But the chief cause of grievance against the public schools is the fact that the possession of a school label of a certain kind, irrespective of the quality of the education received, constitutes a claim to privileged status, and that the products of the public schools gravitate to the best positions in the Government, in the Services and in industry. Aneurin Bevan has told us that the reason for this is that those who have the power to confer favours are themselves products of the public schools and like the smell of the same herd.3

Mr.

It is generally admitted, however, that the education and training given in these schools are excellent. A system which has enabled the State to be served by men such as Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. Attlee, Mr. Hugh Dalton and General Wavell can certainly claim to have made a valuable contribution to the nation's requirements.

The important point is that the educational advantages of the public schools should be available for pupils from poorer as well as those from more prosperous homes.

A Royal Commission should be set up on the lines suggested by Professor Julian Huxley to consider the problem of education in a democratic country, with reference particularly to the position of the public schools in our national life.

SCHOOL CAMPS

If it is true that the chief value of the public school lies, not in what is taught in school hours, but in what is learnt from the communal life of a boarding school, indirectly and unconsciously, and, if it is thought too that the products of this system are on the whole good, this is a strong argument for the extension of the boarding-school system.

The State's first experiment in this direction-the National Camps-has proved a great success. Mr. Malcolm MacDonald has referred to these school camps as one of the most significant pieces of work to which Parliament has lent its hand in recent times, and has said that, when the war is over, we ought to make adequate provision for sending town children regularly to spend a reasonable period of each year in the country. They are places", he said, “where successive generations of school children can get an enrichment of their bodies, minds, and spirits which will enable them, in their day, to maintain the highest traditions of a race which has always drawn much of its strength from the lovely countryside of its birth."

Those who have visited these camps are rightly enthusiastic about an experiment which has almost Utopian possibilities. It is claimed that these camps, with their closely-knit community life, enable an apprenticeship to be served for the larger community outside. The fact of the children being on the premises day and night leads to the growth of vigorous school activities. Academic and textbook education can be reduced to a minimum, and school work becomes more practical and real. A balance of living' is secured whereby town children, through living in the country, become freed from urban prejudices and limitations.

Now that this experiment has proved such a great success educationists will demand after the war a vast increase in the number of these 'State Boarding Schools' so that their benefits shall be made available to all children.

EQUALITY OF DECENCY

No child should be compelled to spend his school life in a dingy unhealthy building. Children are, to an incredible 2 Ibid, P. 47. 3 Ibid, p. 48.

degree, the products of the environment in which they are brought up.

If the school is a slum building, ill ventilated and without proper sanitary arrangements, then the quality of the children who emerge from it will be impoverished.

A ruthless sweeping away of these ugly, sooty ramshackle erections which now pass as schools is a long overdue reform. Their destruction, never before envisaged on the ground of economy, and now being carried out by an unwillingly beneficent enemy, is an unqualified blessing. We need not only equality of opportunity; we need also equality of decency.

EQUALITY OF BREATHING SPACE

No real progress in education is possible either until the size of classes has been reduced to educable proportions. Until this reform has been achieved all the highfalutin talk about a New Testament for Education is mere claptrap. Until this abuse has been redressed, the money spent on building and equipping the new schools will bring no adequate return. Democracy in this country will be all the safer when this reform has been carried out, for massproduction methods in the class-room, suppressed initiative, and dreary routine are productive, not of a self-disciplined, intelligent race of citizens, but of a species of human robots, automata for mechanical subservience under a dictator "; fertile soil for unscrupulous propaganda; easy prey for any political gangster who happens to come along.

PARITY OF CONDITIONS

Equality of opportunity demands that every type of school must be regarded as having equal social prestige. It follows therefore that every type of school shall receive, in proportion to its needs, the same consideration in regard to premises, staffing, and equipment. Though the bulk of true secondary education in this country, if secondary is interpreted in the Hadow sense of post-primary', is given in the Senior and Central Schools, yet by a strange paradox these schools are still conducted under elementary regulations. "A thing is not worse, because it is different ", wrote Tacitus, and there is no case whatever for regarding the education given at the schools attended by the great majority of children over eleven as inferior to that given in schools called secondary.

Prof. Tawney has used this argument: "Many of the children attending the former are of precisely the same age as their comrades in the latter, and have the same need of air for their lungs, playing-fields for their legs, and classes small enough to give a reasonable chance to both pupil and teacher ".

