PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 695 



has been described as examination-ridden ; I regretfully agree. 

 It is not the fault of the examining bodies ! neither is it the fault 

 of the teachers. The peo])le get the Government they deserve, 

 even in educational matters; the first step to a cure must be 

 taken by the parents. As long as school committees foster the 

 examination craze by gauging the educational abilities of the 

 school stati' on the number of children " ])Ut through " any 

 given examination, as long as parents measure the want of edu- 

 cational attainment in their child by its failure at a certain ex- 

 amination — so long will the present unsatisfactory state continue. 

 The security of tenure and further advancement of the teacher 

 de])ends. in too many schools, upon the number of " passes " 

 that can be shown ; remove this incubus, and the teachers will 

 heave a sigh of relief and pass from the cramming mill to his 

 ])roi)er sphere, that of education. 



I would remove the vulgar — in the sense of po{)ular — view 

 of education, and substitute for it the definition given by an 

 eminent American commission of education : " Real education 

 is the vital interaction between a mind and its world." The 

 child's (nvn world is small, and he probably re-acts intelligently 

 under its stimulus ; the world outside the child is large, and under 

 its influence he re-acts more or less incoherently, more or less 

 intelligentl}-. The child, as it were, is under the fire of an edu- 

 cation battery of some four guns, each using very dififercnt 

 ammunition, with the added disadvantage that the battery as 

 a whole is not tuider the control and direction of a single com- 

 mander, but that each gun is firing when, how, and where its 

 individual gun-captain may wish. These agencies for education 

 that I ha\e likened to guns arc: ( i ) home, (2) neighbours, (3) 

 school, and (4) church. This distribution of educative power is 

 not in fixed divisions, set once and for all by previous tradition 

 or practice. Together these agencies carry out the total work 

 of education witb the economy and such efficiency as comes 

 through a division of labour ; a new sociological order and a 

 more complex environment have weakened the powers of some 

 of them, however. Thus the town homes of the artisan class 

 have not that parental authority and control over children exer- 

 cised by the family life of the farmers ; theological doctrines grip 

 fewer numbers now than a century ago ; apprentices learn less 

 of the intricacies of their trades in modern factories than their 

 forerunners did when these trades were lodged in the employers' 

 household; the junior employe in a mercantile house learns less 

 of the ramifications of business methods now than his type did 

 fiftv vears ago, when identification with " a house " meant, ])rac- 

 tically, identification for life. Under the flux of changing con- 

 ditions, those influences hitherto brought to bear by the other 

 agencies are, as they become weakened and inoperative, demaiided 

 from the school. As the moral training of the church and family 

 life become insufficient, we find moral education included in 

 the school curriculum. x\s children, owing to the restrictions 



