Science in National Education 



thing, whether it is designed to encourage observa- 

 tion and thinking in his children, to make their 

 minds active and not merely receptive, whether it 

 is experimental enough, whether it is first hand." 



It would be an incalculable benefit to English 

 national life if the whole of our elementary school 

 system were full of the intellectual vigour which 

 already distinguishes some of the schools, and if, 

 through improved staffing and access to playing- 

 fields, the success of the best schools in encourag- 

 ing corporate spirit could be reproduced in all. 

 The old idea that the public elementary schools 

 are for the poor only has lost much of its power 

 but still works mischief to the unity of our social 

 life. The quickest way to eradicate it is to make 

 the public elementary schools so good that parents 

 who have their children's welfare at heart will want 

 to send them there. 



Urgent, too, is the need (in some respects it is 

 the most urgent) for an improvement in the great 

 majority of our local secondary day schools. They 

 have been left to a bitter struggle with financial 

 difficulties. They can, as a rule, afford no more 

 than a pittance to their assistant teachers. Very 

 many of them are ill equipped for the teaching 

 of the humanities. Mr. Headlam, in his " Report 

 on the Teaching of Literary Subjects in some 

 Secondary Schools for Boys," 1 dwelt upon the 

 need for better school libraries. " In scarcely a 

 single school " (he was referring to seventy which 



1 "General Reports on Higher Education," 1902, p. 65. 

 Eyre Spottiswoode, 1903. Cd. 1738. 6d. 



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