NOVKMBEB 0, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



583 



him beyond the inspection of his work to 

 express himself in decent English and to 

 submit to examination from the outside ; 

 but even here the payment for such instruc- 

 tion should be by an attendance grant tem- 

 pered in some degree by the results of ex- 

 amination, since examiners are not always 

 to be trusted. 



The attendance grant was not viewed by 

 some with great favor at first, and protests 

 were received against its adoption, a 

 favorite complaint being that it was sure 

 to entail a loss of grant. One became 

 suspicious that some of those who protested 

 were aware that the last bulwark which de- 

 fended the earning of grants bj' cram was 

 being removed, and that inspection might 

 prove more irksome than examination. 

 This is past history now, and the new sys- 

 tem works as smoothly as the old and with 

 not more complaints than are to be always 

 expected. 



As I have said, grants were for very 

 many years supposed to be confined to aid- 

 ing the instruction of the industrial classes, 

 but this limitation was more nominal than 

 real. It might probably be imagined that 

 it was no vfery diSicult task to distinguish 

 an artisan and his children from students 

 who belonged to the middle classes. This 

 was not the case, however. Children be- 

 longing to the industrial class were, on 

 joining a science class, obliged to state the 

 occupation of the father, and it was no 

 uncommon thing for fathers to be given 

 brevet-rank by their children. Thus, a 

 brick-layer's son would describe his father 

 as a 'builder,' which, if true, ought to have 

 brought him into the ranks of the middle 

 class. These unauthorized promotions 

 were one of the difficulties the inspector 

 had to face w'hen .judging as to the status 

 of the parents. This difficulty was largely 

 met by a rule that all those who attended 

 evening classes were supposed to be of 

 the industrial class; but as day classes in- 



creased the numbers of those who by no 

 possibility could be of the artisan class also 

 increased, and it became a very invidious 

 duty of the inspector to put M.C. (Middle 

 Class) against the names of many. It was 

 determined by superior authority that only 

 those students or their parents who could 

 claim exemption fi-om income-tax should 

 be reckoned as coming within the category 

 of industrial students. In early days the 

 qualification for abatement on income-tax 

 was a much lower figure than it is 

 to-day, and almost each succeeding chan- 

 cellor of the exchequer has raised the 

 figure of the income on which the abate- 

 ment could be claimed. To-day it is, I 

 believe, TOOL a yeai', bringing tJie official 

 definition as to membership of the indus- 

 trial classes to an absurdity. It became 

 evident to the official mind, which some 

 people are good enough to say works but 

 slowly, that the definition must be amended 

 or the limitation abolished. The progress 

 of events happily made the abolition the 

 better plan, and was the means of allowing 

 inroads of science instruction to be made 

 into secondary day schools. 



The history of these inroads I shall now 

 give. Instruction given in so-called or- 

 ganized science schools was originally aided 

 by the department by means of a small 

 capitation grant. Thfese schools were sup- 

 posed to give an organized course of science 

 instruction, and the successes at examina- 

 tion determined the pajTuent. They were 

 not satisfactory as at first constituted, and 

 they so dwindled away in numbers that in 

 1890 only some one or two were left. A 

 small increase in capitation grant in 1892 

 revived some of them, and a fair number 

 existed in the following year. There was 

 no doubt, however, that the conditions un- 

 der which they existed were most unfavor- 

 able for a sound education, which ought not 

 only to include science but also literary in- 

 struction. The latter was, in many schools, 



