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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 ELEMENTARY PHYSIOGRAPHY 
 
 Treated Experimentally 
 
 With 4 Maps and 243 Diagrams 
 
 vCrown 8vo. 25. 6d. 
 
 ADVANCED PHYSIOGRAPHY 
 
 With 215 Illustrations 
 ^^Crown 8vo. 4«. 6d. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. 
 
EDUCATION 
 
 AND 
 
 SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER MORGAN 
 
 MA., D.Sc, F.R.S.E. 
 
 PEINCIPAL OF THE PROVINCIAL TEAlNINO COLLEOK, EDINBUEQH 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AlfD MADRAS 
 
 1916 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
uc- 
 
 \^l 
 
 ^c? 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This is the age of the Social question. At no previous 
 time have the needs and problems of society been 
 more keenly felt or more earnestly faced. Our social 
 problems are spiritual and ethical as well as economic. 
 In dealing with them two objects must always be 
 kept in view: one is the improvement of the economic 
 conditions of the people, and the other, and no less 
 important, the improvement of personal character. 
 Social workers have been slow to realise that pre- 
 vention is better than cure, and that the child is the 
 centre of the social problem and our strong hope of 
 its ultimate solution. We have been devoting too 
 much attention to adults and too little to the young. 
 The words of an old writer contain much wisdom : 
 ' Barren land should not be cultivated, nor even once 
 ploughed ' ; or, as a modern writer even more pointedly 
 puts it, ' Too much money is spent upon the diseased 
 tree, not enough upon the growing twig.' 
 
 Let us honestly face the fact that we cannot do 
 much to modify the lives and characters of the adults 
 of the community who have gone astray, but we can 
 do a great deal to bring physical, mental, and moral 
 health into the Hves of the children, and to give scope 
 to their infinite potentialities for the good of the 
 nation. Think of the fifteen million children in the 
 
 355235 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 country under fourteen years of age. The whole 
 gamut of human capacity must be represented there, 
 and lying latent in them is the collective power, if 
 properly developed, to make our country the happiest 
 and most prosperous of nations. Hence workers for 
 social amelioration are concentrating their energies 
 more on the training and education of the child than 
 on any other form of social endeavour. 
 
 Education, not in the old narrow sense of school 
 teaching, but as comprising all the forces that develop 
 the powers and form the minds and characters of the 
 young, is now recognised as the most important 
 method of social intervention, and the most powerful 
 means by which democracy can secure the realisation 
 of its ideals. As a consequence, there is growing up 
 a new body of educational literature less specialised 
 in substance and less narrow in aim and interest than 
 that which has hitherto been common. It is the aim 
 of this volume to present some of those wider aspects 
 of education, and to show the part that education, 
 properly interpreted and exercised, may play in 
 removing the barriers to social progress, and in im- 
 proving the condition of the whole body politic. 
 
 I desire to acknowledge my great indebtedness 
 to my colleague Mr. James Drever, M.A., B.Sc, 
 Lecturer in Education, Edinburgh University, for 
 revising the proofs and making many valuable sug- 
 gestions in connection with them. 
 
 ALEX. MORGAN. 
 
 Edinburgh, 
 
 November 1, 1915. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PA.GB 
 
 1 
 
 I. Social Pathology 
 
 II. Imperfect Remedies of Social Diseases . 
 
 III. The Causes of Social Diseases — ^Heredity 
 
 IV. The Causes of Social Diseases — Environment 
 V. The Causes of Social Diseases — Defective 
 
 Education .... 
 
 VI. The Conditions of Social Progress 
 
 VII. Education and Heredity. 
 
 Vni. Education and Environment . 
 
 IX. Education and Practical Life. 
 
 X. Education and Practical Life — Practical 
 
 Teaching in the Primary School 
 
 XI. Education and Practical Life — Pre-Trade 
 
 Education .... 
 
 Xn. Further Education . 
 
 XIII. Further Education (continued) 
 
 XIV. Children under School Age . 
 XV. Education and Public Health 
 
 XVI. Education and Public Health (continued) 
 
 XVII. Education and Public Health (continued) 
 
 XVIII. Education of Defective Children . 
 
 XIX. Education of Defective Children (continued) 217 
 
 XX. Wider Use of School Plant . 
 
 XXI. Teachers and Social Progress. 
 
 XXII. Conclusion . . . . 
 
 Index 
 
 11 
 21 
 
 28 
 
 42 
 54 
 61 
 76 
 87 
 
 96 
 
 107 
 122 
 134 
 148 
 166 
 182 
 196 
 208 
 
 227 
 237 
 243 
 
 249 
 
EDUCATION AND SOCIAL 
 PROGRESS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SOCIAL PATHOLOaY 
 
 Until recent times there was a tendency, in Western 
 nations at least, to emphasise the rights of the 
 individual as against the rights of the community, 
 and to regard the State as existing solely for the 
 interests of its individual members. The laissez- 
 faire doctrines of the last two centuries exaggerated 
 unduly the importance of the individual, and the 
 danger of interfering with his rights and liberties. 
 Modern social philosophy is opposed to these views. 
 Fouillee correctly represents the opinions of the present 
 time when he says : ' The danger that, above all others, 
 a democratic nation must avoid is the disintegration 
 of society into units with no immediate concern but 
 self-interest, into individuals to whom social duties 
 and bonds are gradually ceasing to appeal.' ^ 
 
 1 Education from a National Standpoint, p. 4, by Alfred Fouillee. 
 (International Education Series.) 
 
2 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 Individtialistic theories if carried to their logical 
 development would lead to the destruction of the 
 State. Hence at the present moment there is a 
 return to something like the old Greek ideal of citizen- 
 ship, that it is the office of a good citizen to serve 
 the State, to live and, if need be, to die for the State, 
 whose duty it is on the other hand to protect its 
 citizens and to equip them for social service in which 
 they develop their highest individuality. The modem 
 biological conception of society as an organism, the 
 living cells of which are the individual members, is 
 changing the old-time demand for individual liberty to 
 a demand for social soUdarity . We prosper only by the 
 weKare of the whole, and if there is disease or degenera- 
 tion in any part, the entire community suffers thereby. 
 ' If one member suffers all the members suffer with 
 it.' Hence those interested in social welfare are 
 examining the ills of society at the present time with 
 microscopic intensity. There never was a time when 
 there was so much social endeavour, or when so many 
 minds were engaged in examining our social ills, 
 and in planning and working out schemes for their 
 remedy. As a consequence, we know infinitely more 
 than even our parents did about the problems of 
 humanity, and, through the practical appHcation of 
 knowledge fast accumulating, we may confidently 
 hope that a solution of the problems will be found. 
 There is no reason in the nature of things why society 
 should be oppressed for ever by the ills that at present 
 afflict it. If we set ourselves earnestly to the task, 
 
SOCIAL PATHOLOGY 3 
 
 it is within our power greatly to reduce, if not entirely 
 to remove, them. What we have to do is to study with 
 patience the symptoms and causes of the national 
 malaise, and then to apply the appropriate remedies. 
 It is not necessary in a general treatise such as 
 this to give a minute and exhaustive analysis of the 
 pathological conditions of society. They are chiefly 
 three : poverty, vice and crime, and parasitism and 
 the exploitation of the weak by the strong. 
 
 Poverty 
 
 Poverty is one of the commonest forms of social 
 disease and one of the chief obstacles to social progress. 
 Whether we advocate the entire abolition of child 
 labour, the extension of the period of compulsory 
 education, the improvement of housing, or any other 
 proposal calculated to ameliorate the condition of 
 the people, we are met at every turn by the same 
 objection — the inability of a portion of the community 
 to bear the increased cost. Our present economic 
 and social conditions are producing an unending 
 supply of broken and destitute people who are always 
 within measurable reach of want, who suffer in body 
 and in mind from lack of the necessaries of life, and 
 are unable to lead healthy and useful lives. 
 
 Few realise the extent to which our country is 
 suffering from this disease. Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree 
 in his work on * Poverty ' makes an exhaustive study 
 of the economic conditions of York, and gives figures 
 which show that ten per cent, of the population of 
 
 B 2 
 
4 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 the city are very poor. Mr. Charles Booth in ' Life 
 and Labour of the People in London ' shows that 
 twelve per cent, of the people are in poverty. The 
 recent investigations made by the Royal Commission 
 on the Poor Laws reveal that over two millions of 
 different persons are granted parochial relief every 
 year, the expenditure for this purpose in England 
 alone being £15,000,000 a year, and in Scotland 
 £1,286,000, or altogether an average of 5s. 6d^. per head 
 of the population of the United Kingdom — about the 
 same as we spend on education.^ In addition to this 
 at least nine millions sterling are expended in relieving 
 poverty each year by public and private charities 
 throughout the United Kingdom. The sum disbursed 
 by charities in Edinburgh amounts to the large total 
 of £290,000 a year, and from the Poor Rates £95,000. 
 From figures such as these it is unfortunately but 
 too plain that there are at all times within the United 
 Kingdom between three and four million people of 
 all ages on the borderland of destitution. The 
 sufferings of these people have been thus described 
 in a recent study (' Poverty,' by Robert Hunter) : 
 * As a class they have the longest hours of work, they 
 have the lowest pay ; they have competition of the 
 severest kind to face ; they are oppressed by sweating 
 methods ; their employment is irregular ; their 
 tenements are the most insanitary, and their rents 
 
 1 Mr. Rowntree shows that of the total expenditure of the city of 
 York, 16 per cent, is spent on pauperism, 7 per cent, in dealing with 
 •rim«, and 12 per cent, on education. 
 
SOCIAL PATHOLOGY 5 
 
 relatively the highest that any class pay ; the prices 
 for food and fuel are exorbitant, because they must 
 buy in small quantities ; when they find it necessary 
 to go into debt they are fleeced by loan sharks ; they 
 are most often ill ; they bear the burden of more 
 deaths than any other class ; and being without 
 savings they are in actual distress as soon as they are 
 unable to work, or as soon as they are unemployed 
 as a result of economic or other causes.' 
 
 The poverty of our country districts is a very 
 different thing from the congested poverty of our large 
 towns, where it withdraws itself into the social swamps 
 called slums. The condition of the slum-dweller is 
 truly described by Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb in their 
 recent work on ' The Prevention of Destitution.' 
 ' Destitution in a densely-crowded modern city means, 
 as all experience shows, not only oncoming disease 
 and premature death from continued privation, but 
 also, in the great majority of cases, the degradation 
 of the soul. Massed in mean streets, working in 
 sweating dens, or picking up a precarious livelihood 
 by casual jobs ; living by day and by night in over- 
 crowded one-room tenements through months of 
 chronic unemployment or persistent under-employ- 
 ment ; infants and children, boys and girls, men 
 and women, together find themselves subjected — in 
 an atmosphere of drinking, begging, cringing, and 
 lying — to unspeakable temptations to which it is 
 practically inevitable that they should in different 
 degrees succumb, and in which strength and purity 
 
6 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 of character are irretrievably lost. Anyone acquainted 
 with the sights and sounds and smells of the quarters 
 of great cities in which destitution is widely prevalent 
 — especially anyone conversant with the life -histories 
 of families below the " Poverty Line " — learns to 
 recognise a sort of moral malaria which undermines 
 the spiritual vitality of those subjected to its baleful 
 influence, and, whilst here and there a moral genius 
 may survive, saddened but otherwise unscathed, 
 gradually submerges the mass of each generation, as 
 it grows up, in coarseness and bestiality, apathy and 
 cynical scepticism of every kind.' 
 
 And what of the children of the slums, the innocent 
 victims, as Hall Caine says, of the social maelstrom ? 
 
 Is this a holy thing to see 
 
 In a rich and fruitful land, 
 Babes reduced to misery. 
 
 Fed with cold and usurous hand ? 
 
 And their sun doth never shine, 
 And their fields are bleak and bare, 
 
 And their ways are filled with thorns : 
 It is eternal winter there. 
 
 For where'er the sun doth shine. 
 And where'er the rain does fall, 
 
 Babes should never hunger there 
 Nor poverty the mind appal.^ 
 
 In the name of our humanity let us do what is in 
 our power to remove, as far as may be, the heavy 
 
 1 WiUiam Blake. 
 
SOCIAL PATHOLOGY 7 
 
 handicap on their young lives, and to rescue them 
 from the influences of their surroundings of poverty 
 and crime. 
 
 We have only referred as yet to the three or four 
 milUons of our population in actual poverty. Great as 
 their number is, it is small compared with those who 
 Uveonthe border Hne of poverty, always within measur- 
 able reach of starvation, and in a condition fluctuating 
 between want and the fear of want. Twelve or 
 thirteen miUions ^ not actually overtaken by poverty 
 have their Hves overshadowed by a bitter and relent- 
 less struggle for the means of subsistence for themselves 
 and those dependent on them. When all is well they 
 may be able to keep the wolf from the door, but they 
 know that he is waiting to enter the moment there 
 is sickness, or accident, or depression in trade. Some- 
 thing is wrong with a civihsation in which nearly 
 a fourth of the people Hve, as in this country, below 
 the level of fairly comfortable subsistence. 
 
 Vice and Crime 
 
 On the prevalence of vice and crime as a social 
 disease there is no need for us to dwell. ' Sin is the 
 longest, heaviest drift in human history. . . . Men 
 have reared against it government, education, philo- 
 sophy, system after system of religion. But sin 
 has overwhelmed them all.' So writes Dr. George 
 Adam Smith, Principal of Aberdeen University. 
 
 1 See Pov&rty, by W. Reason, M.A., pp. 12-41. (Headley Bros.) 
 
8 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 About a million of our population are committed to 
 trial every year for criminal offences great and small, 
 and more than half of these, in spite of our prisons 
 and penal code, return to their careers of wrongdoing. 
 Our annual drink bill is £161,000,000, and betting 
 and other forms of gambhng are indulged in by vast 
 numbers of our population. If these two vices alone 
 could be removed a vast number of families would 
 at once rise from poverty into the ranks of those living 
 in comfort, and rearing families well clothed and 
 well fed. 
 
 Exploitation arid Parasitism 
 
 Exploitation is a common process both in the 
 natural and the economic world. Natural selection 
 and evolution are one long series of exploitations. 
 So too in human society, so long as men are regarded 
 as a means of production and of money making, and 
 not primarily as spiritual beings with infinite 
 potentiahties, on the cultivation of which eternal 
 issues depend, so long will the strong and inteUigent 
 prey upon the weak and ignorant and take advantage 
 of them. This runs all through history. When Plato 
 planned his Republic and Aristotle his ideal City-State, 
 they took for granted that the educated citizens 
 should be supported by the rest of the population. 
 When in the Middle Ages a leisured class made up of 
 the nobility and the cultured arose, it was natural in 
 the existing conditions for its members to assume 
 that they should be supported by the labour of the 
 
SOCIAL PATHOLOGY 9 
 
 masses. And even when, in more recent times, the 
 wage system replaced the various forms of feudal 
 slavery the spirit of exploitation remained. 
 
 In modern times exploitation takes new forms — 
 industrial concerns run solely for profit, sweating at 
 the expense of the health and happiness generally 
 of women and juvenile workers, and idleness preying 
 on the industry of others and yielding no service 
 to society in return. No community can afford to 
 support permanently a mass of social parasites — 
 the unemployed rich and idlers of every class, the 
 pauper, the tramp, the criminal — all, in short, who 
 are supported by the industry of the rest of the popula- 
 tion and add nothing themselves to the sum total of 
 achievement, whether in the realm of industry and 
 commerce, or art and science, or morals and religion. 
 Mankind is born to labour, and if society would rid 
 itself of this form of disease it must put inflexibly 
 into force the Scriptural injunction that *if any will 
 not work neither shall he eat.' 
 
 If we consider the prodigious waste of work and 
 life and the loss of spiritual power to the world by the 
 diseases of society, we cannot fail to be impressed by 
 the urgent need to find and apply a remedy for them. 
 They are a barrier to social progress, they drag down 
 the national Hfe. At present only part of the energies 
 of the nation are available. We are handicapped 
 like the builders of the walls of Jerusalem, everyone 
 of whom ' with one of his hands wrought in the work, 
 
10 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 and with the other held a weapon ' to ward off the 
 enemies of the nation. We are within the mark if 
 we say that in our islands a quarter of a million of 
 the adult population is supported entirely by the 
 community, and that four times that number is 
 supported partly by it. These million and a quarter 
 represent a loss of productive power to the nation 
 of at least twenty-five million pounds per annum. 
 The criminal classes represent an equal loss of 
 productive power. Moreover, the money value of 
 the products of society consumed by all these amounts 
 to about the same as the productive power withheld 
 — ^namely, fifty million pounds. Further, to complete 
 our computation we must remember that this mass 
 of defective society requires for its support or restraint 
 a vast series of contrivances and institutions — asylums, 
 workhouses, hospitals, courts of law, reformatories, 
 prisons — all in an economic sense non-producing. 
 In money terms these counterpoises to the defective, 
 dependent, and criminal sections of the community 
 equal all the other sums put together.^ If we estimate 
 the annual pecuniary burden caused by the social 
 diseases of the nation at two hundred million pounds, 
 we shall not rate it too highly — truly ' an arithmetic 
 of woe.' But if we further estimate it in terms of 
 human misery and suffering, mutilated character, 
 and destruction of spiritual power, the loss to the 
 nation is appalling. 
 
 * See Destitution, Can we end it? p. 8, by Rev. Henry Carter. 
 (London : J. J. Stark.) 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 IMPERFECT REMEDIES OF SOCIAL DISEASES 
 
 A DESIRE for the alleviation of the ills of society is 
 moving all ranks and conditions of men. The practical 
 question that faces every earnest mind is : what can 
 the nation do to prevent the continuance of the 
 discreditable and blighting state of affairs which 
 has just been described ? Society has as yet 
 seriously tried but two remedies — deterrence and 
 relief ; and the result has been a complete failure to 
 remove, or even greatly lessen, our social ills. 
 
 Until the present generation our main remedy 
 for crime has been the prison. Recent investigations 
 have shown that as a deterrent from crime the influence 
 of imprisonment has been greatly over-estimated. 
 It is calculated that about seventy per cent, of the 
 inmates of our gaols have been imprisoned before — 
 many of them several times. Consider the effects 
 of this. A French writer, M. Lacassagne, has said 
 that ' when a man has been two or three times in the 
 prison of Paris we can have no further hope of him ; 
 he is a gangrenous member of the social body.' 
 
 Our prison system has failed because its chief aim 
 
12 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 has been to punish crime rather than to reform 
 character. Little real attempt has been made to 
 make criminals into useful citizens. We have ample 
 evidence to show that too often imprisonment hardens 
 the criminal, and sends him back to the world no 
 better qualified and no more inclined to lead an honest 
 life than before. Sir Godfrey Lushington, in giving 
 evidence before a Departmental Committee presided 
 over by the Home Secretary of the day, Mr. Herbert 
 Gladstone, said, ' I regard as unfavourable to reforma- 
 tion the status of a prisoner throughout his whole 
 career ; the crushing of self-respect ; the starving 
 of all moral instinct he may possess, the absence of 
 all opportunity to do or receive a kindness, the 
 continual association with none but criminals, the 
 forced labour, and the denial of all liberty.' Mr. 
 W. F. Spaulding writing in the Forum says, ' Crime 
 can no more be reduced by punishing or even reforming 
 the criminal than an epidemic of smallpox can be 
 stopped by curing its victims. The criminal is a 
 product, and crime can be decreased only by stopping 
 the production.' 
 
 Legislation, at the best, can do comparatively 
 little to remedy social evils, and in the prevention 
 of crime even that little has not been done because 
 for centuries our legislators have been viewing the 
 matter from the wrong standpoint. They have been 
 devoting their attention too exclusively to the crime, 
 and in their concern to * make the punishment fit the 
 crime ' they have lost sight of the criminal. Now we 
 
IMPERFECT REMEDIES 18 
 
 are concentrating our attention upon the latter, and 
 we find that he is not innately and hopelessly vicious, 
 that his criminality is the resultant largely of defective 
 physical and mental training, and bad physical and 
 social environment. If this be so, the remedy for 
 crime is not punishment but removal of the conditions 
 that cause it, and a thorough process of training and 
 education for some useful calling. Reformatories con- 
 ducted on educational lines are slowly replacing the 
 old prison regime. We have begun the new process 
 by the Borstal System of training youths who, 
 between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, have 
 been sentenced to imprisonment for at least twelve 
 months. During their period of confinement they 
 undergo educative and reformative treatment preparing 
 them for useful callings. The system has been success- 
 ful in the great majority of cases, and it is probable 
 that similar methods will be extended yet to a con- 
 siderable proportion of adult criminals. 
 
 Our Poor Law system has proved equally inade- 
 quate as a remedy for poverty, and it has done so 
 because its root principles are deterrence and relief, 
 not prevention. It has not reached the sources of 
 poverty ; and whether the poverty has been brought 
 about by the fault of the person himself or of the 
 community as a whole, whether the cause be moral 
 or economic, physical or mental, the Poor Law requires 
 that the stage of destitution must have been reached 
 before help can be given. ' Thus it ordinarily deals 
 with this social malady at its crisis, not at the 
 
14 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 commencement. At the crisis of destitution the 
 family is a battered, breaking wreck, often past hope 
 of salving ; had help been forthcoming when the 
 storm first broke — help that self-respecting folk could 
 accept without forfeiting self-respect — final disaster 
 would probably never have been reached.' ^ 
 
 The workhouse too often promotes rather than 
 cures the evil it was intended to combat. By its 
 undiscriminating relief of destitution it provides in 
 many cases only a subsidy to misconduct. Further, 
 it does nothing to build up the character of the able- 
 bodied paupers who seek its shelter, or to enable them 
 to become self-dependent and self-supporting. The 
 recent Report (1909) of the Royal Commission on 
 Poor Laws strongly condemns the workhouse system. 
 ' These institutions [workhouses] have a depressing, 
 degrading, and positively injurious effect on the 
 character of all classes of their inmates, tending to 
 unfit them for a life of respectable and independent 
 citizenship. Life in the workhouse does not build 
 character up, it breaks down what little independence 
 and alertness of mind is left. It is too good for the 
 bad, and too bad for the good.' Mrs. Bosanquet, 
 one of the Commissioners, in her volume on * The 
 Poor Law Report ' says, ' The Commissioners were 
 convinced, both from the evidence they received and 
 from what they themselves saw, that there is a class 
 of persons to whom workhouse life has ceased to be 
 deterrent, and that many even of those who shrink 
 
 1 Destitution, Can we end it ? p. 8, by Rev. Henry Carter. 
 
IMPERFECT REMEDIES 15 
 
 from it at first rapidly deteriorate under its influence, 
 until they prefer it to the more strenuous and 
 responsible life of the outside world.' If we want 
 the poor to be always with us the continuance of 
 the Poor Law and Workhouse system, as at present 
 planned, will do much to bring about the result. 
 
 In addition to State Relief all nations have made, 
 to some extent at least, voluntary provision for the 
 care of the poor and helpless among their people. 
 Charity, public and private, may have an im- 
 portant influence on the spirit of those who exercise 
 it, and the note of humanity in it is probably worth 
 all it costs; and while no one would seek to dry up 
 entirely this stream of human sympathy, its general 
 influence upon the recipients is open to serious 
 question. It is an imperfect remedy fpr poverty in 
 at least four respects — it is wasteful, it ^is undis- 
 criminating, it is spasmodic and inadequate, and it 
 does not prevent or cure the disease against which it 
 is directed. 
 
 Everyone acknowledges that a large part of the 
 millions of pounds disbursed every year in the United 
 Kingdom in what is broadly called charity is ' poured 
 into a slough of poverty which swallows it up, and 
 leaves no trace of improvement.' The waste of 
 money is a great evil, but the waste of character is 
 a greater. Charity given to those who should not 
 receive it undermines self-respect and self-reHance, 
 and encourages laziness, hypocrisy, and self-indulgence. 
 In such cases charity gathers parasites round it, and 
 
16 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 only intensifies the need and degradation it was 
 intended to relieve. There are times when giving alms 
 is truly no charity.^ Churches, Charitable Associa- 
 tions, and philanthropic individuals have overlapped 
 in their keen desire to administer relief, and have 
 not always made sure that the recipients were not 
 getting similar help from other sources, nor taken 
 care that the money was reaching the really deserving 
 and needy. By impulsive, indiscriminate giving, the 
 reaUy necessitous have often been overlooked, the 
 wants of the work-shy and the bogus poor have 
 been plentifully supplied, and our towns have been 
 overrun by professional beggars who have reduced 
 begging to a fine art. Charity may be so harmful in 
 its results and may so aggravate existing evils as 
 to be positively immoral.^ We do not for a moment 
 suggest that charity should never be given, but we 
 assert that the wise distribution of charity is one of 
 the most difficult and delicate forms of social service, 
 and should be engaged in only by those who have a 
 full knowledge of the causes of poverty, and of the 
 lives of those whom they desire to help. Poverty, 
 for instance, due to industrial causes is not a problem 
 which charity organisations can successfully deal 
 with ; such cases are complicated ones, and money 
 help will do little for them. Can we wonder that 
 there is often wrung from the sufferers the bitter 
 
 1 See Daniel De Foe's Essay on Giving Alms no Chanty. 
 
 * See The Prevention of Destitution, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 
 pp. 298 et seq. (Longmans, Green, and Co.) This is the most important 
 work yet written on the remedies of destitution. 
 
IMPERFECT REMEDIES 17 
 
 cry, * Curse your charity ; we want work.' Or again, 
 where poverty is due to personal fault, financial 
 help will only make matters worse unless it is 
 accompanied by a successful demand for effort and 
 improvement on the part of the recipient. A cruel 
 feature of the giving of charity is that it does not 
 generally raise those who receive it above the need of 
 further assistance, it does not make them able to bear 
 their own burden, it does not communicate to them 
 the energy and initiative to take advantage of 
 opportunities to help themselves. Rather it tends 
 to destroy what initiative they have, and to make 
 them more dependent. 
 
 The spirit of philanthropy and charity was never 
 so widely spread as it is to-day. It is fostered by the 
 pulpit, the platform, and the press. And yet there 
 is growing a keen sense of the total inadequacy of 
 all our charity to cope with the evils of poverty. 
 While we assist one family, a hundred others are 
 drifting without hope into the morass of destitution. 
 Our best efforts at relief do nothing to drain the 
 social quagmire. Our spasmodic and inadequate 
 doles generally do harm rather than good. Mr. 
 Charles Booth, in the volume we have already referred 
 to, says, ' Churches, Chapels and the like intervene and 
 give a little help, and the widow struggles on for a 
 time receiving something one week and nothing the 
 next, she and her children becoming generally weaker, 
 both morally and physically, through want of proper 
 and sufficient food, and ultimately broken down in 
 
18 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 health and destitute, she comes upon the parish. . . 
 A little thought will show that shilling coal tickets 
 and soup dinners and occasional half-crowns are' 
 practically useless to make up the loss of the bread- 
 winner's wage.' Mr. Malcolm Spencer in his suggestive 
 little work on ' Social Degradation ' gives expression 
 to a similar opinion. ' When charity is given at aU 
 it should be ungrudging and it should be adequate. 
 . . . The giving of small sums or grocery tickets 
 makes for the eradication of an honourable dislike to 
 receive such help. A small sum is not generous 
 enough to challenge a grateful spirit in the 
 recipient, and it leaves the need unsatisfied, thus 
 inviting further requests, and inducing a wheedling 
 spirit.' 
 
 Not all the wealth of the British Isles dispensed 
 as charity would cure the poverty in our midst.^ 
 The problems are too vast and too complex to be 
 dealt with by charity. Our help is at best an allevi- 
 ation. Our philanthropy is always a little too late, 
 it is an imperfect patching of an evil that is done 
 and should have been prevented. It does not lit 
 in the unalterable nature of things that there shoul 
 be destitution. On the contrary, we believe witiy 
 Thoreau that it is ' a superfluous and evitable wretched 
 ness.' It is our duty to find out what measures will 
 prevent, in the general case, the occurrence of 
 
 1 Thackeray in The Virginians says, ' Whenever you take your walks 
 abroad how many poor you meet ! If a philanthropist were for rescuing 
 all of them, not all the wealth of all the provinces of America would 
 suffice him.* 
 
IMPERFECT REMEDIES 19 
 
 destitution, and what treatment must be adopted 
 to effect not merely the rehef but the cure of every 
 case not prevented.^ 
 
 Society will not rid itself of its diseases — crime, 
 poverty, and all the rest — until their production is 
 prevented. We must direct our attack upon these 
 diseases at their source and prevent their occurrence. 
 Not to the tenderness of heart which goes no farther 
 than the binding up of wounds and the raising of 
 those who have fallen need we look for the regeneration 
 of society. No stricter enforcement of the criminal 
 code, no increased activity of almsgiving, no feeding 
 of the children of the poor at pubhc expense, can be 
 regarded as other than temporary expedients till 
 better measures are discovered. We must go to the 
 root of the matter, and we have never done that yet. 
 * There is a danger lest the patches and plasters which 
 our reformers would apply with such haste should 
 only intensify the evil they are intended to cure.' ^ 
 We must attack each social evil in its source, find 
 out the causes from which it springs and institute 
 a determined crusade against them. This is much 
 
 ^ The time has come when the nation will be failing in its duty if 
 it bases its policy on anything less than this. See the Majority and 
 the Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and the 
 Relief of Distress ; the publications of The National Committee for the 
 Prevention of Destitution (37 Norfolk Street, Strand, W.C.) ; The 
 Prevention of Destitution, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb ; Destitution, 
 Can we end it ? by Rev. Henry Carter ; and Social Environment and 
 Moral Progress, by Alfred Russel Wallace (Cassell & Co.). 
 
 * Tekel, p. 4, by F. J. Adkins. (Swan, Sonnenschein & Co.) 
 
 c 2 
 
20 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 more difficult than a policy of relief. It involves 
 much mental labour, much patient investigation, and 
 the formulation of suitable plans of curative and 
 preventive treatment. There is no royal road to the 
 solution of our social problems. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CAUSES OF SOCIAL DISEASES — HEREDITY 
 
 The aim of the preceding chapters has been to show 
 that the ills that retard the progress of society are 
 measurable, preventable, and curable. Our remedies 
 have not succeeded because we do not know enough 
 as yet of the causes at work or of the methods to be 
 applied. Superficial diagnosis will not help us to 
 heal our social maladies. It is futile to denounce, 
 as is sometimes done, certain classes of the community 
 as responsible for them, or to attribute them to human 
 fallibility or original sin. Some of the best minds are 
 now seeking to discover a remedy. A new spirit 
 of inquiry is abroad which 'is slowly elaborating a 
 knowledge of the diseases, and with the elaboration 
 and completion of this scientific diagnosis is bound 
 up all the future hope of the world.' ^ 
 
 The diagnosis is by no means easy, for we have 
 to deal, not with human nature alone, nor w ith physical 
 nature alone, but with social life, which arises from 
 the interaction of the one with the other. We have to 
 
 1} The Church and the Poor, p. 8, by Rev. W. Muix, B.D. (Edinburgh : 
 Macniven & Wallace.) 
 
22 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 thread our way through an intricate maze of causes 
 and effects, distinguishing always between those 
 which are proximate and those which are remote. 
 Anything short of this will lead to mistaken diagnosis, 
 and, as we saw in the last chapter, to inadequate 
 or unsuitable remedies. The tendency to this is the 
 greater because the maladies themselves are on the 
 surface, and first-aid alleviations are at hand to tempt 
 us. What is more natural than to meet the evil of 
 poverty by pubUc or private charity, and in doing 
 so to avoid the trouble of finding out whether the 
 poverty is only temporary and requiring financial 
 help, or whether it is due to some deeper cause in our 
 economic or national life ? Ready-made panaceas 
 should be distrusted as a means of securing either 
 social or physical health. 
 
 It is not necessary for our general purpose to 
 enter into a minute analysis of the causes of the 
 typical diseases of our social order mentioned in the 
 opening chapter. An almost infinite variety of causal 
 conditions exist which run in and out of each other ; 
 but we shall confine ourselves to three which appear 
 to us fundamental, and which include nearly all 
 minor causes that can be mentioned — they are defec- 
 tive heredity, defective environment, and defective 
 education. We shall examine these in turn. 
 
 Heredity 
 
 It is a law of nature that descendants tend to 
 resemble their ancestors. Like tends to beget 
 
HEREDITY 28 
 
 like. It is a matter of common observation that 
 children resemble their parents, tend to have 
 dispositions similar to them, and may even exhibit 
 the physical and mental traits of ancestors several 
 generations removed. This transmission of ancestral 
 characteristics is called heredity. It is one of the 
 great active principles of nature. It seems a simple 
 and elementary law so long as we confine ourselves 
 to physical heredity, to the transmission from parents 
 to offspring of distinguishing characteristics of 
 structure, form, and constitution. It is a common 
 saying that if we want to secure a healthy man we 
 must go back to his grandfathers and see that they 
 are fit. Life Insurance Companies know the influence 
 of heredity. There is more doubt, however, in the 
 minds of some when we extend the law beyond 
 the physical into the region of the intellectual and 
 the moral. Yet, just as surely as we have physical 
 heredity, so do we have mental and moral heredity. 
 The recognition of this is a thing of yesterday, and 
 the mediaeval doctrine of innate ideas has given 
 way only slowly before it. Mind is not an uncreated 
 first cause ; in the mental as in the physical realm 
 there is transmission, not creation. Sir Francis 
 Galton writing in 1865 said, ' The human mind was 
 popularly thought to act independently of natural 
 laws, and to be capable of almost any achievement 
 if compelled to exert itself by a will that had a powei 
 of imitation. Even those who had more philosophical 
 habits of thought were far from looking upon the 
 
24 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 mental faculties of each individual as being limited 
 with as much strictness as those of his body, still 
 less was the idea of hereditary transmission of abiHty 
 clearly apprehended.' ^ Professor H. H. Home of 
 New York University writes with equal definiteness ; 
 * The intellectual child is not a happen-so, nor the 
 lazy child, nor the weakly emotional child, nor the 
 industrious child, nor the honest child. These, and 
 all the other mental traits which together constitute 
 that psychic complex we call his soul, are really the 
 equivalent on the mental side of certain definite 
 elements in his nervous system inherited from his 
 ancestors.' ^ Or again, as Professor Karl Pearson 
 said in his * Huxley Lecture ' in 1903 : ' We inherit 
 our parents' tempers, our parents' conscientiousness, 
 sh3niess, and ability, as we inherit their stature, 
 forearm, and span.' Verily — 
 
 There is a history in all men's minds 
 Figuring the nature of the times deceased. 
 
 Ribot in his valuable treatise on ' Heredity ' 
 makes an exhaustive study of the heredity of the 
 various psychological elements — instincts, imagina- 
 tion, memory, will, temperament, and capacity. Our 
 instincts are echoes of the past reverberating through 
 our nervous system, they are inherited tendencies 
 to activity in the cells of our nervous mechanism which 
 
 1 Preface to Hereditary Oeniiis. 
 
 * Idealism in Education, p. 21. (Macmillan & Co.) Anyone 
 interested in the bearings of heredity and environment on education 
 could not do better than read chapters ii. and iii. of this suggestive 
 book. 
 
HEREDITY 25 
 
 enable us to act, feel, or think without having learned 
 to do so. We have the instinct ^ of locomotion which 
 enables the child to extend in innumerable ways 
 his exploration of the world. We have the instinct 
 of activity and constructiveness which, as James 
 says, enables ' the child not only to train the muscles 
 to co-ordinate action, but to accumulate a store of 
 physical conceptions which are the basis of his know- 
 ledge of the material world through life.' We have 
 the instinct of curiosity which constitutes the child 
 a born investigator. We have the instinct of play 
 which develops the muscles, and acts as a tonic to 
 the brain and the whole nervous system. We have 
 the social instinct which forms the groundwork of 
 the training of the child for his place in society. The 
 list might be prolonged almost indefinitely ; indeed, 
 as some one has said, ' man is a great complex of 
 tendencies to act, feel, and think in certain ways.' 
 Without these inherited instincts, education and 
 development, physical or mental, would be impossible. 
 We may say, then, that what we are capable of 
 becoming in body, mind, or character with our utmost 
 development is our inheritance. ' The older one 
 grows,' says Goethe, ' the more one prizes natural 
 gifts, for by no possibiHty can they be procured and 
 stuck on.' We cannot by taking thought add a 
 cubit to our physical or mental stature beyond our 
 
 * We are here using the word * instinct ' in the older and wider 
 sense, rather than in the stricter sense in which some recent psycho- 
 logists use it. 
 
26 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 inherited limits. In this the modern theory of heredity 
 and the venerable doctrine of predestination agree. 
 The influence of heredity is all-pervading. * Every 
 child at birth is endowed with a heritage transmitted 
 from innumerable ancestors . . . which decides the 
 individual's race and strain, and potentially inclines, 
 if it does not actually coerce, his tastes and ambitions, 
 his fears and hopes, his failure or success.' ^ Observe, 
 however, that it is capacity we inherit, not actual 
 attainment, which depends upon the amount of effort 
 we make, and always falls short of the potentialities 
 of our nature set by heredity. 
 
 But it is the evil influences of heredity that 
 we are concerned with in our present study, for 
 unfortunately they are obstinate hindrances to social 
 progress. Many a luckless child is handicapped by 
 hereditary influences from the hour of his birth, and 
 no subsequent care can secure for him an efficient 
 social life : 
 
 My child is mine. 
 Yet all his gray forefathers of the past 
 Challenge the dear possession : they o'ercast 
 His soul's clear purity with dregs and lees 
 Of vile unknown ancestral impulses ; 
 And viewless hands from shadowy regions groping 
 With dim negation frustrate all my hoping.^ 
 
 The sins of the fathers, we are told, are visited upon 
 the children unto the third and fourth generations, and 
 modern science tends to corroborate the statement. 
 
 1 G. A. Dorsey in Science, xi. 119. 
 
 ■ From At Bay, by May Byron, quoted by Professor Horn*. 
 
HEREDITY 27 
 
 Heredity is responsible for the lifelong handicaps 
 to which many are condemned — such as bUndness, 
 deaf -mutism, idiocy, insanity, constitutional disease 
 tendencies, and predisposition to vice and crime.^ 
 Those thus afflicted do not get, as we say, a ' square 
 deal ' at birth. This is the lot of many of the children 
 in the dens of our large cities. 
 
 They look up, with their pale and sunken faces, 
 
 And their look is dread to see, 
 For they mind you of their angels in their places 
 
 With eyes meant for Deity .^ 
 
 When once we grasp the full import of the doctrine 
 of heredity, and the mighty influence for ill it can and 
 does exert on the physical, intellectual, and moral 
 nature of mankind, we must regard it as one of the 
 great fundamental causes of the disease of society. 
 
 ^ One of the most frequently quoted illustrations of this is the 
 case of the notorious Juke family. Their history was investigated 
 by R. Dugdale, and was published in the Annual Report of the New 
 York Prison Commission in 1877. He traced the brood back to a 
 worthless drunken vagabond born about 1720 who married a woman 
 as worthless as himself. They reared a family of vagabonds who in 
 course of time married others of the same class. In 1877 the descendants, 
 direct and indirect, numbered 1,200, of whom 300 had died in infancy, 
 400 were thieves, 130 incorrigible criminals, and 310 professional 
 vagrants. They cost the State of New York in all a quarter of a million 
 pounds. 
 
 * The Cry of the, City Children, by Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CAUSES OF SOCIAL DISEASES— ENVIRONMENT 
 
 Heredity is the alpha but it is not the omega in the 
 development of complex human nature. It is not 
 the only and supreme force at work ; if it were, we 
 might well be weighed down by a sense of the burden 
 handed on to us from a past entirely beyond our 
 control. Heredity decides to a large extent what our 
 native capacity shall be, but environment deter- 
 mines in the main what use shall be made of that 
 capacity, whether in the physical, intellectual, or moral 
 sphere. 
 
 By environment, in a general sense, we mean the 
 physical circumstances in which an organism develops. 
 Writers from Plato to Darwin have called attention 
 to the influence of air, climate, fertihty of the soil, 
 and conditions of nutrition in fashioning mankind 
 by their incessant action. In the biological world 
 the growth and indeed the very existence of 
 an organism are dependent upon its adaptation 
 to its surroundings. If the environment does not 
 afford scope for the activity of the organism its 
 development is stunted. It cannot exist apart 
 
ENVIRONMENT 29 
 
 from its environment. The very life-process of the 
 organism consists in the interaction between it and 
 its environment. 
 
 As in the biological so in the intellectual and moral 
 sphere. Mental life is a continual action and reaction 
 between two elements — self and environment — and 
 it is by the interaction of these that the mind 
 lives and develops. Mind cannot exist or develop in 
 vacuo ; it is not, in this life at any rate, a spiritual 
 substance existing indepeAdently of the objective 
 world. Pure mind or isolated consciousness is an 
 abstraction of metaphysics; we do not meet it 
 in actual experience. A man has to spend his life 
 in certain intellectual and moral surroundings, and 
 from these surroundings he must draw to a large 
 extent his mental and moral sustenance. 
 
