Spens (1938)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Analysis, Preface, Introduction
Chapter 1 Development of the secondary curriculum
Chapter 2 The present position
Chapter 3 Physical and mental development of 11-16 year olds
Chapter 4 The curriculum of the grammar school
Chapter 5 Scripture
Chapter 6 English, classics, mathematics, general science
Chapter 7 The School Certificate Examination
Chapter 8 Technical schools
Chapter 9 Administrative problems
Chapter 10 Welsh problems
Chapter 11 Conclusions and recommendations
Appendix I List of witnesses
Appendix II Liberal education (Young)
Appendix III Secondary curriculum (Kandel)
Appendix IV Faculty psychology (Burt)
Appendix V Transfer of training (Hamley)
Appendix VI Curricula in the Dominions (Clarke)
Index

London: HM Stationery Office

Chapter 4 The curriculum of the grammar school
[pages 140 - 205]

1. Our terms of reference instruct us, when dealing with the organisation and interrelation of schools other than those administered at present under the Elementary Code, to have regard in particular to 'the framework and content of the education of pupils who do not remain at school beyond the age of about 16'. The Consultative Committee is deeply committed by its Report on The Education of the Adolescent to the view that the education of boys and girls from the age of 11+ is to be envisaged as far as possible as a single whole, whether it ends at or before the age of 16 or at the age of 18 or 19 (1), and in our survey of the curriculum we maintain this view. We do not, therefore, consider that modern schools, whether selective or not, can be wholly excluded from our consideration. There is in fact no clear line of demarcation, physical, psychological or social, between the pupils who attend grammar schools and those who attend modern schools, and all the evidence that we have heard on the existing methods of selection for one or other type of school confirms us in our opinion that the line as drawn at present is always artificial and often mistaken. But our terms of reference exclude modern schools, and although they have never been far from our thought, in what follows we shall deal primarily with the curriculum of the grammar school as it is, and as we think it should be. (2)

2. The framework of the grammar school curriculum was first defined by the Board of Education in its Regulations for Secondary Schools in 1904, and in broad outline this framework remains unchanged. The salient articles in the current issue of the Regulations (1935) are:

'2. (b) The school must be a school for pupils who intend to remain for at least four years and up to at least the age of 16. It must provide a progressive course of general education of a kind and amount suited to an age range at least from 12 to 17.'

'7. Except with the previous permission of the Board, adequate provision must be made for instruction in the English language and literature, at least one language other than English, geography, history, mathematics, science, drawing, singing, manual instruction in the case of boys, domestic subjects in the case of girls, physical exercises, and for organised games.'

4. Although the Board's Regulations have always permitted exceptions and have been administered in a liberal spirit, they have undoubtedly exercised a strong influence in the direction of uniformity, first on the grant-aided secondary schools, but since 1907-8, when the Board began to make a list of secondary schools which it recognised as 'efficient', on the non-grant-aided schools also. But the position has changed very considerably since the institution of the School Certificate examination in 1917. No one who can remember the welter of examinations in the years before the [First World] War, for which schools had to prepare pupils who desired to enter particular professions, can doubt that the institution of a single examination has simplified the work of the schools enormously, and no one will dispute that 'under proper conditions they are a necessary and a valuable part of the educational machinery of a good school system'. (3) But our witnesses are almost unanimous in their opinion that, despite all safeguards, the School Certificate examination has not escaped the danger proverbially inherent in all machinery, and now dominates the work of the schools, controlling both the framework and the content of the curriculum. (4)

5. Various considerations point to the necessity of a thorough reconsideration both of the framework and of the content of the curriculum. As we have seen in Chapter 1, the existing framework was completed in the second half of the nineteenth century during a phase of civilisation which was largely static, and is accordingly more suited to a static than to the dynamic phase in which we live today. The last 40 years have seen many and great changes, and the world in which the modern child is born and in which he grows up is a very different world from that of the Victorian child. The advance in technological knowledge and practice in these 40 years has been greater than in the whole previous history of our civilisation. We live at a faster rate, the old lines of social cleavage have become blurred and are breaking down; with improved means of intercommunication and transport the world has contracted and its peoples have been brought nearer together, and their lives, thoughts and actions are in closer contact.

These 40 years have also seen a great advance in the science of psychology. We know more, though still not enough, of the processes of thought than our fathers knew, and we no longer accept without question their view that there is a special virtue in particular studies by which they develop particular qualities of mind that necessarily function in other connections. We know more, though still not enough, about the natures of boys and girls, and our whole attitude towards them has changed as a result. We recognise that they have a personal interest in their upbringing, something to contribute to its problems, and a point of view that we treat with greater deference. (5) The emphasis in educational theory has shifted from the subject to the child. We are more conscious of the differences between children, their varied aptitudes, sentiments and inclinations, and are no longer satisfied to put them all through the same mould. We have in particular learnt the importance of interests or 'sentiments' in education, and that the performance of a distasteful task is not necessarily a valuable discipline. We have learnt that just as men work best when their hearts are in their job, so boys and girls work best when they are interested in their work and see its purpose.

The last 25 years have also seen a large increase in the number of pupils attending grammar schools. In the grant-aided secondary schools in England and Wales the number has risen from 165,570 (4.6 per thousand of population) in 1911-12 (6) to 466,245 (11.3 per thousand of population) in 1937(7), that is to say there were nearly three times as many pupils in these schools in 1937 as in 1912. In the same period the percentage of ex-public elementary school pupils has grown from 63.2 to 77.0. This evidence of an increased and increasing demand for secondary education raises new problems. In the first place, a curriculum suited to a limited group of pupils is not necessarily adequate to meet the widened range of abilities of a far larger group, drawn from a wider range of social and cultural backgrounds, and selected on the basis of an examination which in itself is not necessarily a guarantee of ability to pursue a curriculum which is narrowly defined. In the second place, English secondary education has by tradition come to be regarded essentially as preparatory to the universities or some other form of higher education. With the increased numbers attending grammar schools, the majority of the pupils do not continue their studies beyond five years, and a substantial number leave before these are completed. (8) As has already been proved in most European countries, there is considerable danger both to the individual and to society in looking upon secondary education as only, or chiefly, preparatory to higher institutional education; such a situation must inevitably lead to an overproduction of 'intellectuals' and the unrest consequent on their inability to find the niche in an economic world for which they regard themselves as fitted and prepared. We have not yet reached this point in Britain, but we were assured by some of our witnesses that the capacity of the professions in the widest sense to absorb the product of secondary schools is less than it was, and may be further reduced.

Lastly, the new edition of the Handbook of Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers and Others concerned in the Work of Public Elementary Schools (1937), with its enlightened analysis of the aims and problems of the modern school, is a challenge to the grammar schools to take stock of their position which cannot be ignored, for the modern school is not only an essential part, but numerically the larger part, of the national provision for the education of the adolescent.

6. All these circumstances have led in recent years to criticism of the curriculum and its content, much of which has been brought to our notice by our witnesses and in the memoranda which we have received. (9) It has been represented to us that secondary education is still strongly influenced by the discredited conception of an all-round training of the faculties, and by the idea of a liberal (10) education which corresponds neither to the circumstances of the pupils nor to the needs of modern civilisation; that we think too much of education in terms of information and too little in terms of feeling and taste; that a university objective is tacitly assumed throughout the course; that the schools provide instruction in a number of subjects which are in danger of falling out of relation with one another; that the curriculum is too diffuse in some directions and too narrow in others, too rigid, and too much dictated by examination requirements; that too many subjects are carried up to the same level; that the timetable is overcrowded and congested, and leaves too little time to consider and discuss the wide implications of the subject matter with a consequent limitation of the ability to think; that there is a strong tendency to adjust the pupil to the curriculum rather than the curriculum, to the needs and abilities of the pupil, and in particular that the needs of the less academic pupil receive inadequate attention; that there is a grave tendency to overwork and overstrain adolescent pupils, especially girls.

It is not our intention to discuss these criticisms in detail at the present point. That many of them are dispassionately believed by many who are competent to express an opinion is certain. That none of them is wholly without justification is also certain. We enumerate them here because they form part of the data of our problem, and will have to be faced in their appropriate setting.

7. One other preliminary point remains. One of our witnesses told us that 'it is difficult to see what end is aimed at nowadays' by secondary education, and doubtless it is true that in the daily task of attending to the immediate job in hand the ultimate objective may not always be evident. On the other hand we have received convincing evidence that those who are intimately concerned with the conduct of grammar schools have clear ideas of the aims which they have in view, and that these aims are concerned with the training of the pupil, first as a person with a body, a mind and a spirit, second as a future citizen of a democratic country, and third as one who will have work of some kind or other to do for a livelihood. With varying emphasis, now on one and now on another of these aspects, this aim is implicit in all schools. (11)

8. The reconsideration of the framework and content of the grammar school curriculum is accordingly the theme of the present chapter. Some grammar schools are for boys alone, others for girls alone, and others contain both boys and girls (12), but unless the context implies otherwise, no distinction is attempted between these three types of school. We begin with an analysis of the principles which we believe should underlie the whole curriculum of the school in the widest sense of the term.

9. The curriculum of a school is, in the strict sense of the phrase, a statement or programme of its courses of teaching and instruction. There have been times and places in which the carrying out of that programme has been, in effect, the school's sole activity, any others being subordinated to it; but that could hardly be said today of any school in this country. To account fully for the broader views now incorporated in general educational practice would involve a diagnosis of contemporary life, but it is clear that the newer ideas have entered into the main body of schools from several distinct sources. In this country some of the most significant have simply filtered down from the public schools, where they have long prevailed. Others are an evident and direct response to the needs of an age which has seen an immense development in the political and industrial organisation of all the great nations. Others, again, are expressions of a profound modification in the old individualistic basis of English life - changes in opinion and sentiment which require the schools to accept responsibilities formerly borne elsewhere. Lastly there has been a notable advance in the technique of education, accompanied and fostered by an incessant discussion of ends, ways and means, by no means confined to those whose interest in the subjects is that of the teacher or the administrator.

The outcome of the changes thus brought about is that a typical school of the present day is to be regarded as not merely a 'place of learning' but as a social unit or society of a peculiar kind in which the older and the younger members, the teachers and the taught, share a common life, subject to a constitution to which all are in their several ways consenting and cooperating parties, pursuing purposes which, though not coincident, are nevertheless correlative. It is of necessity an artificial entity, in that it is deliberately created and maintained as a means of bringing to bear upon the young formative influences deemed to be of high importance either for their own development or for the continued well-being of the community. But it is, or should be, also a natural society in so far as the conditions of life in it, particularly those we think of as discipline and order, should enable its members to live on easy terms with one another, the older members exercising due influence upon the growth and characters of the younger, and the younger having space and freedom for many-sided individual development. In such an 'organisation of childhood' formal learning, the curriculum, in the narrower sense of the word, must always retain its central place, but there will be much more - activities of a less formal, nature and other activities entirely informal, which make equally essential contributions to the life of the society.

