270 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
of view it is useful to teach a ploughboy to love poetry and not useful 
to teach a public schoolboy to hate Greek. This is not, I remark, an 
argument against teaching a subject whose disappearance from our 
education would be an irreparable disaster. It means merely that the 
literatures of the ancient world, when taught, should be taught in such 
a way as to contribute positively to the quality of a modern life. But 
the term ‘ useful,’ according to the definition, certainly includes utility in 
the narrower sense. The daily work of the world must be kept going, 
and one of the essential tasks of the schools is to fit the young to carry 
it on under the immensely complicated conditions of present-day civilisa- 
tion. There is no incompatibility between this admission and the 
general line of my argument. The only relevant limitation imposed by 
the argument is that what is conservative in purpose shall be creative 
in its method and, being so, shall embody some dignified tradition of 
practical, esthetic, or intellectual activity. The condition may be 
satisfied by a technical education based upon many of the great historic 
occupations of men and women—for example, upon agriculture, build- 
ing, engineering, dressmaking—provided that inspiration is sought from 
the traditions of the industry or craft at their noblest. Anyone who has 
a wide acquaintance with the schools of the country will know some 
whose work accords with these high requirements and gives to prac- 
tically minded boys or girls an education truly liberal in aim—that is, 
an education which tends to free their minds from bondage to sordid 
tastes and petty interests and to make them happily at home among 
large ideas and activities of wide and enduring importance. What these 
schools have done and are doing should be borne in mind when Article 10 
of the Act of 1918 comes again to life or is replaced by legislative pro- 
visions of still bolder design. To conceive ‘ secondary education for all ’ 
as meaning ‘ the grammar school curriculum for all’ would be to make 
a most serious blunder. The only mistake more serious would be to 
exclude adolescent boys and girls, even of the humblest station, from 
any essential part of the national inheritance of culture. But this error 
may be avoided while full account is yet taken of the far-reaching differ- 
ences in the talents and ingenium of individuals and the rich diversity 
of the valuable currents, intellectual, practical, and esthetic, in the life 
of the community, of which any one may be made the basis of a course 
truly liberal in quality. 
The eminent philosopher, Professor Giovanni Gentile, now Minister 
of Public Instruction in the Italian Government, has in more than one 
brilliant work—notably in his eloquent lectures on ‘The Reform of 
Education ’—exnounded views largely congruent with those expressed 
in this paper. JI welcome his agreement not merely because it may be 
presumed that the principles he upholds are the principles informing 
his administration, but even more because the philosophical positions 
from which we start are widely different. Signor Gentile holds, as I 
do. that the proper aim of education is to shape the activities of the 
individual spirit in accordance with the best traditions of the human 
movement. In particular, he does not shrink from insisting that the 
simplest instruction in the primary schocls should be offered in the true 
spirit of culture. And he also maintains that the education of the 
