512 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



Section L.— EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 



President of the Section : Rev. W. Temple, M.A. 



WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. 



The President delivered the following Address : — 



It is a great responsibility, as it is a great honour, to be allowed the oppor- 

 tunity of delivering the Presidential Address to the Education Section of 

 the British Association this year. The whole subject of education is more 

 before the public mind tlian it has been for a generation at least, and one is 

 tempted, therefore, to range over the whole field. I shall indeed range pretty 

 far, but of course an individual's opinions are only of real value so far as 

 they reflect at least some experience of his own. My experience has been 

 entirely with education of the secondary school and University type, and 

 ■with the effort, of which I shall speak incidentally, to supply University 

 teaching to adult working men and women ; this is indeed an instance of 

 the University type of education. Of elementary schools, which I suppose 

 constitute, for the present at least, the main part of our problem, I know 

 nothing directly and very little indirectly. But I see two things with regard 

 to them : first, that all reform is conditional upon our securing smaller classes ; 

 and, secondly, that the elementary schoole ought not to be the most important 

 part of our English problem, for we ought to be turning our attention to the 

 building up of an adequate secondary system. It is in the sphere of secondary 

 education that our whole equipment is most conspicuously and lamentably 

 deficient. 



One other word of introduction. The present interest of Englishmen in 

 education is partly due to the fact that they are impressed by German 

 thoroughness. Now let there be no mistake. The war has shown the 

 effectiveness of German education in certain departments of life, but it has 

 shown not only its ineffectiveness but its grotesque absurdity in regard to 

 other departments of life, and those the departments which are, even in a 

 political sense, the most important. In the organisation of material resources 

 Germany has won wrell-merited admiration, but in regard to moral conduct, 

 and with regard to all that art of dealing with other men and other nations 

 which is closely allied to moral conduct, she has won for herself the horror 

 of the civilised world. If you take the whole result, and ask whether we 

 prefer German or English education, I, at any rate, should not hesitate in 

 my reply. With all its faulte, English education is a thing generically superior 

 to the German. It is to perfect our own, and not to imitate theirs, that we 

 must now exert ourselves. And so I turn to the discussion of some parts 

 of this task. 



There is a great deal of public interest at the present time, and 

 very nearly as much mental confusion, with regard to education generally, and 

 especially with regard to the place of technical training in education. The 

 discussion in the public Press and elsewhere follows the lines of a number 

 of cross-divisions. We sometimes have the division into literary and scientific 