10. To consider the purposes of that life is to discuss the aims of education. Upon this subject it has been said that 'every scheme of education being, at bottom, a practical philosophy, necessarily touches life at every point. Hence any educational aims which are concrete enough to give definite guidance are correlative to ideals of life - and as ideals of life are eternally at variance, their conflict will be reflected in educational theories.' We do not wish to enter into the conflict and, in fact, do not find it necessary for our purpose to reduce the aims of education to a single formula. It is, however, desirable that we should keep before our eyes the several parties whose interest in and influence upon the educational process need to be borne in mind.

Of these the first and foremost is the community, acting either formally through its organ, the state, or less explicitly but none the less effectively by imposing its 'form and pressure' upon schools that are not subject to state regulation as well as upon those that are. Speaking broadly, the interest of the state is to see that the schools provide the means by which the nation's life may be maintained in its integrity from generation to generation; to make sure that the young are prepared to preserve - and some of them to advance - its standards in all modes of activity which are important to the common weal. In a democratic community it must 'educate its masters'; in communities of other types it must see that the citizens are trained for obedient and willing service. Underneath this explicit, overt educational activity of the state, working through laws and regulations, there is the unformulated but very real demand of the community that the young shall grow up in conformity with the national ethos.

The second party to be considered is the parent. It must be recognised as a governing principle that parents, over and above their general rights as citizens, have a dominant interest in the education of their own children. Education must always begin at home, and to the end of school life continues to be shared between home and school. The degrees and modes of partnership vary widely as circumstances differ. Where parents may choose their children's schools, their influence in favouring certain types and maintaining certain disciplinary and cultural traditions is unmistakable. Elsewhere extreme poverty at home and defective standards may create special problems for the school; but here, as in the former case, the school's success depends in the long run upon a good understanding between parties who, whether they are conscious of it or not, are partners in the children's upbringing.

The function in the school society of the teaching staff (including the heads of the schools) is complex. From one point of view teachers are the parents' substitutes and agents, doing what in the last resort is the parents' work and clothed for the purpose with a measure of parental authority. At the same time they are also agents of the community, the means by which it secures from the schools the services it expects them to render. This is true whether their salaries are or are not a public charge, and whether their work is or is not controlled or inspected by the state.

The staff has a characteristic part to play in the life of a school. Boys and girls show, especially during adolescent years, a strong tendency to organise their lives in relative independence of adult ideas and regulations. The tendency is healthy and should be accepted sympathetically, yet if left wholly to itself is prone to react towards barbarism instead of leading towards civilisation. The important function of the teaching staff outside their classroom activities is to act as unobtrusive observers of the general school life, refraining from interference with it where interference is unnecessary, but prepared to safeguard its moral qualities when these appear to be threatened. In brief, their influence should take the form of guidance - a guidance which, more than any other factor, creates and conserves the individuality of a school.

11. The changes which we have described as the conversion of the school into a society have had a marked effect upon the attitude of modern boys and girls towards their education. If the schoolboy no longer creeps like a snail unwillingly to school, it is not merely because the school has become a humane institution wherein Orbilius uses his special privilege sparingly and sometimes repudiates it altogether, nor merely because modern subjects and in many cases better teachers engage the pupil's interests as those of his ancestors were often not engaged; it is because, in a well-planned and well-ordered school of today, he finds open to him a life that satisfies most of his present needs, physical, intellectual, social and moral.

That the value of a system of education is to be estimated by its success in doing this, is a position not likely to be disputed; but the application of the principle raises questions as difficult as they are important. In our Report on The Primary School (13) we had to insist that, while the teaching at that stage must necessarily look forward to the child's post-primary studies, yet it was by no means to be considered merely or even chiefly as a preparation for them. The child's life during the primary school years has, we argued, its special needs and its intrinsic values, and the prime object of his education at that stage should be to satisfy those needs and to develop those values. We maintained further that the more completely these immediate aims are achieved the sounder will be his later intellectual growth.

We apply the same principle to the secondary school stage, and hold that the results of neglecting it here, though not so obvious as in the earlier stage, are equally injurious. In the secondary school the pupil's studies must be retrospective in so far as they are based on what has gone before, and prospective in so far as they should look forward to maturer studies or to his occupation on leaving school. But before everything else the school should provide for the pre-adolescent and adolescent years a life which answers to their special needs and brings out their special values. It is doubtful whether this requirement is at present generally satisfied; the view is, in fact, widely held that teaching at the secondary stage is prejudiced by the undue influence of the university curriculum. If this is true the resulting harm is, we suggest, not confined to the secondary school. Again there is little doubt that the content of the curriculum in some secondary schools is such as to distort the teaching in the primary or preparatory schools. Where this happens, the child who passes from the earlier stage to the later must generally suffer loss on both sides of the frontier. We do not claim that intuition, however highly trained, can discern infallibly the proper shape of any section of the ideal educational curve; even those who are most confident that they have found it will do well to regard their views about it as provisional and open to criticism. But to say this is not to admit the right of those responsible for any educational stage to fix the conditions of entrance thereto without regard to the intrinsic nature and requirements of the stages that precede it.

12. From the community and the state, from the parents, from the teachers, and from the nature and needs of boys and girls issue the forces that are to shape the school society. Their varying prominence is a main feature in the differences between one school system and another and between one school and another within the same system. For instance, history and custom have, in England, endowed the teaching staff with a degree of authority in determining the curriculum which puzzles and sometimes scandalises visitors from abroad; for in most of the continental countries, and even in the British Dominions, minute regulation gives the educational system a uniformity which the English mind views with uneasiness. But an English school which departs widely from the average practice can do so only with the support of a body of parents of unusual views, and its divergences are limited by the necessity of preparing its scholars for the public examinations that guard the entrance to higher education, the professions and other desired walks in life. Thus even the most independent school is subject to the normalising influence of social demands, in addition to the silent but powerful national influences from which none is free.

The question, how much autonomy should be granted to the individual school, cannot be wholly separated from the more difficult question, how much is to be granted to the individual pupil. Every man is autonomous in so far as he is responsible for his acts and for his character, but the conditions of his life and upbringing may have greatly circumscribed his freedom of development and in that sense have limited his autonomy. A nature rich in creative force may break through the borders of a narrow environment and in defiance of limitations produce the fruits of genius. Less gifted natures accept the limitations perforce and are shaped by them. A happy result of the modern enrichment of school life is the greater scope now offered for individual reaction and growth. Boys or girls are free to pursue private scientific hobbies or to cultivate the arts without incurring the contempt or condemnation of their fellows, and, in addition to such opportunities outside the classroom, 'options' in the official timetable offer an increasing latitude of choice in school studies. This enlargement of the scope for individual development at school is no small thing, but the issue it involves is trivial compared with one forced upon our attention by the trend of events in other countries. The doctrine that the provision of education is a national concern has long been accepted among us, as well as the correlative doctrine that agents of public authority may usefully help the schools to express in their teaching and general life the best traditions of national culture and character. No one proposes to return to the position of thinkers like Herbert Spencer, who would exclude the state wholly from the field of education. But observing, as one cannot now fail to do, how completely and exclusively the state may occupy that field - turning the schools and the teachers into mere instruments of its policies, vehicles for the dissemination of the ideas it approves, and means for excluding from the minds of the young all ideas of which it disapproves - then we feel bound to assert our faith in the English compromise between state regulation and freedom of teaching, and to express the hope that circumstances will never arise to endanger its continuance. For where the schools lose their freedom, the freedom of the individual citizen is in peril. The state may through its schools offer much which the young will accept, even with enthusiasm; nevertheless, though they may not know it, their minds are in prison. We find it impossible to believe that a community will not, in the long run, suffer by such drastic limitation of intellectual autonomy, and that, on the other hand, it has not everything to gain from the free growth of individuality among its potential citizens. In our view a school fulfils its proper purposes in so far as it fosters that growth, helping every boy and girl to achieve the highest degree of individual development of which he or she is capable; and all that we say about the curriculum of the school is to be applied in the light of this declaration.

13. From these preliminary observations we pass to the curriculum, using the term in the wider sense that accords with the position we have taken up. We are to legislate for a society and are to indicate the scope and nature of its chief activities. We have agreed that these are to be chosen with a view to the pupils' physical, intellectual, moral and social development and must reflect what is best in the life and traditions of the community. And we have adopted the further principle that, while studies should not be introduced which are beyond the present comprehension and unrelated to the present experience of pupils, yet, especially towards the end of the course, studies may well be introduced to a limited extent which have a definite bearing on the next stage of their life, whether that be a future occupation or continued education at a school or university.

We wish to reaffirm a view expressed in our Report on The Primary School (1931) (14), in which we urge that the curriculum 'should be thought of in terms of activity and experience rather than of knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored'. Learning in the narrower sense must no doubt fill a larger place in the secondary than in the primary school, but the principle we quote is no less applicable at the later than at the earlier stage. To speak of secondary school studies as 'subjects' is to run some risk of thinking of them as bodies of facts to be stored rather than as modes of activity to be experienced; and while the former aspect must not be ignored or even minimised, it should, in our opinion, be subordinate to the latter. This remark applies most clearly to 'subjects' such as the arts and crafts and music, to which we attach great importance, but which have generally been relegated to an inferior place in the school programme; but upon our view it holds good also of more purely intellectual activities, such as the study of science or mathematics. An unfortunate effect of the present system of public examinations is that it emphasises, perhaps inevitably, the aspect of school studies which we deem to be the less important.

The intellectual and other activities to be specified are, we have said, to represent or reflect what is of highest and most permanent significance in the life and traditions of the community. By the 'community' we mean here, in the first instance, the national community of whose life the schools are a part. It is true that the elements which have the highest and most permanent significance for our national life are not, in general, things denied to other nations; they have the highest value and significance for the human family as a whole. But for education one needs the influence of a concrete tradition or way of life, and there can hardly be said to be a common human tradition. There is, undoubtedly, a common western European tradition, derived mainly from the Graeco-Roman civilisation as it was transformed by Christianity, and one of the chief functions of secondary teaching is to make boys and girls conscious of it and regard it as something to be reverenced and preserved. But the right way to do this is to begin by making them conscious of that tradition as it exists in their own country. Hence the importance of fostering in our schools the special traits of the English character at its best; of giving English letters a chief place in the studies of youth; and of cherishing English traditions in the arts and crafts, including our once proud art of music. To speak thus is not to accept the ignorant and presumptuous doctrine that we have nothing to gain or to learn from other nations. On the contrary our pupils should discover, as occasion offers, how much our national development owes, in many of its aspects, to the influences of other peoples, should learn to respect great civilisations which are widely different from our own, and should understand how essential international cooperation has become to the progress of science and invention and the applications of knowledge and skill in increasing the health, wealth and convenience of mankind. Nevertheless, the national tradition in its concrete individuality must, for the reasons adduced, be the basis of an effective education.

