is capable of condemning all examinations in one breath and in the next of expressing utter contempt for somebody who failed to obtain First Class Honours or some university scholarship. Prof. Elliot Smith is admittedly one of the most distinguished specialists in his particular line. But he reminds one of Huxley's observations on specialists in relation to university government. Many of these, Huxley wrote, are broad-minded practical men: some are good administrators.

'But, unfortunately, there is among

them, as in other professions, a fair sprinkling of oneidea'd enthusiasts, ignorant of the commonest conventions of official relation, and content with nothing if they cannot get everything their own way." Huxley says very truly that such people, with the very highest and purest intentions, would ruin any administrative body unless counterpoised by non-professional, common-sense members of recognized weight and authority in the conduct of affairs.

"

Is it not presuming too much for Lord Chelmsford to suggest that it is the duty" of the University to reply to Prof. Elliot Smith's criticisms? University College voluntarily accepted incorporation in the University at a time when its fortunes were at a comparatively low ebb and it has benefited enormously by its close association in the University. A vast amount of expert legal, financial, and administrative work has been done for the college by the University without any question of payment. At Oxford and Cambridge, one may note, the colleges are heavily taxed in contributions to the cost of university work. Take the question of propaganda. In 1907 the University published a pamphlet entitled General Information for Internal Students." This has been printed and issued at great expense to tens of thousands of matriculated students. Can it be doubted that the prosperity of University College is due in part to this service? Again, students of the college have benefited greatly from university and inter-collegiate athletic and social facilities, from the Officers Training Corps and similar activities initiated or encouraged by the University. The educational benefits are perhaps less tangible. Putting it on the lowest basis, the University has held the ring and warded off competition and has assured University College full opportunities for development. If, as Shakespeare says, The poorest service is repaid with thanks,' University College shows its gratitude to the University in a peculiar way by providing a platform for criticisms of its history, work, and traditions.

As to Lord Chelmsford's suggestion that the college has loyally co-operated in developing and improving the University, I am bound to point out that this view is not universally held. A good and impartial witness is the late Prof. A. D. Waller, a man of the highest scientific standing, accustomed all his life to weigh evidence and to form conclusions without personal bias, who for many years as a member of the Senate and of the Academic Council enjoyed exceptional opportunities of observing the policy of the University and its colleges at first hand. He published, apparently in 1912, "A Short Account of the Origins of the University of London," in which he asserts unequivocally that the college representatives during the preceding ten years had opposed the extension of the scope of the University as regards the advancement of science and learning. They have been absorbed by college interests as a primary consideration, and have never loyally supported the University as such .. and so the old Dualism of 1898-of Teaching University and Examining has become College versus University. During the last ten years the colleges have become incorporated' by the University, and have steadily drawn the clothes over to their side of the bed . . . and it has become an essential part of that policy that the habitation of the University should be transferred from South Kensington to a more central position in the neighbourhood of the British Museum."

Here is independent confirmation of Lord Dawson's

to the transfer of the University headquarters to Bloomsbury has undoubtedly been based on the fear that University College would thus acquire the hegemony of the University to the grave disadvantage of other colleges, departments, and interests. Personally I have always maintained that this fear is a bogey. Recent events in no way connected with the subject of the present article have somewhat modified this opinion. But if there is any basis for the fear, it is of importance that King's College should be transferred to Bloomsbury in order that it may provide an antidote or counter-irritant.

or

We come therefore to Principal Barker. Let it be said at once that nobody wishes to prevent King's College from cultivating its garden. But sometimes when a garden is neglected, the seeds of noxious weeds are blown to the neighbouring garden; or it may be that a garden grows very beautiful flowers, but too many of one kind; perhaps it requires some expensive appliance for its cultivation, the cost of which might be shared by another garden. Seriously we may look to Principal Barker to give some constructive thought to the wider garden of the University of London, which is really the subject of the discussion. He writes in his letter to The Times in the manner of Diogenes that 'It does not greatly matter where we are situated-whether we remove to the north or the west or the south of our present site, or whether we remain where we are, and cultivate our garden by the Thames." From the point of view of the organization of the University of London, I submit that it matters greatly where King's College is situated. The University of London may be a forbidding subject, presenting, as Mr. Fisher has said, a large number of formidable and intricate problems which have squandered many brilliant energies and soured many sweet tempers. These problems must be solved somehow. The question of the removal of the University headquarters and of King's College to Bloomsbury presents crucial issues in relation to the future policy of the University, as regards constitution, administration, powers, finance, co-ordination, and developWe may hope therefore that Principal Barker will acknowledge this; better still, that he will favour the world with his views on the general lay-out and cultivation of the University garden in which King's College forms a bright and fragrant parterre.

ment.

