Our Present System 



clerks do not turn willingly to life on the land. 

 They do not understand its possibilities or 

 its advantages. The Poor Law Report 

 shows that our present system of education 

 is devised for turning out clerks rather than 

 citizens who can work with their hands. 

 Yet every one should know how to use his 

 hands intelligently. Clerks too would be the 

 better for this knowledge. No greater in- 

 dictment can be brought against our present 

 system of education than that it is turning 

 out petty clerks rather than intelligent and 

 skilled workers. Our system of education 

 is turning out a higher percentage of un- 

 skilled labour than any other system ; worse 

 still the ratio of unskilled to skilled tends to 

 increase. This is a great evil, not only from 

 the agricultural but from the national point 

 of view. If we are to maintain ourselves 

 against the increasing competition of in- 

 dustrial rivals, we must see that our future 

 citizens are trained to be workers as highly 

 skilled and intelligent as those of other 

 countries. Our technical schools and the 

 science courses in our universities do not go 

 far enough. Our employers of labour as a 



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