 Yet we must not look upon man as the victim 
 of an inflexible unyielding environment to which he 
 must adapt himself. In considering the develop- 
 ment of human society it is possible to lay too great 
 stress upon adaptation to environment. Complete 
 conformity or adjustment to environment is not the 
 final goal of human progress. Man in virtue of his 
 intelligence and his will is able to rise superior to 
 environment, to conquer all influences in it detrimental 
 to his mental and moral well-being, and thus to J 
 utilise it as a means of self-expression, of exercise, 
 and of growth. Environment, in short, provides the 
 opportunities for the development of the capacities 
 that heredity has bestowed. Browning expresses 
 
80 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 with true philosophic insight the relation betweet 
 the world within and the world without : 
 
 I count life just a staff 
 
 To try the soul's strength on, educe the man. 
 
 The success or failure of individuals in hfe is measured 
 largely by their power of adjustment to environment, 
 and of controlling and utilising it to draw forth their 
 capabilities. If we would truly understand the mean- 
 ing of life, we must regard the interaction between 
 man and environment as a spiritual and not a purely 
 mechanical process. A person's environment is o 
 one kin with himself, and furnishes the opportunity 
 and indispensable medium of his self-reaHsation. It 
 is an important function of education, as we shall 
 see, to enable him so to use it. 
 
 But before entering further into a discussion c 
 the relationship between man and environment, w 
 should arrive at some preliminary understanding, 
 at least, as to the exact nature and scope of environ 
 ment. We are not concerned with the difEerenc 
 of opinion among scientific men as to the pre* 
 meaning of ' adjustment ' and ' environment.' 1 
 our purpose environment includes all the influenct 
 and agencies whatsoever operating to mould th 
 individual. It is made up of two factors — the materia 
 and physical environment, and the social and spiritual 
 environment. 
 
 The material and physical environment in- 
 cludes such influences as air, light, heat, chmate, 
 
 I 
 
ENVIRONMENT 31 
 
 scenery, mineral wealth, natural harbours and 
 navigable rivers, stores of natural energy such 
 s coal, wood, and running water; it consists, in 
 hort, of nature organic and inorganic. A recent 
 writer states well the influence of physical environ- 
 ment on man. ' Historians,' he says, ' have long 
 since noted and emphasised the far-reaching importance 
 of cHmate and geographic surroundings upon the 
 development of peoples. The mountains and coast 
 lines of Greece, the seven hills of Rome, the arctic 
 winter and intolerable nights of Greenland, the torrid 
 •^un and sweltering heat of Africa, and the fertile 
 fields of America have formed the texts for many a 
 chapter designed to show the effect of environment 
 in shaping destinies. Reverse the surroundings of 
 the Eskimo and the New Englander, the Briton and 
 :|the Abyssinian, and what inversions of character 
 ,night have ensued ! Indeed, we may say that the 
 chance environment surrounding one's birthplace to 
 .a large extent determines whether one is to be a 
 .jreamer or a doer, an idler or a producer, a savage 
 .foa progressive citizen.' ^ 
 .j^ry The social and spiritual environment is concerned 
 jj^ith man as a doer, thinker, and worshipper. It 
 ^ncludes the great human institutions — the Home, 
 |the School, the Vocation, the State, and the Church, 
 jail forms of societies and organisations, spiritual 
 beliefs and moral standards, our ideals, customs, 
 pubHc opinions, fads and fashions, all the intellectual, 
 
 1 Principles of Education, by F. E. Bolton, p. 24. (T. Fisher Unwin.) 
 
32 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 material, and moral achievements of the race, our 
 language and literature, arts and science — in short, all 
 the fruits of civiHsation. Nearly all the influences 
 and problems of life meet in the social and spiritual 
 environment. 
 
 It is not necessary to discuss at length the relative 
 importance and specific effects of these two groups 
 of environing influences in the development of the 
 race. In the earher stages of civilisation the influence 
 of physical environment predominates. Depending 
 as he does on what nature spontaneously supplies, 
 primitive man flourishes best under kindly skies and 
 on fertile soil where vegetable and animal food supplies 
 are abundant. But as mankind rises in the scale 
 of civiUsation, the social and spiritual environment 
 becomes more potent, and man is able at the same 
 time, to an increasing extent, to master and change 
 his environment as well as to adjust himself to it. 
 ' He modifies cHmate by clothing and housing, he 
 adds to the productivity of the soil by right cultivation 
 and by fertilisers ; if good ports or rivers are lacking, 
 he digs harbours and transports his goods on canals 
 or railways ; if natural power in its older forms is 
 insufficient, he utilises other forces of nature by the 
 scientific developments of steam and electricity ; 
 and if his own region fails to supply him with ores, 
 he imports them from his neighbours. In other 
 words, while man is largely determined by his environ- 
 ment, social as well as physical, he himself decides 
 by intellectual processes what environment he desires 
 
ENVIRONMENT 88 
 
 to be subjected to, and then deliberately seeks to 
 create about him such an environment.' ^ The whole 
 progress of civilisation has been accompanied in this 
 manner by a gradual freeing of mankind from sub- 
 serviency to his environment. 
 
 The forces of environment may act in two opposite 
 ways : they may feed, stimulate, and energise, or they 
 may starve, repress, and kill ; and the resultant develop- 
 ment depends upon the ratio of the one action to the 
 other. The influence of environment for good or ill 
 is depicted by Plato in his ' Republic ' in a passage of 
 great beauty ^ : that young citizens ' must not be allowed 
 to grow up amid images of moral deformity, as in 
 some noxious pasture, and there browse and feed 
 upon many a baneful herb and flower day by day, 
 little by little, until they silently gather a festering 
 mass of corruption in their own soul.' Rather should 
 they be like men living in a beautiful and healthy 
 place ; ' from everything that they see and hear, love- 
 liness like a breeze should pass into their souls,' and 
 teach them, without their knowing it, the truth of 
 w^hich beauty is a manifestation. 
 
 It is the pressure of environment that causes 
 many, perhaps most, of the diseases of society. 
 Destitution, for example, is largely due to environ- 
 mental influences. The pressure of economic conditions 
 makes and keeps men poor. Differences of moral and 
 industrial efficiency doubtless do determine in the 
 majority of cases who shall succeed or fail in the 
 
 1 Sociology, by J. Q. Dealey, p. 97. (Silver, Burdett & Co.) 
 ' Republic^ bk. iii. 401. 
 
34 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 struggle for employment, but in very many instances 
 the number of those who fail is determined by economic 
 factors beyond their control. As the Minority Report 
 for Scotland of the recent Royal Commission on 
 the Poor Laws says : ' Experience has demonstrated 
 that, although individuals in aU sections of the 
 destitute may be morally defective, and this in aU 
 sorts of different ways, the great mass of destitution 
 is the direct and almost inevitable result of the social 
 environment in which the several sections have 
 found themselves, and that it can be obviated if 
 the cases are taken in time and the environment 
 appropriately changed.' The destitution of so con- 
 siderable a proportion of our population as at present 
 is not a part of the inevitable and necessary nature 
 of things. It is due to defects in our human insti- 
 tutions, our social arrangements, our education, our 
 business, our industry — in short, to the pressure of 
 social environment in some form or other. 
 
 The harmful pressure of environment has become 
 greatly accentuated in our day by the tendency of the 
 population more and more to collect in crowded cities. 
 A century ago something like seventeen per cent, of 
 our population lived in large towns, haK a century 
 ago fifty per cent, was urban, now the percentage has 
 risen to nearly seventy-five, and the census of 1912 
 shows that the transference from country to town is 
 still going on. The home by the growth of large 
 cities has lost its industries and its surrounding play- 
 ground, and as a result much of its educational 
 
ENVIRONMENT 85 
 
 possibilities. Moreover, the wear and tear of life in 
 great towns induces mental diseases, or diseases of 
 the nervous system. As Professor M. V. O'Shea 
 says : ' As one studies Old- World civilisation in general, 
 he reaches the conclusion that no nation has yet 
 discovered how to preserve continuously the physical 
 and moral vigour of the people under conditions of urban 
 life. The human body and mind were evolved in close 
 contact with nature, and the evidence seems conclusive 
 that they will not develop completely in the individual 
 under the restraint and irritations of the city.' ^ 
 
 The congestion of our modern cities is leading to 
 serious overcrowding. In London there are 150,000 
 one-room houses in which are living 313,300 persons, 
 that is an average of over two persons in each room. 
 There are about 20,000 persons living five in 
 a room, and a like number living six, seven, or eight 
 in a room. Think of the physical, social, and moral 
 environment engendered by such conditions ! Little 
 wonder that the crowded slums of our towns are the 
 great recruiting ground of the disease, destitution, 
 intemperance, vice, and crime which constitute the 
 main factors in the social problem. 
 
 And what of the children reared amid such 
 surroundings ? From the hour of their birth they are 
 doomed, almost inevitably, to hardship and suffering. 
 George Macdonald's lines describe their case : 
 
 Where did you find that little tear ? 
 I found it waiting when I got here. 
 
 1 Social Development and Education, p. 307. (Houghton MiflOin Co.) 
 
 D 2 
 
36 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 Remember, too, that the influence of environment for 
 good or ill is most powerful over childhood with its 
 highly impressionable nature, great plasticity, extreme 
 suggestibility, and infinite capacity for imitation. 
 
 A small part of a child's intellectual or moral nature 
 is inborn and peculiar to him ; by far the greater 
 part is conditioned by the interaction between his 
 inherited mental and moral nature and his environ- 
 ment, particularly the minds and characters of 
 those around him. What then of those who are 
 allowed to grow up amid degrading scenes of vice 
 and crime ? Too often, in the terrible words of 
 Blake- 
 Stricken with Albion's curse, 
 They become what they behold. 
 
 As Tennyson exclaimed, they ' soak and blacken 
 soul and sense in city slime.' The description of 
 child-life in the slums by Dickens in * The Uncom- 
 mercial Traveller ' is not untrue yet. ' I can find — 
 must find, whether I will or not — in the open streets 
 shameful instances of neglect of children, intolerable 
 toleration of the engenderment of paupers, idlers, 
 thieves, races of wretched and destructive cripples 
 both in body and mind ; a misery to themselves, a 
 misery to the commimity, a disgrace to civilisation, 
 and an outrage on Christianity. I know it to be a 
 fact as easy of demonstration as any sum in any of 
 the elementary rules of arithmetic, that if the State 
 would begin its work and duty at the beginning, and 
 
ENVIRONMENT 37 
 
 would with the strong hand take those children out 
 of the streets while they are yet children, and wisely 
 train them, it would make them a part of England's 
 glory, not its shame — of England's strength, not 
 its weakness — would raise good soldiers and sailors 
 and good citizens and many great men out of the 
 seeds of its criminal population ; it would clear London 
 streets of the most terrible objects they smite the 
 sight with — myriads of httle children who awfully 
 reverse our Saviour's words, and are not of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven but of the Kingdom of 
 HeU.' 1 
 
 Improvement in the environment of the slum child 
 within and without the home will play a large part 
 in the solution of our social problems. 
 
 It is hardly necessary for the purpose of the study 
 we are conducting that we should attempt a precise 
 estimate of the relative importance of heredity and 
 environment in shaping the course of human develop- 
 ment. The present-day controversy regarding this 
 is merely the modern form of the time-honoured 
 discussion of Nature versus Nurture. The controversy 
 is, however, assuming a new importance because of 
 its bearing on social reform. Social and educational 
 workers must know something of the relative strength 
 
 1 Henry George in a striking passage in Progress and Poverty 
 Bays : ' It is my deliberate opinion that if, standing on the threshold 
 of being, one were given the choice of entering life as a Tierra del Fuegan, 
 a black-fellow of Australia, an Esquimau in the Arctic Circle, or among 
 the lowest classes in such a highly civilised country as Great Britain, 
 he would make infinitely the better choice in selecting the lot of the 
 savages.' 
 
38 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 of the forces arrayed against them. The eugenists 
 and certain scientists, led by Sir Francis Gait on and 
 Professor Karl Pearson, have examined the matter 
 by exact methods, and have reached the conclusion 
 that inheritance is the more important influence, 
 and that environment counts for comparatively little. 
 It is by heredity, they say, that the soul from birth 
 has its predestined form, that our characters are 
 moulded, our physique determined, and our intelli- 
 gence meted out. Humanity, they affirm, can be 
 raised chiefly by improving the hereditary strain of 
 the race through a process of selective mating, and 
 through the prevention of the propagation of children 
 by the physically and morally unfit. 
 
 But the evidence produced by the investigations of 
 modern biological and sociological science tends, in 
 the main, to show that the admittedly powerful in- 
 fluence of heredity in causing even physical degeneracy 
 has been greatly over-estimated. Dr. Alfred Eichholz, 
 one of the Medical Officers of the Board of Education, 
 and a former Fellow and Lecturer of Emmanuel 
 College, Cambridge, strongly expressed this view in 
 his evidence before the Inter-Departmental Committee 
 on Physical Deterioration. 
 
 Whatever may be the case of the congenitally 
 feeble-minded, the epileptics, and the deaf-mutes, 
 most of our physical deficiencies are not inheritable. 
 Nature tends to give every generation a fresh start. 
 About 80 per cent, of children are born healthy, and 
 the vast majority of the failures in Hfe have been 
 
ENVIRONMENT 39 
 
 produced by the physical and social environment to 
 which they have been exposed. The expression 
 of hereditary nature depends largely on environ- 
 ment. At birth, the individual is equipped with the 
 plasticity of mind and the capacity of development 
 which are his inheritance ; but the direction and 
 extent of the development depend mainly upon 
 influences and stimuli from the external world. ' I 
 am a part of all that I have met,' says Tennyson in 
 * Ulysses,' and this is the tendency of the teaching 
 of present-day science. 
 
 If we could remove the influence of evil en- 
 vironment hardly ten per cent, of the population, 
 if so many, would prove unfit from other causes. 
 Criminality, for instance, is not specifically a matter 
 of heredity any more than phthisis is. Those who 
 fill our prisons have inherited not criminality, but 
 lack of control of the nervous system and certain 
 weaknesses of mind and character, all of which serve 
 as a good soil in which the seeds of crime may grow 
 rankly if sown by an evil environment. 
 
 In proof of the dominating influence of environment, 
 we have only to recall the fact that change of environ- 
 ment at an early age nearly always produces a change 
 of character. Hence the marvellous success that 
 has attended the taking of children from the slums 
 and the worst of parents and placing them in good 
 homes. In this environment the vast majority grow 
 up good citizens, whereas we know that if they had 
 remained in their original surroundings they would 
 
40 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 almost inevitably have become paupers, evil-doers, 
 or criminals. The rescue work among young children 
 by the late Dr. Barnardo, Mr. Quarrier, and others 
 shows that, no matter what the parents may be, if 
 the children are taken away and placed in good homes 
 before they have been contaminated by the wicked- 
 ness around them, they in almost every case do weU.^ 
 In attempting to estimate the relative influence 
 of heredity and environment we must bear in mind 
 that it is impossible to draw a sharp Hne between the 
 effects of the two, for in very many cases inheritance 
 is but the stored up effects of past environment. 
 This is true of our physical and mental heredity which 
 has been influenced by the environment of our 
 ancestors back to the dawn of human life. It is even 
 more true of what has been called social heredity, 
 which is really a form of environment. Social heredity 
 includes the political and social system of the nation, 
 the social influences, ' the circle of thought, the 
 atmosphere of ideas, the culture inheritance into 
 which the individuals of the nation are born.' ^ These 
 
 1 Statistics show that over 97 per cent, of these children rescued 
 from the slums become respectable, self-supporting citizens. 
 
 ' Dr. F. H. Hayward's Education and the Heredity Spectre, p. 18. 
 (London : Watts & Co.) This work discusses in a masterly way the 
 relative influence and educational significance of heredity and environ- 
 ment. The author brings forward strong reasons for believing the 
 influence of environment paramount. ' Heredity,' he says, ' seems at 
 present mainly a theme for novelists and playwrights, a deus (or 
 diabolus) ex machind of sociological and pedagogical thinking, called 
 in whenever men are too ignorant or too indifferent to push their inq uiries 
 far. The notion of heredity tickles the modern imagination in much 
 the same way as the notion of the devil tickled the imaginations of 
 mediaeval men. There is something fearsome and fascinating about 
 
ENVIRONMENT 41 
 
 are far more potent than physical heredity in shaping 
 the mind and character of the nation. As Sir Ray 
 Lankester said in his Presidential Address to the 
 British Association : * The mind of the human adult 
 is mainly a social product, and can be understood 
 only in relation to the special environment in which 
 it develops, and with which it is in perpetual inter- 
 action. . . . The recognition of this truth seems to 
 be the most important advance in psychology in recent 
 years.' 
 
 Whatever be the truth regarding the relative 
 influence of heredity and environment, our imme- 
 diate duty is obvious — namely, to see that by wise 
 restrictions every child gets a ' square deal ' at birth, 
 and is given thereafter a fair chance of full physical, 
 intellectual, and moral development by surrounding 
 him with favourable environment, using that word 
 in the comprehensive sense in which it has been used 
 in this chapter. 
 
 it. Exactly what amount of potency it possesses can at the present 
 moment hardly be stated w ith confidence ; but inasmuch as influences 
 have, in scores of cases, been credited to it that are demonstrably the 
 results of environment, it behoves us to look with suspicion upon 
 explanations that are very likely to be false. Entia non sunt multipli- 
 canda praeter necessitatem. Until we are certain that environment, 
 an intelligible and undoubted force, is not responsible in any particular 
 case, we should avoid appealing to an agency whose potency is neither 
 intelligible nor undoubted.' 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CAUSES OF SOCIAL DISEASES (CONTINUED) — 
 DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 
 
 Education is a part of our environment, and the 
 consideration of the extent to which defects in it may 
 act as a barrier to social progress belongs strictly to 
 the chapter we have just finished ; but the subject 
 is so important as to deserve separate consideration. 
 There has been a great deal of destructive and ill- 
 informed criticism of the school and all its work. 
 What we need is more of earnest constructive criticism, 
 for all such criticism is in reaHty co-operation. 
 
 In the opinion of many well able to judge, educa- 
 tion has not kept pace with the progress of society in 
 other respects. Its absolute motion has been onward, 
 but its relative motion, our critics tell us, has been 
 retrograde. The commonest defects alleged against 
 present-day school education are that it is too formal, 
 too much confined to book instruction, too unpractical, 
 too remote from the necessities of Ufe, and too much 
 regarded as an end in itseK instead of a preparation 
 for economic and social life. Non vitae sed scholae 
 discunt. 
 
DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 43 
 
 The largest factor in the production of the in- 
 competent and the failures in hfe is the incapacity 
 for doing useful and efficient work. According to the 
 investigations of Charles Booth, B. S. Rowntree, and 
 others, over fifty per cent, of the cases of extreme 
 poverty in our large industrial centres are due to 
 inability to get and keep employment, rather than 
 to sickness or faults of character. Everywhere there 
 are boys and girls growing up with no opportunity 
 in the school or elsewhere for effective training for 
 a vocation, and unenviable indeed is the fate of any- 
 one who falls without practical skill or trade into 
 the pitiless competition of the modern labour market. 
 They swell the ranks of the casual workers living on 
 the verge of poverty. Too often their industrial 
 helplessness saps in course of time their moral fibre, 
 and they fall into the ranks of the unemployables. 
 Such has been the experience of many a promising 
 youth. 
 
 We have not yet fully recognised that the 
 educational situation has been fundamentally altered 
 by the industrial revolution consequent upon the 
 discovery of steam power and the application of 
 science to industry. By the change from hand-tools 
 to machines, from manual labour to manufactured 
 power, the home has been shorn of its industries, the 
 small workshops have given place to the factory, 
 with its intricate processes, speeded-up methods, 
 and division and sub-division of labour. The changes 
 have given rise to a great expansion of industry, and 
 
44 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 have heralded the period of world intercourse, world 
 markets, and large-scale methods of production and 
 distribution. 
 
 Now the effects of the industrial revolution have 
 not been entirely beneficial to the children. The 
 change from rural and semi-rural to urban life has 
 deprived them of the opportunities for work and 
 play which are essential to their physical and mental 
 development. Home industries no longer give them 
 their manual training and useful occupations for their 
 leisure hours. The change from complete, to sub- 
 divided labour has deprived apprenticeship of its 
 educational value. Our predecessors were probably 
 not wrong in proceeding upon the theory that the 
 school should provide a general education as a supple- 
 ment to the training for practical work obtained 
 elsewhere, but we shall be to blame if we continue 
 to follow their example. 
 
 In the process of social evolution the time has 
 arrived when the school must undertake the whole 
 educational process, and not one phase of it only 
 as before. It must now both train and teach, 
 both provide the foundation of personal develop- 
 ment and rear upon it the superstructure of in- 
 tellectual attainment. The adjustment of our national 
 system of education to the changed and changing 
 conditions created by the industrial revolution is 
 one of the most difficult and pressing problems 
 before educators at the present time. Much of the 
 present unrest in education is due to the continual 
 
DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 45 
 
 effort of the school so to adjust its methods and 
 curriculum as to enable it to provide a substitute 
 for the educational influences which have ceased to 
 operate, and to supply those forms of practical training 
 which recent changes have caused to be dropped 
 from the life of the young. 
 
 That something is wrong at present is indicated 
 by the too large percentage of children who leave 
 school without the ability to pass the tests applied by 
 the Government Department of Education at the 
 end of the compulsory school age. The educational 
 process has broken down in their case, not necessarily 
 because they are dull or careless, but often because the 
 course of instruction has only appealed to a relatively 
 small part of their nature, and has, in consequence, 
 failed to secure their attention and interest. Until 
 recent times the whole of the energy of the school has 
 been devoted to the three R's, and English, Geography, 
 and History, and the consequence has been that even 
 these have not been taught satisfactorily. They 
 must always be the most important subjects in the 
 primary school, but alone they do not satisfy the 
 deepest instincts and interests of childhood — namely, 
 the instinct for doing, the instinct for play, and the 
 instinct for social life. 
 
 While the child is yet in the most receptive and 
 plastic period of his life, we must follow more 
 closely the lead of nature, and educate and develop 
 all the powers of the child, especially the active 
 powers. Fifty years ago Carlyle pointed out the 
 
46 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 need of this. ' Our schools,' he said, ' go all upon 
 the vocal hitherto ; no clear aim in them but 
 to teach the young creature how he is to speak, to 
 utter himself by tongue and pen ; which, supposing 
 him even to have something to utter, as he so very 
 rarely has, is by no means the thing he specially wants 
 in our times. How he is to work, to behave and do, 
 that is the question for him which he seeks the answer 
 of in schools.' Bergson in recent times has expressed 
 the same view. In his work on ' Creative Evolution ' 
 he says : ' We think only in order to act. Our intellect 
 has been cast in the mould of action. Speculation 
 is a luxury, while action is a necessity.' ^ 
 
 Neglect to train the active powers of childhood 
 has caused in the past many of the failures, misfits, 
 and non-valeurs of life. Dr. Snedden, the Com- 
 missioner of Education in the State of Massachusetts, 
 has given strong expression to this opinion in these 
 words : ' To the student of social life — the social 
 economist — it is becoming apparent that a large, if 
 not the largest, factor in the production of the vicious 
 and incompetent, the criminal and the pauper, is 
 incapacity to produce effectively, to work productively. 
 The idle boy, the loafer, the untaught youth, the 
 untrained girl — they are destined usually to be a 
 heavy burden to society instead of being bearers 
 
 ^ Professor Darroch states with philosophic power the pragmatic 
 position in education in the first two chapters of his work on Education 
 and the New Utilitarianism. (Longmans, Green, and Co.) He points 
 out the need of laying greater stress on the practical and constructive 
 arts, and upon co-operative methods in the work of the school. 
 
DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 47 
 
 of burdens.' ^ In the education of delinquents and 
 those who have inherited criminal tendencies we now 
 recognise the necessity of training the physical and 
 industrial capacities as well as the intellectual. Those 
 whom nature leads to destroy are taught to produce. 
 When will the advantage of such training be extended 
 more fully to ordinary school children ? It would 
 involve, no doubt, a good deal of re-surveying and re- 
 valuing of the subjects and methods of instruction ; 
 but it is worth our while to undertake the task, for 
 it would add vitality to our primary education. 
 
 The child should be led to see more clearly than 
 is the case at present the usefulness of the training he 
 is receiving in school. We might supply to him to a 
 greater extent a motive or end for what he is required 
 to do by revealing, say, its place in achievement. It 
 will not do to be always telling the child that he will 
 see the use some day of what he is learning now. 
 The motive is too remote to stimulate his interest 
 or fix his attention. In primary school practice there 
 is too much application of the doubtful doctrine of 
 formal training of the faculties, and there is too much 
 of what Tolstoi called ' the snare of preparation ' — 
 always doing something for the sake of something 
 which the pupil does not yet see. With care and 
 forethought it is possible to make the pupil feel even 
 now the practical utility of the training he is receiving. 
 We need all through the primary school curriculum 
 more education ad hoc — that is, education having 
 
 ^ Educational Review^ January 1910, p. 17. 
 
48 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 a direct bearing upon the activities and purposes of 
 Hfe. 
 
 That the school may be an effective means of 
 social progress it must make more of the invaluable 
 human material entrusted to its care. It must regard 
 the pupil less as a product to be turned out according 
 to a stereotyped pattern, and more as a living 
 personality, carrying within him the secret of his 
 own mental and moral growth. The essence of 
 personality is purpose and free activity, and the 
 cultivation of these must be made the starting-point 
 of effective teaching. Guidance, not repression, is 
 the function of education.^ The latter, we know, 
 may produce a conventional and non-imaginative 
 type of child, but only the former can produce the 
 capable, adaptable, and self-reliant citizen required 
 to meet existing social conditions. We need to 
 cultivate more efficiently the feelings and the will, 
 and the whole moral nature of the child, and we can 
 do this more successfully by guidance and training 
 in the use of active freedom than by any system of 
 external prohibitions. 
 
 1 Mr. Cloudesley Brereton says in the Fortniglitly Review, June 1913 : 
 ' We have got in many ways radically to change our ideas. Instead 
 of having a sort of regulation education which we fit like a cast-iron 
 boot on to every child of a certain age, we have got first to measure, 
 so to say, the child's foot and then make the boot that it requires. 
 In a word, we have got, first and foremost, to diagnose the child's main 
 aptitude, and then only can we decide what is best for the child ; we 
 must, in fact, first attempt to discover what is his predominant ability 
 and bias, atid then, taking carefully into account the time he is likely 
 to remain at school, draw up for him a course of study or direct him 
 towards a course of study that seems to meet the needs of his case.' 
 
DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 49 
 
 Another respect in which our system of public 
 education has certainly retarded social progress has 
 been its almost total neglect, until quite recent times, 
 of the physical well-being of the child. Body and 
 mind are but two aspects of our being. If the mind is 
 worked at the expense of the body, the physical power 
 is lowered, and thereby the intellectual power, for 
 the one reacts upon the other. Similarly, if the 
 physical side of our being is neglected, our mental 
 power is thereby impaired. In order that the race 
 may prosper, the educational system of the country 
 must aim at developing the bodies and minds of the 
 children at the same time and in due proportion. 
 
 We recognise now, as we never did before, that 
 the most important resource of the nation is the 
 health of the people, and that consequently the most 
 valuable item in the nation's capital of vitality is the 
 health of the young. The health of the adult com- 
 munity is built upon the physical welfare of th3 
 children ; therefore the school is our most influential 
 agency for the conservation of national health and 
 working power. Children should through education 
 leave school with fewer physical defects, sounder 
 bodies, keener eyesight, and better hearing than when 
 they entered it. On the contrary, we have abundant 
 evidence that the unavoidable strain of school work 
 is accentuated by the harmful length or sequence of 
 lessons, or by defects in heating, lighting, ventilating, 
 and seating arrangements. 
 
 Investigations by the Physical Deterioration 
 
50 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 Committee revealed that 70 per cent, of the children 
 about to leave the Primary Schools in West Ham, 
 and 66 per cent, in Manchester, were below the 
 normal standard of physical development. Sir 
 George Newman, Chief Medical Officer of the Board 
 of Education, states that of the six million pupils 
 in the elementary schools of England and Wales, ] 
 it is found on investigation that about 10 per cent, 
 suffer from serious defects of vision, 3 to 5 per 
 cent, from defective hearing, 1 to 3 per cent, from 
 suppurating ears, 10 per cent, from adenoids or 
 enlarged tonsils requiring surgical treatment, 20 to 
 40 per cent, from harmful decay of the teeth, 1 per 
 cent, from tuberculosis, and 1 to 2 per cent, from heart 
 disease. Investigations by Dr. W. Leslie Mackenzie, 
 Medical Member of the Scottish Local Government 
 Board, have revealed a similar state of affairs in 
 Scotland ; so that we may take it as proved that all 
 over the country from 50 to 70 per cent, of our school 
 children are suffering from physical degeneration or 
 disease in some form or other. Modern research 
 confirms the truth on every hand that 
 
 This mad unthrift world 
 
 Every hour throws life enough away 
 
 To make the deserts kind and hospitable. 
 
 When we consider the amount of preventable 
 disease among school children, the effects that 
 inevitably follow in the health of the community in 
 the next generation, and the national burden of sick- 
 ness and disablement caused by it, we see that we 
 
DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 51 
 
 have here one of the main hindrances to social progress. 
 Doubtless the recently instituted periodical medical 
 inspection of school children, and the provision in 
 necessitous cases of remedial treatment, will have a 
 great effect in conserving the national health and 
 working power, and so will the increased attention 
 now given in the curriculum to physical training. 
 But in addition to these, children must get definite 
 instruction in the laws of health, and, in particular, 
 girls must get better instruction in all household arts. 
 Anyone who knows the conditions in the poorer 
 districts of our cities is appalled at the gross ignorance 
 of mothers there regarding the cooking of the com- 
 monest articles of food, and regarding the care of 
 children, and the hygiene of the home. The primary 
 school must certainly pay yet closer attention to this 
 part of its curriculum. 
 
 Education will never have the efficiency it should 
 in combating the ills of society so long as children of 
 school age are allowed to engage in exhausting and 
 often demorahsing forms of employment out of school 
 hours. The attention of the country was called to 
 this point by a Parliamentary Return in 1899 which 
 showed ' that at least 144,000 or 10 per cent, of the 
 children in full time attendance at school were 
 employed out of school hours for wages,' the majority 
 being engaged in going errands, some in street-trading, 
 others in sweated industries at home, such as 
 flower-making, box-making, and the like. If half- 
 timers had been included in the above Return the 
 
 B 2 
 
52 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 number of child-workers would have been almost 
 doubled. 
 
 Following on the exposures made by this Return, 
 an Inter-Departmental Committee was appointed 
 to investigate the whole matter. The Committee 
 reported that they found themselves * compelled to 
 offer an unqualified condemnation of the educational 
 effect of the system of partial exemption in both town 
 and country. . . . The bright child becomes mediocre, 
 the average child dull, and the dull child hopeless.' 
 The reasons are not far to seek. Half-time work 
 interferes with the education of the child just at 
 the time when it is most important. Moreover, the 
 double work, in very many cases, imposes a strain 
 greater than his body can bear. The price is paid 
 in lowered bodily and mental vitality, inability to 
 profit to the full extent by schooling, stunted physical 
 development, and impaired health. 
 
 As a result of the recommendations of the Inter- 
 Departmental Committee the Employment of Children 
 Act was passed in 1904. The Act forbids the employ- 
 ment between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. of any child of school 
 age, the employment of any child in work likely to 
 be injurious to his health or education, and of children 
 under eleven in street trading. The Act also gives 
 local authorities powers to make by-laws further 
 restricting the employment of children in their 
 districts, especially in certain occupations common 
 in the districts. Only a small number, however, of the 
 local authorities have as yet made by-laws under the 
 
DEFECTIVE EDUCATION 58 
 
 Act, and there is no doubt that the large number of 
 children still seriously overworked out of school hours, 
 often in unsuitable occupations, is a barrier to social 
 progress. There is a proposal being made in Parlia- 
 ment to supplement the Employment of Children 
 Act by another placing on School Boards the 
 responsibility of licensing boys and girls from fourteen 
 to sixteen years of age wishing to engage in street 
 trading. This is part of a general movement to place 
 the whole of the care of children under the educational 
 rather than the police or other authorities. 
 
 The last defect in our educational system we shall 
 mention is the absence of a compulsory and com- 
 pletely organised system of continuation education. 
 A large fraction of our population does not attend 
 a school of any kind after thirteen or fourteen years 
 of age. These children have only got at best the 
 rudiments of an education, and under modern con- 
 ditions of industry they become derelicts in the lowest 
 grades of work, doomed 
 
 To drudge through weary life without the aid 
 Of intellectual implements or tools. 
 
 Here is no small cause of our social problems. 
 
 One of our chief hopes of the progress of society 
 in the future lies in repairing the acknowledged defects 
 of our educational system, and so increasing its power 
 as a lever in raising the sunken and struggling part 
 of our population, who are at once a discredit and a 
 source of weakness to our social order. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 One principle in relation to human progress we 
 hope we have established — namely, that the ills of 
 society cannot be remedied by alleviating individual 
 cases of distress. Moreover, mere external treatment 
 of symptoms is not enough. We must discover the 
 deep-seated causes of the ills, and submit them to 
 suitable treatment. Only thus can we improve the 
 condition of the whole body politic. 
 
 Genetic Development 
 
 Herbert Spencer has taught us that society is 
 not a mechanism but a Uving growth. It is subject 
 to the general laws of development of every organism, 
 and its growth to a more perfect form is taking place by 
 the gradual processes of evolution. In the first place, 
 there is a slow and steady progress of society towards 
 a higher t3rpe naturally and without dehberate plan 
 or effort. We may call this genetic or racial develop- 
 ment. The factors that cause it are many and often 
 minute. They may be the instinctive groping of 
 
CONDITIONS OF PROGRESS 55 
 
 humanity towards a goal unknown, or the desire to 
 excel which is innate in human nature, or the rivalry 
 of competition, the struggle of class with class or 
 nation with nation, or the stress of material necessity, 
 or the struggle against a poor climate, an infertile 
 soil, or an unfavourable location. The influences, 
 indeed, are innumerable, and they call forth a certain 
 amount of thought and effort directed towards an 
 immediate purpose. There is no far-sighted end in 
 view, but nevertheless progress of the race towards 
 higher conceptions of life and thought is made — so 
 slowly, it may be, as to be only perceptible through 
 long stretches of time. 
 
 Not only is genetic development slow, it is also 
 highly expensive in proportion to the benefits derived. 
 In the struggle and rivalry by which the progress 
 is achieved much suffering and waste are inevitable. 
 Many become physically and mentally stunted by 
 the hardness of the struggle, and never attain to their 
 real possibiHties. Mental energy that was capable 
 of high achievement is expended on a lower level in 
 overcoming material difficulties. There are : — 
 
 Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, 
 Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. 
 
 But 
 
 Chill penury repressed their noble rage 
 And froze the genial current of the soul. 
 
 ' There are some natures so sensitive and refined that 
 their best products become blighted in a keenly 
 
56 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 competitive system, so that the aggressive only 
 survives but not the ethereal and the spiritual. In 
 quietness the divine is born.' ^ 
 
 Telic Development 
 
 Genetic development is the method of the world 
 of nature, but in human affairs it is to a large extent 
 supplanted by development on a higher plane. Here 
 the blind relentless struggle for existence is replaced 
 by purposive or teleological or, briefly, telic develop- 
 ment. As compared with genetic development, it 
 emphasises the moral and spiritual more than the 
 physical side of the world-process ; it is a conscious 
 adaptation of social forces for definite purposes, rather 
 than an unconscious drifting towards an unknown 
 goal ; it is constructive rather than destructive ; 
 it inspires rather than depresses ; it substitutes 
 mental co-operation and interdependence on a higher 
 plane for the struggle for existence on a lower plane ; 
 it is socialistic rather than individualistic ; it is directed 
 towards the general elevation of the standard of life 
 of the whole human family rather than of the stronger 
 and more aggressive members of it. 
 
 There are still those who attach less importance 
 to telic development in human progress than to the 
 blind drift of genetic development. They believe 
 that progress has been due mainly to unconscious 
 natural forces, such as the pressure of material needs ; 
 and that where conscious psychical forces appear to 
 
 * Dealey's Sociology, p. 178. 
 
CONDITIONS OF PROGRESS 57 
 
 have exerted initiative, they have generally been 
 occasioned by physical impulses. But everyone will 
 be ready to admit that conscious effort at least greatly 
 economises the power of unconscious forces, and 
 abbreviates the slow processes of nature. We cannot 
 leave everything to vis medicatrix naturae. The fuller 
 study of the modes of social evolution now taking place 
 is causing us to assign greater importance to the power 
 of consciously ordered effort in the progress both of 
 individuals and of peoples. There is every reason 
 to believe, too, that, with the growing self-conscious- 
 ness of nations, moral and spiritual considerations 
 will more and more outweigh material forces, and that 
 in future the progress of nations will be more and 
 more determined by the capacity they display for 
 the purposive utilisation of their resources. 
 
 The chief factors in telic development are social 
 reform, economic reform, and educational reform. 
 The importance of these has been recognised by all 
 the famous Utopians from Plato to the present time. 
 The panaceas for social reform put forward by modern 
 humanitarians are bewildering in their number and 
 variety, but they at any rate justify the hope that all 
 this anxiety to hghten the burden of the depressed 
 classes will some day lead to a deeper knowledge of 
 the determining factors in social progress, and will 
 enable us to lay more securely the foundations of a 
 higher civilisation. 
 
 The sociahstic theories so prevalent at the present 
 time are attempts at a solution of the social problems 
 
58 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 by economics. In their extreme forms they are 
 undoubtedly erroneous and inexpedient, but they 
 are indications among others that the rising tide of 
 teHc development will lead, probably at no distant 
 date, to a drastic revision of our economic theories, 
 and a rejection of many of the outworn methods and 
 obsolete data of our political economy. In the 
 economic sphere new achievements in science and 
 invention will cheapen food supplies, and set free a 
 vast amount of energy and capital now wasted. 
 Machinery and labour-saving devices mil be multiplied 
 to perform the work now done by unskilled and badly 
 paid labour, and to increase vastly the effectiveness 
 and productive power of the nation. One man with 
 the arts and tools and machinery of to-day can do 
 the work formerly done by fifty or a hundred men; 
 and the people of one of our manufacturing towns 
 have a greater productive power than had the whole 
 of Britain a century ago. The necessaries of Hfe have 
 been cheapened by these means, and the whole nation, 
 except the totally submerged class, has been lifted 
 to a higher plane of material comfort and industrial 
 weKare. Wages have been increased, and the length 
 of the working day has been diminished from 15 hours 
 to 12, from 12 to 10, from 10 to 9, and it is probable 
 that the end has not yet been reached. 
 
 But the advent of machinery has brought its 
 special dangers. The machine, as some one has said, 
 is apt to make a class of machine citizens, lacking in 
 individuality, narrow in interests, and unable to use 
 
CONDITIONS OF PROGRESS 59 
 
 to the best advantage the wider margin of leisure and 
 money which modern conditions allow. Machines 
 have practically aboHshed the education of apprentice- 
 ship. Yet we must have machines, even although 
 we know they will continue to narrow the workman, 
 to diminish his pride of craftsmanship, and in many 
 cases to displace him altogether. But it is not 
 inevitable that an age of machinery should destroy 
 the power of personality, provided the workman has 
 a broad education and intellectual interests beyond 
 his work. Machinery will increase his intervals of 
 leisure in which to widen his mental horizon and 
 develop his higher hfe. 
 
 If we regard the advent of machinery aright 
 we see that it is but an expression of the will of 
 man, enabling him to fulfil his larger destiny and 
 higher purposes. This idea is well expressed by 
 Professor Dealey, a well-known writer on social and 
 political science. ' As man advances in knowledge 
 he learns how more effectively to master nature, to 
 manipulate its resources at will, and to harness for 
 his purposes its energy and productivity. Each 
 forward step implies that men shall henceforth rely 
 less on their own muscular exertions and more on 
 mental capacity. The mechanical, routine drudgery 
 of life is slowly passing away, and in its place is coming 
 a demand for trained intellect utilising machinery. 
 But this implies far greater productivity for the same 
 amount of human energy. ... As the working day 
 decreases in length, the worker will find himself with 
 
60 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 abundant leisure on his hands, and he also will find 
 pleasure in the arts, in science, and in philosophic 
 meditation. In short, all will become members of 
 the leisured class, for all will have energy and 
 opportunity for the cultivation of the higher life. . . . 
 When unskilled labour and ignorance disappear from 
 civiHsation, the social reformer will at last come into 
 his own, and Utopians may rest in peace.' ^ 
 
 The industrial revolution and the introduction of 
 machinery have placed us at the beginning of a new 
 era. Yesterday was the day of the few ; the day 
 of the many is dawning when every man shall have 
 the opportunity of self-reaUsation which is his by 
 right. Social and economic re-organisation scientifi- 
 cally applied will continue to engage the thought 
 and enlarge the power of the statesman, but the 
 emphasis will be placed more and more on the 
 chief factor in social progress — Education. 
 
