ii8 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



We are just beginning to emerge from the desolation 

 of pothooks and blackboards into which their mistaken 

 zeal led us. Our education authorities occasionally re- 

 cognize a school outside the normal run trade schools, 

 schools for home-making and serious efforts are made 

 to form centres of technical instruction, appropriate to 

 the industries and specialized character of the popula- 

 tion of each district. But further differentiation is the 

 most crying need, together with a recognition of the 

 fact that the various sections of the community differ 

 inherently among themselves, and, to make the most 

 of their possibilities, require methods of training 

 differing profoundly among each other in scope, aim 

 and duration. 



Far more use might be made of the natural develop- 

 ment of childhood in a well-ordered home of almost 

 any class, and much help could be obtained from a 

 wise encouragement of individual and local enterprise. 

 Unfortunately, it is almost inherent in any form of 

 centralized official control to press for uniformity and 

 to minimize the opportunities for private and local 

 endeavour. If the home environment be so cor- 

 rupting that the removal of the children from parental 

 influence becomes a necessity in the interests of society, 

 the laws of heredity would lead us to believe that a clear 

 case has been established for preventing the creation 

 of further decadent citizens by the rigid segregation of 

 the parents. 



Whatever be the methods of training in vogue in a 

 country in contradistinction to the principles of educa- 

 tion whether we agree with them or regard them 



