SECTION L.— EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 



THE FUNCTION OF ADMINISTRATION 

 IN PUBLIC EDUCATION 



ADDRESS BY 



J. SARGENT, 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



The British Association in general, and this Section of it in particular, 

 have long been accustomed to Presidential Addresses which, with less 

 than the usual compromise between truth and politeness, have generally 

 been described as brilliant and provocative. Certainly there would be 

 no exaggeration in applying these epithets to those addresses to which I 

 myself have had the privilege of listening. 



This year I can at any rate promise the Section a change, but it will 

 not be a change for the better. Even if, in my undergraduate days, I 

 occasionally staggered College societies with visions of things to come, I 

 can only say that, after twenty-five years in the service of local government, 

 the instinct of self-preservation if nothing else has taught me to confine 

 myself to things as they are. 



At the same time I am proud to be old enough, or young enough, to 

 have been at school and college at a period when young men looked for 

 a new book by my immediate predecessor with something of the same 

 spirit of hope and excitement as the Christians of Macedonia may have 

 awaited a communication from St. Paul. There was a memorable 

 evening in our Senior Common Room when I laboured, not with entire 

 success, to persuade our venerable Dean that, in spite of a certain similarity 

 in title, Kipps, the book I was commending to his notice, was not identical 

 with another modern work called Kim, which had earned his disappro- 

 bation and was in fact by quite a different author. 



I will not at any rate blame my subject, even if at first sight it may 

 appear a dull one, for the shortcomings of this address. The reasons 

 I chose it are twofold ; in the first place it is the only serious topic I know 

 enough about to justify my discussing it in the presence of an audience 

 of such various distinction, and in the second I am rapidly approaching 

 a state of suspended animation so far as my association with local govern- 

 ment is concerned, so that without aspiring to brilliance or even provoca- 

 tion I can air my views with greater freedom and possibly less offence 

 than any of my colleagues who are still bound to the wheel of official 

 discretion. 



