairies’) were to be ‘milk harvesters’, and when asked what their job was when they went to town on a Friday night, they told enquires that they were milk harvesters, and their business cards (which the boss was to provide for them) showed the details:

•  Joe Blogs
•  Senior Milk Harvester, or Assistant Milk Harvester 
•  Meadow Lee Farms Ltd, 333 Whatnot Road 
•  Dairyville 
•   Phone number and email
•  Location map on reverse side
•  Motivational slogan such as - ‘We harvest and export nature’s best health food to the world’.

One student actually got himself some business cards and followed my advice, and he said it was amazing the improved response when he shopped in town and handed over his card.  He said the assistant called him ‘Sir’!

Students arrived at class in spring with hands like 40 grit sandpaper, with green stain embedded deep in the cracks and open sores that never healed.  I used to tell them to keep well away from their girlfriends till well after calving.  It took a long time for it to be OK to wear milking gloves in those days.

 Clean overalls each day

I suggested that employers provide clean overalls for every milking, and they pay for the laundering done commercially.  I even suggested that they even milk in white overalls like we pommie students were made to do under the eye of a ‘dairyman’.

 Farmer comments

You can imagine how this went down with employers, whose reported comments at the next class were unprintable. I was simply trying to get students (and their bosses) to be proud of what they did – harvesting the world’s most important health food that was fed to infants, invalids and seniors because of their special nutritional needs.  As I said – the idea was a total wipeout.

Employers killed it all because they didn’t believe in an image change themselves. This is why the Minister’s ‘we’ has to start with farmers.  Don’t waste any more time or money goading farm trainers and teaching institutions, with so many different outfits competing with each other all over the country. It’s a dog’s breakfast that will need a big sort out before long.

Agricultural education in NZ. 1. Better ways needed for future learning

 

By Dr Clive Dalton

Future demand for trained staff

The Minister of Primary Industry expects New Zealand agriculture to double export earnings by 2025, which will be in a climate of relentless costs rises, increasing international competition from subsidised farmers, and increasing food safety standards. There were no instructions from the politicians as to how this could be done.  

To achieve this goal, the Minister’s other prediction was we’d need 50,000 new recruits at all levels of the industry (see comment later regarding this figure).  To get anywhere near these targets – in my view, we’ll need a revolution in primary industry education.  At the moment, our teaching is in the dark ages.

Change will have to start with massive changes in ‘learning’, which in turn will need a bombshell under current ways of ‘teaching’, because today’s learners are tomorrow’s farmers and investors, and they are going to have to be smarter in all aspects of business and technology than ever was dreamed of before.

This is because predicting what new information primary industry will need by 2025 can only be guesswork.  Nobody right now would have any idea. What we can predict with any certainty is that we are facing a rapidly changing world, with the speed of change increasing daily.  It’s a case of change, innovate, or go under.   Survival depends on ‘education’ and ‘innovation’, and the present New Zealand primary education situation won’t meet the Minister’s 2025 targets without rapid change.

Too many trainers

For a start, the current NZ primary education scene is a dog’s breakfast of providers and trainers, all offering courses to complete the same NZQA units, and many competing in each others' back yards for EFTS (Effective Full Time Students) which is simply a competition to get bums on seats to keep the organisations in business.  If the 50,000 people target has to be met by 2025, under the current setup, this silly competition needs to be ditched and sorted out at government level.

Classic proof of this nonsense was a piece in the NZ Farmers Weekly, September 29, 2014 by Rebecca Harper about new developments at Taratahi with the title 'Passion to produce quality workers'.  Quote: 'Taratahi seems to be everywhere these days. The residential campus is based near Masterton with non-residential campuses in Northland, Rodney, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Taranaki, Hawke's Bay, Manawatu, Wairarapa and Southland.' How stupid is that?

 My attempt to list courses and providers

I stress that this is an 'attempt'! I must have spent  hours searching websites of the main organisations, trying to find out what they did. Some are so full of 'bells and whistles' that getting answers to simple questions is not a feature they have tested before launching them.  So don't rely on my list as being accurate - as I gave up in the end. 

There should be an accurate list like this somewhere though. It certainly illustrates my point about 'teaching in each others' back yards.  Can you imagine how hard it must be for careers' teachers to give a student advice?  I tell any who ask me to always phone their nearest PrimaryITO office and not try to decipher this lot for a student.

Agriculture New Zealand. 

PTE owned by PGGWrightson.  Accredited for NZQA to deliver approved training at levels 1-6. 

