PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 927 



and a little club of pupils might well make their index in common. Then the 

 materials should be treated in literary form, every detail of literary workmanship 

 receiving attention. I fully expect to be told that this plan has actually been 

 tried in some school or other. The hi.=torical researches of the school may give 

 opportunity for the use of foreign languages, for map-drawing, or for the handling 

 of statistical information. 



Mr Greenin<j Lamborn's 'School History of Berkshire" is interesting as an 

 investigation carried out by and for the boys of an Oxford school. It will be 

 read in a very different spirit from that with which the condensed school-history 

 of Eno-land is received, and will no doubt suggest more work of the same kind. 

 The share of the boys may well grow larger and larger. 



The advocates of learning by inquiry and learning by doing will descend even 

 into the nursery. What an opportunity is afforded by toys ! — an opportunity 

 that those who purchase all their children's toys tbrow away. Surely every little 

 girl ought to be encouraged to make plausible dolls out of the rag-bag, every little 

 boy to make his own menagerie, his own boats and whistles and sledges. Even 

 the bought toy gives opportunity for inquiry. Ask any child if he has noticed 

 that the animals of the Noah's Ark are always thicker at one end, usually the 

 hinder end. There is a reason for this, and a curious reason, which the child may 

 be helped to discover. 



Mastery of Something. 



Let us indulge less than we do the passion of intellectual avarice, if only 

 because avarice blinds us to the relative values of things. The old French 

 anatomist, M6ry, said of himself and his colleagues that they were like the rag- 

 pickers of Paris, who knew every street and alley, but had no notion of what 

 went on in the houses. The accumulation of miscellaneous knowledge of useful 

 things, copious, inexact, inapplicable, may, like rag-picking, leave us ignorant of 

 the world in which we live. Let us try to reach the inner life of something, 

 great or small. The truly useful knowledge is mastery. Mastery does not come 

 by listening while somebody explains; it is the reward of etfort. Effort, again, 

 is inspired by interest and sense of duty. Interest alone may tire too quickly; 

 .sense of duty alone may grow formal and unintelligent. Mastery comes by- 

 attending long to a particular thing — by inquiring, by lookiug hard at things, by 

 handling and doing, by contriving and trying, by forming good habits of work, 

 and especially the habit of distinguishing between the things that signify and 

 those that do not. 



It is too much to expect that mastery will often be attained in school. School 

 is but a preparation, not I think for promiscuous learning, but for the business of 

 life. The school will have done its part if in favourable cases it has set a pattern 

 which will afterwards develop itself naturally and harmoniously. 



The following Papers were read : — 



\. The Outlook : A Grand Experiment in Education. 

 By Professor H. E. Armstbong, F.Ii.S. 



2. Education under a Local Authority. By E. Blair, M.A., B.Sc. 



I. The London Council became the Local Education Authority for the Admini- 

 strative County of London on May 1, 1904. The Council not only succeeded 

 to the powers and duties of the London School Board, but is also required ' to 

 maintain and keep efficient all public elementary schools within the area which 

 are necessary.' Further the Council, which had previously, under the Technical 

 Instruction Acts, been responsible for the supply of technical education, was 



' Oarendon Pres-, 19C8. 