14. A broad survey of the activities of a community shows that they fall roughly into two types, which may be distinguished as conservative and creative. The former are the multifarious activities which secure the community's continued existence and maintain its 'standards of life'; that is, they are the activities that go on in a myriad factories and offices and households, on farmlands and on the seas. The latter are most clearly exemplified in the activities of poets, of dramatists, of painters, of musicians, of men of science, inventors and the higher classes of administrators and legislators. The difference between them is not ultimate; for the routine performances of today were the creative achievements of yesterday, and may - as in the use of wheels, of weaving, of the fundamental agricultural processes, of writing - have been among the highest creative achievements of all time. It is, indeed, a commonplace that purely creative activities - such as the theories and discoveries of 'pure' science - generally prove sooner or later to have conservative value. Conversely, activities which are conservative in their genesis, such as the vast industrial organisations of today, may have an impressive creative aspect. The antithesis - and the synthesis - of the two types appears in the individual as well as on the large scale in society. We are all, to a considerable degree, creatures of routine, clinging to familiar conditions and sequences, finding a certain satisfaction in their repetition, and prepared to devote energy to their maintenance. It is less obvious that every man is also a creator, yet, if one looks closely enough, the generalisation becomes acceptable. For instance, although the use of language as a means of communication - obviously a conservative function - consists of routines learnt in childhood and made habitual by endless repetition, there is yet some intrusion of the creative spirit even into the speech of the stupid: it has been said that no one can begin a sentence with any certainty of what it will become by the time he reaches the end of it. And it is obviously true that the dullest person constantly adjusts the common idioms of his native tongue to the task of reporting events or thoughts or wishes which, at least for him, are new. In poetry this creative spirit, which is scarcely anywhere wholly excluded, takes control of the situation, and the common means of communication becomes material for the highest and most individual art. What we have said about the effect of creative in raising the level of conservative activities does not fail here; for the national idiom has in many cases been greatly indebted for its vigour, beauty and efficiency to great literary artists who have made it their medium of creative expression.

Mutatis mutandis [with the necessary changes], what we have said about letters may evidently be said about other arts and crafts. It is also true of activities of very different type, such as physical science. The outstanding discoveries and inventions which punctuate the progress of civilisation were born in creative moments of which no record remains, except the technical processes derived from them that spread from community to community and were handed down from generation to generation. Many of these involved acute observation and exact knowledge, but they were not science any more than forcible speech is poetry. Science, in the proper sense of the word, appeared only when the creative spirit of man began systematically to seek satisfaction in building up intelligible pictures of nature's intimate ways for the pure purpose of understanding them.

The bearing of these ideas upon our problem is direct and important. In the first place they remind us that a school, if it is to reflect truly the activities of the 'great society' must both give the knowledge and training required for the routine duties of adult life and also foster the creative impulses needed not merely for new enterprises and adventures but even for the daily adaptation of routine and technique to changing situations. Surveying the work of the secondary schools as a whole, we cannot feel that the reminder is unnecessary. In spite of modern advances, didacticism is still overweighted in comparison with originating activity. On the one hand, the pupils assimilate too much and do too little; on the other hand, the schools are inclined to stand too long upon the ancient ways and to be out of touch with the modern movement.

In the second place they suggest that the activities which are the richest in the creative element have the strongest claim for a place in the curriculum. For these spring from the deepest needs of human nature, and represent cultural movements, generally of great antiquity, which have developed characteristic modes of discipline and technique and mark out the main lines of human achievement.

15. It does not follow, because we expect to find both these elements contained in school work and school life, that a recognition of their presence provides any basis for a division into different classes of what are commonly known as school subjects. As we have said already, the difference between the creative and conservative activities of a community is not ultimate. It may be that this difference is particularly hard to distinguish in a community of adolescents, whose capacity both to maintain what is traditional and to create and assimilate what is new is related, no less to their social tendency to learn from and imitate each other, than to their ability as individuals to respond directly to adult teaching and influence. In every subject both elements are present, and the relative prominence of one or other will depend not only upon the content of what is taught but upon the teacher's personality and mode of thinking and even, it may be, upon the actual methods which he employs in the classroom.

In some of the main lines of human thought and feeling with which it is one of the functions of education to make children familiar - in religion, art, morality - it is often impossible to make any valid distinction, and say when they are to be regarded primarily as safeguarding the conditions and maintaining the standard of individual and social life, and when they represent adventures of the human spirit into the previously unknown and unexplored.

We have cited already the use of language as one example of how the two elements are combined almost inevitably in one field of mental and physical processes. An example of a different kind may be found in the actual organisation of the school society itself and of those many activities outside the classroom, including the generally accepted school games, which the tradition of the English public school and grammar school has committed, in greater or lesser degree, to the control of boys and girls themselves. The boy who is learning to exercise responsibility, in whatever position may be assigned to him in the structure of the school society, will have continually in mind a tradition to be maintained and strengthened, and a continuity to be preserved. But it is equally important that he should feel that each successive generation may have something of its own which is fresh and useful to contribute to that tradition; and that authority in permitting him to take his part, within carefully considered limits, in the regulation of school life is giving him the opportunity, in cooperation with others, to initiate as well as to conserve, to make precedents as well as to follow them.

Nevertheless we repeat that both elements must be represented in the curriculum, and that a larger place than hitherto must be found for those activities which we believe opinion would generally agree to call creative. This consideration does not, however, lead us to any revolutionary conclusion as to the actual content of the curriculum, though it leads us to advocate a rather drastic revision of the allotment of time as between the different activities and courses of instruction. We believe that on the basis of the foregoing considerations there is justification for including in the curriculum of the child during adolescence religious and moral teaching and training m the care of health, bodily efficiency and grace, manners and social organisation; and also that time must be found for those lessons which consist to a greater extent of direct teaching. They comprise (I) Letters: that is the use and appreciation of language, including at least some study of the native literature; (II) some forms of art, including music, the most universal of the arts; (III) handicrafts, taught with emphasis either on the aesthetic aspect, as in weaving, carving, handwriting, or on the constructional aspect, as in carpentry and needlecraft; (IV) science, including mathematics as the science of number, time and space. To these must be added history and geography, which appear in two-fold guise. History is in one sense literature and is read for more than the information that it contains. Similarly, geography has a strongly marked scientific side which entitles it to a place in our fourth group. But the two subjects have, taken together, the special function of recording and interpreting the human movement - history explaining the genesis of the present from the past, geography teaching the dependence of men's activities upon the natural environment and their interdependence all over the globe. In these aspects history and geography may be said to be central in the curriculum, and in our opinion are both indispensable.

We believe that of the activities which we have mentioned those associated with moral and physical training in the widest sense are fundamental and should be the concern of all pupils. But it might be contended that differences in ingenium sometimes justify choice among the others, though we hold that they should all be represented in the secondary school curriculum. We admit that there are extreme cases: boys and girls who are on general grounds suitable members of a secondary school but who seem to have a 'blind spot' which prevents them from gaining any good from some particular form of instruction. Where these cases are due to absorption in some other line of study for which the pupil discloses a marked talent, they are not much to be regretted: nature's own way of establishing her balance should be accepted. They are, however, much more often due to defects, positive or negative, in the pupil's early training, and may then be curable by patience and understanding. We believe that, speaking generally, the common needs and impulses of human nature are distributed with rough impartiality, and that there are few pupils of normal intelligence whose imagination is not stirred, whose interest is not awakened, and whose powers are not engaged when they are brought, under wisely chosen conditions and by competent teaching, into contact with any of the great, cultural traditions. A well-rounded education involves some degree of contact with all of them, although not necessarily contact with all at every stage. It is, in fact, the gravest defect of the present system that a boy or girl may pass through a secondary school having made no contact, or next to none, with one tradition - that of the arts and crafts - -which is certainly not the least noble or the least ennobling.

Not to recognise important differences in ingenium and ability would, however, be to shut one's eyes to plain facts. While, then, we think that, in principle, every pupil should make acquaintance with all the groups of activities in our second class, yet we also think that, where possible, there should be varied provision for pupils of varying talents and taste. Our group (IV) may be taken as an illustration. Mathematical thought is one of the greatest gifts of the Greek mind to the modern world, and the spirit of natural science the factor which above all others has made that world what it is. Without some acquaintance with these, much that is fundamental in modern life is unintelligible. But although the essential features of mathematical thought and the broad aims and achievements of science are almost universally attractive when properly presented, many minds - and by no means the least bright - are oppressed by the arid technique and the excess of detail with which the teaching of these subjects is too often darkened and encumbered. There is, therefore, a need for courses, both in science and in mathematics, which shall bring out the essential characters of those modes of creative activity and illustrate the part they play in the business of mankind, but shall be, for certain pupils, alternative to the standard courses. And we wish to make it clear that we contemplate a flexibility in the public examinations which would permit these - possibly unexaminable - courses to be taken under proper safeguards by aspirants for a School Certificate.

16. In the foregoing paragraphs we have, for the reasons explained, constantly spoken of 'activities' rather than of 'subjects'. In avoiding the latter term we do not wish, however, to reject one of its important connotations or implications. Some writers on education maintain that a 'subject', such as history or mathematics, is a kind of museum collection of activities, made after the life has gone out of them, and for that reason is not to be made the basis of school studies. Intellectual growth, it is urged, should be nourished not upon these dead materials docketed and classified in textbooks, but by presenting the scholar with problematic situations to be dealt with by means of ideas and methods which may now have the historical character, now the mathematical, now the physical or biological. These ideas and methods are to be acquired as the need for them emerges, without reference to the logical categories to which they belong. Seductive as this doctrine is, even the authority of Dewey does not make it wholly acceptable. As will be seen below (15), we attach much importance to the 'problem method' which is akin to the 'project method', and in our Report on The Primary School (16) have stated that in our opinion the 'project method' in the full sense of the term has a very useful place in the teaching of young children. We recognise, moreover, the great value of occasions (the production of a school play or the building of a cricket pavilion are obvious instances) which invite the application and synthesis of a considerable range of acquired knowledge and skill. But our general doctrine forbids us to go much farther than this; for its essence is that the school 'subjects' stand for traditions of practical, aesthetic and intellectual activity, each having its own distinctive individuality; and we hold that the profit a pupil derives from them does not come from casual or episodical contacts, but by his being, so to speak, put to school to them, and so getting to make their outstanding characters part of the equipment and habit of his mind. If this is to happen, the subjects must be pursued as such - though we have urged that they should be pursued actively and not merely be assimilated by memory and understanding.

