ON EDUCATIONAL TRAINING FOR OVERSEAS LIFE. 345 
And again, regarding the comparative efficiency of different subjects performing 
these particular experiments, a definite statement on this point must be deferred 
until data from a greater number of individuals are available. 
REFERENCES. 
1 F. A. Duffield—Cost of Cycling at Varied Rate and Work. Rep. Brit. Assn., 
p. 481 (1923). 
2 J.S. Macdonald. Proc. Roy. Soc., B., vol. 89, p. 403 (1916). 
* F. A. Duffield and J. 8. Macdonald. Proc. Journ. of Physiol., vol. lviii., p. xiii 
(1923), and vol. lix., p. xvii (1924). 
Educational Training for Overseas Life.—Report of Committee 
appointed to consider the educational training of boys and girls in 
Secondary Schools for overseas life (Rev. Dr. H. B. Gray, Chairman ; 
Mr. C. E. Browne, Secretary; Dr. Varcas Eyre, Sir RicHarp 
Grecory, Mr. O. H. Larrer, Sir Joun Russet1). 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
Iv recent years the congested state of the various professions and industrial occupations 
in Great Britain has presented a serious problem alike to parents and educational 
authorities. Boys on leaving our secondary schools are finding it more and more 
difficult to obtain suitable openings in offices or works, and though a number enter 
banks or insurance offices, they represent only a tithe of those competing for a place. 
On the other hand, the overseas Dominions possess vast resources awaiting a population 
to develop them. They need workers for the land, and offer great opportunities to 
lads of spirit and enterprise. In spite of tempting offers by the overseas Governments 
in the form of free land and loans, few boys from our public schools, or from other 
large secondary schools, are found to be taking to colonial life. Various reasons may 
be advanced to account for this reluctance, or absence of desire on the part of English 
boys to go overseas, but whatever they are the effect is the same—a distinct loss to the 
Empire generally and a source of weakness to the home country particularly. 
While a boy is at school the problem of his future career seldom troubles him; he 
is content to wait on opportunity when school days are over. Few boys up to sixteen 
have any definite ideas or desires on the subject. Unless their parents or friends have 
places already marked out for them, they tend to follow some prescribed course of 
study leading up to such examinations as offer certificates qualifying for entrance into 
the various professions or into commercial life. Thus the school curriculum very 
often determines a boy’s career. In the case, however, of the many boys who show no 
power or liking for any special school-subject, their future occupation depends often 
on some chance opening. Banks and other offices are full of such young men, yet 
many of these would from their character and physical qualities be far better suited 
for the more vigorous and freer life on the land overseas. 
PURPOSE OF COMMITTEE.—It is very significant that the majority of head- 
masters think some of their boys would have done better in life on the land overseas 
than in the occupations they have taken up in England. Several headmasters 
emphasise this point and put the number of such boys as high as 10 per cent. of 
those leaving school each year. 
At the Headmasters’ Conference in December last, emphasis was laid on the need 
for a scheme of settlement on the land, and a resolution was passed instructing their 
committee to investigate the possible methods of encouraging and organising the 
settlement of public school boys in the overseas Dominions. 
The Headmaster of Wellington, in moving the resolution, said ; ‘ It is a healthier, 
more human, and a more useful life to be growing wheat or wool for the needs of man 
in the wind, sunshine, and rain than to be calculating percentages under electric 
light, and with all the advantages of central heating. We ought to be doing more 
than we are in encouraging boys to go out. I am not certain that many of us have 
done anything to familiarise them with the idea that to go overseas is a natural and 
ordinary conclusion of public school education.’ 
Many schools send one or two boys a year to agricultural colleges or to farms, 
but in the majority of cases they are not trained there specifically for overseas life. 
