APPENDIX II 195 



of false economy in regard to education. Let us make drastic 

 changes if they be necessary, let us stop expenditure on the 

 non-essentials in education and see that every penny is well 

 spent, but let us remember that it is only by spending sufficient 

 to secure sound and practical education that we can hope 

 to recuperate after this disastrous war— that we can hope to 

 make head against the increased competition of the United 

 States and Germany itself. Germany is a highly organized 

 industrial countr)', and after this war its incentives to increase 

 production will be greater than ever. 



In the past we have spent large sums on our elementary 

 education. Much of this money has been wasted because 

 instruction has been too " bookish," in the bad sense of the 

 word, and not sufficiently practical. Secondly, because of 

 the scant provision for continuation instruction, much in- 

 struction that has been so costly to provide has been entirely 

 lost. We see children going in for technical courses at the 

 age of sixteen who cannot benefit to the full by these courses 

 because their general education is bad — because they have 

 forgotten so much of what has been taught them. Other 

 countries are far better provided with continuation instruction 

 than we are, and even in the case of the children of labourers 

 it is very generally carried on to the age of sixteen and even 

 eighteen. 



To consider the case of the countryside, this war has still 

 further depleted our rural population. A strong and flourish- 

 ing rural population is the first essential for the welfare of a 

 country, so that henceforth our chief aim in education must 

 be to teach the importance of country life from the national 

 point of view, and to instil more and more a love of it in the 

 rising generation both in town and country schools. I admit 

 that from the labouring man's point of view country condi- 

 tions have in the past been most unsatisfactory and the 

 opportunities for betterment too few. These conditions must 

 be changed, and I am convinced that they will be changed 

 ere long to such an extent that the teachers themselves will 

 feci justified in using their influence to direct the inclination 



