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and teac-luug until such time as tbey are able to take their place again in the main 

 department of the school. Of course, in many of our ICnglish elementary schools, 

 where the numbers of children in each standard are very large, there are 

 divisions, one for the quicker and one for the slower children. But do we not 

 need to push this a gi-eat deal further, and to make much more distinction between 

 different types of mind and rates of intellectual growth from the bottom of the 

 school upwards ? Any such reform means smaller classes in the urban schools 

 and better staffing in the rural schools. These are the two esential reforms in our 

 elementary education. Each of these reforms must be very expensive, so expen- 

 sive that we ought to try by experiments to rind out what we can do eflectively to 

 individualise the children by dividing classes differently for different parts of their 

 work, by encouraging more private study on the part of the children and by 

 massing groups of children together for certain subjects. 



It would be an excellent thing if each great local authority would have two 

 or three of its elementary schools set apart to work out the educational problem 

 and the financial problem, which are really involved in giving every child in the 

 elementary school an individual training suitable to its needs. 



Then it is desirable that we should try in certain districts a new type of ele- 

 mentary school, with far more manual work in the curriculum, with a great deal 

 of physical training, and with simpler aims in regard to the more literary studies. 

 Much may be learnt from the industrial schools, and I cannot help feeling that, 

 with all the good intentions in the Avorld, the present curriculum of many of our 

 elementary schools is too ambitious for the real needs of the children, and that 

 the latter would get more good from something simpler and more practical. 



Thirdly, we need a very careful working out of the best course of study and 

 of training for higher grade schools attended by pupils between the years of 

 twelve and fifteen — careful experiment as to how to adjust the studies in those 

 schools to the real needs of different kinds of practical life, and at the same time 

 how to keep fresh and strong a literary interest and feeling of civic duty. 



Fourthly, we need carefully watched experiments as to the actual results of 

 postponing the beginning of Latin as a regular school subject until twelve years 

 of age. We wish to know how quickly children who begin Latin late can over- 

 take those who have begun the language much earlier. We need to know more 

 thoroughly than we do at present what such a change as the postponement of 

 Latin until twelve would actually mean to the normal standard of scholarship at 

 the top of the classical secondary schools. We need a careful comparison of the 

 classical attainments actually reached in the Reform Gymnasien in Germany, 

 where this system has for some years been on trial with good results, with the 

 classical attainments of the boys at similar ages in our own classical schools. 

 Further, the comparison should extend to the general attainments of the boys in the 

 same two groups of schools, and not be limited to the department of classics. If it 

 is possible to defer until twelve the beginning of Latin as a regular school subject, 

 many difficulties arising from the present break of gauge between primary and 

 secondary education will be greatly lessened. 



I desire next to direct your attention to an urgent and extremely difficult 

 problem in our English education — I mean the waste of intellectual power and 

 the frequent injury to character which arise from children leaving the elementary 

 school at thirteen or fourteen and then passing away altogether from discipline 

 and educational care. The problem of the right education of boys and girls 

 during adolescence is only just beginning to receive the attention which it 

 deserves. But can we live in our great cities without having an uneasy feeling 

 that modern conditions of city life and of city employment, with their opportunities 

 for earning a comfortable wage quite early, and with their unwholesome excite- 

 ments, are really imperilling the stamina of many of the boys who should be the 

 recruits of our skilled industries, and of many girls who should grow up to be 

 the mothers of good and healthy homes iu the future ? It is much to be feared 

 that certain phases of modern industry, which depend on the practically unskilled 

 employment of boys and girls who have recently left the elementary schools, are iu 



