302 



NATURE 



[November ii, 1915 



on the Continent. Such, for instance, are the schools 

 of Manchester, Salford, Birming^ham, Belfast, Shef- 

 field, Bradford, Bristol, Edinburgh, Nottingham, 

 London, and of these several take rank as technical 

 universities where day students may ji;raduate and 

 recognised degrees may be obtained. In particular, 

 the Imperial College of Science and Technology and 

 the Manchester School of Technology are not sur- 

 passed by any similar institution in the world. 



There are now eleven universities in England and 

 Wales, including the ancient ones of Oxford, Cam- 

 bridge, and Durham, The latter have conformed to 

 the spirit of the age by adapting theinselves to the 

 requirements of science, while the more modern uni- 

 versities, though primarily established to meet the 

 needs of industrial development, have taken ample 

 care of the equally important subject of the arts. 



A general survey of our present equipment for 

 national education would, however, clearly show that 

 we are still far below the standard our industries 

 require if they are to compete successfully with those 

 of other countries ; therefore the most reactionary form 

 of economy during the war would be the reduction 

 of Government grants to education of any grade. 



It would be noted also that no provision has vet 

 been made to continue the education begun in the 

 elementary schools through the period of adolescence 

 — the impressionable period for good or evil — in the 

 life of our young people who at fourteen years of age 

 must begin to earn something towards their own cost 

 of living. Each year something like 600,000 of these 

 young people leave the elementary schools, forming a 

 population of about two millions of young people, from 

 fourteen to seventeen years of age, a prey to many 

 evil influences, and comparatively few of them are 

 accounted for in the attendances at the evening 

 schools. Special provision for them has not yet been 

 made, nor has any definite system of continuation 

 schools for the manual worker yet been established ; 

 consequently the expenditure on public elementary 

 education is largely wasted, and the mental, moral, 

 and physical training of the children of the nation is 

 suddenly arrested at fourteen years of age. 



This link in the chain of education is so vitally 

 important from the industrial point of view 

 alone that it should be dealt with without 

 delay by a special committee of industrial and 

 educational experts ; for after this war more 

 than ever shall we need to use every advantage 

 that the highest education can confer upon our people 

 in order to utilise the ample material resources of all 

 kinds which we possess, if we wish to maintain our 

 place in the world of industry and commerce. 



At this point I will venture to express a doubt as to 

 the efficiency in administration of our national educa- 

 tion system at the top, either for initiation orcontrol. 

 A Department of Education, with a Cabinet Minister 

 as president, assisted by a permanent Secretary of 

 Education and a vast number of inspectors and 

 examiners and Civil Service clerks is, in my opinion, 

 unsuitable for our country as well as extremely un- 

 economical. A bureaucratic spirit creeps into such a 

 Department, without any one person being Sp>ecially 

 to blame, and such a spirit is the obstacle to en- 

 lightened progress. 



The freedom and responsibilities of local administra- 

 tive authorities, acting through competent directors of 

 education and committees composed largely of the 

 best and most enlightened in the community as co- 

 opted members, may be, and in fact are, frequently 

 impaired or destroyed altogether. 



The glaring inconsistency of the Board of Educa- 

 tion, as at present constituted, lies in the political 

 necessity of changing the president at every ciiange of 

 Government. The education of the people of the 



NO. 2402, VOL. 96] 



nation is a subject too sacred to be rendered liable to 

 the whims and caprices of party politics. 



A small salaried Council or Royal Commission of 

 Education, appointed by Parliament from the best men 

 the country possesses, regardless of party, each retir- 

 ing at fixed periods, but eligible for reappointment, 

 would suffice to represent the State in all respects, 

 while ensuring the continuity of principles and methods 

 of progressive education. The local authorities, under 

 such conditions, would undertake large responsibilities 

 with greater freedom, and higher educational efficiency 

 would be assured throughout their respective areas of 

 administration. 



One's mind naturally associates the desire for true 

 education chiefly with the industrial classes, and 

 especially so in these times when, under the terrible 

 stress and strain of a vast war, the real qualities of 

 men and things are disclosed. It is obvious that a 

 more thorough and enlightened system of education 

 such as we have been considering would in the course 

 of years render the relations between employer and 

 emploved totally free from the troubles we have had 

 and must have from time to time under present 

 conditions. 



These disputes arise out of a sense of injury, real 

 or imaginary, on the part of one side or the other, 

 generally in connection with wages and hours of 

 labour, or. with questions of discipline and business 

 management. Evidence is accumulating to prove 

 that the relationship between employer and employed 

 has hitherto, generally speaking, been based on false 

 and glaringly unscientific principles. Trades unions 

 and employers' federations exist more for organised 

 defence and resistance than for peaceful progress, and 

 it lies in the very nature of the present system of 

 industrial management that this should be so. There 

 is really as little cause for the two elements involved 

 in industry, namely, capital and labour, to be divided, 

 as for a household to be divided against itself. Em- 

 ployers and employed live, as it were, under one roof 

 and for one purpose, the one being absolutely de- 

 pendent on the other. They must rise, continue, or 

 fall together. For want of a thorough understanding 

 of this economic law, as old as the hills, yet never 

 universally recognised, the path of industrial develop- 

 ment has been strewn with the wreckage of lives, 

 the waste of capital and energy, and at times with 

 incalculable misery for thousands of women and chil- 

 dren comparable only to a state of active warfare. 



Where there is no true vision the people perish. 

 Without the desire to learn, to know, to see and trust 

 to a better way than that of recurring strife, the 

 people deserve to perish. We must have visions in 

 relation to industrial peace such as we visionaries hold 

 in relation to international peace. After this Arma- 

 geddon has been fought out and the victory won by 

 those who fight for truth, justice, and right, against 

 what appears to be the frantic force of evil doers, we 

 must resolve to start again on a higher plane of indus- 

 trial relationship, in the attainment of which educa- 

 tion on the lines already indicated must necessarily 

 be the leading factor. 



No country in this world can so easily change the 

 moral and mental growth of its children from the 

 wrong direction to the right as Great Britain can. 

 We possess absolute political freedom-, the poorest of 

 the poor amongst us casting as potent a vote under 

 our self-governing constitution as the richest magnate 

 in the land. With the political freedom and individual 

 responsibility such as we enjoy, perfect discipline must 

 ensue if we become educated scientifically to do the 

 necessary thing in the right way, for the welfare 

 of the country and of all who dwell therein. 



If liberty and self-government by the people for the 



