The Opening Ceremony 91 



countered in the rural districts, and we have been 

 most anxious to find some means by which education, 

 and more especially elementary education, should be 

 brought into closer relation with rural life and with 

 the occupations connected with the cultivation of the 

 land, and that all classes connected with the land 

 should be induced to feel that education is a thing 

 which is not necessarily antagonistic to, but which 

 ought to be conducive to, the interests of all who are 

 engaged in the cultivation of land. We at the Board 

 of Education, although we have long had this feeling, 

 could not do very much in the matter until we obtained 

 some external assistance. We can only prescribe the 

 subjects and the course of instruction within certain 

 very wide limits. The actual course of instruction 

 must be left to a very great extent to the managers 

 of schools and to the teachers in schools; and not 

 unnaturally managers and teachers have been, like 

 most of us, inclined rather to continue in the old 

 grooves than to strike out into new directions and 

 developments for themselves. W^ithin the last three 

 years we have received that external assistance and 

 impulse towards a new departure of which we stood 

 in need. 



A very influential committee has been formed, and 

 joined by a large number of members of Parliament, 

 and by a large number of members of county councils, 

 and its object is to draw up proposals to improve the 

 character and adapt more to its surrounding circum- 

 stances the instruction given in the schools of the 

 rural districts. The committee drew up certain reso- 

 lutions, which were formally laid before the Board of 

 Education and accepted with great pleasure and satis- 



