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and prosecute the benevolent work of caring for the crippled and afflicted children 

 of the country, their just demands upon the public purse will necessarily become 

 more pressing. 



Upon the whole I am not disposed to criticise the education which is given 

 in the different standards of elementary schools. It is not, I think, ill adapted 

 to the two-fold object of preparing the children for their normal duties in 

 after-life, and of offering to especially intelligent children the chance of rising 

 to a higher position than that in which they have been brought up. But no 

 teaching, however reasonable in itself, can be properly imparted where the 

 classes of children are too large. If I have learnt any lesson by my educational 

 experience, it is that difficult cases — and these are the cases which try the 

 teacher's skill — need a great deal of individual time and thought. I used to 

 feel, when I was a schoolmaster, that there were not more than two or three of 

 my pupils whom I did not think I could have helped and possibly saved, had 

 it been in my power to spend sufficient thought and time upon them. It is 

 overcrowding which is the difficulty in schools as well as in homes ; and I do 

 not believe that any schoolmaster or schoolmistress can do full justice to a class 

 of more than twenty or at the most twenty-five small children. But this, again, 

 is a matter of expense, and as a matter of expense it touches the rates. 



Upon the whole, too, I do not regret the substitution of Education Com- 

 mittees for the original School Boards. It is true that the ideal picture of 

 School Boards consisting of educational experts who cared pre-eminently or 

 exclusively for the educational needs of their city is naturally pleasing to the 

 imagination. But the School Board, with its power of invading the public 

 purse, lent itself to friction with the civic authority. At present the Education 

 Committees connect the education of a city by a direct personal chain with its 

 civic administration; and if the civic element upon the Education Committees 

 should ever seem to fail in educational knowledge or interest, the opportunity 

 of co-opting educational experts, and among these experts men and women 

 who might often shrink from the ordeal of a hotly contested election, would 

 seem to afford a sufficient guarantee against indifference. 



But after some careful consultation with persons who in Manchester and 

 elsewhere- have studied for many years the problem of public elementary 

 education, I have been led to the conclusion that the reforms needed at the 

 present time are principally the following : — ■ 



The control of the Board of Education over local education authorities 

 has become too strong and too stringent. It is probably stronger and more 

 stringent now than it has ever been since 1870. It would be wise, I think, 

 to leave or to place greater administrative power in the hands of the local 

 education authority. Local authorities understand local needs. So long as 

 they do not depart from the general principles laid down by the Board of 

 Education, they should be free to expend each its share of the public monetary 

 grant in the way which they hold to be best for their own communities. 



I see no need for a dual system of inspectors in elementary schools, and I 

 think it tends to the interference of H.M. Inspectors with details upon which 

 their judgment is sometimes more confident than their knowledge is profound. 



It is difficult in speaking of inspection to refrain from all allusion to the 

 notorious circular letter which was issued some time ago in the name of Mr. 

 Holmes. That letter was not, I think, so wrong in sentiment as in language. 

 Inspectors chosen from the ranks of the elementary teachers may be deficient 

 in breadth of sympathy, as other inspectors educated in the ancient universities 

 may be deficient in practical experience. It is much to be hoped that the 

 unnatural contrast between the antecedents of two classes of inspectors will 

 pass into the background, and that the duty, which lies upon all education 

 authorities, of appointing the best men or women as inspectors, whatever 

 any one's antecedents may have been, will regulate all appointments in the 

 future. 



The period of a child's school-life is now too brief. There should, I think, 

 be a universal minimum age at which children may leave school. It should 

 probably be fourteen years. But whatever that age is, it should be absolute. 

 It should be wholly independent of local by-laws, of the passing of standards, 

 or of attendance at school before the age of fourteen. 



The question of evening schools is fraught with difficulty. To make attend- 



