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EDUCATION
advantages as might enable them to compete with some degree of success for these posts ; and this result has reached already down to schools of a much lower educational class than could have been supposed to be affected by it. Its effects have been, I think, wholly beneficial. ” To this weighty experience may be added that of Dr Warre, the headmaster of Eton, who says, in reference to competition for the army :— ‘ The army examination has had a very considerable influence here. It has caused the institution of an army class, the aim of which is to send boys straight from the school to Woolwich and Sandhurst, saving them from having to go to a private tutor for special preparation. “The institution of the army class has reacted distinctly upon the school and its work. Formerly the boys who chose the army for their profession (mostly vigorous and high-spirited lads) were as a rule the idlest and the most difficult to manage, and consequently maintained a low standard of industry and discipline and of interest in their work. The army class has changed all this, and these lads are now among the hardest working and steadiest in the school. “ This has had its effect upon the rest. The consequence, briefly stated, is that the rank and file throughout the school do better as regards work. The general average of work has, in my opinion, distinctly improved in the last ten years, and among the causes I think that the institution of the army class has no small share, and this is therefore due to the public competition for entrance into Woolwich and Sandhurst.” In another great public school—that of St Paul’s in London—the master of the army class points out “that although the aim of the form is mainly admission to Woolwich, and is based upon the syllabus of the Woolwich Entrance Examination, not more than two-thirds of the boys are candidates for the army. Others desire to proceed to Cooper’s Hill, the City and Guilds of London Technical Institute, or the navy as engineer-students, or to prepare for such examinations as the Institute of Actuaries, in which mathematics play an important part. In respect of the qualities of character and intellect, the army form may be fairly taken as representative of the school as a whole, and discipline is maintained with the same ease. The intimate association of the two elements, the military and the civil, benefits the whole form, and the boys in this department have always taken a prominent part in the athletics of the school.” From many quarters other evidence comes showing that, in the opinion of the teachers, the examinations of the Civil Service Commissioners have been much improved, and that as experience grows there is greater similarity in aim and method between the views and plans of good teachers and the requirements of the Civil Service Commissioners. The last quarter of the 19th century was characterized by considerable activity and productiveness in the literature of education. Except Ascham’s Scholemaster, Educa- Mulcaster’s Positions, Milton’s Tractate, and literature. Locke’s Thoughts, the England of former generations had contributed little to pedagogic theory. But in recent years contributions to the history, the philosophy, and the practice of education have been very numerous in Great Britain as well as in Germany, France, and the United States. For a general bibliography of the subject the student will do well to consult, in German, W. Hein’s Encyclopddisches Handbuch des Pddagogik, and K. A. Schmid’s Encyclopddia der gesammten Erziehungsund Unterrichtswesens; in French, F. Buisson’s Dictionnaire de p6dagogie; and in English, W. S. Munroe’s Bibliography of Education, Henry Barnard’s English Pedagogy, and Sonnenschein’s Cyclopaedia of Education. The history of the growth of ideas and theories on education can best be studied in Professor S. Laurie’s Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education and Life of Comenius, Oscar Browning’s Educational Theories, H. T. Marks Outlines of the History of Educational Theories, Com-
payre’s History of Pedagogy, Mahaffy’s Old Greek Education, and Donaldson’s, Hailmann’s, or Joseph Payne’s History of Education, J. B. Mullinger’s The Schools of Charles the Great, J. H. Newman’s Rise and Progress of Universities, It. H. Quick’s Educational Reformers, J. M. Leitch’s Practical Educationists, Sir J. K. Shuttleworth’s Pour Periods of Education, Matthew Arnold’s article on “Schools” in Humphry Ward’s Reign of Queen Victoria, and his Popular Education in France and official Reports to the Education Department, edited by Lord Sandford, Stanley’s Life of Dr Arnold, Meiklejohn’s Life of Dr Andrew Bell, Lupton’s Life of Dean Colet, three Lives of Pestalozzi, by De Guimps, Dr Biber, and Karl von Baumer, John Morley’s Rousseau, J. P. Richter’s Autobiography, Hugh Miller’s My Schools and Schoolmasters, Sir Henry Craik’s The State and Education, the volumes of Special Reports issued by the Board of Education, and the series of Great Educators published by Heinemann. From the theoretical or speculative as well as the practical side, other additions to educational literature have been Herbert Spencer’s Education; Intellectual, Moral, and Physical, Bain’s Education as a Science, Herbart’s Science of Education, F. Frdbel’s Education of Man, Pestalozzi’s Leonard and Gertrude, J. P. Richter’s Levana, the Reports of the American Committee of Fifteen, Educational Aims and Methods, and the Lectures on Teaching, delivered before the University of Cambridge by the present writer, M. Breaks Quelques mots sur Vinstruction publique, Lloyd Morgan’s Psychology for Teachers, Edward Thring’s Theory and Practice of Teaching and Education and the School, President Eliot’s Educational Reform, and Professor N. Murray Butler’s The Meaning of Education, P. A. Barnett’s Common Sense Applied to Education, and Bernard Bosanquet’s The Education of the Young (in the Republic of Plato). The official Reports of Royal Commissions, notably those of the Schools Inquiry of 1867, Lord Cross’s Commission on Primary Education, 1887, and Mr Bryce’s Commission on Secondary Instruction, 1894, deserve special attention, and the Annual Reports of the Department now known as the Board of Education will always be found to give the latest financial and other statistical details respecting the number of teachers and scholars in the elementary and other schools under the supervision of that Department. At the beginning of the 20th century the outlook on the future of English education is, though somewhat obscure, full of promise. The latest Act of the Government, constituting a central Board with power J^^bt'be to co-ordinate the scattered agencies hitherto future. concerned with public elementary schools, with science and art, and with technical education, as well as with the administration of the Endowed Schools’ Acts, has possibilities of usefulness in it which are not yet fully realized. It will, it may be hoped, succeed in giving unity of purpose to the whole educational machinery of England, and will define the several duties of the School Boards, the County Councils, and other local authorities, and their relations to the central Government and to each other. It will provide for the information of parents an annual register of qualified teachers and of approved schools. It will furnish large and equal opportunities to promising learners in all classes of the community to pur sue their studies and to cultivate their different powers and aptitudes. It will so far stimulate local authorities as to secure that there is as ample a provision of secondary as already exists for primary schools all over England. It will afford to the public a guarantee of efficiency, by means of a judicious combination of inspection with examination, following in this particular the weighty recommendation