 * Dealey's Sociology, p. 181. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 
 
 In previous chapters we have discussed the influence 
 of heredity and environment in social pathology ; what 
 we have to consider now is, given the hereditary 
 merits and faults of man, what can education do to 
 mould them for the good of the race ? In human 
 progress the ethnical, not the individual, is the true 
 point of view. The problem before education is not 
 merely the instruction of individuals but the preserva- 
 tion and elevation of the race. The effects of education 
 do not cease with the individual ; all posterity shares 
 in the social inheritance received by the individual 
 and modified by him for good or ill during his lifetime. 
 The task of education in this connection has been 
 defined to a large extent by the work of biologists, 
 whose investigations are continually throwing light 
 on the subject of heredity, and on the degree of modifi- 
 cation of which it is susceptible. Certain facts have 
 already been definitely established by biology, and 
 can be used by the educationist as he seeks to modify 
 the influences of heredity. Enough is already known 
 
62 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 to show that heredity has freighted the soul and body 
 of each child with the accumulated results of ancestral 
 well- and ill-doing, that education can overcome 
 many of the defects due to inheritance, and that on 
 the right development by education of hereditary 
 acquisitions depends in some measure the progress 
 of civilisation a generation or two hence. 
 
 Heredity marks in broad outlines the limits of the 
 capacities of each individual. Some minds have ten 
 talents, others five, and others one, and it is the 
 function of education to enable each type of mind to 
 put its inherited talents to the best use. Education 
 cannot change inborn capacity, but it can discover 
 and develop it. Education, Wordsworth tells us, 
 can 
 
 Nourish imagination in her growth. 
 And give the mind that apprehensive power 
 Wliereby she is made quick to recognise 
 The moral properties and scope of things. 
 
 But it cannot create imagination, it can only stimulate 
 and develop it up to the limit of hereditary endow- 
 ment. It is waste of effort and resources on the part 
 of education to attempt to create capacities which 
 are denied at birth. It is attempting that which 
 is physiologically as well as psychically impossible. 
 We cannot educate what nature has not put there. 
 Two mistakes education has made in the past 
 in connection with heredity, and they have cost the 
 nation dear. One we have just referred to — namely, 
 the persistent, some would say presumptuous, attempt 
 
EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 63 
 
 to create capacity. Education cannot add a single 
 cell to the brain. It cannot develop one who is devoid 
 of imagination and manipulative skill into an artist, 
 nor one who is weak in mathematical power into a 
 mathematician. As Ruskin puts it, ' apricot out of 
 currant, great man out of small, did never yet art 
 or effort make.' Sir Francis Galton says : ' I have 
 no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed, 
 and often implied, especially in tales written to teach 
 children to be good, that babies are born pretty much 
 alike, and that the sole agencies in creating differences 
 between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady 
 application and moral effort. It is in the most un- 
 quahfied manner that I object to pretensions of natural 
 equaUty. The experiences of the nursery, the school, 
 the university, and of professional careers are a chain 
 of proof to the contrary. I acknowledge freely the 
 great power of education and social influences in 
 developing the active powers of the mind, just as I 
 acknowledge the effect of use in developing the muscles 
 of a blacksmith's arm, and no further. Let the 
 blacksmith labour as he will, he will find that there 
 are certain feats beyond his power that are well within 
 the strength of a man of herculean make.' 
 
 The other mistake of education has been the 
 attempt to turn out all pupils uniformly developed 
 and rounded off in accordance with some preconceived 
 ideal. Nature has her own order of talent and we 
 must follow that. In the attempt to perform the 
 impossible and develop all alike httle progress has 
 
64 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 been made, and in the time thus spent latent talents 
 and potential capacities have been allowed to pass 
 undiscovered or to atrophy by neglect. Dormant or 
 undeveloped capacity is as valueless as no capacity. 
 It is the duty of education to discover and develop 
 native abilities, to enable each one to realise his 
 capacities, to make the most of his inheritance, to 
 give him the will and the power to do and to be the 
 utmost that his inherited potentialities allow. It 
 Is thus that education can contribute most to the 
 advancement of civilisation and the progress of society. 
 The question is sometimes asked whether education 
 should seek to develop the strongest or the weakest 
 points in the hereditary equipment peculiar to each 
 individual. If we were sure that characteristics 
 strengthened or acquired during one's hfetime were 
 transmitted to posterity, we should certainly seek 
 to develop the weakest powers of each individual, 
 and thus tend to produce permanent superiority 
 within the race. The question of the transmission 
 of acquired characteristics will be discussed more 
 fully below, but in the present state of our knowledge 
 we should say that while education should aim at 
 cultivating a general equiUbrium of the powers of 
 each individual, it should lay stress on the hereditary 
 capacities which are strongest in the individual, and 
 will enable him to contribute most to the well-being 
 of society. For everyone, even the most depraved 
 and ignoble, has in him, covered over and concealed 
 deep down it may be, some personal quaUty valuable 
 
EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 65 
 
 to the world — a quality that can only become fully 
 active if developed by education. It is the task of 
 education to arouse dormant heredity, and to give 
 every man the particular training that will enable 
 him to fulfil the purpose in society for which he is 
 endowed.^ 
 
 Conversely, if education should by purposive 
 selection cultivate the good, it should also seek to arrest 
 and check the bad. Unfortunate though it seem, 
 heredity preserves defects as well as excellences, and 
 there is bad — both intellectual and moral — in the best 
 of us as well as good in the worst. By withholding 
 the opportunities that would call forth the bad we 
 must let it die a natural death through lack of exercise. 
 
 ^ This subject is fully discussed by Professor H. H. Home in his 
 work on Idealism in Education (Macmillan). At p. 43 of that work 
 he says : ' Where heredity has left us weak we are likely to remain 
 weak, as for example, in common sense, humour, or temperament, 
 despite much etfort. It therefore pays in the case of the individual 
 to develop him most in the forte in which he is strongest ; this will be 
 his contribution to society. This method is attended with the risk 
 of narrowness, eccentricity, and specialisation, but it accomplishes 
 highest individual achievement and greatest social progress. The 
 risk is to be run, minimised indeed by some attentive effort to the weak 
 points, while the strongest points, however, are receiving the greatest 
 emphasis. The notion of a well-balanced, all-round, harmoniously 
 developed human mind is a fictitious ideal ; we are strong in some 
 points and weak in others ; our general ability is really an average of 
 var^dng abilities in different directions. As nature endows us this 
 way, educational effort should be similarly proportioned, givini, most 
 time to the strongest points. A genius in a given line may actually 
 be handicapped by being compelled to follow alien interests. Society 
 has many men who can do the things we do poorly ; we are fortunate 
 if society has not many men who can do the things we can do best. 
 While the strong points are to be emphasised, the weak points are not 
 to be neglected. And both strong and weak points may need stimuli 
 to awaken them.' 
 
66 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 Harmful tendencies and instincts can be turned by 
 education into useful channels or be weakened, 
 counteracted, or ' modified by the cultivation of 
 opposing impulses and emotions. This, we take it, 
 is what is meant by getting rid of original sin. The 
 education which accomplishes most is that which 
 works through, rather than against, our native 
 impulses, and which conserves their energy while 
 modifying them into more useful forms. 
 
 What we have been suggesting presupposes an 
 intimate knowledge of the hereditary possibilities 
 and hmitations of each pupil in a class. We cannot 
 otherwise make the most of the fund of original 
 tendencies each one brings into the world, eradicating 
 what is useless and supplying the additions that are 
 desirable. The child has a claim to be studied and 
 understood by his would-be educators, and the progress 
 of society demands that we should ascertain and 
 develop talent wherever it exists for moral or 
 cultural or practical achievement. It is the power 
 to do this that marks the great and inspiring teacher. 
 
 Education can aid progress by recognising and 
 training abilities valuable to social progress. We can 
 only attain the highest collective Hfe through the fullest 
 development of individual Hfe. The better recognition 
 of varying inborn capacities and natures is thus one 
 of the pressing needs of education. The absence of 
 this in the past has too often led to blundering and 
 retardation. Many have complained, and sometimes 
 with justice, of the inappropriateness of the education 
 
EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 67 
 
 they received at school. Education in the future 
 must be made to fit the child and not the child the 
 education. For this we must have smaller classes 
 and individual education ; children have been treated 
 in the mass too long.^ 
 
 In cases in which it is possible, a knowledge of 
 the parents of the child and of the hereditary ten- 
 dencies of the family will help greatly in diagnosing 
 his capacities and in guiding us as to the best plan 
 of his education. But it would be futile to push our 
 induction too far, for the child's inheritance goes 
 back to the remote past, and there are qualities in 
 him that we cannot trace in either parent. Any 
 individual mind is the product of infinite ages of 
 heredity. 
 
 In the same way a study of racial characteristics 
 would be an advantage to every teacher. If we would 
 know the child aright we must study him historically. 
 A knowledge of the evolutionary development of the 
 race in the past is the key to the imderstanding of 
 the child to-day. If we know the psychology of the 
 race of the child, his little variations from the normal 
 will have more meaning to us. 
 
 A question of great interest, though a difficult one, 
 is : Can the influence of education in one generation 
 
 ^ Professor Home in the work we have just mentioned says : * A 
 child's nature is a seed of life w^ith an immanent design, perhaps a whole 
 flower garden, weeds and all. To educate a child is to comprehend 
 the plan of its soul and to assist this plan towards its full realisation. 
 Study to know then your individual child and use your knowledge. 
 No two souls are precisely alike, not even of twins. Least of all, then, 
 is education the recasting of all souls in the same mould.' 
 
 F 2 
 
68 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 be handed on to the next ? We do not refer to the 
 material, intellectual, or moral progress of society 
 which results from education. That is part of what 
 we may call our social inheritance which descends 
 from generation to generation as certainly as physi- 
 cal inheritance. Each generation receives through 
 education all the social achievements of the past, 
 its hterature, science, art, inventions, and industry, 
 adds to them and passes them on to the next. The 
 influence of social heredity on the development of 
 the race can hardly be over-estimated. But it is a 
 part of our environment, and we need not anticipate 
 the discussion of the next chapter. The question 
 before us at present is rather the very practical 
 one whether the education of the present generation 
 helps to make the education of the future race 
 easier.^ 
 
 The question is really a biological one, for high 
 psychic attainment depends upon the possession of 
 a nervous system delicately organised, and a brain 
 with much grey matter and highly convoluted. One 
 would naturally suppose that centuries of ancestral 
 thinking would be bound to produce an influence on 
 the physical structure of the brain which would be 
 handed on from one generation to another. As 
 Professor Donaldson puts it in his great work on 
 
 1 Plato in his Republic refers to the question and answers it in the 
 affirmative. 'Good nurture and education,' he says, ' implant good 
 constitutions, and these good constitutions, taking root in a good 
 education, improve more and more, and this improvement affects the 
 breed in man as in other animals.' Bk. iv. 424. 
 
EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 69 
 
 ' The Growth of the Brain ' : ' We feel . . . that the 
 descendants of several generations of educated 
 ancestors should have a nervous system favourably 
 modified, more vigorous, more responsive, more 
 accurate in its reactions, and growing, perhaps, for 
 a longer time, thus extending the period of its 
 adaptability. But for this evidence must still be 
 sought.' And this is the view of the majority of 
 biologists at the present time. The human brain 
 has developed as the result of countless ages of 
 evolution, but this development is not through 
 inheritance of acquired characteristics, biologists say, 
 but through the preservation of better variations. 
 The effects of the education of each individual are so 
 external to his nervous make-up as to be an acquisition 
 during his lifetime rather than an inheritance, and 
 therefore they have to be acquired afresh by the 
 next generation. 
 
 So the question with which we started is a part 
 of the classic one : Can acquired characters be 
 inherited ? Philosophers and biologists have been 
 discussing this since the time of Plato, and seem as 
 far from settling it as ever. All are agreed that 
 physical and mental characters which are congenital 
 are transmissible to offspring, but in the make-up 
 of body and mind there are in addition certain 
 characteristics acquired during the lifetime of each 
 individual which he did not inherit, and it is regard- 
 ing the transmissibility of these acquired traits that 
 there is still considerable doubt and discussion. 
 
70 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 The popular opinion is that they are transmissible, 
 but scientific opinion is much more divided. Darwin, 
 Lamarck, Herbert Spencer, Haeckel, Ribot, and many- 
 other prominent biologists, especially in France and 
 America, believe that acquired traits may be trans- 
 mitted in some measure from parent to child. Spencer 
 leaves no room for doubt. ' Either,' he says, ' there 
 has been inheritance of acquired characters or there 
 has been no evolution.' Ribot in the Preface to his 
 work on * Psychological Heredity ' says : * In general, 
 accidental deformities and mutilations are not trans- 
 mitted ; we are not surprised that the child of a man 
 with one eye or one arm has two eyes or two arms. 
 Even the transmission of scars is not always estab- 
 lished on very sure proof. But, apart from the 
 modifications due to local, partial, or brutal causes 
 there are those which result from slow action, which 
 intimately affect the living organism by nutrition and 
 even by education. The experiences of teachers are 
 not calculated to weaken the belief in a transmission 
 of certain acquired characters.' On the other hand, 
 Weismann, Sir Francis Galton, A. R. Wallace, Karl 
 Pearson, and the majority of biologists deny the 
 possibility of the transmission of modifications acquired 
 during the lifetime of the individual.^ 
 
 * After many years of research Weismann in 1892 formed the opinion 
 that the germ cells contain a substance called germ-plasm out of which 
 the new individual is formed, one portion being used up to form the 
 new body cells, the other portion remaining perfectly unchanged to form 
 the new germ-plasm of the germ cells of the individual of the next 
 generation. According to this theory the germ-plasm of the new 
 individual is not derived from the body cells of the parents, nor is it 
 
EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 71 
 
 The vehemence of the biological contention is now 
 abating, for it is found that the facts are not all on 
 one side, and that much of the division of opinion in 
 the past has been due to differences in the meaning 
 attached to the term ' acquired character.' This 
 has been more clearly deiined in recent times, and 
 the general opinion among scientists now is that 
 modifications acquired during the lifetime of an 
 individual are not transmissible, with the very doubtful 
 exception of those that influence for good or bad the 
 vital powers of the individual. Hence it is the duty 
 of education to secure that acquired characteristics 
 are re-impressed upon each successive generation if 
 they are good, or are suppressed if they are bad. 
 
 The question of the transmissibility of acquired 
 characters is of more than purely academic interest. 
 ' Our decision regarding it,' says Professor J. A. 
 Thomson (' Heredity,' p. 165), ' affects not only our 
 whole theory of organic evolution, but even our every- 
 day conduct. The question should be of interest to 
 the parent, the physician, the teacher, the moralist, 
 and the social reformer — in short, to us all.' 
 
 So far as education is concerned some conclusions 
 of importance follow from the discussion in which 
 we have been engaged. For one thing, it has taught 
 
 subject to modifications taking place in the body ; it is transmitted 
 absolutely unchanged from generation to generation. What the oiS- 
 spring will be depends therefore upon what the germs of the parents 
 are. Inheritance is from germs to germs. These lead an isolated 
 and protected life, and are not affected by traits acquired by education 
 or other means. 
 
72 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 us the need of caution in estimating the relative 
 importance of these two factors in social evolution — 
 heredity and education. Both have their place and 
 their limitations.^ We cannot accept the view of 
 some that heredity is all-powerful, that inherited 
 ability, temperament, or character cannot be modified 
 by education, that the mathematician, the poet, and 
 the criminal are all alike born, not made, and that 
 the destiny wrapped up in them at birth unfolds 
 itself inevitably during their lifetime. If this were 
 so, the sole business of the educator would be to 
 ' draw out ' the inherited ' faculties ' and predeter- 
 mined characteristics of the child committed to his 
 care.^ In that case there would be little hope of the 
 improvement of the race. 
 
 But one vital factor has been overlooked by the 
 supporters of the supremacy of heredity — namely, that 
 man, the highest product of organic evolution, has in- 
 herited a plastic, not a rig^d, brain endowed, as in the 
 case of the lower animals, with a highly developed 
 
 ^ Donaldson, in discussing the relative importance of education and 
 heredity, says : ' Education must fail to produce any fundamental 
 changes in the nervous organisation, but to some extent it can strengthen 
 formed structures by exercise, and in part waken into activity the 
 unorganised remnant of the dormant cells. No amount of cultivation 
 will give good growth where the nerve cells are few and ill-nourished, 
 but careful culture can do much where there are those with strong, 
 inherent impulses toward development. On neurological grounds, 
 therefore, nurture is to be considered of much less importance than 
 nature, and in that sense the capacities that we most admire in persons 
 worthy of remark are certainly inborn rather than made.' {The Growth 
 of the Brain, p. 343.) 
 
 2 Dr. F. H. Hayward gives a full and able discussion of this in his 
 Education and the Heredity Spectre. (Watts & Co.) 
 
EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 73 
 
 apparatus of fixed instincts. The unique inheritance 
 of mankind is, as Dr. F. H. Hayward has shown, the 
 plasticity, suggestibility, and educability of his brain. 
 Through these qualities the educator can guide the 
 development of the natural capacity of the child, and 
 impart ideas and ideals to him. The plasticity of the 
 human brain makes the influence of education well- 
 nigh omnipotent in moulding-power when compared 
 with heredity. As Hamlet says, ' Use can almost 
 change the stamp of nature.' 
 
 Man is partly born and partly made, and his 
 ultimate development depends partly on heredity, 
 but largely on education and training. He inherits 
 his capacity, but his actual attainment, intellectual 
 or moral, depends mainly upon the effort of his 
 own will and the education he receives. We must 
 not confuse inborn characteristics with character. 
 We have hereditary tendencies and characteristics, 
 but not hereditary character — in that fact lies the 
 opportunity of education. Professor Home states 
 the distinction aptly : ' We inherit certain disposi- 
 tions, tendencies, inclinations, impulses, temperaments, 
 temptations ; we do not inherit our actual attainment, 
 our thoughts, deeds, habits, and the conscious life 
 of man. The son of an inebriate will be weak 
 physically ; he does not inherit the appetite for 
 liquor, unless perchance such a craving was already 
 congenital in his ancestry ; least of all does he in- 
 herit what he will do with such craving. At this 
 point the influence of the third element, the personal 
 
74 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 will, appears. Character is an acquisition, not an 
 inheritance ; capacity is an inheritance, not an 
 acquisition. The moral attainments of civilised man 
 are a product of his will, not of his inheritance. Our 
 character is what we become within our inherited 
 Hmits.' 1 
 
 We should not regret too much our inabihty to 
 transmit the effects produced in individuals by means 
 of education. It is to the advantage of the race that 
 it should be so. It frustrates, no doubt, the hope 
 that the results of education in the individual may 
 be preserved by heredity for posterity, that the 
 capacity of the race may be improved by the cumu- 
 lative effect of education from generation to generation, 
 and that the education of the present generation may 
 increase the educability of the brain and nervous 
 system of generations yet to come. It involves, too, a 
 fresh start being made in each individual case, as if 
 our ancestors had received no education. We have 
 to begin the education of each generation at the same 
 point. As Professor Adams wittily puts it, ' Each 
 baby must begin at scratch.' ^ 
 
 But there the disadvantage ends, for the non- 
 transmissibility of acquired modifications means that 
 we have in every case the opportunity to determine 
 which characteristics we desire to produce. If moral 
 qualities were innate, not products of education and 
 
 * Idealism in Ediication, p. 32. 
 
 * The Evolution of Educational Theory, p. 56. (Macmillan & Co.) 
 The whole of this book is worthy of study. 
 
EDUCATION AND HEREDITY 75 
 
 environment, if the development of each child 
 depended solely on the virtues and vices he had 
 inherited, if bad characteristics, being congenital, 
 could not be removed, then every dream of human 
 progress would be in vain. Education loses, no doubt, 
 the aid of hereditary virtues, but this is more than 
 compensated by the loss of hereditary vices. The 
 task of the educator would be enormously increased 
 if children coming from bad homes inherited in every 
 case the badness acquired by their parents. 
 
 Our study of the relation of education to heredity 
 has shown us that education is one of the most 
 important contrivances of civihsation to enable human 
 beings to advance independently of heredity. This 
 furnishes one more argument for doing everything 
 in our power to improve our means of education in 
 the broadest sense, including every endeavour to 
 develop mankind in the school, in the home, in the 
 workshop, in the nation, and in the world at large. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 EDUCATION AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 In Chapter IV we showed that every organism is 
 dependent for growth — indeed for very existence — 
 upon adaptation to its surroundings. Nature demands 
 that an organism must be adjusted to its environment 
 before it can live alone. Hence every animal has a 
 period of infancy and helplessness that it may be 
 prepared for its environment. In the case of man 
 the period of dependence is much longer than in the 
 case of other animals, because he has to be adjusted 
 to a much more complex physical, social, and spiritual 
 environment. The development of body, mind, and 
 character in man during this period is partly due 
 to the forces of growth from within, and partly to 
 the forces of environment, including education, from 
 without. 
 
 The progress of society is made through the 
 reciprocal forces of the environment stamping its 
 influence on the race and the race reacting on the 
 environment, receiving its mental and moral sustenance 
 from it, and striving to conquer all influences in it 
 detrimental to the well-being of its members. If 
 
EDUCATION AND ENVIRONMENT 77 
 
 the adjustment is not made, or if the environment is 
 not suitable for nutrition, growth, and development, 
 then follow many of the pathological conditions of 
 society to which we have drawn attention. 
 
 As with the race so with the individual. The 
 success or failure of individuals in life, and the fullness 
 of their self-realisation, are determined largely by 
 their power of adjustment to environment, and of 
 utilising it to draw forth their capacities. It is the 
 province of education to guide the process of adjust- 
 ment, and to place the young en rapport with their 
 environment. Without the assistance of education 
 the child of to-day would have to depend, as his 
 primitive forefather did, upon his own experience, 
 and upon the knocks and bruises of environment for 
 the lessons he learned. 
 
 Sometimes the school fails to give the young the 
 kind of preparation demanded by their particular 
 environment. The instruction and methods, for 
 instance, of the schools in our crowded cities give too 
 little scope for nature study, for constructive work, 
 and for healthy recreation — all necessary antidotes 
 to the restricted environment of the town child. Our 
 rural schools copy, in the main, the defects of their 
 town neighbours ; they neglect the valuable educational 
 material supplied by, and required for, their surround- 
 ings, and so they hasten the drift of the population 
 from country to town, which is giving rise to many 
 of our modern industrial and social problems. 
 
 But education has to prepare the child to be able 
 
78 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 to adapt himself not merely to his present but to 
 any future environment in which he may be placed. 
 By suitable prevision education may prevent shock, 
 surprise, and even failure when the youth leaves school 
 and enters the larger arena of the world. Many of our 
 social problems are due to the inability of individuals 
 to adjust themselves to a new or rapidly changing 
 environment. Workers, for instance, trained for a 
 certain industrial environment which changes, may 
 not have sufficient initiative and adaptability to 
 readjust themselves to the new conditions, and 
 they may drop into the ranks of the unfit and the 
 poor. 
 
 Our educational system must afEord a fuller 
 preparation for the environment of the world, and be 
 more closely related to practical life. This is no new 
 conception. It was the cause of the revolt of the 
 grammar schools in Scotland against the exclusively 
 classical curriculum in vogue a century and a half 
 ago, and of the establishment throughout the country 
 of academies with modern courses of study. It was 
 an important part of the message of Pestalozzi and 
 Froebel to the world, and it has been the inspiring 
 force, consciously or unconsciously, of nearly every 
 large educational movement since their day. It is 
 the cause of much of the educational unrest at the 
 present time, and it is in obedience to it that we 
 are now seriously endeavouring to organise a national 
 system of practical and vocational education. 
 
 There is general agreement among educationists. 
 
EDUCATION AND ENVIRONMENT 79 
 
 at least in Britain, that vocational education, in the 
 sense of direct training for the particular lifework 
 or economic environment lying before the pupils, should 
 not be given till the completion of primary school 
 education. The child must be fitted to live in the 
 moral and intellectual surroundings of modern civiHsa- 
 tion before being given a special training for his future 
 occupation. To do otherwise would be to interfere 
 with the full development of the child in the name of 
 education. 
 
 Nothing could be more harmful to the develop- 
 ment of the future worker, and of his ability 
 to live alone in self-dependence, than premature 
 specialisation or vocational training. The proper 
 business of the primary school is to develop potential 
 efficiency and capacity for service which may be 
 used not in one but in any future calling. The three 
 R's, EngUsh, Geography, and History should always 
 be, as we have said, the most important subjects 
 in the primary school, but they should be taught in 
 a more practical way than is usually the case at present, 
 and more attention should be given in the primary 
 school to training the body and the active powers of 
 the child, and to social or civic training. 
 
 But about the age of twelve a distinct change takes 
 place in the mind of the child, and it should be reflected 
 in the education planned for this period. The child 
 is approaching adolescence, and there is a growing 
 impulse towards the realities of hfe which, in the 
 children of the working classes, manifests itself in 
 
80 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 a desire to leave school and get to work. Yet the 
 youth is not fit either physically or mentally for the 
 work of life, and it is necessary in the interests of 
 himself and of society that he should continue his 
 education for a year or two longer. During this 
 period, say from twelve to fourteen years of age, the 
 education given should have a more direct bearing 
 on the economic environment of the pupil. The 
 education should be at most only semi-vocational, and 
 should give instruction and practice in the processes 
 fundamental to one of the typical groups of industries 
 for which workers have to be trained — namely, com- 
 merce, industry, agriculture, and housekeeping.^ 
 
 The education given aft^r that stage in day and 
 evening continuation schools should be distinctly 
 practical and vocational, giving a knowledge of the 
 materials and the various operations of the industry 
 in which the youth is engaged, an acquaintance with 
 its history and the course of its development, and 
 giving generally a width of training which the work- 
 shop practice of the industry is least able to give. 
 This subject will be treated more fully in the next 
 chapter. 
 
 To enable man to adjust himself to his environment 
 is, we have said, one of the great tasks of the school. 
 
 1 The Scotch Education Department acted on sound educational 
 principles when it instituted the Supplementary Courses, as they are 
 called — The Commercial, The Industrial, The Agricultural, and The 
 Household Management Courses — for the last two years of pupils who 
 have to leave school to become workers at the age of fourteen. See also 
 p. 110. 
 
EDUCATION AND ENVIRONMENT 81 
 
 But education does much more than this ; it enables 
 man to adjust, in turn, his environment to meet 
 his physical, social, and spiritual needs. Man and his 
 environment are not fixed entities independent of each 
 other ; there is a constant action and reaction taking 
 place between them, and in the process both are 
 moulded and modified. Complete equilibrium between 
 man and his environment is never attained, and if 
 it were progress would cease. It is for this reason 
 that savage races are essentially unprogressive. Their 
 adaptation, we might almost say submission, to their 
 surroundings is little different from that of the lower 
 animal to its physical environment. They are with- 
 out the divine discontent which changes the environ- 
 ment. But as man rises above the savage state, 
 and as his mind and will become more highly developed 
 by education, he gains a greater power over environ- 
 ment, and an increasing ability to make it minister 
 to his needs. In this way a higher civilisation emerges, 
 and the human race progresses towards the fuUness 
 of its development. 
 
 Adaptation of mankind to environment makes 
 for social conservation, but adaptation of en- 
 vironment to mankind makes for social progress. 
 In proportion as man through education gains 
 the mastery over environment, and discovers more 
 powerful means of controlling environing conditions 
 in the interests of the race, greater cultural and 
 economic achievements will become possible, and 
 the number of those who live from hand to 
 
82 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 mouth, dependent for sustenance on ceaseless toil, 
 will diminish. 
 
 The function of the school is fundamentally to 
 secure the development of the child through supplying 
 such materials as stimulate between him and his 
 environment reactions which are in line with right 
 habits and right ideals. Education prepares the 
 child for his present environment and future sur- 
 roundings in the world by bringing appropriate stimuli 
 (materials of instruction) to bear upon the brain to 
 train it to successful habits of reaction during its 
 period of growth and plasticity. Method in education 
 consists in providing stimuli well suited to the 
 capacities of the child — stimuli that will awaken 
 interest and produce such response on his part 
 as will secure his proper development. The best 
 teacher is the one who is most skilful in doing 
 these things. 
 
 Environmental studies — that is, studies specially 
 designed to prepare the pupil for his environment 
 in the world — should play a large part in education. 
 To prepare man for his physical environment educa- 
 tion should give a knowledge of nature as complete 
 as the period of school training will allow. To enable 
 him to adjust himseK to his human and social environ- 
 ment, and to become a good citizen, he should be 
 taught the history of his country, and get an accurate 
 conception of its laws, institutions, and national and 
 local government. Whatever else is taught, there 
 should be a wide study of hterature. It affords a 
 
EDUCATION AND ENVIRONMENT 88 
 
 knowledge of life and of society which no other study 
 can give. Through it the child can be brought into 
 contact with the best thoughts, ideals, and achieve- 
 ments, which constitute the spiritual environment 
 of the race. Through it he can associate with 
 the great personalities in history, literature, religion, 
 science, and art, and learn the secret of their 
 greatness. 
 
 The view of the educative process we have put 
 forward shows that it is not mere instruction and 
 receptivity. Adjustment of the individual to environ- 
 ment and modification of the environment to fit the 
 individual are not accomplished by a mechanical but 
 by a self-active process ; they require activity of 
 mind and will. Life in the world is not a matter of 
 contemplation but of action, it is not abstract but 
 concrete, being made ^up of daily and hourly acts. 
 So with education which gives the preparation for 
 life ; it comes through what the child does, not through 
 what he thinks and feels apart from action. Right 
 conduct, or, as we would say, right adjustment to 
 the world, is the end of education. 
 
 Educators are apt to forget the truth enunciated by 
 Pestalozzi and Froebel, that seK-activity is the prime 
 condition of the development of mind and of the 
 realisation of capacities. Unless every impression con- 
 veyed by the teacher leads to self-expression in some 
 form or other by the pupil, the educational process is 
 incomplete. The impression must be wrought by the 
 self-activity of the pupil into the very fibre of his being, 
 
 Q 2 
 
84 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 and not remain simply a matter of consciousness.^ 
 It is becoming a commonplace of educational precept, 
 if not of practice, that the teacher may teach the child, 
 but the child must educate himself through the active 
 exercise of his body, mind, and will. 
 
 Three further thoughts are suggested by our study 
 of education and environment. One is that education 
 is more necessary now than in former generations. 
 More intensive and more scientific methods of 
 production, and quicker and more regular means of 
 transport, are producing changes in our economic 
 and social environment at an unprecedented rate. 
 Education must keep pace with these changes, and 
 lessen the difficulty of readjustment to the changing 
 environment. Society, we believe, is progressing 
 steadily in all these changes towards a goal of good. 
 It is the mission of education to maintain and direct 
 that progress. 
 
 Another thought suggested by our present study 
 is the wide scope and numerous agencies of education. 
 Not merely the school, but the whole of the vast en- 
 vironment of man educates him in the broadest sense. 
 As Emerson said, the whole w^orld is required for the 
 education of a human being. There is not a situation 
 in life but leaves its influence on his education. 
 Moreover, every period of life is educative. The few 
 years of school life provide an important but small 
 
 1 James states this with his usual directness : ' An impression 
 which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears, and in no way modifies 
 his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is physically 
 incomplete. Its motor consequences are what clinch it.' 
 
EDUCATION AND ENVIRONMENT 85 
 
 part of our education. During them we can accom- 
 plish only a few of the more definite and formal adjust- 
 ments to our environment, the other adjustments 
 go on as long as life and impressionability remain. 
 
 Finally, since environment plays such an impor- 
 tant part, the State should do everything in its 
 power to prevent the lives of the young, at least, 
 being spent in an unfavourable environment. It is 
 this consideration that justifies the State in seeking 
 to create an ideal educational environment in the 
 school, in insisting that the building should be of 
 good, but not expensive, architecture, that it should 
 be on an open site w4th plenty of light and sunshine, 
 that it should exemplify in its construction every 
 hygienic principle, and that all the furnishings, while 
 simple, should be chosen with as great care for their 
 artistic influence as are the furnishings of a cultured 
 home. It is for this reason, too, that the State insists 
 that the teachers, who constitute the social and 
 spiritual environment of the school, must be in advance 
 of the social and ethical standards of the community. 
 
 It is for a similar reason that municipalities and 
 philanthropic individuals should attack and improve 
 the wretched environment of the slums. It is hopeless 
 to expect to exert generally an upHfting influence 
 on dwellers there so long as they live in dirty, squalid 
 surroundings. Because of the misery of their environ- 
 ment, not because of their innate depravity, they 
 supply the larger part of our pauperism, vice, and 
 drunkenness. This goes on in an endless cycle ; as 
 
86 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 the parents are., so the children become, and the same 
 sad state of affairs is perpetuated from generation 
 to generation. But it is not enough simply to clear 
 away slum dwellings. If we were to remove the 
 inhabitants of the slums to wholesome dweUings 
 to-morrow, they would soon make slums of them. 
 The disease is mainly a spiritual one, and we must 
 attack it at its source, which is the slum mind. It 
 can be remedied only by better moral and intellectual 
 education, combined with the philanthropic endeavours 
 to which we have just referred.^ 
 
 In so far as the home neglects, or is unable to 
 discharge, its parental and educational functions, we 
 must tend and train the children in creches and day 
 nurseries and kindergartens till they are of school age. 
 We cannot teach them there the three R's, but we 
 can protect them from the harmful influences of 
 their environment during the daytime at least, we 
 can train them to habits of cleanliness, and we can 
 train them to play, and to love nature. In these and 
 a hundred other ways we can influence the inner life 
 of these children, and help to lay the foundation of 
 good health, good morals, and good citizenship in the 
 years to come. 
 
 ^ See National Education and National Life (especially chap, v.), 
 by J. E. G. de Montmorency. (Swan, Sonnensohein & Co.) 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 EDUCATION AND PRACTICAL LIFE 
 
 Among primitive peoples education was entirely 
 practical and informal. It was obtained from the 
 home and the activities centred in it, and from the 
 human and physical environment of life. With rising 
 civilisation and the growth of social institutions — 
 the State, the Church, and the Vocation — the educative 
 forces became more widely distributed, and the sphere 
 of informal education was enlarged. Supplementing 
 and reinforcing one another, these various institu- 
 tions performed almost the total work of training 
 the young. The idea of formal education given in 
 school was of comparatively late development ; more- 
 over the education was given only to the few, and 
 had little bearing on the ordinary activities of life. 
 With the progress of society the older institutions 
 have been weakened as educative agencies, and 
 there has been a steady transference of training 
 from the informal to the formal sphere. The 
 school has been called upon to take the place of the 
 older agencies of practical training that have failed, 
 and not merely to provide a general education 
 
88 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 as a supplement to the training for practical work 
 obtained elsewhere. 
 
 If this view be correct, and it can hardly be 
 seriously questioned, we see that the present-day 
 demand for fundamental reform of school work, 
 by the inclusion of practical as well as cultural 
 studies, is inevitable, and is a consequence of the 
 gradual process of social evolution. It is coming 
 from two distinct sources — the pedagogic and the 
 industrial. 
 
 Ever since the Renaissance there has been a growing 
 movement in educational theory towards realism, 
 naturalism, and general pragmatism. The mental 
 powers to be cultivated by education are no longer 
 considered to be merely knowing, feeling, and willing. 
 These processes are not now regarded as complete 
 without their expression in action. In every normal 
 child there is a preference of doing to thinking. 
 Educational theory has been slow to reahse the 
 importance of this in developing the ideals of 
 duty, self-control, and work. The impressions and 
 ideas conveyed in education are not complete 
 unless they lead to appropriate action ; if we 
 stop short of this we cannot ensure positive and 
 lasting results. In skilful teaching, seK-expression by 
 the pupils always follows impression. By increased 
 utilisation of the impulse to activity we are now 
 giving greater concreteness to our teaching, we 
 are removing the school from its position of isola- 
 tion, and we are bringing about a more real and 
 
PRACTICAL EDUCATION 89 
 
 organic relation between life within and without the 
 school.^ 
 
 Side by side with these influences there have been 
 taking place, especially during the last three or four 
 generations, social and economic changes of vast 
 educational importance. We refer to the changes 
 following on the discovery of steam-power and the 
 application of science to industry. The effects of 
 the industrial revolution on the school were described 
 in a previous chapter (Chapter V). We have had 
 to bring our educational aims into closer harmony 
 with present industrial conditions. As the home and 
 the vocation no longer play the part they did in 
 providing practical education, the school has been 
 called upon to do more now than develop merely the 
 intellectual and moral power of the people. Modem 
 industrial conditions necessitate that the educational 
 foundations of productive as well as intellectual 
 capacity, of ability to do as well as to think, should 
 be laid in the school. Only if this is done can the 
 school play the part of which it is capable in social 
 betterment, and in the alleviation of many of the 
 deplorable consequences of our modern industrial 
 system. 
 
 It has been estimated that about fifty per cent, 
 of the working power in this country is wasted or not 
 brought into use. It is possible by suitable education 
 
 * Tolstoi maintained that the more a people advances the more 
 does true education desert the traditional school for the region of real 
 life outside. 
 
90 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 so to train the intellectual and productive powers 
 of the young as to raise the intelligence and earning 
 power of the people as a whole in the next generation. 
 Consider what this involves. Every advance in the 
 general standard of efficiency lightens the labour of 
 man, yields him a more abundant return for his toil, 
 raises him from a condition of constant struggle for 
 the bare necessaries of life to a higher plane of material 
 comfort, and increases his opportunities for leisure 
 and mental, moral, and physical improvement. No 
 better investment can be made by the nation than 
 to give every child the opportunity to secure such 
 an education. 
 
 For centuries we have recognised the necessity 
 of a practical training for the professions, and a 
 generation ago the industrial necessities of the country 
 forced the establishment of technical colleges for 
 the training of industrial leaders, but the idea of 
 giving a practical education to the great body of 
 industrial workers is new and is presenting many 
 difficult problems. It necessitates a transition from 
 educational ideals which were known and definite to 
 others which are wider but as yet ill-defined. It 
 involves remodelling to a considerable extent the 
 material, method, and spirit of public education ; it 
 means placing emphasis on thought-processes and 
 ideas that will lead to future achievement ; it means 
 making memorisation and mere taskwork give place 
 to interest and self-control ; it means giving due 
 scope and suitable training to the natural activity of 
 
PRACTICAL EDUCATION 91 
 
 the child, so that the classroom may become in reaUty 
 his workshop in which he will acquire habits that will 
 help to give efficiency to his after-life. In educational 
 reform cautious innovations and clear thinking are the 
 need of the moment. 
 
 There is general agreement that direct training 
 for the particular lifework lying before the pupils — 
 even if that were known — should not be given till 
 the completion of the primary curriculum at the 
 age of thirteen or fourteen, and that there should 
 be a great increase after that stage in the present 
 opportunities for vocational training. We recognise 
 that a fundamental error has been made in treating 
 the child too much as a psychological rather than a 
 social being. 
 
 Nevertheless, nothing could be more shortsighted 
 or more harmful to future development than a pre- 
 maturely specialised training. Vocational interests 
 should not be allowed to invade the period sacred 
 to the development of child nature. Children have 
 a right to their childhood, and it is our duty to 
 see that they are not robbed of it. We must allow 
 them to grow out of it before we begin to train them 
 for the occupations they may follow through Ufe. 
 If we start too soon we shall train them to grow into 
 machines, not into men and women. But there is 
 a vast difference between training for Ufe and training 
 for a definite calling ; one is universal, the other 
 special. The business of the primary school is to 
 prepare for social and intellectual rather than 
 
92 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 industrial life, to develop potential efficiency and 
 capacity for service which may be realised in any 
 future calling. 
 
 The difference between vocational and practical 
 teaching must be clearly recognised. It is the latter 
 we are meanwhile advocating. Primary education 
 requires a more practical turn, requires a closer adapta- 
 tion of its methods to those of nature, to those by 
 which the mind of the race has developed. It needs 
 to give more freedom for the expression of the child's 
 own nature, to give greater scope to his love of activity, 
 to connect all the work of the school with the realities 
 of the child's daily life, and to make fuller use of the 
 various activities and aspects of life that interest 
 him at his particular stage of development. This is 
 what we mean by practical education in the primary 
 school. 
 
 The reform required in primary education is not 
 so much a new curriculum as a better realisation of 
 the possibilities of the present one. We need a change 
 in the spirit rather than in the material of education. 
 There should be a better balance between the practical 
 and the intellectual aim of education. The value of 
 knowledge has been overrated in the past, and the 
 great psychological truth that the hands and eyes 
 are the chief avenues to the child-mind has not yet 
 got a sufficient hold in school methods. We need 
 all subjects in the curriculum to be taught in a more 
 concrete and practical way. One of the most baleful 
 features of teaching beyond the infant stage has been 
 
PRACTICAL EDUCATION 98 
 
 its tendency towards the formal, the abstract, and 
 the bookish. SpeUing and reading have been taught 
 too commonly as exercises in conventional forms, 
 geography has been taught as topography, and history 
 as chronology. 
 
