some of the best university associations and influences. Moreover, I should be glad to see at least one elementary teachers' training college established in each of our great universities, so that all the members might have the advantage of university associations. I have, indeed, often wondered that some of the wealthy churchmen who are so earnest about maintaining the influence of the church in the field of education do not spend a little of their wealth in founding Church of England training colleges for teachers at Oxford and Cambridge, as I can hardly imagine any other policy which would be so efficient for the purpose they have in view. Give me the training of the teachers and I count all other matters as of secondary importance. My last suggestion on this point is that steps should be taken to invite and attract students from secondary schools to enter the elementary school training colleges with the view of becoming elementary school teachers.

On the influence of the teacher, Dr. Percival said further:

The influence of the school-teacher on the character of the young is probably greater than that of any other person outside the family circle. Every day in manifold relationships, all through the growing and impressible life of early years, the teacher's personality is acting on the mind of the pupil, and it is proverbial that all the strongest and best influences on life and character, as also those that are most mischievous, act upon us through the direct influence of some personality. The power of the Saviour himself in human life has been described with much truth and suggestiveness as His revelation multiplied by the power of His personality. What a vast field of opportunities this implies, and what a weight of responsibity it lays on those who take up this office, both as regards their character and conduct and their personal training for it. Thus the teacher's success or failure depends very largely on the effect of his own personality, and showing itself in his manners, temper, character, and tastes, and on the ideal of work and duty which he impresses on his pupils by the spirit of his life and by his own example. It will, for instance, make a vast difference to your work and its fruits whether the aim which chiefly occupies your thoughts is simply to satisfy the examiner or to earn a grant; in other words, the narrow utilitarian aim which is certain to infect your pupils with the same utilitarian spirit, or whether in all your teaching you are possessed with the feeling that you are placed in your office to cultivate their tastes, to build up their character, to train their faculties, and to refine their tempers and their manners; in fact, to make them as far as your opportunities enable you to do it men and women of the true Christian type. This being so, we can not too emphatically impress on everyone who proposes to undertake the teacher's office the weighty words of Matthew Arnold: "The best thing for a teacher to do," he said, “is to put before himself in the utmost simplicity the problem he has to solve. He has first of all to instruct the children committed to his charge in certain elements of learning. He has also to bear in mind that they have for the most part a singularly narrow range of words and thoughts. He has consequently to give them some knowledge of the world in which they find themselves and of what happens and of what has happened in it, and he has to do all that within him lies toward opening their mind and opening their soul and their imagination; and," he added in words which deserve to be graven in the memory of every teacher, "the teacher will open the children's soul and imagination the better the more he has opened his own, and he will also clear their understanding the better the more he has cleared his own."

Need of closer relations between elementary and secondary teachers.Dr. Percival not only recognized the need of enlarging the sphere of the elementary teacher, but he urged that teachers of secondary schools shall have special training for their vocation. With respect to these he said:

We have to lament the long delay in establishing any system of professional training for the office of teacher. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge are

prepared to do their part, and have already done something, and women have very wisely taken advantage of the facilities provided at Cambridge, but among men the opportunities offered have been very generally ignored. And I feel that these efforts of the universities will meet with little success until the state requires that every teacher in a publie (i. e., secondary) school must undergo a period of professional training and probation. I desire to see such a requirement, both because it will raise the status of teachers, and so make them better teachers, and because it will increase their efficiency in all that large portion of their work which is affected by accumulated and transmitted experience and the training that is based upon such experience; but I desire it even more because it will be the means of bringing young men under the influence of the great prophets of education-those men of genins and inspiration of whose mind and work many of our young masters are totally ignorant-thus stimulating their intellectual and moral faculties and changing and uplifting their ideals of duty.

This conception of the teaching profession accords with the views advanced by the royal commission on secondary education. They advocated the unification of all grades and a system of official registration, open alike to all teachers without respect to the class of schools in which they seek employment.

The narrow course of elementary schools an obstacle to union of grades. The narrow course of the average elementary school is a greater obstacle to such union even than the social and scholastic distinctions between the teachers. Pupils who have been taught the merest elements, whose minds have never been opened to any real subjects of thought, are in no state to enter upon secondary courses. This consideration was urged upon the attention of Parliament, during the debate on the annual appropriations, by Sir John Lubbock, who moved "that it is desirable to assimilate the provisions of the English education code, as regards class and special subjects, to those in the Scotch code of 1897.”