Courses: Dairy, beef, sheep, deer

Locations: Sites throughout NZ for range of organisations (e.g. Landcorp).

Cost:  Paid in full by participants

Aoraki Polytechnic, Timaru.

PTE. Accredited for NZQA to deliver approved training Units at levels 2 -6.

Also Lincoln University Diploma in Agriculture (not NZQA Units).

Main Courses: Dairy, beef, sheep, deer and others

Locations: South Island centres and Online

Cost: Paid in full by students

Information from Mile Parr, Primary Portfolio Tutor.  For the Lincoln Regional Diploma in Agriculture, all the learning material is in a 'course textbook' and the students have access to the web-site.  The Polytechnic offers a support tutorial class for the enrolled students, run any tests, labs and final exams for local regional students of Lincoln.
 

             
Dairy Training Ltd (DTL).

< http://www.dairynz.co.nz>

Dairy Training Ltd (arm of DairyNZ) delivers training for the dairy industry.

Accredited for NZQA to deliver Units at levels 2 -6.

Main courses:

Locations: Sites throughout NZ except bottom of South Island.

Cost: Paid half by employer and half by government. Participant may refund employer.

atcTrainME

PTE. Accredited for NZQA Units level 2.

Main Courses: Dairy farming and range of general subjects.

Locations:  Waikato centres, South Auckland and Christchurch

Cost: No fees. Paid by government.

Telford Farm Training Institute

< http://www.telford.ac.nz>

PTE. Accredited for NZQA Units level 2-6.

Lincoln University Diploma in Agriculture (non NZQA Units).

Location: Balclutha and correspondence courses.

Cost: Paid in full by participant.

Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre

PTE. Accredited for NZQA Units level 2-6.

Lincoln and Massey University Diploma in Agriculture (non NZQA Units).

Main courses: Dairy, beef, sheep, deer and others.

Location: Masterton, Rodney (Auckland), Taranaki, Hawke’s Bay, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Northland.

Cost:  Paid in full by participant.

Waipoa Farm Cadet Training Trust.

PTE Accredited with NZQA Units level 2 ?.

Two year residential.

Main courses:  Beef, sheep, shearing.

Location: Gisborne

Fees:  Paid in full by participant.

Smedley Station and Cadet training Farm

<www.smedley.ac.nz>

PTE Accredited with NZQA Units at level 2 ?.

Two year residential.

Main courses: Beef, sheep, shearing.

Location: Central Hawke’s Bay

Fees: Paid in full by participant.

High schools

Courses taught by approved NZQA providers covering NZQA Units 2

S.T.A.R courses as tasters

 In the stupid competitive environment set up under government policy in the 1980s, the drive was to get as many EFTSs as possible. The Waikato Polytech Dairy Farm Trainee (DFT) course I taught for new entrants counted as 0.6 of an EFTS.  The course was ideal for farmers  with students starting at the Polytech in late January, to be ready for calving on June 1.  Farmers claimed it was an excellent qualification for their needs, and operated for years before it had to be changed to NZQA Units.

Our bureaucrats then started dreaming up ways to ‘stretch’ an EFTS, by giving students written assignments to do on the farm (during calving believe it or not!), and then come back to class for more lectures immediately after calving to claim a full EFTS from government.  It was going to be easy money for the Polytech, but was crazy as it was the last thing farmers wanted, as work didn’t stop after calving.  But then the bureaucrats had never done a calving, and the last people to be consulted were employers!  It was all about keeping the Polytech in business.

But it got worse. Certificates from Polytechs were then stretched into Diplomas, and Diplomas stretched into degrees!  Polytechs giving degrees in my view was bad enough, but then higher degrees were even offered, which made a total mockery because in agriculture, Polytechs didn’t have research facilities or qualified staff to meet the academic standards required.

No market research

Providers never appeared to do any market research to check demand before setting up teaching facilities, and just expected students to turn up. Then if they didn’t, the institutions complained to the government, or anybody else who they hoped would bail them out with more money.  Lincoln University has just done this.

Lincoln has itself to blame, with the current Vice Chancellor appointing three assistant VCs as soon as he got there. The whole situation should never have been allowed to get this way, with students/learners being the ones to suffer by having to face rising fees, massive loans and questionable teaching standards, from dwindling staff who were made redundant to help meet the bills.  Lincoln should have remained a college of the University of Canterbury and stuck to it’s old and highly respected core business.  Now it’s part of a much lauded ‘hub’ to add more complications to it’s future.

