‘OCTOBER g, 1902] 
NATURE 
597 
individuals are concerned. We are all still imbued with 
primitive instincts. In some way two parties arise, and the 
question is, which shall conquer? More often than not the 
true inwardness of the issue presented is left out of account—the 
considered opinion of the day is scarcely asked for, or if 
opinions are collected they are not weighted. Therefore calm 
reason is rarely the arbiter. The conditions of modern civilisa- 
tion require that some better method shall be devised, which 
will really enable us to do that which would be of the greatest 
good to the greatest number. We do not sufficiently remember 
‘that while we are tilting, the enemy at our gates is contem- 
plating our failure to maintain and strengthen our fortifications, 
and quietly advancing his forces to the attack. Speaking of the 
Navy in the House ef Commons not long ago, Mr. Arnold 
Forster said: ‘‘ There was a need for some reinforcement of 
the intellectual equipment which directed, or ought to direct, 
the enormous forces of our Empire.” Surely we may take these 
words as true generally. 
At the present time, when the responsibility of controlling all 
grades of education is about to be cast upon the community 
and the actual cali to arms is imminent, it is imperative that a 
sound public policy should be framed and that nothing should 
be allowed to stand in the way of the public good. It cannot 
be denied that School Boards have done most admirable 
service ; but there are many who are convinced that in not a 
few respects they have been disastrous failures and that we 
need a wider organisation, penetrated with sounder and 
especially with more practical views. The one essential 
‘condition of success is that the public itself treat the matter 
seriously, realising that their own immediate interests are at 
stake and thats they will be the first to suffer if those who are 
chosen by them to formulate the new policy and to supervise 
the work of education are unqualified and, to emphasise my 
meaning, let me add, unpractical. If the State is to retain any 
measure of authority, it too must be prepared to exercise that 
authority wisely. The blame to be put upon School Boards in 
England for having allowed an unpractical system of education 
an the schools is as nothing compared with the blame to be put 
upon the Education Department for having allowed sucha system 
to grow up by the adoption of academic ideals and academic 
machinery. Until recently, it was a disqualification for an 
inspector to have teaching experience. A good degree, if not 
political influence, was the one qualification. - Consequently men 
were chosen whose practical instincts had never been developed, 
who knew nothing of practical life and of common-place require- 
ments, and nothing of children and their ways; with rare 
exceptions, the inspectors could look at education only through 
literary blinkers. To intensify the evil, the wicked system of 
payment by results was introduced. An inspector such as I 
have described, working under such a system, could not do 
otherwise than destroy teaching." 
The first necessary step to take will be to reorganise the 
Education Department, root and branch ; to imbue it through- 
out with sound ideals and lead it to understand its great 
importance as the head centre of the Educational system ; for 
disestablish as we may, and however much we may favour 
local self-government, a head centre there must be to correlate 
the efforts made throughout the country and to distribute 
wisdom ; but its functions will be those of an exchange and 
inquiry office rather than directive and assertive. At least, such 
is my reading ofthe tendency of the Zeztgeist. Such a Depart- 
ment will have an Intelligence Board, whose members are partly 
official, partly unofficial, so that it may maintain itself in constant 
touch with outside opinion and effort. One function of this 
Board will be to preside at a monthly bonfire of red tape and 
official forms ; for in future, even if no other subject of Govern- 
ment concern be kept in a lively and living state, education 
must infallibly be. The whole staff of the office, including the 
inspectorate, will be required to avail itself of that most valuable 
institution, the sabbatical year, ze. to spend every seventh 
year in some other employment, so that they may not forget 
that the world has ways sometimes different from those pictured 
within the office and which it is advisable to take note of in 
education. Refreshed and invigorated, they will return to 
work, prepared to sacrifice all sorts of traditions and to 
recognise the existence of short cuts across fields which had 
before appeared to be of interminable dimensions; and as it 
1 The inspector destroys teaching, because he is bound by law and 
necessity to examine according to a given pattern; and the perfection of 
teaching is that it does not work by a given pattern (Thring). 
