transformation. But my point is that it is essentially the old thing having undergone, as it were, translation into a changed idiom. Administratively, the educational system of Australia is as French in its thorough-going centralization as anything can be. But see it actually at work in the schools and you will forget the administrative accent in your ready recognition of the familiar educational language.

You will forgive, I know, the introduction of this personal touch if it serves to illuminate and confirm the view that out of the tradition itself we can extract all the rational criteria we shall need.

That we shall need them badly is already abundantly clear. Have we yet grasped, for instance, what will be the burden of success in a conflict such as that in which this country is now engaged, fought under conditions which make this land the focal point of the world? It is not merely that we may find ourselves with more prestige than we are able to carry. We cannot escape, even if we would and however humbly we take it up, the burden that will be laid upon us of reordering and re-educating over large areas of the world. This we can hardly undertake except in the light of our own principles. Those principles we shall have to grasp both firmly and flexibly, for we have not only to make ourselves aware of their true nature and of the obligations they impose upon us, but also to apply them to a wide diversity of circumstance. So there faces us a double task, of clear formulation and of diversified translation into many different idioms, a task for which I cannot feel that we are yet quite ready. Nor shall we find it wholly congenial, for I have noticed that the call for explicit selfawareness always causes some embarrassment to English people who, with some reason no doubt, suspect formulated creeds. But we must meet the demand. It would be tragic if, in face of such a call, we merely generalized uncritically our local and insular forms and customs, and treated the rest of the world as though, if it were not English, then it just ought to be.

Moreover, looking now to internal possibilities in our own country, is there not some risk of a clash between a rigid and uncritical traditionalism and the doctrinaire blue-prints of some form of planned Utopia? We must not make the bad mistake of saying that such Utopianism, the expression of the rationalistic, unhistorical type of mind, is un-English. In varying degrees of intensity it has always been with us, and occasionally, as in the seventeenth century, it has had its moments of triumph. The mischief it could do to English education, if it got control and ran wild, is incalculable.

Nevertheless, something of its temper will be needed now, and the problem before us is to effect a harmony between it and the dominant tradition itself, to square rationality with continuity. The way to achieve that, I am convinced, is to apply rational criticism to the tradition itself, to make it fully conscious of itself and its present world, purging it of impurities and irrelevancies and restating its values and principles in a form that would endow them with fresh relevance and fruitfulness.

For a task demanding such resources in the way of courage and intellectual adventure I see no institution so well-placed as the public school. If it can brace itself to give the necessary lead I have no doubt of the strength and solidity of the response that would be evoked.

The second of the two great services that the public school is in a position to perform is vast out of all proportion to the brief reference I can give to it. It is nothing less than the closing of the division in this nation which has been allowed to open up during the last century or so. You can help to close it as no one else can, for to try to maintain it now must bring disaster. I confess I stand amazed at attempts which are sometimes made to deny its existence. The six years I have spent in work in English education since returning to this country have served to convince me that the poison of social division is not only there but that it has also been spreading into fresh fields of English life and education. Suppressed during national crisis it may redouble its

virulence when the crisis is past. The elimination of it will present a host of practical difficulties, but I suspect that this will be made easier in principle as a result of changes in social temper and outlook which the crisis itself is inducing.

So much for the specific tasks of the boarding school in the historic form it takes in the English public, school.

Let us turn now to the other aspect of the matter. It concerns, you will remember, the possibility of applying the technique of what I have called' full-control' in a much wider way, in fact to society at large.

To those who are alive to what has been happening in this country during the last forty years this is no Utopian fancy. In our characteristic intuitive and inarticulate way we seem to have been experimenting in this very thing. Out of the effort to give to the rank and file of the people not a bare modicum of elementary instruction but a real education there has emerged a striking development in the range of social control that we now attempt in the interests of the good life. By legislation, by administration, by spontaneous voluntary action of groups and individuals, in fact in all the characteristic ways, we have striven to take a firmer grip not only of the school but also of all the environing conditions which, for good or ill, may have educative effect. The arm of the Community as Tutor now reaches out far beyond the school. Millions of children are now infinitely better fed, clothed, and housed than their predecessors were forty years ago. Health conditions have been transformed, and many an elementary school child enjoys better medical care than his fellows in the preparatory school. We are now contemplating the extension of beneficent educative control, whether in school or not, to 18 or 20, and are beginning to understand that such matters as housing, wage-policy, and town-planning are in one important aspect educational matters.

