860 REPORT— 1901. 



proportion of the children in schools, both elementary and secondary, are Hot really 

 educated at all — they are only prepared for examinations. The delicately ex- 

 panding intellect is crammed with ill-understood and ill-digested facts, because it 

 is the best way of preparing the scholar to undergo an Examination-test. Learning 

 to be used for gaining marks is stored in the mind by a mechanical effort of 

 memory, and is forgotten as soon as the Class-list is published. Intellectual 

 fuculties of much greater importance than knowledge, however extensive — as 

 useful to the child whose schooling will cease at fourteen as to the child for whom 

 elementary instruction is but the first step in the ladder of learning — are almost 

 wholly neglected. 



The power of research — the art of acquiring information for oneself — on whicli 

 the most advanced science depends, may by a proper system be cultivated in the 

 youngest scholar of the most elementary school. Curiosity and the desire to find 

 out the reason of things is a natural, and to the ignorant an inconvenient, pro- 

 pensity of almost every child; and there lies before tbe instructor the whole realm 

 of Nature knowledge in which this propensity can be cultivated. If children in 

 village schools spent less of their early youth in learning mechanically to read, 

 write, and cipher, and more in searching hedgerows and ditch-bottoms for flowers, 

 insects, or other natural objects, their intelligence would be developed by active 

 research, and they would better learn to read, write, and cipher in the end. The 

 i'aculty of finding out things for oneself is one of the most valuable with which a 

 child can be endowed. There is hardly a calling or business in life in which it is 

 not better to know how to search out information than to possess it already 

 stored. Everything, moreover, which is discovered sticks in the memory and 

 becomes a more secure possession for life than facts lazily imbibed from books and 

 lectures. The faculty of turning to practical uses knowledge possessed might be more 

 cultivated in Primary Schools. It can to a limited extent, but to a limited extent 

 only, be tested by examination. Essays, compositions, problems in mathematics 

 and science, call forth the power of using acquired knowledge. Mere acquisition 

 of knowledge does not necessarily confer the power to make use of it. In actual 

 life a very scanty store of knowledge, coupled with the capacity to apply it 

 adroitly, is of more value than boundless information which the possessor cannot 

 turn to practical use. Some measures should be taken to cultivate taste in 

 Primary Schools. Children are keen admirers. They can be early taught to 

 look for and appreciate what is beautiful in drawing and painting, in poetry and 

 music, in nature, and in life and character. The effect of such learning on manners 

 has been observed from remote antiquity. 



Physical exercises are a proper subject for Primary Schools, especially in the 

 artificial life led by children in gieat cities : both those which develop chests and 

 limbs, atrophied by impure air and the want of healthy games, and those which 

 discipline the hand and the eye — the latter to perceive and appreciate more of 

 wliat is seen, the former to obey more readily and exactly the impulses of the 

 will. Advantage should be taken of the fact that the children come daily under 

 the observation of a quasi-public oHicer — the scliool teacher — to secure them 

 protection, to which they are already entitled by law, against hunger, nakedness, 

 dirt, over-work, and other kinds of cruelty and neglect. Children's ailments and 

 diseases should by periodic inspection be detected : the milder ones, such as sores 

 and chilblains, treated on the spot, the more serious removed to the care of 

 parents or hospitals. Diseases of the eye and all maladies that would impair 

 the capacity of a child to earn its living should in the interest of the community 

 receive prompt attention and the most skilful treatment available. Special 

 schools for children Avho are crippled, blind, deaf, feeble-minded, or otherwise 

 atUicted should be provided at the public cost, from motives, not of mere philan- 

 thropy, but of enlightened self-interest. So far as they improve the capacity of 

 such children they lighten the burden on the community. 



I make no apology for having dwelt thus long upon the necessity of a sound 

 system of Primary Instruction : tliat is the only foundation upon which a 

 national system of advanced education can be built. Without it our efforts and 

 our money will be thrown away. But while primary instruction should be 



