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elementary schools. Hardly a handful had been instructed in 
modelling or elementary science, and in the case of boys the pen 
was the only useful implement which they had been taught to 
use with their hands. Anything in the shape of systematic 
manual or technical instruction had been practically unknown in 
our elementary schools. And yet this happened, as I have said, 
in a country which offered more employment to skilled handi- 
craftsmen and industrial specialists than any in the world. In 
England alone the elementary school education was chaos. 
There were excellent grammar schools, high schools, colleges 
and evening classes, and the ancient universities with their 
splendid endowments intended for the nation, but mainly 
absorbed by the wealthy. But there was no systematic secondary 
education organised by State or municipalities for the public 
benefit, forming the bridge between the elementary schools and 
the universities open alike to the poor as to the rich. In all the 
leading countries across the channel. the secondary school took 
its natural place above the elementary school, and carried on the 
work, and by means of scholarships carrying forward the 
talented and those possessing means and leisure, on the one 
hand, to the Polytechnic School for the highest scientific training, 
and on the other, to the university for those desiring equal 
culture in literature or the classics. 
In England, with most boys, when they left the day school 
their education was ‘ finished,’’ and they never entered a school 
again. On the Continent, when they left the day school, their 
serious education only began. In the towns everywhere there 
were free night schools—continuation and improvement schools— 
maintained by the municipalities for teaching drawing, science, 
languages, literature, music, commerce, and all subjects that 
would help apprentices and young men and women in their 
callings. In manufacturing towns there were special technical 
schools, in which the principles underlying the local industries 
might be systematically studied and in many instances practically 
applied. I have no desire to minimise the useful work which 
was being done in evening classes in this country under the 
Science and Art Department. But of the zeal for education 
abroad we had no conception in this country, and of the rivalry 
of states and municipalities in their lavish equipment of schools 
attended by the operative classes. They had discovered by hard 
experience that to find the best they must offer facilities to all, 
and that it was only in training the intellects and hands of their 
people that they could contend against the organised industries 
and the mineral and material resources of England, and they had 
discovered that the schoolmaster was a more effective civiliser 
and a cheaper state official than the policeman. While we had 
given untiring attention to the development of our machinery 