RAISING OF THE SCHOOL-LEAVING AGE

A further vital step toward the attainment of equality of opportunity in education is the raising of the schoolleaving age.

Sir Richard Livingstone in his book The Future in Education, holds that the fundamental defect of our educational system is that in all cases it comes to an end with adolescence.

If continued education is desirable for the welfare of some pupils and this is shown by the fact that parents who are financially able ensure that their children have it, regardless of any so-called evidence of ability to profitthen it should be provided for all.

Yet what do we find? "One is met at the very threshold", writes Sir Cyril Norwood, "by the blunt fact that one child must go out into the world at 14 and find such employment as he may, while another is protected, guided, and maintained through the whole period of his adolescence, and may be free to postpone even the consideration of his life's career, until he has finished with the university. Something must clearly be done ", he warns us, “to fill in this immense gap ".

The school-leaving age should be raised to 15, therefore, as soon as circumstances permit, and as a long-range policy,

the adoption of a leaving age to 16 must be envisaged as inevitable.

Pari passu with the raising of the leaving age, there should be restored also the day continuation school programme on the lines of the Fisher Act.

Not only should the State plan to keep alive the educational flame through adolescence to maturity, but, in order to make the plan complete, coherent, and comprehensive, the scheme must provide also facilities for the leisure hours of its young people.

Up to now Britain has paid less attention to the training of its youth than almost any other country in Europe, and it is a sad commentary on our social conscience that it should take a war to force us to face the problem. The omission is all the more remarkable when it is realized how much the future of our country depends on the right training of its youth.

In the meantime we are confronted with the fact that in this country to-day, six-sevenths of the population, the very backbone of the nation, leave school at the age of 14, the vast majority drifting aimlessly through adolescence to early manhood, spending their time as one writer tells us in "hops, chips, flicks and kicks". Many of them, through lack of guidance and opportunity, grow up caricatures of the fine men and women which they would have become had they been given the chance.

Such terms as an educational ladder or broad highway are singularly inappropriate to describe the means whereby a pupil may proceed from the elementary school, through the secondary school to the university. It would be more correct to describe it as a very slippery greasy pole, for only one in 200 who start from the bottom reach the top.

Unless they have been wise enough to choose parents with means ", writes Mr. Lionel Elvin," (and failure to do this is the elementary school child's first mistake) they enter the university by a combination of brains, smart examination technique, and good fortune in getting money from authorities and institutions."

It has been proved statistically that the opportunity of a son of fee-paying parents to proceed from a secondary school to a university is more than forty times that of an ex-elementary school boy whose father could not afford secondary school fees.

How far do the universities themselves conform to the principle of equality of opportunity? The late Prof. Dibelius, a foreign observer, described Oxford and Cambridge as rich men's universities. He affirmed, too, that these universities are the expression of the educational needs of the well-to-do. Yet nine out of ten headships in our secondary schools go to the products of the older universities! Thus the dice is loaded at every turn against the child of poor parents.

"

of our prisons", continues Mr. Henriques, is largely recruited from those who have fallen into crime in adolescence. They are not by nature criminals, but, denied a proper outlet for their high spirits, they have satisfied their desire for activity and adventure in the wrong way, and they have been insufficiently trained to withstand the temptations which they meet."

Mr. Kenneth Lindsay has recently given startling figures concerning the magnitude of the youth problem. There are in this country 3,000,000 young people between the ages of 14 and 20 of whom only about 500,000 attend some form of full-time education. The remainder, he tells us, are in no man's land". In spite of a network of evening classes, youth centres and clubs, fully 60 per cent are untouched by any of these organizations.

These young people, wage-earners though they may be, are still apprentices to life, and it is the bounden duty of the State to look after them. Youth welfare must take its place therefore as a recognized province of education, side by side with the elementary, secondary, and further education as an integral part of development of the educational system, and not merely an improvisation to supply its deficiencies.

"

Young people ", to quote the oft-reiterated words of Lord Baden-Powell, like doing a job and feeling responsible." In the hour of the nation's peril our young men are burning to be of service and to help positively the national effort. This is shown by the recent rapid growth of the various forms of youth service corps up and down the country.

