L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE 221 
the school and the world outside there is a freshness and rich actuality 
about his teaching compared with which mere formal or traditional 
routine is a feeble thing. 
The development of an educational system in a democratic country 
such as ours is a difficult and complicated enterprise. Consider by way 
of contrast what is happening in certain other and ultra-modern states. 
You are struck at once by the dominance of a single leading idea, to which 
there is little that corresponds in our own society. In soviet Russia it 
is being said that the one purpose of education is to create active workers 
for the construction of a socialistic state. Of Germany much the same 
can be said. The Nazi Minister of the Interior only the other day 
declared that the time had come for abandoning liberal notions of 
free individual development. The child must be reared for complete 
absorption in and subservience to the corporative state. Whatever else 
we may think of it, this concentration on a single aim undoubtedly 
simplifies and speeds up the work of educational construction or re- 
construction. But for us such an immense simplification is out of the 
question. Our system of education has to meet, and if it may to adjust, 
many differing demands: the demand of the parent, of the community, 
of industry, of the state, demands which are not quite the same to-day 
as they were yesterday, and will not be constant to-morrow. And all 
these demands have to be reconciled with the demand that the child or 
young person shall be assisted freely to develop his individual character 
and ability. In the familiar words, ‘ adequate provision must be made 
in order to secure that children and young persons shall not be debarred 
from receiving the benefits of any form of education by which they are 
capable of profiting.’ It is in this assertion of the rights of the individual 
that the English system of education differs fundamentally from those of 
our neighbours who are obsessed, as we think, with the notion of the 
omnipotent state. And it is because of this principle that the educa- 
tionist disappoints many would-be reformers in our own country who 
wish to re-construct our education in the interest of early occupational 
competence. 
Not that the educationist and those who hold with him are blind to 
social and economic necessities, but their concern is for the future 
Education cannot dispose of present emergencies any more than a tree 
can grow ripe fruit overnight. It takes a generation for its policies to 
come into full bearing. ‘The men and women of to-day must deal with 
their own difficulties. ‘The one thing of which we can be certain in these 
rapidly-changing times is that to-morrow will be different. It is, there- 
fore, no mere theory but the soundest possible practice that we should 
develop the powers of youth that they may face emergencies, the nature 
of which we cannot predict, with moral courage, adaptability, and re- 
sourcefulness. But 
If we draw a circle premature, 
Heedless of far gain, 
Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure, 
Bad is our bargain. 