I will conclude with one or two thoughts bred among the tares of my own brain, thoughts so unsophisticated that they may have escaped more brilliant intellects which have studied the problem of the University of London. First, there is fortunately no evidence that intrigues and disloyalty have damaged the prestige of the University. It is certain, however, that in the fullness of time, this poisoned atmosphere will have most serious effects on the colleges concerned. Further, the spirit shown is entirely alien to the great city whose name we have assumed-to its traditions, its dignity, its tolerance, its good humour. So long ago as the twelfth century, London had an authorized educational system consisting of three schools "retained by privilege and ancient dignity." But other schools were allowed "by goodwill and sufferance." At this late hour, when the need for co-operation is overpowering, London will never accord a position of peculiar privilege to any of its Colleges.

THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE P.N.E.U.

HIS year the Conference of teachers and parents, Union, took place during Holy Week in the Mortimer Hall, London, and was very well attended. The gathering had a special reference to the life and work of Charlotte M. Mason, the great educationist and founder of the Union, who passed away in January, full of years and honour, at the age of eighty-one.

THE ORIGIN OF THE SOCIETY.

It was in 1888 that the Union was first formed in Yorkshire among a few thoughtful parents who were anxious to do something to give to the world in some permanent form what Miss Mason had already given to Bradford in the form of lectures, namely the educational thought and philosophy on the home training of young children, which all the world may now read in her book " Home Education." The gradual growth of the society was described to the Conference by Miss Mason's former secretary, Miss E. Kitching, now the director of the Parents' Union School. She told her audience how local branches were first formed to give parents and teachers mutual opportunities for discussion of educational principles, and for learning each other's points of view, and how now these may be found all over the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon, etc., and there is not a corner of the globe where there are not at any rate some members of the society, from Pekin to Northern Rhodesia or the Falkland Islands !

The adoption of a definite scheme of work in accordance with Miss Mason's teaching of the great capacities of each child considered as a person, and the need for the widest and most generous curriculum, so that every "person might find a due opportunity to develop, was also described from three different points of view.

THE CHILDREN'S OWN TRIBUTE.

This was most admirably given by Mr. Michael Franklin, a young man now at Oxford, who spoke of what the Parents' Union School" (the correspondence scheme for carrying out these ideals) had done for him, working first as a little child at home, and then in schools which had adopted these methods. He said that all life was enriched by the knowledge of outdoor nature, or of the great pictures and music of the world thus given him, so that the Alpine flowers above Grenoble or the great Carpaccios in Florence were already dear and familiar friends when actually encountered. With all due allowance for natural talent, his fluency and the clear thought of his speech and his power of holding an audience were an extraordinary tribute to the teaching methods, of access to the best literature, followed by the pupils' narration, which Miss Mason advocated and the Union puts into practice.

THE TRIBUTE OF THE SCHOOLS.

A private schoolmistress, with a large London private day school, also spoke of the direct spiritual appeal the work has for many different natures, and she read aloud some most beautiful examples of original composition, of narration, and of appreciations of music made by children in her school. At the conclusion of her paper there were some very telling and spontaneous personal experiences contributed by parents and teachers, all showing the wonderful development which had resulted even in very unexpected personalities.

THE WORK IN THE NATION'S SCHOOLS.

But perhaps the most moving of all was the paper contributed by Miss Golding, of a Bristol elementary school— one of the nearly 200 which follow the same work and curriculum of the P.N.E.U. as do the hundred and more private schools and the thousands of private families. The examples of work she gave were very wonderful, but the fact that it was her children who had pointed out the fitness of the poem they were learning on the day they received the news of Miss Mason's death, was more telling than any other evidence-" And in my heart some late lark singing is perhaps one of the most beautiful epitaphs ever written, and most applicable to Miss Mason.

INDIVIDUAL TRIBUTES.

The fact that Lady Aberdeen had made a journey from Ireland to London en route for Scotland, to take the chair as President, and that such well-known and valued figures in the educational world as Mr. Lyttleton, the former

head master of Eton, the Chief Inspector, Prof. de Burgh of Reading, the County Directors of Gloucestershire and Norfolk, and the Master of the Temple, all came to speak of the work and influence of this great woman, showed that the world at large has realized all that she tried to do for it in her own day and for the generations to come. For her work of training teachers for home schoolrooms, and of providing the programmes and examinations of the Parents' Union Schools is to be continued according to the provisions of her will, which for its far-seeing wisdom deserves to rank with the great testaments" of great

men.

