296 Fifth Conference 



of specialized training open to them, but also because 

 there are not sufficiently remunerative positions open 

 to the more special teachers. But this also, I feel 

 sure, will be remedied in the near future. Besides, 

 when the training-college system is reorganized it 

 should be quite possible for part, at any rate, of the 

 second year to be spent in some agricultural training 

 college. 



I venture to hope that we may even go further and 

 see a new branch of training colleges (not inferior 

 to, but different from the present), giving special 

 attention throughout the teachers' careers to scientific 

 study and nature-knowledge, opened in some eight 

 or ten centres under the control of groups of councils. 

 It is plain that if this is to be done well and 

 thoroughly, some of the more elementary studies of a 

 secondary kind now given in these colleges must drop 

 out, and the necessary knowledge must therefore be 

 acquired by the students in the proper place — a 

 Secondary School — at an earlier period of their 

 career. 



I have not touched so far upon the disadvantages 

 of the present system and the very partial effect of 

 the work done. It must be remembered, in the first 

 place, that the County Councils have hitherto had no 

 mandate to train teachers in Nature-study or anything 

 else. The letter, and, more important, the spirit of 

 the Technical Instruction Act distinctly ruled out the 

 training of teachers for other than secondary and 

 technical purposes; hence knowledge to be used 

 solely in the elementary school scarcely at present 

 can be called a legitimate object for county funds. 

 Nature-knowledge, a fortiori, as being chiefly useful 



