46 



NATURE 



[March 21, 19 18 



educationists prior to the war. Let it be remem- 

 bered how many Education Bills since the Act of 

 1902 have proved still-born or abortive. 



The present Bill has at least achieved one vic- 

 tory : it has killed "half-time" for children under 

 the agfe of fourteen years, and will thus bring- into 

 full-time education in the schools upwards of 

 207,000 children (who are now either partially or 

 wholly excluded), to their manifest great advan- 

 tage. The Lancashire and Yorkshire textile em- 

 ployers have almost unanimously accepted the 

 inevitable judgment on this iniquitous system. 

 The Bill further proposes, as perhaps its cardinal 

 feature, and upon which serious opposition will 

 concentrate itself, to establish the means of con- 

 tinued education within working hours for young 

 persons between the ages of fourteen and eighteen 

 years, by requiring- at least eight hours per week 

 during forty weeks of each year, or a total of 320 

 hours, to be devoted to their physical, mental, 

 and moral training. 



The necessity for such a measure, having regard 

 to the large expenditure upon public elementary 

 education, which must otherwise largely fail of its 

 purpose, is to be seen in the fact that at the 

 present time, despite the provision now made 

 in evening classes, there are considerably 

 more than 2\ millions of our youth between 

 twelve and eighteen years of age who have 

 ceased all opportunities of education, many 

 of whom grow up uncared for in large measure 

 in body, mind, and soul. There are those who, 

 like the Workers' Educational Association, deeply 

 regret that opportunity has not been taken to 

 place before Parliament and the people at this 

 crucial time a measure of a much more drastic 

 and far-reaching character. They regard the time 

 as opportune for great and vital changes in the 

 sphere of education. They point out the ineffective- 

 ness and unfruitful results of our elementary 

 education, how it is little better than a blind 

 alley lacking organic relation with the system \ 

 of secondary schools, to which fewer than 5 per 

 cent, of the children in public elementary schools 

 in England proceed ; that the provision of secon- I 

 dary education and the facilities for enjoying it are : 

 lamentably deficient, and, even when taken ad- 

 vantage of, are pursued to such small effect that | 

 the school life of a secondary-school boy is but j 

 two years and nine months, and of a girl two 

 years and eleven months, and that the average 

 leaving age of boys is only fifteen years and seven 

 months, and of girls sixteen years, a large number 

 ceasing to attend the secondary schools at all after 

 fourteen. 



This reacts upon institutions of higher learning 

 with disastrous results, seeing that from the 

 secondary schools upon the grant list in England 

 and Wales in 1910 only 1008 pupils went forward 

 to the universities, being 2*2 per cent, of the total 

 number (44,934) who left secondary schools in 

 that year. 



Of these, more than half (51*66 per cent.) were 

 ex-elementary-school children. As 600,000 chil- 

 NO. 2525, VOL. lOl] 



I dren leave the elementary schools annually, only 

 j about one per thousand receive a university edu- 

 j cation, and so unequally are the facilities dis- 

 tributed for such advanced training that more than 

 one-half of the 566 boys passing from English 

 [ public secondary schools to the universities come 

 • from three counties, and there are actually three 



counties which contribute no candidates at all. 

 i It is doubtless true that many of the proposals- 

 of the Bill, which are now merely permissive, 

 should be made mandatory, as, for example, the 

 provision of nursery schools, open to all children 

 whose parents wish them to attend; the duty of 

 making adequate provision for medical and dental 

 treatment ; and of providing the means of physical 

 training, baths, and playing fields. 



Other desirable features would be the prohibi- 

 tion of all employment of children for profit or 

 wages during the compulsory full-time schoo! 

 period; the provision of maintenance allowances,- 

 the raising of the elementary-school age to fifteeni 

 within a defined period; the abolition of fees in 

 I secondary schools; the continued education for 

 practically half-time for all young persons not re- 

 \ ceiving full-time education; the serious limitation 

 ; of the hours of labour for young persons below 

 I eighteen years of age ; reduction in the size of 

 ! classes in elementary schools to forty, and ulti- 

 I mately to thirty; an increase in the amount of 

 i State grant to 75 per cent., where all the con- 

 j ditions of a satisfactory provision for education 

 j are fulfilled, together with provision for the con- 

 tinued education of children who, being less than 

 fourteen, left school before the Act comes into 

 force, as well as that large body of children, esti- 

 mated at 600,000, who have been exempted from 

 school attendance during the war. 



It is satisfactory to find that the Bill is to be 

 committed to a Committee of the whole House, 

 where it will have the advantage of public debate, 

 and where a number of amendments will be sub- 

 mitted, not all of them with a view to its improve- 

 ment, but rather with the purpose of delay and of 

 ultimate defeat. Mr. Fisher, who has shown con- 

 spicuous zeal and industry in the advocacy of his 

 measure, and would doubtless welcome any agreed 

 amendments widening its scope, will need all the 

 help of its friends to ensure its safe passage 

 through the House. The measure is without ques- 

 tion a considerable advance, and may be regarded 

 as a step towards the realisation of the ideals to 

 which the best friends of education for all the 

 people aspire. "We have," said Mr. Fisher in 

 the course of the debate, "in this country a con- 

 tinual wastage of ability, of clfaracter, and of 

 physique. That is the principal evil which it is 

 proposed to remedy in this Bill. In other words, 

 this Bill acclaims the principle of the rights of 

 youth. We hold that young people have a right 

 to be educated, and that youth is the period speci- 

 ally set apart for that purpose. . . . The State 

 must make up its mind as to the minimum of the 

 education that its citizens should receive, and them 

 require that minimum to be given." 





