PRESIDKNTIAL ADDKKSS. 517 



ways. First, it releases children from the distiijliiie of school just at the 

 moment when discipline begins to be most essential. Down to the beginning of 

 adolescence what we need is something that may more fitly be called super- 

 vision, and for myself I have great sympathy with those who hold that under a 

 general supervision there should be the utmost possible freedom for the child. 

 But with adolescence there comes a temporary chaos in the psychological 

 make-up, and during that period there is an urgent need, not only for super- 

 vision, but e.xpressly for discipline as that word is commonly understood, 

 namely, tho imposition of lestraint, forcible if need be, in order that certain 

 impulses may not break loose and destroy the harmony of the whole nature. 

 But the school-lea\'ing age is unfortunate in another respect also. We teach the 

 child to read, and then send him away from school at a time when it is too 

 early to have begun the training of his taste and judgment. We have made 

 liim a prey to all manner of chance influences but have not supplied him with 

 the power of selection between these, or the means of resisting those which his 

 better judgment condemns. 



Something no doubt can be done by means of continuation classes provided 

 that the time for them is taken out of the hours of employment and not 

 added on to these ; but nothing will really meet the case except an all-round 

 raising of the school-age. And even then we still need to get away from the 

 conception of a necessary minimum. What we have to aim at is the maximum 

 attainab'c by each scholar, not th6 minimum that will make him a tolerable 

 member of a civilised communit\'. If we aim at a minimum that will be 

 what most of the scholars also aim at. Bat how are we to make tliis 

 change ? The obvious method is a large system of exhibitions, maintenance 

 grants, and the like, and we must welcome the proposals of the Consultative 

 Committee presided over by Mr. Acland which w-ere made public during July- 

 last. The proposals are better than the Eeport, which, as was pointed out 

 in ' Tltv Times Educational Supplement,' is too much under German influence. 

 But here, again, v>-e come to another false suggestion. Any system of scholar- 

 ships and exhibitions is false in principle, because it inevitably suggests to the 

 child that it is to pursue its studies for the sake of its own advancement : 

 the whole system coheres with the ideal of the educational ladder, by means 

 of which men and women may climb from one section of society to another. 

 Now it is undoubtedly true that the State is bound to secure for its own 

 interest that brain-capacity wherever found shall be fully developed, and 

 that if a child of a dock labourer has capacities fitting him to be a groat 

 statesman or a great artist it is for the public interest that these capacities 

 should be fully developed. But we have also to remember that when by 

 education you lift a child from one section of society to another, you expose 

 him to one of the most insidious of all temptations, the temptation to despise 

 his own people. And if once his native sympathies are thus broken up, it is 

 unlikely that he will grow any more. An educational system which depends 

 upon the ladder is in a fair way to train a nation of self-seekers. Our demand, 

 and here I know that I am speaking for the whole community of labour, must 

 be for the educational highway. Our aim must be, not chiefly to lift gifted 

 individuals to positions of eminence, but to carry the whole mass of the people 

 forward, even though it be but a comparatively little way. We want the 

 whole system to be all the while suggesting that the child's faculties are being 

 trained, not for its own advancement, but for the benefit which the com- 

 munity is to receive. And the right way to suggest this, while also securing 

 for the c-ommunity the maximum benefit, is, as it seems to me, nothing less 

 than a system of free education from the elementary school to the University, 

 which instead of offering exhibitions to enable those who are capable to 

 proceed, will on the contrary exclude at certain wisely chosen stages those who 

 are unable to benefit further by school education. At each of such stages there 

 should be for those who are excluded from further advance some form of 

 apprenticeship, and if the stage comes early this should be conducted as far 

 as po.ssrble accord'ng to the principles of .school life, with all its discipline as 

 well as supervision. 



But while I regard that as the ideal, of course I recognise that it caimot 

 bo achieved at once, and for the moment the line of advance must be that 



