TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 831 
The fitness of a great deal of the teaching to the special needs and require- 
ments of the children has to be considered afresh. 
The tendency to overlook the interests and the attainments of each individual 
child has to be checked, 
The wastefulness of our absurdly truncated system of elementary education 
stopping abruptly at about twelve years of age and then leaving the children to drift 
away into au unexplored educational wilderness has to be superseded by some 
rational system of continuation classes made obligatory. ‘Truly the harvest is a 
plenteous one for those who desire to uplift our English life by helping forward 
the best modes of educating the rising generation in a scientific, or, in other words, 
a wise, intelligent, and large-minded spirit. 
Much, it is true, has been done in almost every part of the educational field 
during the last half-century, but not nearly so much as ardent friends of education 
anticipated forty years ago. 
I have already quoted some significant words from Mr. Arnold’s illuminating 
Report on the Schools and Universities of the Continent as he saw them thirty- 
seven years ago, If that report had been turned to immediate practical account 
at the time, if some English statesman, like William von Humboldt, had been 
enabled with a free hand to take up and give effect to Mr. Arnold’s chief suggestions, 
as Humboldt and his colleagues gave effect to their ideas in Prussia in the years 1808 
onwards, the advantage to our country to-day would have been incalculable. 
In our insular disregard or depreciation of intellectual and scientific forces 
actually working in other countries, we have undoubtedly wasted some of that 
time and tide in human affairs which do not wait for cither men or nations. 
But, putting regrets aside and turning to some of the practical problems that 
seem to confront us to-day, I venture to put before you for consideration such 
cursory and unsystematic observations or suggestions as my personal experience 
has led me to believe to be of practical importance. Jor more than this I have no 
qualification. 
In the first place, the growth of crowded city populations and the conditions 
under which multitudes have for at least two generations been growing up 
and passing their lives in our great cities have set us face to face with the very 
serious preliminary problem of physical health. 
If our physical manhood decays all else is endangered, so that the first business 
of the educator is to look well to the conditions of a healthy life from infancy 
upwards. 
Hence the great educational importance of the petition presented by 14,718 
medical practitioners, including the heads of the profession, to the central educa- 
tional authorities of the United Kingdom. 
This petition opens with these impressive words :— 
‘Having constantly before us the serious physical and moral conditions of 
degeneracy and disease resulting from the neglect and infraction of the elementary 
laws of hygiene, we venture to urge the Central Educational Authorities of the United 
Kingdom (the Board of Nducation of England and Wales, the Scotch Education 
Department, the Commissioners of National Kducation in Ireland and the Inter- 
mediate Hducation Board of Ireland) to consider whether it would not be possible 
to include in the curricula of the Public Elementary Schools, and to encourage 
in the Secondary ‘Schools, such teaching as may, without developing any tendency 
to dwell on what is unwholesome, lead all the children to appreciate at their true 
value healthful bodily conditions as regards cleanliness, pure air, food, drink, &c. 
In making this request we are well aware that at the present time pupils may 
receive teaching on the laws of health, by means of subjects almost invariably 
placed upon the Optional Code. By this method effective instruction is given to 
a small proportion of the pupils only. ‘This does not appear to us to be adequate. 
We believe that it should be compulsory and be given at a much earlier age than 
at present.’ 
And it concludes as follows :— 
‘In many English-speaking countries, definite attempts are being made to train 
