196 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



secondary school. In recent years the demand for more secondary 

 schools, the need for dealing with many arrears of improvements or 

 developments left by the war, and the financial difficulties with which 

 Central and Local Authority alike have been beset, have delayed the 

 expansion of practical instruction required by the Fisher Act. 



Yet another reason may be given. Secondary schools have had 

 behind them the prestige of the universities, to which their curriculum 

 naturally leads, and central schools in comparison have sometimes been 

 regarded as blind alleys. Universities are the crown of our educational 

 system. It is a laudable aim that the education of all children of scholastic 

 ability should be rounded off there — and, on the other hand, universities 

 of late years have broadened their curriculum to include many techno- 

 logical subjects. But their doors are guarded, and rightly so, by an 

 examination which demands the all-round curriculum of the ordinary 

 secondary school. On the maintenance of an effective entrance test 

 depends to a considerable extent the standard of work of the universities, 

 and on the standard of the universities depends the standard of every 

 school in the country. Do not let us make the mistake of judging the 

 efficiency of our educational system merely by the number of young men 

 and women we send to the universities. Let us judge it rather by the 

 standard of our universities, by the extent to which they are accessible 

 to young people of scholastic ability, irrespective of circumstances, by 

 the adequacy and efficiency of other provision for continued or higher 

 education, and by the extent to which universities and other institutions 

 alike, whole-time or part-time, are ministering to the development of 

 powers of appreciation, thought and varied ability among our people. 



Further, I find it difficult to resist the conclusion that our tardy and 

 somewhat grudging recognition of the need for practical instruction has 

 been due partly to a failure to appreciate the psychological issues involved. 

 There are two things which we seem too ready to forget. The first is that 

 not only in the early stages, but also in the later — in adolescence — there 

 will be no intellectual development without interest and understanding. 

 The second is that if a child is not able to take interest in at least some 

 of his lessons, school may be positively harmful to his mental development. 

 ' An unsuitable course,' said Sanderson of Oundle, ' may not only fail to 

 develop, but actually retard progress.' Yet too many of us, quite un- 

 consciously, seem to be guided by Mr. Dooley's aphorism that ' it doesn't 

 matter what you teach a child so long as he doesn't want to learn it ' ! 



The value of practical instruction for younger children is now fully 

 admitted, but too often we seem reluctant to recognise what its worth may 

 be higher up in the school. Yet Professor Cyril Burt, to whom I am indebted 

 for some valuable notes on this subject, writes that recent psychological 

 tests have shown that both the range and nature of individual abilities differ 

 increasingly among older children — ' though differences in inborn ability 

 may appear quite early among individual children, the degrees to which 

 they differ become larger and larger, and continue to increase (at any rate up 

 to the age of about fourteen) almost proportionately with increasing age.' 

 The need for variety of curriculum increases, therefore, with adolescence. 



Again, we have been ready to own the worth of practical instruction 

 for the dull and backward, and to understand that one of its special values 



