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_The Social Problems Series_

EDITED BY

OLIPHANT SMEATON, M.A., F.S.A.

THE CHILDREN


_The Social Problems Series_


THE CHILDREN

SOME EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS


BY

ALEXANDER DARROCH, M.A.

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH


LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
16 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
AND EDINBURGH
1907




CONTENTS



CHAP.                                                            PAGE

   I. INTRODUCTION--THE PRESENT UNREST IN EDUCATION                 1

  II. THE MEANING AND PROCESS OF EDUCATION                         13

 III. THE END OF EDUCATION                                         22

  IV. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE PROVISION
      OF EDUCATION                                                 31

   V. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE COST OF
      EDUCATION                                                    46

  VI. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE MEDICAL
      EXAMINATION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN AND THE MEDICAL
      INSPECTION OF SCHOOLS                                        54

 VII. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE FEEDING OF
      SCHOOL CHILDREN                                              66

VIII. THE ORGANISATION OF THE MEANS OF EDUCATION                   77

  IX. THE AIM OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION                                85

   X. THE AIM OF THE INFANT SCHOOL                                 98

  XI. THE AIM OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL                               107

 XII. THE AIM OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL                             118

XIII. THE AIM OF THE UNIVERSITY                                   126

 XIV. CONCLUSION--THE PRESENT PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION               131




THE CHILDREN




CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION--THE PRESENT UNREST IN EDUCATION


The problems as to the end or ends at which our educational agencies
should aim in the training and instruction of the children of the
nation, and of the right methods of attaining these ends once they have
been definitely and clearly recognised, are at the present day receiving
greater and greater attention not only from professed educationalists,
but also from statesmen and the public generally. For, in spite of all
that has been done during the past thirty years to increase the
facilities for education and to improve the means of instruction, there
is a deep-seated and widely spread feeling that, somehow or other,
matters educationally are not well with us, as a nation, and that in
this particular line of social development other countries have pushed
forward, whilst we have been content to lag behind in the educational
rear.

The faults in our present educational structure are many, and in some
cases obvious to all. In the first place, it is said, and with much
truth, that there is no systematic coherence between the different parts
of our educational machinery, and no thorough-going correlation between
the various aims which the separate parts of the system are intended to
realise. As Mr. De Montmorency has recently pointed out, we have always
had a national group of educational facilities, more or less efficient,
but we have never had, nor do we yet possess, a national system of
education so differentiated in its aims and so correlated as to its
parts as to form "an organic part of the life of the nation."[1] An
educational system should subserve and foster the life of the whole: it
should be so organised as to maintain a sufficient and efficient supply
of all the services which a nation requires at the hands of its adult
members. For it is only in so far as the educational system of any
country fulfils this end that it can be "organic," and can be entitled
to the claim of being called a national system.

This lack of coherence between the different parts of our educational
system and the want of any systematic plan or unity running through the
whole is due to many causes. As a nation, we are little inclined to
system-making, and as a consequence the problem of education as a whole
and in its total relation to the life and well-being of the State has
received but scant attention from politicians. Educational questions, in
this country, are rarely treated on their own merits and apart from
considerations of a party, political, or denominational character, and
hence the problems which have received attention in the past and evoke
discussion at the present are concerned with the nature of the
constitution, and limits of the power of the bodies to whom should be
entrusted the local control of the educational agencies of the country,
rather than with the problems as to the aims which we should seek to
realise through our educational organisation, and of the methods by
which these aims may be best realised. Hence, as a nation, we have
rarely considered for its own sake and as a whole the problem of the
education of the children. And until we have done so--until we have made
clear to ourselves the kind of future citizen which as a State we desire
to rear up--our educational agencies must manifest a like
indefiniteness, a like inconsistency, and a like want of connection as
do our educational aims and ideals.

Again, closely connected with this first-named defect in our educational
organisation, and in fact following from it as a logical consequence, is
our fatal method of developing this or that part of our educational
system and of leaving the other parts to develop, if at all, without any
central guidance or control, until at length we realise that