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 it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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 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