larger Group, and taught in close association therewith.

Without attempting to draft a Time Table in detail, the following may be offered as a fair division of a school-day during this period. Supposing that six "hours" of forty to forty-five minutes are at the teacher's disposal, one each day should be given to the Humanities (History, Literature, or Geography), one to Language (the native and the foreign tongue), one to Natural Science, including gardening or other out-of-door pursuits, one to Number and Geometry, one to the Arts of Representation and Production, and one to Recreation and Music. If the Home Lessons are extended beyond half-an-hour, the extra lesson should be of a very light nature, such as drawing.

§ 9. Summary.-In taking a review of achievement during this school period, the teacher will again find that the pupil has made a definite stride, not only in acquiring useful habits (such as using books of reference) and tastes (for good literature, good pictures), and in knowledge (early history, elementary science, etc.), but in arriving at a new mental stage. He is fully habituated to the regular forms of school study and of school life. Every period, when passed by him with genuine success, enables him to enter on the next with greater prospect of achievement. "To him that hath shall be

given."

During this period of school life we have reached the limits within which general education is given to all children alike, whatever their antecedents or whatever may be designed as to their future (see Chap. IV, § 5). Up to this point many children are taught together, some of whom will leave school in a year or two, others will remain till fourteen,

fifteen, or sixteen, or even till eighteen or nineteen at some school or other. But we shall be compelled in the succeeding chapters to treat separately of the three types of schools differentiated in Chap. IV, and we shall take them in the order of the Table on p. 114, dealing firstly with the special needs of children who conclude school life before they are fourteen years of age: to these classes we have given the name "Special Primary Stage,' -they constitute the highest classes or years of the Primary School of England or the Continent, and are parallel to the "Grammar School" of the United States.

CHAPTER IX

THE LAST YEARS OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL

The benefit to the country and to the individual is infinitesimally small, if the boy is unable or unwilling to be and to do in the larger sphere what he was and did in the smaller.-COTTERILL, Suggested Reforms in Public Schools,

p. 106.

Quite as pressing, according to the evidence which we have received, is the need in country districts of giving a more practical direction to the school education.-"Report of Inter-Departmental Committee on the Employment of School Children" (Home Office: Parliamentary Paper, 1901).

§ 1. WE have described this Special Primary Stage as consisting of a two years' Course, for boys and girls of the average ages of twelve to fourteen,1 parallel to the Sixth and Seventh Standards of Codes issued by the Board of Education. Now it is clear that, if a curriculum be devised to suit the needs of this particular group of children, the classes ought to consist of these children and of no other. That is to say, the complete scheme of differentiation should be adopted whereby children after the Fifth Standard, who intend to remain at school beyond thirteen, are always drafted either to a Higher Elementary or to a Secondary School, leaving the

1 Many will, of course, be older, for it is usually the more intelligent (and therefore younger) children who have been drafted into the Higher Elementary or Secondary Schools.

teacher of those who are left behind with only one type of pupil, viz. boys and girls who will remain with them at the outside for only two years more.

But such a complete plan of differentiation can only be carried out in towns, for it is only in towns that a Higher Elementary School can be established with an adequate number of pupils; the village school must continue, now as always, to supply a variety of needs. And even in towns, it will take many, many years before all parties concerned— parents, teachers, authorities-understand the problem so well as to get the maximum of benefit from the three types of school.

Nevertheless, the advantages are so manifest that we are well justified in devoting a few pages to this particular type of curriculum, especially when it is borne in mind that in point of numbers the pupils. will greatly exceed the total of all who proceed to Higher Elementary or Secondary Schools.

These pupils are still boys and girls, with all the marks of youth upon them: but they are already alive to the economic demands of their future career. Their wits are sharpened by necessity: at home they have had to help in domestic toil, and sometimes they have already learnt to turn an honest penny by work before or after the hours of school.1 Thus, as distinguished from pupils of the same age in other schools, they are practical and "knowing," independent, and often assertive: ready very often to learn all that school can offer them, but quite as often turning an eager look towards the life of labour which awaits them.

They are waiting, then, to be equipped for life; and yet it is difficult at first sight to decide what equipment can be furnished, for the pathos of their

1 Vide Home Office Report quoted above.

P

situation lies precisely here: that they are about to join the ranks of unskilled labour, as labour apprentices, errand boys, domestic servants, and the likeservice which, at its commencement, requires no technical equipment whatever. This is, indeed, one reason why the curriculum of Standards VI. and VII. is still treated by Government as a part of general education, simply serving as a continuance of Standard V. These pupils, it is said, need no special equipment, for their future calling in life makes no such demand upon them: hence the best curriculum is one which is purely liberal, and which offers them the highest and the best during the short year or two which remains.

But, as we have seen again and again, no scheme of liberal education is complete if it fails to take account of the nature of the pupil; and a boy or girl, standing already half-way on the threshold of life," cannot take the same interest in academic pursuits as is expected of those who are to abide cloistered within the school for several years.

66

We propose, therefore, a curriculum which is essentially "liberal" in character, and both ethical and intellectual in its aim, but which is calculated to attract the special regard of those who follow it, because of its outlook on their immediate future.

§ 2. The Humanities.-The underlying thought governing the curriculum will be-the world we live in and the Humanities will be selected from the History of Queen Victoria's reign. The story is read in the best literature and poetry, and, arising out of the main theme, there are two branches, one affecting the pupil as a coming citizen, the other affecting him as a bread-winner. On the one side, he learns the elements of politics, local and Imperial : he visits the Town Hall, the Courts of Justice,