126 



NATURE 



[April 12, 191 7 



THE BEDROCK OF EDUCATIONAL 

 PROGRESS. 



THE final Report of the Departmental Com- 

 mittee on Juvenile Education in Relation to 

 Employment after the War, a summary of the 

 recommendations of which appeared in our issue 

 of last week, is a welcome indication of the great 

 change which within the last few years, and 

 notably during the course of the present disastrous 

 war, has come over the mind of the nation in 

 respect of the importance and necessity of in- 

 creased facilities for education for all classes of 

 the people and the need for a more intelligent and 

 generous estimation of its requirements. 



The committee, in entering upon the inquiry, 

 set before itself a high ideal, realising, as the 

 report shows, the great work of reconstruction 

 which the war has imposed upon the nation in 

 many spheres of its activities — social, industrial, 

 and commercial — in the successful accomplish- 

 ment of which it boldly asserts that "education, 

 with its stimulus and discipline, must be our 

 stand-by." The committee has taken full advan- 

 tage of the terms of reference to review the condi- 

 tions under which elementary education is 

 administered in England and Wales, its range, 

 quality, and purpose, especially in the later years 

 of school life, and to lay bare in the report its 

 shortcomings, no less than the grievous waste of 

 the public resources arising from the ineffective 

 preparation of the great mass of the children of 

 the nation for the duties and responsibilities of 

 life and for a satisfactory livelihood, due to the 

 fact that so many of them are allowed to leave 

 school at an untimely age and that no proper 

 provision is made for the continuance of their 

 education on entering into employment. 



The war, by the shutting down of commerce 

 with the Central Powers, has revealed to all 

 classes of the community the vast extent to which 

 we were dependent upon them, and especially upon 

 Germany, for the supply of many highly valuable 

 manufactured products, essential to our well- 

 being, and the fruit solely of the applications of 

 scientific discovery: that she held the "key" to 

 certain of our important industries, such, for 

 example-, as those of cotton and woollen textiles, 

 which largely depended for their successful mar- 

 keting upon the dyes and finishes manufactured 

 by German chemical firms. Hence the grave un- 

 easiness which has of late possessed the minds of 

 many of our leaders as to the state of our educa- 

 tion, and as to the results of the large and grow- 

 ing expenditure upon it since the Act of 1870, and 

 now amounting, imperially and locally, to con- 

 siderably more than thirty millions sterling 

 annually. 



It is recognised, and it is a highly commendable 

 feature in the report, that elementary education 

 is the base of any effective educational organisa- 

 , tion, and that the superstructure of secondary and 

 university education rests of necessity upon it, so 

 far as the means of selection of the best brains 

 of the mass of the nation for the opportunity of 

 advanced training is concerned. The first demand 



NO. 2476, VOL. 99] 



must therefore necessarily be that the course of 

 elementary education shall be continued without 

 any exemption whatsoever for every child up to 

 the age of fourteen at least. The report shows a 

 leakage in full-time attendance at the elementary . 

 school of at least 33 per cent, between twelve and 

 thirteen, and thirteen and fourteen years, at least 

 in the period before the war, whilst for the years 

 beyond and up to the age of eighteen the number 

 of young persons outside all vital educational 

 influences reached the astounding number of 

 2,200,000, or 81 "5 per cent, of the total number 

 of juveniles at these ages. This vast number of 

 young people are to be found neither in day nor in 

 evening schools, and to them must be added the 

 large numl^er of half-timers who, chiefly in the 

 textile districts, are receiving a scanty education, 

 under "the present detestable system of half-time 

 exemptions," between the ages of twelve and 

 thirteen. 



With this mass of meagrely educated and in- 

 effectively trained young people physically, men- 

 tally, and morally, how is it possible to maintain 

 the position of this nation, with its enormous im- 

 f>erial responsibilities, in face of the social, indus- 

 trial, and commercial competition of the better 

 instructed and trained nations of the Continent, 

 whose recognition of the potentialities of science 

 and the assiduity and the complete preparation 

 with which they have pursued it have enabled the 

 greatest of them, namely, Germany, to become 

 our most formidable rival? Despite the warnings 

 so strikingly set forth in the report of the Royal 

 Commission on Technical Instruction of 1882—84, 

 and of all the efforts which ensued thereon to 

 establish throughout the kingdom technical schools 

 and classes, only a mere fraction of the industrial 

 population has been reached, and because of the 

 inadequate preparation of the large majority of 

 the students who availed themselves of the facili- 

 ties offered, which were chiefly in the evening, at 

 the close of the day's work, only a comparative 

 few reai>ed the full benefit of the provision made. 



The truth is that we began at the wrong end, 

 and we now realise in some measure the serious 

 character of our error. We failed to perceive that 

 no satisfactory technical instruction can be given 

 except u|>on a sound basis of general, including 

 scientific, training, continued throughout the full 

 period of pre-adolescent life, and that such train- 

 ing for those capable of receiving it — and they are 

 a considerable percentage of the general mass — 

 shall be further continued for whole-time pupils in 

 suitably equipped and staffed secondary schools, 

 in preparation for the highest specialised instruc- 

 tion and training available in our universities and 

 in the highest type of technological institutions. 



For those who must perforce — and they will be 

 the great majority of those attending the ele- 

 mentary schools — enter the ranks of bread- 

 winners on leaving school at fourteen, the report 

 makes a strong plea for provision for continued 

 education for at least eight hours per week, taken 

 from the ordinary working hours and continued 

 for ten months during each year until the age of 

 eighteen is reached. The course of education to 



