L.— EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE 223 



or 16, and then say farewell to education for ever. For them we have done 

 practically nothing. The problem has been barely touched and never 

 clearly envisaged. Here, by the side of the impressive architecture of 

 our elementary, secondary and university system, a few scattered buildings 

 rise above the ground, watertight indeed and solid so far as they go, 

 but haphazard, unco-ordinated, and inadequate to the need. The 

 task of the future, I repeat, is to deal with this, our great educational 

 scandal. 2 



Before I make some practical proposals for its removal, I should like to 

 suggest certain principles which we must observe if our efforts are to be 

 successful, and to which little attention has hitherto been paid. They 

 apply to all forms of education except the elementary stage, and some of the 

 weaknesses of our existing system are due to their being overlooked. The 

 first of these principles is that education must be adjusted not only to the 

 natural capacities of the pupil but also to the stage of development which 

 his brain has reached ; that certain forms of study are appropriate to 

 certain ages. That is a platitude. What need then to stress a principle 

 which everyone accepts. Yet, if accepted, is it remembered by an age 

 which has acquiesced in the idea that most of the population should leave 

 school at 14, and is now comforted by the thought that in future they 

 may not leave it till a year later ? At the ages of 14 or 15 the mind 

 cannot cope with, if it can conceive, the subjects which compose a liberal 

 education and are vital to the citizen. A boy reads literature — Hamlet or 

 King Lear — and should read them. But what can the profound scepti- 

 cisms of Hamlet, the passion and agony of Lear mean to him ? He reads 

 history. Can he form a true conception of Charles and Cromwell, 

 Bismarck and Napoleon III ? At 18 we may scan the surface of history 

 and literature, but we cannot see below it. Those waters are very deep 

 and only the adult mind can swim in them. Still more does this apply 

 to the political questions on which an elector has to express an opinion. 

 Unless you believe that these subjects are not meant for the masses and 

 that the voter needs no further education for his duty than experience of 

 life, the newspapers, and the speeches of political candidates, you are 

 admitting the absurdity of an education which stops at 14 or 15. The 

 Hadow Report spoke of giving ' a humane or liberal education ' through 

 the schools which they proposed. It is one of those phrases sounding, 

 seductive, but untrue, into which all of us are at times betrayed. The 



2 It may be argued that I have exaggerated the position, and said nothing 

 of Junior Technical and Commercial Schools, Junior Evening Institutes, etc., but 

 their nets catch only a small number of the fish. The following figures are 

 instructive : 



(a) 476,590 children left P.E. Schools in 1934-35, being 71 -9 per cent, of the 

 total number of leavers. 



(b) Of these 6,647, i.e. 1 -4 per cent., left for further full-time instruction. (The 

 majority of pupils who leave P.E. Schools for full-time instruction leave at an 

 earlier age.) 



(c) In the same year there were 75,993 pupils aged 15-16 in Evening Institutes 

 and Evening Courses at Technical and other Colleges. 



