TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 781 



One of the weakest sides of our present training-college system is the fact 

 that it does so little to develop what may be called post-graduate professional 

 study. This might be fostered by requiring evidence thereof in all candidates 

 ambitious of promotion. Men who liave been out of college two years or longer 

 might be encouraged to oHer themselves for a higher professional examination based 

 on a liberal view of the profession. Success therein might be rewarded by scholar- 

 ships enabling those who desired to follow courses of a higher professional 

 character at the universities. All the universities have organised schools of 

 education, and I can imagine no better work for these schools than that which 

 some such scheme would give them. The course of study should be broadly 

 professional — in addition to the history and theory of education, it might 

 well include economics and sociology. Above all, it should be associated with 

 the experimental school. To enter into the work of such a school a certain 

 ripeness is wanted. The average student in training is intellectually much too 

 raw, and he has not got the professional grip which would come after two or three 

 years' intelligent class-room work. 



The head of a school should have some idea of the educational system as a whole. 

 He should grasp the purpose of it all, and thus understand how to adjust his own 

 school to the general scheme as well as to the local environment. Having gone 

 through such a course as that suggested, we might reasonably expect him to 

 organise his school with some insight into social needs and in the spirit of a 

 trained inquirer. 



6. School Training/or Home Duties q/ Wome7i. 

 By Professor A. Smithells, F.R.S. 



It is difficult to regard any work as more important for the world's welfare 

 than that which falls to the woman who has to manage a home. We are, I think, 

 all agreed that it is work for which training, somewhere and at some time, is 

 in the highest degree desirable. Traditionally this training is provided by an 

 informal apprenticeship in the home. As a matter of fact, among the vast multi- 

 tude whose daughters have to go to work it is hardly provided at all ; among the 

 rest it is often very imperfectly provided. It would be difficult to estimate the 

 evils that result from this state of things. The only remedy is to make provision 

 for the training outside the home, and there seems to be no reason why it should 

 not be provided at school ; beyond this, that school time is fully occupied with 

 other things, and the children do not stay long enough. The question, as it affects 

 children of the poorer classes, who leave school early, is beyond the scope of this 

 contribution, but I should like to say that in the primary school I would, with 

 a very light heart, sacrifice a good deal of what is now learned, for some simple 

 sane instruction in the elements of the household arts and in the inculcation of 

 cleanly and orderly habits of living. We seem to have made a fetish of the three 

 R's and entirely lost our sense of proportion when we take the money of the State 

 to apply what we call education to the children of the poor. 



I wish, however, to deal with a difi"erent class of the community and a different 

 grade of school — with girls who are better off and are in secondary schools. It is 

 commonly held that such girls should be trained entirely at home in what relates 

 to the management of the home. From this view I dissent emphatically for two 

 reasons. In the first place the homes in question are often very much worse 

 managed, and the seat of much more ignorance, prejudice, and folly, than their 

 presiding geniuses have any idea of. It is not the last word of commendation, 

 not a guarantee of perfection, for a girl to say, ' I learnt that from my mother ; she 

 learnt it from hers.' AVho is there that has not suffered from such revered traditions 

 in the field of cookery, to take a single prosaic example ? All practical arts were 

 once learned in this way, and we are tenacious of the system in this country. 

 Some of our industries are perishing for no other reason than that traditional 

 methods of work handed down from one generation to another are being obstinately 

 adhered to. 



In the second place I dissent from the view that all which relates to the 



