ON EDUCATIONAL TRAINING FOR OVERSEAS LIFK. 459 



given a fair chauce to the fellow who was good at doing things rather 

 than in writing or talking about them. It was impossible for boys to 

 preserve their self-respect if they were continually being reminded by the 

 school curriculum that they were hopelessly inferior people. A school 

 that existed merely to convince a boy how stupid he was, was not doing 

 its job. Only a tiny fraction of boys were not good at something or other, 

 and the school curriculum must be wide enough to give every fellow his 

 chance. A boy might be hopeless in the art room, but a real artist in 

 making up a seed bed ; poor indeed in the mathematical master's eyes, 

 but an expert in the manufacture of simple surveying instruments. 



In conclusion, he asked for the inclusion of biological and practical 

 studies in the curriculum not only from the point of view of overseas 

 settlement, for, after all, it was only a small percentage of their boys and 

 girls who would go abroad, but because they were essential factors of a 

 good general education. 



He believed, indeed, that if the Overseas Committee of the British 

 Association would only take up this question of rural education for its 

 own sake, apart from any consideration of settlement overseas or of 

 farming at home, it would do more than anything that had been done for 

 many long years to regenerate rural England, and to place the economic, 

 social, and spiritual life of England on a higher plane than it had ever 

 reached before. 



