206 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



that for many boys, and for still more girls, the present curriculum is 

 unsuitable, that they are not all, or indeed comparatively many, of them 

 going to the universities, and that they ought not to be sacrificed to the 

 interests of the few who do contemplate that course. The question is 

 raised whether as a matter of fact this intellectual training of the girl 

 ought to be the same as that of the boy, and whether the tyranny of 

 imposing the preparatory curriculum of the university upon the girls is 

 not even more unreasonable than it is asserted to be in the case of the 

 boys. On this point the committee which reported on the differentiation 

 of the curricula as between the sexes spoke with an uncertain voice, 

 probably because they knew that there were many feminine associations 

 ready to tear and devour any committee or any individual who said 

 anything which might be taken to imply that women were not the full 

 equals of men, and girls of boys. 



The practical outcome of all this is the suggestion that boys and girls 

 should be awarded a school certificate even if they omit a foreign language 

 entirely, or mathematics and science entirely, so long as they make up 

 for it by proficiency in subjects such as music, art, handicraft, housecraft 

 and other subjects of more motley character and more dubious claim. 

 On this proposal the English teaching profession is divided, the Head- 

 masters' Conference and the Assistant Masters' Association being against 

 it, the Headmasters' Association doubtfully in favour, and the Head- 

 mistresses' Association and the Assistant Mistresses almost as one woman 

 in favour also. From this state of affairs one can judge where the shoe 

 pinches most, but there is no doubt that it does pinch, and anyone who 

 remembers the figures which I have just quoted will quite readily under- 

 stand why. There are more boys and girls taking the full secondary 

 course to-day than are either fit for it or fitted by it. The malcontents 

 are quite right in the criticisms which they level against the system and 

 its present results, but they are in my opinion wrong as to the nature of 

 the cure and the method by which they would bring it about. 



The standard of secondary education in England is high, and is some- 

 thing of which we have a right to be proud. Its methods and objects are 

 the fruit of long experience and of the efforts of several generations. The 

 boy or girl who has taken a school certificate before the age of sixteen, 

 followed an advanced course, or specialisation in a sixth form, to the age 

 of 18+, has reached a level attained in few educational systems other 

 than our own. I question indeed whether any country is producing boys 

 and girls of as high a level of intellectual excellence and training as those 

 hundreds who go up every year to compete for scholarships and places 

 at Oxford and Cambridge. I believe this to be true of the boys, and it 

 is certainly true of the girls. This system is now built on the general 

 education of the school certificate and the specialised education of the 

 higher certificate, and I hold that it should stand unimpaired, and not be 

 tampered with ; for it is far easier to relax a standard than ever to recover 

 it. To say that every boy and girl who goes to a secondary school for 

 four years should be awarded the same certificate, whatever subjects they 

 may have studied and offered, is to say that things which are not equal 

 to one another are equal to the same thing ; it is to say that the boy who 

 has been successful in English, history, geography, Latin, French, mathe- 



