244 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



lay a sound foundation of pure physics and chemistry upon the most 

 modern lines — for everyone. Some of this work will no doubt overlap 

 the mathematical teaching. And finally, to meet awakening curiosity 

 and take the morbidity out of it, we have to tell our young people and 

 especially our young townspeople, about the working of their bodies, 

 about reproduction and about the chief diseases, enfeeblements and 

 accidents that lie in wait for them in the world. 



That I think completes my summary of all the information we can 

 hope to give in the lower school stage. And as I make it I am acutely 

 aware of your unspoken comment. With such teachers as we have ! 

 Well, I think that it is a better rule of \\ie, first to make sure of what you 

 want and then set about getting it, rather than to consider what you can 

 easily safely and meanly get, and then set about reconciling yourself to it. 

 I admit we cannot have a modern education without a modernised type 

 of teacher. Everything I am saying now implies a demand for more 

 and better teachers — with better equipment. And these teachers will 

 have to be kept fresh. It is stipulated in most leases that we should 

 paint our houses outside every three years and inside every seven years, 

 but nobody ever thinks of doing up a school teacher. There are teachers 

 at work in this country who haven't been painted inside for fifty years. 

 They must be damp and rotten. Two-thirds of the teaching profession 

 now is in urgent need of being either reconditioned or superannuated. 

 In this advancing world the reconditioning of both the medical and the 

 scholastic practitioner is becoming a very urgent problem indeed, but it is 

 not one that I can deal with here. Presently this section will be devoting 

 its attention to adult education and then I hope the whole question of 

 professional and technical refreshment will be ventilated. 



And there is another matter also closely allied to this question of the 

 rejuvenation of teachers, at which I can only glance now, and that is the 

 bringing of school books up to date. In this informative section of school 

 work there is hardly a subject in which knowledge is not being vigorously 

 revised and added to. Our school work does not follow up contemporary 

 digesting. Still less do our school libraries. They are ten, fifteen years 

 out of date with much of their information. Our prison libraries by the 

 by are even worse. I was told the other day of a virtuous prisoner who 

 wanted to improve his mind about radio. The prison had a collection 

 of technical works made for such an occasion and the latest book on radio 

 was dated 1920. There is, I believe, an energetic New School Books 

 Association at work in this field, doing what it can to act in concert with 

 those all too potent authorities who frame our examination syllabuses. 

 I am all for burning old school books. Some day perhaps we shall have 

 school books so made that at the end of five years, let us say, they will 

 burst into flames and inflict severe burns upon any hands in which they 

 find themselves. But at present that is perhaps — Utopian. It is even 

 more applicable to the next stage of knowledge to which we are now 

 coming. 



This stage represents our last thousand hours and roughly I will call it 

 the upper form or upper standard stage. It is really the closing phase of 

 the available school period. Some of the matter I have marked for the 

 history of this grade might perhaps be given in grade B and vice versa. 



