492 



NA rURE 



[hEUKUARV 25, 1909 



a consenting party to a cause of mental and physical 

 weakness. This, as he remarked, is not a question of 

 party politics — it is simply a question as to whether the 

 nation is content to see the standard of height and the 

 standard of weight of many children being reduced in 

 order that employment of half-timers should be con- 

 tinued. As to the school-leaving age and the need 

 for further educatidn in continuation schools. Sir 

 Norman Lockyer urged that something should be 

 done to show that the real interests of the employers 

 lie in the fact that if the children can be taught how 

 to learn for a little longer time, all those in their 

 employ, at whatever age, will be more useful to them. 

 It was suggested that the Government should ba 

 brought into operation in the same way — the same 

 very definite and perhaps rather drastic way — as has 

 been done in Germany. In Germany, as Prof. Sadler 

 shows in the valuable work on " Continuation 

 Schools " edited by him, employers of labour are 

 obliged to grant to all their employees under 

 eighteen years of age attending continuation schools 

 arranged by the Government or the local authority, the 

 necessary time jor school attendance as prescribed b)' 

 the authority in question. Attendances at continua- 

 tion schools can be made compulsory for male persons 

 under eighteen years of age by the bye-law of a 

 district or town council. Only in five States, repre- 

 senting about one-forty-sixth of the population of the 

 German Empire, is attendance at continuation 

 schools wholly voluntary. 



Dealing with the main causes of unemployment 

 and various proposed remedies, the recently published 

 report of the Poor Law Commission provides useful 

 guidance as to a desirable direction for future educa- 

 tional enterprise. The development of continuation 

 schools for boys who have left the elementary school 

 and a modification of the prevailing type of curri- 

 culum in primary schools are urged. The report con- 

 demns emphatically the widespread evil of employing 

 boys who have just left school in immediately re- 

 munerative but uneducative occupations which lead 

 nowhere and provide them with no special knowledge 

 to ensure their employment later in life. The Com- 

 missioners 



regard with favour the suggestions that boys should be 

 kept at school until the age of fifteen instead of fourteen ; 

 that exemption below this age should be granted only for 

 boys leaving to learn a skilled trade ; and that there should 

 be school supervision until sixteen, and replacing in school 

 of boys not properly employed. 



Experience has shown that a long time may elapse 

 before the recommendations of a Royal Commission 

 are translated into Acts of Parliament, but, in view of 

 the powers given to Scottish school boards by the 

 recent Education Act for Scotland, it ma\' be hoped 

 that it will not be long before something is done to 

 give the English boy from the elementary school an 

 education and training in his teens which will ensure 

 his becoming a skilled worker when manhood is 

 reached. 



The Commissioners, we are glad to note, have not 

 ignored the necessity for providing during the years 

 of adolescence suitable technical instruction for the 

 boys upon whose ability as skilled artisans our indus- 

 trial efficiency as a nation will in the future depend. 

 The report insists that 



There is urgent need of improved facilities for technical 

 education after the present age for leaving school. With 

 a view to the improvement of physique, a continuous system 

 of physical drill should be instituted, which might be com- 

 menced during school life, and be continued afterwards ; 

 and, in order to discourage boys from entering uneducative 

 occupations which offer no prospect of permanent employ- 

 ment, there should be established, in connection with the 



NO. 2052, VOL. 79] 



Labour Exchange, a special organisation for giving boys, 



parents, teachers, and school managers information and 



guidance as to suitable occupations for children leaving 

 school. 



We can imagine no more effective method of re- 

 ducing in future years the ranks of the unemployed 

 than that recommended in the report. The problem 

 is first to educate the parents to forego the advantage 

 of their boys' immediate earnings — providing them 

 with some solatium, if necessary — and then to pro- 

 vide the boy with suitable employment which will 

 enable him to learn a trade, and to be a skilled worker 

 in his manhood. To convert him into a competent 

 artificer it is necessary to see that the boy attends the 

 technical school during his apprenticeship, or corre- 

 sponding years, for a certain number of hours which 

 form part of his working day. 



But, as has been pointed out in these columns 

 again and again, the full advantages of a scheme of 

 technical instruction cannot be secured unless the 

 boys attending the classes of the technical institute 

 have received an adequate and suitable education in 

 the elementary school during the years up to fifteen. 

 In the past, the type of curriculum and the general 

 character of the education have been unsuitable for 

 boys who will later become manual workers. The 

 Commissioners have recognised these facts, and thev 

 recommend the Board of Education earnestly to con- 

 sider the necessity for re-modelling the practice and 

 ideals of our elementary schools. To quote the 

 report : — 



A considerable amount of evidence has been subnnutcd 

 to us to the effect that the present system of elementary 

 education is not adapted to the wants of an industrial com- 

 munity. There is a consensus of feeling, in which we 

 ourselves concur, that the present education is too literary 

 and diff ise in its character, and should be more practical. 

 It should be more combined than at present with manual 

 training. It is not in the interests of the country to pro 

 duce by our system of education a dislilie of manual work 

 and a taste for clerical and for intermittent work, when 

 the vast majority of those so educated must maintain 

 themselves by manual labour. If school training is to be 

 an adaptation of the child to its future life and occupation, 

 some revision of the present curriculum of public elementary 

 schools seems necessary. 



Men of science will welcome this full and generous 

 recognition of the claims of " practical " subjects to 

 take a large part in the education of children who 

 will later constitute our industrial community — a 

 necessity which was urged in the report of the British 

 Science Guild Committee, published in Nature of 

 January 28 (p. 283). Manual work must be treated 

 with respect, and every effort made to explode the 

 prevalent fallacy that iil-paid and precarious clerical 

 work is more " respectable " than honest, skilled 

 constructive labour. 



Since the publication of the report of the Commis- 

 sion an influential and representative deputation has 

 waited upon the Prime Minister on the subject of 

 boy labour, and many of the considerations here 

 passed in review were urged upon the Government. 

 In replying, Mr. Asquith dealt in an illuminating 

 and sympathetic manner with the years between 

 leaving school and reaching manhood — the unbridged 

 gap, as he called it. After endorsing to a large ex- 

 tent the recommendations of the recent report, Mr. 

 Asquith dealt with some of the education difficulties. 

 He said : — 



I think the most interesting and suggestive part of the 

 discussion to which we have listened this afternoon has 

 been upon the subject of the exemption, the raising of the 

 age of exemption, and of enlarging the use, perhaps by 

 compulsion, of continuation schools. I am entirely with 

 you, I think, in the most advanced views that have been 



