226 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



Other countries have recognised the need of a break between academic 

 studies and professional training, and delay the latter until experience and 

 greater maturity serve to make it effective. The Danes, both in their 

 Folk Schools and in the training of their teachers, recognise the need for 

 some experience of the world before embarking upon studies that demand 

 a serious outlook upon life. 



An Unorthodox Experiment. — Recently a new Irish Education Act 

 found us insufficiently supplied with the types of teacher necessary to 

 implement it. We needed teachers of general subjects, building trades, 

 metal work, motor-car engineering, rural and general science, and 

 domestic economy. We selected our candidates for these groups with 

 care, the average age being about twenty-five, and importance was 

 attached to the quality of their previous work and experience ; few had 

 previously taught. The groups were placed under teachers of experience 

 who dealt with the technical training and the problems of teaching 

 simultaneously. Teaching methods were confined to the subject-matter 

 of the group, and consisted mainly of discussions and criticism lessons 

 and a little class experience. The duration of the courses was less than 

 a year. I was present at all the final teaching tests and was astonished 

 at the excellent standards reached. These teachers are now at work 

 throughout the country, and with few exceptions have fulfilled our 

 expectations. Many have been called upon to undertake teaching duties 

 not contemplated originally, and they have not failed. 



Some conclusions are indicated from this unorthodox experiment. 

 In the making of a teacher his maturity and serious contacts with life are 

 of great importance ; concentration upon the teaching of specific lessons 

 is more eff^ective than the discussion of theoretical principles ; and, lastly, 

 the skill acquired in the teaching of one subject is available for wider 

 application. 



Section L in York, 1906. — My distinguished predecessor. Sir Michael 

 Sadler, in this chair and in this city twenty-six years ago surveyed, with 

 very great ability, the whole field of English education at that time. He 

 deait at some length with many of the questions to which I have referred, 

 but especially to the need for more vocational purpose in school work. 

 At that time he saw signs of a first general appreciation of education 

 definitely for life, and showed how educational problems must be inter- 

 woven with social problems. He said : ' In planning a course of education 

 for anyone you must keep the actual needs of his or her future life-work 

 steadily in view. The schools must prepare the children for citizenship 

 and for individual efficiency in this or that type of future calling, and 

 must dovetail educational discipHne into the practical tasks of life.' 

 And again : ' Schools are at present too little concerned in the question 

 how each individual pupil is likely to earn his living.' He appreciated 

 that, with the expansion of the public school downwards and the 

 elementary school upwards, the old middle-class grammar school must 

 disappear, and that the two remaining types would attract such a 

 variety of pupils that it would be difficult to have a clear-cut vocational 

 purpose. 



The traditional ruts into which education moved, the concentration 



