702 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
learned the most elementary principles of their own profession. An anonymous 
teacher, writing some weeks since in the ‘ Morning Post,’ said: ‘The cookery class 
can be made an invaluable mental and moral training ground for the pupils, the 
most stimulating part of primary education. It teaches unforgettable lessons of 
cleanliness and order, of quickness and deftness of movements. The use of the 
weights and scales demands accuracy and carefulness, and the raw materials 
punish slovenliness or want of attention with a thoroughness which the most 
severe of schoolmasters might hesitate to use. Practical lessons in chemistry 
should form an important feature of each class... . The action of heat and 
moisture on grains of rice provides an interesting lesson on the bursting of starch 
cells, and the children’s imagination is awakened by watching the hard isolated 
atoms floating in milk change slowly to the creamy softness of a properly made 
rice pudding. The miraculous change in the oily white of egg when it is beaten 
into a mountain of snowy whiteness gives them interest in the action of air and 
its use in cookery.’ 
Can the teaching of grammar or the analysis of sentences provide lessons of 
equal value in quickening the intelligence of young children ? 
I must add one word before passing from this suggestive illustration of the 
value of scientific method in the treatment of educational questions. We live in 
a democratic age, and any proposed reform in the teaching of our primary schools 
must be tested by the requirement that the revised curriculum shall be such as 
will provide not only the most suitable preparatory training for the occupations in 
which four-fifths of the children will be subsequently engaged, but will, at the 
same time, enable them or some of them to pass without any breach of continuity 
from the primary to the secondary school. There mast be no class distinctions 
separating the public elementary from the State-aided secondary school. The 
reform I have suggested is unaffected by such criticism. The practical training 
I have advocated, whether founded on object lessons furnished by the Field, the 
Workshop, or the Home, would prove the most suitable for developing the child's 
intelligence and aptitudes and for enabling him to derive the utmost advantage 
from attendance at any one of the different types of secondary schools best 
fitted for his ascertained abilities and knowledge. The bent of the child’s intel- 
lect. would be fully determined before the age when the earliest specialisation 
would be desirable. No scheme of instruction for primary schools can be 
regarded as satisfactory, which is not so arranged that, whilst providing the most 
suitable teaching for children who perforce must enter some wage-earning pursuit 
at the age of fourteen, or at the clcse of their elementary school course, shall at the 
same time afford a sound and satisfactory basis on which secondary and higher 
education may be built. And I hold the opinion, in which I am sure all teachers 
will concur, that a scheme of primary education pervaded by the spirit of the 
Kindergarten which, by practical exercises, encourages observation and develops 
the reasoning faculties, and creates in the pupil an understanding of the use of 
books, would form a fitting foundation for either a literary or a scientific training 
in a secondary school, 
I have purposely chosen to illustrate the main subject of this address by 
reference to defects in our primary instruction, because the success of our entire 
system of education will be found, year by year, to depend more and more upon 
the results of the training given in our public elementary schools. We have 
scarcely yet begun to realise the social and political effects of the momentous 
changes in our national life, consequent on the first steps which were taken less 
than forty years ago to provide full facilities under State control and local 
management for the education of the people. 
At present all sorts of ideas are afloat which have to be carefully and scien- 
tifically considered. The working classes have to be further and somewhat 
differently educated, in order that they may better understand their own wants and 
how they are to be satisfied. We have placed vast powers in the hands of local 
bodies, popularly elected, powers not only of administration, for which they 
are well adapted, but powers of determining to a very great extent, by the free 
use of the rates, the kind of instruction to be given in our schools, and the 
LL 
