6^9 



IMPERIAL VIEWS ON EDUCATION. 



The Lord Chancellor's various pro- 

 nouncements upon the necessity for the 

 reorganisation or readjustment of the 

 British educational system are so vital 

 that as a natural sequence many and 

 various opinions have been put before 

 the public in books, magazines, and 

 newspapers. The ideas of the two great 

 educationalists who have each embodied 

 their opinion in a book will prove useful. 



Dr. Grav has had 

 the practical experi- 

 ence of thirty years 

 as headmaster of 

 Bradfield College, 

 which he found in 

 the depths a n cl 

 brought to a high 

 degree of efficiency. 

 He is himself an 

 Oxford man, who 

 has since his retire- 

 ment from Brad- 

 held gained fresh 

 insight into educa- 

 tional matters as a 

 member of the 

 Mosely Commis- 

 sion, f.nd by his 

 departmental work 

 in British Colum- 

 bia, and, moreover, 

 those who passed 

 through his hands 

 at Bradfield will 

 agfree that he is en- 

 titled to speak with 

 authority. In his 

 book, "The Public 

 Schools and the 

 Empire " (Williams 

 and Norgate), he 

 experiences, which 



D."^. H. R. CRAY. 



of the scholastic profession are not fit 

 for independence and unfettered 

 authority. On the contrary, he feels it 

 to be a crying shame that the\- have been 

 accorded so few marks of public recog- 

 nition for their able, loyal, and self- 

 denying services. But nothing short of 

 external control will get rid of the 

 chaotic and unscientific systcm^ — or want 

 of system — under which the education 



of the future citizen 

 is carried out. For 

 the grounds upon 

 which Dr. Gray 

 founds his convic- 

 tion our readers 

 must go to the book 

 itself ; no short 

 summary could 

 give their value 

 adequately. 



Scarcely a phase 

 of schoolboy life is 

 left untouched in 

 his book, which 

 deals with the sys- 

 tem of housemas- 

 ters, the mistake of 

 all teachers being 

 University men, the 

 question of pre- 

 fects, holidays, 

 boys who fail to 

 profit by the or- 

 dinary system, the 

 necessity for a reli- 

 gious basis, a little 

 discretion as re- 

 gards sports, and 

 so on ; but the one 



summarises his 

 ead him to the 

 conclusion that external control over 

 all stages of education i«, in the in- 



point upon which 

 he la\-s great emphasis is the fact 

 that revision must begin with the 

 universities, meaning, of course, Ox- 

 ford and Cambridge. The system by 



terests of Empire, the only remed}' for which boys who have not the least likeli 

 the existing state of educational chaos. 



This opinion Dr. Gray holds — not 

 through an undue bias in favour of ex- 

 tending the power of the State over the 

 life of the individual citizen ; not be- 

 cause the body of men who fill the ranks 



hood of going to any universit\- — that 

 is to sa)-, the large majority of the 

 scholars in England's secondary schools 

 —must pass under the yoke of the 

 examinations of these rival universities 

 is more than absurd, it is harmful to the 



