Government, have, I think, specifically disavowed the doctrine that the State as a State is only concerned with secular matters. If this is so, the country may expect such amendments in the Bill as will secure in all cases (subject to a conscience clause applying equally to parents and teachers), the elements of Revealed Religion as part of the State curriculum. That is one most important matter from the School Manager's point of view. There is another, only less important, that a final and just settlement should be found for the outstanding questions of rights and consciences. While we are quarrelling, other countries are forging ahead. The nation at large cannot afford to have the religious controversy remain open; to have this Government come to one decision, and the next come to another. The scare of uncertainty destroys efficiency in the schools. The educationalist demands as a right some settlement that no great party in the State will feel compelled, on accession to power, to re-open. National life cannot be secure till national education is placed on a permanent basis outside the storm-area of local and imperial politics.

LINCOLN'S INN.

J. E. G. DE M.

UNIVERSITY

OF

CALIFORNIA

THE EDUCATIONAL OUTLOOK

THE religious aspect of National Education at times threatens to overwhelm in popular interest those other aspects of education that are hardly less disputable and scarcely less important. Difficult as it would be to overestimate the value of a just settlement of the religious difficulties, and important as it is to keep in mind the fact that religion has played a predominant part in the history of English education, yet it is certainly at times necessary to lay the question aside and to consider the evolution of national education as a whole, to regard its organisation and its grading, the interaction of its parts and its relationship to national life. It is often said that those aspects of education are so technical and unattractive that nothing can render the subject one of popular interest. Yet, in fact, there are few subjects that call more vehemently for the attention of the mind of the people, since it

may be alleged, without any exaggeration, that the future of England as a nation depends upon the creation of a really efficient system of national education. This paper is, therefore, an attempt to state in non-technical language our present educational position, and to describe the educational outlook. It may be said with confidence at once that so fair a prospect has not been seen before in the educational history of the English people.

Certain principles distinguish a system of national education from what may be called a national group of educational facilities. Such a group of facilities we have always had in a more or less complete though inorganic form. We have always had universities ; we have always had secondary schools; we have always had primary schools; and all these facilities have once or twice possessed at one and the same moment a considerable measure of efficiency. They seem to have been efficient for a brief period at the end of the fourteenth and again at the beginning of the seventeenth century. But it may be said, without fear of