THE MEMORIAL SERVICE.

The proceedings culminated on Maundy Thursday morning in a memorial service held by kind permission in that true church of the nation, St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. A beautiful address was given by the head master of Westminster, the Rev. H. Costley White, who spoke of Miss Mason's personal character as a truly great, truly noble, truly good woman." The lessons were read by the Master of the Temple, and the "Veni Creator Spiritus" was beautifully sung as a solo, a fitting reminder of her teaching that all wisdom and learning came from on high, and are one in the wisdom and knowledge of God.

FOREIGN AND DOMINION NOTES.

Secondary SchoolsReducing and Feeding

FRANCE.

For England it has been our hope to purge the secondary schools of their inferior pupils-these to be provided for in continuation schools-and to feed them liberally with the best elements of the primary schools. France is feeling her way in that direction. The Minister of Public Education proposed to exclude the cancres (bad pupils) by means of an external entrance examination for admission to the lycée ; the Conseil supérieur (adopting the view of the Fédération des Professeurs) at its last meeting, preferred a month of probation in the lycée, at the end of which the fate of the probationer will be determined by a vote of his teachers. This probationary month will be renewed in each class, taking the place of the somewhat illusory examen de passage on which promotion now depends. It is pointed out (La Vie Universitaire, iv. 4) that the probationary month will be as futile as the present examination unless the teachers have numerous candidates or pupils from whom to select. Recruits then must be drawn freely from the primary schools. But can the parents of the poorer children afford to dispense with their earnings or services whilst they are in the higher schools? The Conseil supérieur has shown itself favourable to a plan for granting, along with the ordinary bourses or scholarships, bourses d'entretien, or allowances for maintenance. Hitherto bourses have benefited, not working men, but minor officials and the middle-class.

Trade Schools

an Example.

It being supposed that the most promising pupils are drafted out of the primary schools into the secondary, what is to become of the remainder? We indicate one method of providing for them— a method significant of the bid that France is making quite legitimately for industrial and commercial supremacy. It is by means of écoles de métiers, or trade schools, created by the Sous-secrétariat de l'enseignement technique. An example of such schools is the École de cordonnerie in the Rue Huygens at Paris (XIV arrondissement), which, established only in April, 1922, has already more than fifty pupils. Its object is to produce not only skilful shoemakers, but also competent managers and masters for the business of shoemaking. There is no amateurish trifling. The course lasts for three years. The boys begin with mending shoes, and the teacher, watching them, distinguishes those who lacking taste will remain always workmen, or even only menders, and ceux qui sont appelés à un avenir plus brillant," those who will one day be the high priests of St. Crispin, practitioner once at Soissons. Machines of every type are in the school, and the pupils work with all; courses in cutting train them for the most difficult part of the trade. They are received at the age of thirteen or when older. As well as technical training general instruction is offered to

(Continued on page 274.)

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some, such as will bring them to the standard for the certificat d'études primaires; to others, teaching in commercial arithmetic, bookkeeping, shorthand, and civics; whilst for the most advanced there are lectures in hygiene and commercial law. No fees are charged. These trade schools may not be at present large or numerous; on the other hand, they possibly represent the germ of an important development in the making of French citizens. In England we have to contemplate two ways of proceeding if we would hold our own: (i.) By trade instruction in works or shops, reinforced through continuation schools; (ii.) By trade schools which make provision for general as well as for technical education. The objection to the continuation schools is the cost of them; would not the alternative involve incomparably greater expense ?

Plattdeutsch.

GERMANY.

A singular result of the War is the movement in various lands to restore honour to dialect. According to the journal Niedersachsen, the Prussian Kultusministerium has published a Lehrplan by Fritz Wicht for Plattdeutsch in schools. Low German customs are to be preserved as well as the language, which will be called into use, so far as possible, in teaching every subject. It was once estimated that nine million Germans spoke Plattdeutsch, and writers in it, such as Fritz Reuter (Mecklenburg-Schwerin) and Klaus Groth (Holstein) shine brilliantly among the lights of German literature.

UNITED STATES.

