22 REPORT OF THE SCOTTISH COMMISSION 



From the description given it will be evident that while these 

 High Schools have played an honourable part in the development 

 of Denmark their system is not applicable elsewhere. They 

 peculiarly answer to the conditions and fit the genius of the 

 Danish people. Where young people of from eighteen to twenty- 

 five years of age have a wage-earning opportunity they will not 

 sacrifice it for a period of the year in order to attend such courses of 

 education ; but it is a question worthy of consideration whether 

 the principles underlying the system could not be applied to a 

 greater extent than now in the evening continuation schools so 

 general throughout Scotland. 



Certainly these People's High Schools make a deep nnpression 

 upon the visitor. It is a wonderful thing to see, as at Lyngby, 

 young women of the peasant class, who have quitted the farm and 

 the field for three summer months in order to rub up their elementary 

 school education, and come under the influence of history, litera- 

 ture, poetry and song. That the culture of the High School 

 afterwards expresses itself in the home and the working life 

 cannot be doubted. Living in association, under the guidance 

 of teachers with whom the moulding of character is everything, 

 the students must insensibly gain the taste for order and refine- 

 ment, of which the evidences are never absent from the humblest 

 Danish dwelling. Nor is the part the High School plays in the 

 worldly success of the Danish farmer likely to be exaggerated. 

 Sir Horace Plunkett quotes it as the opinion of Danes of all classes 

 that the High School, with its general effect upon mind and char- 

 acter, is really more potent in the practical sphere than the school 

 of specialised instruction. At any rate this may be said ; if Danish 

 industrial advancement reminds us that we cannot too much exalt 

 the " technicalities," the High School reminds us that neither can 

 we afford to depress the "humanities." 



The Agricultural Schools 



When first instituted the High School, in addition to the 

 subjects already mentioned, took up land-surveying, agricultural 

 chemistry, and other sciences underlying the practice of agriculture. 

 As the latter developed and increased in importance this provision 

 proved insufficient, and it became necessary to devote whole 

 courses to such matters. Thus arose the " Landbrugsskole " or 

 Agricultural School as a branch from the High School stem, obtain- 

 ing its pupils and methods from the High School, but having agri- 

 culture and the natural sciences for its subject matter. As at the 

 High School, the pupils are all boarders, pass no examination, and 

 get no certificate. Like them also the schools are private ventures, 

 now subsidised by the State, and in a number of cases the land 

 attached to them is the property of the State, and is let to the 

 schools for a nominal sum. 



Of the Agricultural Schools fourteen are entirely separate from 

 the High Schools, one is solely a dairy school, and twenty-nine are 

 situated contiguously to the High Schools, and in the case of these 