At the same time we are learning that school is only one of many agents in a truly healthy society, and we are concerned not only to co-ordinate its action more effectively with that of its collaborators but also to ask ourselves a crucially important question: whether, because of social deficiency in the past, we have not been charging the school with functions that do not properly belong to it. Perhaps my audience may be able to point to some of these misplaced functions.

Here, then, the ancient vision of a unified society, educative in all its parts, comes once more into view. When we become more fully aware of what we are actually doing, shall we check ourselves in apprehension and horror, or shall we go on with redoubled energy and enlarged vision? Can there be any doubt of the answer? We may suffer disappointment in the end, but we shall go on until that happens.

But, suppose we achieve a large measure of success, what then? I suggest that the school will become more specialized to its teaching function, the full responsibility for education being more widely diffused throughout society by means of organs that work in close co-operation with the school. We shall evolve a new kind of Ministry of Education giving full expression at the centre to rich conceptions of the necessities of education that have long been taking shape in many of the local areas.

Out of all this the day school emerges in a new setting as an agency discharging specific allotted functions as part of a much wider educating whole, the nature and working of which are fully understood and which is controlled as a whole. The educator, if not the philosopher, has become king, and the principle of full-control is operating now not in terms of a particular type of school, the boarding school, but over the whole social range.

Is this a fanciful picture? I do not think so, for the lure of it is working strongly among us even now. Nay more, has not the boarding school itself always presupposed the backing of a highly determinate kind of society as its medium and co-operator? Has it, indeed, any meaning apart from

leisure-time activities.

University training departments and training colleges are increasingly alive to the part which their students have to play in fashioning the life of the country and much more social work, both theoretical and practical, is included in their courses. Now that the Government has foreshadowed the raising of the school-leaving age to 15, with part-time education up to 18, to come into effect when the war is over, there must be a reconsideration of the training of teachers for older children and adolescents, and it is understood that the appropriate bodies are already at work on the problem. Apart from full-time teacher training, a great deal is done in short-time holiday courses for both voluntary workers and teachers, courses which are arranged by the Board of Education and the training colleges, to attend which students are selected and aided by education committees. Many of these courses have been arranged in physical training, but others have covered all kinds of adolescent activities. More committees are themselves arranging courses for those living within their areas and are also aiding-in many cases handsomely—with fees and maintenance those who attend outside courses. But, when the results of all this work are reviewed it is obvious that much more needs to be done, particularly in preparation for part-time compulsory continued education. The problem of the adolescent must surely be regarded as a whole, and workers, both voluntary and paid, must be found and trained who share common ideals and purposes so that interests and skills which the boys and girls acquire may be enjoyed and practised widely. This implies that the men and women concerned must have shared much in their training, and must feel themselves to be part of a unified whole, however diverse their interests may be.

The lack of buildings, and the use of unsuitable buildings, have both proved to be serious stumbling-blocks to youth work carried on by voluntary organizations and education committees; towards the solution of this difficulty many local education authorities are now making a useful contribution by letting suitable buildings more freely to any recognized bodies dealing with adolescents. But private bodies owning suitable halls and rooms might, in many places, be more reasonable about rentals and conditions of use. The experience of voluntary organizations and education committees proves conclusively that, unless a building is designed with an eye to youth work or leisure time activity, it will not be satisfactory. Even when it is, it must still be suitably furnished and equipped. Many more buildings designed for the purpose and erected by local authorities with the legal power to do so are needed. They could be let to the bodies wishing to use them. Great changes in building are expected when the war is over, based on the experimental work of the last fifteen years in technical colleges, community centres, institutes of leisure, the Peckham Health Centre, and, above all, the village colleges of Cambridgeshire and the spacious new senior schools of many local education authorities. Henry Morris and others have shown that schools, planned for the purpose and rightly constructed, can be made centres of cultural, social, and recreational activity, for the whole community in town or country. The introduction of part-time continued education will mean in the countryside that many more villages will establish a claim by numbers and uses to a building suitable for a village centre. Alterations will be necessary to many existing junior schools to make them suitable for adolescent and adult activity, and the difficulty of nonprovided school buildings should not prove insuperable. Much can be done by this means to restore the communal village life, and so make it independent of the towns.

Though much more needs to be done in providing playingfields, most local education authorities, who are the biggest owners, do all they can to provide pitches for adolescents in all organizations. Comprehensive schemes in town and in country with full ground staff, tractor cutters, and so on, prove better on costs alone than to maintain separately a number of privately owned fields. In this way and in many

other ways local education authorities are now helping, whilst grants for equipment, camping rentals, and apparatus have also been made available by them.

