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I lead some of you to enquire into the chnracter of the work done 

 by your children at school : I wish I could feel sure that such 

 enquiry would not end in your becoming intensely dissatisfied. 

 The fact is that in this, as in many other matters, we shirk and 

 shift responsibility. If parents send their children to school say at 

 6 to 8 years of age and leave them there until 16, 17, or 18 years 

 old, witliout making the slightest endeavour to ascertain if they 

 are l)eing properly trained, whose fault is it if at the end of their 

 school life it be discovered that they have learut nothing of real 

 vahie to them in years to come? But liow often is this discovery 

 made ? How frequently do we hear the outcry, " What am I to do 

 with my sons?" And does not the difficulty in too many cases 

 arise from the fact that the said sons have had no proper training 

 at school 1 The fact is that our middle-class schoolmasters are, in 

 too many cases, perfectly irresponsible persons. Parents, as a rule, 

 have not the knowledge which would enable them to be judges ; 

 moreover, no school could be successfully carried on if subject to 

 constant interference. But whereas in tlie Board Schools provision 

 is made for testing the efficiency of the teachers, we, the middle- 

 class public, have absolutely no guarantee that the teachers in the 

 schools available to our children are competent to perform the work 

 they undertake ; and those who become teachers in our schools, as 

 a rule, enter upon their duties without the slightest previous 

 training, and have gradually to find out for themselves how to 

 teach. The result is that, having themselves learnt more or less 

 ahcnit events and things, but rarely, if ever, the art of doiv;/ 

 things — they merely teach our children about events and things, 

 and do their best to stunt what little intellect they possess by 

 causing them to commit to memory a vast amount of useless 

 verbiage, failing to realise that it is their main duty to develop 

 faculties and not to exact positive knowledge. This is why we 

 have such difficulty in placing our sons. Xo doubt changes are 

 taking place ; things are improving : but all too slowly if we are 

 to retain that position of vantage in the world which Englishmen 

 have so long enjoyed. I have spoken strongly in the hope of 

 drawing your attention to this subject, as at the present day it is 

 tlie most important one on which it is necessary to form public 

 o]iinion. 



