April 17, 1913] 



NATURE 



if the standard of exemption fixed by the local educa- 

 tion authority has been passed. This is the "half- 

 time" system, and in the year 1910-11 the number 

 of children who took advantage of it was 71,475, 

 So per cent, of whom belong- to the districts of 

 Lancashire and Yorkshire engaged in textile indus- 

 tries. The total number of pupils in attendance at 

 public elementary schools of England in the year 

 1910-n was nearly 5,000,000, so that the "half- 

 timers" form only about 1+ per cent, of the children 

 under instruction, and since the year 1907-8 the num- 

 ber has been continually decreasing. 



Little can be said in favour of the "half-time" 

 system from the point of view of the child's physical, 

 mental, and moral development, all of which are 

 sacrificed by it to the interests of some parents and 

 employers. The facts described in the work on " Con- 

 tinuation Schools in England and Elsewhere," edited 

 by Dr. M. E. Sadler, provide an unanswerable indict- 

 ment of the system by which child-labour is exploited 

 because it is cheap and the educational discipline of 

 school is minimised at a period when it is most needed. 



Several attempts have been made to abolish the 

 half-time system, the most recent being the Education 

 (School Attendance) Bill, which was introduced in the 

 House of Commons last year, and was afterwards 

 sacrificed. The Bill provided that no child under the 

 age of thirteen should be allowed to leave a public 

 elementary school, and that a child should only be 

 allowed to leave school before the age of fourteen 

 for the purpose of entering into some beneficial em- 

 ployment. It was left to the local education authority 

 to decide whether the conditions of the proposed em- 

 ployment were suitable to the child, and whether it 

 was likely to lead to permanent employment and to 

 afford useful training. 



It may be possible to find arguments in favour of 

 permitting a child to leave school relatively early in 

 order to enter employment which will make him a 

 skilled workman, but no amount of special pleading 

 will Drove that a child of twelve is benefited by work- 

 ing six hours in a mill each day and attending school 

 for two and a half hours as well. When the school 

 curriculum is of a more practical character than it 

 is at present — and many education authorities are 

 making it so — it will not be reasonable to urge, as Sir 

 William Anson did last year, that the mechanical 

 drudeery of the mill-room is more valuable for after- 

 life than instruction in educationally-graded courses of 

 manual work and housecraft. 



The great majority of children who leave the 

 elementary schools receive no further school training. 

 The following table, based uoon the statistics pre- 

 pared for the Board of Education by the Continuation 

 Schools Committee which was appointed in 1907, 

 gives some indication of the numbers of adolescents 

 receiving no regular education : — 



Boys and Girls (England and Wales), 1006-7. 



Not at '1 hool (either day 

 or evening) 



Age Population , ' 



No. Percent. 



It is a common complaint that what is learnt in 

 school is soon forgotten in after-life. This is true 

 of most subjects and of most children ; and the loss 

 of the knowledge is usually the result of disuse. The 

 above table shows that a very small proportion of 

 children from elementarv schools continue their educa- 



NO. 2268, VOL. 91] 



tion by attendance at continuation schools, the result 

 being that in most cases they are unable after a 

 couple of years to perform the' simplest arithmetical 

 calculation or show evidence of having received in- 

 struction in any ordinary subjects other than reading 

 and writing. This is a bad beginning for after-life, 

 and the nation will benefit by any measure which 

 will bring pressure to bear upon parents and employers 

 to ensure attendance at continuation schools. In 

 Germany, twenty-seven States have adopted the com- 

 pulsory continuation-school system, which imposes the 

 statutory obligation on all employers of labour to give 

 their employees under eighteen years of age such leave 

 of absence from work for the purpose of attending 

 the schools as the local authorities may prescribe. It 

 is time that similar measures were adopted in out- 

 own country. The years of youth and adolescence, 

 when supervision, discipline, and guidance are 

 particularly needed, are at present left unguarded 

 by the State. It is true that we have in the 

 three-quarters of a million students who attend even- 

 ing and similar schools an army of voluntary students 

 of which any nation may be proud, but nearly one- 

 fifth of these students fail to complete the small mini- 

 mum of attendances (from thirty to sixty hours) 

 required to enable grants to be claimed towards their 

 instruction, and most of the remainder only receive 

 very elementary instruction, comparable perhaps with 

 the work of continuation and trade schools in Ger- 

 many, but forming no satisfactory substitute for the 

 highly developed system of secondary and technical 

 education in that country. 



We do not suggest that the education system of 

 Germany is adapted to the needs of our own country 

 and people, but we do believe that until a national 

 system of our educational institutions has been formu- 

 lated comparable with that of our chief competitor, 

 it will not be possible to inspire confidence in the 

 expenditure of large sums of public money on educa- 

 tion. We go to Germany for our illustrations because 

 there the result of organisation bv the State has been 

 to raise education out of the slough of commercialism 

 and make the people appreciate its advantages to the 

 nation and the individual. If comparison with Ger- 

 many is permissible in the case of armaments, it is 

 much more so in connection with education, in which 

 we ask, not for two schools to one, but an approach 

 to equality. 



In true secondary schools, high-grade technical in- 

 stitutions, and advanced university students lie our 

 weaknesses as compared with Germany. There are 

 nearly 1000 recognised by the Board of Education 

 as efficient secondary schools in England and 

 Wales, and they are attended by about 170,000 

 boys and girls, three-fifths of whom are from public 

 elementary schools. Three-quarters of these pupils 

 are, however, under fifteen years of age, and if pupils 

 under twelve years of age be left out of consideration 

 the average length of the secondary-school life is less 

 than three years. Germany has in its secondary 

 schools more than twice as many pupils as are in 

 our State-aided secondary schools, and all taking 

 courses lasting six or nine years, leading to definite 

 goals and linked up closely to the public life. The 

 leaving certificate obtained after passing through a 

 nine-years' course qualifies for entrance into any Ger- 

 man university, and to any of the learned professions. 

 We have no such general certificate for the pupils of 

 our secondary schools, and the standard of the certifi- 

 cate could not be passed successfully by the majority 

 of the stuHents in our universities, while to apply it 

 to the product of our schools at present would be 

 impossible. 



With few exceptions, our technical institutions also 