But the vital question is, 'How long is this enthusiasm, aroused for war work, to be translated into terms of peace ? What is going to be the long-term inspiration that will keep the forces now being rallied interested after the war ? Maybe this dynamic will manifest itself, as one writer suggests, when the youth of this country begins to realize that it can play a part, a unique and vital part, in the struggle of the whole people toward a higher stage of society. ADMISSION TO THE UNIVERSITIES

How far short of the principle of an equal opportunity is our present system in regard to admission to the universities? The answer is disquieting.

The United States has one of every 125 of its people at a university, compared with one university student in every 1,150 people in England, one to 1,000 people in Wales and one to 455 people in Scotland. In the U.S.A. too, which is every State of the Union, for every citizen's son or daughter, if he passes the necessary examinations, to have a university tuition free. It is obvious from these facts that we have a long way to go in order to catch up with the United States in regard to equality of educational opportunity.

ANOMALIES AS BETWEEN DIFFERENT AREAS No plan for providing equality of opportunity in education can succeed until the anomalies which now exist between one area and another are removed.

It is obvious that a wealthy area carrying no financial burden is able to make wider and better educational provision than a poor area heavily burdened with rates.

The

Statistics reveal the tremendous disparity which at present exists as between one area and another. percentage of special places awarded to secondary schools ranges from under 25 per cent to 100 per cent. Secondary school fees range from something over four guineas to thirty guineas.

The total net local education authority expenditure per child (elementary) ranges from £24 9s. 4d. to £9 6s. 3d. To a child in one area, four types of post-primary school may be available, senior, central, technical, and grammar. In other areas the only alternative to the grammar school is the senior school.

Is it intelligent or democratic, it is pertinent to ask, that the accident of residence should so largely determine a child's educational opportunities?

Not only may a child be a victim of educational inequality because he happens to live in a locality heavily burdened with rates, but even in the same area, there cannot be equality for all children, if elementary and secondary education are under different authorities.

Sir Frederick Mander in a recent speech drew attention to the absurdities of the present system. We have 300 local education authorities ", he told his audience," and at present we grade them as we grade out public-houses. Some are fully licensed, and some are only half licensed; some are permitted to sell the whole range of educational beverages, including the more heady wines of secondary and technical education. The rest are merely educational beer-houses. and may sell only the proletarian beverage of elementary schooling. This ridiculous system ", he maintained,

must

be brought to an end. We need fewer and larger administrative units, and these should be fully licensed ".

ENVIRONMENT AND ATTAINMENT

The basic inequality is that which exists as between home and home, and, whatever ideal pattern educational administrators may seek to impose upon the schools, they will continue to reflect social and economic realities.

A highly important report on the effect of environment on education has been issued recently by the Glasgow Education Committee. It is highly significant," the report states, “that the results show an almost precise mathematical relationship", i.e. that attainment is exactly in inverse ratio to the quality of nutrition and environment. In plain words, the poorer the home the poorer the school record. This authority, by providing hot meals, &c., regularly at one of its schools in an attempt to remedy bad home conditions, was able to raise this Group VIII school to the scholastic level of a Grade IV school.

What a magnificent change could be effected in one generation", wrote one educational journal, when referring to this experiment, were every local authority in the land to introduce similar treatment for its unprivileged children".

Without waiting for a change in the social order, a great deal could be done, even at this juncture, to minimize the incidence of inequality as between home and home by the simple expedient of a more generous distribution of maintenance grants and the elimination of school fees.

The question of equality of environment is not an educational but a social question, but the two problems are inexorably and inextricably bound up with each other. The State has performed only half its duty to the child

if it has regard only to the provision of educational facilities, and shows no active concern in the nature of his home environment. Nor can the teacher discharge his full obligation to his pupil if he is content to concern himself merely with his duties in the class-room.

It is generally admitted that only when the defects of our present social system are remedied can education exert its maximum influence. It follows, therefore, that the true educator is something more than a mere pedagogue. Brought face to face in the class-room with the inequalities of the system which now exists, he is compelled through sheer force of circumstances to become a social reformer. If we sincerely believe that every child must have a real chance in life, it is our plain duty as teachers to mobilize public opinion on the side of such reforms as will combat and destroy those forces which now bar the way to equality of educational opportunity-forces inside the home itself, such as poverty, with its attendant evils of malnutrition and disease, and forces outside the home such as ignorance, callous indifference, vested interest, prejudice, and finally administrative muddle in regard to the control of education. This then is our mission, nay our privilege, to help secure for each child a square deal in education.

