38 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTION D. 



some of the elementary schools in England, children are heing 

 fed in class ; there is a strong movement in favour of the medical 

 inspection of school children and its logical outcome, the estab- 

 lishment of school clinics, where pupils are treated for ailments 

 and diseases. Worse still, children are taught in school at early 

 ages the beginning of those trades and crafts in which they are to 

 seek their living afterwards. The demand is that the schools 

 shall send out half-trained farmers, teachers, carpenters, book- 

 keepers and clerks. Every association with a cause at heart 

 wishes to introduce him to its text-book ; and Readers in Tem- 

 perance, Readers in Hygiene, Readers in Moral Conduct are 

 forced upon his bewildered attention. The student, while still 

 under the care of his master, is to be trained in arms to defend 

 his country. Between the ages of 8 and 11 he is crammed with 

 a reading-book on Civic Duties', and learns Moral Philosophy by 

 standards: Truthfulness in Standard I, Courage in Standard II 

 Patriotism in Standard III, Perseverance in Standard IV, and 

 so on. 



Girls, who used to be taught household duties under the 

 loving care and supervision of their parents, are now compelled 

 to spend unreasonably long periods at school over sewing and 

 cookery and domestic science. They are taught by their mis- 

 tresses, instead of by their mothers and elder sisters, how to dance 

 and behave themselves in public, and to entertain friends and 

 guests. In some schools the function of the police court is 

 usurped, and juvenile mockeries of tribunals dispense amateur 

 justice for offences committed outside, and as well inside, the 

 school premises. 



And now the clergy, at their own request in most cases, are 

 to be deprived of what one would have imagined they considered 

 their special and most precious work, namely, the definite reli- 

 gious teaching of the young. In fact, the. school seems destined 

 to lessen or to obviate entirely the work and duty of the parent, 

 the employer, the magistrate, and the clergy. 



From the age of 3, when children are taken off their parents' 

 hands to dally through Kindergarten exercises, the school is re- 

 sponsible for almost every phase of the development of the 

 younger generation. The school, in fact, has to do everything 

 with the child except bring it into the world, and if the 'State is 

 going to undertake so much responsibility I do not see how it can • 

 fail eventually to propose some State system of eugenics which 

 will make marriage a matter of State permission, or even selec- 

 tion. It is the consideration of logical extremes of this kind, 

 against which all reasonable human beings must revolt, which 

 sternly calls for some halt to be made in this surrender to the 

 school of so many grave responsibilities which really belong to 

 1 ithers. 



