768 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



separate class institutions complete in themselves. Throug-h the pressure of a 

 similar social change, the Public school curricula have been broadened so as to 

 meet the needs of their new and wider clientele. The old classical tradition has 

 been found inadequate to meet the more varied needs of the new situation. The 

 old classical monopoly, though still exerting undue influence over the scholarship 

 and entrance examinations at the Public schools, has lost its former power. 

 Modern studies steadily gain ground. Physical science and engineering have 

 asserted their claims. The Public schools are gradually adjusting themselves to 

 the requirements of business life in its new and more scientific forms, as well as to 

 the needs of boys who are destined for the older professions. 



The first result of these educational changes in England is social fusion. Old 

 barriers of separation are melting away. Old prejudices, injurious to social 

 unity, are lessened. Engli.sh social life is readjustiug itself to new economic con- 

 ditions and, responding to the new impulse, the schools are hastening the change. 

 But the second result is fogginess in educational aims. Both the public elementary 

 school on the one hand, and the Public school on the other, attract such a variety 

 of pupils, with such diverse prospects in life and from so many different kinds of 

 home, that it is increasingly difficult for either of them to have a clear-cut 

 purpose in preparing their pupils for the actual tasks which await them when 

 school days are over. In the case of boys, moreover, a number of new callings 

 require courses of intellectual preparation on other than those traditional lines 

 which gave, in fact, a form of technical training for some of the older professions. 

 In the case of girls the same difficulty arises through uncertainty whether to 

 prepare for married life or for the examination requirements of a professional 

 career. In such circumstances schools, when challenged to define their criterion 

 of educational efficiency, are apt to lay stress upon the importance of moral ' tone ' 

 and esprit de corps. However just may be this emphasis upon the moral side of 

 education, moral training is apt to become unreal and lacking in clear purpose 

 unless it is associated with definite preparation, intellectual and otherwise, for 

 actual tasks in life. It gets conventional, or refers too exclusively to the artificial 

 and temporary conditions of school-life, and sometimes in practice signifies a code 

 of manners and of bearing rather than vital principles of conduct. Hence comes 

 the growing force of the new movement in educational thought which calls for 

 closer adjustment of school work to the actual tasks of adult life. Schools are at 

 present too little concerned in the question how each individual pupil is likely to 

 earn his linng, and are too apt to act as if their responsibility were confined to 

 bringing all their scholars through the appointed course, and to preparing as many 

 as possible of them to enter successfully upon some further stage of education, as 

 though the definite choice of a career could in all cases be safely or wisely thus 

 postponed. The demand that tlie schools should become more practical in their 

 aim without becoming narrowly utilitarian grows stronger year by year. Difficult 

 as such a demand is to satisfy, there is nothing unreasonable in it ; yet it cannot be 

 met without a franker recognition of the probable after-career of the pupils than 

 is at present usual or likely to be popular. But one great cause of the democratic 

 movement in favour of better schools for the people, and for widening the social 

 connection of the Public schools, is that numbers of parents want their children 

 to start life on a higher plane than they did themselves, and to earn their living 

 by an occupation better thought of socially than their own. Any serious attempt, 

 however, to make* all schools prepare more definitely for the practical tasks of life 

 would involve the assumption, which of course is roughly accurate, that children 

 will for the most part enter into occupations similar to those followed by their 

 parents, and that educational provision must be made for them accordingly. Now 

 it is clear that in a time of swift economic change like the present such an assump- 

 tion would break down in a considerable number of cases, and that those would 

 be the cases of the greatest educational promise. For example, it would be absurd 

 to assume that, under present conditions of land tenure and cultivation, all the 

 children of farm labourers in rural schools will wish to remain on the land. 

 Thus, there are the makings of a conflict between those plans of education which 

 rest upon the principle that every child should be given a chance ' to rise in the 