 Coming from general principles to details, we may 
 say that in primary education four things at least 
 should be aimed at : — 
 
 1. Training of the mind. 
 
 2. Training of the body. 
 
 3. Training of the motor-activities. 
 
 4. Training for social and civil Hfe. 
 
 Until quite recent times the whole of the energies of 
 the school were devoted to the first division — namely, 
 the three R's, and English, Geography, and History. 
 These subjects are very important, but according to 
 present-day opinion they do not satisfy the deepest 
 instincts and interests of childhood — namely, the 
 instinct for play, the instinct for doing, and the 
 instinct for social life. We have scientific evidence 
 now that concentration on purely intellectual training 
 is a hindrance to the cultivation even of the intellectual 
 powers. It is claimed that in the education of 
 physically defective children most rapid progress is 
 made by giving instruction in the open air, by affording 
 liberal opportunity for play and for motor training, 
 and by devoting but one-half of the total school-time 
 to mental effort. Is it not possible that what is true 
 of the physically defective may be equally true 
 of the physically sound ? At any rate, something 
 
94 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 should be done to diminish the number of those who 
 leave our primary schools as failures, who have never 
 been interested by the work, who have never caught 
 the gleam of inspiration from it, nor thought of the 
 school except as a place of weariness and detention. 
 
 The Kindergarten turns the activity and play 
 of children to educational account, and the modern 
 practice in infant teaching is right in making the 
 technical arts of reading, writing, and counting spring 
 from kindergarten methods. What we want is to 
 introduce the same spirit into all our instruction, to 
 ' kindergartenise ' all our teaching. We need a more 
 practical treatment of all subjects at all stages. 
 Receptive and passive methods have played too large a 
 part in school work in the past. We have proceeded on 
 the assumption that mere book-knowledge and mental 
 gymnastics are of first-rate importance. It is the 
 power to employ our knowledge in a manner useful 
 to ourselves and to the world that matters. Hence 
 in teaching every subject there should be a basis 
 of concrete experience laid by the employment of 
 the child's active powers. This will form a sure 
 foundation for the subsequent rationalising process 
 which will give, in due time, the universal relations 
 of things. 
 
 Practical teaching will render at least two things 
 necessary. In the first place, it wiU involve reducing 
 the present * grotesque size of classes ' ; ^ and in the 
 
 ^ See p. 15 of The Schools and Social Reform, by the Unionist Social 
 Reform Committee on Education. (London : John Murray.) 
 
PRACTICAL EDUCATION 95 
 
 second place, it will necessitate a more rational arrange- 
 ment of school furniture than the parallel rows of 
 fixed desks of the present day. Our schoolrooms 
 should be furnished for doing and not solely for 
 listening. Until this is done it is useless to talk of 
 practical education, or the training of motor-activity.^ 
 The passive ideal and dead uniformity of methods 
 that have so long prevailed in education have 
 materialised themselves in equally monotonous rooms 
 and furnishings, giving no scope for turning to 
 educational use the motor impulses of children. 
 School architects and school furnishers must adapt 
 their plans and designs more closely to the modern 
 ideals and needs of practical education. 
 
 ^ Dr. Sykes, Director of Technical Education in Teachers' College, 
 Columbia University, New York, says : ' T have a vision of an elementary 
 schoolroom. It is not by choice the vision of the schoolroom of my 
 own childhood — the formal rows of seats, the bare ugly walls and 
 windows, the languid youngsters droning over abstractions. ... It 
 is rather the vision of a schoolroom that makes you think of the corner 
 of a kitchen, sewing-room, blacksmith shop, carpenter shop . . . the 
 windows opening on the school garden, and the teacher — well, someone 
 who can do things ' {Teachers' College Record^ September 1911, p. 9). 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 EDUCATION AND PRACTICAL LIFE (CONTINUED) — 
 PRACTICAL TEACHING IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 
 
 In the preceding chapter we saw that pragmatism 
 has entered the field of education, and is proclaiming 
 a new message to teachers. It is not necessary to 
 discuss at length the application of that message to 
 the method of teaching all the subjects included in 
 the four divisions of elementary education given on 
 p. 93. Every child when he leaves school should 
 have a command of language, spoken and written, 
 and of numbers — the so-called three R's. These are 
 universal tools necessary in every walk of life, but 
 they should not be prematurely forced upon the 
 child. They will be acquired with ease when the 
 mind demands their use, and in most cases that will 
 not be before the age of seven. They are conventional 
 arts which do not interest young children who cannot 
 appreciate their value for future use. They should 
 be given at first an extraneous interest through stories 
 and games. 
 
 The child should get constant oral practice 
 both formally and informally in the use of language, 
 
PRACTICAL ELEMENTARY TEACHING 97 
 
 and in building up his vocabulary. He should 
 get training in saying plainly and directly in 
 spoken and written words whatever he has to say. 
 Every lesson in every subject in the elementary school 
 should also be a lesson in English. Good speech, 
 clear-cut expression, and good legible writing cannot 
 be obtained on other terms, and they should be the 
 possession of every normal child who completes an 
 elementary education. One period a day devoted 
 to the study of grammar and of the English of the 
 school-reader will not give abiUty to speak and write 
 simple direct English, to read thoughtfully and with 
 expression, and to appreciate good Hterature. Con- 
 centration on masterpieces of hterature, and constant 
 attention in all the work of the school to correct and 
 well-defined expression, are the most effective means 
 of studying language in the elementary school. 
 
 The teaching of arithmetic, too, requires to be put 
 on a more practical basis, leading to a ready com- 
 mand of numbers, and to ability to think numerically, 
 and to make quickly and accurately calculations 
 involving the four fundamental operations. Children 
 like to deal with real quantities and actual processes. 
 Hence the problems of everyday life and of business, 
 rather than the arithmetic of the school, should be 
 taught. The teacher should rely less upon the 
 text-book, and more upon problems obtained from 
 business men and problems brought by the children 
 from their homes. The catch-problem should be 
 displaced by the problem of everyday importance. 
 
98 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 Repeated and varied practice of this kind in funda- 
 mental principles, and practical instruction at a later 
 stage in the general arithmetic of business and 
 industry, and in the forms and papers relating to them, 
 are the work suitable to the elementary school. 
 
 Arithmetic in industrial life goes along with 
 practical measurement. Hence pupils should be 
 trained to measure with common instruments, such 
 as the footrule, the tape, the chain, and the calipers ; 
 to weigh by means of the beam and spring balance ; and 
 to find volumes by means of immersion. Practical 
 measurements such as these interest the children, 
 and furnish endless problems for teaching the various 
 operations of arithmetic. 
 
 The practical teaching of geography and nature 
 study has been much improved in recent years, and 
 an effort is being made to continue in our junior and 
 senior classes the good start made in the infant 
 classes. As so much has been written in recent years 
 on the teaching of geography, and as the author has 
 already dealt with the subject,^ he will not add to the 
 literature on it now. The following concise state- 
 ment by an American writer ^ is suggestive : — 
 
 Through contact with the most fundamental 
 problems that have to do with our daily life, the 
 study of geography and man's relation to the earth 
 on which he Uves may be made real and meaningful. 
 
 ^ Pamphlet on The. Practical Teaching of Geography, by Alex. Morgan. 
 (London : George Philip & Son.) 
 
 2 Arthur H. Chamberlain in the Proceedings of the National Education 
 As8ociaii(m of the United States for the Year 1910, p. 289. 
 
PRACTICAL ELEMENTARY TEACHING 99 
 
 Food, clothing, shelter, transportation — ail are such 
 important factors in man's welfare that their study- 
 is a ready introduction to the world of geography. 
 Trace the raw food-products through the stages of 
 soil preparation, planting, tending, harvesting, and 
 the various processes of manufacture, transport- 
 ation, and the like. Consider from beginning to 
 end the stages through which our various articles 
 of clothing pass from the raw material to the 
 most intricate processes of manufacture. Study the 
 growth of the abodes in which we now live through 
 the evolution of cliff, cave, hollow tree-trunk, cabin, 
 to homes constructed of wood or brick, of stone, 
 of iron and steel, until the structures of to-day readily 
 withstand the ravages of fire. View in detaD the 
 journey of these materials from the forest, the mine, 
 the mill, the quarry, the kiln, as through one process 
 after another they find their way from distant lands 
 to our own doors. 
 
 These things are not studied as ends in themselves 
 so much as means to ends. In no way can a know- 
 ledge of physical conditions be so well acquired as 
 through these channels. By taking up the study of 
 wheat from the standpoint of food, or cotton in its 
 relation to clothing, there is a constant working 
 back to climate, soil, location, and all that enters 
 into makiug of value a knowledge of physical, industrial, 
 and commercial geography. . . . 
 
 The study of man's relation to his enviionment 
 is easily made as interesting as a fairy story. The 
 work of rivers and glaciers, of winds and tides and 
 ocean currents, the cause of deserts, the significance 
 of lakes and seas, of plains and mountains, of valleys 
 and forests — all may be appreciated through rational 
 interpretation. . . . *v^ 
 
 Through these and similar "channels the student 
 is led to see and appreciate his place in society. He 
 
 H 2 
 
100 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 acquires a fund of real geographical knowledge per- 
 taining to his own and to other countries that can, 
 in his short life in the primary school, be had in no 
 other way. 
 
 And of facts, locations, populations, climate, 
 productions, industries, manners and customs, he 
 secures a more intensive understanding than should 
 his entire time be devoted to the ordinary method of 
 fact-gathering. 
 
 Just as geography reveals to the child the world 
 of the present, and the sort of world in which he 
 must live and work, so history reveals the world of 
 the past, how mankind has lived and thought and 
 worked in it, and how the race has through its work 
 grown in power, in knowledge, and in liberty. Such 
 instruction is necessary to prepare the child to meet 
 the world, and to play with intelligence and efficiency 
 his part in it. For this purpose school history must 
 give less attention to wars and rumours of wars, and 
 more to the achievements of men who, by their 
 heroism and their great intellectual and moral power, 
 have improved the social, material, and moral con- 
 ditions of the nation. 
 
 Much of the content of history is beyond the 
 understanding of children, and to give concreteness 
 to the teaching it should begin with the study of 
 current events, and of local and industrial history. 
 The study of the development and perfection 
 of means of transit by land and sea which have 
 vastly increased our commerce, and of the in- 
 vention of labour-saving machines which have 
 
PRACTICAL ELEMENTARY TKAC^WG' XOl 
 
 revolutionised our industries, and are playing so 
 important a part in social progress, should be a 
 prominent part of the teaching of history at every 
 stage. This will arouse more interest, will give more 
 real culture, and will bring the child nearer to the 
 sources of the wonderful growth of our country than 
 will any amount of instruction regarding the nation's 
 wars or monarchical succession. In the practical 
 teaching of history the acting of historical scenes 
 with suitable but inexpensive dresses, weapons, &c., 
 should always form an important part. 
 
 Physical education includes everything connected 
 with the care of the body, so that it may be made 
 healthy and fit for the service of the mind and for 
 the performance of duty in the world. Mental retarda- 
 tion and moral weakness, generally attributed to 
 causes beyond our reach, are often due to physical 
 causes which may be removed or alleviated by suitable 
 education. Physical education means more than 
 training the body. It includes instruction in the laws 
 of health and sanitation as affecting ourselves and 
 society, in the value of simple weU-prepared food, 
 and in the importance of temperance and regularity 
 in all our daily habits. 
 
 We have not yet realised the educational im- 
 portance of free play and organised play or games 
 in addition to formal gymnastics, and the necessity 
 of abundance of room for physical activity both 
 inside and outside the school. We have not grasped 
 the full educational significance of Groos' statement : 
 
102 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 * Animals do not play because they are young, 
 they are young in order that they may play.' We 
 have not had the courage yet to clear the floors 
 of the classrooms of the rows of fixed desks. But 
 there is an influence at work remodelling our ideas 
 of the nature and requirements of physical education. 
 This new spirit is manifesting itseK in medical 
 inspection, school clinics, school nurses, school dentists, 
 school dinners and the many other schemes for making 
 the best use of the few short years of compulsory 
 education to give the children, especiaUy of the poor, 
 the opportimity, which is their due, of leading healthy 
 and efficient lives. 
 
 There is one branch of primary education that 
 has been subject to more than the usual amount of 
 misconception and erroneous treatment. We refer 
 to the various forms of educational handwork — 
 drawing, clay-modeUing, woodwork, metalwork, 
 sewing, &c. Many teachers and others are still 
 at sea regarding the fundamental ideas under- 
 lying hand-and-eye training. They see in it only 
 a form of industrial work and a preparation for trade 
 training. Most emphatically its aim is not vocational 
 but liberal education, not the premature production 
 of tradesmen or factory hands, but the training of 
 more efficient men and women, who will be better 
 instruments of social service through the cultivation 
 of powers which would otherwise he dormant. 
 
 The true motive for the introduction of manual 
 activities into education hes in the nature of the child- 
 
PRACTICAL ELEMENTARY TEACHING 103 
 
 mind. The active instinct in childhood is as strong 
 as the play instinct. A child prefers doing to thinking, 
 seeing and handling things to hearing or reading about 
 them. He loves tools, and loves to be doing things 
 with them. Education must follow nature, and utilise 
 at every stage the motor impulses and interests which 
 are the inheritance of the race. 
 
 Much greater stress should be laid on the practical 
 and constructive arts in the work of the primary 
 school. Instead of getting an hour or an hour and 
 a half a week in the infant and supplementary classes, 
 they should get that amount of time each day through 
 the entire period of elementary education.^ It is 
 wrong even for physiological reasons to postpone 
 manual training till elementary education is complete ; 
 that is, till the age of twelve or thirteen. If the 
 fine co-ordinations of the muscles of the hand and 
 fingers, wrist and arm, are not secured before that 
 age, there wiU be great difficulty in securing them 
 at a later age. 
 
 Even the so-called purely intellectual part of 
 education derives benefit from manual work. A 
 Committee of the Unionist Parliamentary Party 
 have been investigating the matter, and they say : 
 ' The local authorities that have developed it (hand- 
 work), as have several during the last few years, are 
 
 ^ See Report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education 
 on Attendance at Continuation Schools, p. 53 (Cd. 4757. Published 
 by His Majesty's Stationery Office). A further Report (Cd. 6849) deals 
 very fully with the whole question of Educational Handwork, especially 
 as a necessary part of secondary education. 
 
104 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 realising its good effect. The Committee, therefore, 
 recommend that manual instruction be essential to 
 every day-school. It must not be regarded as a special 
 subject ; the mere provision of a few classes is not 
 enough. It must be the very life of the school.'^ 
 Dewey makes manual work the starting-point and 
 centre of education, and he is not wrong. It should 
 be correlated in every way possible with the general 
 work of the school. In that way the instruction 
 in that work will be made more interesting, more 
 concrete, and more lasting. 
 
 After all, whether a subject is cultural or practical 
 depends largely upon the spirit in which it is taught. 
 Manual training should be taught by trained teachers 
 thoroughly quahfied on the technical side. Moreover, 
 it should not be left entirely to visiting teachers, nor 
 should it be given only in a special workroom. There 
 is a great deal of manual work that could be done in 
 the ordinary classroom,^ especially if the fixed parallel 
 rows of desks were done away with. Then would 
 handwork take its rightful place in education, not so 
 
 * The Schools and Social Reform, p. 15. (London : John Murray.) 
 Dr. Henry H. Belfield, of Chicago, in making a report to the United 
 States Department of Labour came to a similar conclusion. He said 
 that evidence collected in America and England showed that pupils 
 who get manual training as a part of their school work in the regiilar 
 school hours accomplish as much academic work as pupils who devote 
 all the school time to the latter. The facts, he says, justify the con- 
 clusion that from one to two hours per day, according to the age of the 
 pupils and the character of the work, should be given to the manual 
 side of education. 
 
 * See Modern Views on Education, by Thiselton Mark, p. 143. 
 (London ; Collins.) 
 
PRACTICAL ELEMENTARY TEACHING 105 
 
 much as a new subject but as a new method entering 
 into and reforming and vitalising the teaching of all 
 subjects. 
 
 More rapid progress would have been made by 
 the new ideas had educational handwork not fallen 
 under the baleful influence of faulty teaching. Even 
 into its concrete processes there has entered a narrow 
 formalism. It has been taught on an exercise basis 
 rather than on a productive basis. By means of a 
 cast-iron progression of tool exercises, and a pedantic 
 sequence of models, it has been taught just as formally 
 as arithmetic or reading or spelling. Children are not 
 interested in whittling and sawing and planing, and 
 making of joints or stitches, and other manipulative 
 exercises according to rule. Doing something for 
 which they experience no present need, simply because 
 it will be useful in some future operation, is not sound 
 method, is not parallel to Hfe's training, and is not 
 the way in which the race learnt its industries. Mr. 
 Thiselton Mark puts his finger unerringly on the 
 defect : ' At present,' he says, * too much of the time 
 spent in woodwork by the boy between twelve and 
 fourteen is consumed in making useless miniature 
 representations of objects rather than objects of use. 
 A model that works, such as boys of this age some- 
 times make, is a different matter. A good balance, 
 a signal with levers, a model of a crane, rank with 
 objects of use. But with respect to the making of 
 miniature objects, merely to incorporate certain 
 " exercises," many woodwork instructors of to-day 
 
106 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 are saying : "A model is an invention of the Evil 
 One." ' 1 
 
 We must devise our handwork courses so that at 
 every stage the children will have real problems to 
 face, will have to a large extent actual things to make 
 arising out of their everyday needs and interests, 
 will have something to do or to make which they 
 recognise as definitely useful for themselves, or for 
 their homes, or for the school or school system.^ Let 
 us not be too much afraid of doing work in school 
 useful for others : in this lies the germ of the idea of 
 social service. After all, the real test is not whether 
 the work is utilitarian or non-utilitarian, but whether 
 it is essentially educative in character and spirit. 
 Let us break away from the artificially graded 
 exercises in manual training, and the making of 
 decorative knick-knacks, and let us give the pupils 
 some introduction to the practical utility of their 
 handiwork. Let us pass, in short, from the 
 disciplinary conception of the sloyd exercises to the 
 practical conception of the arts and crafts, and in so 
 doing we shall shift the emphasis from the disciphnary 
 value of the exercise to the concrete value of the work 
 in carrying out the constructive idea of the child. 
 
 ^ Modern Views on Education, p. 123. 
 
 * In some towns in the United States 10 per cent, of the pupils' 
 manual training time is devoted to the production of school equipment, 
 not for the sake of economy, but to give the test of economic value to 
 the work, to give an opportunity for co-operative effort, and to enforce 
 the lesson of efficient utilisation of time and materials. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 EDUCATION AND PRACTICAL LIFE (CONTINUED) — 
 PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 
 
 We have not dealt as yet with the last two years of 
 elementary school life — namely, from twelve to 
 fourteen years of age. This is a difficult period in 
 education. A distinct change takes place in the 
 mind and nature of the child as he approaches 
 adolescence. Life is beginning to grip him. The 
 development of the social impulses which takes place 
 about this time manifests itself in a greater interest 
 in the social life and the activities of the outside 
 world. Even newspaper records of current events 
 begin to interest him. The toy play which pleased 
 his childish fancy no longer satisfies, and it gives 
 place to interest in organised play and group games. 
 The growing impulse towards adult activities and the 
 realities of Ufe leads to a desire to leave school and 
 get to work. Besides, the elementary curriculum 
 proper, aiming at developing the whole nature of the 
 child, is fairly well completed by this time, and parents 
 and children alike often feel that the last two years 
 of compulsory school-hfe are not profitably spent. 
 
108 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 And yet the child is not fit either physically or 
 mentally for the work of life, and it is absolutely 
 necessary, in the interests of himself and of society, 
 that the child should continue at school for a year 
 or two longer. 
 
 The difficulty is to devise an education giving, as 
 Carlyle said, ' a training in practicality,' adapted to 
 the special needs of children who may be expected 
 to constitute in due time the rank and file of the 
 industrial army. In response to the waking work- 
 impulse education must provide forms of practical 
 training which the children can see will be of use to 
 them in after-life. The education given should be 
 semi-vocational, and should connect itself not only with 
 life but with livelihood ; the life-career motive will 
 interest the pupils, although it cannot be brought 
 into play with full effect for a year or two yet. During 
 this period liberal education should be continued, 
 but the practical training should no longer be merely 
 incidental or subordinate to it. Our aims at this 
 stage are to train — first, the efficient producer ; second, 
 the intelligent citizen ; and third, the educated man 
 and woman capable of appreciating the ideal things 
 of Hfe. These aims settle the elements of the education 
 appropriate to this period : first, the practical ; second, 
 the civic ; third, the cultural. 
 
 In the last-mentioned category the study of the 
 masterpieces of Hterature should predominate. Other 
 subjects of a general character, such as arithmetic, 
 should be put on a purely practical basis, and in the 
 
PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 109 
 
 history instruction the study of current events, and 
 of local history, and of the history of the evolution 
 of industry, should play a large part. 
 
 In the second category the instruction in civics 
 should have as its aim to give the pupils a sympathetic 
 knowledge, political and industrial, of their own city, 
 country, and national government, so that the out- 
 come may be an intelligent comprehension of the duties 
 of citizenship and of the obHgations of social service. 
 
 In the first category the practical education of the 
 child between twelve and fourteen years of age should 
 not be vocational in the sense of training for efficiency 
 in a particular calling. The child is not ready either 
 mentally or physically for this. Moreover, it would 
 presuppose, and probably restrict, the choice of a life- 
 calling before the interests and talents of the child 
 were fully known. The training should be at most 
 semi- vocational, and should give instruction and general 
 skill in the processes fundamental to the more or 
 less universal occupations, and also a knowledge 
 of the general facts of economic and industrial life, 
 and of the possibilities and necessities of the various 
 crafts and their relations to one another. 
 
 Such a training would give a general under- 
 standing of the methods, possibilities, and social 
 significance of modern industry, and it would impart 
 a meaning and a motive to the work of the school. 
 A certain measure of preparation for some future 
 vocation would undoubtedly follow, although the voca- 
 tional aim would never be dominant. The training 
 
110 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 would help to discover the tastes and aptitudes of the 
 pupils for certain kinds of work, it would thus give 
 much needed assistance in the wise choice of a calling, 
 and it would lay a suitable foundation for that calling 
 whatever it might be. 
 
 It is fortunate that the adoption of a uniform course 
 of practical education for all elementary school pupils 
 entering adolescence is not essential, for the arrange- 
 ment of such a course, even if it were desirable, would 
 be beset by great difficulties. If we could analyse the 
 multitude of trades and occupations of our highly 
 civiHsed life and discover the processes fundamental 
 to them all, then these processes might be made the 
 staple of the practical education for this period of 
 childhood. There are sufficient points of similarity, 
 however, in the materials, processes, and products of 
 the occupations of mankind to warrant us in arranging 
 them in five fundamental groups : — 
 
 1. The agricultural. 
 
 2. The industrial. 
 
 3. The commercial. 
 
 4. The household. 
 
 5. The professional. 
 
 We may omit the last from our consideration as it 
 does not belong to the elementary school stage ; but 
 pupils who have to leave school at the age of fourteen 
 should have during their last two years at school the 
 opportunity of getting a practical course of education 
 along the Hnes of one or other of the first four groups ac- 
 cording to their tastes, or their probable future vocations, 
 
PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 111 
 
 or the prevailing vocations of the locality. At least half 
 the school-day should be devoted to the course selected, 
 the rest of the day being devoted to the intellectual 
 and civic instruction already mentioned. 
 
 A choice between the above occupational courses 
 would only be possible in schools with a sufficient number 
 of pupils, and there is much to be said for establishing 
 in populous areas separate schools for children from 
 twelve to fourteen years of age, as has been done in 
 Edinburgh and other cities. 
 
 Scotland has led the way in providing suitable 
 courses of practical training supplementary to the 
 prior general education given to pupils under twelve 
 years of age. Since 1903 the Scotch Education 
 Department has given special grants for children 
 between twelve and fourteen years of age getting instruc- 
 tion in Supplementary Courses, the nature of which is 
 outlined in the Code of Regulations for Day Schools.* 
 
 The Department through its inspectors sanctions 
 the granting of merit certificates to pupils who are 
 fourteen years of age, and who have completed satis- 
 factorily one of the Supplementary Courses of instruc- 
 tion. But even fourteen is too early for a child to 
 enter upon his lifework, although the law camiot compel 
 him to remain longer at school. The doors of the 
 more skilled and desirable industries are closed to him. 
 
 ^ See the Sixth Schedule of the Code of Regulations for Day Schools 
 (Cd. 5562. Published by His Majesty's Stationery Office). The out- 
 line of the courses there given should be carefully studied by all 
 interested in practical education. 
 
112 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 Hence the Scotch Education Department in its Code 
 for 1914 has offered, very msely we think, an additional 
 grant to schools that are able to get a fair proportion of 
 the pupils in the Supplementary Courses to remain for 
 three years instead of two — that is, to fifteen years 
 of age instead of fourteen. It is to be hoped, in the 
 interest both of the child and of society, that fifteen 
 will soon become the normal minimum age for leaving 
 school. 
 
 Every year the schools of the country send out 
 thousands of children of thirteen or fourteen years of 
 age to join the ranks of wage-earners.^ But the duty 
 of the school and of the nation does not end there. 
 It is not sufficient to have given these boys and girls 
 a proper training for a caUing. If we stop there aU 
 the thought, the skill, and the money which have been 
 spent upon their education may be lost. There is no 
 more critical period in the lives of children than T\'hen 
 they leave school and have to face for the first time 
 the bewildering complexity of modern industrial and 
 commercial Hfe. It is a striking fact that the 
 more the economic life of a country is developed the 
 greater are the risks of disaster and shipwreck to its 
 youth. The difficulty of taking the right step and the 
 disastrous consequences of taking the wrong one were 
 never so great as they are to-day. The recent Royal 
 Commission on the Poor Laws, the Reports of the Con- 
 sultative Committee of the Board of Education, and 
 
 ^ In Edinbiirgh, for instance, 4600 children leave the Elementary 
 Schools each year. 
 
PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 118 
 
 of Commissions on Industrial Education in Canada, 
 and in Massachusetts, all emphasise this. They point 
 to the paramount necessity of supplying reliable in- 
 formation and guidance, to those about to leave school, 
 regarding the conditions of promising and permanent 
 employment suited to their capabilities and bent, and 
 regarding overstocked or decUning industries, ^and 
 occupations that never lead to a man's work. 
 
 For want of such guidance the choice of work has 
 been left in the past to all sorts of chance circumstances, 
 and children have been allowed simply to drift into 
 employment. Evidence submitted to the Inter-De- 
 partmental Committee on Physical Deterioration in 
 1904 showed that about forty per cent, of the boys who 
 leave school in the poorer districts of London go in this 
 way into casual employment. From lack of definite 
 purpose, pupils from schools all over the country are 
 going into unskilled occupations, highly paid it 
 may be, but teaching nothing, leading nowhere, and 
 offering no hope of advancement. The increasing use 
 of machinery and the growing speciahsation of indus- 
 trial work have enormously increased the demand for 
 unskilled labour. Modern industry and commerce are 
 riddled with blind alleys, and after years wasted in 
 them, youths on the threshold of manhood find them- 
 selves no nearer to permanent desirable lifework. 
 Without a definite trade, and with intelligence 
 undeveloped by reason of the menial and more 
 or less automatic work in which they have been 
 engaged, they fall in many cases into the ranks 
 
114 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 of the casual labourer, the unemployed, or even the 
 unemployable.^ 
 
 The evil results of the absence of proper training 
 and guidance to children about to leave school may 
 show themselves in other ways. The children may 
 enter occupations for which they are not adapted, and 
 in wliich they will never become efficient workers. 
 Misfits occur in nearly every vocation, and they are a 
 fruitful source of economic loss and personal suffering. 
 Want of efficiency means poor workmanship, lack of 
 promotion, and uncertain employment ; and those who 
 find themselves in this unfortunate position often break 
 down early under the strain of work for which they are 
 not suited. More frequently, perhaps, they drift at 
 an early stage from one position to another, and this 
 means for many youths deterioration, demoraUsation, 
 and sooner or later unemployment. 
 
 If we require conclusive evidence of the conse- 
 quences of the unguided and aimless entrance into 
 
 * Mr. Meyer Bloomfield, in commenting on the evidence collected 
 by the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, says : 
 
 ' Unanimous testimony on this point by the special investigators 
 of the Royal Commission has led to the opinion that this perhaps is 
 the most serious of all the problems encountered in its study of unemploy- 
 ment. A term of sinister import has been coined to describe the products 
 of this vocational anarchy — the Unemployables. 
 
 * The unemployables are people whom no ordinary employer would 
 willingly employ, not necessarily because of their physical or mental 
 incapacity, but because their economic backbone has been broken. The 
 wasted years have landed their innocent victims on economic quick- 
 sands. Attractive wages with no training, the illegitimate use of 
 youthful energy, long hours of monotonous and uneducative work, 
 have produced at his majority a young man often precocious in evil 
 and stunted in his vocational possibilities.' The Vocational Chiidance 
 of Youthy p. 19. (Houghton Mifflin Co.) 
 
PRETRADE EDUCATION 115 
 
 work through the ever open door of unskilled and dead- 
 end occupations, we have only to turn to some of the 
 evidence submitted to the Royal Commission on Poor 
 Laws. The startling fact is there shown that about 
 twenty-eight per cent, of the unemployed are young 
 people between twenty and thirty years of age. If 
 we are to deal successfully with this problem of the 
 unemployed, if we are to provide something more than 
 palliatives for the human waste that it represents, 
 the first step will be to see that every child gets a 
 practical training of a definite kind before leaving 
 school at fourteen, that he gets guidance and assistance 
 in selecting suitable life work, and that he is not 
 allowed at this stage to break off entirely his education. 
 Vocational guidance, in short, is a necessary part of 
 a thoroughgoing system of practical and industrial 
 education. 
 
 If from such considerations we conclude that voca- 
 tional guidance is necessary, the question is. To whom 
 does the duty of giving it belong ? Doubtless, it belongs 
 to the parent in the first instance, and if he were always 
 in a position to discharge it the matter might be left 
 there. But the wise choice of an occupation is so 
 important to society as well as to the individual, and 
 the conditions of modern industry are so complex, 
 that the parent himself generally requires information 
 and assistance in the task. He cannot be expected 
 to have in most instances a sufficiently intimate 
 knowledge of the training, powers, limitations, and 
 bent of the child, of the precise nature of the 
 
 i2 
 
116 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 work in each of the important vocations, and the pre- 
 paration required for and the opportunities offered 
 by it. 
 
 There has for some time been discussion as to which 
 pubhc authority should give the assistance required — 
 the Board of Trade through its Labour Exchanges, or 
 the Local Educational Authority. In placing children 
 in suitable employment, it is certainly necessary to 
 have a knowledge of the adult as well as the juvenile 
 labour market, and this information the Board of 
 Trade possesses. But it does not know the tempera- 
 ment, capacity, and previous training of the child, 
 and, as this knowledge is essential, the school appears 
 to be the logical starting-point for vocational guidance. 
 It seems necessary, accordingly, to extend the scope 
 of the national school system to include some over- 
 sight of the vocational adjustment of those it has 
 trained at such expense. In Scotland this has already 
 been done by the Education Act of 1908, which 
 empowers School Boards to institute employment 
 bureaux and, in the words of the Act, ' to combine 
 with other bodies to maintain any agency for collecting 
 and distributing information as to employments open 
 to children on leaving school.' 
 
 The first local authority to put this clause of the 
 Act into force was the School Board of Edinburgh, 
 which, after a conference with representatives of the 
 Chamber of Commerce and the various trade organisa- 
 tions in the city, instituted an Educational Informa- 
 tion and Employment Bureau. As it was, so far as 
 
PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 117 
 
 we know, the first Bureau of the kind in this country, 
 it may be interesting to state its constitution and 
 functions as passed by the School Board on July 20, 
 1908 :— 
 
 1. The Bureau shall be placed under the charge 
 of a Standing Committee of the Board to be called 
 the Educational Information and Employment Bureau 
 Committee, and to consist of seven members of the 
 School Board. 
 
 2. There shall be associated with the Committee, 
 an Advisory Council, consisting of the Members of 
 the School Board and such representatives of public 
 bodies and trade associations as the Board may from 
 time to time co-opt, due regard being had to securing 
 representation of the principal trades of women's 
 occupations. 
 
 3. The Advisory Council, as representing the 
 various trades and occupations related to the Bureau, 
 shall advise the Committee and the Director of the 
 Bureau on all matters connected with the education 
 required for such trades and occupations, and on 
 the conditions of employment. 
 
 4. Accommodation for the Bureau shall be found 
 in the School Board Offices. 
 
 5. The School Board shall appoint a Director 
 who, subject to the Committee, shall organise and 
 superintend the Bureau. Generally his duties shall 
 be as follows : — 
 
 (a) To interview boys and girls and their parents 
 
 or guardians, and advise then with regard 
 to further educational courses and most 
 suitable occupations. 
 
 (b) To prepare leaflets and pamphlets or 
 
 tabulated matter giving information to 
 the scholars about continuation work. 
 
118 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 (c) To keep in touch with the general require- 
 
 ments of employers, and revise from time 
 to time the statistics about employment. 
 
 (d) To prepare and revise periodically state- 
 
 ments of the trades and industries of 
 the district, with rates of wages and 
 conditions of employment. 
 
 (e) To keep a record of vacancies intimated 
 
 by employers, and to arrange for suitable 
 candidates having an opportunity of 
 applying for such vacancies. 
 (/) To report periodically on the work of the 
 Bureau. 
 The Director of the Bureau will also act as the 
 organiser for the Continuation Classes. 
 
 Note. — ^As soon as the Committee and the Director 
 have been appointed, notice should be sent to all 
 head masters, employers, &c., explaining the purposes 
 of the Bureau and the conditions for utilising its 
 services. Head masters should be provided with 
 printed forms to be given to the outgoing scholars, 
 on which shall be entered the standard of education 
 attained, habits of punctuaUty and attendance, and 
 any general information that would be useful; and 
 a dupUcate shall be sent to the Bureau. The Bureau 
 shall be open free of charge to parents and pupils 
 wishing information as to education or employment. 
 
 Prior to Edinburgh the city of Boston, Massa- 
 chusetts, had a well-organised system of vocational 
 guidance, and everyone interested in the subject 
 should read the valuable little monograph, to which 
 we fhave frequently referred, on ' The Vocational 
 Guidance of Youth,' by Meyer Bloomfield, Director 
 of the Vocation Bureau of Boston. 
 
PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 119 
 
 In the case of smaller school boards it is not 
 possible or necessary to form such a complete organisa- 
 tion as exists in the cities we have mentioned. But 
 in every case either the head of the school, or some 
 teacher to whom he delegates the duty, should act 
 as vocational adviser for that school. This teacher 
 should be reheved from other duties for a certain 
 length of time each week in order to have an oppor- 
 tunity of interviewing pupils, conferring with parents 
 and employers, and keeping records of the pupils 
 who leave, and of the requirements from time to time 
 of the industries in the district. 
 
 Vocational guidance is one of the important 
 phases of the modern broader conception of the scope 
 and purpose of national education. It is an essential 
 part of the movement to make the school a more 
 effective instrument of social progress. It does not 
 mean prescribing a calling, but it means organising 
 all available means of information so that parents 
 may know the kind of work their children leaving 
 school are best fitted by nature and education to do 
 well. Vocational guidance will lead to greater 
 industrial efficiency, to increased welfare of the masses, 
 and to the amelioration of conditions that help to 
 produce the dependent and delinquent classes. More- 
 over, it will help to build up the ideal of service, of 
 lifework as a mission, of a calling followed by deliberate 
 choice, adapted to inclination and capacity, and 
 engaged in heartily and not with a feeling of drudgery. 
 In addition to the direct benefits of vocational 
 
120 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 guidance certain valuable indirect results will follow 
 from it. For one thing, it will give rise to a large 
 amount of practical information regarding the 
 various trades and callings, and the qualities and 
 preparation required for them, that cannot fail to 
 be of great service to the world. But more impor- 
 tant still, the closer co-operation it involves between 
 the school and the world of work ' will lead to the 
 enriching of school life with vocational purpose.' 
 These things will increase the demand for more and 
 better continuation and trade education, and will 
 give an added interest to school work which will 
 have something concrete and definite in view. This 
 will tend to hold the children longer at school, and 
 parents will generally be willing to keep them at 
 school if it is seen that doing so will be a subsequent 
 advantage to the children in their Hfe work. 
 
 Practical education and vocational guidance in- 
 volve a considerable enlargement in the responsi- 
 biHty and function of the teacher. It is no longer his 
 aim merely to teach according to a rigid curriculum, 
 and to make the members of his class as uniform as 
 possible so that they may fit into the requirements 
 of school life. He has to train them for the infi- 
 nitely varied demands of the world. He has to 
 discover the quahties of each pupil in order that, 
 in the words of Professor John Adams, ' he may 
 make the best use of the educand's naturel while 
 at school, and may make the best recommendation 
 for his life work when he leaves it. Even at the 
 
PRE-TRADE EDUCATION 121 
 
 present moment, and under our rigid conditions 
 as to curricula, the teacher is often apphed to for 
 advice regarding the best hne of work for the pupil's 
 future. But, in point of fact, the teacher has very 
 little opportunity of learning what the pupil is fit 
 for in other than scholastic subjects. Under the 
 newer conditions he will become practically a speci- 
 alist in diagnosing the best kind of life work for 
 individual pupils. This does not mean that all 
 schools are to become vocational. Indeed, this newer 
 view rather marks off the teacher as essentially a 
 pre- vocational trainer. He has to find out the pos- 
 sibilities of the educand, and give a training that 
 will have a bias in favour of the future life work for 
 which the educand is specially fitted.' ^ 
 
 If vocational guidance is to be worth anything, 
 it must be individual in character. We must consider 
 one child at a time, and this involves that there 
 must be considerable reduction in the number of 
 pupils generally assigned at the present time to the 
 care of each teacher. 
 
 * The Evolution of Educational Theory, p. 362, 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 FURTHER EDUCATION 
 
 The most significant movement in the educational 
 world jto-day is the one concerned with the care of 
 youths between fourteen and eighteen years of age 
 who have left school and gone to work. It is recog- 
 nised that a fundamental weakness in our present 
 school system is that it allows compulsory educa- 
 tion to terminate at thirteen or fourteen years of 
 age. The aims of public education — a trained mind, 
 a well-formed character, capacity for citizenship and 
 for some work useful to the community — cannot be 
 attained during the short space of eight or nine 
 years of the compulsory school period. 
 
 Not until an efficient system of continuation 
 schools is organised will compulsory elementary 
 education give an adequate return for the large 
 expenditure it requires. Every year we spend in 
 Britain £30,000,000 of public money on primary 
 education, on the ground that it is necessary for 
 the safety of the State and the perpetuation of 
 our free institutions. A large part of this money 
 is wasted if we cease to exercise any care for the 
 
CONTINUATION EDUCATION 123 
 
 further education and training of the child after he 
 leaves the elementary school. And this is what 
 we are doing at the present day in the case of 
 three-fourths of the youths of the country. We are 
 employing nearly the whole of the energy of our 
 national education in partially training the children 
 of the country, and then we allow them in large 
 measure to waste. 
 
 According to statistics collected by the Con- 
 sultative Committee of the Board of Education 
 in 1909, about a million and a haK of boys and 
 girls between fourteen and seventeen years of age 
 in England and Wales receive no further educa- 
 tion and preparation for their life work than that 
 which the primary school has afforded them. Their 
 mental development is arrested, and a large part 
 of what they have previously learned in school is 
 quickly forgotten. Their natures are, as yet, far from 
 their full scope and development ; their characters 
 and mental and physical powers are immature and 
 only partially trained for the duties of life. As 
 Friedrich Paulsen very well says : ' The education 
 provided for our youth may be compared to an 
 abandoned ruin ; the foundation is laid, a few walls 
 are constructed, then the work is left to the de- 
 struction of wind and water.' ^ As a nation we are 
 wasting our people more than we are wasting any- 
 thing else. The waste of our material resources, 
 
 ' Quoted by Edwin G. Cooley, Proceedings fw 1912 of the Natumal 
 Education Association of the United States, p. 1207. 
 
124 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 as we have just pointed out, is a serious matter, 
 but the waste of our human resources is a much 
 more serious one, for no nation can prosper, as com- 
 pared with other nations, except by the better 
 conservation and development of the productive 
 capacity of its people. 
 