For these reasons we think that proposals for unifying subjects should be entertained with some caution. There is, for instance, a good deal to be said for unifying history and geography; there would result a useful economy of time, and the topics treated would receive complementary elucidation from two points of view. Is it, however, certain that geography, if combined with history, could retain the valuable distinctive character which it has acquired in the hands of modern scholars and teachers? If not, the apparent gain might actually be a loss. On the other hand, there is everything to be said for intimate working alliances between subjects, provided their essential autonomy is preserved. The teaching of physics and of mathematics - especially, perhaps, of mathematics - suffers much at present from a separation which Newton would have found incomprehensible; and, as some of our witnesses have pointed out, the teaching of history loses a great deal because it neglects the contribution which the teachers of science and art could make to it. Again 'education for citizenship' could be much assisted by a careful planning of syllabuses which would, at suitable times, concentrate upon the relevant topics the light of several subjects.

It is, however, not inconsistent with our position to deprecate the needless subdivision of subjects - a subdivision which in some cases, such as mathematics (eg the separation of solid from plane geometry, of elementary calculus from algebra), physics, and biology (eg the neglect of zoology in comparison with botany), tends to distort rather than to bring out the characteristic architecture of the subject.

17. The views on the curriculum here set forth may meet with objections or doubts from two directions. There are some critics of school teaching whose simple criterion of its value is its direct usefulness in after-life; to these we shall address ourselves in the next section. There are others, a large body with the support of a long tradition, who think that the school subjects are to be valued for the sake of the special or general training they impart to the mind. There are some who reduce this creed to a single article: 'It does not matter what you teach a boy so long as he dislikes it'. Others, however, express ideas which have been the faith of philosophers and schoolmasters from the time of Aristotle. Modern psychology has attacked them and shown that some of them are indefensible; it has, however, not convinced either experienced teachers or mature students that the faithful study of one of the major subjects does not impart some virtue to the mind. We believe that our view about these subjects makes the nature of that virtue clear. The subjects in question represent, it has been said, typical modes of activity which have been established through the centuries by the labours of a few men of supreme genius, a larger group of practitioners of outstanding talent, and an immense army of journeymen. We are apt to think of them in a too abstract and narrow way, forgetting that for the poet, the craftsman, the scientist, his poetry, his craft, his science is a way of life with ethical as well as intellectual or aesthetic characters. There is a characteristic integrity of the poet, of the musician, of the mathematician, just as there is a characteristic ethical code of the medical man or the seaman. And just as the young doctor or sailor in the making not only acquires certain knowledge, skill and habitual reactions, but also undergoes a special kind of ethical permeation, so the student who is put to school to one of the great cultural traditions acquires something of the ethical as well as the other characteristics that individualise it. We may, then, speak of the 'training' he receives in art or in mathematics, using the word to mean essentially what it means when we speak of the training of the doctor or the seaman. This training may quite properly be described also as 'mental discipline'. For it involves the submission of the pupil to the influences of the great tradition; it is his endeavour to learn to do fine things in the fine way.

18. With regard to the other possible line of criticism, we accept fully the position that school studies should fit boys and girls for the practical affairs of life, and that if they do not do so they must be badly planned or badly conducted. There is, however, in our view no educational heresy so serious as the belief that culture and practical utility are mutually exclusive. We even accept with some reserve the view that education should train for the right use of leisure - sound as the doctrine is - lest it should lead to a dichotomy between studies important for serious life and those pertinent only to hours of leisure. In brief, we are not prepared to admit that any of the activities of the secondary school, assuming them to be pursued in the spirit we have indicated, are not 'useful' in the sense that they tend to raise the level and quality of life in all its phases and moments.

Moreover, the conception we have set forth by no means excludes what is called vocational education, provided that certain conditions are satisfied. There are a number of occupations - those of the engineer, the cabinet-maker, the builder, the farmer are instances - which meet no trivial or transient needs. They have long filled an essential place in the life of civilised peoples, have a characteristic ethical tradition, have nursed fine characters and given scope to originating minds and great practical powers. They cannot be worthily carried on without scientific knowledge or trained artistic sensibility. To school a boy in any of these ancient occupations is to ensure (if it suits his ingenium) that he will throw himself into his work with spirit, and derive from it a definite organisation of mind and character. There are, in fact minds whose energies are released only by studies which have the directly envisaged goal of a vocational training. In such cases the vocational education is in the fullest sense also liberal.

We accept, then, vocational curricula, provided they comply with our general principles - provided, in short, that what is special in them is merely the pursuit of a specific aim and a corresponding adjustment of direction and emphasis among the activities proper to a secondary education. But we go farther, and agree with many of our witnesses that the studies of the ordinary secondary school should he brought into closer contact than at present with the practical affairs of life. This contention is entirely in accord with our view of the curriculum. It has been pointed out by more than one writer on education that a certain rhythm characterises the progress of the secular movements which the several subjects represent in the school curriculum. For instance it is well known that the history of electrical science, since it began to move forward in the eighteenth century, has shown such a rhythm or succession of phases. It began with a period of wonderment and delight in marvellous and bizarre phenomena for the first time brought to light - the wonders of the electrical machine, of the Leyden jar, of the voltaic pile; it passed to the exploitation of electricity in the service of man - the phase which began with the electric telegraph and enriched the Victorian age with new utilities; and was completed by the contemporary phase - initiated by the great work of Clerk Maxwell - in which the physicist seeks to construct a picture of the whole material world in terms of electrical entities. The expert will recognise that the rhythm thus exhibited in the history of the science as a whole is constantly repeated on a smaller scale in its parts; and there is good reason to think that other great cultural traditions exhibit their own rhythms.

The writers quoted do not fail to observe that the interest of children in a subject tends to exhibit a rhythm corresponding to the rhythm of its history. There is a phase in which the subject makes its first appeal to the sense of wonder or romance. This is followed by a more sober phase in which interest fastens upon the practical utility of the new knowledge and is disciplined to precision in its application. Lastly conies the phase in which constructive logic takes the central place - the phase of generalisation or system. Now on the large scale, now on the small scale, this rhythm seems to govern the natural movements of young minds.

Following the line suggested by this analysis, we point out that no cultural tradition is adequately represented by teaching which fails to give a proper place to each of its characteristic phases or aspects. The charge that the secondary school curriculum is out of touch with the interests of practical life is a charge - we fear not ill-founded - that it concentrates upon the 'system' stage and neglects the earlier stages of the rhythm. If such subjects as languages, art, and needlecraft as well as mathematics and science are better taught than formerly, it is because that neglect has to some extent been repaired. We are, however, of opinion that not enough is at present made of the 'utility phase' in the development of the pupils interests. The curiosity of children of secondary school age about the practical concerns and activities of the great world is frequently so strong as to amount to a passion. In mathematics and physical science, for instance, the 'problem method' should be the standard mode of procedure - practical questions of wide interest and utility being made the occasion for the introduction of new mathematical or scientific knowledge or technique. In art and handicraft the applications of the notion are obvious. If the utility phase were adequately developed in all the subjects of the secondary school curriculum, everything which those concerned about 'education for citizenship' rightly demand would probably be granted. Pupils would leave school with a better equipment for practical affairs of many kinds and with some understanding of the way in which those affairs depend upon exact knowledge, and would be better prepared to pursue such knowledge with intelligence upon the technical plane.

19. We have stressed the 'utility phase' because in our view it is at present insufficiently developed. We are, however, far from undervaluing the importance in secondary education of the final phase of systematic knowledge and general ideas. We deem it unfortunate that any pupil should leave a secondary school without some inkling of the stupendous influences which ideas of abstract thinkers have had upon the world, and without some notion of the aims and technique of exact thought. (17) Full adolescence is, indeed, the epoch of life at which an intelligent boy or girl first feels the attraction of great generalisations and of views and speculations which seek to bring all time and existence within their scope. This efflorescence of the growing intellect does not always appear at school and is not to be forced. But it may safely be said that the relatively abstract and systematic learning which we have here in view is always most profitable when it comes fresh to minds which have, in conformity with a natural rhythm, given themselves previously to studies of a directly practical bearing.

20. This analysis of the principles which we conceive to underlie the curriculum of the secondary school leads us to no revolutionary conclusions. So far as the activities and subjects of the curriculum are concerned, we have reached the normal curriculum of all grammar schools and, where circumstances are favourable, of most modern schools. There are of course difficulties of organisation and timetable in its practical working which may limit the possibility of doing all that we should like to see done, and these will be discussed later in this chapter. But if we admit, as we do, that it is the duty of a school to initiate its pupils into the great traditions of culture of which we have spoken, and while so doing to provide for the growth of each pupil's powers of body, will, emotion, intellect and conscience, it ought not to omit any of the recognised subjects and activities, and none of our witnesses suggested that any should be omitted. Where, however, we believe change is necessary to meet the conditions of modern life is in the emphasis to be laid on particular subjects, in their content, and in the methods of teaching them - and by emphasis we do not mean the amount of time allocated to a subject in the timetable. Thus, there can be no doubt as to the value of the natural sciences when vitally taught, both for the part which they play in the modern world and from the interest they naturally excite in boys and girls. But we do not suggest that this value should be emphasised by an increase in the time usually allotted to these subjects. When the aim is to arouse a general interest in science and its applications in everyday life, a course for this purpose may well require less time than would a more formal treatment of the subject.

21. So far we have been thinking of a national system of secondary education for the abler children of the nation, beginning at the age of 11+ and continuing in general up to the age of 18 or 19. That course is at the present time divided into two stages, the first ending about the age of 16 and the second covering the years from 16 to 18, and the termination of each stage is marked by a public examination. It is far from being the case that all pupils remain at school for the whole course, and still less is it the case that all carry their education further in a university. Statistics are only available for the grant-aided secondary schools, but in these schools only 16.2 per cent of the pupils were over 16 years of age on 31 March 1937, and only 5.7 per cent of the pupils who left school during the year ended 31 July 1937 after attaining the age of 16 proceeded direct to a university. (18) These figures raise serious and difficult problems; first as regards those pupils who continue at school for a year or more after the age of 16, with or without taking the School Certificate examination, but do not intend to proceed to a university; secondly, as regards those pupils who leave school at about the age of 16, immediately after taking the School Certificate examination, or without sitting for it.

