PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 765 



reserve. Whether in course of time the enforcement of these powers will come 

 chieliy through the central authority or through the local authorities is still 

 uncertain. The cantonal principle and the national principle are struggling for 

 the mastery. Probably neither of them will completely prevail. But considera- 

 tions of finance, the growing need for increased contributions from the Treasury in 

 relief of local rati s, and the accumulation of experience in the very large and 

 widely distributed staff of the central authority, point towards a steady increase 

 in the power of the Board of Education to press for change, partly through the 

 direct exercise of the power of the purse, partly through the influence of its advice 

 upon the action of the local authorities. 



Secondly, we have realised more fully than heretofore the need for greater 

 unity of purpose in the different grades of education and the dependence of what 

 is attempted at one stage upon what has been accomplished in another. For 

 example, we have recognised the fact that technical instruction cannot be built 

 up as a detached system by itself. In its higher forms it has to rest upon a long 

 and carefully organised course of secondary education: in its more elementary 

 grades upon a sound foundation given in the primary and higher-grade schools. 

 The need of adjustment between the methods of teaching in the infant school and 

 those employed in the junior classes of the senior school ; the waste of effort 

 caused by a sharp break of gauge at the junction between the public elementary 

 and the older type of secondary school ; the impossibility of making an effective 

 reform in the curriculum of preparatory schools without a modification of the 

 requirements of the entrance and scholarship examinations at the Public schools, 

 are all frontier questions, the consideration of which has forced upon us the need 

 for greater unity of plan in our educational system. And in order to secure 

 greater unity of plan, we are tending towards greater unity in educational admini- 

 stration. The central authority has been unified and entirely reorganised. In all 

 parts of the country new local authorities have been set up with powers which 

 embrace primary, secondary, and technical education. 



Thirdly, a wholly new stress has been laid upon the physical side of education. 

 The reports of the Scottish Royal Commission on Physical Training, 190.3, and of 

 the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, 1904, have helped us 

 to see the whole question of school work in a new perspective. A systematic 

 physical training must be regarded as an essential part of the daily work of every 

 school, and will be found as beneficial to the intellectual and moral development 

 of the scholars as to their bodily condition. For guidance in the educational 

 treatment of every child according to its physical need ; for the detection of 

 defects in eyesight, in hearing, and in teeth ; for marking the symptoms of organic 

 disease, we require systematic medical inspection of all school children at perio- 

 dical intervals, especially in schools in poorer districts. The attention of great 

 numbers of the teachers is already directed to these matters, and with a fuller 

 training in hygiene they would be able to make a considerable number of the 

 necessary observations for the use of the medical inspectors who would visit the 

 schools at such intervals as the special circumstances required. The crux of the 

 difficulty lies in getting the parent to act upon the medical inspector's report. 

 But the majority of parents, especially when interest in the matter was shown 

 by a personal visit to the home, would gladly take the necessary steps to 

 secure the medical treatment required. Where help was necessary, it would 

 not be difficult, through the co-operation of charitable agencies, to secure it. And 

 in cases of obstinate neglect, the law should severely remind the parent of his 

 responsibility. But to improve the schools and the physical care of the school 

 children is not sufficient without reforming the state of many of their homes also, 

 and without a great change in some of the conditions of industrial employment. 

 Where the insufficient feedingor the wrong feeding of some of the children is found 

 to defeat the work of the school, the retil cure of the mischief lies in dealing with 

 the parents, with their economic weakness or ignorance or wastefulness or insensi- 

 bility, as the case may be. Where the children come to school exhausted by the 

 strain of long and lat^ employment out of school hours, the remedy has to be 

 found in stringent regulation of the use of juvenile labour, and, so far as may be, 