The report of the debate given below affords an interesting view of the manner in which the elementary-school programme has been gradually developed. After offering the resolution, Mr. Lubbock continued:

Greater encouragement should be given to the teaching of geography, elementary science, English, and history. These were class subjects, and only two of them could be taken in English elementary schools, whereas the number across the border was three. With regard to specific subjects, which included physics, chemistry, mechanics, shorthand, foreign languages, and so on, a child, whether in England or Scotland, could receive instruction in only two, but the Scotch scholar might earn 4s. for each, while the English child was not permitted to earn more than 2s. for each. One result was that of five million and a half school children in the southern half of the island, only 140,000 were presented for examination in specific subjects. Mr. Jebb seconded the motion. Though a firm believer in the importance of learning a few things well rather than many things superficially, he believed that advantage would be found in the way pointed out by Sir J. Lubbock, because it would lead to attractiveness in education.

Sir J. Gorst sympathized with the desire to make education as good in England as in Scotland, but he pointed out that it could not be done by merely equalizing their rules for class and specific subjects. In Scotland, as compared with this country, a greater percentage of the children went to school. They remained there to a more advanced age, and the proportion of teachers was larger. The English education department had come to the conclusion that two class subjects, with the compulsory

lessons, were as much as the children could profitably study, considering the tender years of most of the scholars in this country. Even Scotland had not found the third-class subject an entire success, and discretion with regard to it was no longer with the school managers; the inspector, at the beginning of every year, determining whether one, two, or three such subjects should be taken. The officers of the educa tion department were quite alive to the desirability of teaching as much as possible, but he hoped the motion would not be pressed to a division.

Sir W. Harcourt said he had listened to a most instructive debate. What was the answer-he was afraid the conclusive answer-to the proposal of his right honorable friend, the member of the university (Sir J. Lubbock)? It was that we had neither the material nor the machinery in this country for giving to English children a decent education; that it was impossible to teach in the schools of this country the elementary science and other subjects that were taught in the schools of other countries. The vice-president of the council had told them that English education was inferior to Scotch education; that in England the children remained at school a shorter time; that they had worse instructors; fewer certificated masters in proportion to the number of children, and that altogether there was a low-grade education in England as compared with Scotland. But the outcry of the last few years has been that the board schools had given too high a class of education. Yet the Scotch education, which was so superior to the English, was not up to the mark of that of the countries which were our competitors. Every man interested in the education of this country ought to read what the Germans had been doing. What a confession it was that we were unable to give to English children such an education as was given in every country in Europe. And we were without any secondary education which was one of the first requirements of this country. We had continuation schools, but no compulsion. All the regular education of this country was a miserable modicum given to children of 11 and 12. Many of the subjects of party discussion were not half so important as this question. Why was it that we had fallen back in the national competition? He believed that the artisans of this country were equal to any in the world, and that no better work than theirs could be turned out. But what the Germans had been devoting their attention to in the schools was the teaching the people the arts of solicitation in commercial life, and of the distribution of their goods to every country in the world. What was needed for that purpose was a general education, and elementary education ought to lead up to that, it ought to lay the foundation of a general sound education. But we did not keep the children at school hours enough, nor years enough, nor did we have competent teachers to teach them what they ought to know. The first thing to do was to awaken the minds of the people of England to the greatest of all their deficiencies. Why was Scotch education superior to English education? Because the people of Scotland cared more about education than the people of England, and understood better the practical value of it. The debate had served a useful purpose by enabling those who were best acquainted with our educational machinery to make plain a state of things that ought to be made plainer every day.

Sir W. Hart-Dyke wished to put a little pressure on his right honorable friend (Sir J. Gorst) and the education department. What was wanted was that a child should have a useful and practical education, and that the code should be so drawn as to be elastic in all details of a practical kind, and with regard to any extra class subject. He would ask his right honorable friend who had spoken of the experiment being tried in Scotland whether he could not give some indication (next year, for instance) that this same experiment would be applied to England.

Mr. S. Smith remarked that education was a matter of time, and that in Germany and Switzerland a large proportion of the children remained at school until the age of 17. Our present method was not so much education as a system which addled the brains of the children and led to mental confusion. Many of those who went to continuation schools at the age of 16 had forgotten nearly everything they had learned and could hardly read and write.

Sir J. Lubbock hoped the vice-president would listen to the suggestion of Sir W. Hart-Dyke, and that if he found the Scottish system worked well he would, at the end of the year, give them the advantage of it in the English elementary schools. He begged to withdraw the motion.

