94 The Conferences 



" For long, people in England and throughout the world had 

 become wearied of an exclusively literary curriculum, which is 

 bad for every child, as tending solely to the development of its 

 mental faculties, and particularly bad for the country child, 

 because it withholds all knowledge of the life around him. This 

 has been fully realized by the Board of Education in the Code 

 of 1900, the Specimen Courses of Instruction and the changes 

 in the curricula of the training colleges. Much excellent work 

 has for many years been done in isolated schools to familiarize 

 children with the simple facts of nature, to develop their powers 

 of observation, to awaken a spirit of inquiry, and to teach them 

 less from books and more from things. But this work is com- 

 paratively unknown. There is no general agreement as to 

 methods of instruction, nor as to what is practicable and ex- 

 pedient. There is a risk, too, that inexperienced teachers, at- 

 tempting to teach subjects of which they have no knowledge 

 beyond that of a text-book, may bring ridicule upon the whole 

 movement, especially amongst the rural classes, and that the 

 last state of the schools may be worse than the first. It seemed, 

 therefore, that the time had arrived when an attempt should be 

 made to collect evidence of what is being done, and to illustrate 

 by some central exhibition the lines which ought to be followed. 

 I consulted Sir G. Kekewich, who cordially approved. Sir 

 William Hart- Dyke and Sir John Hibbert at once gave me 

 their support ; and in Sir John Cockburn, who was for seven 

 years ^Minister of Education in South Australia, besides being 

 Prime Minister and subsequently Agent-General for the Colony, 

 we found a most able chairman of the executive committee. 

 The manner in which the project was taken up was extraordinary, 

 evidencing the intense interest in this particular question, and 

 that we had hit upon the right psychological moment. The 

 Royal Botanic Society most generously placed their grounds 

 at our disposal — a fact which deserves recognition. In some 

 respects the exhibition is unique. It is questionable whether any 

 exhibition upon the same scale has ever been directed to one 

 element in education — namely, the study of Nature. We shall 

 show what is done at every step from the infant school up to 

 such institutions as the Wye and Downton Agricultural Colleges 

 on the one hand, and the Durham College of Science and the 