 With the increased demands on workers at the 
 present day, the necessity for further education 
 than the primary school can afford is becoming more 
 and more urgent. The school has to do almost 
 single-handed, as we have shown, what was pre- 
 viously done by a number of institutions, and 
 moreover it has to do it better than in any previous 
 age. The demands on the adaptability, intellectual 
 power, and practical capacity of the workers are 
 greater now than ever they were before. Those 
 whose education and training cease at fourteen years 
 of age are in every danger nowadays of becoming 
 failures in life, or at least of being relegated to only 
 the lowest grades of work. 
 
 The close of the primary school course is prob- 
 ably the most critical period in the life of the young. 
 They are approaching adolescence — the most malleable 
 and formative period of their lives. New interests 
 and impulses are arising within them, and their 
 leaning to social and practical life is increasing. 
 Their characters and habits are far from formed, 
 and are still plastic for good or ill. It is imcertain 
 as yet whether they will become loafers and weak- 
 lings in life, or interested, inteUigent, and efficient 
 
CONTINUATION EDUCATION 125 
 
 citizens. Everything depends upon the use made 
 of the period from thirteen or fourteen to eighteen 
 years of age for mental, moral, and practical training. 
 Much of the training which would have been pre- 
 mature before fourteen years of age, on account of 
 immaturity, can be undertaken now. 
 
 Under present arrangements in this country com- 
 pulsory education ends just at the time when its con- 
 tinuance is most required. This was pointed out by 
 the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical 
 Deterioration. In their Report they state : " Edu- 
 cation in the ordinary sense of the word is over just 
 when in its full significance it becomes most neces- 
 sary, when parental direction is almost entirely 
 absent, and in lieu of it very little supervision is 
 exercised from any other quarter over physical or 
 moral development.' The serious educational, moral, 
 and even economic, waste resulting from this neglect 
 was pointed out with great emphasis by the Con- 
 sultative Committee of the Board of Education. At 
 page 16 of Volume I of their exhaustive Report 
 on Continuation Schools they state : ' The Committee 
 find that at the most critical period in their lives a 
 very large majority of the boys and girls in England 
 and Wales are left without any sufficient guidance 
 and care. This neglect results in great waste of early 
 promise, in injury to character, in the lessening of 
 industrial efficiency, and in the lowering of ideals of 
 personal and civic duty.' 
 
 We may say, then, that on aU hands there is 
 
126 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 now a consensus of opinion that the most pressing 
 educational problem at the present time is the edu- 
 cation of adolescents. The difficulty is to decide what 
 practical steps should be taken in dealing with it. 
 GreneraUy speaking, one or other of two courses 
 might be followed. We might extend the period of 
 compulsory schooling for two or three years beyond 
 the present limit, or we might build upon the ele- 
 mentary school a complete system of part-time 
 continuation classes carrying forward the general 
 and practical education of those who must leave 
 school at fourteen, and making it more helpful for 
 the successful discharge of their various duties in 
 life. This would really be a form of secondary 
 education for the masses of the people. 
 
 The first would doubtless be the ideal solution, 
 but it must, we fear, be dismissed as impracticable 
 at the present time. The burden upon working- 
 class parents would be increased beyond what they 
 could bear without substantial State assistance. 
 Also,' the difficulty of making the change from school 
 environment to life conditions would be greater even 
 than now. Moreover, psychological investigation has 
 shown that the great majority of boys and girls at 
 fourteen years of age, in all grades of society, are 
 ready for vocational training provided it is accom- 
 panied by suitable forms of education. But the 
 first, the financial difficulty, is the only serious one, 
 and if it were overcome the others could be 
 arranged. 
 
CONTINUATION EDUCATION 12T 
 
 The second course — namely, the development 
 of a system of continuation education — is the more 
 practicable plan, and it is the one that has been 
 applied in Scotland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, 
 and Switzerland. Germany has organised her con- 
 tinuation schools more completely and successfully 
 than any other country in the world. Her reply to 
 the problems raised by the industrial revolution 
 was the development of her continuation and trade 
 schools. Her reward has been a marked increase 
 in the productive power and material prosperity of 
 her people, and an unprecedented development of her 
 trade and industries. 
 
 When evening continuation schools were started 
 in this country they hmited their scope almost en- 
 tirely to instruction in English, arithmetic, and 
 other school studies, their aim indeed being simply 
 to continue the education of the elementary schools. 
 The studies were abstract and bookish, no attention 
 was paid to the trades of the pupils, and there was 
 no bond of union between the schools and the work- 
 shops. It is no wonder that with these imperfections 
 the evening schools of twenty or thirty years ago 
 were attended by only a small number of the youths 
 of the working classes. Experience, particularly that 
 of the German people, has shown that we should 
 relinquish the old traditions out of which the evening 
 schools arose as places for the repetition of elementary 
 school work, and develop continuation education 
 as an independent school system requiring the same 
 
128 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 liberal financial support, and the same care in organ- 
 isation and staflfing as the primary schools. 
 
 If continuation education would succeed it must get 
 away from studies which are solely ' cultural,' and 
 place the emphasis on the forms of training which have 
 to do with mastery of some definite activity, career, or 
 vocation. General education, especially instruction 
 in literature, should always be given, but it should 
 be closely related to the practical studies. The one 
 should reinforce and give content to the other. The 
 drawing, mathematics, science, and other subjects 
 should be taught practically, and in such a way as 
 to supply the deficiencies in the workshops' training, 
 and to enlist the interest of the pupils. 
 
 Continuation teaching should never be a generaHsed 
 affair, but a definite attempt to supplement and round 
 out the training in some occupation in accordance 
 with the needs of advanced modern industrial practice. 
 This necessitates that, wherever possible, separate 
 classes should be formed for the various trades and 
 occupations in the district — including domestic work 
 and agriculture — for in this way only is it possible 
 to adapt the course of training to the needs of the 
 individual pupils. 
 
 But even under the most favourable circumstances, 
 the continuation school can never give a complete 
 trade training ; that must be obtained in the actual 
 pursuit of the caUing. The aims in view in con- 
 tinuation education are rather to emphasise those 
 parts of the training which the industry itself is least 
 
CONTINUATION EDUCATION 129 
 
 able to give, to keep pace with the period of apprentice- 
 ship, making it thorough and many-sided, and especi- 
 ally to counteract the narrowing effect and poverty of 
 ideas which result from the extreme specialisation 
 of modern industry. The worker is no longer a crafts- 
 man in the old sense of the word — a master of all 
 the processes involved in the production of the finished 
 work. Hence he requires instruction in general 
 principles, and a knowledge of the materials employed, 
 and of the various processes and successive stages 
 in the manufacture and distribution of the articles 
 produced. The aim throughout is to cultivate simul- 
 taneously knowledge and skill, and to develop the 
 industrial intelligence, originality, and adaptability 
 of the pupil. ^ 
 
 The continuation pupil is at a stage at which w^e 
 must train him to be not only a good workman but 
 a good and loyal citizen, able to play worthily his 
 part as a member of society and of the State. An 
 essential part of continuation education therefore 
 is civic instruction. A suitable starting-point is 
 the pupil's trade or occupation. The more we are 
 able to base civic instruction on personal experience 
 the more successful it will be. The history of his 
 trade, the course of its development, and its position 
 
 * The whole subject is dealt with in a complete manner in the Report 
 of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education on Attendance 
 at Continuation Schools, and in the volume on Continuation Schools in 
 England and Elsewhere, by Michael E. Sadler. One of the most 
 suggestive documents dealing with continuation education is the Scotch 
 Education DepartmenVs Code of Regulations for Continuation Classes. 
 
130 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 in the industries of his own country and of the world 
 should be discussed. He should learn something of 
 the efforts and struggles of workers in other indus- 
 tries, and of the interdependence of interests of all 
 members of the community. By these means he 
 should be led, before he reaches his political majority, 
 to recognise his duty towards his fellow workmen 
 and his employer, and his family and social duties. 
 He should learn how the present-day problems of 
 his town and the nation arose ; and the outcome 
 of it all should be a clear recognition of his responsi- 
 bilities, duties, and rights as an individual in the 
 State. 
 
 But it is not only the intelligence, character, and 
 practical powers of the pupil that are still largely 
 untrained when he leaves the elementary school. His 
 physical powers also are undeveloped. Hence suitable 
 forms of physical training and games, and instruction 
 in the laws of health (including first-aid help) should 
 take a prominent place in all continuation school work. 
 
 There should always be a true bond of union 
 between the continuation school and the workshop. 
 There should be co-operation between those who 
 regard continuation teaching from the educational 
 side and those who, through practical experience, 
 regard it rather from the economic and industrial 
 side. The many problems involved in continuation 
 education are not solely pedagogic, and unless we 
 bring to bear upon them the best opinion of the great 
 employing class and of the great class of skilled 
 
CONTINUATION EDUCATION 131 
 
 employees they cannot receive their best solution. 
 Hence while continuation schools, as an integral part 
 of our educational system, should be conducted by the 
 pubhc and at the pubHc expense, the curricula and 
 other practical details of the school work should be 
 submitted to consultative and advisory bodies consist- 
 ing of representatives of employers and employees in 
 the industries of the district, as well as of the teachers 
 and the local educational authorities. 
 
 This is the plan that has been adopted in London, 
 Edinburgh, Munich, and some other cities, and it is to 
 this effective co-operation that the marked success of the 
 Continuation School system in these centres is in large 
 measure due. In Edinburgh, for example, the School 
 Board has instituted about twenty Advisory Committees, 
 one for each group of industries in the district, such as 
 printing, engineering, building construction, &c. Each 
 Committee visits once a year the appropriate groups 
 of classes, and also helps in planning suitable courses 
 of instruction, and in delimiting the spheres of action 
 of the school and the workshop. 
 
 It deserves consideration whether, in the towns 
 in which these Committees have been formed, pubhc 
 opinion is not ripe enough to extend their scope by 
 utiHsing them, along with the employment bureaux 
 recommended in the preceding chapter, to furnish 
 information regarding the conditions and prospects of 
 the various industries, and to help pupils to find 
 situations for which they are suited. In this way the 
 Committees would probably help to prevent the 
 
 E 2 
 
132 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 hardship and industrial waste arising from the over- 
 crowding of some trades and the scarcity of workers 
 in others. 
 
 A difficulty in connection with continuation schools 
 is the supply of teachers. At present these schools 
 in this country are staffed mainly by primary school 
 teachers, with a certain amount of assistance from 
 skilled artisans and talented business men and women. 
 This is probably the best arrangement that can be 
 made so long as the classes only meet for an hour or 
 two in the evening on two or three nights a week. 
 The ordinary school teachers employed, however, 
 should be selected because of their fitness to teach 
 adolescents on a practical basis ; and, to do full justice 
 to themselves and to their work, they should be 
 allowed a corresponding amount of relief from their 
 day-school teaching. 
 
 Expert artisan teachers have many advantages. 
 They bring the air of the occupation into the 
 school, the processes they teach are the actual 
 processes of the up-to-date workshop, and they 
 illuminate their teaching by reference to practical 
 details. If practical experts of this kind are employed, 
 it is highly desirable that they should be given, 
 through co-operation with the local authority for 
 training teachers, instruction in educational methods, 
 aad at least a short course of supervised practice in 
 teaching.^ The tendency, however, is to make con- 
 
 * Every new untrained teacher employed in Continuation Classes 
 in Edinburgh is required to take, under the Edinburgh Provincial 
 
CONTINUATION EDUCATION 133 
 
 tinuation school teaching a separate career, demanding 
 special preparation and training. This is very marked 
 in Prussia and other parts of Germany, and the practice 
 will spread rapidly in this country as more and more 
 of the classes meet in the daytime. 
 
 Committee for the Training of Teachers, a course of training which 
 includes : — 
 
 1. Six lectures on General Methods in Teaching. 
 
 2. Four Demonstration Lessons with discussion of the methods 
 employed. 
 
 3. Ten hours of supervised practice in teaching Continuation Classes. 
 
 4. Regular visits during ordinary classwork from the Master of 
 Method. 
 
 5. Specially arranged visits of the Master of Method accompanied 
 by an expert who has proved himself a competent teacher in the relative 
 subject. 
 
 This enlightened policy of the Edinburgh School Board has had a 
 most gratifying effect on the teaching in the continuation classes. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 FURTHER EDUCATION (CONTINUED) 
 
 The conviction is rapidly growing that voluntary 
 attendance at continuation schools meeting chiefly 
 in the evening no longer suffices for the educational 
 requirements of modern States. Every year we are 
 getting a clearer perception of the nature and extent 
 of the mischief that is being wrought by the present 
 system of laissez faire. A large proportion of the 
 adolescent boys and girls throughout the country 
 will never be touched by a voluntary system, and 
 these are the very ones who need the education most. 
 Keen and capable youths attend, but the reckless and 
 unskilled never go, and the unemployable, the hooligan, 
 and the apache are the outcome. 
 
 In some manufacturing cities in England the 
 number of possible pupils attending continuation 
 classes is as low as 1 in 25, and in even the more 
 progressive educationally it is only about 1 in 7. 
 No city in the country has been more successful 
 with its voluntary continuation schools than Edin- 
 burgh, and even there out of about 17,000 youths 
 between fourteen and seventeen years of age 5500 
 
CONTINUATION EDUCATION 135 
 
 are receiving no form of education, and probably 
 never can be reached by voluntary methods. In face 
 of these figures, and many others that could be quoted, 
 those interested in the educational welfare of the 
 country see that some system of compulsion is necessary. 
 This involves no new principle. The State which 
 claims control over the child up to thirteen or four- 
 teen years of age cannot stop there. It must recognise 
 its duty to guard from waste for some years longer 
 what it has been at such trouble and expense to train. 
 
 There are, we know, many difficulties in the 
 way of compulsory continuation education — some 
 educational and administrative, others economic. 
 We have yet to learn much regarding the char- 
 acter of the instruction most suitable for many 
 industries. If we make attendance at continua- 
 tion classes obligatory on all children leaving the 
 elementary school, we shaU have to reconsider the 
 whole question of staffing and accommodation. Re- 
 forms will be necessary in the conditions of employ- 
 ment during adolescence, for it would be cruel to 
 force youths tired after their day's work to attend 
 schools in the evening. Various economic problems 
 will be raised by the partial withdrawal of this large 
 body of juvenile work from the labour market. 
 
 But, above all, the movement for continuation 
 education is retarded by the absence of a strong 
 public opinion in favour of compulsion. Only the 
 few who have studied the matter are definitely in 
 favour of change, the many are apathetic or even 
 
136 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 antagonistic. They are not convinced that the cost 
 involved to the ratepayers, and the sacrifice to the 
 parents, the youths, and their employers, would 
 be a good investment. They point to what they 
 consider the doubtful returns from our compulsory 
 primary education, without seeing that it is to 
 a large extent the incompleteness of that system 
 which leads to the waste of public money and to 
 the unconvincing results. 
 
 In this state of pubUc opinion everything possible 
 should be done to arouse public interest in continuation 
 classes, and to spread information regarding them. We 
 can help meanwhile to popularise the classes by suiting 
 the instruction and the times of meeting to the needs, 
 and even the convenience, of the young people, and 
 of the employers in the various industries in the 
 district. Day-school teachers can help by advising 
 all pupils who are leaving them to enrol in continu- 
 ation classes. Much useful propaganda work can 
 be done, by means of meetings and distribution of 
 circulars, to point out the nature and value of the 
 work done in continuation classes. The Consultative 
 and Advisory Committees we have referred to can do 
 much to help on the Continuation Class movement. 
 
 But while doing everything possible to meet 
 reasonable difficulties and to educate public opinion, 
 it should be realised that we cannot continue in these 
 days of keen international rivalry to dally with the 
 problem of compulsory continuation education. It 
 is a matter of national safety to settle it without 
 
CONTINUATION EDUCATION 137 
 
 much further delay. On the way to a universal 
 compulsory system there is the system of local 
 option. Statutory power might be given to the Local 
 Educational Authorities to make by-laws for com- 
 pelling attendance at continuation classes up to 
 an age fixed by the by-laws. This is the method 
 that has proved so successful in Germany, and 
 has been in operation in Scotland since 1908. Since 
 the foundation of the Germanic Empire the different 
 States composing it have had the power to make 
 attendance at continuation schools compulsory, and 
 to require employers to grant the necessary time. 
 In twelve of the States every apprentice has to 
 attend a continuation school for from six to eleven 
 hours a week during the whole period of his appren- 
 ticeship, or until the completion of his eighteenth 
 year, and his certificate as a journeyman is only 
 granted if he has satisfied the necessary educational 
 tests. In ten of the States there is ' local option ' 
 regarding continuation school attendance, and in 
 only four States is attendance voluntary. 
 
 Section 10 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1908, 
 requires every School Board to make provision for 
 continuation classes with reference to the crafts 
 and industries — including agriculture and domestic 
 arts — practised in the district. The same section 
 also gives each School Board power to make by- 
 laws, if they so decide, compelling the attendance at 
 these classes of such young persons between fourteen 
 and seventeen years of age as are not otherwise 
 
138 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 receiving suitable education. A penalty is imposed 
 upon anyone who employs a young person at times 
 when he or she is required by the local by-law to 
 attend the continuation class, or employs him or 
 her for such a length of time as exceeds in any one 
 day or week the period of employment permitted 
 for the young person by any Act of Parliament. 
 
 Sufficient time has not elapsed to enable a final 
 opinion to be formed of the Scottish system. As 
 yet only eighteen School Boards out of about nine 
 hundred have adopted it, but it should be added 
 that the largest School Board in Scotland (Glasgow) 
 is one of the eighteen. Complaints are already 
 being made that districts, which have been enter- 
 prising enough to make attendance compulsory, are 
 being placed at an apparent disadvantage as com- 
 pared with their industrial rivals in adjoining dis- 
 tricts that have not adopted the compulsory system. 
 This may be a shortsighted view, but there is no 
 doubt that less temporary inconvenience and dis- 
 location of industry would be caused were the com- 
 pulsory system universal. Doubtless after a time 
 employers will see that attendance at continuation 
 classes increases the value of the services of their 
 workers. Should the local option plan fail, local 
 authorities will be able to make with more con- 
 fidence an appeal to ParUament to make obligatory 
 attendance at continuation schools universal. 
 
 The general adoption of the compulsory method 
 would be a reform of great magnitude and of far- 
 
CONTINUATION EDUCATION 189 
 
 reaching consequences, not only to the young people 
 concerned but to the country at large. The increased 
 productive power and the physical well-being of the 
 people would, within a generation, be out of all pro- 
 portion to the increased cost to the nation. As 
 Thorndike very well says, ' The community that insists 
 on protecting the young against being used up in helping 
 the community to get a living, soon finds itself getting a 
 better living, and other things of much more worth.' ^ 
 
 There is at the present time a great waste of 
 teaching power, and consequently financial waste, 
 in connection with continuation education, because 
 the instruction is given almost entirely in the evenings, 
 when neither the pupils nor the teachers are capable 
 of their best work. Only pupils of more than average 
 physical and intellectual strength are able to undergo 
 such a strain without injury at this critical period 
 in their growth. Everyone who has considered the 
 question agrees that along with compulsion should go 
 a reasonable part-time system of work at occupations 
 and part-time attendance at day continuation classes.^ 
 
 ^ Education, by E. L. Thorndike, p. 238. (Macmillan.) 
 * Scotland already has the nucleus of a Day Continuation School 
 System in the Supplementary Classes referred to on p. 111. The Supple- 
 mentary Schools in Edinburgh, for example, have accommodation 
 suitable for the practical instruction of apprentices in twenty trades. 
 In Germany evening classes are being gradually dropped, and in 
 some cities by-laws have been passed forbidding them for youths under 
 eighteen. J. E. G. de Montmorency in The Schools of the Nation, p. 40, 
 says : ' It may be a heresy, but for my part I am inclined to believe 
 that in a really perfectly organised scheme of national education there 
 should be no evening schools, though there should be every facility for 
 study in the provision of lectures, reading rooms, and technical lending 
 libraries.' 
 
140 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 The chief obstacle to this reform in the past has 
 been the fear that it might interfere unduly with the 
 exigencies of trade and commerce. Experience has 
 shown that the fear is to a large extent groundless. 
 Many public-spirited and enlightened employers of 
 labour in the chief manufacturing centres throughout 
 the country — in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, 
 Manchester, York, Sheffield, Bradford, Leicester, 
 &c. — have voluntarily sent their young employees 
 to day classes. Almost without exception they have 
 come to the conclusion that they get work better in 
 quality and relatively greater in quantity, and they 
 have given effect to this view by the payment in 
 many instances of the class fees and full wages. 
 
 In arranging the times of the day classes for a 
 certain trade every consideration should be given 
 by the educational authorities to the convenience 
 of the employers in that industry, and if the industry 
 has a periodically recurring dull season the instruction 
 might be given chiefly during that time. 
 
 Compulsory day continuation classes should play 
 an important part in solving the apprenticeship 
 problem. In the days of small workshops the master 
 gave his apprentice an all-round knowledge of his 
 trade, and at the same time trained his mind and 
 character. Modem conditions of industry render 
 that impossible. The educational opportunities of 
 the factory and workshop nowadays are almost nil, 
 and the system of apprenticeship will break down 
 utterly unless it is reconstructed on a broader basis. 
 
CONTINUATION EDUCATION 141 
 
 The young worker must get in future a large part of his 
 training elsewhere than in the workshops, and for 
 this purpose the continuation school will be indis- 
 pensable. By dovetailing suitable continuation educa- 
 tion and training into workshop practice, it will be 
 possible to produce workers endowed with the practical 
 skill and the alertness and adaptability of mind 
 necessary to meet successfully the demands of the 
 new industrial conditions. 
 
 In some cases the day continuation schools 
 have developed into trade schools, in the restricted 
 sense of that term — namely, schools in which young 
 persons are taught from the foundation all the de- 
 partments of work in a certain trade or skilled occupa- 
 tion, including the use of all the hand and machine 
 tools required for the processes involved. In these 
 schools the whole or a portion of the apprenticeship 
 is passed. The class rooms are Hke workshops, and 
 the work is carried on in a manner as nearly as possible 
 similar to actual shop conditions. The greatest 
 development of trade education has taken place 
 in France, Switzerland, and Germany. In Munich 
 alone, under the leadership of Dr. Kerschensteiner, 
 there are complete courses for sixty-seven trades, 
 and in Berlin for over two hundred and twenty. 
 Such schools are still in an experimental stage in this 
 country. In Scotland they are practically non- 
 existent. In England there are about thirty, and 
 in Ireland about a dozen. 
 
 But it is doubtful if trade schools, in the strict 
 
142 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 sense, will ever be numerous on account of the 
 great diversity of trades, the almost infinite speci- 
 alisation of modern industry, and the large cost 
 of equipment, materials, maintenance, and instruc- 
 tion in them, in proportion to the number of 
 students who can be instructed. Moreover, it is 
 very questionable whether the trade school can 
 ever be made a complete substitute for apprentice- 
 ship. It is impossible for the school to reproduce 
 the conditions and the experience of the workshop 
 or the office. These and other difficulties will always 
 limit the development of trade schools for all except 
 a few special crafts and industries. For all other 
 cases a well-developed Day Continuation School 
 System for the various trades, with a thorough mutual 
 understanding as to the part of the training to be 
 done by the school and workshop respectively, should 
 meet all the educational and economic wants of the 
 country. 
 
 Although we have been advocating so far the neces- 
 sity of adequate faciHties in continuation schools for 
 the education of youths up to seventeen or eighteen 
 years of age, yet we are of opinion that there should 
 be no upper age limit in our continuation school 
 system. It must provide for adults as well as adoles- 
 cents, for those of all ages who, through ambition 
 or love of learning, desire to drink more deeply at 
 the wells of knowledge. Education should not cease 
 when we begin to be men and women. Hence in 
 connection with our continuation school system 
 
CONTINUATION EDUCATION 143 
 
 there should be voluntary evening classes for those 
 who desire to continue their general or practical 
 education by studying after their day's work. These 
 classes would provide purely advanced and exten- 
 sion teaching, regardless of the requirements of the 
 too definitely prescribed schemes of study by which 
 so many parts of our educational system are need- 
 lessly bound and enshrouded. 
 
 We have been dealing as yet with the practical 
 education of the skilled artisan and the rank and file 
 of industrial workers. It is at least equally essen- 
 tial for our national well-being to train experts in 
 the various fields of industry and commerce, and 
 to carry on the scientific education of youths of 
 promise in the hope that they may become leaders 
 in their respective fields. For social progress we 
 need, as John Stuart Mill said, ' a perpetual succes- 
 sion of superior minds by whom knowledge is 
 advanced, and the community urged forward in 
 civilisation.' ^ 
 
 Hence at the apex of our national system of 
 practical education we require technical colleges, 
 colleges of arts and crafts, colleges of domestic 
 science, and colleges of agriculture — all closely co- 
 ordinated with the continuation schools, and giving 
 the highest instruction in the technique and scientific 
 methods of the industries in the communities in 
 which they are situated. One of the oldest technical 
 colleges in Europe is the School for Watchmaking 
 
 ^ Principles of Political Economy, Bk. V, chap, xi, §8. 
 
144 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 in Geneva, and we know that to-day the Swiss are 
 the most perfect watchmakers in the world. Ger- 
 many has six or seven thousand college-trained 
 chemists in her industries, and imtil the recent war 
 she led the world in chemical dyes, pigments for 
 artists, and coloured inks for printing processes. 
 
 In order to build up new industries or to revive old 
 ones, continental nations institute technical schools 
 for the industries. In this coimtry we have not 
 done so. Our technical colleges, which are to all 
 intents and purposes our artisan universities, have 
 suffered generally from insufficient nutrition — 
 material and personal. They have been hampered 
 through lack of financial support and lack of suitable 
 pupils, especially day pupils, from local industries. 
 The vast majority, indeed, of employers have been 
 totally indifferent to them. 
 
 We must encourage, too, a thoroughgoing 
 system of industrial research in the laboratories 
 of our technical colleges and universities. As 
 Mr. J. A. Pease, President of the Board of Educa- 
 tion, said in the House of Commons in May 1915, 
 ' We must bring our universities and technical 
 institutions into closer connection with industry, 
 and also our leaders of industry into closer connec- 
 tion with skilled workers.' Action, he said, should 
 be taken at once for this purpose, and he recom- 
 mended the appointment of an Advisory Council 
 on Industrial Research, consisting of scientific experts 
 along with leaders of industry. 
 
CONTINUATION EDUCATION 145 
 
 Many movements have been set on foot from 
 time to time to bring higher liberal education within 
 the reach of the working classes. The University 
 Extension Movement had this object in view, but 
 it has proved a comparative failure because it was 
 imposed upon workpeople by the Universities from 
 above, instead of being organised and managed by 
 the workers themselves. This fundamental error 
 has been remedied in the Tutorial Classes promoted 
 by the Workers' Educational Association. The aim 
 of this Association is to interest the workers in higher 
 education by supplying information regarding facih- 
 ties for such education, and by providing facihties 
 when they do not exist. The most important work 
 done by the Association in this direction is the in- 
 stitution of University Tutorial Classes.^ The idea 
 of the movement is not to give advanced instruction 
 of a kind directly useful in the vocations, but to 
 provide university education to workers who remain 
 workers all their lives. The aim is intellectual 
 and spiritual energy, not material success, not to 
 enable workers to become something else than what 
 they are. 
 
 The movement has spread with extraordinary 
 rapidity. During the session 1913-14, for instance, 
 thirteen Universities in England and Wales conducted 
 in all 142 classes, which were attended by over 3500 
 students drawn from almost every occupation, but 
 
 1 See University Tutorial Classes, by A. Mans bridge. (Longmans, 
 Green, and Co.) 
 
 L 
 
146 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 mostly manual workers. No University has done more 
 to further the movement than Oxford University. 
 The University Tutorial Classes are managed by Joint 
 Committees consisting of equal numbers of University 
 representatives and of representatives of the Workers' 
 Educational Association. In every case the tutors are 
 appointed by the Universities, and they are always 
 persons of high university standing. 
 
 The subjects studied are chosen by the class in con- 
 sultation with the tutor, and they generally have a more 
 or less direct bearing upon the great problems of life. 
 Courses have been selected in this way from the follow- 
 ing : Economics, Economic History, Literature, General 
 History, PoUtical Science, Philosophy, Psychology, 
 and Biology. No class is allowed to exceed thirty 
 in number, and each member must agree to attend 
 regularly once a week for twenty-four weeks during 
 each of three successive winters, and to undertake 
 to be regular in writing essays bearing upon the subject 
 of the course. Each meeting of a class lasts for two 
 hours, the first of which is devoted normally to a 
 lecture, and the second to questions and discussion 
 by the students. A high standard of work is generally 
 reached, and we are informed on the authority of the 
 English Board of Education that in the classes ' there 
 are students whose essays compare favourably with 
 the best academic work.' 
 
 The work done by the Tutorial Classes shows that 
 the higher education of the manual workers is no 
 impracticable chimera. The Classes are spreading 
 
CONTINUATION EDUCATION 147 
 
 the love of pure learning among the working people, 
 are bringing within their reach many of the best 
 advantages of university education, and are thus 
 enabhng them to perform more worthily their part 
 as members of the family, society, and state. 
 
 L 2 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CHILDREN FNDER SCHOOL AGE 
 
 By the passing of the Education Act of 1870 children 
 over five years of age were practically compelled to 
 attend school, but school attendance under this age 
 was encouraged by the payment of liberal grants — 
 six shillings for each child under four, and eight 
 shillings for each one over that age. The result was 
 that when the next great Education Act was passed 
 — that of 1902 — there were in the public elementary 
 schools of England and Wales nearly six hundred 
 thousand children between three and five (or about 
 a third of all the children of that age in the country) 
 and two or three thousand even under three years 
 of age. According to the official view as expressed 
 in the Reports of School Inspectors, these children 
 were from the first to be ' instructed suitably to their 
 age,' for, even at the best, their school-life would be 
 so short, and they would so soon have to enter the 
 labour market, that ' it could not be considered wise 
 to postpone reading, writing, and simple arithmetic 
 too late.' 
 
 But gradually doubts arose in the pubHc mind as 
 
CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 149 
 
 to the wisdom of submitting children under five to 
 school instruction, or indeed of having them in the 
 ordinary elementary school at all. The matter was 
 investigated by the Board of Education first by five 
 of its Women Inspectors, and afterwards by its Con- 
 sultative Committee.^ The Reports of these experts, 
 published in 1905 and 1908 respectively, came to 
 practically the same conclusions — that the formal 
 education of a child should not be seriously com- 
 menced before the age of six or seven, that in dealing 
 with babies under five there should be no hard-and- 
 fast time-table or curriculum, that set lessons in 
 reading, writing, and arithmetic should not be given, 
 that there should be ample facilities for play and 
 games and easy access to the school garden or play- 
 ground, and that suitable provision should be made 
 for the children sleeping when tired. 
 
 A good home is, on social, hygienic, and educational 
 grounds, the best school for a child until he is five 
 years of age.^ But unfortunately many homes have 
 not the necessary means or accommodation for the 
 nurture and training of young children, and if the 
 children are left entirely to the care of the home they 
 may in many cases, as we have shown in previous 
 chapters, be handicapped for life physically, mentally, 
 
 ^ The Beport of the Consultative Committee upon the School Attendance 
 of Children below the Age of Five (Cd. 4259. Published by His 
 Majesty's Stationery Office) should be read, as it contains a full and 
 adequate statement of all aspects of tbe subject. 
 
 ' Since 1905 the Board of Education has made it optional to Local 
 Educational Authorities to refuse admission to their schools of children 
 under five years of age. 
 
150 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 and even morally, before they reach ordinary school 
 age. Or the mothers may have to be absent from 
 home during the day to go to work, and may have 
 to leave their children, for whom they are toiling, 
 untended either indoors or in the streets. 
 
 Such cases cannot under any social arrangements 
 be entirely avoided, and it seems but fair to the 
 children themselves, and to the interests of the com- 
 munity at large, that some public provision should 
 be made for their care and training. If wisely done 
 this will strengthen, not weaken, the influence of home 
 life. If the children are given a better chance now 
 of growing up to be useful citizens, this will lead in 
 course of time to a steady diminution in the number 
 of homes in which children cannot enjoy the inestim- 
 able blessing of proper parental training, and will be 
 a powerful means of improving our imperfect social 
 conditions. We must always keep in mind that our 
 ultimate aim is to make aU homes such as to be able 
 to discharge satisfactorily their natural duty of foster- 
 ing, at every stage, the development of the children in 
 them. 
 
 Let us consider at the outset the provision made 
 at the present time for children whose upbringing is 
 neglected from any of the causes we have mentioned ; 
 we shall then be in a better position to decide whether 
 it is advisable or necessary to improve or supplement 
 the present arrangements. 
 
 Among the manifestations of the quickened social 
 conscience of the present day are the many efforts made 
 
CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 151 
 
 for the care of children under compulsory school age in 
 the poor districts of our large towns. The means taken 
 for their care are mainly of three kinds — day nurseries 
 or creches, kindergartens, and babies' classes in the 
 public elementary schools. 
 
 Day nurseries originated in France about seventy 
 years ago, and in 1913 there were no fewer than 110 
 of them in Paris and its suburbs, and over 320 in other 
 parts of the country. From there they have spread 
 into Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany. They have 
 never secured a very firm footing here, and at the 
 present time there are only about eighty day nurseries 
 in this country, the great majority — fifty-five — being 
 in London. In Edinburgh there are four, supported 
 by voluntary subscriptions and managed by a number 
 of medical doctors and other citizens who have formed 
 themselves into the Edinburgh Day Nurseries Associ- 
 ation. The routine of day nurseries is somewhat 
 as follows : They are open daily (except Sunday) 
 from about 6.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. They receive 
 children from two or three weeks to five years old, and 
 a charge of about 3d. or 4:d. per day is generally 
 made for each child. The children are washed when 
 admitted in the morning and dressed in the nursery 
 clothes for the day. A doctor visits the day nursery 
 frequently, and everything possible is done by attention 
 to cleanliness, feeding, rest, and play to secure the 
 development of the children. 
 
 Next come kindergartens for children from three 
 to five years of age. They are as a rule conducted in 
 
152 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 this country by private persons or societies. They 
 not only take care for several hours a day of children 
 from necessitous homes, or children whose mothers 
 are at work, but they also attend to the cleanliness 
 of the children, to their physical growth by means of a 
 midday meal followed by sleep, and to their moral 
 and mental education through occupations, games, and 
 plays, more or less in accordance with Froebel's prin- 
 ciples. The chief objects and aims to be kept in view 
 in work of this kind in a slum district have been stated 
 to be : — 
 
 1. To see that the children are clean and adequately 
 
 fed, and to train them in habits of cleanliness. 
 
 2. To occupy them indoors and out of doors in 
 
 a manner suited to their childish years, thus 
 adding to their happiness, intelligence, and use- 
 fulness during childhood and in after-life. 
 
 3. To aid the progress of morality, order, and 
 
 freedom through the general influence of the 
 kindergarten. 
 
 4. To obtain the goodwill and co-operation of the 
 
 parents, to acquaint them with the laws of 
 human growth and development, and to help 
 them to realise and fulfil their responsibilities 
 with regard to their children. 
 
 The former and present students of the Edinburgh 
 Provincial College for the Training of Teachers support 
 a College Mission in the form of a free kindergarten 
 in a poor district in the neighbourhood of the College. 
 
CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 153 
 
 Miss Ethel Marriott, who was in charge of the kinder- 
 garten during the first two and a half years of its 
 existence, has given the following outline of the daily 
 routine, which may be taken as more or less typical 
 of that in other institutions of the kind : — 
 
 * The children arrive, often escorted by an 
 elder brother or sister, at or soon after 9.15 a.m. 
 Each is armed with a small lunch " piece " with 
 his name written on the wrapper, and on Monday 
 mornings brings his overall, towel, and pillow-case 
 washed by the mother at the week-end. After 
 putting away their " pieces " in a basket, the 
 children hang up their outdoor things on pegs 
 easily recognisable to them by a special brightly 
 coloured picture, and put on overalls. 
 
 ' Brushing of teeth comes next on the pro- 
 gramme ; and then the children go into the 
 schoolroom where each is given a "job " — that 
 is, a piece of work for which he is responsible 
 and which is done not for himself alone but 
 for the welfare of all. There is much to be 
 done to make the " wee schule " as bright and 
 beautiful as possible. There are flowers to 
 arrange, pets to be cared for, brasses to be 
 polished, the piano to be dusted, milk to fetch. 
 The children have a high standard. " I hke 
 to see the pinanny [piano] real clean " said 
 one mite of four as she rubbed away at the keys 
 with her red duster. Left to themselves the 
 
154 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 children arrange flowers beautifully, and take 
 a great pride and joy in their work. Then 
 follow morning song and the register, and 
 then any pennies brought are put into the chil- 
 dren's contribution box — a much beloved china 
 cat. Many halfpennies which would otherwise 
 be spent at the " sweety shop " are brought to 
 " Pussy " instead, and then comes in due 
 time the delight of spending the savings at 
 the toyshop. 
 
 ' After some vigorous marching, running, 
 drilling, the children settle down to an occupa- 
 tion. These occupations are usually centred 
 round some natural object of which the children 
 have already some experience. For instance, 
 if " horse " is the centre chosen, the children 
 go out to see the horses working on the roads ; 
 they visit a stable ; and watch the neighbouring 
 blacksmith shoeing a horse. And then after 
 these experiences, in simple materials such as 
 bricks, sand, clay, &c., and through stories, 
 songs, and games, they represent their ideas, 
 and so deepen the impressions gained. 
 
 ' At 10.30 A.M. two monitors (children) set 
 the lunch tables, and we all sit down together 
 to a meal of milk and bread. A special point 
 is made of this, because, unless on Sundays at 
 dinner-time, these children never sit down to 
 a family meal. Too often at home they are 
 given a " piece " and ordered out of doors. 
 
CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 155 
 
 While the monitors clear away and wash up 
 the mugs and plates, the others have games 
 or free play with toys, in the garden whenever 
 possible. Unconsciously, in all this work, the 
 children are forming habits of orderliness; and 
 in working together and in the sharing of toys, 
 &c., are learning something of the joy and 
 responsibilities of citizenship. 
 
 ' At noon they go home, returning again 
 at 1.15 P.M., when boots are taken off, and the 
 children go to bed and sleep for an hour. The 
 beds are specially made of strong netting stretched 
 across wooden frames which fold up to be put 
 away, and can be easily disinfected. There 
 is no doubt of the benefit of the afternoon sleep 
 to the children who, in their overcrowded homes, 
 are generally put late to bed, and even then do 
 not sleep under really hygienic conditions. In 
 time, the mothers come to reahse the importance 
 of this midday rest. 
 
 ' We encourage mothers to come about the 
 kindergarten to watch the children at work 
 and play, to come to evening meetings when 
 they take turns in helping with the teas, to 
 send small contributions, and to help with 
 sewing and washing. Gradually as the aims 
 of the kindergarten come to be realised, the 
 mothers make greater efforts for the children, 
 and marked improvement in cleanhness, regularity, 
 and punctuality is the result.' 
 
156 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 Experience has shown that the kindergarten is one 
 of the most successful educational agencies for reaching 
 the home and uplifting its ideals. It tends to make 
 the parents take a keener interest in the care and 
 development of their children. It gives the chil- 
 dren a chance of becoming robust and vigorous in 
 body and mind, and of becoming in due time useful 
 citizens. The free kindergartens in the slums 
 have done good by the emphasis they lay on the 
 humanising, socialising, and nurturing element in 
 education. They have pointed the way in which 
 the community's efforts may best be directed to 
 save the child of the slums from almost inevitable 
 social failure ; and they have been the starting-point 
 of other philanthropic endeavours to deal effectively 
 with the problems of the slums through playgrounds, 
 social settlements, visiting nurses, &c. 
 
 As kindergartens have been founded chiefly by 
 private societies, there are no general statistics to be 
 had as to the total number of poor children provided 
 for in this way in Britain as a whole, but they form 
 a very smaU fraction indeed of those who stand 
 in sore need of such aid. In London there are only 
 seven or eight kindergartens. In Scotland there are 
 in all at present seven — five in Edinburgh, one in 
 Glasgow, and one in Dundee. It must be remembered, 
 too, that, to do its work effectively, and to retain its 
 family-like influence, a kindergarten can accommodate 
 only about twenty children. 
 
 In many of the public elementary schools in England 
 
CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 157 
 
 and Wales there are babies' classes formed for children 
 between three and five years of age, and government 
 grants are paid for them. In Scotland, on the other 
 hand, there are hardly any children under five in the 
 elementary schools — probably because of the com- 
 paratively small number of women who go out to 
 work there, and of the higher standard of home life 
 resulting from this. But even there it is felt that more 
 should be done for the children under compulsory 
 school age, especially in the poorer quarters of the 
 large towns. 
 
