754 THE PLACE OF RESEARCH IN EDUCATION. 



but it must be the true chemistry of the discoverer, not the cookery- 

 book-receipt pseudoform which has so long usurped its place. What- 

 ever be taught, let me repeat that mere repetition work and lesson 

 learning must give place to a system of allowing children to do things 

 themselves. Should we succeed in infusing the research spirit into our 

 teaching generally, then there will be hope that, in the course of a gen- 

 eration or so, we shall cease to be the Philistines we are at the present 

 time; the education given in our schools will be worthy of being named 

 a 'liberal education,' which it never will be so long as we worship the 

 Old World classical fetish, and allow our schools to be controlled by 

 those who reverence this alone, having never been instructed in a 

 wider faith." 



And what aye schools such as this to do ? Should they not also teach 

 in the same spirit? As the secondary education commissioners point 

 out — education must ever become more practical — a means of forming 

 men (and they should have added, and women) not simply to enjoy life, 

 but to accomplish something in the life they enjoy. 



To this end, every school, I believe, whether in this metropolis or 

 elsewhere, must work out its own salvation ; and we must not look for 

 payment on results, or countenance examinations which reduce all to 

 one dead level. 



When Professor Ayrton and I were appointed the first professors of 

 the City and Guilds of London Institute — he having cut his educational 

 teeth in the service of the Japanese and I having been largely made in 

 Germany — we found ourselves in complete agreement that we would 

 have nothing to do with teaching for examinations. Those who after- 

 wards became our colleagues in the establishment of the Finsbury 

 Technical College, my friends Mr. (now Sir Philip) Magnus and Profes- 

 sor Perry fully shared this view, and we all saw that a big problem in 

 education lay before us which we could only work out if we had complete 

 liberty of action, and the committees we had to do with never for one 

 moment questioned this — all honor to them. I am proud to say that 

 the programmes of the guild's colleges have never been disfigured by 

 references to examinations as objects to be kept in view by students, 

 and I venture to think that when the time comes to consider without 

 prejudice the services which the city guilds have rendered to the cause 

 of education, it will be admitted that they, more than any other body, 

 have shown true appreciation of English needs. It is worthwhile not- 

 ing that although it has never been a coaching college, the Finsbury 

 Technical College has always been overfull, which disposes of the 

 assertion that the bait of an examination must necessarily be held out 

 as an attraction. 



But what have the polytechnics done"? To what extent have they 

 made a clean beginning in all subjects; and to what extent have 

 they been suborned to worship at the examination shrine to earn the 

 unholy money bribe called payment on results? 



I am told that the latter course is adopted in some cases, not because 

 it is felt to be the right one, but because it would not do for Polytechnic 



