734 TEANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



Bedford College, University of London, and the large sums given for the 

 domestic department of King's College for Women. 



Though, however, as the Charity Commissioners say, a great impulse was 

 given to girls' education by the Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission and 

 the legislation as regards endowments that followed, I think that, even without 

 these, great progress would have been made, though probably less rapidly. 

 The desire for it was already there. Women who had themselves suffered from 

 the previous deficiency were working for improvement, and sympathetic men 

 friends were helping. It "was becoming more and more obvious not only that 

 women teachers must have adequate opportunities of learning, but that the 

 home no longer in itself afforded sufficient scope for the energies of the 

 daughters, especially unmarried daughters, of the professional classes, and 

 that they must be trained for other useful work. The supply of suitable 

 education followed the demand, as generally happens when the demand is strong 

 and clear. The very mention by the Charity Commissioners in the passage I 

 have quoted of the creation as well as of the application of endowments for the 

 purposes of female education is evidence of the active public interest in the 

 matter. The spirit which has led during the last half -century to the liberal 

 endowment of education for girls and women from private sources has also led 

 the State, and public bodies generally, to consider girls equally with boys in 

 all public administration of education or of educational funds. The same spirit 

 has led the newer universities without exception to admit women to their 

 benefits on equal terms with men. And at the same time the creation of some 

 professions and skilled industries — e.g., sick nursing — by women, and the open- 

 ing to them of others, together with the general movement in favour of profes- 

 sional training for professional work, have led to the great development of 

 opportunities of technical or vocational training for women as well as for men. 

 This immense — almost revolutionary — change, as regards Educational oppor- 

 tunities for women, which has occurred within the recollection of people of my 

 age, and which must be attributed largely to the efforts of women themselves, 

 is, 1 think, very striking; and it certainly, as I said, fully justifies the selec- 

 tion of a woman to preside over the Educational Section of the British Associa- 

 tion. The apology I feel to be needed is for the particular woman selected. 

 For it is the Science of Education, or at any rate the Science and Art of Educa- 

 tion, that this Section presumably exists to advance, and I am no educator, no 

 teacher, I have made no psychological study of young people from an edu- 

 cational point of view, nor of the different methods of teaching suited to 

 different ages, no statistical investigation of the influence or particular curricula 

 in training the mind or furnishing it with useful information. I have, in short, 

 neither made contribvitions to the science of education nor practised the art. 

 Any work I have done has been on the administrative side, and I can speak 

 only as a member of the general public — not as an expert. And what is there 

 new, in a subject so much discussed, for a member of the general public to 

 say? An illuminating address is, I fear, under the circumstances impossible. 



Not that I regard the view of the general public as unimportant. Indeed, 

 I am not sure that a good case could not be made out for having a mere 

 member of the general public as such as president from time to time. The 

 general public must, as all will admit, decide what is to be spent on education, 

 or, more strictly, on schools and colleges and professional educators, out of 

 both public and private income — it is for them to decide on its relation to 

 other social and family needs. But the concern of the public with education is 

 not merely financial and administrative. It is more intimate than that. For 

 education is not a subject like physics or chemistry on which only an expert 

 has a right to an independent view. There are, no doubt, aspects of it of 

 which only the expert can properly judge, there are experiments in it which 

 only the expert can advantageously try, and there are, of course, departments 

 of it in which the opinion of the expert is indispensable. But without depre- 

 ciating either the science or art of education, it is clear that when we take 

 education in its widest sense it concerns everybody, and almost everybody is 

 bound to have views about it. Each generation as a whole is responsible for 

 handing on to the next the control over matter and mind, and the power of 

 co-operation, which it has itself inherited from its forbears and added to, and 

 which it must put its successors in a position to add to further. It is on this 