 In the best schools babies' classes are not put under 
 the same disciphne and formal instruction in the three 
 R's as the older pupils, and the work done contains 
 many of the good features of the kindergarten. There 
 can be no doubt of the value of these classes to babies 
 who otherwise would be left day by day mainly to the 
 influences and hardships of the street. But the classes 
 are not generally as clear in their educational aim as 
 the kindergarten, their furniture is not so suitable, 
 nor do they have, like it, accommodation for sleeping 
 when the babies are tired. The playground, too, of 
 the babies' class is in nearly every case the same as 
 that of the older pupils, and there is no garden with 
 flower plots and sand heaps and playing spaces in 
 which the babies may work and play and sleep in the 
 open air on most days of the year. In short, the 
 babies' room of the elementary school tends to be too 
 much of a school and too little of a nursery to meet the 
 needs of the neglected slum child. 
 
158 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 But all these attempts, creditable though they be, 
 to deal with the child problem are insufficient to prevent 
 the lamentable waste of child life and child character 
 going on throughout the country. We are threatened 
 in many districts with a stationary or even a decreasing 
 population, and yet we are squandering the life of the 
 young at a rate that is alarming. According to figures 
 given in the Report of the Consultative Committee 
 upon the School Attendance of Children below the Age 
 of Five, the number of deaths per thousand during 
 the decade 1891-1900 was :— 
 
 
 Scotland 
 
 England 
 and Wales 
 
 Under 1 year . 
 
 127-9 
 
 153-3 
 
 1-2 years 
 
 43-6 
 
 42-4 
 
 2-3 „ 
 
 17-6 
 
 160 
 
 3-4 „ 
 
 10-4 
 
 10- 1 
 
 4-5 „ 
 
 7-3 
 
 7-2 
 
 Much of this is due to the poverty or ignorance or 
 neglect of parents. There are countless families in 
 which the offspring have to grow up amid extreme 
 poverty, often cold and hungry and poorly clad, or 
 amid squalor, dirt, and other conditions in which 
 there can be no health of body or of soul. They are 
 disinherited beings from the beginning. They are 
 damaged for life during the plastic years of early 
 childhood, and the primary school receives them 
 weakly, stunted, and often coarsened and corrupted 
 by their surroundings. There is every probability 
 that if they grow to manhood or womanhood at all 
 
CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 159 
 
 they will become burdens upon society instead of 
 bearers of burdens. 
 
 If we are to attack at its source this common 
 cause of social disease, the educational authority 
 must supplement the deficiencies of those parents 
 who are incapable, through one cause or another, of 
 superintending the early development, both physical 
 and moral, of their children. Such help will be 
 more economical and more efficacious than the doles 
 of Poor Law Authorities which may alleviate but 
 rarely cure. Until educational authorities and the 
 community recognise the extent of the mission of the 
 school, ' many innocent and helpless children will be 
 doomed to walk the downward path which leads to 
 failure, inefficiency, ill-health, and crime.' ^ 
 
 Day Nurseries 
 
 The State acknowledges its duty of caring for and 
 training certain children by paying grants for any 
 over three years of age attending the public elementary 
 schools. But it cannot stop there, for the first three 
 years of a child's life are the most critical of all as to 
 the permanent effect upon the child's development 
 in after-life. It must help to establish day nurseries 
 for the nurture and care during the daytime of infants 
 whose parents must go to work. This is what is done 
 in some other countries, and notably in France, which 
 provides a fairly complete system of creches, caring 
 for children from a few weeks old. The countries 
 
 ^ Carlton, Education and Industrial Evolution, p. 287. (Macmillan.) 
 
160 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 which have instituted creches have done so to protect 
 themselves against future loss and greater burdens. 
 
 No one questions the fact that a good home is nature's 
 provision for the proper care and treatment of the 
 growing child. It has advantages that no other 
 institution can reproduce. But if the mother is in- 
 capable of taking care of the child, or if she has to go 
 out to earn a living, the home loses its advantages. 
 The wage-earning mother has generally no alternative 
 but to leave her children of tender age to be cared 
 for by older members of the family, if there are 
 such, or to ' put them out ' to take their chance with 
 the families of equally over-pressed or badly-housed 
 neighbours, or to send them to be taken care of by 
 a ' minder ' who makes a living by looking after a 
 number of children in this way. All these methods 
 are unsatisfactory, and many hard-driven mothers 
 would gladly take advantage of a better system, 
 and pay according to their means. 
 
 It is of great importance, therefore, to the welfare 
 of the community generally that under existing eco- 
 nomic conditions there should be a sufficient supply 
 of public day nurseries in the poorer districts of our 
 industrial towns. Into them should be admitted 
 children from, say, six weeks to three years old, whose 
 mothers are obliged to go from home to work, or to 
 work at home under unhealthy conditions. Neither 
 sick children nor children from infected homes should 
 be admitted. The day nurseries should be open on 
 weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 P.M, With few exceptions, 
 
CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 161 
 
 payments should be made daily or weekly by the 
 parents for at least part of the child's keep. 
 
 The buildings should be suitable for the purpose, and 
 not merely altered buildings. They should be fitted 
 up inexpensively like a nursery, with sleeping-places, 
 pictures, toys, and small chairs. There should be 
 ample room for the older babies to play in. Babies 
 from eighteen months to three years old should spend 
 most of the time in the garden when weather permits, 
 and after meals they should sleep there in hammocks. 
 Everything necessary for the health of the children 
 should be provided, and a doctor should visit the 
 nursery frequently. 
 
 The institution should be under the care of a 
 skilled nurse who understands baby nature. It 
 should be under the joint supervision of the Local 
 Government Board as the authority for public health 
 and of the Education Department as the authority 
 for education. The actual management should be 
 left to a committee of ladies, and any inspection should 
 be carried out by a lady inspector. Each day 
 nursery should be supported partly by the sums paid 
 by parents for the care and feeding of their children, 
 partly by government grants and local rates, and 
 partly, it would be hoped, by subscriptions, donations, 
 and legacies from philanthropic individuals. 
 
 Nursery Schools 
 
 The babies at about the age of three should pass 
 on to a nursery school in the same building. Here 
 
162 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 the training of the child till five years of age should 
 be continued in the spirit of an intelligent and devoted 
 mother. There should be no rigid time-table, the 
 length of the lessons should be at the discretion of the 
 teacher, and formal lessons in reading, writing, and 
 arithmetic should be excluded. The children should 
 not be subjected to any undue mental or physical 
 discipline. The children's natural instinct for move- 
 ment should not be unduly checked, and in all the work 
 of the nursery school we should keep in mind one of 
 the important aims of the founder of the kinder- 
 garten — ' the conscious nurture of the free self -activity 
 of childhood.' The training of the child through spon- 
 taneous and free activity is even more distinctly the 
 aim of the Montessori method of education that is 
 attracting so much attention at the present time, 
 and the spirit of that method should be assimilated 
 by the nursery school. 
 
 There should be singing and dramatic games, story- 
 teUing, and memorisation and recitation of simple 
 poetry. In this way the children will gain in language 
 power, their imagination will be directed into worthy 
 channels, and the seeds of good literary taste will be 
 sown. Their mental powers should be further trained 
 through much hand-work, brush-painting, weaving, 
 building, modelling in wet sand (not clay), &c. Much 
 time — at least half the day when weather permits — 
 should be spent in the garden in tending the plants, 
 in playing with sand and toys, and in games. In 
 all the routine of the nursery school we should follow 
 
CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 163 
 
 the spirit rather than the exact letter of the kinder- 
 garten. Great attention should be given to the 
 personal hygiene of the children, for there is perhaps 
 no period of life during which care of the body will 
 bring greater reward. Bad physical habits are not 
 yet firmly rooted, and physical defects are as yet more 
 easily dealt with — such as defects of the teeth, eye, 
 ear, and throat. There should be adequate medical 
 inspection. The children should be taught healthy 
 habits of cleanliness, of rest, and of exercise. They 
 should sleep for an hour a day after dinner, and this 
 sleep should take place in the garden when the weather 
 is good. 
 
 All these are essential parts of the curriculum of 
 a nursery school. Dinner should be provided for 
 those of the infants whose parents wish them to stay 
 for the midday meal. A small sum should be charged 
 for it, and only in necessitous cases which have been 
 carefully investigated should dinner be provided free. 
 In the case of too many parents the need of working 
 for their children is almost the only remnant of the 
 sense of parental duty left, and, while protecting the 
 helpless young from neglect, we should do nothing 
 to weaken this feeling. Attendance at the nursery 
 school should, however, be free, and the school should 
 be an integral and grant-earning part of the school 
 system under the Local Educational Authority.^ 
 
 * In France and Belgium the age for compulsory school attendance 
 is six, but France provides accommodation in Bcoles Maternelles for 
 about one-fourth of the children between two and six ; and Belgium, 
 before the outbreak of the great War in 1914, accommodated in 
 
 M 2 
 
164 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 In fixing the amount of nursery school accommoda- 
 tion necessary, the Educational Authority should keep 
 in view the industrial and social conditions of the 
 various parts of the area administered by it, and should 
 place the schools so as to be most accessible to children 
 whose home conditions are not satisfactory. There 
 would still, doubtless, be room for creches and kinder- 
 gartens supported by private individuals or societies 
 in districts in which the Local Educational Authority 
 has not provided day nurseries or nursery schools. 
 Only, these private institutions would have to be open 
 to inspection to ensure that the children in them are 
 being treated on proper lines. 
 
 Day nurseries and nursery schools should be 
 utiUsed to give girls in the upper classes of the ele- 
 mentary schools and the students in colleges of 
 domestic science practical training in the care, 
 management, and feeding of young children. Such 
 pupils and students should learn to make garments 
 for use in day nurseries, and they should do some 
 of the washing and cooking. 
 
 Under ideal, or even good, home conditions the 
 recommendations of this chapter would not be neces- 
 sary. But unfortunately such conditions are far 
 from being universally attainable at the present 
 time, and are not likely to be for some time to come. 
 Until then public day nurseries and nursery schools 
 
 ^coles Gardiennes nearly one-half of her children between three and 
 six years old. Switzerland, Germany, and the United States all 
 make much fuller provision for the training of children under school 
 age than we do. 
 
CHILDREN UNDER FIVE 165 
 
 will be necessary to combat festering social diseases, 
 and to give poor and neglected children the nurture 
 and training which the home cannot or will not supply. 
 They will amply repay the expense involved by 
 creating and fostering a higher ideal of the respon- 
 sibilities of the home towards its offspring, and by 
 raising the physical, mental, and moral standards 
 of future generations. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 EDUCATION AND PUBLIC HEALTH 
 
 Writers on education have always maintained 
 in theory the importance of cultivating a healthy 
 body as the basis for the education of the mind.^ 
 But until the last few years, this theory has been 
 almost totally neglected in practice. No school- 
 men can claim the credit, we fear, for the change 
 that has recently taken place. Rather, the duty 
 of maintaining the health of children at schools has 
 
 1 Plato said man consists of a body and a soul ; * we are not to 
 fashion one without the other, but make them draw together like two 
 horses harnessed to a coach.' It was Juvenal who first pointed out 
 the necessity of mens sana in corpore sano. Montaigne said, ' It is not 
 a soul, not a body, we are training up ; it is a man, and we ought not 
 to divide him into two.' Locke, adopting Juvenal's aim of a sound 
 mind in a sound body, said, ' He that hath these hath little more to 
 wish for, and he that wants either of them would be but little the better 
 for anything else.' Rousseau wrote, ' The body must needs be vigorous 
 in order to obey the soul. ... In order to learn to think we must 
 exercise our bodies which are the instruments of our intelligence.' 
 Herbert Spencer said, ' As remarks a suggestive writer, the first 
 requisite to success in life is to be a good animal, and to be a nation of 
 good animals is the first condition to national prosperity. ... It is 
 becoming of especial importance that the training of children should 
 be so carried on, as not only to fit them mentally for the struggle before 
 them, but also to make them physically fit to bear its excessive wear 
 and tear.' 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 167 
 
 been forced upon them by the logic of events. There 
 has been first of all the recognition, rather late in 
 the day, that compulsory education in schoolrooms 
 under present conditions means a certain amount 
 of compulsory disease through infection. And the 
 very fact that the State requires the attendance of 
 children at school for eight or nine years imposes 
 an obligation upon it to care for their physical welfare 
 during that period. 
 
 Then, too, there has arisen in recent times a 
 general movement for the improvement of public 
 health. There has been what the French call a 
 Renaissance Physique. This is due no doubt partly 
 to a fear of physical deterioration of the race under 
 the high pressure of modern life. But it is due mainly 
 to the fact that the public mind is now aroused to 
 the primal importance of the health of the people. 
 There can be no social progress or social efficiency 
 without it. We recognise now, as we never did before, 
 that the most important of all our national resources 
 is the good health of the citizens. Our economic 
 efficiency and even our intellectual and moral achieve- 
 ments as a people are dependent upon it. It has 
 been truly said that a nation to be great must first 
 make of its citizens good animals. Every kind of 
 greatness and success has a physical basis. 
 
 A natural concomitant to the movement for 
 bettering the public health generally is the increased 
 attention now paid to the health and strength of 
 school children. The health and physical efficiency 
 
168 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 of the adult community in the next generation are 
 built upon the physical welfare of the children of 
 the present. The school is thus our most influential 
 agency and our strategic starting-point for the pre- 
 vention of disease and the enhancement of our national 
 health and working-power. 
 
 We have already in previous chapters drawn 
 attention to the enormous and unnecessary waste 
 of human life and potential power through the 
 diseases of infancy and childhood. Some of the 
 mortality and physical deficiency is due, as we showed 
 in the preceding chapter, to the State making no 
 provision for the physical well-being of neglected 
 children below compulsory school age. Also, some 
 of the injury to those above that age is inseparable 
 from present school conditions. The mere subjec- 
 tion of children to school routine and discipline, and 
 to segregation and confinement in schoolrooms for 
 a number of hours a day, during which they are 
 deprived to a certain extent of sunshine and fresh 
 air at an age when these are most important to their 
 growth, is detrimental in some degree to the health 
 of the children. 
 
 But after every allowance is made for what may 
 be said to be unpre vent able, our present school 
 arrangements cannot escape blame for spreading 
 disease, and causing or aggravating physical defects. 
 It is a striking fact, deserving of the careful atten- 
 tion of educationists, that the health record of children 
 not attending school is better than that of those 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 169 
 
 attending it. The school has contributed to the 
 number of cases of short-sightedness and of spinal 
 curvature, and it has bred and spread infectious 
 diseases.^ It has caused over-pressure in many 
 cases, and by interfering in this way with nerve 
 nutrition and growth it has injured the physical 
 and mental development of the young. 
 
 The over-pressure or nerve strain has been exerted 
 in many different ways. Fine sewing and writing have 
 been exacted from young children before even the larger 
 muscles of their hands and arms have been trained, 
 and the work has been done only at the cost of painful 
 and exhausting effort. The over-pressure has been 
 due sometimes to requiring pupils to pass examina- 
 tions too difficult for them. It has been caused 
 by requiring young children day after day to keep 
 still for considerable periods when reasonable free- 
 dom of movement might have been allowed. It 
 has been caused by the overloading or bad arrange- 
 ment of the curriculum, or by imposing tasks without 
 
 * Dr. Wood of Teachers' College, Columbia University, points out 
 that ' Board of Health Reports show that cases of measles, diphtheria, 
 scarlet fever, and whooping-cough increase in number from the beginning 
 of the school year in September, when the housing up and segregating 
 process begins, up to March or April when the children are more of the 
 time out of doors. During the summer vacations the curves indicating 
 the prevalence of contagious diseases are at the lowest. We are driven 
 by such statistics to the conclusion that the school disseminates disease, 
 and is responsible, in part at least, for the greater prevalence of 
 contagious diseases of children during the winter months. Extra- 
 ordinary precautions based upon improved scientific method will be 
 necessary in order that the school may successfully safeguard the 
 children from disease and infection.' {Ninth Year Book of the National 
 Society for the Study of Education, p. 20.) 
 
170 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 due consideration of individual limitations. As some 
 one has said, what is over-pressure to some is only 
 intellectual vagabondage to others. In many cases 
 the overpressure has been due to school work being 
 combined with underfeeding or parental neglect, or 
 with the half-time work system,^ or with employ- 
 ment out of school hours. 
 
 But whatever the form or cause of the over- 
 pressure, the result of the strain if prolonged is 
 inevitable — feebleness of constitution, vulnerability 
 
 * An Inter-Departmental Committee on Partial Exemption from 
 School found that in England in 1906 there were over 47,000 half- 
 timers, mostly in industrial centres like Lancashire and Yorkshire. 
 This system impairs the health and growth of the young workers. As 
 soon as children become half-timers at the age of twelve they fall below 
 the standard of the health and physique of the children in full attendance 
 at school. A synopsis of returns given by Medical Officers in Lancashire 
 published by the Schoolmaster in February 1913 shovved that 'there 
 were five times as many cases of physical defect of eye, ear, throat, &c., 
 and of organic or general weakness noted by the doctor as requiring 
 medical treatment amongst half-timers as amongst other children.' 
 Other evidence to a similar effect has been collected, and there can be 
 no doubt that, in view of such facts, the half-time system should be 
 abolished. 
 
 Many children in full attendance at school are engaged out of school 
 hours in street-trading, or in working at home or in shops. A Parlia- 
 mentary Return in 1899 estimated that 178,000 children of school age 
 were employed in this way in England. These figures revealed a serious 
 state of affairs, and an Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical 
 Deterioration (consisting of representatives of the Home Office, the 
 Board of Education, and the Board of Trade) was appointed in 1904. 
 The Committee found that the number of children concerned was at least 
 200,000, and the evidence collected showed that serious intellectual, 
 physical, and moral injury was being done to the children. The Report 
 should be read. An outcome of it was the passing of the Employment 
 of Children Act, 1904, which protects in some measure children in 
 attendance at school from undue labour, and gives Local Authorities 
 power to make further by-laws to regulate the employment of children 
 in their area. 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 171 
 
 to disease, and loss of efficiency which will impair 
 the whole future life of the child. Education should 
 aim at physical and mental equilibrium, at deve- 
 loping body and mind simultaneously and in due 
 proportion. The physical and intellectual dangers 
 of over-pressure in education are even more obvious 
 if we consider them from the point of view of the 
 race. As Fouillee points out, so far as the race is 
 concerned, ' a cultivated intellect, based upon a 
 bad physique, is of little worth, since its descen- 
 dants will die out in one or two generations.' ^ By 
 over-pressure education impairs the physical and in- 
 dustrial efficiency of future generations, and lowers 
 the level of the race which it aims at elevating. 
 
 School hygiene is a thing of recent growth. We 
 might search through government reports or records 
 of educational meetings a few years ago without 
 discovering mention of it. At first it had the merely 
 negative aim of preventing disease. The State 
 considered that its care for the health of school- 
 children ended with laying down regulations to 
 prevent the spread of communicable disease, and 
 with insisting upon the suitability of the site, and 
 the proper lighting, ventilation, and sanitary con- 
 ditions of school buildings. But now school hygiene 
 has passed to the positive and more inspiring aim of 
 developing to the utmost the health and vitaHty 
 of the young through physical education, medical 
 inspection and treatment, school feeding schemes 
 ^ Education from a National Standpoint, p. 32. 
 
172 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 for necessitous children, open-air schools, and a 
 variety of special schools for physically and mentally 
 defective children. 
 
 The chief agencies for physical education are 
 play, games, and physical drill. They should form 
 a prominent element in our educational system, 
 since it is mainly by the amount of care taken during 
 the years the child is at school that the final develop- 
 ment of the body is fixed. 
 
 The significance of play, not only for physical 
 but also for intellectual, moral, and social training, 
 is a comparatively new theme in educational circles,^ 
 and much still remains to be done in utilising the 
 play instinct more effectively as an aid to the edu- 
 cation of childhood. Play is more than a mere vent 
 for surplus vitality. It is the natural expression of 
 child-life. It is nature's schooling, through which 
 the child gets the greater part of his early educa- 
 tion. It is the means by which the inner growth 
 of the child is secured independently of formal in- 
 struction. Play, moreover, is essential to the bodily 
 welfare. Through it the young gain control over 
 their muscles. It is not only the best form of 
 physical exercise but it acts as a tonic to the whole 
 nervous system, and keeps ' the springs of being 
 
 ^ This is the more surprising as the educational value of play was 
 established by Froebel in The Education of Man as early as 1826. In it 
 he says, for instance, ' We should not consider play as a frivolous thing ; 
 on the contrary, it is a thing of profound significance. . . . By means 
 of play the child expands in joy as the flower expands when it proceeds 
 from the bud ; for joy is the soul of all the actions of that age.' 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 173 
 
 ever fresh and flowing.' At every stage of educa- 
 tion we must make room to some extent for what 
 Rousseau called ' the noble art of losing time.' Tired 
 powers must be allowed to recuperate. When mental 
 exercise has fatigued one part of the brain, play 
 must call into action other areas of the brain and 
 send nerve currents to energise the tired cells. 
 
 Play and games should be the central feature 
 of the physical education of childhood to which all 
 other forms should be supplementary. As far as 
 possible the play of children should be free and spon- 
 taneous — the expression of their own nature without 
 adult restriction or guidance. It is an instinctive 
 impulse, and it should be allowed to a large extent 
 to take care of itself. This should be especially 
 the case during the first eight or nine years of a 
 child's life. Only in this way will play give scope 
 for the individuality of the child and develop his 
 sense of freedom and power. 
 
 But physical education, for its full effect, must 
 depend upon something more purposive than free play 
 and games planned and carried out by the children 
 themselves. There are many reasons for this. For 
 one thing, their play if unsupervised may, as they 
 grow older, be so strenuous as to lead to exhaustion. 
 Also, children do not know what to play, and if left 
 entirely to themselves their play as they get stronger 
 will tend to degenerate into disorganised rough and 
 tumble, pushing and teasing. They need assist- 
 ance to suggest good games, and to be shown how 
 
174 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 to play them. How often do children ask to be 
 told something to play ? Guidance and assistance 
 are specially needed by the children in the poor 
 and crowded districts of our great cities. The sur- 
 roundings, generally ugly and squalid, are not such 
 as to encourage play. Without space to play in, 
 with imaginations fed only by the impressions of 
 the streets, the joyous activity of these children 
 is strangled, they do not know how to play, and 
 unless they are helped to play, their vitality is 
 lowered, and they and those who come after them 
 become drags upon the race.^ 
 
 Organised play and games — the physical exercise par 
 excellence — should form a regular and daily part of the 
 education given in every school, and in primary schools 
 even more than in secondary. Their educational im- 
 portance is fully recognised by the Regulations of the 
 Board of Education for Primary Schools. They not 
 only give pleasure and zest, but they accomplish, in a 
 natural and unconscious fashion, most of the desired 
 ends of physical education. They teach self-reliance, 
 they increase physical and mental alertness, determina- 
 tion and quickness of judgment. * There is no better 
 
 1 Mrs. Humphry Ward, in The Play-Time of the Poor (Smith, Elder 
 & Co.), quotes words of Charles Lamb which are too true yet, despite 
 the changes that have taken place in the hundred years since they were 
 written : ' The children of the very poor have no young times. They 
 do not prattle ! The child of the slum is transformed betimes into a 
 premature reflecting person. It was never surg to ; no one evjr told 
 it a tale of the nursery. It was dragged up to live or die as it happened. 
 It had no young dreams. It broke at once into the iron realities of 
 life.' 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 175 
 
 work in the field of education than to inculcate a 
 wholesome love of games in the playground, for to do 
 this means the creation of an esprit de corps, a readiness 
 to endure fatigue, to submit to discipline, and to sub- 
 ordinate one's own powers and wishes to a common 
 end. It is for this reason that schools which can 
 raise football and cricket teams, swimming clubs, 
 and cadet corps, are wont to exhibit such excellent 
 work inside the walls of the school.' ^ 
 
 It foUows from what has been said that the work 
 of the teacher in a primary or secondary school is 
 not confined within the walls of the schoolroom. He 
 should consider it a matter of professional obligation 
 to take an interest in the games of the pupils in the 
 playground and in the playing field. He will find that 
 the pupils will welcome his assistance if given without 
 ofiicious interference, and that he will get an oppor- 
 tunity of knowing his pupils and of influencing them in 
 a way that is impossible by any other means. 
 
 Now that we realise the purpose and educational 
 value of play, which, as Montaigne said, both trains 
 the muscles and braces the mind, we see that the 
 playground is one of the most essential parts of a school 
 structure. Unfortunately primary schools are not as 
 a rule so well off in this respect as secondary schools, 
 and they ought to be. A school without an adequate 
 playground should be considered somewhat of an 
 educational deformity, and an injustice to the children 
 
 ^ Board of Education's Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers, 
 p. 76 (Cd. 2638). 
 
176 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 attending it. There are hundreds of schools, especi- 
 ally in our large cities, with totally insufficient facilities 
 for play, the excuse being the dearness of land. In 
 parts of London the cost of playground accommoda- 
 tion runs from IO5. to 14<s. per square foot. This is 
 well-nigh prohibitive, and raises questions regarding 
 our social economy that may have to be considered 
 some day. Playgrounds in the basement or on the 
 roofs of school buildings are poor substitutes for open 
 playing grounds, and we must look forward to the time 
 when cheap transport will enable workers to live away 
 from congested districts, and will develop industries 
 in villages remote from large towns. Then we may 
 have a return to something of the rustic simplicity 
 described by R. L. Stevenson : — 
 
 Happy hearts and happy faces, 
 Happy play in grassy places — 
 That was how, in ancient ages. 
 Children grew to kings and sages. 
 
 In addition to playgrounds our school system 
 requires adequate recreation grounds or playing fields 
 in which organised games may be played, and in which 
 the older pupils of the primary schools may play 
 games like football, cricket, and hockey. In the 
 planning of new towns, or the extension of present 
 ones, open spaces for games should be reserved at 
 such intervals as to be within easy reach of any given 
 district. Meanwhile, there should be an arrangement 
 made between the educational and the municipal 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 177 
 
 authority for the more systematic utiHsation of portions 
 of the pubHc parks for the games of school children. 
 This plan is already in operation with great advantage 
 in a number of our cities, but it requires fuller and 
 wider adoption. 
 
 Open spaces for play out of school hours are greatly 
 required in crowded and slum districts. If children 
 have nowhere to play but the streets, not only does their 
 health suffer but they are subject to many dangers, 
 to temptations to crime, and their play tends to 
 organise itself on the street-gang basis. Playless dis- 
 tricts are the hotbeds of juvenile delinquency. If 
 adequate means were provided for public recreation 
 in the densely populated parts of our large towns, 
 less money would be required for juvenile and adult 
 reform. Amusement is stronger than vice, and the 
 best preventive for crime in the young is plentiful 
 opportunities for play. 
 
 The case for public playgrounds was forcibly 
 stated in an address by Mr. J. A. Riis of New York. 
 He said : ' We are coming to realise that if we want 
 strong men and women as members of our social 
 system we must have strong children ; we must 
 protect them from the deadly toils of child-labour, 
 and must give them parks and playgrounds rather 
 than crowded streets. Life is a child's first right, 
 and after that freedom from work and a place to 
 play in during his tender years. There is a starthng 
 connection between our great army of tramps and 
 child-labour and parkless slums. The boy without a 
 
178 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 playground is father of the man without a job. We 
 have been manufacturing our own criminals by con- 
 signing our city children to the streets.' 
 
 School playgrounds ought to be open after school 
 hours, and a larger number of open areas should be 
 provided and equipped for out-of-door games and gym- 
 nastics. If an inventory were made of all the vacant 
 sites, waste places, and reclaimable areas in our cities, 
 it would be found that many play spaces could be 
 obtained at little public expense. Some capable and 
 sympathetic person should be placed in charge of the 
 playgrounds, to supervise the play of the children and 
 to see that they are taught organised play. There 
 would be little difficulty in getting voluntary helpers 
 to give time and service to assisting this valuable 
 work. ' There is no work in which the kindness and 
 cleverness of EngUsh ladies can be employed with more 
 good to the community and with more happiness to 
 themselves than in teaching children to play.' 
 
 The need for work of this kind is making a strong 
 and successful appeal to all who are interested in edu- 
 cation and general social conditions. Many supervised 
 play-centres have been opened in London, largely 
 through the instrumentality of Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 whom we have just quoted. The movement has spread 
 to several other towns in England, and valuable work 
 along similar lines is being done by the Play Centre 
 Association in Edinburgh. The play centres are sup- 
 ported as yet mainly by private philanthropy, but the 
 work cannot extend, as it should, until it is administered 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 179 
 
 more largely by the educational authorities. It 
 belongs to public education in the largest sense, for 
 it is a means of developing the physical and moral 
 nature of the young who may be unfortunately 
 circumstanced, and of training them to a healthy and 
 efficient manhood and womanhood. - 
 
 In addition to play and organised games, scientific 
 physical training or gymnastics is an essential part of 
 all education, both primary and secondary. Play 
 and games alone are not a guarantee of all-round 
 physical development. Parts of the physical system 
 are not reached by the haphazard training they give. 
 Physical efficiency is as much a matter of the nervous 
 system as of the muscles, and the finer neuro-muscular 
 co-ordinations are not developed by play and games 
 alone. We require, in addition to these, physical 
 training consciously and purposely directed. That is 
 the recommendation made in the Report of the Inter- 
 Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, 
 and of the Royal Commission on Physical Education 
 in Scotland, and it is given practical effect to in 
 the valuable and comprehensive syllabus of physical 
 exercises issued since then conjointly by the English 
 Board of Education and the Scotch Education 
 Department. 
 
 Physical training has many advantages which 
 should ensure it a place in the education of every 
 child. It gives a great deal of useful exercise in a 
 limited time, and it does not require a large amount 
 of space as play and games do. It is eminently useful 
 
 N 2 
 
180 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 in developing symmetry and correct proportions — 
 the Greek ideal of balance in physical development — 
 and it can be adapted to individual needs and be used 
 to remedy personal defects. It is a part of moral edu- 
 cation in as much as it requires personal effort in the 
 pursuit of a worthy ideal — namely, the perfection of 
 bodily development. 
 
 But physical training tends to be conventional 
 and lacking in spontaneity as compared with other 
 forms of exercise. Herbert Spencer rightly called it 
 * factitious exercise.' It is too much like a lesson. 
 Unless skill is shown by the teacher, it is uninteresting 
 and wearisome from the absence of amusement. It 
 involves exercise of will power and considerable mental 
 as well as physical strain, and it ranks with mathematics 
 as one of the most fatiguing branches of instruction. 
 
 Certain general conditions must be observed in 
 physical training if the best results are to be obtained. 
 The exercises should be given as far as possible out of 
 doors. But at the same time, class-room calisthenics 
 should be a recognised part of physical education. 
 A few minutes devoted now and then to breathing 
 exercises and suitable exercises of the arms, &c., will 
 remove the bad effects of cramped and constricted 
 postures in class-work. Another aim to be kept 
 constantly in view by the teacher of physical training 
 is to secure the interest of the pupils, so that they may 
 take a pleasure in doing things whose performance will 
 lead to good health. We must make the work instinct 
 with the joy of Hving. Get away from formal, artificial 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 181 
 
 kinds of movement. Utilise some of the movements 
 involved in dancing (including folk-dancing) and games 
 and, in the case of boys, in military drill. 
 
 In physical training quality is more important than 
 quantity. It is not increase of muscle merely, but of 
 vitality and good health, that is our object. Further- 
 more, health is a means and not an end. We cultivate 
 the body to make it the fit bearer and ready servant of 
 the cultured mind. ' Body for the sake of soul ' was 
 one of the guiding principles of Plato, and it should 
 never be lost sight of by those dealing with the 
 physical aspects of education. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 EDUCATION AND PUBLIC HEALTH (CONTINUED) 
 
 Britain has not lagged long behind other countries 
 in the matter of the medical inspection of school 
 children. It was taken up first of all in a tentative 
 way by some of the more progressive local educa- 
 tional authorities, as in London, Bradford, &c., but 
 it was soon found that partial effort was not enough. 
 Evidence given before various Commissions — such as 
 the Royal Commission on Physical Education in 
 Scotland (1903), the Inter-Departmental Committee 
 on Physical Deterioration (1904), and the Departmental 
 Committee on Medical Inspection (1905) — showed that 
 the school children were suffering from ill-health and 
 physical defects to an extent that had never been 
 imagined. The evidence thus brought forward led 
 Parliament to pass in 1907 the Education (Adminis- 
 trative Provisions) Act making the medical inspection 
 of school children compulsory in England and Wales. 
 Similar provision for the northern part of the King- 
 dom was made by sections 3, 4, and 6 of the Education 
 (Scotland) Act, 1908. 
 
 Medical inspection has already made great 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 183 
 
 strides during the short time these Acts have been 
 in operation. Each child is now examined by the 
 medical officer at the beginning and end of his 
 school career, and at suitable intermediate intervals. 
 Annual reports have to be sent to the Board of 
 Education by school doctors all over the country, 
 and these are suppling much valuable information 
 regarding the physical handicaps of school children. 
 The facts that have been brought out by these first 
 attempts at a systematic survey have been well-nigh 
 overwhelming. They reveal an amount of weak- 
 ness, defect, deformity, and disease of which we 
 had no idea. A Report of Sir George Newman, 
 the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education, 
 issued in 1914 states that : — 
 
 ' To speak generally, it may be stated that 
 out of the six million children registered on 
 the books of the Public Elementary Schools 
 of England and Wales about 10 per cent, suffer 
 from serious defect of vision, from 3 to 5 per 
 cent, suffer from defective hearing, 1 to 3 per cent, 
 have suppurating ears, about 10 per cent, have 
 adenoids, inflamed tonsils, or enlarged cervical 
 glands requiring surgical treatment, about 1 
 per cent, have ringworm, 1 per cent, suffer 
 from tuberculosis of readily recognisable form, 
 from 1 to 2 per cent, are affected with heart 
 disease, from 30 to 40 per cent, have un- 
 clean heads or bodies, and probably more 
 
184 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 than half the children are in need of dental 
 treatment. 
 
 * These percentages are, of course, approxi- 
 mate only ; they exclude children invalided 
 from school ; they exclude the blind, deaf, 
 crippled, mentally defective, and epileptic ; they 
 exclude all cases of infectious diseases ; and 
 they exclude also that great group of children 
 who are suffering from indefinable malnutrition, 
 debility, and low vitality, and who number 
 not less than half a million. But even these 
 underestimates, if worked out on six milHon 
 children, yield a burden of disease which sug- 
 gests not only much suffering and pain, but a 
 serious degree of absolute incapacity to profit 
 from the education which the State provides. 
 Nor must we ignore the fact that this extent of 
 child disease means an increase to the national 
 burden of sickness and disablement in adoles- 
 cence and adult Hfe.' 
 
 Evidence of this kind gives cause for anxiety, 
 and shows the need for the medical inspection of 
 school children. We know now that much that 
 was attributed before to stupidity or inattentiveness 
 or laziness on the part of the child is the result of 
 defective hearing or eyesight, or abnormal growth of 
 adenoids. Some of the defects that have been revealed 
 by inspection, if they are not attended to, become more 
 marked with the growth of the child, and may cause 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 185 
 
 further harm by spreading to other parts of the body. 
 Periodical medical inspection should discover these 
 defects at an early stage, at which they will in most 
 cases be easily cured. But medical inspection should 
 do more. It should prevent the schools from being 
 one of the chief means of spreading contagious and 
 infectious diseases. It should see that the entire 
 hygienic conditions of the schools are attended to, 
 for it is not profitable to confine children for hours 
 a day in badly ventilated and poorly lit class-rooms, 
 and then have perhaps to build special schools for 
 them when they have become anajmic and physically 
 defective. 
 
 There is no doubt that through the regular medical 
 inspection of school children we are at the begin- 
 ning of a far-reaching movement for preserving 
 the health of the people, and for removing one 
 of the great obstacles to social progress. The aim 
 of medical inspection is not the accumulation of 
 statistics, but, as pointed out in a memorandum of 
 the Board of Education, ' the physical improvement 
 and, as a natural coroUary, the mental and moral ^ 
 improvement of coming generations.' Emphasis must 
 be placed on preventive measures, and the sources 
 of disease must be attacked and eradicated. The 
 nation will not derive the full benefit of medical 
 inspection unless it is followed by action, either by 
 
 * * A weak or a sickly body is a grievous moral disability in so far 
 as by narrowiDg the range of contact with life it stunts the character.' 
 (MacCunn, The Making of Character^ p. 65.) 
 
186 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 the parents or by the State, if necessary. The Act 
 of 1907 gives the local educational authorities power 
 to provide medical treatment,^ and many of them 
 have done so in a manner deserving of all praise. 
 
 More than half of the local authorities in Eng- 
 land and a small fraction in Scotland have adopted 
 schemes of medical treatment. There is great diver- 
 sity in the schemes. The most efficient as well as 
 the most economical plan appears to be that of the 
 school clinic where professional attendance is given 
 periodically for the treatment of the eyes and teeth, of 
 ringworm and skin diseases of a contagious character, 
 and of minor ear troubles, enlarged tonsils, adenoids, &c. 
 
 In large centres a clinic can serve a group of 
 schools. In Edinburgh, for instance, a clinic has 
 been established in a central position, and in it 
 treatment is provided for defective eyesight or teeth 
 or for diseases of the skin ; and nurses follow up the 
 cases in the children's homes and see, as far as 
 possible, that the doctor's suggestions for treating 
 the various ailments are carried out. The staff 
 employed consists of the chief medical officer, three 
 assistant medical officers, four trained nurses '"to 
 assist the doctors in the general inspection work, and 
 six trained nurses employed in connection with medical 
 
 ^ It was intended by the Education (Scotland) Act of 1908 that 
 the same power would be extended to Scotland. It was found, however, 
 in the law courts five years later that the Act would not bear this inter- 
 pretation. This was at once remedied by the Education (Scotland) 
 Act, 1913, which made it legal for School Boards to incur expenditure 
 on medical treatment of school children from the school rates 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 187 
 
 treatment. In some parts of the country arrangements 
 are made with hospitals or with general practitioners 
 to supply the medical inspection and treatment. 
 
 School authorities now receive grants from the 
 Board of Education in aid of expenses incurred 
 for medical treatment. In England and Wales 
 the total grant for this purpose in the year 
 1913-14 amounted to over £80,000 and in Scotland 
 to £7,500, and in this way local educational authori- 
 ties are encouraged to take general advantage of 
 the powers conferred on them by the Act. In some 
 districts a small fee is charged for treatment ; in 
 others this is not done, as it often has the effect of 
 making the parents refuse to allow their children to 
 undergo the treatment. 
 
 The experience of the last eight years shows 
 that the compulsory medical inspection of school 
 pupils has had a considerable effect in rousing parents 
 to take a more intelligent and active interest in the 
 health of their children; but there are many dis- 
 tricts in which the effect is as yet comparatively 
 small. In some localities the repeated advice of 
 ^hool doctors and visits of school nurses fail to 
 produce any effect, and as many as 60 per cent, of 
 the children found to be iU go untreated. 
 
 Many educational and medical experts who were 
 at first opposed to State medical treatment of school 
 children are now becoming convinced of its necessity. 
 If we cannot compel the home by law to discharge 
 its responsibilities, society must supply the want 
 
188 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 rather than allow the child to suffer damaging 
 physical neglect. This is necessary in the interest 
 not only of the child but of the whole community. 
 It is preventive work of the best kind to attack diseases 
 as early as possible. The Chief Medical Officer of 
 the Board of Education says : ' Many of the diseases 
 and physical disabilities of the adolescent and the 
 adult spring directly out of the ailments of child- 
 hood. For example, malnutrition, debility, dental 
 caries, adenoids, and measles in childhood are the 
 ancestry of tuberculosis in the adult. They pre- 
 dispose to disease, and are, in a sense, both its seed 
 and soil ; and thus it is that tuberculosis in the 
 adult, which may be taken as a t3rpe and example of 
 preventable disease, is, in large part, the direct 
 development of disease in the child.' Better spend 
 thousands on medical treatment at an early stage 
 than scatter miUions later on in caring for human 
 wreckage past repair. A compulsory school medical 
 service will gradually raise the standard of health 
 of the community. It is a necessary part of a sound 
 scheme of national health insurance. 
 
 Experience has demonstrated the value of the 
 school nurse in connection with medical inspection 
 and treatment. Where large numbers have to be 
 dealt with the nurse can save the doctor's time for 
 examination and diagnosis. She can assist in the 
 routine work of inspection, and can follow up the 
 work of the doctor and see that his directions for 
 treatment are carried out. Under the supervision 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 189 
 
 of the doctor, she can attend to minor ailments and 
 injuries ; she can raise the standard of cleanliness 
 among the dirtier children ; she can detect the 
 early symptoms of infectious diseases, and in various 
 ways diminish the risks of epidemics due to 
 segregation. 
 
 An important indirect benefit of the medical in- 
 spection of school children is that parents are stimu- 
 lated to aim at a higher standard of health in the home. 
 While visiting the homes the nurse can consult with 
 parents concerning the medical treatment the children 
 should have, and she may get opportunities of giving 
 suggestions, if asked to do so, regarding the home care 
 of children and home hygiene in general. The school 
 nurse is thus a valuable intermediary between the 
 doctor and the school on the one hand, and the school 
 and the home on the other. She is worth many 
 attendance officers, and should without further delay 
 take the place of that functionary in our educational 
 system. 
 
