518 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



suggested by Mr. Aclaiid's Committee, supplemented by the greatest possible 

 development of the tutorial-class system which owes its origin to the 

 Workers' Educational Association, and for a full account of which I must 

 refer to Mr. Mansbridge's book 'University Tutorial Classes.' The great 

 feature of the tutorial-class system is its freedom from the spirit of com- 

 petition and worldly self-advancement. Tt is an effort on the part of working 

 people, with the help which the Universities have been nobly ready to supply, 

 to equip themselv<?s more perfectly to meet their responsibilities as citizens 

 and as members of their own class. Within each tutorial class the element 

 of competition is entirely absent, and any proposal which might have the 

 indirect effect of introducing such a spirit is regarded by the whole move- 

 ment with extreme anxiety and disfavour. By this system real University 

 teaching is brought within the reach of the working people without their being 

 drawn away from their own class. The Universities have responded nobly to 

 the appeal, as I have said. But they simply cannot from their own resources 

 meet the need which really exists. Either the State or private generosity must 

 come to the help of the movement. The Board of Education has already shown 

 its approval not only by a most valuable report which it has issued, but also by 

 revising its code so as to enable it to give a higher grant! to this work than 

 was possible under the old regulations. But still more is needed. There must 

 be munificent endowment of this work either by benefactors or by the State 

 if the opportunity is to be genuinely taken. 



The tutorial-class movement has made two important discoveries. The first 

 is that there is a very great amount of literally first-class ability in the country 

 going to waste for lack of opportunity. That many of us had formerly been 

 convinced must be the case; it is now proved. The other discovery is this. A 

 man who has had no secondary education at all can take up work of the 

 University type when he is of full age if his mind has remained alert. I 

 believe many continuation classes fail through ignorance or neglect of this 

 fact. We always tend to restart the teaching process at the exact point which 

 the student had reached when he left school. That is a mistake. The man 

 or woman whose education ends at fourteen or thirteen, and who becomes 

 desirous of more at twenty-one or later, has lost much in the way of knowledge ; 

 but if the mind has remained alert the development of faculty has gone on 

 and the appropriate method of study is that of the University, not that of 

 the secondary school. This is of the utmost importance. We shall not for 

 many years to come secure such a raising of the school-age or such a re- 

 modelling of our system as shall guarantee the full development of every child 

 and adolescent. Thousands will continue to be dropped by our educational 

 system at fifteen, if not sooner. Of course a healthy-minded boy who leaves 

 school at fifteen means to have done with his books. He promptly throws 

 them away unless he is Scotch, and then he sells them. But six or more years 

 later he may wake up to his need for more knowledge and intellectual training. 

 Our tendency has been to give him school teaching; that is wrong; he is of 

 the age to which University teaching is adapted, and only in that will he 

 find what he is wanting. 



I turn now to problems connected with subjects of study. Provided there 

 has been established such a social life as I have described, there will be less 

 harm than otherwise resulting from some degree of specialisation in secondary 

 schools. The students of different subjects will be mixing with one another, 

 and will learn from one another a great deal of those subjects which they are 

 not themselves definitely studying. Certainly one of the great advantages of 

 the college system at the Universities is that it gathers together in very 

 intimate social intercourse students of different subjects. It would be impos- 

 sible for me, for example, to express what I owe to my intercourse with 

 students of natural science during my time at Balliol in Oxford. My own 

 study of natural science lasted for one term, during which I turned the age 

 of thirteen. We rubbed glass rods on fur mats and then held them over 

 strange instruments in which gold leaves behaved in a manner which I now 

 forget, and that was all; but I venture to think that I have acquired sufficient 

 knowledge of how scientists interpret the world to be of real service to me, 

 and this I owe almost entirely to being a member of a college which contained 



