THE PLACE OF KESEAIiCH IN EDUCATION. 757 



Clearly, therefore, it is essential that we should not lose sight of the 

 fact that an exceedingly complex educational system is now growing 

 up under the influence of men who, for the most part, are in no sense 

 experts, and have but little knowledge of the details of such work, 

 although possessed with the desire in every way to do service to the 

 community and to improve our national position. It therefore behooves 

 all who can follow such work to keep most careful watch on the march 

 of events; otherwise those who seek to benefit may in the end do 

 irreparable injury; the present is a most critical period in our history, 

 and such watchfulness is imperatively demanded of us. 



I have ventured on this digression because so much depends on the 

 foundation laid at school, as technical studies can only be satisfactorily 

 engaged in by those who have been well trained from the beginning. 



As Professor Herkomer says, the kind of individuality to be devel- 

 oped in each town — or in the case of our huge metropolis, in each 

 district — will vary according to the necessities of the community. In 

 future each polytechnic in London must seek to ascertain what special 

 work it can do to greatest advantage, instead of all following one 

 example, as is too much the case at present. In words almost exactly 

 those of my artist colleague: "This is the only way in which schools 

 will obtain a direct influence over the industries of the country; and 

 the influence will be the right one when the master is carefully selected, 

 because it will be the school around a man and not a man struggling 

 to be master in the midst of a system of impersonal teaching, where 

 every student is expected to be squeezed into a great educational 

 mangling machine." "Choose your master carefully," he says, "but 

 then let him be master, and he will soon, with freedom of action, vary 

 his forms of tuition according to the idiosyncrasy of each student, or 

 the necessities of his immediate locality. The one true prize to be 

 worked for would be individual progress. All teaching must be on a 

 personal basis." 



Choose your master carefully — this is indeed good advice. But this 

 implies, of course, that those who have to choose know how ; that they 

 have some standard before them. Have they? Results seem to show 

 that they rarely have. In this matter, as in many others, I believe, 

 the City and Guilds of London Institute has set a good example by 

 selecting men known to be capable of doing research work, and a large 

 amount of research work has been done in its colleges. I am not aware 

 that, excepting in the case of the principal of this polytechnic, capacity 

 to undertake research work has been regarded as a qualification; on 

 the contrary, for I know that when it was urged at one of them that a 

 particular candidate had exceptional qualifications of this kind, the 

 answer was: "We want a man to teach, not to do research." But 

 the work of true education is pure research ; really good teachers are 

 engaged in nothing else, being constantly occupied in studying their 

 pupils' idiosyncrasies and in devising suitable methods of instruction. 

 The "researcher" is the equivalent of the artist; the teacher who can 



