Science in National 



frank discussion is healthier than insipidity and 

 loss of interest. Stubborn personal opinions are 

 like grit in the bearings of the machine. State 

 education of the bureaucratic type resents oppo- 

 sition. It tries to freeze out private effort. It 

 is intolerant of competing claims. In all these 

 respects it is repugnant to the genius of English 

 life, though not necessarily repugnant to some of 

 the sections of which English life is composed. 

 Will it not be prudent, therefore, to devise for 

 England a kind of State education different from 

 the pattern adopted in other countries which are 

 sometimes held up to us as models for our 

 imitation ? 



In one of her books on West Africa, Miss Mary 

 Kingsley made the remark that tf a careful study of 

 the things a man, black or white, fails to do usually 

 gives you a truer understanding of the man than the 

 things he succeeds in doing." If this applies not 

 to individuals only but to nations also, it is worth 

 while to consider why England, in so many other 

 forms of social effort a pioneer, has been but slow 

 in organising her State system of education. Of 

 the many reasons which may be cited for this 

 backwardness (some of them, it must be admitted, 

 intellectually discreditable, others much the re- 

 verse) I believe the fundamental one to be this. 

 At each great crisis in educational policy the think- 

 ing and politically influential classes in England 

 have been more equally divided in their convictions 

 as to the type of citizen which it was expedient to 

 produce and as to the civic aims which it was 



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