354 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It is proposed that the horough coimcils shall have the power of ap- 

 pointing and dismissing teachers (though not of fixing their number, 

 qualifications and salary) and of selecting the sites for any new ele- 

 mentary schools that the County Council decide to provide. The bill 

 in these respects may perhaps be altered, and it is possible that members 

 of the council will form a majority (as they do not in the unamended 

 bill) on the education committee. In most other respects it is pro- 

 posed to bring London within the act of last year and therefore under 

 the final control, for all forms of education, of the Board of Education. 

 However, little is certain yet except that the London school board 

 will pass away and with it that competition between primary and 

 secondary schools which has been the result of one of the less desirable 

 aspects of the work of a board which has done much good and earnest 

 work in London since 1870. Of course, none of the London board 

 schools will cease to exist, nor will one single form of educational 

 activity disappear. Only the name will be changed and the particular 

 characteristics of certain schools will be altered. Schools that ought 

 to be strictly secondary in character will be made secondary, while 

 schools of a primary type will be compelled to keep to that type, but 

 will also be dove-tailed into the nearest strictly secondary school. 

 London will gain immensely by this, though admirers of the London 

 school board system will feel keenly any reversal of the old and ruinous 

 policy of forcing higher grade elementary education into competition 

 with pure secondary education. Gain in efficiency is, however, the 

 only thing to be considered, and there can be no doubt that the London 

 school board has outgrown its functional usefulness and may well be 

 replaced by a body capable of coordinating metropolitan education of 

 all grades. 



When the London bill is passed English education, whether pri- 

 mary, secondary, technical or tertiary, will be in a highly satisfactory 

 state as far as machinery is concerned. The putting of this machinery 

 into smooth motion will then be merely a question of time. When 

 this is done the future of England may be regarded without pessimism 

 or distrust. The widest meaning of education itself will gradually 

 enter into the knowledge of the nation and it will be within the 

 power of the poorest to reap harvests of incalculable wealth in hidden 

 lands yet unknown to the masses of the people. Far away lie these 

 lands, beyond the passionate, the stormy, the fretful, the cruel ocean 

 of ignorance. All glory and honor will be to the generation that 

 shall devise fit means of transit across this fearful region. The sea 

 of ignorance imprisons the human race in a narrow land. Across its 

 waters the few pass fitfully, fearfully now; but surely the day is not 

 far distant when the many shall claim in pride and gladness their 

 birthright of passage. 