NO. 1719, VOL. 66] 
will be required that they spend a certain proportion of their 
close time in the company of children—if they have none of 
their own—they will learn that a child has ways and views of 
its own, none the less interesting and worthy of consideration 
because they are somewhat different from those of grown-up 
people. 
It is fortunate that the Technical Education Movement has 
been coincident in England with the development of the School 
Board system. Those engaged in it have worked untrammelled 
by official requirements, and much original thought has been 
enlisted in its service. In essence it has always been a revolt 
against the academic ideals permeating University education 
and the schools generally ; the faults of the schools, in fact, are 
the more obvious in the light of experience gained in technical 
education, which will now come to our aid in correcting them. 
The really serious tasks before those who direct the work of 
education in the immediate future will be the choice of a pro- 
gramme and the provision of capable teachers. If they enter 
on these tasks with a light heart, God help our nation; they 
will thereby give proof that they have no true conception of 
the great responsibility attaching to the position they occupy. 
Let no man offer himself for the work unless he feels certain 
that he is in some degree qualified. 
As to the programme, it may be said that that is for the 
teachers to settle ; and so it should be. But it cannot be denied 
that, by long-continued neglect to read the writing on the wall, 
they have lost the claim to legislate ; they have shown that they 
do not know how to legislate. The public must lay down the 
programme in its broad outlines ; teachers must fillin the details. 
The task imposed upon the schools will be to develop the 
faculties generally—not in the lop-sided manner customary here- 
tofore—and especially to develop thought-power in all its forms 
and the due application of thought-power. 
I believe that gradually a complete revolution must take place 
in school procedure, and that the school building of the future 
will be altogether different from the conventional building of 
to-day, which is but an expansion of the monkish cell and the 
cloister. Instead of being a place fitted only for the rearing of 
what I have elsewhere termed desk-ridden emasculates, the 
school will be for the most part modelled on the workshop, 
giving to this term the most varied meaning possible, and a 
great part of the time will be spent at the work bench, tool in 
hand. Nature’s workshop will, of course, be constantly utilised, 
and the necessary provision will be made for aytdoor exercise 
and physical training. Scientific method will underlie the 
whole of education. 
It will be recognised that education has two sides, a literary 
and a practical; that the mind can work through fingers ; in 
fact, through all the senses ; that it is not embodied only in the 
so-called intellect, a narrow creation of the schools. The 
practical training will therefore be regarded as at least equal in 
importance to the literary. Heads of schools will not only 
be potential bishops, but almost all careers will be open to them. 
In fact, I trust the system will be in operation which I have 
already advocated should be applied to the Education Depart- 
ment, and that the members of the school staff will be forced 
out into the world at stated intervals, so that they may not 
degenerate into pedants capable only of applying set rules much 
after the manner of that delightful creation Beckmesser in 
Wagner’s opera ‘‘ Die Meistersinger.” 
The class system will be largely abandoned. Children’s 
school time will not be chopped up into regulated periods in a 
manner which finds no analogy in the work-a-day world, but 
they will have certain tasks confided to them to do and will be 
allowed considerable latitude in carrying them to completion, 
In fact, they will be treated as rational beings, and their 
individuality and self-respect developed from the outset. The 
Boer War will have taught us to adopt open-order teaching as 
well as open-order firing. Schools will glory in turning out 
individuals, not machines. The success of the Americans is 
largely due to the way in which Republican doctrines are applied 
to the up-bringing of children in America. We must follow 
their example, and set our children free and encourage them to 
be free at an early age. The human animal develops at a 
sufficiently slow rate in all conscience, and there is little need 
for man to retard hisown development. School, with its checks 
upon freedom and individuality, should be quitted at seventeen 
at latest, I believe, and all subsequent systematic training should 
take place at college. Boys are kept at school after seventeen 
mainly for the purposes of-the school. It is claimed that by 