And now Lincoln University starting to teach their agricultural qualifications, do research, and provide industry demonstrations on the farm of St Peter’s school in Cambridge, which makes no sense for them to spend their reducing money in the Waikato.  It’s a great idea to get high school students interested in agriculture at an early age, but the local DairyNZ staff and the Waikato University agribusiness faculty could have provided all the help the school needed, all under the supervision of the PrimaryITO.  St Paul’s Collegiate in Hamilton is doing just this, using local support to promote agribusiness.

Dollars wasted

The Waikato Polytech where I worked from 1993-2000 must have wasted hundreds of thousands of tax payer’ dollars on ‘memoranda of understanding’ with other NZ Polytechs, and opening ‘campuses’ in other locations in competition with the local teaching organisations. 

The cost of the many trips by bureaucrats and senior staff to China and India to do the same fortunately is well buried and forgotten. They all came to naught.  Nobody got the chop of course, as it was government policy and was encouraged, and it still seems to be going on.  The Waikato Polytech (now Wintec) ended up closing their formal agriculture (and equine) courses some years ago, which shows how much they understood industry needs in the region – which is what Polytechs were supposed to be good at!

At one stage the Waikato Polytechnic bureaucrats worked on a deal for us to teach the long-established and much revered Massey Diploma in Agriculture to tap the local market.  I was asked (wearing my Ph.D.) to make a few trips to Massey to talk to their key staff involved in the Diploma, where it soon became obvious that there was no way we had the qualified staff or the facilities to teach the Massey Dip.  I got very stressed on return, trying to get this simple fact through to the bureaucrats, (especially our Dean), who had little idea about agriculture or the respect the Massey Diploma had gained in the farming community over 70+ years.

Our bureaucrats were clearly not concerned about the quality of education, and only about getting more local bums on seats. To my great relief, the idea died a natural death, after wasting what must have been many thousands of taxpayers’ dollars. The bureaucrats moved on to their next pie in the sky which was overseas students.

Distance learning

In the early days of the internet in education, too many NZ teaching institutions (especially Polytechs), and not just in agriculture, initially saw ‘distance learning’ as a cheap way to earn more fees from more students for less work, with no proof of clients getting value for money. They just didn’t put enough support into it – probably because they didn’t appreciate at that stage what was involved.

Organisations designing ‘distant learning’ options didn’t realise how much work had to go into preparing top-notch material, and the support needed to go along with it.  It wasn’t just mailing out printed lecture notes, handouts and PowerPoint slides.  This happened with a friend who in 2012 did a post graduate teaching Diploma from a noted NZ University, where she was charged the same fees as students who attended daily lectures.  She was ripped off for sure.

The New Zealand Uni boffins have been slow to learn from major world universities in UK and the USA currently providing on-line programmes at no cost which receive plenty of compliments from users I have talked to - and who all want to do more! This is becoming a booming business and can only grow with the power of the Internet for generations who have been weaned on to technology. New Zealand needs to take a giant leap forward into this.

As far as using modern technology is concerned, primary education in New Zealand is still an antiquated bureaucratic muddle. 

Memorable tutors

I love asking students I meet about their lecturers, tutors, supervisors and teaching methods being used, to see how things have changed since my years of suffering as a Farm Institute and then University student, and then inflicting more pain on others in my 8 years as a University lecturer, and 7 years as a Polytech tutor – getting my own back! 

Clearly little has changed since the ancient Greeks invented the lecture where literate teachers informed illiterate audiences. If you attend any public talk or lecture today, where the majority will be using ‘death by PowerPoint’, you’ll see that nothing has changed.  The speaker puts up a PP slide and then reads it to the audience – who can all read for themselves.  The sad thing is that none of us in the audience complains – we sit there checking our watches, our brains miles away thinking about something different.  Research has shown that it’s mainly sex!  A friend suggested that we should all read aloud the words on the slides with the lecturer.

 With all the resources now on the Internet, and with all that could be added to assist agricultural learning, the chances of learning in a small group at an interactive computer screen must be thousands of times better than listening to a lecturer moaning on for hours.

What's your tutor's name?

Regularly, students I ask only know their tutors’ first name, and Uni students I talk to rarely know the name of their HOD or Dean, and certainly they have never met their Vice Chancellor or CEO.  One management student recently, majoring in Human Resources (who failed my ‘who is your HOD’ test), told me that they get visits from important guest lecturers – but when asked she couldn’t remember their names.  Then she reassured me they get a lot of information from the Internet – which did not inspire my confidence.

