The Children: Some Educational Problems

The Children: Some Educational
Problems, by

Alexander Darroch This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no
cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give
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Title: The Children: Some Educational Problems
Author: Alexander Darroch
Release Date: May 11, 2007 [EBook #21419]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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The Social Problems Series
EDITED BY

OLIPHANT SMEATON, M.A., F.S.A.
THE CHILDREN
The Social Problems Series
THE CHILDREN
SOME EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS
BY
ALEXANDER DARROCH, M.A.
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
EDINBURGH
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK 16 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
AND EDINBURGH 1907

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION--THE PRESENT UNREST IN EDUCATION 1
II. THE MEANING AND PROCESS OF EDUCATION 13
III. THE END OF EDUCATION 22
IV. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE
PROVISION OF EDUCATION 31
V. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE COST
OF EDUCATION 46

VI. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE
MEDICAL EXAMINATION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN AND THE
MEDICAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOLS 54
VII. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE
FEEDING OF SCHOOL CHILDREN 66
VIII. THE ORGANISATION OF THE MEANS OF EDUCATION 77
IX. THE AIM OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION 85
X. THE AIM OF THE INFANT SCHOOL 98
XI. THE AIM OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 107
XII. THE AIM OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 118
XIII. THE AIM OF THE UNIVERSITY 126
XIV. CONCLUSION--THE PRESENT PROBLEMS IN
EDUCATION 131

THE CHILDREN
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION--THE PRESENT UNREST IN EDUCATION
The problems as to the end or ends at which our educational agencies
should aim in the training and instruction of the children of the nation,
and of the right methods of attaining these ends once they have been
definitely and clearly recognised, are at the present day receiving
greater and greater attention not only from professed educationalists,
but also from statesmen and the public generally. For, in spite of all
that has been done during the past thirty years to increase the facilities
for education and to improve the means of instruction, there is a
deep-seated and widely spread feeling that, somehow or other, matters

educationally are not well with us, as a nation, and that in this
particular line of social development other countries have pushed
forward, whilst we have been content to lag behind in the educational
rear.
The faults in our present educational structure are many, and in some
cases obvious to all. In the first place, it is said, and with much truth,
that there is no systematic coherence between the different parts of our
educational machinery, and no thorough-going correlation between the
various aims which the separate parts of the system are intended to
realise. As Mr. De Montmorency has recently pointed out, we have
always had a national group of educational facilities, more or less
efficient, but we have never had, nor do we yet possess, a national
system of education so differentiated in its aims and so correlated as to
its parts as to form "an organic part of the life of the nation."[1] An
educational system should subserve and foster the life of the whole: it
should be so organised as to maintain a sufficient and efficient supply
of all the services which a nation requires at the hands of its adult
members. For it is only in so far as the educational system of any
country fulfils this end that it can be "organic," and can be entitled to
the claim of being called a national system.
This lack of coherence between the different parts of our educational
system and the want of any systematic plan or unity running through
the whole is due to many causes. As a nation, we are little inclined to
system-making, and as a consequence the problem of education as a
whole and in its total relation to the life and well-being of the State has
received but scant attention from politicians. Educational questions, in
this country, are rarely treated on their own merits and apart from
considerations of a party, political, or denominational character, and
hence the problems which have received attention in the past and evoke
discussion at the present are concerned with the nature of the
constitution, and limits of the power of the bodies to whom should be
entrusted the local control of the educational agencies of the country,
rather than with the problems as to the aims which we should seek to
realise