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a monument of learning when he reaches eighteen, will know something; and what he knows will be naturally and spontaneously acquired. The faculty of apprehendTing, which no boy is wholly without, and which is entirely distinct from the faculty of being passively crammed, will have been continuously exercised instead of being atrophied. Above all, they will go out into the world with a reasonable amount of confidence in themselves and with some disposition to go on learning, by using their minds in the right way, linking the new to the old. On girls the effect will be no less beneficial : indeed, much more so, as the mischief has told more banefully upon them. In short, the time has come for a clear and ■ decisive choice between two psychological theories offered for our acceptance. The child's mind is either a passive - receptacle into which unsorted facts may be poured to be retained for subsequent use: or it is a delicate and mysterious organism constructed so as to be injured by cramming, and boundlessly benefited by self-activity.

(3) Examinations as a means of selection. This is a practical problem successfully grappled with by Lord Cromer in Egypt and solved by the common-sense of the heads of business firms. Tests must, of course, be applied, and for more reasons than one the paper examination will be an important ingredient. But it ought to be - supplemented by a general estimate of physical and ■moral stamina, and by the most important requirement

of all, the probability of growth in later life. It is likely that any reforming efforts in this direction will be derided and possibly inhibited by stagnant-minded critics; but the wise experiment has been justified sufficiently to indicate the direction in which we are ■bound to move. Examinations must be employed for purposes of selection; but it is a mere counsel of prudence that they should never again afford the only criterion of a young man's fitness for important undertakings. If they do, they become a dark cloud on the horizon to every youngster who at thirteen is told that he will have to qualify or starve.

Above fourteen and sometimes earlier the menace of the School Certificate and the professional examinations begins to loom on the near horizon. The former demands proficiency, or anyhow a standard in certain subjects As th

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presumed to be necessary for a general education. The latter add to these according to the predilections of directors of companies and other 'practical' persons influenced by the stress of competition and the manifold fluctuations of commerce. Another coda springs from th the pressure of parents on Headmistresses, and in one school there are four kinds of dancing, for each of which a separate time in the week has to be found. Hence a chaotic and wholly purposeless activity. In the general welter the only people as helpless as the Headmistresses are the Headmasters.

Up to thirteen, then, the main line of reform is easy to see. Examinations begin to be pestiferous when they are used as goads for the lethargic. In preparatory schools they are not needed for the purpose of classification. That is secured in ordinary 'work': i.e. by written reproduction of knowledge gathered in the natural way. In Public and other Secondary Schools the practical problem has still to be worked out. It consists of minimising the nightmare of competition as regards the School Certificate; which ought to be regarded as a Preliminary Entrance Examination to the professions. Subsequent tests should be in the hands of the professions. The school authorities should have the entire control of the Preliminary examination.*

This will be seen to be the inevitable outcome of the general adoption of the Mason method of letting all pupils assimilate instead of being crammed. That method is based on a natural principle which every single teacher acknowledges in theory, however persistently he violates it in practice. It is found to mitigate two great obstacles to progress the large classes and the congested curriculum. When children are feeding themselves, 'forty feeding as one,' the number of the class is not important.

* Compare these two pictures. About thirty-five years ago a Preparatory Schoolmaster was showing a visitor round. They went into a class-room, and the boys stood up. Thinking, as always, of Entrance Scholarships the master took one youngster by the neck and said, 'I shan't let this one go under 80l.' He might have been talking of a prize calf.

To-day in a P.N.E.U. school one may see such natural spontaneous eagerness in the lessons that it is impossible to imagine greater delight in any game. That is where every motive except interest in the subject is banned, and the children teach themselves.

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As to subjects, even when they are already numerous the method of spontaneous assimilation is the one safeguard against stuffing and indigestion. Three subjects, zealously 'hammered in,' will effect more mischief than thirty from which the learner selects his natural nutriment.

