authority, will fail to appeal to the Scottish electorate, and ought, in the meantime, to induce the members of the Unionist party to stiffen the backs of the Government and insist on the passing of the Education Bill before there is any thought of grouse, or golf, or salmon.

Not that the Bill is perfect, perhaps even in the eyes of its framers. It is, however, a practical measure, and will improve the machinery by which teachers are appointed and paid, and schools built and kept up. It alters the areas from which school boards are elected the details as to the electoral areas will doubtless greatly interest members of Parliament, but they are really unimportant. From the schoolmaster's point of view the important thing is that the claws of the village tyrant will at last be pared, for school boards consisting of a bully and his sycophants will cease. There never have been many such, still the interposition of the Education Department in defence or support of a teacher has not been unknown.

The new school boards are invited to make better provision for the technical instruction, for the physical training and recreation, and for the medical examination, of school children. There is wisdom in this, but it may easily be turned into folly and extravagance.

The Bill also makes provision for the creation of provincial councils. The Bill says one at each university town; but there is a popular call for a

fifth at Inverness, and there seem to be many plausible reasons for special treatment of the Gaelic-speaking counties at least, for Caithness has much more affinity with Edinburgh than with the "capital of the Highlands." These councils are

to have no executive powers beyond making provision for the training of teachers "within their province.' vince." Their other functions will apparently be to answer conundrums proposed by the Department. They will have the right of expressing their views to the Department "on any matter affecting the educational interests of their province." A clause this which seems to smack strangely of one of the new Russian constitutions granted to-day, unauthorised to-morrow, and superseded next week. It shows how great the power of the Education Department has become, when a clause of an Act of Parliament is required to grant freedom of speech, under certain limitations, to any of his Majesty's subjects. The provincial councils are to be established "in connection with each of the universities," whatever that may mean, and are to "include members of the Senatus Academicus of one or more of the universities and representatives of the school boards and of the governing bodies of the central instituin which higher education is given," &c.

tions

The desire of the Education Department to get into closer relations with those engaged in higher education would be

laudable, were not the closer relations of the kind the lion desires to have with the lamb.

What have the universities to do with primary or secondary education? The function of a university is the pursuit of knowledge. The Education Department, however, worships symmetry, and will never be satisfied until it controls the universities and directs them by a code. It proposes to flatter them by asking them to aid it in framing the codes for primary and secondary education. It will then say, If you make the children learn so and so, you must arrange your university courses to suit them. They must be taught in the same groove all their lives, and no trace of individuality or originality on the part of any professor or lecturer must be allowed to interfere with the proper percentage of passes. The university must not provide a new atmosphere and a wider horizon for the youth of the country. The schemes of education have been laid down, and from the primary school to the graduation ceremonial they must be stuck to. Of course Sir Henry Craik and Dr Struthers would be the first to disclaim this interpretation of their attempt to draw the schools and the universities closer together. They do not desire to degrade the universities. If, however, the provincial councils are established, the men who guide the universities will have to fight hard to preserve the independence, the individuality, of these historic institutions.

It will not be safe to trust the universities to the tender mercies of a bureaucracy however enlightened, and however wise and learned its head maybe. The danger for the universities is that they will go farther on the road to becoming merely training colleges for the professions. They always have trained professional men, but they have always insisted on the professional man learning many things more than those necessary for the mere practice of his profession. The aim of the universities, even in Scotland-poor, practical, idealistic, and proud, has been to make their students complete men, not mere capable lawyers, teachers, physicians, or pastors. The Scottish pass degree in classics is higher and demands more than a similar degree at Oxford or Cambridge, and is therefore appreciably more searching as an educational test than any professional entrance examination. It is perhaps an unnecessary parenthesis to add that the honours degrees in Scotland still show no indication of even approximating to those of the two great English universities.

A code is not likely to help. A knowledge of botany or zoology is not essential to a surgeon, but he will be a poor creature if he knows nothing of them. Some knowledge of Greek used to be demanded of doctors of medicine. The profession lost in dignity, and its members in breadth of view and interest, when it was abandoned to the "wolves of science."

