The Children: Some Educational Problems | Page 2

through our educational organisation, and of the methods by
which these aims may be best realised. Hence, as a nation, we have

rarely considered for its own sake and as a whole the problem of the
education of the children. And until we have done so--until we have
made clear to ourselves the kind of future citizen which as a State we
desire to rear up--our educational agencies must manifest a like
indefiniteness, a like inconsistency, and a like want of connection as do
our educational aims and ideals.
Again, closely connected with this first-named defect in our
educational organisation, and in fact following from it as a logical
consequence, is our fatal method of developing this or that part of our
educational system and of leaving the other parts to develop, if at all,
without any central guidance or control, until at length we realise that
the neglected parts also require attention, and must somehow or other
be refitted into the whole. E.g., since 1870 there has been a great
advance in the extent and intent of elementary education in both
England and Scotland, but this progress has been of a one-sided nature,
and there has been no corresponding advance either in the perfecting of
the educational system as a whole, or in the co-ordination of the
various grades of education. In Scotland, since the passing into law of
the Education Bill of 1872, the means of elementary education have
been widely extended and the methods of teaching have been greatly
improved, but there has been no corresponding advance in the
provision of the means of higher education, and as a consequence, at
the present day, we find many districts without adequate provision for
carrying on the education of the youth of the country beyond the
Primary School stage. Secondary education has been provided in some
centres by means of endowments; in others through the extension of the
term "elementary" so as to include education of a more extended nature
than was originally intended to be covered by that term. In England
until 1902, very much the same conditions prevailed, but since then,
mainly in order to remedy the state of things created by the judgment in
the Cockerton Case, the control of primary, secondary, and technical
education has been placed in the hands of the County and Borough
Councils, who are empowered "to consider the educational needs of
their area, and to take such steps as seem to them desirable, after
consultation with the Board of Education, to supply or aid the supply of
education other than elementary, and to promote the general

co-ordination of all forms of education." Tinder the powers so granted
much has been done throughout England during the past few years to
extend and make efficient the means of higher education; to erect
schools which shall provide training for the future services required by
the community and the State of the more highly gifted of its members,
and to co-ordinate the work of the various agencies entrusted with the
care and education of the children of the nation.
Through the failure of the Education Bills of 1904 and 1905 to pass
into law, Scotland still awaits the creation of local authorities charged
with the control and direction of all grades of education, and in this
respect her educational organisation is much more loosely compacted
than the system which now exists in England.
Further, in Scotland, on account of the absence of one controlling
authority, we often find in those districts in which the provision for
higher education is ample, imperfect co-ordination between the aims
and work, on the one hand, of the Primary School, and on the other, of
schools providing higher education. From this cause also it follows that,
unlike our German neighbours, we have made little progress in
determining the different functions which each particular type of
Higher School shall perform in the social organism, and have not
assigned the particular services which the State requires of each
particular type of Higher School. It is surely manifest that the service
which the modern industrial State looks for from its members is not the
same in kind and is much more complex in its nature than that which
was required during the mediæval period, and that if this service is to
be efficiently supplied, then there is need for Higher Schools varied in
type and having various aims.
This want of unity between the various parts of our educational system
manifests itself again in the indefiniteness of aim of many of our
Higher Schools, and in the lack of co-ordination between the Higher
School on the one hand, and institutions providing university and
advanced instruction on the other. Up till quite recently, the sole aim of
our Secondary Schools was to provide students for the