100 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



function in educational schemes. And having had now about a genera- 

 tion's experience of some aspects of this problem, I am about to submit 

 some reflections and a few proposals in regard to those aspects of geo- 

 graphical research, and applications of them to educational uses, with 

 which I have been personally concerned. They are not those which have 

 hitherto received the widest attention, and to some people they may not 

 seem of the widest utility or significance. But for this very reason, if I 

 succeed in making good any suggestions in this special department, they 

 may serve a fortiori to commend more liberal recognition of other geo- 

 graphical studies, of which the value and utility are admitted by common 

 consent outside the syllabus and the time-table. 



The ' Nest Phase ' in Geographical Teaching. 



We begin to hear rumours about the ' Next Phase in Education,' and 

 my colleague in Section L will no doubt tell us just what that means. 

 Now whatever else it means — and involves, when it comes to pass — it is 

 at all events an occasion for revising old estimates of what is practicable, 

 in the light of new notions of what is desired, with the help of immemorial 

 ideas of what is desirable because essential to citizenship. And as the 

 ' Next Phase in Education ' means at all events this — to quote ' Circular 

 1397 ' of the Board of Education — that schools are to be reorganised 

 ' to secure for all pupils a break at eleven, and a fresh start at that age 

 on a definitely new stage in education,' it is clearly urgent that those who 

 have views as to what geographical training that ' new stage in education ' 

 shall offer should express them without delay. 



A generation ago — and perhaps even less — the establishment of a 

 ' break at eleven ' for all pupils would have meant serious risk that in the 

 ' new stage ' little would be taught except subjects of obvious and 

 immediate utility : — ' science and art ' subjects certainly ; stenography 

 probably, but as a ' practical ' alternative to music, or by way of ' physical 

 drill ' for the fingers ; modern languages, perhaps, but treated linguistically 

 and conversationally, as vehicles of information or ' orders ' rather than 

 ideas. That risk is still real ; but I think it is less insistent than it was, 

 mainly because the facilities already offered for a high type of secondary 

 education to children from all kinds of homes, and still more for retrieving 

 omissions through adult classes, and (may we not add ? ) the humanising 

 devices of wireless transmission and mechanical record, for disseminating 

 first-rate and first-hand guidance and stimulus to lonely souls, and mere 

 parents, have gone far to break down obstacles and remove misconceptions 

 as to the methods, objects and significance of relatively advanced studies. 

 And this is a change of outlook which has conspicuously affected those 

 subjects and aspects of education which suffered most severely in the 

 past from defective exposition — from ' the second-rate at second-hand,' as 

 an Oxford satirist of ' extension ' put it. 



It is, if I am rightly informed, to be one of the principles of the ' Next 

 Phase in Education ' that from the age of eleven onwards the programme 

 of studies shall be progressively differentiated in accordance with the 

 faculties and proficiency of individual pupils. This on the one hand 

 should mean that for those whose natural bent is towards handicraft 



