Science in National Education 



Treasury. This current of opinion may lead to 

 an increase in the power of the central authority 

 and to some weakening of the power of the local 

 authorities. For a time, this change might seem to 

 hasten the growth of a national system of educa- 

 tion, but it is doubtful whether, in the long run, 

 education (elementary and higher elementary edu- 

 cation at all events) would not suffer by the 

 lessening of a sense of local responsibility for the 

 welfare of the schools. 



Secondly, there is still a good deal of indiffer- 

 ence in many districts with regard to the im- 

 provement of the local secondary schools. It is 

 true that local responsibility for the welfare of 

 these schools is new and that there has hardly 

 been time for the importance of the responsibility 

 to be fully realised. On the other hand, the 

 fact that the leading residents in each district 

 usually send their own sons away to boarding 

 schools at a distance withdraws from the local 

 secondary day schools the personal interest which 

 they would otherwise enjoy. For the time (though 

 there are some signs of a reaction) the habit of 

 sending boys away, even from an early age, to 

 boarding schools is increasing rather than other- 

 wise. Yet experience in other countries shows 

 that strongly staffed and well-taught secondary 

 day schools form the intellectual backbone of a 

 system of national education. Our local secondary 

 day schools suffer as a rule from crippling poverty. 

 The assistant masters are usually paid miserable 



salaries, and not one in a hundred of them can 



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