is the chief educational centre of the province, and besides the university of Alberta has a branch of the Normal school, Alberta College, Westminster Ladies' College and a Presbyterian college.
Edmonton has extensive live-stock, dairy, milling and packing industries. There are 9 coal mines within the city limits and 24 on the outskirts, giving a yearly output of 1,680,000 tons. Gold, silver and oil are also found in the neighbourhood.
EDMUNDS, GEORGE FRANKLIN (1828–1919), American lawyer and political leader (see 8.949), died in Pasadena, Cal., Feb. 27 1919.
EDUCATION (see 8.951).—In the sections on Education, in the articles on various countries, mention is made of the progress made there during 1910–20. Here a general account is given of progress in the United Kingdom and the United States.
(1) United Kingdom
The first two decades in the 20th century opened a new era in the history of education in the United Kingdom. In England and Wales the Act of 1902 not only combined in a national sys- tem of elementary education both voluntary and state schools, but laid a wider foundation for a national system of secondary education. It was an Act which represented the spirit of com- promise. It gave a new expression in one most important group of institutions to the English genius of harmonizing diverse elements within the State. At the same time the Act marked a great experiment in local government, by transferring the re- sponsibilities for education, elementary and secondary, from the ad hoc school boards in England and Wales to the municipal and county councils, and bringing education thereby into closer relations with the other sides of civic policy.
It is necessary to the understanding of the development of English education between 1910 and 1920 to keep in view this fundamental change at the beginning of the century. For during these first 10 years the system of education was taking on a new character, which reflects a wider conception of education. The school becomes more publicly recognized as a great centre of social influence. Provision is made by statute to secure in necessitous cases that school children shall be properly fed. Inspection of the health of school children becomes a responsi- bility of the local education authorities. Increased attention is directed to the special problems of physically and mentally defective children. The care also for the leisure hours of the child and the provision of play centres become part of school life; and the creation of juvenile employment organizations, in connexion with the school, express the continuity of the elementary school with the after life and care of the child. Side by side with these developments there can also be observed a remarkable growth of corporate life amongst school children themselves, and of voluntary organization of social workers, anxious to help in the ways of the juvenile community. It is not too much to say that a broader human outlook marks English and Welsh elementary education in the first 20 years of the 2oth century. And this is no less true of education in Scotland.
Meanwhile, a deeper sense of the need for secondary and con- tinuation education was also awakened. The growth in the num- ber and variety of continuation classes under the local education authorities, the rise of the Workers' Educational Assn. and of the university tutorial classes system are all signs of the new order in education. What this means in progress can only be realized by looking backward and reflecting how modern is the growth of the system of English public education. When the mind follows the story of education in England from 1831, when first small grant was made by Parliament for public education, the opening decades of the 2oth century stand out above all as calling into consciousness a deeper and wider idea of national public education.
The second decade of the 2oth century rrfarks in a very pecu- liar degree the continuation and working out of the movements which had manifested themselves in the preceding 10 years. The great Act of 1918, with the corresponding Education (Scotland) Act, extended and deepened the work of the 1902 Act in England and Wales and of the 1908 Act in Scotland. The principles of
organization and the ideas of the relationships between the school and society, developed in the legislation and administration of the period 1907 to 1910, were being progressively carried out in the years immediately following. But the second decade of the 2oth century is broken and deeply affected by the years of war. In these 10 years three periods may be distinguished. The first from 1910 to the outbreak of war in 1914; the second from 1914 to the Armistice period in 1918; the third from 1918 onwards, the opening of the period of reconstruction and reaction. The first period, from 1910 to 1914, was marked by the steady prog- ress of the new order. The sectarian controversy which had raged round the Act of 1902 had subsided; a wider and deeper conception of educational relationships was growing steadily with a more general acknowledgment of the truth, that national education in England must combine a wide variety of opinions and a large freedom of curriculum. There was a new spirit of tolerance. The administrative authorities, central and local, had set themselves seriously to carry forward the extension upwards of the educational structure on the basis of the 1902 settlement. These are years of steady progress and widening outlook.
The second period is that of four years of war, a period in which there was much less check to the continuous work of school education than might have been expected. But necessa- rily the schools suffered by reason of the war. The young male teachers went off on service, many school buildings were re- quired for military and emergency purposes, the restrictions as to the employment of children were relaxed. Yet the war gave a new impulse to school life. Examples of service and sacrifice were present to the mind. There was a strain and seriousness which affected both teachers and scholars, and gradually, too, there came to the nation a fresh realization of the value of educa- tion in developing individual and national life. Already in the early years 01 the war expression was given to the demand for a wider and fuller system of national education, and steps were taken for the systematic consideration of the problem of " con- tinuation education " and later of " adult education." Before the conclusion of hostilities the Departmental Committee on " Juvenile Education in Relation to Employment after the War " had presented its report and the Minister for Education had framed, and Parliament approved, a measure which ranks with the great Acts of 1870 and 1902. Moreover the army itself had become a great school or university and the experiments carried out with the forces at home and overseas in adult education were fruitful in stimulating new ideas as regards the scope and method of national education and in directing attention to the place which education should have in the life of men engaged in the military and naval services.
The third period from the Armistice onwards, presents, in less than three years, marked contrasts. In the first enthusiasm for reconstruction there was a vigorous forward movement with the view of bringing into operation as rapidly as possible the provi- sions of the 1918 Acts. It was more than a period of reconstruc- tion; it was a time of new national ideals. Then came the ebb, with economic pressure, industrial unrest, high costs of construc- tion and equipment, and financial stringency, and the larger educational programme has been temporarily suspended. In the grey morning of reparation and economic reconstruction after a World War education had suffered, and there was some receding of the high hopes and feelings. But the check could only be regarded as temporary, and the ideas born in war and in the early days of peace were in 1921 already reasserting themselves.
In considering the period from 1910 onwards it must also be borne in mind that the educational movement has been increas- ingly closely interwoven with other developments. Thus the public library organization in the years immediately preceding the war was being linked more closely than before with the edu- cational system. It must also be remembered that already be- fore the war a stronger national spirit had been evincing itself in education in the several parts of the United Kingdom. Eng- land, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, each was shaping on its own lines its national system, and the comparison of the development in the several states is rich in instruction for the student of mod-
