TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 853 
average life of a male teacher. Sir William Anson said the other day in the 
House of Commons that pupil-teachers were, as a whole, not competent to take 
university degrees. Speaking with a considerable knowledge of public schools, 
I can confidently assert that they are just as fit to take these honours as the 
average public-school boy, and in some cases much more fit. The list I hold in my 
hand contains three first classes, including a nineteenth wrangler, eight second 
classes, and three third classes, a record which might do honour to many a Cam- 
bridge college. It is also objected that our students are not trained to be 
elementary teachers, but that they drift into secondary teaching. This we do not 
find to be the case. During the twelve years’ existence of the College only three 
students have given up education altogether, and only twelve, or an average of 
one a year, are now engaged in secondary education, and these have satisfied their 
obligation by serving in most cases as elementary teachers. I therefore maintain 
that the pupil-teachers we receive, who are by no means a picked or selected lot, 
are fully competent to profit by a university education, and that they do, when so 
trained, continue to be elementary teachers. We have also tried the experiment 
of training primary and secondary teachers together. We were the first to do 
this, and our example has been imitated elsewhere. We find that this condition 
is indispensable to our success, and that both classes of teachers gain largely by 
being trained together. 
M. Emile Hovelaque said that he had extreme diffidence in speaking on a 
subject mainly administrative and wholly English, but he was encouraged to 
do so by the protests which had been made against introducing any narrow and 
parochial spirit into the training of the teachers. If it were desirable that 
teachers from one part of the country should have experience in other parts, 
might it not be equally desirable for teachers to have experience of foreign 
countries? In France there had recently been instituted a scheme which, 
though not primarily designed for the training of teachers, might easily be made 
to work in with that object. In the French universities, secondary schools, and 
training colleges it was now the practice to have foreign visitors in residence, 
and their business was not to teach, but to give to advanced pupils the benefit of 
opportunities for unconstrained conversation and for deriving accurate and living 
impressions of foreign countries. It was found that this informal intercourse with 
foreigners was much more instructive for the students than any conversation 
with or teaching by the regular professors. It would be a great advantage if 
a larger number of English students for the higher branches of the teaching 
profession could be induced to take up residence in this way at the French 
schools and colleges, where they would receive free board and lodging in ex- 
change for a few hours’ conversational work a day. The advantage tothe English 
student would be great, because he would not only be able to learn the French 
language, but he would have every opportunity of studying the methods of 
teaching practised in the French educational institutions. In regard to the 
teaching of the mother-tongue, the example would be especially valuable, for 
particular attention had been devoted to that subject in France; and in England 
the teaching of English had been surprisingly neglected. The scheme, it should 
be noted, was not one for international exchange of secondary school teachers, 
but rather for the interchange of those who in the future were intending to 
become teachers in secondary schools. 
Miss Edna Walter said that it was useless to consider how to increase the 
supply of teachers without increasing the rewards of the profession. Instead of 
giving bursaries and scholarships to attract young people into the profession, it 
would be better to spend the money in increasing the salaries of teachers, so as to 
keep them in the profession. 
The Rev. W. T. A. Barber laid emphasis on the necessity of a broadening 
element in the training of elementary teachers. He mentioned an experiment 
which is being worked out in the Eastern Counties. Intending teachers are 
removed at twelve, on scholarships, to secondary schools; are there mixing with 
children of another social style till eighteen, and then, all school subjects laid on 
one side, are sent for a single year of pedagogics to a training college. The train- 