The second part of the problem facing Youth Committees -the 60 to 70 per cent unattached—is by far the more difficult. Voluntary organizations are being helped by the Board of Education and locally by education and youth committees to carry on their work more effectively, to increase their membership, and to extend their activities (the President of the Board of Education, 29/4/41). But, even if these organizations between them provided all the outlets required by youth to-day, in the opinion of many youth committees it would still be some time before they attracted any appreciable number of the unattached. The suggestion that existing organizations might never in the best of circumstances attract the whole of youth to member ship has led some people to belittle new experiments. Their attitude is summed up in a letter to The Times dated April 1, 1941, from Sir Edward Cadogan, in which-after stressing the heroic effort demanded of those whose business it is to keep the initial enthusiasm for a new movement alive over a long period of years he goes on to say: "That measure of success has been due to the fact that those responsible for the management of the organizations have been men and women with unrivalled experience of youth and its requirements. Where they have failed, if in any respect they have failed, no one else is likely to succeed." It is probable that something like that was said to the late Lord Baden-Powell when he founded in 1908 a new movement twenty-five years junior to the oldest of the then existing youth movements. Baden-Powell was certainly not discouraged by it, and Sir Edward Cadogan's assertion is reminiscent of what was also said about the Young Farmers' Clubs when they first appeared in this country between 1928 and 1932. Fortunately their founders also were not discouraged. These clubs, of which the number increases yearly (there are now over 500 of them), are organizations built upon the occupations and opportunities of the rural areas, with strong social and recreational sides. They combine technical instruction and practical experience with club activity in a very happy and successful way, and develop responsibility in their young members, most of whom are between 14 and 21 years of age. They are not so dependent on adult leadership as some organizations and much of the responsibility is taken by young members who hold executive office. Adult advice is available when required in an advisory committee of farmers, who usually guarantee the loans necessary from time to time in stocking the club. The club is a fine school of citizenship for all its members and of training for those who are to lead in the community in later years.

In their endeavours to meet the needs of the unattached many education committees have themselves started, or are helping others to start, boys' and girls' clubs. Some of these clubs have been severely criticized, but it is apparent that they must be run differently in different places according to conditions and circumstances brought about by the war. Generally, however, the club most criticized is the 'in-out' club which provides nothing but amusement. All club and organization leaders of experience are agreed that such a club can have very little effect unless it is justified by special conditions and first-class leadership. Then it is likely that out of amusement may come demands for creative activities of real value, and the club will develop so that ultimately no one without a knowledge of its history could guess at its origin.

Too little is known of the excellent results achieved in technical colleges and evening institutes all over the country-work which is being rapidly extended and diversified. Most people unfortunately have the idea that the work of these colleges and institutes is purely practical and intended to improve the industrial or commercial skill of the students. But all of them, and particularly the evening institutes, provide endless sources of activity for

leisure time. It is not possible in the space of this review to do justice to the contribution which these institutions are making, varying as they do from the great colleges of the industrial centres, with thousands of students and a welldeveloped social and recreational life, to village colleges and area institutes also with many-sided activities.

The most significant development in youth work since the war began is the Youth Service Squad originating in East Suffolk and now flourishing in many other areas. In May, 1940, a number of boys and girls between 14 and 20 years of age banded themselves together in the East Suffolk village of Copdock to help in the national effort to win the war. They appointed one of their number as leader and undertook first of all the collection of the village salvage. They then looked further afield, discovered other work which needed to be done, and did it very effectively. When news of this squad's work came to the East Suffolk Youth Committee, they decided to tell all the other villages in the county and to invite youngsters to form similar squads. The response to a poster which the youth committee issued in the following July was immediate, and over eighty squads were registered at once as part of the County Youth Service. At the end of April, 1941, there were nearly 200 squads with a total membership of 1,600. Of this number 80 per cent had never previously belonged to any organization at all. That means that the 60 per cent unattached in East Suffolk have so far been reduced by 1,280, or over one-fifth, and the total of unattached is now reduced to below 50 per cent. Numbers are steadily increasing and new squads are forming, so that these figures may ultimately show a still further decrease in the number of unattached. The programme of the squads is threefold. First comes service of national and local importance; the list of jobs is impressive and includes ninety different kinds of work, most of which needs to be done in peace-time too. In addition, there is a list of twenty kinds regarded as peace-time work only. Secondly, there is the educational side. A large number of squad members have joined as individuals, or as squads, their nearest evening institutes or classes, and, where this was not possible, teachers of subjects such as crafts, drama, country dancing, have been sent to squads in their own quarters. Thirdly, the recreational and social side, including play production, concerts, dancing, games, and physical training, has developed so that many villages have been entertained and enlivened, and much has been done for troops quartered nearby throughout the winter, while new games' leagues have been formed and many informal visits and matches have taken place between squads. squads lead a very busy life indeed and it is not uncommon for them to meet four and five nights a week.