22. The fact that many pupils who are not intending to go to a university remain at school after 16 is now generally recognised. It is a natural growth from the life of the schools themselves, from the keenness of the teachers and pupils, from the longer views of parents. It is a spontaneous growth, and its vigour is derived from its spontaneity. These pupils contribute a new and important element to the sixth form. (19) The sixth form is indeed the most characteristic and most valuable feature in a grammar school in the training of character and a sense of responsibility, and on its existence depends all that is best in the grammar school tradition. Not only does it make possible that free and yet ordered self-government which is the admiration and envy of educationists of other lands and a national asset, but it acts as a perpetual stimulus to the work of both teachers and pupils, providing both with a new and wider horizon. At one time the sixth form was composed almost entirely of pupils looking forward to a university career, and, since we are agreed that all those pupils who are capable of making proper use of a university education should have the opportunity that the grammar school provides, we regard it as essential that the organisation and curriculum of grammar schools should continue to fulfil this function as adequately as possible. (20) But we are also agreed that the tendency of other pupils to remain longer at school should in general be encouraged, and particularly by the extension of the special courses which some schools are already arranging for pupils who are not going on to a university. In many cases these courses will naturally take the form of a preliminary vocational training of such a kind that the pupil will recognise its value for the next stage of life. But all these special sixth form courses will not be of a vocational character. Our witnesses have told us of successful courses in modern studies, in economics, in music, and in other directions. We welcome these, and we think that a wide liberty should be left to the schools in the choice and arrangement of these courses, and that no obstacles should be placed in the way of their development.

23. The second problem is that specially mentioned in our terms of reference, the curriculum for pupils who do not remain at school beyond the age of 16. Here we have to safeguard the interests both of those pupils who are going on to a sixth form and perhaps to a university, and also of the 85 per cent who are not remaining at school beyond 16. At present, education in grammar schools up to the age of about 16 is tested by the School Certificate examination; and, with a few exceptions, the courses which this presupposes, and which are therefore provided, are those which are principally designed as a foundation for further study. Are they equally suitable for pupils who in fact will not often have the opportunity of further study? The answer is not so simple as may at first sight appear.

24. There is no general factor which determines the age at which a pupil leaves the grammar school. In many cases it may be influenced by the terms of the undertaking which many authorities require a parent to sign before his child is admitted to a grammar school. This usually pledges the parent under penalty to keep his child at school for a period of five years, i.e. up to the end of the school year in which he reaches the age of 16. Our witnesses tell us that parents frequently defer their decision on the question of continued attendance at school until their children are about to take, or have just taken, the School Certificate examination.

Doubtless in many cases economic conditions, for which the pupil himself has no responsibility, compel pupils to leave school as soon as they are free to do so, while the evidence of success at school afforded by passing the School Certificate examination is a factor which weighs with parents in retaining their children at school. The important fact in all these cases is that it is impossible at the age of 11, or even at 13, to pick out with any certainty the pupils who will stay beyond 16. This rules out any solution by organising two types of grammar school, the one with an age range of 11 to 16, the other with an age range of 11 to 18 or 19. Indeed all our witnesses strongly opposed such a separation as inconsistent with the policy laid down in The Education of the Adolescent. Even if such a solution had been practicable, we should have rejected it, believing that the doubtful advantages which might be obtained by the establishment of separate schools for pupils expected to leave at 16 would be outbalanced by the loss of the stimulus of working in a school with a sixth form and all that a sixth form implies. (21)

The same considerations apply to any organisation of 'sides' in a grammar school on the basis of the probable length of the pupils' school life, and in rejecting this solution also we are again supported by our witnesses. We consider that the prime duty of the secondary school is to provide for the needs of children who are entering and passing through the stage of adolescence. If in its organisation and curriculum the grammar school puts first things first, and provides adequately for the effective training of boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 16, then, so far as the training during these years is concerned, it matters little whether the pupil leaves at 16 or 18. Our problem indeed proves to be part of a larger one. What, if any, changes in the curriculum for pupils between the ages of 11 and 16 are desirable in order that it may better subserve the needs of adolescence, and the differing interests and capacities of individual pupils? And the real difficulty lies, not in the fact that many pupils leave at 16, but that the rapid growth in the number of pupils in grammar schools during and since the [First World] War has resulted in the inclusion in the schools of a number of pupils who are not quick at seizing the relatedness of things or ideas, and who find French and mathematics difficult, and so find the School Certificate examination beyond their reach. These pupils, who are often described as 'non-academic', and sometimes less charitably as 'misfits', are to be found both among those who are admitted from public elementary schools and among those who are admitted from private schools. The number of these pupils varies from area to area, but it was represented to us that in certain areas they may amount to as many as from 25 to 35 per cent of the pupils in a particular school.

We hope that our recommendations to secure parity of status for all forms of secondary education will make it easier to transfer pupils to schools better suited to their needs, and that without creating any sense of slur or failure. But it would be wrong to think that the presence of 'non-academic' pupils in the grammar schools is all loss to themselves, to their abler fellows, or to their school. If we regard the school as a social unit with a life that is in a sense a microcosm of the larger life in which pupils will later share, and a training ground for that larger life, then we believe that to restrict that school society rigidly to the intellectual cream of the adolescent population would be to impair its social value. The less academic pupils have something of value to contribute to the life of the school society, and in fact many do contribute to it. Later in this chapter (Section 37) we shall make suggestions to meet the intellectual needs of these pupils.

25. We adopt as a governing principle that the course of instruction for pupils between the ages of 11 and 16 should fulfil the following conditions:

(i) It should cater for the special needs of adolescence; that is to say: it should be related to the natural activities of body and mind during that period, and both illuminate and guide the pupil's experience.

(ii) It should develop and harmonise the powers of body, will, intellect, emotion and conscience.

(iii) It should not consist to any considerable extent in courses which are only of value if the subjects are carried further.

(iv) It should be reasonably 'all-round' while giving full opportunity for the pursuit of individual interests.

(v) It should stimulate or create the desire to continue some form of study whether or not pupils leave school at 16.

26. We have already in paragraph 15 arranged the content of the curriculum in what seems to us its natural grouping. For practical purposes, however, we find it more convenient here to adopt a different system of grouping, viz:

I. English, religious knowledge (Scripture), history, geography, literature.
II. Languages.
III. Mathematics, science.
IV. Music, art, handicraft, domestic science.
V. Physical education.

27. When we include religious knowledge in the first group, we are thinking mainly of the religious or moral education which can be given in the classroom, though religious instruction or 'Scripture' is, of course, only a part of religious education. We discuss in our next chapter the difficulties presented by this subject and the way in which we think that they can be largely overcome. The teaching of religion is not, and cannot be, examinable; but we believe that this is not necessarily also the case in the teaching of Scripture, provided a principle be adopted which we regard as in itself a right principle. We consider, in short, that Scripture should be taught primarily with a view to the understanding of what the books of the Bible were in fact intended to mean by their authors. Such an objective treatment of Scripture reduces the difficulties in teaching it. Moreover, all who believe that the Bible is 'an inspired record of a unique revelation' must welcome this systematic study of the Bible as providing an essential background for religion. Even those who believe otherwise must admit that Christianity has played the most important part in the development of our civilisation, and that without a study of the meaning of the Bible any adequate knowledge of what that civilisation means is impossible. Finally, we are convinced that such an objective study of the meaning of the Bible will increase children's intellectual respect for, and interest in, religion. We believe also that this result is more likely to be secured in schools whose staff contains one teacher with a considerable technical equipment in Scripture comparable to that of specialists in other subjects, who could take a substantial part of the higher teaching and who would inspire and guide Scripture teaching throughout the school. Such specialists have been introduced into a number of girls' schools, but into very few boys' schools; and we are satisfied not only that this policy has been justified, but that the result has been to place girls' schools markedly ahead of boys' schools in their handling of this problem.

28. Physical education is now recognised as a matter of national concern, and as such is likely to claim greater emphasis in the curriculum and a larger share in the timetable. In a school it means more than the physical training appropriate to the individual pupil, gymnastics and games, or the training in dexterity of hand which is gained in the workshop. Its aim is to foster the habit of healthy living which is founded on an active belief in the value of health and the knowledge what to do to ensure it. But a knowledge of hygiene divorced from regular practice of its teaching is of little value; it is not what a pupil knows but what he does and how he lives that really matters. Here we have something to learn from the rising generation in other countries. Respect for the body, pride in posture, cleanliness, grace, poise and hardness of muscle, these are the evidences of the habit of healthy living. Of the importance of physical education for the hours of leisure there is no need to speak. To some aspects of sex education we have referred briefly elsewhere. (22)

29. We take next the subjects which we have included in our fourth group. We take first music and the arts for their value in awakening and developing that aesthetic sensibility which is one of the most valuable of human gifts, and which, although its possibilities vary greatly from one child to another, is wholly denied to none. In the past, particularly in boys' schools, these subjects have often received too little attention, but we believe that their importance is now more generally recognised. We still, however, feel it necessary to reaffirm the recommendation which we made in our report on Differentiation of Curricula between the Sexes in Secondary Schools (1923, p. 138); 'That a more prominent and established place in the ordinary curricula of schools both for boys and girls should, be assigned to aesthetic subjects, including music, art and other forms of aesthetic training, and that special attention should be paid to developing the capacity for artistic appreciation as distinct from executive skill.' We feel this training to be as important as the training of the intellect through languages, science and mathematics, and should like to see a larger proportion of the school hours available to subjects of this nature.

In the same group we place the handicrafts, the domestic arts and gardening. As we have said above (paragraph 13), we regard these subjects as of great importance, and regret that so often in the past they have been relegated to an inferior place in the school programme. Even today in many schools for girls the accommodation and equipment for the domestic arts and home crafts, and in many of the older schools for boys that for handicrafts, are insufficient to permit of a proper development of these subjects. This is especially true of the provision for work in metal. It will be seen below (23) that we propose that these subjects should receive a larger proportion of the timetable.

30. We now come to the subjects in which the intellect is more intimately concerned. We have agreed that the school should provide opportunities for the study of all of the subjects included in our first three groups. But this does not mean that all pupils must study all these subjects at the same time or for the whole of their school life. It is impossible to accept the definition of an educated person as one who 'knows something of everything and everything of something'. That idea was only tenable at a time when the extent of knowledge was far smaller than it is today, and when it was believed that each subject was necessary for the training of particular faculties. Education means far more than 'the acquisition of a number of disconnected fragments of information with such power of observation, clear thought and expression as may have been picked up by the way'. The value of information has been grossly exaggerated in all systems of education, and is grossly exaggerated in popular esteem. Hilaire Belloc's lines

'The path of life, men said, is hard and tough
Only because we do not know enough.
When science has discovered something more,
We shall be happier than we were before.'

