Land Problems and National Welfare 



exists still a certain number of inspectors who 

 may damp rather than encourage local initia- 

 tive, but such men certainly are not missionaries 

 of the true spirit that prevails at the Board. 



It is naturally most important that harmony 

 should exist between the central and the local 

 authority, otherwise it will be hard to achieve 

 the * strength that lies in concentration of effort 

 and co-ordination of aim " that Mr. Bray so 

 ably contends for in his excellent work, " The 

 Town Child." 



A most important point is how to induce 

 local education authorities to concentrate their 

 effort and co-ordinate their aim. The local 

 authorities do not keep sufficiently in touch with 

 each other ; a certain amount of esprit de corps 

 is right, but in a question of such national 

 importance as the development of our system of 

 education, there ought to be more co-operation 

 than at present there is amongst education 

 authorities. Every experiment to make our 

 education more practical should be carefully 

 watched by all local committees and either 

 adopted or adapted as soon as it has proved 

 successful. 



The County Councils Association is supposed 

 to be the chief means of keeping County 

 Councils in touch with each other, and it at- 

 tains this object, but not sufficiently, particu- 

 larly in the department of education. It is 

 hard to see how to remedy this defect ; possibly 



152 