Clearly the top brass never sit in on random lectures, or pop into the cafeteria to chat and sample their wares.  They are probably in meetings with  hired consultants who have never stood in front of a class.

Agriculutural education in New Zealand. 4. Better ways needed for learning

By Dr Clive Dalton

What’s memorable?

I often ask farmers after they’ve been to a talk or lecture how it went.  ‘Good good’ is always their reply.  Then when I ask what they learned or if there was a key message – I can bet that their regular reply will be  - ‘not a lot, or not really, but it was a good meeting’.  That confirms that the main benefit was social, and not educational.

I often suggested that the best way to run a scientific conference would be to wait till everyone had gathered before announcing that no papers would be read, because they were in the pre-published proceedings sent out beforehand.  Then everyone could sit around talking to each other, as most of the benefit of going to scientific gatherings is to chat during meal times and in the evenings.

I used to run sessions to help MAF staff who had to get their messages across to farmers at conferences and field days. We always started off by asking participants to name a memorable speech and a memorable speaker.  It was amazing how hard this was.  Most had to think long and hard, and even back to their school days to remember anyone, which tells you a lot about communication skills and information retention.

One Indian scientist colleague on the course recalled listening to the inspirational Pundit Nehru, while hanging on a tree branch among the millions gathered listening for four hours.  He never felt the pain in his arms till he fell off when Nehru ended.

The clear conclusion for participants was that it was the speaker’s ‘performance’ before the message. It has been well researched that it’s not the information given in a talk which is memorable, but the passion with which it is delivered.  How many hours of other peoples’ lives have passionless speakers wasted?

Stupid tests and exams

As students, we were tested to death, supposedly to see what we had learned (remembered) by regurgitating it to pass exams. We used to ‘cram’ for exams, knowing that as soon as we left the exam room, there would be a mighty emptying of our brains of stuff that we would never need again in our lives, and if we did, we could always look it up again. 

Now we Google it, so what do exams and tests tell you about a person’s learning?  But this question is too revolutionary to be talked about, and there’s little chance of teaching organisations in their current format changing. 

But there may be a faint glow of light since computers have been established in some (sadly not all) primary schools where children have laptops and tablets, and the benefits are now moving through into high schools.

As students, we soon learned that exams were not the place to express our own views or opinions that differed from the lecturer’s.  Lecturers/tutors don’t like students that are brighter than they were as students. I saw a lot of this when marking exams in my University lecturing days.

Failure was our fault

If we failed exams, then it was our fault, and never that of the teacher or their methods. A third year University student recently told me that her class couldn’t understand one seniour tutor’s accented English, but the class dare not complain – it was their problem not his.  So think of how many hours of students’ time (and fees) he wasted over the years that he was employed, with nothing done about it.  The students would all have been better learning on their own via the Internet.

 A University professor recently told me that she was concerned that on-line learning was causing fewer students to come to class – which she said was important for social interaction.  Social interaction is certainly important, but could her problem not be that her students considered they learned more on line than having to listen to lectures, and why was this not blatantly obvious?

The way lecturers/tutors have judged their teaching success is by exam or test results. This is a highly dangerous assumption, as material regurgitated in exams may not be an accurate measure of what people have actually learned and retained, as there are so many well-known tricks to pass exams.  A few of these will easily get you the 50% needed for a pass, and at a 50% pass mark, you may have learned or retained nothing of value, but enough to pass the exam. 

It doesn’t bear thinking about what we’ve crammed into our heads at school and in higher education that was never of any use in our lives. Sadly as we age, some of this stuff is more memorable that what day of the week it is!  I remember our entomology lecturer insisting that we should learn the names of all the veins in a fly’s wings – presumably to pass his stupid exams to preserve his arrogant reputation and ego.

 Fudging exam results

Then there’s the trick of ‘scaling’ test results, which has saved many a lecturer’s reputation – mine included.  The normal policy is that an agreed percentage of students have to fail, but if most of the class fails, then you do a bit of fudging to scale up the marks to get to the accepted level through.  The accuracy of marking can be really worrying– but rarely admitted.  Three of us once marked the same papers at University and gave vastly different marks.  We never did that again, as the shock was too embarrassing!

Formal testing and exams always have a time limit, which is grossly unfair for anyone who has literacy/numeracy problems, as they end up being heavily penalised.  This would not happen if tests were done via the Internet, and where learners were allowed to use any resources needed – because it’s stupid to test learners’ memories.  You need to test understanding and what’s relevant and what’s not for a situation. 

