428 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



things which should not be done may also still be seen there. 

 These colleges are not in the hands of literary men. Frankly 

 recognising that there is not time for everything in school- 

 boy life, the authorities have omitted classics from the curri- 

 culum. Another and perhaps the greatest step forward taken by 

 these schools is the introduction of manual exercises as an 

 essential part of the curriculum and the devotion of a very 

 large part of the time to such work. The results obtained 

 under this system are altogether remarkable : the qualities of 

 self-helpfulness, alertness and exactness are encouraged and 

 developed in a most successful manner ; although the boys vary 

 in aptitude, very few show themselves to be incapable of 

 profiting from the workshop instruction and the whole 

 outlook on life is altered by such training. 



I believe we shall be forced, in the course of time, to admit 

 that the plan adopted at the two Naval Colleges is one which 

 must be followed generally and that every possible form of 

 manual work will eventually find its place in our schools. 



When I refer to these schools, I am told that their aims are 

 entirely different from those of other schools. Of course they 

 are ; their aim is definite : it is to turn out boys who have 

 learnt to help themselves and to think for themselves and to 

 use their hands to some purpose — boys who have all their 

 faculties developed. It may well be that the course has direct 

 reference to the future of the boys — but so it should in every 

 school ; at present it has no reference to the future of any but 

 a half-dozen or so who are being crammed like cattle to 

 compete for some special pecuniary prize, some university 

 scholarship. The curse of commercialism meets us at every 

 step : instead of giving a liberal education to their best boys, 

 our schools insist on turning them into the rankest specialists — 

 classical or mathematical. What we need, in fact, more than 

 anything else is to despecialise the teaching and make it 

 general and liberal. Even our Universities are sinners in this 

 respect, as almost every subject is taught from a purely pro- 

 fessional point of view, although the majority of their students 

 have no intention of taking up professional work. Attention 

 is centred on the prize animals; the beasts of burden, who are the 

 effective workers in the world, are in no way tended as they 

 should be — much to their present advantage perhaps, pending 

 the discovery of suitable, liberal methods of meeting their 



