8 ( 



Review "./ Reviews, 1 1 10/ 13. 



EDUCATIONAL 



PROGRESS. 



EDUCATION AND THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 



J. E. G. de Montmorency, in an 



article with the above title in the Edin 

 burgh Renew, expresses the opinion 

 that a wave oi educational energy is 

 passing through England at the present 

 time. Never before has one phase of 

 social duty been the subject of such 

 widespread attention. When we come 

 to regard a national system of educa- 

 tion from outside, it is important to con- 

 sider first the minimum results that it 

 must aim at, and, secondly, the maxi- 

 mum achievement which must be its 

 ideal. Perhaps the failure of English 

 education has been due to the fact thai 

 while it has toyed with the desire for an 

 ideal, it has grievously neglected the 

 essential minimum. What is that mini 

 mum ? Surely it is that the girls should 

 become fit for motherhood and mentally 

 and technically tit for managing a 

 household ; thai the boys should become 

 tit for fatherhood and mentally and 

 technically fit to earn a living wage in 

 some department of labour. 



Now if one thing is more certain than 

 another it is that an educational system 

 which casts the child adrift at the age 

 of twelve, thirteen, or fourteen years 

 cannot give this minimum. The educa 

 tional system that ends with the end of 

 school classes has not justified its exist- 

 ence. That existence will not be justi 

 tied till the minimum outfit for life is 

 made the birthright of every child that 

 enters the schools. Somehow or other 

 the period from fourteen to seventeen in 

 the case of every child must receive the 

 most watchful care, for these are the 

 all-important years, and the growth of 



body and mind in these years have a 

 significance in national life that it 

 would be impossible to over-rate. 

 Schools to the age of seventeen no one 

 need ask for, but secondary education 

 in the true sense must be continued to 

 that age. It may be given in associa- 

 tion with the workshop, domestic ser- 

 vice, the factory, the farm, apprentice- 

 ship shops, and numerous open-air 

 industries and forms of employment ; 

 but given it must be if the minimum 

 outfit for life — and secondary education 

 is the process that gives an outfit for 

 life — is to be secured. 



The principle to be dwelt upon with 

 respect to the whole vast problem is 

 this : that all education from the tenth 

 or eleventh year onward to at least the 

 age of seventeen must be, in the sense 

 explained above, secondary education. 

 Higher elementary teaching is nearly 

 useless for giving the child an outfit for 

 life. The child must receive a training 

 that teaches it to think and develop its 

 individuality. Moreover, the schools 

 will provide facilities, on payment of 

 fees or by means of scholarships, for 

 higher education in the case of those 

 children who are able to stay on and 

 obtain whole-time education for a longer 

 period in preparation for special work 

 or for the university. It is of the 

 greatest importance to make special 

 provision for those children who are 

 able to remain on at school and to take 

 up their life-work from the age of six- 

 teen onwards. At present there is al- 

 most a fashion to remove a child at 

 fifteen before the secondary training 



