370 BRAIN WORK AND 



Plainly stated, the aims of the school under 

 this system ought to be the following : To give 

 such an education that, on leaving school at the 

 age of eighteen or twenty, each boy and each 

 girl should be endowed with a thorough know- 

 ledge of science such a knowledge as might 

 enable them to be useful workers in science 

 and, at the same time, to give them a general 

 knowledge of what constitutes the bases of 

 technical training, and such a skill in some 

 special trade as would enable each of them to 

 take his or her place in the grand world of the 

 manual production of wealth.* I know that 

 many will find that aim too large, or even im- 

 possible to attain, but I hope that if they have 

 the patience to read the following pages, they will 

 see that we require nothing beyond what can be 

 easily attained. In fact, it has been attained ; 

 and what has been done on a small scale could 

 be done on a wider scale, were it not for the 

 economical and social causes which prevent 



* In their examination of the causes of unemployment in 

 York, based not on economists' hypotheses, but on a close study 

 of the real facts in each individual case ( Unemployment : a 

 Social Study, London, 1911), Seebohm Rowntree and Mr. 

 Bruno Lasker have come to the conclusion that the chief cause of 

 unemployment is that young people, after having left the school 

 (where they learn no trade), find employment in such professions 

 as greengrocer boy, newspaper boy, and the like, which represent 

 " a blind alley." When they reach the age of eighteen or 

 twenty, they must leave, because the wages are a boy's wages, 

 and they Know no trade whatever 1 



