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different processes as a general education and a professional training.

3. Instead of thinking out the great problem of secondary training for ourselves in England, aided by the experience of training in other countries, to attempt to graft a foreign system of training on to our English education.

4. To attempt to limit experiment and differentiation in methods and conditions of training.

If we avoid these four mistakes, and if the aristocracy of English teachers devote their attention to the question of training, we shall probably in the coming century have a satisfactory system of secondary training in England.

Let us now turn briefly to the training of teachers for elementary schools. Sir Joshua Fitch has already described to us the schools and teachers of a hundred years ago. I came across a statement the other day which I think reflects public opinion on elementary education a century ago. The statement was made by an educational authority so high that I dare not give it, and referred to school buildings. "A barn is a very good model for an elementary school, and a good barn can be easily converted into a satisfactory school building." Such statements no doubt explain the simple but not beautiful style of rural schools that one still occasionally meets with.

The evangelical revival at the end of last century had produced a large number of Sunday Schools. It has been truly said, "The idea of education for the poor sprang in England from a religious impulse, it was fostered by intense religious zeal. ***Thus the Sunday School came to be the type of the daily school, which at first only gave instruction to read the Bible." As Mr Graham Balfour points out, "The germ of the religious difficulty has lain in the English elementary system from the beginning." "The services of the Churches to elementary education have been many and splendid and the Church of England has been pre-eminent in its selfsacrifice and devotion as in its privileges." This historical fact,

-the ecclesiastical foundation of our elementary educationexplains our sectarian training colleges and our public grants to them, as well as the comparative ease with which three times in this century we have suddenly increased our supply of .elementary teachers when the need arose, because in each case the Churches made a special effort. It explains also some of the special difficulties under which we suffer at present in the training of elementary teachers.

Two educational societies referred to by previous lecturers (the National Society and the British and Foreign School Society), both of which still remain with us, were started early in the century to develop elementary education. A large number of teachers were required, and both societies were forced to train a considerable number. Sir Joshua Fitch described to us the other day the Monitorial Systern, adopted by both Societies, in which a Head Master has a staff of children-the monitors. He teaches them, and they teach the school. The training required for this system was described by one of the founders of the system in these words: "Give me 24 pupils to-day and I will give you 24 teachers to-morrow." Surely the shortest course of training ever suggested, 24 hours! It is hard for us to realise the gratitude felt at the time for this primitive system of teaching, the training for which was of course quite mechanical and mere imitation. I quote from a contemporary writer, which quotation shows vividly the folly of prophecy: "Thousands upon thousands will bless him (the founder of the system) while he yet lives, and a perpetual series of millions will revere his memory." Both the educational societies established model schools where teachers were trained for a few months in the system.

From about 1810, public interest in elementary education grew steadily, politicians began to pay attention to it, and in 1838 came the first Treasury grant for elementary education. That remarkable man, Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth,-the real founder of our primary education-saw, as most of us now see, that the

only possible compromise was to give public money for education to the two religious societies already occupying the educational field. Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth and his friends saw, however, also clearly that the training of teachers was not really a denominational concern at all, but a national concern. May I be allowed to add also that it is not a municipal concern? They earnestly desired a State training college, and two attempts were made in that direction, Kneller Hall, and the college at Battersea founded privately by them. Both attempts failed, largely because of the religious difficulty, and we have still no State Normal college. Meanwhile public money was pouring in for elementary education in an evergrowing stream, and a considerable amount of it went to the training of teachers-for model schools, the building of training colleges, and for their equipment. Meanwhile the Monitorial system had failed. In 1842, Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth said: "Elementary Schools generally are in a most deplorable condition...... The Monitorial System has not only utterly failed, but for the time being has ruined the confidence of the poor in elementary schools and exhausted the charity of the middle classes." Something had to be found to take its place, and Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth and his friends imported from Holland what we know by the name of the Pupil Teacher System. This was in 1846, but we did not carry it out in England exactly in Dutch style. In Holland, elementary scholars from 13 to 18 helped the Head Master, and were themselves taught in the evening by an association of masters in each town (corresponding to some of our present pupil teacher centres, which is a comparatively new development in England). Also all Dutch pupil teachers went to a central training college to complete their general education, and their knowledge of the principles and methods of teaching. Even now all our pupil teachers do not pass to a training college. Slowly and gradually we have improved our English pupil teacher system, but even to-day many consider it a totally inadequate plan for educating and

training efficient teachers. Further information on this subject can be obtained from the report of a Departmental Committee in 1896, which considered the question of pupil teachers.

I will describe in detail the best pupil teacher arrangement that I know at present in England. I give it because I believe we are slowly tending towards some arrangement of the kind all over England. The pupil teachers are chosen by competitive examination at the age of 15. Only those are admitted to the examination who have been for at least two years in a secondary school. The successful candidates are sent back to a secondary school for two years, and the School Board pays all their school expenses. They spend one afternoon a week in an elementary school, helping and being helped. At the end of two years they become half-timers, spending half their time in the same secondary school to continue their own education, and half the time as an ordinary pupil teacher in an elementary school. They receive the ordinary pupil teacher's pay. At 19 they can pass to a day training college in connection with an university college, and the majority will be able to take their degree during their training course. This is by no means an idealarrangement, but superior to anything we have had in the past in England.

Going back to the forties, when the pupil teacher system was established, it is very sad to read a description of the teachers of the day.

In 1839 we read: "There is a great lack of teachers; almost the only teachers are untrained men who for some defect of body or health had been driven from the rougher struggles of life and muscular toil, or self-taught Sunday School teachers trained for three or six months in some central model school."

In 1849, Macaulay thus describes the schoolmasters of the poor: "How many of these men are now the refuse of other callings-discarded servants or ruined tradesmen, who do not know whether the earth is a cube or a sphere, whom no gentle

man would trust with the key of his cellar, and no tradesman would entrust with a message." The condition of the dame schools can be realised by a statement from one of the dames : "It's little they pays us, and it's little we teaches them.”

Even as late as 1858 we read the following description of a school, giving the conditions under which some of the teachers of that day taught: "The closeness of the room made animal heat save artificial fuel, and though the foul air may for a time make the children restless, it soon acts as a narcotic." I am not describing a prison, but a school, not in a remote rural district, but in the heart of London. The Assistant-Commissioner, who gives the account, says it is a very usual kind of London school. The teachers were, some of them, discharged barmaids, consumptives in the last stages, vendors of toys, outdoor paupers, men and women 70 and 85 years of age, and all this only 42 years ago! The Assistant-Commissioner remarked, "None are too old, too ignorant, too feeble, too sickly, to regard themselves and to be regarded by others as unfit for school keeping. 'Bodily infirmity is a special reason for becoming a teacher.'"

Meanwhile, in the middle of the century, select committees and Royal Commissions were collecting information and arousing public opinion, and public money was contributing funds for the instruction of pupil teachers, for training colleges, for their staffs and for their pupils. In 1847 the Education Department arranged for an examination for elementary teachers, and provided an augmentation grant for all those who passed it. Matters were steadily improving, a better class of teachers were gradually appearing, better educational advantages were opening before them, denominational training colleges were springing up more and more, and the work of teachers was being inspected, when suddenly a very serious step was taken in 1861. A Royal Commission had considered that the junior forms in school and the less intelligent pupils were being neglected, and had suggested that part of the Government grants should be given