The educative effects of any branch of study consist in its suitability and usefulness in providing material for thought, for the perception of relations, for matter on which the pupil may strengthen his powers of reasoning; in its invitation to the pupil to form interests or sentiments about a subject; in its assistance in the building up of such habits as perseverance, sanity of judgement and initiative; in the building up of that complex of habits which constitutes a skill. But these values inhere, not in particular subjects, but in the spirit of study. To obtain these values it is not necessary to study a wide range of subjects. For a future writer a training that consists solely in the study of the classics may be a good training, and the addition of some science or mathematics would not necessarily make it any better for him. From the educational point of view, it is not the subject but the methods of teaching that matter. This is not to say that the choice of subject is of no importance. It must be worthy of study. And this means, as we have said before, that it represents a line of activity, intellectual, aesthetic or practical, which has played an essential part in the evolution of the human spirit.

31. It has been said that 'the principal weakness of the secondary curriculum, taken as a whole, is that too often it is not centred round any core, or related to any one main stem of learning, or way of looking at life'. We believe that this is true, and that the lack of a unifying principle, such as used to be provided by a classical education, is responsible for a great deal of wasted and misdirected effort in the classroom. It is true that a talented pupil will often create such a core for himself, but for the majority of pupils we think that the school itself should adopt a unifying principle in its curriculum, and we recommend that it be found in the teaching of English and that assembly of subjects which are often loosely spoken of as the English subjects. Chief among them is the training in clear and precise expression of ideas in English, both orally and in writing; we have still, we believe, much to learn from the methods of teaching composition employed in the French state schools, and we should welcome these and other exercises designed to develop powers of comprehension and expression. It is a common and grave criticism that many pupils pass through the grammar school (and even through the university) without acquiring the capacity to express themselves in English. Secondly there is history, primarily but not exclusively the history of Britain, taught especially in the later years of school life with particular reference to the history of the past century; yet we cannot neglect earlier and also classical periods if we are to teach our pupils to appreciate English literature and to understand British institutions. Thirdly there is geography which, though really a link subject between the sciences and the humanities and drawing its material from both, is traditionally regarded as an 'English subject'. Fourthly there is a reasonably wide reading of English literature itself. Fifthly there is Scripture, of which we have already spoken.

32. The importance of history, and in particular of recent history, for its own sake is obvious; moreover, since with pupils under 16 the theoretical discussion of economic questions is impracticable, and the objections to the direct discussion of current political questions are considerable, recent political and economic history is the best introduction to the study of politics. Not only does it supply the necessary information, but it can be taught so as to induce a balanced attitude which recognises differing points of view and sees the good on both sides. As we have said elsewhere it is in this way, by precept or still more by the breadth of their own sympathies, that teachers can best educate pupils to become citizens of a modern democratic country.

Geography also can give a conception of the world and of its diverse environments and peoples, which should enable boys and girls to see social and political problems in a truer perspective, and give them sympathetic understanding of other peoples. For the older pupils a comprehensive scheme of world study, based on well-grounded principles, can offer scope for the consideration of a variety of vital problems bearing on social, economic and political life. Such a course, in our opinion, is to be preferred to the isolation of one aspect of geography, for instance physical, political or economic geography.

The reading of literature is not only an important side of the work in English, but, with music and the arts, also plays its part in awakening and cultivating aesthetic sensibility. Literature is, of course, not the only subject of the curriculum in which the emotions are concerned. There is a strong emotional element in the sentiments that a pupil develops for any subject, but in the study of literature emotional training is more direct and more easily developed. This is one reason why the value of wide reading in literature is now universally admitted. We have, however, grave doubts as to whether books should be used and studied at this stage in the manner that is necessary if English literature is to be an examination subject. We believe that prescribed books do more to injure the growth of a budding sentiment for literature than to encourage it, and therefore recommend that books should no longer be prescribed in the School Certificate examination.

33. One important aim of the English teaching will be to give the pupils some idea of the meaning of civilisation and of their own country's contribution to it; some recognition, in fact, of the heritage into which they enter and the responsibilities awaiting them as citizens. But other countries have contributed as much or more to the building up of western civilisation, and some knowledge of their differing contributions and attitudes to life is needed for a sympathetic understanding of them. This is one reason why we believe that all pupils should be given the chance of learning at least one language other than their own. We leave the decision, as to what language should be taught first to the schools. The majority of schools have for traditional reasons adopted French, but if the first language is to be a modern one, the claims of other languages are at least as cogent, and have led several schools to adopt German or Spanish. Other schools in which two languages are included in the general curriculum prefer to take Latin first, a course of procedure which, in the case of schools sending many pupils to the older universities, enables them to compete on more equal terms with the public schools.

The cultural value of the linguistic study of a modern language consists largely, it is true, in a quickened realisation of the way in which words express thought, and in, greater clarity and precision in the use of the mother tongue; but it consists not least in the enlargement of sympathy and interest; and in an age dominated by the spoken, and written word and a world in which distance is ceasing to count, these qualities are of outstanding importance. These cultural values may be obscured by bad methods of teaching or by the necessity of bringing pupils with little linguistic ability up to the standard in composition required in the School Certificate examination. But many boys and girls who will never write a prose in a modern foreign language can learn to read a book or newspaper in that language intelligently and to understand and speak on simple topics, and may acquire some understanding of the people who use that language and of their contribution to civilisation. There is, too, the further gain that in a foreign language, in the early stages at any rate, answers are in general right or wrong, and the difference between knowing and nearly knowing is clearly defined.

In the first year of the study of a foreign language it should receive as much as one lesson a day; and those who, after a fair trial, show no signs of an aptitude for languages should be allowed to drop it.

34. We think that all pupils whose taste and aptitude justify the study of a second language should begin this about a year after taking up the first. The case for a modern language is obvious and in certain circumstances may be unanswerable. There are, however, strong arguments for choosing an ancient language, especially in the case of a pupil who is going to do sixth form work of an academic character. By experience of, and contrast with, an earlier civilisation we obtain a clearer knowledge of our own; and Latin should probably be chosen in preference to Greek because of its bearing on our ordinary non-scientific vocabulary and of the cultural background which it so often supplies in our literature. (24) The claim of Latin to a place in the modern curriculum has often been hotly contested, but this is largely due to the traditional methods of teaching it. In no other subject has the end been placed at so great a distance, and the realisation of its value emerged so late. We regard it as essential that Latin should be so taught that something definite is gained long before the university stage. Interest in Rome should first be awakened through some knowledge of Roman life and achievement, and through the large Latin element in our non-technical vocabulary; the first Latin passages read should include many which illustrate Roman life; the grammar should be simplified and the rules of syntax dealt with as they occur in the matter read; while for very many pupils the time given to the writing of Latin should be very greatly reduced. We believe that in this way it is possible to give Latin a value and an interest that the pupil can appreciate even if he leaves school at 16.

35. No school subject, except perhaps classics, has suffered more than mathematics from the tendency to stress secondary rather than primary aims, and to emphasise extraneous rather than intrinsic values. As taught in the past, it has been informed too little by general ideas, and instead of giving broad views has concentrated too much upon the kind of methods and problems that have been sometimes stigmatised as 'low cunning'. It is sometimes utilitarian, even crudely so, but it ignores considerable truths in which actual mathematics subserves important activities and adventures of civilised man. It is sometimes logical, but the type and 'rigour' of the logic have not been properly adjusted to the natural growth of young minds. These defects are largely due to an imperfect synthesis between the idea that some parts of mathematics are useful to the ordinary citizen or to certain widely followed vocations, and should therefore be taught to everybody, and the old idea that, when mathematics is not directly useful, it has indirect utility in strengthening the powers of reasoning or in inducing a general accuracy of mind. We believe that school mathematics will be put on a sound footing only when teachers agree that it should be taught as art and music and physical science should be taught, because it is one of the main lines which the creative spirit of man has followed in its development. If it is taught in this way we believe that it will no longer be true to say that 'the study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment' (25), and that it will no longer be necessary to give the number of hours to the subject that are now generally assumed to be necessary.

36. The part played by the natural sciences in modern life is so important an element in the experience of boys and girls that its inclusion in the curriculum needs no justification. But there is a general feeling that the common practice of concentrating on a systematic study of particular sciences lays too early a stress on the 'phase of generalisation' and too little on the earlier phases of romance and utility (26), and accordingly is not the best approach to science for adolescent pupils. This feeling has already led to the provision of courses (and papers in the School Certificate examination) in general science as alternatives to courses in particular sciences. These courses in general science aim at relating science to everyday life and experience. They avoid what is of a purely academic nature and illustrate laws and general principles by special reference to practical applications drawn from the physical and biological world around. In this way general science makes a more direct contact with life and creates real interests. It appears probable that, as experience is gained, these courses will move further away from the particular sciences both as regards material and method of treatment. Some account of relatively advanced work might well be included. (27)

37. So far we have been dealing with the subjects which we believe are desirable for the general mental equipment of the adolescent pupil as an individual and a future citizen, and have said little or nothing about his equipment as a future worker. We have done so, not because we do not recognise that preparation for a vocation is an important part of education, but because we believe that specialised training should come last in time. But the extent to which a 'general' training is prolonged must depend on circumstances, such as the natural capacity of the pupil and the ability of the parent to continue to support his child. We have already called attention to the less academic element in the grammar school at the present time. In the Metropolitan area and in other large towns, these pupils mostly seek to obtain clerical posts in industry and especially in commerce, and leave in large numbers at, or very shortly before, 16. We think that their circumstances are such that some preliminary vocational training is in their interest. Further, it is claimed - and the claim must be allowed - that for these pupils the provision of commercial subjects is a strong incentive to renewed vigour and industry and likely to react favourably on all their work. We consider it is essential that such training should be given with an equipment and accommodation that does not fall below the standard required for other subjects, and by teachers of equivalent qualifications. We agree with our witnesses who have said that it is not so much commercial education which is needed as education for commerce, and this means a somewhat different treatment of such subjects as English, geography and mathematics, though not necessarily so different a treatment that these subjects lose all cultural value. But under present conditions what is most important for the immediate objectives of the 'non-academic' pupils is a mastery of the mechanical skills of typewriting and shorthand. We are told that a sufficiently high standard in each of these can be obtained with five lessons a week during the fifth year (15-16) of the grammar school course without jeopardising success in the School Certificate examination. We accordingly recommend that for these pupils opportunities to acquire these mechanical skills should be given after the age of 15, that their arithmetic should include something that might be called bookkeeping, and that their instruction in English, history and geography should lay stress on those aspects which will be of vocational advantage for them.

