1 86 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 



be due partially to certain faults in our recent methods 

 of education. Both our public and elementary schools 

 have been much to blame, the one in that they 

 failed to modify the type of education to suit the 

 altering conditions of national life, the other that they 

 tended to depreciate manual activity and craftsmanship, 

 and over-supplied the ranks of the clerks and penmen. 

 The great public schools go on training their boys chiefly 

 in classics and ancient literature, when the demand has 

 been for men of general education, for men of science, 

 for economists, engineers, and scientific agriculturists, 

 of the same class and breeding as the men supplied by 

 the public schools. The classically trained men have 

 difficulty in finding openings in after life, owing to their 

 type of education. The men educated scientifically in 

 schools of other types are often rejected because their 

 heredity and training leave them unfit to deal with 

 men, especially with workmen, foreigners and natives. 

 Moreover, from the employer's point of view they 

 often lack the guarantees of character and the intuitive 

 sense of masterfulness that are the usual concomitants 

 of the man of good family. 



In any scheme of primary education, the object 

 should have been to provide for a general awaken- 

 ing of the intelligence, by observation, reasoning, 

 and practical knowledge, with special attention to 

 manual training and the elements of domestic life. 

 Here the framers of the code of 1870, assuming that 

 many homes would continue to supply these qualifica- 

 tions, devised a curriculum — excellent as an alternative 

 — to give every one the education suitable for a clerk- 

 ship or the teaching profession. But withdrawing 



