THE NATIONAL CONTROL OF EDUCATION. 51 



profit by it. But there are differences of opinion as to the age at 

 which primary instruction should begin and end; as to the subjects it 

 should embrace ; as to the qualifications which should entitle to further 

 secondary instruction; and as to how far this should be free or how far 

 paid for by the scholar or his parents. 



The age at which school attendance should begin and end is in most 

 countries determined by economic rather than educational considera- 

 tions. Somebody must take charge of infants in order that mothers 

 may be at leisure to work; the demand for child labor empties schools 

 for older children. In the United Kingdom minding babies of three 

 years old and upwards has become a national function. But the infant 

 'school/ as it is called, should be conducted as a nursery, not as a 

 place of learning. The chief emplo}Tnent of the children should be 

 play. No strain should be put on either muscle or brain. They should 

 be treated with patient kindness, not beaten with canes. It is in the 

 school for older children, to which admission should not be until 

 seven years of age, that the work of serious instruction should begin, 

 and that at first for not more than two or three hours a day. There is 

 no worse mistake than to attempt by too early pressure to cure the evil 

 of too early emancipation from school. Beyond the mechanical accom- 

 plishments of reading, writing and ciphering, essential to any in- 

 tellectual progress in after life, and dry facts of history and grammar, 

 by which alone they are too often supplemented, it is for the interest 

 of the community that other subjects should be taught. Some effort 

 should be made to develop such faculties of mind and body as are latent 

 in the scholars. The same system is not applicable to all; the school 

 teaching should fit in with the life and surroundings of the child. 

 "Variety, not uniformity, should be the rule. Unfortunately the various 

 methods by which children's minds and bodies can be encouraged to 

 grow and expand are still imperfectly understood by many of those 

 who direct or impart public instruction. Examinations are still too 

 often regarded as the best instrument for promoting mental progress; 

 and a large proportion of the children in schools, both elementary and 

 secondary, are not really educated at all — they are only prepared for 

 examinations. The delicately expanding intellect is crammed with 

 ill-understood and ill-digested facts, because it is the best way of pre- 

 paring the scholar to undergo an examination test. Learning to be 

 used for gaining marks is stored in the mind by a mechanical effort of 

 memory, and is forgotten as soon as the class-list is published. Intel- 

 lectual faculties of much greater importance than knowledge, however 

 extensive — as useful to the child whose schooling will cease at fourteen 

 as to the child for whom elementary instruction is but the first step in 

 the ladder of learning — are almost wholly neglected. 



The power of research — the art of acquiring information for 