38. We have been pressed by some of our witnesses to include other subjects in the curriculum, and in particular economics, and we have considered with some care the case put forward for this subject. We have come to the conclusion that we cannot recommend its inclusion as a specific subject before the age of 16. As we shall see later, it is hardly possible to find time in the timetable for existing subjects, all of which we regard as indispensable constituents of the grammar school atmosphere. But beyond this, we are not convinced that a serious introduction to the science of economics is within the capacities of the normal grammar school pupil under 16. Nearly all the evidence of successful courses that we have received relates to sixth form work, and therefore clearly supports our attitude. This does not mean that nothing can be done to prepare and dispose the pupil for a later study of economics. It is clearly unsound to deal with the history of the last two centuries without reference to economic conditions and their bearing on the social and industrial problems of that period. The economic aspects of geography have obvious importance in this connection and the course in mathematics ought to lead to an awareness of the importance of statistical method. But in all this the reference to economics should aim at little more than showing the pupils how the science of economics links on to the branches of study of which they know something, so that when they want to study it later they know its relations to their existing knowledge.

39. It is usual to supplement the lessons given in school by exercises to be done by the pupil out of the regular school hours, either consequent on or preparatory to these lessons. In the boarding school these are known as 'preparation' and present no difficulty. In the day school they are known as 'homework', and the widened range of social and cultural backgrounds from which pupils are now drawn, the long school day, the distances which many pupils travel to and from school and the distractions of wireless have created difficulties. These difficulties are real, but it is easy to exaggerate them. Some can be reduced if the school is able to secure the sympathetic cooperation of parents.

We believe that homework plays a necessary part in the education of the adolescent, and especially in consolidating knowledge, in perfecting skills, in developing the power of acquiring information from books and the self-controlled power of application. All of these have to be mastered by each pupil for himself, and though the first steps can be made in the classroom under guidance, it is only continued personal practice that can give any mastery. It is very difficult to find sufficient time for this within the regular school hours with the existing range of subjects, if the present standards of attainment are to be maintained. (28)

We believe on the other hand that it is possible by a careful regulation of homework to secure these results without undue encroachment on the pupil's spare time. The circumstances of schools and the rate at which different pupils work vary so greatly that we hesitate to suggest any prescriptions as to the time to be spent on homework. Experience shows that, where a time is prescribed, pupils commonly disregard it in order to finish the job in hand. It is the business of the school to see that what is asked is not unreasonable, and that where different teachers set work for the same evening the sum total of the different demands is also not unreasonable. Here we believe that the 'tutorial system' which we suggest below may provide a convenient check.

The regulation of homework is of particular importance during the months preceding an external examination. At such times many of the more conscientious pupils, amongst the girls especially, may spend over their books almost the whole of their time between arriving home in the afternoon and going to bed, perhaps at a late hour. The bow which is always bent loses its spring.

Broadly speaking, we think that no homework should be set to junior forms in which the majority of the pupils are under 11; that less should be required of the younger forms than of the older; and that the quota set for the weekend should not exceed that set on the other days of the week, so that the children may then have a free evening to share fully in the family life. (29) We think also that another free evening is desirable in the course of the week, and that this may well be chosen to fall on a day when pupils remain after school hours for various corporate activities other than games. A free evening in the middle of the week is refreshing to a child, and has a good effect on the work done on other evenings. These suggestions would mean that homework should never be required to occupy more than five evenings and where possible only four. (30)

There are certain considerations of a purely social character to which attention should be given in the regulation of homework, since they all have a bearing upon the time which should be allotted to it. The most important of these is the question of general home conditions; where these are adverse, the possibility of substituting preparation at school for homework might well be examined. (31) Other considerations which we have in mind are the length of journeys to and from school, insufficient sleep, and employment after school hours. Where fatigue is ascertained to have been due to such causes, and not to homework alone, the school medical officer should be brought into consultation, and special steps should be taken to ease the burden either of homework or of home duties. Watchfulness in the matter of home duties is especially necessary in the case of girls, and mutual adjustment of the claims of school and home is a delicate task for teacher and parent. The teacher should be aware, too, of the extent to which children may expect help in their homework, and of the extent to which anxious parents may themselves set additional tasks, a practice which we emphatically deprecate.

Informal extensions of school work which are not ordinarily classed as homework include general reading, play acting, local studies and direct observation, practical science, art and crafts, and music; in addition to a multitude of hobbies of a more general kind. Some of these activities can be developed through school clubs and societies; others the pupils will follow independently, and the teacher will reserve his advice till he is asked for it. They all add variety to the class work, and in pursuit of them the pupils learn something of the wise use of leisure. There is, of course, no guarantee that children will learn to use their leisure wisely, but they should have the chance of doing so, and the school can give them active guidance in employing their free time not merely for pure recreation, but for forming useful interests of their own.

40. We recommend that in all grammar schools, all the pupils should, for the first two years after entry, i.e. up to the age of about 13½, follow a curriculum which contains the subjects included in our groups I, III, IV and V. Broadly speaking, we should like to see this curriculum common to all types of secondary schools in order to reduce the curriculum difficulties in transferring pupils from one type of secondary school to another. In addition we recommend that the grammar school curriculum for these, years should include one foreign language, and the consideration which we have just mentioned implies that a foreign language should be included where possible, for suitable pupils, in the curriculum of modern schools. (32) We recommend the inclusion of one foreign language at this stage because we are assured by psychologists and teachers alike that the special aptitudes and interests concerned in the study of a foreign language or mathematics do not as a rule declare themselves much before 13, and the best way to establish their absence is to try out the pupils and observe their response to the teaching. As we have said above, pupils who after a year show little linguistic aptitude had better drop the foreign language. Those who on the contrary show linguistic ability should begin a second foreign language in the second year. We admit this exception to the common curriculum up to 13½ in the interests of the abler pupils who would be seriously handicapped by a later start in a second language if they intend eventually to proceed to a university.

At the end of the second year we suggest that each school should make a careful review of its pupils in the light of what has been observed of their progress, development and tastes during the two preceding years, and that the opportunities for transfer to schools better adapted to their abilities or interests should be freely used. (33)

This also seems to us the right moment to sift out the non-academic pupils and to make suitable alternative provision for their further education. If this sifting out is done carefully at the age of 13½, a second sifting out at the end of their third year of school should yield very few more 'non-academic' pupils. To defer the provision for the needs of these pupils until the age of 15, in the hope that some belated development of ability may take place, is clearly unkind to the majority of them.

41. In a grammar school with at least an annual three-form entry, the usual and obvious way to deal with variations in pace and ability is to organise the school in parallel forms. This system of organisation has already been found necessary m the larger modern schools and has been found to work very successfully. In a grammar school with a two-form entry this is still possible, but the forms are necessarily less homogeneous. Only in the small grammar school with a one-form entry is this impracticable. In these schools there is no obvious way to secure equality of treatment for the abler and less able pupils, and it will require all the administrative skill of the head master or mistress to secure a reasonable compromise. The pupils also will have to rely more on themselves and less on formal lessons. It may be necessary to omit some of the subjects which are normally studied in larger schools. For the most part these small schools will be found in less populated areas, and we shall have more to say about them when we deal with 'The Country grammar school' in the fourth section of this chapter.

So far as 'subjects' are concerned, we do not envisage much difference between the parallel Forms in a school, except in the number of languages taken; the differences will be partly in the content of subjects, partly in the pace of the work, but more in the methods of teaching. What we have said already about the natural rhythm exhibited in the growth of the great cultural traditions, and the use to be made of this rhythm in the teaching of a subject applies with increased force to the methods of instruction in the forms which contain the less able or less academically minded pupils. While we think that each of the three phases of wonder and romance, of utility, and of generalisation and system should be experienced by all pupils, whatever their ability, we are convinced that the interests of the less able pupils will always be best met by a greater stress on the utility of a subject than on the phase of generalisation.

The adoption of the method of organisation suggested in this and the two preceding sections - a common course for the first two years, followed by parallel but different courses in the next three years - will, we believe, make it possible to meet with substantial justice the varying interests of pupils of different abilities, different tastes and different outlook for their future years without injury to the conception of the school as a natural society. The organisation can also be elastic enough to deal with the more exceptional pupils, who are genuinely unable to profit from particular subjects and not merely discouraged by defects in their previous training, or who are absorbed in some other line of study for which they have real ability.

42. In our discussion so far, we have deliberately omitted one consideration which ultimately must be the deciding factor in determining what it is possible for a school to attempt, and that is the timetable. It is often said that the grammar school curriculum is overcrowded, that it is trying to teach more subjects than it has the time to do properly. The timetable is certainly fuller than it was before laboratory work was required of all pupils and not only of pupils specialising in science, before modern languages had gained their present importance, and physical education had been taken seriously. (34) The justification for the criticism really lies in the growth of content in different subjects. The increased use of specialists for the teaching of subjects has beyond doubt been of great benefit to the schools in improving the technique of teaching and in arousing sentiments for particular subjects, but specialists, and in particular the associations of specialists, do not always escape the danger of estimating too highly the share which their subject can play in the intellectual training of a boy or girl. Their attitude towards the content of their subject is more often 'What can I put in?' than 'What can I leave out?', and the result is a demand for more time for their subject which can only be granted by a reduction of the time given to other subjects. (35)

The position became sufficiently serious in 1922 to be the subject of a Circular (No. 1294) of the Board of Education. The immediate occasion was the publication of the reports of the four committees appointed by the prime minister to report on the positions of English, classics, modern languages and science in the educational system. Each of these reports had suggested a minimum time as necessary in secondary (i.e. grammar) schools for its subject. The science committee asked for not less than six periods per week, the classics and modern language committees for five periods for one language and nine periods for two, the English committee for from two to four periods.

The Circular examined how these recommendations fitted in with the demands of other subjects, using as their basis a week of 35 periods of 45 minutes, and produced a timetable which we rearrange in accordance with the grouping we have adopted in paragraph 26.

From this timetable the Board drew the conclusion 'that the minimum claims of individual subjects (in boys' schools) can be satisfied, if at all, only if no additional provision whatever is made to meet the particular needs of individual schools', and for girls' schools that 'the satisfaction of the minimum claims of all subjects represent a much more difficult, if not an almost insoluble, problem'.

We have ourselves made a similar though more detailed analysis of the timetable as affected by what we should like to recommend, assuming for the purpose a school with a three-form entry and a timetable of 35 periods per week, each of 45 minutes, which is given in Table 17 below. In this timetable we assume that there will be a normal course, common to all pupils for their first year, and taken in the later years by the majority of the pupils who will leave about or shortly after the age of 16. In addition we assume the provision of the following alternative courses:

X for pupils learning a second foreign language from the second year onwards.

Z for pupils learning a third foreign language from their third year onwards.

Y for pupils specialising in science or mathematics from their fourth year onwards.

W for pupils learning a second language who desire to give increased attention to artistic or practical subjects in their fourth and fifth years.

