SECTION L.— EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 



THE BROADENING OF THE OUTLOOK 

 IN EDUCATION. 



ADDRESS BY 



THE DUCHESS OF ATHOLL, D.B.E., M.P., D.C.L., LL.D, 



F.R.C.M., 



PRESIDENT OP THE SECTION. 



I feel as if I owed this assembly an apology for speaking on a theme 

 which to many may seem well-worn. If I cannot claim any novelty for 

 my subject, neither can I pretend to any expert or first-hand knowledge 

 of the work of the schools. But perhaps you will allow one whose 

 experience of education has been limited to the administrative side to 

 indicate one or two conclusions to which that experience has led. A 

 further reason for my choice of this subject is its intimate connexion 

 with what is generally recognised as the main educational problem of the 

 day — the education of the adolescent. It is because I think we all feel 

 how important a bearing this question has on our social and economic 

 well-being that I venture to bring the subject before you. 



The Board of Education's Consultative Committee, in their recent 

 Report on the Education of the Adolescent, have made various recom- 

 mendations, of which the one that seems to have attracted most attention 

 is that which deals with the raising of the school age to fifteen, as from the 

 year 1932. Important as that question is, important as is the further 

 recommendation that, a great extension of post-primary instruction 

 being desirable, such instruction should be given under a unified scheme 

 of administration, the heart and kernel of the Committee's proposals 

 lies in their recognition of what I conceive to be a fact of fundamental 

 importance — that in a large number of children wide variations of capacity 

 and gifts are to be expected, and that courses of instruction must therefore 

 be varied to suit. ' Equality,' they declare, ' is not identity, and the 

 larger the number of children to be provided for, the more essential it 

 becomes that they should not be pressed into a single mould.' The child 

 of practical ability must be catered for as well as the child of literary or 

 scientific gifts. 



These statements may well appear too obvious to need argument. 

 From the day when education began to aim at developing faculties as 

 well as disciplining them, the case for a varied curriculum became over- 

 whelming. If moral and perhaps intellectual discipline may be acquired 

 through the study of uncongenial subjects, intellectual development can 

 surely only come with understanding, or when an appeal is made to some 

 latent faculty for appreciation or creation. A child to whom the use of 

 words is new must have those words related to things seen and realised 



