n 4 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



of geographical nomenclature was too often the sole 

 result of the expensive training undergone by the 

 children of the nation. For the most part it was 

 neither education nor training, in any reasonable sense 

 of the word. Though the influence of the system on 

 the children was assuredly considerably better than that 

 of the worst and most degraded homes, it is certain 

 that, in the normal type of school, the atmosphere was 

 far less fitted to form useful, intelligent, self-reliant 

 citizens than the home surroundings of the average 

 family from which the children were withdrawn during 

 the most impressionable years of their lives. And its 

 worst error lay in the dissemination of the idea that the 

 responsibility for the right upbringing of children does 

 not lie with the parents. In a recent address on 

 educational matters, the speaker inferred that it denoted 

 moral obliquity to doubt the wisdom of the Education 

 Act of 1870, and almost in the same breath bewailed 

 the lack of the sense of parental responsibility in 

 matters of the upbringing of children. We believe 

 that his lamentations were largely addressed to the 

 inevitableness which connects cause and effect. 



If the parental desire was that any given child should 

 be trained for a clerkship or other opening in which 

 some degree of literary achievement was essential, and 

 if the child appeared suited for that profession, then 

 the opportunities offered in the public elementary 

 schools might reasonably be taken advantage of. But 

 if a wider choice of occupation lay open to view, if 

 the inborn qualities and aptitudes of the child did not 

 lie in the direction of clerkly habits of life, then the 

 compulsion exercised to make all families submit them- 