 The coming of the school doctor and school nurse 
 is one of the far-reaching developments of modern 
 education. Their appearance in the educational field 
 marks the beginning of a movement for the im- 
 provement of pubhc health through the agency of 
 the school. Their aim till now has been the detection 
 and cure of disease ; their next aim will be the pre- 
 vention of disease ; and the final and greatest aim of 
 all will be the raising, through the school, of the 
 standard of health and efficiency of the whole race. 
 
190 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 At every suitable opportunity during a child's 
 school career he should be taught how to live in a 
 healthful manner ; and a simple course of instruction 
 in the laws of health should be given to every child 
 during at least his last year or two at school.^ This 
 health side of education is of such importance that 
 other parts of the curriculum must be jettisoned, if 
 necessary, to make room for it. The instruction should 
 deal with matters connected with the actual lives of 
 the children, and not with matters beyond their range. 
 The teaching of physiology and anatomy is uninterest- 
 ing to children at the elementary school stage, and is 
 pedagogically unsound. Attention should be given to 
 health rather than to disease. We should teach the 
 general facts and principles relating to hygienic living, 
 and we should do this rather by precept and the 
 inculcation of healthful habits than by reasoned ex- 
 planations of the rules laid down. There is no reason, 
 for instance, apart from insufficient lavatory accom- 
 modation, why we should not teach the care of the teeth 
 by requiring each child to have his own numbered 
 tooth brush and to use it at least once a day in school 
 hours. In this way the habit of teeth-cleaning would 
 be formed. 
 
 Health teaching should naturally consist of two 
 factors: (1) personal hygiene, dealing with all that 
 pertains to preserving a sound and effective body, 
 
 ^ There is a good Outline Scheme for Hygiene and Temperance 
 Teaching in the Board of Education's Suggestions for the Consideration 
 of Teachers. (Cd. 2638. His Majesty's Stationery Office.) 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 191 
 
 such as food, rest and sleep, exercise, care of the 
 teeth, cleanliness, clothing ; and (2) pubhc hygiene, 
 deaHng with everything relating to the maintenance 
 of surroundings favourable to the health of the 
 community, such as fresh air, light, sanitation, and 
 public efforts to stamp out communicable forms of 
 disease. 
 
 All these things should be taught in a non-tech- 
 nical, practical, and habit-forming way. In dealing 
 with diet we should give the children some idea of the 
 fight by public authorities for pure milk and unadulter- 
 ated foods. In dealing with infection we should show 
 them the nature and meaning of the war against 
 tuberculosis. Simple ambulance lessons might be 
 given. Girls should get instruction in the care of young 
 children and the care of the sick. Lessons on temper- 
 ance should be given to the older pupils, but sensational 
 details and exciting descriptions of the unhappy effects 
 of intemperance on society, or of the pathological 
 effects on the individual, are more likely to do harm 
 than good. The lessons rather should deal with the 
 social and economic evils resulting from drunkenness, 
 and the beneficial effects of temperance on personal 
 health, happiness, and working power. 
 
 As we have said, the school is only awakening now 
 to its responsibility in regard to the health of the 
 children, and for the success of the movement that has 
 begun it is necessary that teachers should get, as a 
 part of their professional training, a broad and thorough 
 preparation in all that pertains to the public health. 
 
192 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 The heaviest toll levied on human life by any 
 one disease is that exacted by tuberculosis. England 
 is losing over 35,000 and Scotland over 5000 people 
 a year by phthisis alone, and investigation has found 
 that from 25 to 35 per cent, of the children of these 
 families are infected, and will succumb to the disease 
 unless special precautions are taken. The chief pre- 
 ventative is fresh air. The report of the Departmental 
 Committee on Tuberculosis, published in 1913, stated 
 that ' There is urgent need for a wide application of 
 the principle of open-air treatment and education by 
 means of open-air schools (day and residential), 
 open-air classes, &c.' By early open-air treatment 
 in the schools and in the homes there is no reason 
 why this dread disease should not in course of 
 time be reduced to narrow limits, if^ not entirely 
 eradicated. 
 
 Part of the expense of open-air schools might in 
 some cases be defrayed from the grant in aid of buildings 
 for sanatorium purposes under the National Insurance 
 Act. It is more important in the case of tuberculosis 
 than probably any other disease that public funds 
 should be expended in early prevention rather than 
 later amelioration. But open-air schools or classes 
 would be a benefit not only to the tuberculous, but 
 to the anaemic, the convalescent, and the delicate 
 child, and even to the child of ordinary physique 
 whose parents believe in purer air and fuller sun- 
 Hght than are to be found in the ordinary school- 
 room. 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 193 
 
 The typical open-air school is a collection of unpre- 
 tentious sheds and verandas within easy reach from 
 a town, and yet far enough removed from it to be 
 among green fields and pine woods. Here the sickly 
 children are oxygenated and ozoned back to health, 
 while they are all the time making good progress in 
 their studies. A child in the open air is more alert and 
 capable of greater mental effort than if confined in 
 an ordinary class-room. The school work and school 
 hours are arranged on more rational lines than in an 
 ordinary school. Nature- work is more emphasised 
 and there are more frequent breaks for breathing exer- 
 cises, singing, physical exercises, and games. After 
 dinner the children rest and sleep in the open air for 
 about two hours in well-blanketed deck-chairs, and 
 then after a period of play there are more lessons for, 
 it may be, an hour and a half or two hours. The 
 afternoon instruction is often devoted to nature alone, 
 and the lessons are given in the woods and fields 
 or in the garden. The children can continue the out- 
 door lessons in cold weather or in winter if they are 
 well protected by warm clothing, caps, and mittens, 
 and have the lower part of the body encased in a sort 
 of sleeping bag. 
 
 The movement in favour of open-air schools is 
 spreading all over the country, and progressive 
 educational authorities everywhere are taking part 
 in it. They see that it is their duty to consider 
 the health as well as the education of every child 
 under their charge. The movement is incidentally 
 
194 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 modifying our ideas regarding the school curriculum, 
 and is influencing in a marked degree the construc- 
 tion of ordinary schools, so that all pupils may in 
 future enjoy the advantages of light and air hitherto 
 reserved for the tuberculous. It is impossible to 
 make provision for aU school children in open-air 
 schools, but the adoption of open-air principles in 
 the ordinary school would result in the prevention 
 of much disease and suffering. The class-rooms 
 in modern school buildings should be placed, as far 
 as possible, to face the sun, and should open into a 
 veranda by means of sliding glass partitions. Cer- 
 tainly no new school building should be erected 
 without at least one open-air class-room for weakly 
 children. 
 
 Open-air schools have passed beyond the experi 
 mental stage. There is no doubt they are saving 
 the lives of many children, besides enabling others 
 of poor physique and unfortunate heredity to over- 
 come their physical handicap, so far as that is pos- 
 sible, and at the same time to hold their own in 
 intellectual training. A great improvement to health 
 is secured in these schools even if the children go 
 home every night and for the week-ends, but much 
 better results are secured when the children reside 
 entirely in the schools. Experience has shown that 
 three months in a residential open-air school do 
 more good than double that period in a day open-air 
 school. The residential open-air school is hkely 
 to be the type of the future. It need not be 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 195 
 
 expensive,^ but in any case we should estimate the 
 cost of such schools not only in pounds sterling but 
 also in terms of the life, health, and increased efficiency 
 secured to the nation by means of them. 
 
 * The Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech in 1914 
 stated that it was the intention of the Government to give a speoial 
 grant for open-air schools. 
 
 o 2 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 EDUCATION AND PUBLIC HEALTH (CONTINUED) 
 
 One of the important means of influencing public 
 health consists in the proper nutrition of the young. 
 Poor food, badly cooked food, and deficient food 
 seriously interfere with the mental and physical 
 growth of children.^ As a result of the compulsory 
 medical inspection of children we are now in posses- 
 sion of fairly accurate information regarding the 
 extent to which malnutrition prevails, and valu- 
 able evidence on the point is contained in the Reports 
 of the various Commissions referred to in the pre- 
 ceding chapter. It is startling to be told in these 
 Reports that from seven to ten per cent, of school 
 children are regularly underfed, and that the per- 
 centage rises to a serious extent in poorer districts. 
 In London at least 60,000 of the children attending 
 the public elementary schools were found prior to 
 1906 to be badly nourished, and similar serious con- 
 ditions have been shown to exist in other towns, such 
 as Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee. 
 
 1 See chapter' vii. of The Chiidreny by Professor Darroch. (London ; 
 T. 0. & E. C. Jack.) 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 197 
 
 Underfeeding and malnutrition are not neces- 
 sarily accounted for by the poverty of the parents, 
 although that is by far the most frequent cause. 
 There are many other causes at work — such as the 
 daily absence of the mother from home when she 
 is acting as a wage-earner, or the wilful neglect of 
 parents and the waste of family means in drink, 
 or the ignorance of parents in regard to the most 
 desirable forms of food for children. Frequently 
 the food given is non-nutritious, and often it is posi- 
 tively injurious. Proteids and fats should form 
 a larger proportion of the diet of children than of 
 adults. How many parents are ignorant of that, 
 and of the foods that best supply the necessary 
 materials ? Malnutrition is undoubtedly one of the 
 most potent causes of defective physique. When 
 we consider the amount of improper feeding of 
 children that prevails, both as to kind and quantity, 
 we need not be surprised at the prevalence of rickets 
 in many districts and of bad teeth everywhere. 
 
 Children who day after day are insufficiently or 
 improperly fed suffer physically, intellectually, and 
 even morally. An American author summarises the 
 effects of underfeeding and other harmful conditions as 
 follows : ' It has been shown over and over again that 
 the children of the poor are behind better favoured 
 children in physical development ^ in every way, 
 
 ^ The Medical Oflficer of Bradford Education Committee found 
 that in the poor class schools in Bradford the children were less in height 
 by I to 2| inches, and in weight f to 6^- lb., as compared with children 
 of the same age in the better class eohools. 
 
198 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 often as much as two or three years. They are shorter 
 in stature, Hghter in weight, narrower of chest, and 
 feebler of grip. Moreover, the evils do not end with 
 school life ; for the constitution is so enfeebled that 
 in after years the results are extremely severe. The 
 victims of poverty in childhood fall an easy prey to 
 disease ; they are soon exhausted, and become unfitted 
 early in Hfe for the work of the world. Much of our 
 pauperism and crime may be traced back to this evil 
 of underfeeding in childhood.'^ Children lacking 
 proper food do not possess the physical capacity to 
 profit by the education they receive,^ and the public 
 money spent on their instruction is to a considerable 
 extent wasted. 
 
 But the evil does not end there. Starved in 
 body and mind, these unfortunate children are only 
 too likely to swell the ranks of those who form a 
 large part of our social problem and clog the wheels 
 of social progress. Of all the evidence given before the 
 Committee on Physical Deterioration, none was more 
 striking than the statement by Dr. Eichholz, one of the 
 Medical Officers of the Board of Education : ' I hold 
 a very firm opinion which is shared by medical men, 
 members of Education Committees, managers, teachers 
 and others conversant with the condition of school 
 children, that defective nutrition lies at the base 
 of all forms of child degeneracy ; that is to say, if 
 
 * John Spargo, How Foreign Municipalities feed their Children. 
 
 * Sir George Newman states that the percentage of mentally dull 
 children among the underfed is considerably larger than among children 
 generally. 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 199 
 
 we take steps to ensure the proper, adequate feeding 
 of children the evil will rapidly cease.' 
 
 The pressing importance of these matters is now 
 fairly well understood, and various methods have 
 been adopted to deal with them. A large number of 
 towns have attempted through voluntary agencies 
 to provide for the underfed children by supplying 
 midday meals, either free or at a nominal cost. But 
 charity, however admirable its spirit, always tends 
 to have a pauperising and humiliating influence. 
 Moreover, sporadic local efforts may deal with transi- 
 tory needs, but they are quite inadequate to cope 
 with so persistent and widespread an evil. No 
 individual efforts can solve what is really a national 
 problem. Probably not more than half the total 
 number of children who need food have been reached 
 by such efforts. Systematic provision must be made 
 by law for the feeding of hungry children. Nothing 
 but a national scheme by which every child shall 
 receive, without humiliating conditions, all that is 
 necessary for its physical as well as its intellectual 
 development can meet the wants of the case.^ 
 
 It was considerations such as these that led to the 
 
 ^ Thirty years ago a proposal to feed the hungry children in the 
 public elementary schools would have been derided, and now such 
 a proposal has the support of social workers and politicians of all 
 parties and in ail countries. In our own country it was a Liberal 
 Government that passed the Acts of 1906 and 1908. The Social Reform 
 Committee of the Unionist Party has approved of these measures, 
 and has recommended that the powers conferred on local authorities 
 of dealing with feeding, &c., be made compulsory, not optional. 
 Labour and Trade Unionist Members of Parliament have year after 
 year at their annual congresses made similar proposals. 
 
200 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 passing of the Education (Provision of Meals) Act in 
 1907. This Act empowers local educational authorities 
 in England and Wales to make arrangements for the 
 feeding of necessitous children, and to co-operate for 
 this purpose with any voluntary committee already 
 in existence. The Act is very careful and cautious 
 in its procedure. Only in cases where no such com- 
 mittee exists and where other funds are not available, 
 or are insufficient for the purpose, is a local authority 
 empowered to incur the expense of providing the 
 necessary food. The Local Authority must prove 
 to the Board of Education that only those children 
 are being fed who are unable, through lack of food, to 
 take full advantage of the education provided for them. 
 Power is given to recover the cost of the meals from 
 the parents, unless it has been ascertained, after full 
 inquiry, that a parent is unable to pay the necessary 
 sum through no fault of his own. The cost of the 
 provision of meals under the Act must never exceed 
 the produce of a halfpenny in the pound on local rates. 
 More liberal provision was made for the feeding of 
 necessitous children in Scotland by Sections 3, 6, and 
 16 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1908. The Act 
 gave the School Boards power to provide meals, if they 
 thought it necessary, during holidays and on other 
 days on which the school was not open for ordinary 
 instruction, for poor children generally return to school 
 physically the worse for a holiday ; it did not place a 
 limit on the expenditure out of the rates for the pro- 
 vision of meals ; and it gave the Education Depart- 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 201 
 
 ment unlimited powers of giving financial aid. Indeed, 
 at the present time the Department is giving a grant 
 equal to not more than one-half of the net expenditure 
 incurred by any School Board in providing meals 
 to necessitous children attending any school within 
 its district. Immediately after the great European 
 War broke out in August 1914 Parliament passed 
 amending Acts giving practically identical powers 
 to the above to England, Wales, and Ireland. 
 
 School feeding has only been in force in this 
 country for eight or nine years, and it is too soon 
 yet to tell what its full effects, beyond relieving 
 many cases of distress, may be. Careful tests applied 
 in Bradford and other places have shown that there 
 has been a steady improvement in the health and 
 physique of the children concerned. Incidentally it 
 is inculcating a wiser choice of food in the homes, 
 and it is training the children to enjoy varied, 
 nutritious, and wholesome food. There is in this 
 the making of a strong race in the future, for the 
 children are getting not only their own standard of 
 healthy living raised, but they will be likely to take 
 care that their children in turn get good wholesome 
 food. Also, where the system is properly organised, 
 and the meals are served under the supervision of 
 the teachers, the children have an opportunity of 
 learning habits of tidiness, mannerliness, courtesy, 
 and unselfishness. 
 
 Two suggestions only need be made. In the first 
 place all the children, whether poor or not, should be 
 
202 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 encouraged to eat their midday meal together, and the 
 dining system should be regarded as a part of the 
 school curriculum. There is power for this under 
 the Acts. In no way should any distinction be 
 visible between the children of paying and non- 
 pajring parents. The other suggestion is that adop- 
 tion of the power to provide meals in necessitous 
 cases should be made compulsory, not permissive ; 
 for it is really a part, and an important part, of the 
 whole system of physical education. 
 
 The Board of Education has done meanwhile all 
 that it can, by issuing circulars to local educational 
 authorities caUing their attention to their powers in 
 connection with the provision of meals, and to the 
 great advantage that might accrue by exercising them. 
 But one-third of the authorities have as yet done 
 absolutely nothing in the matter. As the Unionist 
 Social Reform Committee on Education very per- 
 tinently asks : * Why should a necessitous child 
 be fed in one district and not in another ? The 
 Committee, seeing no justification for the existing 
 diversity of treatment, recommend that the adop- 
 tion of the Act should be made compulsory. It is 
 important, however, that the meals should not be 
 used as a grant-in-aid of poverty and low-paid labour. 
 The meals should be regarded as an integral part of 
 school medical treatment. The administration should 
 be a section of the school medical officer's department, 
 not an annexe of the office of the Board of Guardians.' ^ 
 * The Schools and Social Reform, p. 7. 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 203 
 
 It is often objected against legislation of the 
 kind we have been referring to that it runs the risk 
 of undermining parental responsibility, and may lead 
 to much abuse on the part of careless or wicked 
 parents. There are parents who will take advan- 
 tage of any legislation. In their case the feeling 
 of parental responsibility is already insignificant, 
 and the only course is to prosecute them rigorously 
 under the Education Act of 1906 and the Children 
 Act of 1908. It is a dangerous thing to weaken 
 parental responsibility, but it is stiU more dangerous 
 to the State to neglect the well-being of the children. 
 It is wise to see first that the hungry children are 
 fed, and then, after due investigation, to take mea- 
 sures to enforce responsibility upon the parents. 
 John Stuart Mill in his book on ' Liberty ' said as long 
 ago as 1859 : ' It still remains unrecognised that to 
 bring a child into existence without a fair prospect 
 of being able, not only to provide food for its body, 
 but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral 
 crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and 
 against society ; and that if the parent does not 
 fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, 
 at the charge, so far as possible, of the parent.' 
 
 Logic as well as humanitarian ideals make it 
 necessary that the State should protect neglected 
 school children. Since the State has gone so far 
 in providing education for the children, fortunate 
 and unfortunate alike, it must see that they get the 
 necessary physical care and nourishment to enable 
 
204 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 them to derive benefit from the education tenished 
 at so much pubHc expense. We must in fairness 
 recognise that the complex social and industrial 
 conditions of to-day have weakened the influence 
 of the home, and have made it more difficult for 
 parents to meet their responsibilities. This has made 
 a certain amount of State paternalism a modem 
 necessity. Free education, free medical advice and 
 treatment, and a certain measure of free feeding 
 were bound to come. But in taking care that every 
 child gets an opportunity of leading a healthy and 
 useful Hfe, nothing must be done to relieve the parent, 
 who is able, but may be unwilling, from bearing his 
 due share of the general burden. 
 
 One of the latest additions to our educational 
 system is the School for Mothers.^ Many mothers 
 are hopelessly ignorant regarding matters relating 
 to the laws of health and the feeding and care of 
 babies. As a consequence there is a great amount 
 of mortality and of permanent injury to health, 
 especially during the first year or two of life.^ This 
 
 ^ The first school for mothers seems to have been started at Ghent 
 in 1902. Such schools are, however, not quite new in this country. 
 From the earliest days of kindergartens there have been in connection 
 with them classes or clubs for mothers in which mothers have, by means 
 of informal talks, received instruction in matters connected with the 
 welfare of children. The object of these clubs, however, has been to 
 influence the ideas of the home rather than to give definite health 
 instruction. 
 
 2 In the year 1913 there were born in Scotland 121,006 children, 
 of whom 3217 died within the first week, 5009 within the first month, 
 9,559 within the first six months, and 13,163, or 11 per cent, altogether, 
 in the first twelve months. When we consider that every death of a 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 205 
 
 is a great loss to the nation, and a serious hindrance 
 to the progress of society. It is largely due, as we 
 have said, to the defective education of the mothers. 
 Consequently the Board of Education, in July 1914, 
 agreed to recognise schools for mothers as part of 
 the educational equipment of the country, and to 
 pay to the managers of such schools grants up to 
 fifty per cent, of their approved expenditure. 
 
 In these schools instruction is given to mothers 
 before and after the birth of the child in the care and 
 management of infants and little children. The work 
 centres round infant consultations with a doctor in 
 attendance, and the mothers bring their babies to 
 be weighed, and receive advice as to the general 
 care and nurture of the little ones. Following on 
 this, volunteer workers with practical experience of 
 baby-rearing visit the homes of the mothers, and 
 advise and help them in carrying out the directions 
 they have received. To co-ordinate the work of 
 these visitors, and keep it on suitable Hnes, they 
 generally act along with a skilled woman who has 
 been trained for this kind of work. The mothers 
 also attend class meetings at which simple instruc- 
 tion is given in mother-craft, home-nursing, and 
 the like. In order to make the teaching as useful 
 and practical as possible, it is required that the work 
 of these schools should be co-ordinated with that 
 
 ohild means an absolute loss of potential capital and productive power, 
 we see the appalling loss that such a high death-rate amongst children 
 involves to the nation. 
 
206 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 of baby clinics and infant dispensaries, and of day 
 nurseries and nursery schools, if there are such in the 
 district. 
 
 The problem confronting the schools for mothers 
 and all those other institutions is to save the 
 twenty or thirty per cent, of children that die in 
 early years, to avoid tuberculosis, rickets, and the 
 like, that cause so large a part of the diseases of 
 later life. If they do these things they will be worth 
 aU the money and labour spent on them, and they 
 wiU help to rear a healthier manhood and woman- 
 hood in the nation. Nevertheless, they point to 
 a defect in our educational system. It is rather 
 late in the day to be giving instruction when women 
 are either mothers or expectant mothers. The proper 
 time for this is in continuation classes and before 
 marriage. 
 
 Increased attention by school authorities to the 
 health of the young in the ways we have indicated 
 in these chapters is of prime importance for the 
 progress of society. The average length of life is 
 now probably double what it was in this country 
 a century ago. Think what this means to the 
 working power and happiness of the nation. By 
 better health-teaching and physical training of our 
 immense school population we could still further 
 increase the average span of life, we could check 
 contagious disease, and we could diminish the amount 
 of sickness, suffering, and failure in the world. The 
 
EDUCATION AND HEALTH 20r 
 
 school must help to create still higher ideals of 
 health and physical efficiency. Every individual 
 is a temporary depository of a part of the force of 
 the race, and it should be an aim of education to pre- 
 serve this force in its most efficient form for the 
 good of the individual and of society. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVE CHILDREN 
 
 Even after the best arrangements have been made 
 in the ordinary public schools for the intellectual 
 and physical education of the young, there remains 
 an unfortunate residuum for the education of which 
 special measures have to be provided. It consists 
 of the physically or mentally deteriorate, the cripple, 
 the blind, the mute, the feeble-minded, and the epi- 
 leptic. These have always been regarded with pity, 
 but the care of them has been left hitherto to 
 charity. The State made no provision for its un- 
 fortunate wards beyond food, clothing, and shelter 
 through the Poor Law authorities. It acknowledged 
 no responsibility for their training beyond what 
 the ordinary school provided, and, as most of these 
 children were unfit for such instruction, the State 
 did nothing to enable them to become useful and 
 self-supporting members of society. They were re- 
 garded as a burden on society and an obstacle to 
 social progress. 
 
 It is only during the last quarter of a century 
 that the care and treatment of defectives have been 
 
EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 209 
 
 regarded as a function of education, and the provi- 
 sion of suitable schools for them a necessary part 
 of our national system of education. The first defec- 
 tives to be provided for were the bUnd and deaf- 
 mute children. Their education was made compulsory 
 in England in 1893, and in Scotland two years 
 earlier. The Education Act of 1906 made the care 
 and training of defective children a definite duty 
 of the public educational authorities. Also, one 
 of the results of the medical inspection introduced 
 by that Act has been to sift out the children more 
 thoroughly, and to discover which of them need 
 special care and education. Timely medical diagnosis 
 and remedial treatment have already reclaimed 
 many, and prevented further deterioration in others. 
 
 Defective children may conveniently for our purpose 
 be divided into three classes : the physically defective, 
 the mentally defective, and the morally defective. 
 This classification is not by any means rigidly accurate, 
 for these various forms of deficiency are to some extent 
 interdependent. Mental and moral deficiencies may 
 have a physical cause. Imperfect development of 
 the brain and impairment of the nervous system 
 produce mental defects, but nevertheless they are 
 fundamentally physical defects. Again, moral defects 
 are often due to mental deficiencies — lack of judg- 
 ment, weak perception, and inability to grasp the 
 necessary consequences of actions — aU of which may 
 have ethical imphcations. 
 
 The efforts now being made to train and educate 
 
210 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 these defective children are leading to important 
 results. They are enabling many of the unfortunate 
 children to become, to a greater or less extent, useful 
 and efficient citizens instead of be' ng permanent burdens 
 upon their friends or the community, and they are 
 protecting society from some who, untra-ned and uncon- 
 trolled, would grow up to be crimiaals or wastrels. 
 ' In industrial processes it has become the commercial 
 ideal that there shall be no residue left that would 
 go to waste ; the secondary product or by-product 
 now often assumes greater importance even than the 
 primary. Likewise, the apparently subnormal child 
 may be developed into a useful by-product, and among 
 the subnormal children there may be found such as 
 will become leaders if developed in the right direction. 
 And if it were only that the injurious residues are 
 rendered harmless, as is done in factories with the 
 greatest care, and as ought to be done in our educational 
 institutions with equal care, society will be saved an 
 enormous amount of damage. When once we will 
 apply the same painstaking, minute, and completely 
 organised methods which are followed in commerce 
 and industry to the process of moulding the human 
 material, we shall eliminate from society the greater 
 part of those injurious elements which now threaten 
 its health and even existence.' ^ 
 
 In addition to the open-air schools dealt with 
 in a preceding chapter, there are now in nearly all 
 
 ' M. P. E. Groszmann, Proceedings of the Department of Superin- 
 tendence, p. 22 of Report of the National Education Association for 1910, 
 
EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 211 
 
 large centres Special Schools ^ for physically defective 
 children — for the deformed, for cripples, for children 
 suffering from diseases of the bones or joints, from heart 
 disease, from epilepsy — indeed from anything that 
 unfits them from mixing with the healthy children 
 in ordinary schools. They are collected in ambulances 
 and omnibuses and driven to school in the morning 
 and taken home again in the afternoon. A midday 
 meal is provided, for which a small sum is charged, but 
 in very necessitous cases no charge is made. These 
 children are so improved in body and educated and 
 trained in mind in the special school, that when they 
 grow up they are able, in the majority of cases, J to 
 be either wholly or partially seK-supporting ; but 
 others, probably about thirty per cent., either do not 
 live or are unable to support themselves. 
 
 The first schools for physical defectives were, as we 
 have already said, the so-called asylums for the blind 
 and the deaf. The bhnd are no longer considered 
 helpless dependents on eleemosynary aid. They are 
 now educated and trained for economic pursuits like 
 other children. It is cheaper to educate them for ten 
 or twelve years than to keep them for life in charitable 
 institutions, as used to be the case. The feeling of 
 helplessness and almost total dependence upon others 
 was the cause of more unhappiness to them than even 
 the lifelong darkness to which they were condemned. 
 
 In some cases, especially in other countries such 
 
 * The term ' School for Defectives ' is often used, but it is obviously 
 hftrsb and objectionable. 
 
 p 2 
 
212 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 as the United States and Germany, the bUnd are 
 educated in the ordinary schools alongside seeing 
 children. They are taught to read and write and 
 count by the Braille method, and with a little more 
 individual attention do the same lessons as the see- 
 ing pupils. But the dangers to which, on account of 
 their blindness, they are exposed on the way to and 
 from school and in the playground, and other diffi- 
 culties of an educational kind, render it advisable upon 
 the whole that the blind should be taught in special 
 institutions. Methods suitable to their bhndness are 
 adopted, and a large amount of handwork with a view 
 to some particular industrial pursuit is included in 
 the course of instruction. Suitable outlets for the 
 bhnd are foimd to be piano-tuning and the teaching 
 of music, and some pupils are trained for these occupa- 
 tions. Unfortunately many of the caUings formerly 
 open to the blind are being crowded out by modern 
 inventions and the appHcation of machinery to in- 
 dustry. As the pressure upon the blind increases 
 we must give them fuller and richer education, and 
 more highly trained intelligence to enable them to 
 cope with modern conditions. The most highly gifted 
 and energetic among them should have opportunities 
 for preparing for suitable forms of professional Hfe.^ 
 
 With the deaf-and-dumb, also, it is becoming 
 increasingly difficult to earn a Hving. The remedy 
 
 * New York State has passed a law that any blind student attending 
 a university, college, or technical institution, other than a school 
 for the blind, should have a reader provided for him at a salary not 
 exceeding £60 per annum. 
 
EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 213 
 
 is to increase their intellectual training and to give 
 them better vocational training. As in the case of 
 the bHnd, the best service we can do them is to give 
 them an education higher, more practical, and more 
 vocational than the ordinary day school provides, and 
 more general than the institutions in which they are 
 trained now give them . There should be an opportunity 
 provided for the most gifted amongst them to receive a 
 higher education in an institution in this country, like 
 the Gallaudet College for the Deaf in the United States. 
 
 In the popular mind there is no distinction between 
 the deaf and the deaf-and-dumb. As a matter of 
 fact, comparatively few of the deaf are dumb — that is, 
 unable to articulate. The organs of speech are intact 
 in almost every case, but the child born deaf does 
 not hear what is said to him, and consequently does 
 not learn to speak by imitation of sound. If the 
 organs are not exercised the muscles atrophy. As soon 
 as parents learn that their child is deaf they should 
 speak to him as to a hearing child, they should train 
 him perse veringly to move his lips in imitation of 
 theirs, and persistence will lead, unless there is an 
 organic defect, to the production of a natural voice. 
 It may be too late, and in any case it will be harder, 
 to do this when the child goes to school. 
 
 At school the child should be taught, as far as 
 possible, to speak and interpret speech by the oral 
 method and not by finger signs. This requires infinite 
 patience, especially on the part of the teacher, but 
 it is worth while. In watching the facial movements 
 
214 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 of the speaker the child will learn to lip-read, to 
 understand what the speaker is saying, and this will 
 be an invaluable asset to him in ordinary life. The 
 cure for poor lip-reading is more lip-reading, not 
 recourse to signs or written language. The children 
 have to be trained to the habit of concentration. 
 Exaggerated motions of the lips and facial muscles 
 should not be indulged in by the teacher, for they 
 mislead the child as to the nature of the muscular 
 movements necessary to produce certain sounds. 
 Distinct speech at ordinary rate without mouthing 
 is what the child needs. All the while, the child should 
 be trained to imitate the movements and reproduce the 
 sounds. With persistent practice from early years there 
 is no reason why the majority of deaf children should 
 not be able to understand what is said to them, and 
 should not be understood by those who hear them. 
 
 The mentally defective range from the merely 
 backward to the hopelessly imbecile. Recent investi- 
 gations show that there is a large number, possibly eight 
 or ten per cent.,^ of dull and backward children who 
 
 * Galton's inquiries gave 7*7 per cent, as the j)roportion of children 
 below the average in mental capacity ; other investigators have 
 placed it as high as 12-G. A difficulty has been to arrive at a generally 
 accepted standard of normality and subnormality by which we can 
 recognise what constitutes a normal or subnormal chUd. The difficulty 
 goes fartVier back, for we have no universally accepted standardised 
 tests of mental capacity' by which a child may be definitely classified as 
 normal or subnormal. Binet in France, and Lay and Meumann in 
 Germany have done much in devising suitable tests and establishing 
 norms, but the results of their experiments are not yet in the finished 
 orm suitable for general use. 
 
EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 215 
 
 all through their school course are behind the pupils 
 of their own age in the school. Their presence in 
 a class impedes the effectiveness of the teaching, 
 and hampers the progress of the children of normal 
 mentality. The instruction is not suited to them, 
 year by year they fall farther behind those of like 
 age, they never finish even an elementary education, 
 and in consequence they leave school ill prepared for 
 the duties of life. 
 
 The extent and causes of this backwardness are 
 engaging the attention of many educators in order to 
 find the suitable remedies for it. Probably in only a 
 minority of cases is mental inferiority due to heredity. 
 In many cases the backwardness has its origin in 
 unfavourable environment, and the habitual lack of 
 sufficient air, food, or sleep. The brain is sound, but 
 it is not getting a chance. In still a larger number 
 of cases the backwardness springs solely from physical 
 conditions — defects of eyesight or hearing, adenoids 
 or enlarged tonsils producing imperfect breathing, 
 defective teeth causing malnutrition, heart ailments, 
 anaemic and bad nervous conditions. The mind 
 works through the physical system, and if this is en- 
 feebled the vigour and efficiency of the mental powers 
 also suffer. 
 
 Our public elementary school system will do an in- 
 justice to these backward children if it simply tries to 
 make them normal by treating them like other children. 
 They should be taught as far as possible in a small 
 ungraded class in which they can get individual 
 
216 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 attention from a teacher of great skill and experience, 
 and can follow a curriculum specially suited to each 
 case. In this way only can we make the most of the 
 personahty and aptitudes of these children. Some may 
 after a time be able to join the work of the regular 
 classes. Those who go to work before they are able 
 to complete the elementary school course should be 
 required to give part-time attendance at continuation 
 classes until they are sixteen or seventeen years of age. 
 This will make a vast difference in the efficiency of 
 their lives. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVE CHILDREN (CONTINUED) 
 
 Next we come to the mentally defective children 
 proper — those whose brain development is arrested 
 at a certain stage before or after birth. The care 
 and control of these have been a matter of great con- 
 cern to all interested in social welfare. If neglected, 
 they form a large percentage of our pauper, delin- 
 quent, and criminal classes. It has been stated on 
 good authority that they are increasing relatively 
 to the normal members of our population. It was 
 estimated by the Medical Department of the Board 
 of Education that in 1913 there were about 36,000 
 mentally deficient children in England, one-third 
 of whom were under no control and were receiving 
 no training. Many of these were growing up to be 
 criminals or ne'er-do-wells, to become a permanent 
 burden upon the community, and to end their days in 
 gaols, workhouses, and asylums. This state of affairs 
 if allowed to continue would be a menace to our civil- 
 isation and a hindrance to social progress. 
 
 But our legislators are now fully alive to the 
 need of dealing with the problems connected with 
 
218 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 mentally defective children. Within recent years 
 Parliament has passed the Elementary Education 
 (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act in 1899, the 
 Defective Children Act in 1906, the Mental Deficiency 
 Act in 1913,^ and the Elementary Education 
 (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act, 1914. 
 
 Section 1 of the 1913 Act classifies the mentally 
 defective into — 
 
 (a) Idiots ; that is to say, persons so deeply 
 
 defective in mind from birth, or from an 
 early age, as to be unable to guard them- 
 selves against common physical dangers. 
 
 (b) Imbeciles ; that is to say, persons in whose 
 
 case there exists from birth, or from an 
 early age, mental defectiveness not amount- 
 ing to idiocy, yet so pronounced that 
 they are incapable of managing themselves 
 or their affairs, or, in the case of children, 
 of being taught to do so. 
 
 (c) Feeble-minded persons ; that is to say, per- 
 
 sons in whose case there exists from birth, 
 or from an early age, mental defective- 
 ness not amounting to imbecihty, yet so 
 pronounced that they require care, super- 
 vision, and control for their own protection 
 or for the protection of others, or that, 
 in the case of children, they appear to be 
 
 * A similar Bill applicable to Scotland was passed in the same year 
 — namely, the Mental Deficiency and Lunacy (Scotland) Act, 1913. 
 
EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 219 
 
 permanently incapable of receiving proper 
 benefit from the instruction in ordinary 
 schools. 
 (d) Moral imbeciles ; that is to say, persons 
 who from an early age display some per- 
 manent mental defect with strong vicious 
 or criminal propensities on which punishment 
 has had little or no deterrent effect. 
 
 The education of all these was considered hope- 
 less before the great pioneer work done by Edouard 
 Seguin. His volume on ' The Moral Treatment, 
 Hygiene, and Education of Idiots and other backward 
 Children,' published in 1846, is probably the greatest 
 work ever written on the subject. By idiots in the title 
 of his book he means those whom we would now call 
 feeble-minded. He said that by his methods * Idiots 
 have been improved, educated, and even cured ; not 
 one in a thousand has been entirely refractory to 
 treatment, not one in a hundred has not been made 
 more happy and healthy ; more than 30 per cent, 
 have been taught to conform to moral and social 
 law, and rendered capable of order, of good feeling, 
 and of working like the third of a man ; more than 
 40 per cent, have become capable of the ordinary 
 transactions of life under friendly control, of under- 
 standing moral and social abstractions, of working 
 like two-thirds of a man ; and 25 to 30 per cent, 
 have come nearer and nearer the standard of man- 
 hood, till some of them will defy the scrutiny of 
 
220 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 good judges when compared with ordinary young 
 men and women.' 
 
 For the idiot and imbecile, as defined in the Act 
 of 1913, some improvement here and there may 
 be possible, but no education in the ordinary sense 
 of the term can be given ; and the educational 
 authority hands over the responsibiHty for their 
 supervision to a Local Control Authority, which 
 is empowered by the Act to send them to an insti- 
 tution or to place them under guardianship. As 
 some one has said, these unfortunates remain 
 children all their lives — children in intellect and 
 will, though adults in stature and instincts. 
 
 In the case of feeble-minded children on the bor- 
 derland of normal development it is otherwise, and 
 the 1913 Act lays upon local educational authorities 
 the duty of providing for them special schools or 
 classes in which, from seven to sixteen years of age, 
 they may receive an education and training suited 
 to their special needs. The educational authorities, 
 especially those administering districts with large 
 populations, are on the whole loyally doing their 
 best to discharge their new duties. The education of 
 the feeble-minded should be given, wherever possible, 
 in open-air schools. It should consist mainly of a 
 well-organised scheme of motor-training and manual 
 occupations, especially gardening, correlated with 
 speech and language training. By giving these 
 unfortunate children such a training, it may reason- 
 ably be expected, in view especially of the results 
 
EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 221 
 
 obtained by Seguin, and by Madame Montessori in 
 our own day, that the mental condition of nearly all 
 will be improved, and that many will be trained to 
 do work by which they may become in some degree 
 self-supporting, even although they may never be 
 able to take care of themselves without direction. 
 
 Moral imbeciles as defined by Section 1 (d) of 
 the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 must be carefully 
 segregated from other children. Their vicious or 
 criminal propensities would render them a source 
 of danger to feeble-minded children. Nor must they, 
 on the other hand, be placed in schools along with 
 incorrigibles and truants. Because of their lack of 
 self-control, and of their not having passed beyond the 
 imitative stage of mental development, they would 
 easily be led astray by their nimbler-witted and 
 stronger- willed fellow pupils. Not much can be done 
 with them, especially in pronounced cases, which 
 fortunately are comparatively rare, and an insti- 
 tution in which continuous care and oversight can 
 be exercised over them for life is the only suitable 
 place for them, and the only means of preventing 
 them from becoming a criminal charge upon the 
 community. 
 
 In this country the Special Schools for physi- 
 cally and mentally defective children are partly 
 day schools, and partly institutions in which the 
 whole of the Hfe conditions of the children can be 
 controlled. The Special Day School has many 
 
222 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 advantages, and is to be recommended for the 
 majority of cases. It provides a proper division of 
 labour and responsibility between school and home. 
 It permits the child, while receiving mental and phy- 
 sical training in the school, to enjoy the socialising 
 influence of his home if it is not altogether bad. 
 Special Day Schools are the best training ground for 
 the deaf, the cripple, and the educable feeble-minded. 
 
 In institutions, on the other hand, the children are 
 separated from their family and friends, their move- 
 ments are greatly restricted, and they are isolated 
 and compelled to associate for the most part with 
 those who are afflicted in like manner as themselves. 
 And at the end of the school period the change from 
 the artificial environment of the institution to the 
 bustling life of the world is great and perplexing. 
 Yet institutions are necessary for severe cases of 
 mental and moral deficiency, and for all who need 
 continuous care. In all cases in which there is any 
 hope of improvement the cottage system of institu- 
 tional life is the best. It reproduces many of the 
 advantages of home life, it makes it easy to classify 
 the children into suitable groups, it brings them 
 into healing contact with nature, and it provides 
 them with plentiful opportunities of outdoor work. 
 
 The real crux of the problems connected with 
 the treatment of the mentally defectives comes when 
 they leave the Special Schools at the age of sixteen. 
 PubHc control over them ceases just when they 
 are most in need of supervision and guidance, and 
 
EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 223 
 
 the results of years of effort are wasted by subse- 
 quent neglect. Experience has shown that only 
 a small proportion of even the higher grade feeble- 
 minded become partially self-supporting. If the 
 feeble-minded do not get protection and care at 
 this critical period many of them fall victims to their 
 tendency to drift into pauperism, immorality, and 
 crime. Feeble-minded girls, if unprotected, propo- 
 gate their kind, and are a special danger to the 
 community. 
 
