838 REPORT— 1902. 



constant touch witli 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 Government 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, i.e., 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 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 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 programme and the provision of capable 

 teachers. If they enter on these tasks with a light heart, Crod help our nation ; 

 they will thereby give proof that they have no true conception of the great respon- 

 sibility attaching to the position thej occupy. Let no man offer himself for the 

 work unless he feel 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 fill in the details. The task imposed upon 

 the schools will be to develop the faculties generally — not in the lop-sided manner 

 customary heretofore — 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 pro- 

 cedure ; 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 

 T 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 pos- 

 sible ; 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 provi- 

 sion will be made for outdoor 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: 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 Department: 

 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 VVagner's opera * Die Meistersinger.' 



The class sj'Stem will be largely abandoned. Children's school time will not 

 be chopped up into regulated periods in a rnanner which finds no analogy in the 