It is perhaps not surprising that with regard to contemporary Europe American opinion should be sharply Education in divided. At its last meeting the American Foreign Affairs. Historical Association-Woodrow Wilson is now first vice-president of it and may be president in 1924favoured a sympathetic study of European problems. In a recently published magazine ex-Senator Elihu Root lamented that the American public cannot think soundly on foreign relations because it lacks the necessary information and training. An article in The Historical Outlook (xiv. 2) argues in favour of College Courses in Foreign Affairs," and some high schools are already giving the instruction that Mr. Root desiderated. State-wide examinations held by the Regents of New York State last June probed children as to their knowledge of Lloyd George and Jan Smuts, of Soviet government and the status of Ulster, of the Fourteen Points and the Fourteen Reservations. On the other hand, there is the school of those to whom the exterior world in general and Europe in particular are things abhorrent, to whom a study of their doings is no more practically useful than a study of the topography of Dante's Inferno, and to whom the League of Nations is anathema. We quote, without comment, from the Christian-Humanitarian an utterance of this school. "There are Hordes of Hybrid Americans Not Satisfied With the Finest Government on EarthWho Want This Country to Be the Catspaw, Arsenal and Santa Claus for a Tumble Down, Christ-Denying Civilization of the Old World." The political interests of America may justify a policy of isolation. Morality, as we venture to think, is an international matter; nor rightly can the sins and sufferings of one nation be indifferent to other nations. By imparting some education in foreign affairs schools and colleges will be discharging a moral obligation, not the less real because it is so often ignored. Columbia University, always progressive, has, we observe, a freshman's course in contemporaneous civilization.

At the Dam.

TRANSVAAL.

on

We have word from South Africa about education at the Dam. In June, 1922, there were at the Hartebeestpoort relief works between 1,600 and 2,000 children without schools. Came then the scene Mr. Voss, of Roberts' Heights, as organizing principal and promoter of schools. Now there are eight schools with from 1,600 to 1,700 pupils in attendance and some forty or fifty teachers. Practical teachers will be interested to learn that the children do homework under supervision: each teacher in turn has a duty day and on it is responsible for the homework done.

A Want.

TRINIDAD.

It appears from the Teachers' Journal (Port-of-Spain, x, 2) that there is only one recognized school in Trinidad at which girls can get a secondary education, and that is St. Joseph's Convent, established many years ago for the French Catholic families in the island. The new Code requires teachers to be trained at a secondary school, and at St. Joseph's Convent they are, as it seems, isolated, many of them, by religion-like the Brontë sisters in Madame Héger's pensionnat. There is clearly needed in Trinidad another secondary school for future teachers and for future wives.

PERSONAL PARAGRAPHS.

MISS RETA OLDHAM, O.B.E., is retiring from the headship of the Streatham Hill High School (Girls' Public Day School Trust) in July, a position which she has held with conspicuous success since 1898. In addition to her school duties Miss Oldham has been an indefatigable worker in the interests of women and education. Her early studies in Economics and Political Economy-she took First Class Honours in History, Political Economy, and Political Science-have undoubtedly contributed to the width of her many-sided interests. She is a vice-president of the Association of Head Mistresses, of which she was president from 1917-19, having previously served (1915-17) as chairman of committee, and she has discharged the duties of chairman of two of the important sub-committees of the A.H.M., the Openings for Girls and Women and the Education Committees. In 1913 Miss Oldham gave evidence with Miss L. M. Faithful before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, and during the war she presided over a committee of head mistresses which was responsible for the selection of temporary girl and women clerks for work in government offices. She was instrumental in securing co-operation between the Head Mistresses Association and the Colonial Intelligence League for Educated Women, a society which has since merged in the Society for Oversea Settlement for British Women, and she is at present Chairman of its Education Committee. Favoured with a striking personality, and a charming disposition, Miss Oldham has endeared herself to pupils and friends alike, and it is the earnest wish of all that she will still continue her educational activities after her retirement from teaching.

MISS ETHEL RUTH GWATKIN, B.A. London, and Mathematical Tripos, Newnham College, Cambridge, has been appointed head mistress of Streatham High School, in succession to Miss Oldham, by the Council of the G.P.D.S.T., from the beginning of next autumn term. Miss Gwatkin is at present head mistress of Queen Mary High School, Liverpool.

By the death of Dr. Constance Long, education in this country has lost a warm friend and a most wise and practical counsellor. With her intimate knowledge of school matters and of all the concerns of children, her clear and sane judgment was of infinite value to those who were able to consult her. Dr. Long is most widely known as

a pioneer in the researches of psychological medicine. Many teachers were among her patients, and to the sufferers from the clouding depressions of nervous illness who came under her care, her skill, serenity, and kindness were a real salvation. She was most generous in giving help and never spared herself. Her sympathetic advice lightened the darkest places. To her friends her death is a grievous loss, for, besides her unique knowledge and experience, she had an essential goodness which could not be mistaken, and an unusual grace and charm of personality which endeared her to all sorts of people. Dr. Long had consider

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