As to our mission inside the class-room, one could wish for no finer inspiration than the words of Mr. F. C. Happold, This and nothing less is the task of the schools of England at this time, to create a generation of militant youth, dedicated to the task of building, out of the turmoil of the present age, a lovelier, finer England, an England disciplined yet free, a society planned for social justice within a framework of intellectual and spiritual liberty, an England which, because she has recreated herself, may yet recreate the world".

HERE are two principal ways in which a school leads a community life: one is by means of its corporate activity within the school frontiers, the other by participating in social or civic activities outside its own boundaries. Both ways are important in their educational consequences and in their influence on our national character; it seems likely that, if post-primary education is reconstructed after the war, those intra- and extra-mural aspects of school life will receive more than their present share of attention.

Within the school British education is admittedly strong in its emphasis on character-training and its stress on the art of living together. Although at the moment people seem rather more interested in the shortcomings of our public schools than in their virtues, few will gainsay that our school tradition owes much to their cultivation of the corporate life as a method of rearing good citizens and instilling a sense of leadership. What was best in the publicschool revival of mid-Victorian days has now been absorbed into our general educational philosophy with the result that schools of every type in this country practise in some degree the various methods of indirect training in social habit which the great Victorian headmasters were so fond of expounding. This training begins at the nursery stage and permeates the whole range of school provision; Margaret Macmillan was as emphatic in her stress on the significance of a corporate life as Arnold or Thring. Nor must we ever forget how much we owe to assistant masters and mistresses as architects of this fine tradition: consider, for example, the influence which men like Bowen of Harrow have had on our educational and even our political thought. His "play the game has certainly had much to do with our national faith-perhaps excessive, and sometimes misplaced-in the virtues of team-spirit and co-operation. When taught too narrowly such an ethic can produce an exaggerated zeal for house or school, and in national affairs

a tendency to be all for the party and seldom for the State. But it is a valuable social cement, and it is not, as experience has shown, incompatible with an individualism that can be enterprising and audacious. When in 1903 the Elementary School Code included a first reference to "the corporate life of school", it was regarded as a rather exciting innovation; to-day some of the best social activity and leadership training is to be found in elementary schools, and if, as so many hope, all post-primary education operates in the future under one code, it will be found that public, secondary, and senior schools have as a common background this faith in a well-developed communal life as a means of acquiring subconsciously a sense of social discipline and a decent civic spirit.

It is sometimes said that the residential school is a better training ground for character than the day school because it has a fuller and more continuous corporate existence. Indeed, a leading public-school headmaster contended the other day that such schools can accomplish a far more complete religious training because they have the boy twenty-four hours a day. One suspects that this argument is founded on a good many fallacies: for, as Aristotle and many since have observed, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and it is questionable whether the public schools have a monopoly of saints or even of Scripture credits. For a training in the civic virtues it is doubtful whether any institution can provide anything that will compare with the double advantage of a good home and a good day school. Without, however, pursuing this ancient controversy, we can agree with the headmaster to the extent of concurring in the view that religious and social training can be far better accomplished when a school lives the life of a corporate society. In that respect it is possible that the public schools have an advantage not always shared by schools which have grown up since 1870 or 1902.

Redeveloped under the aegis of the State the latter are, in spite of their full social life, not as a rule corporate entities, operating under their own instrument, ordinance, or charter. It may be argued that there is not much in that, and that the value of a separate ordinance is at most one of status in a world in which status counts for less and less. It is possible, however, that the point has more substance in it than we are ready to admit, and that the idea of the separate ordinance is based on thoroughly sound educational considerations.

Most of our schools, it must be remembered, have grown to maturity during a period in which a sort of neo-Hegelian outlook has held sway in government circles. A gentlemanly kind of étatisme has permeated the innumerable codes, circulars and administrative memoranda which have regulated their existence. They have often had to turn and presently to right-about-turn to comply with requirements; they have drunk more milk, arranged more periods of physical training, and done many other things not because it was their own idea but because the Great Leviathan in his infinite wisdom said so. Schools have waited in grim suspense while the Hadow and the Spens Committees indulged in years of deliberation, producing conclusions involving mass organization and reorganization. Applied in an English way by a Board of Education which still practises Matthew Arnold's sweet reasonableness, this regimentation from a central switchboard allows room for local initiative and some pleasant diversity. But it has its dangers. The totalitarians have shown us how an allpowerful state can misuse education to serve political ends; control under a Plato may turn a myriad eyes to the light, but under a Hitler it can, by a Lacedaemonian twist of the screw, be made to produce a generation of militarists and destroy the peace of the world. There is much to be said for local authority or governing body as bulwarks against regimentation by circulars, examination syllabuses, and administrative memoranda; and there is a positive value in an age of reconstruction in having an educational order which will allow much elasticity and room for bold experi