So-called ‘open book tests’ are a stupid idea, with a time limit.  If you know the answer, you don’t need the book, and if you don’t, you haven’t time to find it.

Get rid of Methuselahs

Tutors/lecturers need to be forced to move on after short intervals – and if they won’t, they should be shifted, recycled or retired.  ‘Move on or move out’ should be the policy after a stint of say 10 years at most, with a teaching limit age limit of 55 or less.

Tutors in higher education should only be allowed to stay if they were rigorously checked, and judged as star communicators by their fee-paying clients (students).  Exam results should never be the measure of proficiency.

So many old Universities, including the one I studied at and the one I lectured at, were totally inbred, where their students had stayed on to be appointed as say lab or farm assistants, then lecturers, and then professors and then Heads of schools and Deans.  They knew nothing of agriculture in other areas of Britain or of other countries, and kept new young blood out and were determined never to retire.

We must avoid having what so many school leavers doing Ag courses, considered their tutors to be Methuselahs boring them to death. When you are 16, someone in their 30s is  ancient, and anybody with grey hair is a dinosaur. The older tutor/lecturer who can excite young learners, earn respect and ‘light a fire’ to burn for the rest of their days is very rare bird indeed. 

Thankfully in my UK University days I had a legend – New Zealander Prof Mac Cooper.  He rarely wrote on the board, sat on a table in front of us and just talked (yarned) about the aspects of farming he was covering that day.  He provided knowledge, enthusiasm and a ‘passion’ for farming – and thinking back, those are the keys to what we students remembered.  We spent little time taking notes, and he set challenging exam questions to test our knowledge, and not what we had learned to regurgitate.  We were so lucky and our hearts bled when he died, fortunately after a reasonably long retirement!

Sadly, everybody who has suffered tertiary education can quote examples of lecturing disasters. We lived in hope that we gleaned enough to pass their exams, and by making guesses from the old exam papers of what was likely to recycle this coming year.

Agricultural education in New Zealand. 6. Better ways needed for future learning

 

 By Dr Clive Dalton

Class learning 

This needs to be cut as it's seriously out of date.  Traditional class teaching is, and always has been, a massive time waster, as tutors/teachers/lecturers have to deal with the wide range of student abilities.  So their teaching skills (both good and bad) are spread over many students, and a lot of the allocated time has to be spent on crowd control.

Of course some tutors never worry about this, and just get on with the lecture, which has to be aimed at the average class member, so the bright ones are bored out of their brains, and the slow ones give up or drop off to sleep.

In one of my Polytech classes I had a bright student who had severe attention deficit problems, and he ruined the whole learning experience for everyone by constant interruption about unrelated issues. The others in the class should have had their fees refunded, but nothing was done to help him, the others in the class - or me.  I had no expertise to help him learn, and my lectures were the last thing the poor lad needed.

The good news

The good news and what will drive change (and it's happening now) is the widespread use of laptops, and tablets in primary schools, and high schools. This generation are all so computer literate that they will demand to use all the modern technology that becomes available - and 'we ain't seen nothing yet'!

Boredom 

This is the all-time killer of learning - and it still alive and well.   It must have wasted mega millions of Ag student hard-earned dollars (either borrowed or from taxpayers) through tedium and wasted time.   Using the Internet provides a golden opportunity to meet learners’ individual or group needs, and cut out the massive waste of time and money.

Using high quality information

There has never been so much Ag industry information available than at present – much of it good, with other being questionable and making claims with no proof. But the way agricultural research has gone in recent decades (to the dogs in my view), fair amounts of research is embargoed for lengthy time periods because of its ties to commercial joint ventures.

But what information is available is not always accessible to all learners on an equal basis through the many competitive providers in different areas. But using the Internet cloud, all information can be made available with 24/7 access nation wide.

 

Checking progress 

Internet access allows learners to check their progress in their own time as they proceed.  Learning is not about testing memory – there’s no need for this when we have Google. 

Today’s need is first to know where to find relevant information to solve a problem, and then how to use this information.  Then it’s vital to be able to work out what’s reliable and what’s not. Just look at ‘fertilisers’ as a current example of vitally important farming issue, and what and who to believe about reliable recommendations.

Massive savings

Learners learning in their own time and on the job (with formally allocated time by employers) save themselves the cost of travel, accommodation and fees, which even if they appear ‘free’ – somebody pays, and it’s usually the tax payer.  But the biggest saving is in peoples’ time.  There is no more valuable resource in today’s world.