 Several local educational authorities appoint 
 After-Care Sub-Committees for mentally defective 
 children with a view to promoting the well-being of 
 former Special School pupils, and to assisting them 
 to get suitable employment. Experience in this 
 connection is proving that voluntary effort is not 
 enough, and that compulsory education should be 
 followed by compulsory registration and supervision 
 of all mental defectives beyond school age. They 
 should be released only to parents or guardians 
 who are able to take care of them and be respon- 
 sible for them. In every case in which it is thought 
 necessary they should, in terms of Section 2 (2) of 
 the Mental Deficiency Act, ' be sent to an institution 
 or placed under guardianship.' 
 
 The most suitable form of institution for mental 
 defectives over sixteen years of age is probably the 
 colony home, where the inmates can get employment in 
 simple industries, and careful oversight and attention, 
 and where their handing on the poison of feeble-minded- 
 
224 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 ness to offspring can be prevented. It has been stated 
 that eighty per cent, of the feeble-minded are so by 
 inheritance. The following family histories inves- 
 tigated by E. J. Emerick, Superintendent of the 
 School for the Feeble-minded, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A., 
 show the necessity of preventing the marriage of 
 the mentally defective, whether male or female. 
 
 XT 
 
 6(iiii66i* 
 
 Blind 
 
 This chart shows the effect of feeble-mindedness in tho mother, while 
 the father's family history is good. The result of this man's marriage 
 with a feeble-minded woman is one blind child, four feeble-minded, and 
 four normal children. The chart also shows a case of feeble-mindedness 
 of three generations transmitted through the mother. 
 
 NOTE. — In the genealogical charts, square indicates male, circle 
 indicates female, plain squares and circles indicate normal mentality, 
 black squares and circles indicate feeble-mindedness. 
 
 D-r-6~Z>i-a 
 
 ^j5¥Eh 
 
 ■a 
 
 This chart shows clear evidence of a feeble-minded heredity. 
 Reading from below upwards, the feeble-minded boy had on the maternal 
 side a feeble-minded uncle, great unclc; one feeble-minded second 
 cousin, and two feeble-minded third cousins. On the paternal side 
 there was a feeble-minded aunt 
 
EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES 225 
 
 Q 
 
 
 4 
 
 Died in 
 Infancy 
 
 This chart shows the result of a feeble-minded woman being left 
 without protection ; she had seven illegitimate children all feeble- 
 minded. After her marriage she had a feeble-minded girl, and other 
 three children who died in infancy before their mentality could be 
 determined. 
 
 Teachers of defective children should have a 
 real bent and liking for this special kind of work, 
 otherwise they will not attain high success in it. 
 They should have a quiet and kind yet firm manner, 
 and infinite patience and sympathy with the unfor- 
 tunates they are teaching. It is desirable that they 
 should have the same education and general training 
 as ordinary certificated teachers, but in addition they 
 should get a special training for teaching the kind 
 of defectives among whom their work will He. They 
 must know what mental deficiencies mean, how they 
 are caused, and the technique and methods of deahng 
 with them in the best schools or institutions in the 
 country. After entering upon their work they should 
 be progressive and living teachers, and interested 
 students of education, particularly of the difiicult 
 problems connected with their special work. As 
 
226 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 some one has said, ' We need forward teachers for 
 backward pupils.' 
 
 All the suggestions we have made in these two 
 chapters will only relieve to some extent the heavy- 
 handicap of those unfortunate children. If the sug- 
 gestions are followed they will help to make the Hves 
 of the children thus afflicted as secure and comfortable 
 as possible, and to make the most of their working 
 capacity for the common good. Many problems in 
 connection with the classification and education of 
 mental defectives call for further study and investi- 
 gation. Above all, we require to know more about 
 the causes of these deviations from normal mentahty, 
 and the methods of preventing their operation. It 
 may be found that certain forms of feeble-mindedness 
 wiU be remediable when we know more about the 
 skuU, about disturbances of nutrition, and about the 
 effects of tuberculosis, alcohoHsm, and immoraUty. 
 These are problems that concern not only the educa- 
 tional and medical professions but all who are actively 
 interested in social progress. The schools for defec- 
 tives may thus become educational clinics in which 
 valuable knowledge will be gained that will benefit 
 not only the subnormal but the normal child. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 WIDER USE OF SCHOOL PLANT 
 
 There is a growing opinion that our public elementary 
 school buildings and school plant are not utiUsed at the 
 present time as fully as they ought to be for the better- 
 ment of society. The reasons for this opinion are 
 twofold. In the first place, it is maintained that as the 
 buildings and their equipment represent a vast expendi- 
 ture of public money they should not be allowed to 
 stand idle for so much time when, outside of school 
 hours, they might be used in many ways as centres 
 for the social, civic, and cultural uplifting of the com- 
 munity. In the second place, there is arising a broader 
 conception of the scope of education. It is mainly, 
 but not solely, concerned with the instruction and 
 training of the young. Its functions extend to every 
 stage and condition of life. Almost every scheme 
 which has for its object the improvement of human 
 conditions is, in one way or another, educational, and 
 the schools as public property should be used in 
 support of it, in so far as doing so does not interfere 
 with the main purpose for which they were intended. 
 We shall consider briefly in this chapter some of the 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 more extended services for which the school plant 
 might legitimately be utilised. 
 
 For the sake of the children who are unfortunate 
 in their home conditions, or who live in poor or over- 
 crowded districts, the school playgrounds should be 
 open for play, games, and drill out of school hours 
 (see Chapter XV. p. 178), and some of the school 
 buildings should be used for vacation schools. Per- 
 haps no city is doing so much to develop the play- 
 ground movement as New York. The writer visited 
 that city in the summer of 1905 to become acquainted 
 with what was being done, and he found that the 
 Board of Education of New York kept 110 school play- 
 groimds open during the summer vacation from 1 to 
 6.30 P.M. daily except on Sundays. There was an 
 average daily attendance of 70,000 children, and over 
 500 supervisors and teachers were required. 
 
 In the schools utiUsed for this purpose, not 
 only the playgrounds but the school libraries and 
 some of the class-rooms were open. In one of the 
 vacation playgrounds in the east end of the city 
 there were 2000 children. At 1 o'clock a march was 
 played, and the children fell into line and marched 
 past and saluted the flag. Next, two patriotic songs 
 were sung, then the order to break ranks was 
 given, and the boys went to one side of the playground 
 and the girls to the other. Kindergarteners amused 
 the youngest children. Some of the young children 
 shovelled and carted sand, and had doll parties. The 
 boys and girls separately engaged in free play, such 
 
WIDER USE OF SCHOOLS 229 
 
 as swings and ball games. Some of the girls were 
 taught dancing, and the boys had the use of the 
 swimming pond for that afternoon. Boys were playing 
 base-ball, some practising gymnastics, and in the roof 
 playground teams of boys and a teacher were playing 
 basket-ball. When the children were tired they could 
 go, if they cared, to a room where quiet games were 
 going on, or to the school Hbrary to read story or 
 picture books. 
 
 Seven of the vacation playgrounds were on the 
 piers which jut out several hundred yards into the 
 Hudson, and form the deep-water docks with which 
 for miles the banks of that river are Kned. The piers 
 are occupied by covered stores, and the playgrounds 
 referred to are on the flat roofs of these stores. They 
 are delightful places during the sweltering heat of 
 summer, as they are swept by cool breezes from the 
 river; and a splendid view of the traffic in the river 
 channel can be obtained from them. 
 
 Many children in the poorer districts of our toTvus 
 have difficulty in finding amusement or pleasant 
 occupation during the summer vacation, and they 
 actually begin to long for the end of the holidays. 
 There is no pleasant seaside holiday for them. They 
 have to spend their holiday in the streets, often to their 
 harm. To help these children, and to remove them 
 from the demorahsing influences of the streets, a 
 movement has been started in this country in recent 
 years to institute vacation schools in the poor and over- 
 crowded districts of our large towns. The movement 
 
230 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 is of purely American origin. It was started in Boston 
 in 1885, and now there is not a single large city in the 
 United States without its summer vacation schools. 
 In the summer of 1905 the Board of Education of the 
 City of New York provided fifty-eight vacation schools, 
 having in them 40,000 children, and requiring for their 
 management 760 teachers. 
 
 The first vacation school in England was opened 
 in London in 1902 at the Passmore Edwards Settle- 
 ment, Tavistock Place. ^ The credit of its initiation 
 is due to Mrs. Humphry Ward, and the money for its 
 support was subscribed by friends. The organisers of 
 this school state the purpose for which it was started 
 in a passage worthy of quotation for the inspiration 
 of all workers in similar fields in the future : — 
 
 ' The school aimed at giving the children some- 
 thing to do, in place of roaming listlessly about in 
 street and alley, with nothing to tempt them to 
 action save the ever-present opportunity of mischief. 
 Children such as we have cannot amuse themselves. 
 They have little imagination or initiative, and, as a 
 rule, unless acting under guidance, fail to give their 
 desire for amusement and occupation suitable shape. 
 They roam about, suffering from a peculiar childish 
 ennui, and actually long for the return of the normal 
 school days and the cessation of the wearisome 
 
 ^ Those desiring fuller information than is given here regarding 
 Vacation Schools in England should consult vol. 21 of the Board of 
 Education's /Special Reports on Educational Subjects. They should also 
 read the pamphlet on The Play-Time of the Poor, by Mrs. Humphry 
 Ward (Smith, Elder & Co.). 
 
WIDER USE OF SCHOOLS 231 
 
 holidays. The purpose of the school was to change all 
 this. It sought to satisfy the hunger for occupation 
 by setting the children something to fuid out, or 
 something to do. It sought to care for the physical 
 well-being of the scholars by carefully organised 
 exercises. It sought to raise the children's ideal of 
 morals and conduct by direct and indirect instruction. 
 It sought to show the children that coming to know 
 and learning to do are, in themselves, some of the 
 truest of pleasures. It sought to afford pleasure chiefly 
 to those children who were doomed, from one cause or 
 another, to remain in London throughout the vacation, 
 and so to go sea-less, fresh-air-less, and joyless.' 
 
 This school has been so successful that it has 
 been repeated every summer since it was started, 
 and similar schools have been opened by voluntary 
 associations in a few other towns. As a result of 
 these successful experiments, the Education (Ad- 
 ministrative Provisions) Act, 1907, allowed local 
 educational authorities to establish such schools during 
 the holidays or at any other time, and to give assist- 
 ance to voluntary agencies for the same purpose. 
 London County Council has, since the passing of the 
 Act, opened several of these vacation schools. 
 
 Curriculum is too formal a word to apply to the 
 work done in a vacation school. To continue the 
 same sort of instruction as in the elementary school 
 would defeat the whole purpose of the vacation. The 
 practical note is very prominent, and the tendency 
 is to give no book lessons whatever in the school. 
 
232 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 The writer noted the following manual occupations 
 going on at one or other of the vacation schools in 
 New York : — woodwork, basketry, Venetian and bent 
 iron work, fretsawing, whittling, cobbling, work in 
 burned wood and leather, sewing, embroidery, crochet- 
 ing, millinery, cookery, laundry, and other domestic 
 work, such as laying the table, waiting at table, sweep- 
 ing, dusting, scrubbing, washing dishes. Some of the 
 boys were repairing broken house furniture they had 
 brought with them, Some of the girls were cutting 
 and sewing dresses, and trimming hats for themselves. 
 In one school a nurse was giving instruction to the older 
 girls in bathing, feeding, and care of babies, nursing 
 the sick, and first aid to the injured. 
 
 So far as one could see, the idea underlying all 
 the manual occupations was not to give set tasks, but 
 to lay hold of some interest in the child, and to enable 
 the child to give expression to his own ideas. No 
 time w^as spent in making fancy joints and sections 
 in w^oodwork, but rather in making such things as 
 boys want to make. So, too, with the girls, they were 
 set to making dresses or hats or doll's clothes instead 
 of learning a dozen different stitches. Physical 
 training, music, and drawing also formed important 
 parts of the work of these schools. A good deal of 
 time was spent by the children out of doors, and was 
 occupied in games, and excursions to the parks to 
 interest the children in birds, flowers, and trees. 
 
 Even from this brief outline of the work of vacation 
 schools it will be seen that they may be made a valuable 
 
WIDER USE OF SCHOOLS 233 
 
 aid to social progress in poor and crowded communi- 
 ties. They remove children from the evil influences 
 of the street, they give them healthful and recreative 
 instruction, and they prevent the holiday time from 
 undoing to a greater or less extent the mental, moral, 
 and physical work of the ordinary school. From 
 the freedom with which they are conducted they 
 afford great scope for trying innovations in education, 
 and thus they may serve, to some extent, as experi- 
 mental schools in which educators may have an 
 opportunity of testing new ideas cautiously, without 
 interfering with the work of the ordinary schools. 
 
 The importance of the right use of leisure has been 
 a common theme with sages and morahsts of all ages. 
 It was no less a person than Aristotle who said that 
 the end of Hfe and of education was the noble enjoy- 
 ment of leisure. George Ehot in one of her books 
 writes : ' Important as it is to direct the industries 
 of the world, it is not so important as to wisely direct 
 the leisure of the world ' ; and W. H. Taft, while 
 President of the United States, said : ' It is in their idle 
 moments that the young contract the habits that lead 
 them downward, and it is in their leisure that they 
 can make their character what it ought to be.' 
 
 One of the most valuable outcomes of the education 
 a person has received should be his desire and abihty to 
 occupy his spare time in such a way aswiU benefit himself 
 and others. Tried by this test, our system of education 
 is in too many cases found wanting, for the free hours 
 
234 EDUCATION AXD SOCLAX PROGRESS 
 
 of a considerable proportion both of youths and adults 
 are filled with pleasures which are frivolous and 
 harmful. This is causing anxiety to many observers. 
 The Lord Chief Justice of England said recently that 
 * second only to drink, the real cause of crime is the 
 difficulty of finding healthy recreation and innocent 
 amusement for the young among the working classes.* 
 
 The school must do more in co-operation with the 
 other institutions, especially the home, for the solution 
 of this problem. Our continuation schools, public 
 libraries, museums, art collections, dramatic societies, 
 and courses of lectures and debates on Hterary, social 
 and civic questions, are all educational agencies which 
 are tackling the problem with a considerable measmre 
 of success. But unfortunately they often do not reach 
 the very ones we need to influence. There should 
 be provided somewhere in our educational system 
 social and recreative activities, or what the Lord Chief 
 Justice called * healthy recreation and innocent amuse- 
 ment for the young ' who have left school. The 
 desire for play and for social intercourse is natural 
 in young men and women ; we should frankly recognise 
 it, and utilise it for educative purposes. If we fail 
 to do this we shall help to drive the young, at a difficult 
 and critical period in their lives, to the evil influences 
 of the streets. To elevate recreational life and direct 
 it into proper channels should be thie guiding aim of 
 every one interested in the young men and women of 
 the working classes. 
 
 America is taking the lead in connection with 
 
WIDER USE OF SCHOOLS 285 
 
 what is called the ' social centre movement,' that is, a 
 movement for using a number of schools in the evenings 
 for supervised games, and dancing, and educative 
 recreation. The social centres do not provide enter- 
 tainment only. They have clubs for the discussion of 
 social, poHtical, and literary questions ; they have 
 study and Hbrary rooms, and rooms for quiet games. 
 But naturally the gymnastics and playing games and 
 dancing attract most attention. 
 
 In New York in the summer of 1905 there were eleven 
 schools * used for the purpose, with an average attend- 
 ance of about 2000 at each. The schools were open for 
 eight weeks from 7.30 to 10 every evening except 
 Sunday. In one of the schools visited there were over 
 2000 youths up to about twenty years of age, and many 
 parents were looking on. In various rooms playing 
 games and dancing were going on, while on the roof 
 there were hundreds of young men and women dancing 
 to the music of a brass band. The entertainment 
 closed at 10 o'clock exactly, with the singing of the 
 patriotic song, ' My country, 'tis of thee. Sweet land of 
 liberty.' No one who has visited these social centres 
 and seen them at work can doubt that they remove 
 thousands of youths from the temptations and dangers 
 of the streets, and help to give them a love of pure 
 recreation. 
 
 Other American cities are doing work on somewhat 
 similar lines. The United States Bureau of Education 
 
 ^ The writer visited the Social Centres in New York again in the 
 summer of 1909 and found them still further increased in number. 
 
286 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 places such value on the movement that it proposes 
 to send out bulletms describing the progress of social 
 and recreation centres throughout the country. 
 
 Britain has not been altogether behind in this 
 work. For over twenty years there has been in 
 London a society, presided over by the Countess of 
 Jersey, with the object of providing in over eighty 
 of the London County Council school buildings recrea- 
 tive evenings for the children attending schools in 
 poor districts. About 1500 voluntary workers t€ike 
 part in the work, and the children engage in play, 
 games, singing, and various recreative emplovments. 
 Similar work is now being done in other towns in 
 England. 
 
 The success of work of this kind depends to a large 
 extent upon the voluntary workers who are willing to 
 direct and to take part in it. In this country there 
 is generally no lack of men and women animated by 
 the ideal of social progress and ready to labour in its 
 service. 
 
 As long as this is the case, it is not necessary that 
 local educational authorities should themselves institute 
 recreation centres, but they should readily grant the 
 use of their buildings to accredited associations for 
 the purpose. This is what is done by the Education 
 Committee of London County Coimcil, and it is yet 
 another way in which the wider use of school property 
 may contribute to social progress and to the general 
 well-being of the community. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 TEACHERS AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 In the preceding pages we have considered some of 
 the evils that are affecting so large a proportion of 
 our people, and we have tried to show that, while it is 
 futile to place exaggerated hopes on education, and to 
 look to it alone to bring about the social millennium, 
 it can do more than any other agency to remedy our 
 social ills. Social progress cannot be secured by 
 legislation alone, but by the slower and surer plan 
 of educating the people, and of introducing into the 
 schools the reforms we wish to introduce into the life 
 of the nation. Education is, therefore, not the com- 
 paratively simple thing it was even a few years ago. 
 Nearly every moral and social movement at the present 
 day is setting towards education. Like every function 
 of the State, it is becoming more paternalistic, perhaps 
 even, some would say, more sociahstic in tendency. 
 Our future welfare is so dependent upon the nurture 
 and training of the young that the State cannot 
 allow even the parents to deprive them of their natural 
 right to education, and to protection from moral and 
 physical harm. 
 
238 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 All this is placing heavier responsibilities on the 
 teacher ; it is demanding more highly trained intelh- 
 gence and greater breadth of outlook. Every school- 
 master should be a specialist, doing work that requires 
 a special training and aims at specific results ; but he 
 must also extend his vision beyond the school, and all 
 the absorbing work and studies connected with it, 
 and see the relation of his work to the throbbing life 
 beyond the schoolroom. It was mainly because school- 
 masters in the past, good and devoted men though 
 they were, did not do this, did not cultivate wide 
 interests, that there has come to be associated with 
 teaching the narrowness generally connected in the 
 public mind with the words * schoolmaster,' ' dominie.' 
 Dickens in ' Hard Times ' speaks of the matter-of-fact 
 teacher as ' Thomas Gradgrind, Sir, a man of reaHties, 
 a man of facts and calculations.' 
 
 Every teacher should try to imderstand how educa- 
 tion is related to other forms of social endeavour, and 
 how education can really contribute to social betterment, 
 and can be made one of the main instruments of society 
 in realising its destiny. He should try to get a sense of 
 the whole of which his work is a part, and see the relation 
 of his work to that of other men. He should regard him- 
 self as a social worker co-operating with others in the 
 upbuilding of a higher life among the people, and in 
 promoting a better civilisation. He should be domin- 
 ated by a spirit of social service. He should have a 
 keen sense of the obligation that rests on him to utiHse 
 to the utmost his special opportunities to counteract, in 
 
TEACHERS AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 239 
 
 such ways as we have indicated, the harmful influences 
 of our social and industrial system, to diminish the 
 human wreckage thrown up by it, and to attack the 
 evils of society at their source. If a teacher is not 
 constantly endeavouring to achieve these results he 
 is not performing his full duty to the community. 
 
 The school has as its chief function the mental, 
 moral, and physical training of the child, but it is also 
 one of the main instruments of society for securing 
 its upward progress. Hence every teacher should study 
 the problems of our social, civic, and industrial hfe, 
 and the conditions to be met by society at the present 
 time. During his course of training every teacher has 
 to study psychology, so that he may know the principles 
 of mental development. To this he should add a study 
 of sociology that he may understand the laws of social 
 development. Psychology and Sociology are the chief 
 contributors to the Science of Education, and a know- 
 ledge of them should be part of the professional equip- 
 ment of every teacher. Sociology should decide to a 
 large extent the suitable subject-matter of various 
 curricula, and psychology should determine the ages at 
 which the subjects should be taught, and the form of 
 their most effective presentation. 
 
 The teacher's course in the history of education 
 during his training should be such as to lead him to 
 see the school in its proper relation as one of the most 
 potent factors in the social and industrial progress 
 of the country, and the teacher as a social agent per- 
 forming an essential work for society. There should 
 
240 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 also be introduced into his training, courses in social 
 psychology and the sociological aspects of education. 
 If this were done, the function of the school in society 
 would be better understood, a deeper meaning and 
 purpose would be introduced into the curriculum, the 
 teacher's interest would be quickened, and he would 
 perhaps be sustained by a Hvelier sense of his unique 
 opportunities as a servant of society. 
 
 Along with these theoretical courses there should 
 go some practical training in social work. Our 
 University Settlements and Social Settlements in 
 the slums of our cities should have, in addition to their 
 other work, educational activities carried on to a 
 large extent by students in Training Colleges for 
 Teachers. The scope for work of this kind is well-nigh 
 boundless. A part of such a Settlement should 
 generally be a Kindergarten, for hardly any other 
 agency can do so much good for neglected children, 
 or so much to influence the homes from which they 
 come. It would be well if every large Training 
 College could support by the voluntary contributions 
 of its members a Kindergarten or Nursery School as 
 an educational mission in a poor district of the town 
 in which the College is situated.^ The students from 
 such a College would be more hkely to become enthusi- 
 astic and pubhc-spirited teachers, keenly ahve to the 
 problems of society. 
 
 * This is no pious opinion. It is what is being done at the present 
 time by present and former students of the Edinburgh Provincial 
 Training College, see p. 152. 
 
TEACHERS AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 241 
 
 At the present time there is an absence of ade- 
 quate facihties in nearly all our Universities for the 
 study of social philosophy and social economics, and 
 for the training of social workers whether as volun- 
 teers or officials, and of those who desire to prepare 
 for municipal or national administrative work. 
 Every thoughtful observer must be struck by the 
 wide variation both as to purpose and procedure 
 in the many national and local schemes brought 
 forward from time to time for social betterment. 
 In the absence of such thorough study and prepara- 
 tion as we have indicated, it is unsafe to attempt 
 such social innovations and to try to guide the course 
 of the underlying laws and forces at work. It should 
 be one of the duties of a University to teach the 
 principles of Social Science, to show how they may 
 be apphed to current social problems, and to extend 
 our knowledge of the forces at work shaping society 
 by ascertaining, collating, and reducing to law known 
 facts concerning them. 
 
 In several of our Universities this function of 
 a University is recognised. For instance, London 
 University has a School of Economics and Political 
 Science; Birmingham University has a School for 
 Social Study and for Training for Public and Social 
 Service ; Liverpool University has a School of Social 
 Science and of Training for Social Work. These 
 Universities issue Diplomas to the successful stu- 
 dents in Social Science. In three of the Scottish 
 Universities similar work is being done to a more 
 
242 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 Limited extent ; in St. Andrews University there 
 is a Lectureship in Sociology ; in Aberdeen Univer- 
 sity a Lectureship in Pohtical Science and Sociology ; 
 and in Glasgow University a Lectureship in Social 
 Economics, and a School of Social Study and 
 Training under the directorship of a University 
 Lecturer. 
 
 Teachers are Uving in a time of special difficulty 
 and responsibility, but they should be sustained by 
 a growing sense of the power of education to remedy 
 social diseases, to diminish the amount of wicked- 
 ness, distress, and failure in life, to spread knowledge, 
 self -helpfulness, and hope. No profession has more 
 intimate or vital contact with the minds and souls 
 of men, or has greater power to hasten social 
 regeneration and social progress. No profession con- 
 sequently is rising more steadily in public esteem ; 
 and the time is coming when teaching will be, as 
 Plato argued, the profession held in highest honour 
 in the State. The rate of progress will depend upon 
 whether the members of the profession are putting 
 it to the largest uses in the service of mankind. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 The study we have made shows us that the diseases 
 of society are not inevitable. We have the know- 
 ledge and the power to overcome them if we have 
 the will. But the task is not one that can be accom- 
 pHshed quickly or easily. It involves nothing less 
 than the difficult problem of preventing ills in 
 society, instead of seeking to cure them after they 
 have arisen. Just as in medical science prophy- 
 lactics are supplanting therapeutics in coping with 
 physical ills, so in social science we are aiming more 
 and more at attacking the diseases of society at 
 their source rather than relieving them after they 
 have manifested themselves. We are accordingly 
 extending and developing the work of the various 
 preventive agencies of which the chief is education. 
 The proper extension and wise exercise of the 
 functions of education are at the root of social 
 progress. 
 
 Within the last few decades the duties of local 
 educational authorities have been greatly extended on 
 the social side. These authorities have been charged 
 
244 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 with the responsibiHty of the medical inspection and 
 treatment of school children, and of the feeding of 
 necessitous children. The Poor Law Authorities 
 have failed to get at the causes of destitution in 
 children and to prevent their operation. In the 
 same way, the administration of Industrial and 
 Reformatory Schools by the Pohce Authorities — 
 the Justices of the Peace in counties, and the Muni- 
 cipal Councils in boroughs — has failed to cure, far 
 less prevent, deUnquency in the young. 
 
 Consequently there is now an almost universal 
 consensus of opinion that the entire responsibiHty 
 for the care and training of children (except the invahd 
 and the imbecile) of school age should be placed under 
 one authority — namely, the Educational Authority.^ 
 In this way, much ineffectiveness and wasteful over- 
 lapping would be prevented, and an opportunity 
 would be given of enforcing parental responsibiHty. 
 With its great teaching force, its doctors, nurses, care 
 committees, and attendance officers, our educational 
 system has unrivaUed means of dealing successfully 
 with the physical, moral, and economic disabihties 
 that start in childhood and persist through life. 
 
 The problem of finding the money to maintain 
 the educational system of the future is not an easy 
 one. The extensions and reforms we have sug- 
 gested certainly mean a considerable increase in the 
 
 ^ A Departmental Committee on Reformatory and Indiistrial Schools 
 in Scotland in its Report issued in May 1915 recommended that the 
 administration of these schools should be transferred from the Scottish 
 Office to the Scotch Education Department. . 
 
CONCLUSION 245 
 
 expense of national education. But even then the 
 expenditure wiU be only a small fraction of what 
 we are spending (not unnecessarily, as recent events 
 in connection with the great European War have 
 shown) on preparations for war in times of peace. 
 We have immense national resources,^ and with wise 
 economy in other directions it should be possible for 
 us to spend more on education. 
 
 Present-day conditions demand a greater develop- 
 ment than ever before of the powers of the individual, 
 and therefore a larger expenditure on the provision 
 of opportunities for the purpose by the State. 
 * Modern life makes imperative greater collective 
 action, and increases the duty and responsibilities of 
 the State. Greater relative and absolute portions of 
 the national income must be devoted to collective 
 betterment. The school is one of the chief instru- 
 ments by means of which the duty of the State in 
 modern industrial society is discharged. Not the 
 destruction, but the conservation, of individual 
 development and welfare is the aim.' ^ 
 
 Economists and students of taxation are pointing 
 out new and important sources of revenue which 
 would be partly available for the increased expen- 
 diture on education. Moreover, there should be 
 
 ^ The late Sir Robert Gilfen^ one of the greatest stj-tisticians of 
 his day, said : 'There is enormous wealth to draw upon with a gross 
 income-tax income of about 1000 millions and probably an amount 
 not coming under the Income Tax of 2000 milJions.' We do not 
 suggest, of course, that all the additional money required for education 
 should come from this source. 
 
 2 Education and Industrial Kvolutiov, by F. T. Carlton. 
 
 k2 
 
246 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 a readjustment of the grants to education from 
 imperial and local sources. The burden on local 
 education rates has been greatly increased by new 
 duties imposed by recent legislation, and it must 
 be relieved. In addition to this, various economies 
 and reforms should be carried out. The working ex- 
 penses of the educational system must be diminished 
 by the simplification of the machinery of local and 
 State administration and inspection. This is par- 
 ticularly true of Scotland with about 40 Secondary 
 Education Committees and 970 School Boards, with 
 their small army of officials — clerks, treasurers, and 
 auditors. Large sums, too, could be made available for 
 modern needs by the revision of educational endow- 
 ments which have been diverted from their original 
 purpose, or are no longer suited to present-day 
 requirements. 
 
 Any net increase in the total expenditure on 
 education will, we may be assured, be more than 
 counterbalanced by the nation's reduced bill for 
 drink, crime, ill-health, and destitution. It will be 
 more than compensated by the increased productive 
 capacity of our people due to their better health and 
 greater vigour, their increased skill, their higher moral 
 quaHties, and the prolongation of their average 
 working life. 
 
 The war at present devastating Europe will for 
 generations increase the importance of education as 
 a factor in social progress. After the war solicitous 
 
CONCLUSION 247 
 
 oare of public health will become a cardinal feature of 
 social policy, and more attention than ever will be 
 paid to everything connected with the health of the 
 young. Increased economy of industrial force, too, 
 will be necessary. Thousands of workers trained in 
 manufactures and commerce have been lost in the 
 war, and the prosperity of the country will only be 
 restored by the increased efficiency of those who 
 remain. We must give the children, who will take 
 the place, in a short time, of the workers who have 
 fallen in the war, a longer and better education, and 
 a more practical training — a training that will develop 
 their mental powers, and be at the same time a real 
 preparation for life. The gap between the elementary 
 school age and the threshold of manhood and woman- 
 hood must be filled by an adequate system of con- 
 tinuation education, including more thorough trade 
 and technical education. It is the children at present 
 being educated in the schools who will bring to fruition 
 in the next generation the possibiUties of the coming 
 peace. 
 
INDEX 
 
 AoQmRED characteristics, 64, 69 
 
 Act, Defective Children, 218; 
 Education (1906), 208, 209; 
 Education (Administrative Pro- 
 visions), 182, 188, 200, 202, 
 231 ; Education (Scotland) 
 (1908), 118, 137, 182, 186, 
 200 ; Elementary Education 
 (Defective and Epileptic 
 Children), 218; Employment 
 of ChUdren, 52, 170; Mental 
 Deficiency, 218, 223 ; National 
 Insurance, 192 
 
 Adams, John, 74, 120 
 
 Adjustment to environment, 76, 
 83 
 
 Advisory committees, 131, 136 
 
 Apprenticeship, decay of, 146 
 
 Arithmetic, 97 
 
 Carter, Rev. Henry, 10, 14, 19 
 
 Charity, 4, 15, 22, 199 
 
 Children, backward, 214 ; diseases 
 of, 50, 168, 183, 185, 188, 192, 
 197, 204 ; employment of, 51 ; 
 mortality of, 158, 204, 206; 
 under five, 148 
 
 Civics, 109 
 
 Classes, size of, 67, 94, 121 
 
 Commission, Roval, on Poor Laws, 
 4, 14, 19, 34, '112, 116 
 
 Compulsory continuation educa- 
 tion, 126, 135, 140 
 
 Consultative Committee, 123, 125, 
 129, 149 
 
 Continuation education, 63, 80, 
 112, 120, 122, 134 
 
 Creches, 151, 159, 164 
 
 Crime, 7, 11, 39 
 
 Babies' classes, 167 
 Backward children, 214 _ 
 Bergson, 46 
 Binet, 214 
 
 Blake, WiUiam, 6, 36 1 
 Blind, education of, 211 
 Bloomfield, Meyer, 114, 118 
 Bolton, F. E., 31 
 Booth, Charles, 4, 17, 43 
 Borstal system, 13 
 Bosanquet, Mrs,, 14 
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 27 
 Browning, Robert, 29 
 
 Cablton, F. T., 159, 245 
 Carlyle, 45, 108 
 
 Darroch, Professor, 46, 196 
 Day nurseries, 86, 151, 159, 164 
 Deaf and dumb, 212 
 Dealey, J. Q., 33, 59 
 Defectives, 38, 208, 214, 217; 
 
 education of, 47, 93, 208, 217 ; 
 
 teachers of, 225 
 Destitution, 3, 14, 33 
 Development, genetic, 54 ; telic, 
 
 56 
 Dewey, Professor, 104 
 Dickens, 36 
 Donaldson, I*rofessor, 68, 72 
 
 JEcoles Gardiennes, 164 
 Ecoles Maternelles, 163 
 Economic reform, 58 
 
250 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Edinburgh, continuation schools 
 in, 112, 116, 131, 132, 134, 139 ; 
 day nurseries in, 151 ; educa- 
 tional information and employ- 
 ment bureau, 116 ; kinder- 
 gartens in, 152, 156, 240; 
 medical inspection in, 186 ; 
 play centres in, 178 ; supple- 
 mentary schools in, 139 
 
 Educatioii, aims of, 93 ; con- 
 tinuation, 53, 80, 112, 120, 
 122, 134; defective, 42, 122; 
 expense of, 244 ; freedom in, 
 48 ; individuality in, 48 ; 
 physical, 49, 101,' 130, 172; 
 practical, 43, 45, 79, 83, 87, 
 96, 107, 120 ; pre-trade, 107 ; 
 self-activity in, 45, 48 ; supple- 
 mentary, 80, 107, 109; tech- 
 nical, 143 ; trade, 128, 141 ; 
 vocational, 43, 79, 89, 107, 
 120, 126; width of, 84, 87 
 
 Education and environment, 76 ; 
 and health, 49, 166, 182, 1 89, 196, 
 206 ; and heredity, 61 ; and 
 home, 44, 164, 203 
 
 Educational handwork, 102, 232; 
 reform, 92 
 
 Emerson, 84 
 
 Employment of children, 61, 170 
 
 English, teaching of, 97 
 
 Environment, 28,37; adjustment 
 to, 76 83 ; and education, 76 ; 
 physical, 28, 30, 32 ; pressure 
 of, 33, 34, 39, 85; spiritual, 
 29, 30, 31, 32 
 
 Evolution, genetic, 54 ; telle, 66 
 
 Expenditure, educational, 244 
 
 Exploitation, 8 
 
 Feeble-minded, education of, 
 
 218, 220 
 Feeding, free, 163, 196 
 Fouillee, Alfred, 1, 171 
 
 Galton, Sir Francis, 23, 38, 63, 
 
 214 
 Games, 101, 172, 173, 176, 228 
 
 Genetic development, 56 
 Geography, teaching of, 98 
 George, Henry, 37 
 Germany, continuation schools 
 
 in, 127, 133, 137, 139, 141 
 Guidance, vocational, 113 
 Gymnastics, 101, 179 
 
 Half-timers, 51, 170 
 Hayward, F. H., 40, 72, 73 
 Health and education, 49, 166, 
 
 182, 196, 206 
 Heredity, 22, 37, 61,72, 224; and 
 education, 61 ; and environ- 
 ment, 37, 40 ; mental and moral, 
 23 ; social, 40, 61 
 History, 100 
 Home and education, 44, 164, 
 
 187, 189, 203 
 Home, H. H., 24, 65, 67, 73 
 Hygiene, school, 171, 185, 190 
 
 Individualism, 1 
 Industrial revolution, 43, 58, 89 
 Infant mortality, 158, 168, 204 
 Instincts, hereditary, 25 
 Institutions for defectives, 222, 
 
 223 
 Intemperance, 8, 191 
 Inter-Departmental Committee, 
 
 38, 49, 52, 113, 125, 170, 179, 
 
 182 
 
 James, Professor, 84 
 Juke family, 27 
 
 Kindergartens, 86, 94, 103, 
 
 151,164, 204, 240 
 Knowledge, value of, 92 
 
 Leisure, use of, 233 
 
 Literature, 82, 108 
 
 Locke, 166 
 
 London, day nurseries in, 151 ; 
 kindergartens in, 156 ; iv»edical 
 inspection in, 1 82 ; playgrounds 
 in, 176 ; recreation centres in, 
 236 ; underfeeding in, 196 ; 
 vacation schools in, 230, 236 
 
INDEX 
 
 251 
 
 Machinery, effects of, 58 
 Mackenzie, W. Leslie, 50 
 Malnutrition, 1S8, 196 
 Manual training, 102 
 Mark, Thiselton, 104, 105 
 f Medical inspection and treatment, 
 
 51, 182 
 ! Montaigne, 166, 175 
 k Montessori method, 162, 221 
 1 Montmorency, J. E. G. de, 86, 
 ^ 139 
 
 Tf Mortality of children, 158, 204, 
 f 206 
 *^M.others, schools for, 204 
 
 I 
 I 
 
 s 
 
 I 
 
 Newmait, Sir George, 50, 188, 
 
 198 
 New York, vacation schools in, 
 
 228, 232, 235; social centres 
 
 in, 235 
 Nursery schools, 161, 240 
 
 Open-air schools, 192 
 Open spaces, 177, 178 
 O'Shea, M. V., 35 
 Overpressure, 169 
 
 Parasitism, 8 
 
 Parental responsibility, 203 
 
 Parochial relief, 4 
 
 Pease, J. A., 144 
 
 Pestalozzi, 78, 83 
 
 Physical deterioration, Inter- 
 Departmental Committee on, 
 38, 49, 113, 125 
 
 Physical education, 49, 101, 130, 
 172; training, 179 
 
 Plato, 8, 33, 68, 166, 181, 242 
 
 Play, 101, 172, 175, 177, 228 
 
 Play centres, 177, 178 
 
 Playgrounds, 175, 228 
 
 Poor Law system, 13 
 
 Poverty, 3, 14, 33 
 
 Practical education, 43, 45, 79, 
 83, 96, 107, 120 
 
 Pragmatism in education, 88 
 
 Reform, educational, 92 
 Remedies, imperfect, 11, 244 
 
 Remedies of social diseases, 11 
 Ribot, 24, 70 
 Rousseau, 166, 173 
 Rowntree, B. Seebohm, 3, 4, 43 
 Rural schools, 76, 77 
 
 Sadler, M. E., 129 
 
 School feeding, 196; furniture, 
 
 95, 194; hygiene, 171, 185, 190 
 Schools, city, 77 ; infection in, 
 
 168, 169, 185; open-air, 192; 
 
 rural, 76, 77 ; special, 221 ; 
 
 wider use of, 227 
 Schools for mothers, 204 
 Scotch Education Department, 
 
 80, HI, 129, 179, 200, 244 
 Seguin, Edouard, 219 
 Self -activity, 45, 48, 83, 88 
 Settlements, social, 240 
 Slums, 5, 85 
 Slums, children in, 6, 35, 85, 
 
 158, 174, 175 
 Snedden, Da\-id, 46 
 Social centre movement, 235, 236 
 Social diseases, 1, 11; causes of, 
 
 3, 19, 21; remedies of, 11, 22, 
 
 243 ; results of, 10 
 Social centres, 235; heredity, 40, 
 
 61, 68; pathology, 1; reform, 
 
 57 
 Social progress, conditions of, 54 ; 
 
 teachers and, 237 
 Society as an organism, 2, 28 
 Society, solidarity of, 2 
 Sociology, teachers and, 239 
 Smith, George Adam, 7 
 Special schools, 211, 221 
 Spencer, Herbert, 54, 70, 167, 180 
 Supplementary education, 80, 107, 
 
 109 
 
 Teachers, artisan, 132 ; con- 
 tinuation school, 132 ; duties 
 of, 126, 175, 237 ; training of, 
 132 
 Teachers and social progress, 237 
 Teachers of defectives, 225 
 Technical colleges, 144; educa- 
 tion, 143 
 
252 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Telle development, 66 
 Tennyson, 36, 39 
 Thomson, J. A., 71 
 Thorndike, E. L., 139 
 Tolstoi, 47, 89 
 Towns, overcrowding in, 34 
 Trade education, 128, 141 
 Tuberculosis, 183, 188, 192 
 Tutorial classes, university, 145 
 
 Underfeeding, 196, 198 
 Universities and Social Science, 
 
 241 
 University Tutorial Classes, 145 
 
 Vacation playgrounds, 228 
 Vacation schools, 228, 230 
 Vice, 7 
 Vocational education, 43, 79, 89, 
 
 91, 107, 120, 126; guidance, 
 
 112, 131 
 
 Wallace, Alfred Russel, 19, 70 
 Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 174, 178, 
 
 230 
 Webb, Beatrice and Sidney, 5, 
 
 16, 19 
 Weismann, 70 
 Workers' Educational Associatioc' 
 
 145 
 
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