The motion was by leave withdrawn.

In the debate on the proposal for a special grant Mr. Lubbock urged again the importance of more extended and more systematic teaching of English history. In respect to this branch, both the history of the native country and universal history, England is not only inferior to Scotland, but is behind other civilized countries.

At this moment, then, it may be said, so far as regards elementary education, that the efforts for the advancement of the system and for its closer relation to other parts of educational work have been shifted from the administrative to the scholastic side. Meanwhile, legislative action is invoked in the interests of secondary education.

Secondary education.-It was expected and still is expected that a bill dealing with the problems of secondary education would be introduced at the present session of Parliament. The measure is delayed, but from the public discussions of the subject, and the various proposals that have vigorous support, the main points which must be settled by law may readily be inferred. These are the constitution of a central authority, of local authorities whose duty it shall be to create and foster secondary schools in their respective areas, and definition of the nature and scope of secondary education.

The central authority.-As regards the first point, it need hardly be said that in England there will be no thought of conferring arbitrary powers on a central authority. The ideal toward which, apparently, the English mind is working is thus characterized by Mr. James Bryce:

A central educational authority ought to be able to advise local authorities, to aid them by its knowledge, to stimulate them when inert, to adjust the differences likely to arise between the higher authorities (town and county boards) and the governing bodies of schools, to serve as a sort of court of appeal when a body of trustees seeks to resist the proposed diversion of an endowment either to an educational purpose or to some other locality. Such an authority ought, however, to have a wider scope than the field of secondary education only. It ought to receive the powers and functions which now belong to the education department, and therewith ought also to receive certain functions in reference to the higher education of the country, the so-called university colleges and the universities themselves, functions which are now either feebly discharged by the privy council, or are not discharged at all. In other words, what is needed is a ministry of education, whether under that name or any other, a department of State which shall be able to draw to a center the still unconnected threads of our educational system, and facilitate that organization of it upon intelligible pervading principles which it now lacks.1

This ideal is not likely to be attained at present; it is thought probable that the education department will be merely charged with the distribution of Government aid to secondary schools and with advisory functions in regard to the same.

'Studies in Secondary Education, Introduction, pp. xxiii, xxiv.

The local authority.-The most pressing need in respect to secondary education is that of funds for its adequate provision; the duty of raising the funds, other than those appropriated by Government or supplied by existing endowments, will fall chiefly upon the local authority. From the success of the elementary school boards and the effects of the Welsh intermediate education act (1889) it is evident that a tax levied by a local authority is the most efficient means of "raising the level of education and of associating public interest with it." Hence, it is generally conceded that the local authority must have the right of taxation and also some control over existing endowments. The trend of opinion seems to favor the county councils for this duty, as these already have the right (law of 1890) to levy a tax for technical education and also the disbursement of the surplus from the liquor duties, of which the larger part is applied to the same interest. Opposition to the choice of the county councils is urged on the ground that it is preferable to confide so important an interest to a body created for this purpose alone, and further, because the school boards in the larger boroughs have already developed higher-grade schools," which are in fact secondary schools. Having arisen spontaneously, as it were, out of local conditions, these higher schools are deeply rooted in the sympathies and interests of their respective communities. The school boards have proved their ability to deal with an important phase of secondary education by their management of these higher-grade schools, and it will not be easy to wrest the work from them. On the other hand, it is not deemed practicable to extend the province of the boards, hence, either a new local authority must be created acting independently of the school boards, or one in which the boards and other agencies may be represented. The question of local control appears then as the most complicated and the most vital in the whole problem.

Public funds available for secondary education.-The public funds already available for secondary education amount to very nearly $11,000,000 annually. They comprise the annual grant disbursed through the science and art department, about $4,000,000, of which the larger part is used to foster science and art classes in secondary schools, and the surplus from the liquor duties, about $3,000,000, which may be so applied. The existing endowments which the local authority may control, yielding about four millions more, may properly be classed as public funds, as they have been brought under the control of Government and are now administered under the endowed schools law of 1869, amended in 1873 and 1874.

Classification of secondary schools.-It is impossible either to constitute a local authority or to systematize the application of these various funds without determining what shall be regarded as a secondary school. The question is not new. It was considered at length by the British schools inquiry commission of 1864, and their classification of secondary schools was adopted substantially by the royal