PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 769 



world,' and those plans which presuppose a more stable social organisation and 

 which seek to encourage specific preparation for the workshop and the farm, as 

 well as for the office and the professions. The right solution will lie in securing 

 for every child in town and country up to twelve years of age a humanising and 

 individualising education, which will develop the physical powers, kindle the 

 imagination and give a good preliminary training in accurate observation and in 

 clearness of self-expression. In such a course tlie trnining of hand and eye and 

 the intelligent study of nature will play as important a part intellectually as 

 bookwork and linguistic discipline. At twelve years of age will begin the 

 differentiation of training, provision being made, by scholarships and by sufficient 

 allowances for maintenance, to secure so far as possible for every child, whatever 

 the position of its parents, access to the typo of education appropriate to its 

 aptitude and promise. 



But at present we are in an eddy of more or less conflicting purposes, and our 

 difficulties are increased by the fact that different districts are in very different 

 stages of economic development, some in the full current of change, others still in 

 the grip of old ideas and traditions which have lost their force elsewhere. In 

 some neighbourhoods the old idea that all education above a narrow stint of 

 elementary instruction is a privilege for which full payment should be made by 

 the family concerned, retains, in spite of simmering protest, a good deal of its old 

 power. In others the new collective ideal of public education on equal terms of 

 gratuity for all is the dominant, though not yet wholly victorious, force. In most 

 districts the old and the new ways of looking at the matter are struggling on 

 equal terms and with resulting compromise. Into this medley there has poured 

 the new current of educational thought which runs counter to the vague aspira- 

 tions of those who seemed to take it for granted that the mere establishment of 

 new schools, whatever their curriculum, would remove the graver social ills. The 

 new thought requires that schools should have a definite relationship to the social 

 and economic position and prospects of the pupils. It calls for more workshop 

 training in the elementary schools. It points to the failure of a too literary 

 curriculum to give a right training for practical work. It is a timely protest 

 against the besetting tendency of all rapidly organised modern systems of popular 

 education to overcrowd the more literary occupations. It is really of all educa- 

 tional movements the most radical, because it seeks to raise handwork to a position 

 of greater honour in the community and to lower the undue prestige of purely 

 literary culture. But because it insists upon preparation for life, it"^ is in some 

 danger of unconsciously allying itself with the old view that education must at 

 bottom be a class affair, and should vary from the first according to the position in 

 life in which the children who are to receive it happen to have been born. And 

 along with these movements of thought there is a steady growth of the conviction 

 that in England the State should do more than in times past to control the 

 education of its citizens. And towards increase of State control we find ourselves 

 pushed by the growing burden of educational expenditure and by the need for 

 increased subsidies from the Exchequer in relief of local rates. 



Thus great changes are coming, and coming in the right way, by individual 

 effort responding in many ways to a new sense of national need, as well as bv a 

 gradual reform from within of many old institutions which have struck their roots 

 deep into the national life. Towards strengthening this new sense of responsibility 

 ou the part of the schools and universities which represent in the main the older 

 tradition in English education much was done by that eminent scholar and 

 eloquent writer. Sir Richard Jebb. And, if we extend our view to what is going 

 forward in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, the same impression is confirmed. It 

 has been and is the good fortune of England to receive educational stimulus of 

 different kinds from each of the other parts of the United Kingdom. Scotland, 

 above all, has during the past century and a half taught us many lessons. And 

 we have only ourselves to blame that we have not learnt from her many more. 

 One of her lessons, that the higher educational opportunities should be brought 

 within the reach of every lad of promise, we have at last taken to heart seriously 

 with already fruitful results. Nor ought it to be forgotten how much stimulus' 



1906 3 D 