Most

The aim of the East Suffolk Youth Service has been defined by the youth committee as the encouragement of the spirit of good citizenship. If, they say, youth service is to attain real success, it must recognize fully the spiritual background of true living and service for others. Those who join should realize that the call for service to which they have responded is a high and spiritual thing, religious in the truest sense of the word. Their own religious life may embrace allegiance to some branch of the Christian Church or reverence for some body of belief or teaching, but the service cannot require less of its loyal members than that they should fulfil conscientiously the duties and obligations of their own religious outlook. The committee feel that this ideal must always be in the forefront of the requirements for good citizenship which are put before youth.

The organization of this youth service is simple and elastic. Each squad elects its own leader and secretary; a badge is worn by each qualified member of a squad; there are no subscriptions, and no expenses other than those which a squad chooses to incur itself; no grants are made to squads by the youth committee except for apparatus or rentals, and generally only when squads raise 75 per cent of the cost themselves. Teachers or instructors are, however, sent free when required and when numbers justify it. Monthly

reports on progress and a six-monthly statement of accounts are required to be sent to the youth committee, and te contact between squad and committee is by post, by pe sonal visit from the chairman or organizer, and by regular conferences of squad leaders and members called at selected points in the county.

It is early yet to assess the value of this youth service, not yet one year old, but an examination of some of the reasons for its progress may be useful. First, it started spetaneously in an East Suffolk village, and no squads re formed except on the demand of youth themselves. A critic in a letter to The Times dated March 18 stated that the squads were "curiously reminiscent of the activities of the Nazi régime and not sponsored by a spontaneous demand of the people, but by a Government department". Nothing could be further from the truth. The idea had spread to many other areas long before the Board of Education called attention to it in Circular 1543. Secondly, squads are genuinely self-governed, choosing their own leaders and secretaries, and changing them (as they have done) if they prove incapable of their tasks. Thirdly, the programme of each squad is based on a search for real needs in the area in which the members live and then on the selection of those tasks that can best be performed. Adult advice is always available but never intrusive. A large volume of corre spondence passes between squad leaders and the youth committee. The quality of the reports submitted has been surprisingly good and shows that youth is quite capable of lucid and pithy expression when the subject and the circumstances are real. The success of the work so far must be attributed mainly to the personalities of the young leaders themselves and to the very impressive qualities of leadership which they have shown. One-third of the squads are all boys and one-third are all girls, with boy and girl leaders respectively. The remainder are mixed squads with slightly more girl leaders than boy leaders. The total membership is roughly 46 per cent boys and 54 per cent girls. Membership would be roughly fifty-fifty boys and girls, but for the fact that the boys of 19 and 20 are engaged in Army training and the Home Guard. The President of the Board of Education, in his broadcast of April 29, stated succinctly his reasons for the success of squad work. Speaking of the unattached he said: "If membership of one of the great voluntary associations does not appeal to them, well let them combine in some other way. The need is to get them together and to help them to run their own show. Thus shall we give them the opportunity to realize in practice what so often remains only a theory, that the most satisfying and the most comforting experience is not their own individual pleasure and entertainment, but concerted effort one with another in the service of their fellow-citizens and their country. The desire to serve is the very stuff and essence of democratic citizenship. We must give it every scope, every opportunity, and every encouragement."

The Youth Service of East Suffolk has been adapted to the needs and conditions of many other areas, particularly rural areas. Squads provide the small villages with a workable and self-contained organization which it has hitherto been difficult to establish in them. Experiments are being conducted elsewhere with Civil Defence Cadets, Youth Emergency Corps, Service Clubs, and so on. These new ventures will be watched with the greatest interest as excursions into the wide field of unattached youth, and it is to be hoped will be the forerunners of a wider choice of activities and of the vigorous and developed youth service which is to be an important part of our national life after the war.

"If you're planning for one year plant grain; if you're planning for ten years plant trees; if you're planning for a hundred years plant men."

Old Chinese Proverb.