SECTION L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE 
NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 
ADDRESS BY 
J. L. HOLLAND, B.A. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
I puRPOsE this morning to follow the sound example of those of my 
_ predecessors who have confined their addresses for the most part to matters 
of which they have had first hand experience. My own experience during 
the last thirty years has been that of an administrator in a humble way, 
and I have therefore chosen as my subject ‘ The Development of the 
National System of Education.’ I hasten to assure you, however, that 
I do not design to discuss more than one or two phases of that develop- 
ment. The title is comprehensive enough to enable me to bring under it 
all the things I wish to say, but an inclusive treatment of it would 
require more time than is at your disposal to-day, and a more competent 
exponent than I can claim to be. 
It is vividly present to the mind of every educationist that he is 
serving a society which is disturbed by great private and public anxieties. 
The causes are world-wide. We see the foundations of social order and 
well-being shaking in country after country and we wonder how long our 
own land will be spared. Insuch times of unsettlement that man is hap- 
piest who, with a small thing to do, sees itand does it, who takes short views 
and lives a day at a time, like the caretaker of whom one read recently 
dusting the benches in the Parliament House while revolution was being 
made in the streets without. But the minds of thinking men are quickened 
by the turmoil and must work, and if at times they are depressed by a sense 
of helplessness, that is not the dominant note. It must needs be that 
changes come. By taking thought with their fellows, men can, it may be, 
help to determine the direction and extent of the changes. There pro- 
bably never was a time when every department of social and economic 
life was more vigorously canvassed than it is to-day. Large conventions, 
which in normal circumstances men accept as the price of being allowed 
to get on with their work, are the subject of ceaseless debate ; the quiet 
corners which usually escape notice are ruthlessly being turned out, and 
proposals for reform come from every quarter. 
Education does not sue to be excused from the general re-valuation. 
True that in one aspect it is a great institution with a membership of 
thousands of men and women, concerned like all institutions with the 
effects reform may have on the lives and fortunes of its members. True 