This salutary change is beginning among the youngest. - It cannot fail gradually to affect the tyranny of examinations. The two grand obstacles to reform are (1) rancid suspicion of one set of school teachers harboured by another. (2) Dissensions between men and women teachers as to different curricula for boys and girls. There is a question which only patient experiment can solve. As long as class-teaching is class-cramming, all discussion of the matter becomes a shouting of random and meaningless dogmas. When nature's method becomes general almost any curriculum will give rich opportunity of really beneficent results.

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What has been said in this article may seem at first to advocate certain changes in three departments of our educational system, which are outwardly different. In reality they are closely linked together by the arresting thought-compelling fact that all three powerfully affect the training of character. The link is not difficult to discern. In selecting for professions the rewarding of mental precocity and the ignoring of such elements in the young human being as a gift of cool judgment, of tact, tenacity of purpose, power of command and others, are not only from a practical point of view patently foolish, but they must tend to teach a distorted view of what we nowadays call values. The abortiveness of the system is twofold. It professes to deal with the essential and the permanent: but in truth it aims only at the fleeting, and the secular and the uncertain; and even that it frequently fails to secure. In addition to the folly of the method the ridiculous estimate it sets on cleverness is more than enough to condemn it. The second in order deals directly with character. The third, over-pressure and cramming, obviously makes it difficult for our young people genuinely to believe in a universe of order and law. Their own mental growth has been and is being checked, perverted, and disordered. If they fail to catch the indications of intellectual law Vol. 251.-No. 497.

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and order in themselves they will be blind to the majesty of the moral law.

To improve our method of selection for professional work the tyranny of the exclusive paper-test should be mitigated; other qualifications than intellectual precocity being demanded. The evil of encouraging a spirit of rivalry and comparison among children has been abolished in the schools that follow the Mason method rightly. Over-pressure disappears when the pupils are encouraged to feed themselves instead of being crammed or spoonfed. Where this is secured the congestion of the curriculum does little harm. Of these the second is by far the most urgent and the easiest to put into practice. Great, therefore, will be our responsibilty for any further delay.

EDWARD LYTTELTON.

NOTE. Certain practical difficulties in the way of reform have been pointed out by a correspondent. This article, however, deals mainly with principles. Their application has already been achieved where they are thoroughly understood and the mischief of the present system is fairly weighed.

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Art. 11. INDIA FROM CURZON'S DAYS TO THESE.

1. The Life of Lord Curzon. By the Right Hon. the Earl of Ronaldshay. Vol. II. Benn, 1928.

2. The India We Served. By Sir Walter R. Lawrence, Bart, G.C.I.E. Cassell, 1928.

3. India in 1926-27. A statement prepared for presentation to Parliament by J. Coatman, Director of Public Information with the Government of India. 1928.

14. The Life of General Lord Rawlinson of Trent, G.C.B., af from his Journals and Letters. Edited by MajorGeneral Sir Frederick Maurice, K.C.M.G. Cassell, 1928. LORD RONALDSHAY'S second volume of Lord Curzon's Life will not disappoint the most confident expectations. It is entirely worthy of its subject and gives a vivid picture of a time that has indeed fallen into the irrevocable limbo of the past,' but was marked by doings which have influenced profoundly the whole course of subsequent events. Sir Walter Lawrence who, after years of valuable experience in the political branch of the Indian Civil Service became Lord Curzon's private secretary, has thrown additional and supplementary light on those pregnant years.

Lord Curzon said truly that he had given to India 'all that was worth having of his spirit and strength'; and it was to India that he turned in the hour when life with its labours and disappointments was sinking from under him. In India he had worked with an intensity of courageous and whole-hearted devotion which has never been surpassed, and, despite disappointments and mistakes, had achieved much and shown the way to more. With all his defects of character; defects which neither Lord Ronaldshay nor Sir Walter Lawrence conceals, he left a deep and most beneficial impression on those departments of administration which most affect the security of the country and the lives of the people. To the rank and file of the civil Services, the stokers in the great ship, he was no transient vision, no benignant phantom-but a vivid and inspiring leader; the atmosphere for activity which had always been wide, he made wider; the sense of duty which was keen before, he made keener. He set an example of tireless enthusiasm

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