TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 859 



and to speak the truth, even if she failed to teach them to read and write. The 

 head master of a school of 2,000, or the teacher of a class of eighty, may be an 

 incomparably hotter intellectual instructor, but it is impossible for him to exercise 

 much individual influence over the great mass of his scholars. 



There are, however, certain children for the formation of whose characters the 

 nation is directly responsible — deserted children, destitute orphans, and chiklrea 

 whose parents are criminals or paupers. It is the duty and interest of the nation 

 to provide for the moral education of such children and to supply artificially the 

 influences of individual care and love. The neglect of this obligation is as injurious 

 to the public as to the children. Homes and schools are cheaper than prisons and 

 workhouses. Such a practice as that of permitting dissolute pauper parents to 

 remove their children from public control to spend the summer in vice and beggary 

 at races and fairs, to be returned in the autumn, corrupt in body and mind, to 

 spread disease and vice amongst other children of the State, would not be tolerated 

 in a community intelligently alive to its own interest. 



A profound, though indirect and untraceable, influence upon the moral educa- 

 tion of a people is exercised by all national administration and legislation. Every- 

 thing which tends to make the existing generation wiser, happier, or better has an 

 indirect influence on the children. Better dwellings, unadulterated food, recreation 

 grounds, temperance, sanitation, will all affect the character of the rising genera- 

 tion. Ilegidations for public instruction also influence character. A military 

 spirit may be evoked by the kind of physical instruction given. Brutality may be 

 developed by the sort of punishments enjoined or permitted. But all such causes 

 have a comparatively slight effect upon national character, which is in the main 

 the product for good or evil of more powerful causes which operate, not in the 

 school, but in the home. 



For the physical and mental develo]imeut of children it is now admitted to be 

 the interest and duty of a nation in its collective capacity to see that proper 

 schools are provided in which a certain minimum of primary instruction should be 

 free and compulsory for all, and, further, secondary instruction should be available 

 for those fitted to profit by it. But there are differences of opinion as to the age 

 at which primary instruction should begin and end ; as to the subjects it should 

 embrace ; as to the qualifications which should entitle to further secondary 

 instruction ; and as to how far this should be free or how far paid for by the 

 scholar or his parents. 



The age at which school attendance should begin and end is in most countries 

 determined by economic, rather than educational, considerations. Somebody 

 must take charge of infants in order that mothers may be at leisure to work ; 

 the demand for child labour empties schools for older children. In the United 

 Kingdom minding babies of three years old and upwards has become a national 

 function. But the infant ' school,' as it is called, should be conducted as a 

 nursery, not as a place of learning. The chief employment of the children should 

 be play. No strain should be put on either muscle or brain. They should be 

 treated with patient kindness, not beaten with canes. It is in the school for 

 older children, to which admission should not be until seven years of age, 

 that the work of serious instruction should begin, and that at first for not more 

 than two or three hours a day. There is no worse mistake than to attempt by 

 too early pressure to cure the evil of too early emancipation from school. Beyond 

 the mechanical accomplishments of reading, writing, and ciphering, essential to 

 any intellectual progress in after life, and dry facts of history and grammar, by 

 which alone they are loo often supplemented, it is for the interest of the com- 

 munity that other subjects should be taught. Some effort should be made to 

 develop such faculties of mind and body as are latent in the scholars. The 

 same system is not ajiplicable to all ; the school teaching should fit in with the 

 life and surroundings of the child. Variety, not uniformity, should be the rule. 

 Unfortunately the various methods by which children's minds and bodies can be 

 encouraged to grow and expand are still imperfectly understood by many of 

 those who direct or impart public instruction. Examinations are still too 

 often regarded as the best instrument for promoting mental progress ; and a large 



