L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE 231 
agrees that his junior employees are better mannered, more self-respecting, 
more amenable than those of pre-war days, but he does not find in them 
the alertness, the resourcefulness, the desire for responsibility which a 
sufficiently high proportion of their fathers displayed. Yet British 
industry was probably never more in need of these qualities in its workers 
than it is to-day. 
Is it the business of the secondary school to meet that n>ed of industry ? 
We have in our organisation proceeded on a theory which, nakedly 
expressed, appears to be this. We will choose as well as we may, at about 
the age of eleven, those children who can undergo a further five years of 
full-time education with profit to the community and to themselves ; 
they shall go to the secondary school ; the rest shall complete the compul- 
sory elementary school course, and as for any education beyond that, it 
shall be a voluntary part-time affair. On that theory the secondary 
school is the common full-time school for adolescents. Can we say that 
it is performing so comprehensive a service satisfactorily ? Not unless 
we have the hardihood to maintain that full-time study, extending over the 
period of adolescence, is only necessary for those who are to enter the 
academic or professional classes or the public service, or the managerial 
ranks in industry. 
The schools are now finding themselves obliged to go further afield in 
the search for suitable openings for their pupils, and the contacts they 
are making in this way will in time react healthily upon their work. There 
will be a broadening of the curriculum and maybe a less scholastic 
approach to the more traditional subjects, especially when the grip of the 
School Certificate examinations is relaxed. But anything in the nature 
of a general turn over to the American high school type is to be depre- 
cated, though one would like to see that alternative tried out in some 
of the larger urban areas. The average secondary school is perhaps 
fortunately lacking in the capacity for so great a change, and were the 
change forced upon it by authority much that is honourably distinctive 
would be lost. The high intellectual standards, on which are based not 
merely the after competence of the professional classes, but the whole 
leadership of the nation, would certainly be impaired. If, however, the 
secondary school is to be left unaltered, save for developments from within, 
to continue its present contribution to the national life, there will need to 
be a reduction in the number of its pupils for at least two reasons. 
We are admitting to the schools to-day children who are unequal to 
the curriculum, and whose motive for attempting it is mainly social 
ambition. As Sir Michael Sadler, another former President of this 
Section, pointed out years ago, ‘it is possible to over-stimulate the 
intellectual susceptibility of people of mediocre talent without adding 
much to the sound stock of critical or practical judgment possessed by 
the nation "—a form of waste, he went on to add, ‘ which we are distinctly 
in danger of incurring ’ : a form of waste which we must confess is actually 
being incurred. There are also children of another type in the secondary 
schools, not necessarily inferior, who would be better suited by a less 
academic and more practical curriculum. If these two groups are to be 
turned back, the senior school, the modern school of the Hadow Report, 
