626 _ |. TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
2. Commercial Schools. By G. T. Moopy, D.Sc. 
3. The Compulsory Education of Youth. 
By Professor J. J. Frypuay, Ph.D., M.A. 
1. Up to the era of the Industrial Revolution all races, savage and civilised, 
held the youth of both sexes up to eighteen years of age in control and educated 
them (although only a few were kept at school). The introduction of the factory 
and of wholesale traffic has created a youthful proletariat, emancipated by earn- 
ing wages from control either by the tamily, the Church, or the civic guild, 
2. The consequent evil is accentuated (a) by the artificial conditions under 
which the period of childhood is passed in schools: affording few experiences 
adequate to prepare for precocious emancipation; (b) physical conditions of city 
life; (c) opportunities for cheap luxury presenting temptations to idleness and 
waste—the cinema perhaps the last word in this story; (d) the enormously 
increased demand for monotonous labour which youth can undertake even better 
than older people. 
3. Remedies to be sought by noting how the youth in families of larger 
means are nowadays educated :— 
(a) Youth needs social experience; the family and the Secondary Schools 
together provide opportunities for corporate life appropriate to this period of 
development, ‘The parallel to this among the proletariat is found in Lads’ Clubs, 
the Boy Scout movement, and similar organisations by institutional churches in 
the slums of large cities; but these cannot claim contro? over the youth. With 
a selected few they provide outlet for the imagination and foster ideals. 
(6) Youth needs instruction. The Secondary School for the leisured class, 
the Trade School for the artizan class, need their counterpart in plans for partial 
instruction during a few hours in each week compulsorily imposed on all, and 
taken during the day-time. This is most effective when associated with employ- 
ment in commerce or manufacture, for youth profits by the discipline of hard 
work. The Evening Continuation School has failed to reach the great mass of 
those who need instruction, but has pointed the way to a more comprehensive 
reform. i 
(c) Youth needs vocational guidance and the personal interest of older folk. 
The family and the school unite to supply this for the more fortunate classes. 
Labour Bureaus and the like are beginning to supply it for the proletariat. 
4, The organisation needed must make united provision for these three needs. 
It must be set in motion by the State, since the family and the trade have lost the 
compulsory authority which they formerly exercised; and the State alone can 
interfere on behalf of the youth with the vested interests of capital and labour. 
The outcome will be seen in a new type of institution; and a new type of teacher, 
who will be the guide and friend of youth as well as a ‘ continuation ’ instructor. 
Examples are already to hand in the efforts made by a few large employers of 
adolescent labour in Europe and America: the State as an employer of such 
labour hag hitherto done little. Reform will only be effective when the social 
conscience of the community is aroused in large cities so as to support the 
Legislature in accepting the principle of partial control over wage-earning youth, 
4, Agricultural Education. By A. D. Hau, F.BR.S. 
(A general discussion relating especially to Victorian experience followed, in 
which Mr. F. Tare, Mr. Crarx, and Mr, Hucu Pyz took part.) 
5. Moral Education. By W. R. Boyce Gipson. 
1. Moral instruction has this distinctive characteristic, that it touches the 
interest on its practical side where the life of ideas is intimately one with the 
life of sentiment and will. Its appeal is to the personal reason, and the ideas 
which it stimulates into activity become directive forces of the personal life. 
Hence moral instruction stands on a different platform from instruction in the 
