PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS — SECTION D. $$ 



modern tendency of education is to emasculate the intellect of 

 the pupil, lust as no child, although its life may be saved, can 

 thrive and grow if it is always given predigested food, so no 

 pupil's intellect can grow and expand if its lessons are daily served 

 up to it in a predigested state. The modern teacher must make 

 every crooked path straight before he sends his pupil down the 

 road to knowledge. In modern text-books every difficulty is 

 anticipated and made smooth— the accursed note follows each 

 word and line — the pupil has always one eye on the text and 

 the other on the notes, and his mental attitude corresponds ; he 

 ceases to search for answers himself — he is spoon-fed with solu- 

 tions of anticipated perplexities. The dramatisation of history. 

 a new craze, procures for him in a mixed school an acted scene 

 of Sir Walter Raleigh laying his cloak in the mud before Queen 

 Elizabeth, and in a boys' school Charles I. dies like a gentleman 

 on the scaffold, or a scowling John signs the Magna Charta sur- 

 rounded by truculent nobles whose ages vary from 8 to 13. The 

 bioscope presents to him a vivid picture of scenes and industries, 

 leaving nothing to his unexercised and atrophied imagination ; 

 and the combination of kinematograph and phonograph will soon 

 give Irish schools a speaking and sounding picture of Mr. Red- 

 mond supporting the Home Rule Bill in the House (all complete 

 with Sir E. Carson's fierce interruptions), and Church schools 

 will show their pupils with melancholy resignation Mr. Lloyd 

 George or Mr. McKenna introducing the Rill for Welsh Dis- 

 establishment. 



The present devotion of the younger generation to sport is a 

 natural consequence of this training in the concrete and the actual, 

 although there is, I think, another cause which I hope to touch 

 upon presently. There is very little left to the imagination in 

 sport. The results are very visible and tangible. A decision, in 

 fact, is the outcome of all sport. Either one side beats the other, 

 or by a settled system of scoring the two opponents are declared 

 equal. This definiteness appeals to the average mind, and the 

 result of a cricket match between Australia and England i-. 

 awaited with far more eagerness than the phases of an important 

 Parliamentary debate, the investigations of some scientific com- 

 mission or the publication of some literary masterpiece. So the 

 reaching of the North or South Pole is a definite achievement, 

 and arouses the sporting curiosity of millions who are indifferent 

 to the general scientific discoveries of either the successful or the 

 unsuccessful expedition. 



This devotion to outdoor sports and games requires, I think, 

 the very careful consideration of all those interested in the 

 development of social instincts. As a schoolmaster, I should like 

 to bear testimony to its excellent results in many problems of 

 boy-life and development, and also, as a schoolmaster, to its often 

 deleterious effect upon actual school work. There is. however, 

 a deeper-seated reason than the one I have mentioned. This, I 



