344 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1912. 
earlier part of the degree work at school, even though by a different 
method, is a useful safeguard against mental overstrain on the part of 
irls. 
3 It is unavoidable that a certain amount of common ground should be 
covered by the teaching in schools on one hand and at universities and 
university colleges on the other. When a school course is designed to 
terminate for average boys and girls where university work ordinarily 
begins, the cleverer boys and girls will certainly get beyond this standard 
whilst still at school, unless they are to go to the university at an age 
which is generally recognised as unsuitable, on grounds other than those 
of mental attainments. In other words, the more advanced pupils at 
many secondary schools will always be equal to, or in advance of, many 
undergraduates who are reading for a pass degree at the university. 
Again, some school subjects have to be taught at a university to 
students who have not previously had the opportunity of learning their 
rudiments, and many of the students to whom this applies enter the 
university at a comparatively advanced age. 
The relation between certain public schools and the older universities 
is so intimate that arrangements can be made to prevent overlapping. 
On the other hand, most of the newer universities arrange their courses 
in ‘ years’ without any special regard to the requirements of in- 
dividuals, the result being that students who have just reached 
matriculation standard may have to work with others who are prac- 
tically ready for the Intermediate Examination. In these circum- 
stances, it is not surprising that complaints are made on one hand 
that the university course is too rapid, and on the other that it is too 
elementary. It seems to the Committee not improbable that undesir- 
able overlapping at any university might to a large extent be prevented 
if more care were exercised to ensure that the classes were suitable to 
the particular student. 
Scuoot CurRicu.a. 
Although in the public schools, from which a considerable proportion 
of boys proceed to the universities, there may be no disadvantage in 
arranging the work in the upper part of the school on lines intentionally 
preparatory to the university course, and to some extent overlapping it, 
the case is quite otherwise in the large number of secondary schools, 
where the proportion of pupils who will go to a university is small. In 
these schools, which provide for the bulk of the children of the profes- 
sional and commercial classes, the great majority of the pupils will pass 
into active life as soon as they leave the school. There has been, and 
still is, far too great a tendency to allow the curricula of such schools, 
especially in the upper forms, to be moulded to the requirements of the 
small proportion of pupils who will go to a university. But if a pupil 
going into active life direct from school spends the valuable last 
years of his school course in work designed essentially as an introduction 
to a further long course of study, there is grave danger that he will 
enter upon his career with a number of loose ends of incomplete know- 
ledge, but with no power of applying any of them even to the simplest 
problems which he will constantly meet in his daily occupation. 
Advanced work of this kind is very unprofitable because it leads to no 
definite goal. 