Apparently the universities

do not see the danger before them. They have acclaimed the proposals of the Department as a concession to the claims of their professors to guide the education of the country, which was exactly what the Department wanted and expected. Oh, foolish professors, children surely in other things than finance! oh, subtle Department, without the harmlessness of the dove! It is to be feared that there is a good deal of short-sighted commercialism about the universities. Nowadays their main object seems to be to attract students. There has been recent endowment of learning and research, but not enough to counteract the supremacy of the bread-and-butter principle. It is no answer to say that bread and butter are necessaries. In former days oatmeal was enough, and the men were better.

The universities are assailed by the Bill. They do not yet know it, but they will probably have a fairly bad time before them, whatever happens. The result is on the lap of the gods. The Scottish universities are not all they ought to be or all that they might be, and the provincial councils may, in ways that the framers of the Bill dreamed not of, be a help to better things. The chances, however, are that they will not.

The Bill calls itself an "Education" Bill, but of course it has very little to do with education. It is a finance Bill to some extent; it is also a bill for the "improvement"

VOL CLXXVIII.—NO. MLXXVII.

(i.e., alteration) of the machinery of a branch of local government. It gives no guidance in matters educational, and wisely, for the House of Commons is certainly the last body to which any sane person would entrust the actual education of the youth of the country. What is education? In the mouth of the Scots working man it means "schooling," the submission of his child to a discipline of seven years, imposed by those who know what is best for the child. The tradition is strong, and every Scots working man in town or country wants his child to have what he is told is "a good education." He accepts the schemes sent from above as he accepts rain and sunshine. He grumbles, and occasionally, during harvest or at other times of domestic pressure, rebels; but on the whole he is docile, because he is impotent. The law commands that his child shall spend certain years at school learning certain things. He obeys the law as to the years, and finds no voice to express his views as to the things. Other people's children learn these things, therefore his must, and there's an end on't. But in his heart he doubts, and he does not hesitate to express his view, that the seclusion of his children from him after they are twelve years of age is a grievance.

Education is the development of the intelligence. We are far from even the beginnings of an ideal system of education. The codes of the Department fix certain subjects

K

system invented by the "wisdom" of our ancestors, improved and modified no doubt by Sir Henry Craik, whose whole administration tended towards diversity and liberty so far as, and perhaps even farther than, Acts of Parliament at any rate intended. The system of the parochial schools was excellent, because there was no compulsion. It was thought necessary thirty years ago that every child should be able to read and write. It is perhaps a superstition, but we must accept it; but there the matter of compulsion to a code should have stopped, and there it must now stop. Or rather, let us state a seeming paradox: If we cannot have further liberty, let us have more compulsion. At twelve years of age let children be free of the code, but do not lose hold of them at four teen. From twelve onwards let them take up the line of work by which they will live. If at twelve they cannot read, write, and count, their teachers should be dismissed as incompetent, or the children should be set to "herd crows." Why should the most formative years be sacrificed to the superfluous acquisition of "general knowledge"?

Surely it were wiser to direct primary education to a practical end-at any rate in the case of children over twelve years of age. Then, why should fourteen years be fixed as the limit of the state's control? If the parents are incapable of directing their children who are under fourteen years of

age, they are surely not more capable of directing them for the following two or three important years.

It is dangerous to dogmatise, it is impossible to treat children even of the lowest class in the lump. But without professing that it is a perfect scheme, something like the following may be suggested as an improvement on the traditional system now governing education in Scotland. First of all, let the existing rules as to age be abolished. Second, let children who can gain a merit certificate be at once allowed to learn things that concern their future work in life. Third, let grants be given in respect of children up to any age who continue to put in, say, three or four months' attendance at technical classes, and who also give evidence that for the rest of the year they are engaged in the practical work connected with these classes, as apprentices, as farm-workers, or the like. For instance, if a boy of twelve can obtain a merit certificate, let him go and begin his apprenticeship as a carpenter, but make him spend a certain period in each year in learning drawing, the keeping of accounts, mensuration, the qualities of timber and a knowledge of the places where the various woods come from, an elementary knowledge of dynamics, and the like. But classes of this sort must not be limited to the years between twelve and fourteen. liminaries only will be acquired during these years-probably in most cases, the active and

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