736 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
that “from all classes of children, town and country, a ready response is made 
to an appeal for added responsibility and trust on their part.” .... 
‘The prefect, being in authority himself, comes to see the necessity and value 
of discipline. He is as keen as is his Head for the school’s honour; he worries 
the unpunctual, he takes charge of the playground. He is proud at being asked 
and able to help in matters of school routine, most of all when the teacher is 
called out of the class-room and he is himself responsible for order. And woe 
‘Tt is a moot point whether a written constitution helps or not. Some 
teachers deprecate rules, as limiting a prefect’s sense of responsibility and his 
freedom to follow out his own ideas. That rules, however, meet some want 
seems to be proved by the fact that at a school where the Head Master had 
purposely made none the boys themselves drew up their code, and, the Head 
Master adds: ‘‘I could not have got out any better rules.”’ 
The origin of the movement whose results are thus described is due to the 
man whom I regard as the greatest educator of our time—namely, Sir Robert 
Baden-Powell. I believe that the Boy Scout movement is rendering greater 
service than our complicated State machinery in preparing those who are brought 
within its influence for the struggles of life. It is a matter for regret that so 
small a fraction of the children in our schools is able to share its benefits. I 
only wish it were possible for our political system to admit the appointment of 
Baden-Powell as Minister of Education, with plenary powers, for the next ten 
ears ! 
“ He states that when visiting a great Agricultural School in Australia he 
asked the Principal to inform him briefly what was the general trend of his 
training. The reply was: ‘Character first; then Agriculture.’ 
If this, suitably modified, could be adopted as the motto for all our schools 
the present attitude of the man in the street towards education would soon 
undergo modification. 
There is truth in Dr. Moxon’s statement that ‘A man has to be better than 
his knowledge, or he cannot make use of it,’ and our efforts should be mainly 
directed to making the character and the intelligence of the child so much 
better than his knowledge that increase in knowledge will follow as a matter of 
course. Let us devise some kind of universal Junior Scout system which may 
so brighten the intelligence that the boy will want to know. Let him also 
discover that the paths to knowledge are Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic; 
he will then gladly follow his guides and gather more by the way than when 
he is pushed along those paths in a perambulator. 
So long as we attach greater importance to the results of examination than 
to the judgment of the teacher our system stands self-condemned, for it places 
knowledge above character. 
It is natural that the discontented amongst us should try to cast the blame 
on those in authority, and I confess that at times I feel as if I could join the 
militant section and.relieve my feelings by throwing stones through the windows 
of the Board of Education; but in recent years I have been privileged to pass 
to the other side of those windows, and I have, to some extent, been led to 
realise how able and how devoted are the men to whom the guidance of our 
educational system is entrusted. All who are brought in contact with them 
must acknowledge their earnestness and their zeal in the cause in which they 
are enlisted, and it is remarkable how, in the discussion of educational questions, 
they can, in moments of partial abandon, cease to be strictly official and become 
almost human. It is evident, however, that the aim of such men must ever be 
the smooth working of the machine as a whole. The comforting words ‘co- 
ordination,’ ‘ uniformity,’ ‘ efficiency,’ are ever in their minds. A system planned 
on one great design and perfected in all its details is the ideal for which they 
are bound, consciously or unconsciously, to strive. The pity of it is that the 
more successful their efforts, the worse it is for education in this country. 
Evolutionary progress is only possible where variety exists, and variety 