C for 'non-academic' pupils in their fifth year who desire to do some commercial subjects in their last year.

This experimental timetable (36) is sufficient in our view to show that our recommendations are practicable in the sense that they do not necessarily impose a heavier burden on the schools than they are at present called upon to bear.

43. On the other hand, our recommendations do little to ease that burden, and we think that it should be eased. The necessity is greater in the case of girls than in the case of boys because the demands of the home on the girl tend to be heavier and reduce the opportunities for rest and recuperation that her out of school hours ought to provide, while the adolescent years make a heavier demand on a girl's vitality than they do on a boy's. There would appear to be three possible ways of easing the burden, and only three: to reduce the number of subjects studied by a pupil, to reduce the content of subjects, or to do both.

Table 17 Experimental time distribution (35 periods weekly)

The first involves the abandonment of the general principle that the curriculum should be 'general' in the sense that it deals with all the traditional modes of intellectual activity. As is stated in Circular 1294, 'in practice a general curriculum is only justified in so far as it is a nucleus curriculum, and leaves sufficient margin of time for the individual tendencies of schools and their staffs to operate'. We have already urged that the educative effect inheres not in a subject but in the spirit of study, and are therefore prepared to agree, in the third and later years of the course, to a reduction in the number of subjects studied at any one time, provided these include English itself, some science, and, in the case of the abler pupils, at least one foreign language. (37)

As regards the content of subjects, we have already recommended a reduction in the content of mathematics and a simpler course in science. We think that some further relief is possible if greater variation in the level to which other subjects are carried is accepted in the School Certificate examination. If a subject is carried so far as is necessary for the pupils to realise its utility for life - which is a very different thing from its utility for this examination - and has given them the opportunity of developing sentiments about it, that is sufficient for the needs of the stage of adolescence. The only unity that we claim for the curriculum during adolescence is that it deals with the natural and cultural needs of that particular stage of life. Whether all the pupils leave at 16, or some at 16 and some later, the work of the school is well done if it has fostered the impulse towards continuing education, and there can be no more certain way of stifling that impulse than to suggest that the education is in any sense complete when, at whatever age, a pupil leaves school. It is a common metaphor to speak of the tree of knowledge and the branches of knowledge. We are not greatly concerned with the complaint that 'loose ends' are left in the teaching of subjects, for we remember that every branch and shoot of a tree has a 'loose end', and that these are the active points of growth. The teacher who has stimulated the vital force that makes growth a moral and intellectual necessity has done well.

We are convinced that it is a grave mistake to fill a timetable with periods of formal instruction. If pupils are to acquire a habit of forming reasoned conclusions, they must have time in which to practise it. There should be definite periods in the timetable in which no formal teaching is undertaken, in which all kinds of questions, at times relating to the formal work in hand, but more often to other matters of general interest - and among these we include many of the problems of citizenship - may be informally discussed by the pupils themselves. In these discussions the teacher, divesting himself for the moment of his authority, will, as opportunity offers, join, but always on 'level' terms with his pupils and with no attempt to override the opinions of his pupils except by fair argument. Head masters and mistresses should also be able to count upon a certain number of periods in which they can give a pupil what they think he needs most at the moment without thought of a future test or further objective. Unless the timetable can be lightened, neither of these real necessities in the training of the boy or girl can be satisfied.

44. Finally we realise that our recommendations necessarily involve some reform of the School Certificate examination, since it is inevitable that the syllabuses in the different subjects for that examination should be generally followed in the schools from which pupils sit for it. This is too large a question for the present chapter, and we content ourselves here with one quotation from the Circular which laid down the principles and purposes of the School Certificate examinations: 'It is a cardinal principle that the examination should follow the curriculum and not determine it.' With this we are in absolute agreement.

45. All that we have said above about the curriculum of the grammar school applies also to the country grammar school. If we devote a separate section to these schools it is not because we regard them as a separate type of school, but because they have their own difficulties and also their own opportunities, and it is convenient to deal with these separately. The country grammar school has to serve many purposes which may be served in large towns by a range of secondary schools with a variety of curricula. The capacity of the school to do this is frequently limited by its size and the difficulty of offering to its pupils a wide choice of optional subjects; and it is often an arduous task for both teacher and pupil to pursue special courses of study to a high level. At the same time, the setting of the school affords valuable compensations: the resources of the countryside are at the disposal of the teacher, and provide a wealth of phenomena which should enable him in an exceptional degree to impart a live colouring and a realistic quality to his teaching. There is yet another quality which his teaching may possess. The student of nature is not faced by whole truths; if he unsuspectingly accepts every ascertained fact as a whole truth, he will be ill-fitted to deal with the problems which nature presents. This point, in its application to school practice, was stressed by several witnesses, notably by Sir John Russell, Director of the Rothamsted Experimental Station. 'Numerous examples', he wrote, 'are given in my lessons on soil, in which I set out the experiments designed in consultation with the scholars in the village school at Wye. The observations were made in the field; the current explanation was recorded, but it was often seen to be inadequate or in conflict with some other explanation offered elsewhere; an experiment was therefore designed to test the matter.' Country schools thus enjoy unrivalled opportunities of framing syllabuses which have a high practical value derived from their close affinity to the world outside the school, and which at the same time should develop in the pupil an inquiring and critical mind and the power of independent judgement.

Nevertheless, our evidence shows that the desirability of planning their syllabuses and of determining their methods of teaching with relation to the environment of their schools is not universally accepted by country schoolmasters, apparently for fear of becoming too vocational in their outlook. This has made the National Farmers' Union 'feel that the present curriculum tends too much to emphasise the abstract and academic type of study'. The head master of a country grammar school was quoted as holding the view that 'in rural areas the bias in secondary (i.e. grammar) schools should be on the cultural side if anywhere'. 'Country boys', he said, 'need special attention to language training and literary studies, including the language, literature and culture of at least one great country other than their own. I believe also in the value of the study of Latin for boys living in a rural area. ... I strongly advocate a cultural bias in rural schools; there would, I think, be something to be said in favour of giving a rural bias to urban schools, if practicable.' Even such a policy as this, if it were not pursued too ardently, might not exclude other more practical interests; but it implies a narrower interpretation of the term 'culture' than we have implied above, and it represents in an extreme form the flight from vocationalism. Few, perhaps, would share this opinion as to the special needs of country boys and girls, and the opportunities of country grammar schools. On the other hand, the great majority of those best qualified to judge agree in holding that a country grammar school which takes full advantage of its setting provides a form of schooling which is equally valuable for the pupils who will find their careers in the towns; the whole of their education will have been made the more vivid and effective through their familiarity with the phenomena of the countryside, and through the illustrations which it has been possible to draw from this source. This we confidently believe, and indeed it has been largely recognised throughout western Europe, where the education of boys and girls in town and country alike commonly includes the study of plant and animal life.

We hardly need to stress the value which such a treatment of school subjects as we have indicated will have in increasing the practical wisdom of the worker on the land, and in preparing pupils for other careers which have a background of agricultural interests. The number of those pupils who go on to the land from any particular school may be small; the number of those who will follow occupations mainly concerned with agriculture is much larger. Colonel Le Breton instanced a small country grammar school in which out of 140 leavers, although only 24 had gone on to the land, at least 60 more would in their future careers be mainly or largely interested in agriculture. The degree of their connection with agriculture varied from the close affinity of estate agency to the occasional business done by engineering firms; but in all the occupations he enumerated, such as bankers, solicitors, auctioneers, accountants, rating clerks, grocers and butchers, a more or less intimate knowledge of agriculture was needed.

46. Some 40 grammar schools were recognised by the Board of Education, in their pamphlets on Rural Education (1926) and Education and the Countryside (1934), as 'making a conscious effort definitely to relate their curriculum to their rural environment' (38); and they appear to fall roughly into two groups, according to the extent to which this has been attempted. This distinction corresponds to that drawn by some of our witnesses between schools which have imparted a 'rural colour' to a curriculum of the traditional type and those which have developed an 'agricultural bias'. Thus, the National Farmers' Union said that what they had primarily in view was that an opportunity should be given to all pupils 'to gain a working knowledge of the scientific principles which are the basis of a true application to the life and problems of the countryside'. At the same time, they added that they viewed with approval 'the institution of separate agricultural forms in the larger well-staffed grammar schools in counties where agricultural pursuits are predominant, and where the grouping of pupils for specialised training is practicable'; and they welcomed proposals for further development in this direction, though such proposals, in their view, should not in any way conflict with 'a revision of curricula capable of general application'.

This revision of curricula should in our opinion begin about the age of 13½ or 14. We have already recommended (in Section 40 of this chapter) that all secondary schools should follow a similar curriculum for the first two years of their course, and we are not disposed to make any exception in the case of the country grammar school in the framework of the curriculum for these years, although we hope that full advantage of the opportunities offered by the setting of the school will be taken in the illustration of all subjects. What may be said in general regarding curriculum after the second year of the course is applicable to both groups of school as described in the preceding paragraph. In the third year the difference will be mainly one of emphasis, and may affect the periods allocated to the various subjects in the school timetable rather than the treatment of these subjects. In the three or four country grammar schools which already provide more than a 'rural colour' in their syllabuses, the divergence begins in the higher forms at about the age of 15, with a course of more specific agricultural training, for which specialist instructors, a school farm, and more extensive equipment become necessary, together with modifications of the timetable involving a longer school day and remission of homework. At a later stage we refer, as an alternative to technical high schools of an agricultural type, to the possibility of developing on a regional basis more grammar schools of this type, having the special characteristics described by the Board of Education in the two pamphlets we have mentioned. (39) In what immediately follows we refer in general terms to the curriculum with a 'rural colour' which we consider to be desirable in a greater or less degree for all grammar schools in country districts, and which will be more fully developed in its technical aspects by schools with an 'agricultural bias'. In regard to both types of school we desire merely to suggest a few leading principles, not to prescribe syllabuses or teaching methods.

Among the features which should be specially prominent in the curriculum of a country grammar school, the director of the Rothamsted Experimental Station mentioned the local survey and the school garden. There are two types of survey: the general survey of the surrounding region and the intensive survey of a small area. A general survey should form the basis of much of the teaching in geography and history. He said that such a survey should enable the teacher to present geography as 'the mark left on the face of the earth by nature and by man'; the pupils should be taught to observe and to record accurately, using the 6 inch [15cm] map, of which tracings could be made for working purposes. From the survey material the teacher would also draw concrete examples to illustrate general laws and movements, and to show the development from the older country life and systems of agriculture to the present time: historical data could be obtained from old estate and tithe maps: the church and manor house would offer data of local interest for entry on the historical chart.

In connection with the school garden, Sir John Russell called attention to the extensive service for agricultural research which was now in operation, and sug