be shot in it, and to pay for it. The tax-gatherer tells him how much he is to pay. The ecclesiastical authority plans a church which he must build; and his spiritual guide, who has been set over him by another, prepares a creed and a confession of faith all ready for his signature. He is directed alike how he must obey his king, and worship his God." JAMES L. MCCONAUGHY

DARTMOUTH College

HANOVER. N. H.

II

ENGLISH LAY CRITICS OF EDUCATION

The introduction of Mr. Fisher's Education Bill last year let loose a portentous flood of criticism on a subject that does not usually greatly disturb the equanimity of England. It is true that the Englishman has never had any hesitation in finding fault with his professional educators when he has had his attention drawn to them, but, generally speaking, he has not had enough interest in the matter to do even that, unless when education has been served up to him with the piquant sauce of denominationalism. Now, however, when England is being made to feel that education may have a very practical bearing on her position as a world power, the laymen are beginning to prick up their ears and to take notice. They come to the subject with that vigor of interest and freshness of view that marks the natural attitude ignorance adopts towards a subject that has attracted it. Aristotle does not hold a very high place in the esteem of that large class of Englishmen who like to call themselves "plain," but his reputation would go up with a bound if they chanced to realise what he meant when he maintained that politics is architectonic to education. The plain Englishman would smack his lips over the statement that the schoolmaster must take his orders from the statesman, for, after all, the statesman must in turn take his orders from the man who elects him to office, so that in the ultimate resort the orders come from the plain man himself.

Accordingly, the English layman has little hesitation in adopting the Aristotelian position. He has to use the material produced by the schools, and he has to pay for their upkeep, so he expresses himself freely about what goes on within them. English schoolmasters do not seriously question his right to call the tune, since they realise that he has to

pay the piper; but they mildly suggest, with Sir John McClure in his contribution to the recently published Cambridge essays on education, that "one could wish that he would be content to indicate the end which he has in view, and which he sees clearly, and leave the means of obtaining it to the judgment and experience of the teacher." The popular impression is that the English layman has no such reticence, and that he adopts a strongly utilitarian attitude, asserting that he knows exactly what he wants and that he means to get it. He wants the schoolmaster to drop all his fiddlefaddle about culture and turn his attention to the realities of life—the particular reality in view being the production of a boy ready to enter at once on his duties in factory or countinghouse fully prepared for the work he has to do. The correspondence columns of English newspapers bear eloquent testimony to the touching faith of employers in the efficacy of beginning "real work" at the earliest possible stage. The apprenticeship ideal is held up as the best means of saving the situation.

Yet when we look below the surface, and get at the views of the less vocal section of employers, we reach a different impression. The Education Committee of the London County Council have instituted an enquiry into the relation between education and the demands of commerce and industry, in order to discover how far their schools are meeting the needs of the country. One of the first things the reporting committee discovered is that "while early specialization was advocated in some quarters, in general, business men asked that the education authority should aim at giving a good general education." It came out that business people complained that the Education Committee was not in touch with the requirements of business, but the committee retorts by saying that they discovered that business firms as a rule know little about the educational facilities offered by the authorities. It is interesting to note that "representatives of the engineering industries, chemical and printing trades, in short, industrial firms, were, as a rule, more in touch with the schools and were more cognisant of what could be ob

tained from the schools than those of banks and commercial firms."

The direct criticisms offered on the elementary school boy were (1) That he was deficient in handwriting, arithmetic or spelling; the essentials of elementary education, (2) That obedience, common-sense, and manners (good address) were lacking. The same weakness in elementary subjects is noted in the secondary school boy, with the addition that his thinking is "sloppy," that he does not know modern languages and that he needs more grit and energy in his work. Those who know human nature in general, whether exemplified in master or in man, will not be surprized to find general complaints among employers that the pupils from the schools come to real work burdened with certain defects-unable to work accurately with figures, or write a swift and legible hand, or read aloud clearly and with intelligence an ordinary document. Further, they have no interest in their work, and are given to the abominable vice of "clock-watching." It is claimed that only after the long-suffering employers have themselves licked the young people into shape can anything like satisfactory work be got from them. In mitigation of the charge the teachers may well plead that in the ultimate resort nothing but the process of licking into shape under real workaday conditions will ever produce the finished workman. The pupil fresh from school is tested in a new environment, and there must of necessity be a loss of efficiency because of the new circumstances. It has been suggested that a good plan would be to have a few centers in each large educational area set apart for intensive instruction in the peculiar form of skill required in various typical kinds of industry or business. Under this scheme pupils could be sent for a few weeks to some special school where such a training would be given as might enable the pupils to make a less awkward beginning when they faced their employer. But it hardly seems worth while to make this ad hoc preparation, which after all is only a form of cram to eliminate the worst elements of a temporary disorganisation that must in any case be overcome at the expense of a little temporary loss of efficiency. Why have

two changes of environment when one would suffice, if only it is frankly admitted that a transition period is a necessary stage on the way to satisfactory work?

With regard to "clock-watching" another element is involved. Employers tell us that young people have no interest in their work. In many cases this is not to be wondered at. What is there to interest them in the more or less mechanical details to which their attention is usually confined? The London County Council Report slily remarks: "If the schools develop the English schoolboy's intelligence while the routine organisation of business remains what it was when education and intelligence were less common, the evil-lack of interest-of which business men complain will be aggravated." Obviously the school has its cause of complaint as well as has the countinghouse. But the report goes on to admit that if the schools could cultivate as keen an interest in the classroom as in the playing field "the English boy would find more interest in the human movements of which ledgers and bills and cheques are but the records.” As a matter of fact, the classroom is so dreary a place that the youngsters usually find the countinghouse a cheerful place by comparison. Mr. Ian Hay's schoolmaster had a recipe that has applications outside the school: "There is only one way to teach boys. Keep them in order: don't let them play the fool, or go to sleep; and they will be so bored that they will work like niggers merely to pass the time." The employers are right in blaming present external attractions rather than the departed joys of schooldays. Were it not for the allurements of afterwork games and picture palaces, the clock would not have the sinister charm it appears to exercise.

Hitherto we have been dealing with somewhat ponderous persons who take education seriously. But there is a group of practical people who think contemptuously of education, and regard it as of trifling practical importance. Take for example the opinions of The Outfitter, a weekly paper that claims to have "the largest circulation in the world of any trade paper circulating among buyers of clothing and out