NURSERY

By DOROTHY B. HALL, Nursery Training HE need for nursery schools as part of the national interested in the well-being of children under 5; the problems of evacuation have made the need acute. A correspondent to The Times Educational Supplement of June 28 has said that there are thousands of children between the ages of 2 and 5 waiting to come out to the reception areas as soon as accommodation can be found for them. War-time nurseries are rapidly being established up and down the country to deal with this situation, and while the problem of staffing is arousing controversy, there is complete unanimity as regards the need for such nurseries. Many people hitherto unaware of the existence of nursery education are anxious now to know something about it. The aim of the nursery school is to provide for the child of 2 to 5 the conditions of a good nursery, where, in a social setting, he may have scope and freedom to develop all his powers. The first nursery schools were founded to give the children of poor parents the right conditions for physical development, but these children are not the only section of society who need nursery schools. In these days of small families children of all classes need such schools in order to be freed from a society which is largely adult and where they must so often feel little and inferior, and to be put in an environment where there is time for independence and freedom to experiment and use initiative. During the years before 5 the foundations of health and character are laid, and for this reason alone these years may rightly be considered the most important years of life. Dr. Arnold

ment. When, about forty years ago, Maitland presented Gierke with such enthusiasm to English readers, the implications were nothing like so clear as they are to-day; now Maitland's action has almost a prophetic quality, a message for our times, in that Gierke shows by reference to the mediaeval world how important a part corporations, associations, and societies can play in the framework of civilization. It was against such a background that many of our schools came into being as living communities duly incorporated; William of Wykeham, for example, occupies many pages in defining his ordinances which prescribe that wardens, scholars, clerks, and others shall associate together as colleagues and collegiate persons". In the new educational order is there not room for some restoration and expansion of the collegiate element in school government?

If the public schools have been successful in showing the way to a corporate school life, it must be confessed that they have never met with much success in their extramural contacts. Here the new modern, central, or senior school is doing some magnificent work, succeeding often in creating itself a college or educational cathedral for its immediate neighbourhood. This is a great improvement upon the aloofness to which grammar schools have, to their own loss, so often been prone throughout the ages. "The School", Dewey once said, "is at present engaged largely upon the futile task of Sisyphus. It is endeavouring to form practically an intellectual habit in children for use in a social life which is, as it would almost seem, carefully and purposely kept away from any vital contact with the child who is thus undergoing training. The only way to prepare for social life is to engage in social life". Schools which make training in good citizenship their central aim are often most exclusive in their contacts; it is, however, surely important that pupils should receive their initiation into the civic virtues in an environment of good neighbourliness. What varies, T. H. Green wisely observes, is not so much duty to a neighbour as the practical answer to the question who is my neighbour.

SCHOOLS

Department, Homerton College, Cambridge

Gesell, of Yale University, one of the ablest and most experienced of child psychologists, stresses the importance of the pre-school years as the most critical period in the development of the individual; the researches of Dr. Susan Isaacs, Dr. Charlotte Bühler, and others offer ample evidence in support of this statement.

A nursery school is in the charge of a superintendent who must have had a minimum of two years' college training for this work. She must understand fully the needs of normal healthy children in order to provide them with equipment suitable to ensure good physical and mental health and growth. She should be a keen student of psychology; she should know sufficient about the abnormal child to be able to cope with the difficulties that may arise; and she should have sufficient knowledge of sick children to be able to diagnose disorders of the nervous and physical system and to render first aid. To supplement her work the school doctor visits the school at regular intervals, examines each child in the presence of the parent, and gives advice and suggestions. The school nurse pays even more frequent visits and treats children for minor ailments. But medical supervision alone does not ensure physical health. Each child must have opportunities for free movement in the fresh air and sunshine whenever possible, and regular times for sleep. He must also be trained to form right habits of personal hygiene such as those involved in washing, teeth cleaning, the use of a handkerchief, excretion, &c. The nursery school treats such habits as part (Continued on page 378)

LEARNING THROUGH FAMILIAR THINGS

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