of success in this direction. The ideas which
have arisen from the advocacy of the Montessori system have induced
methods of greater freedom in connection with many aspects of
elementary school life. The Caldecott Community, dealing with
working-class children in the neighbourhood of St. Pancras, has tried
many interesting experiments. That, however, of the introduction of
children's courts of justice had to be abandoned, but not until many
valuable lessons in child psychology had been learnt.

Side by side with the elementary school, there are rising in England
experiments similar to those undertaken by such organisations as the
School City and the George Junior Republics of America. The most
notable among them is the Little Commonwealth, Dorchester, which has
achieved astonishing results through the process of taking delinquent
children and allowing them self-government. But, hopeful as the
prospects are, their ultimate effect will be best estimated when their
pupils, restored in youth to the honourable service of the community,
are taking their full share in life as adult citizens, and naturally
every care is taken in the organisation of these institutions to
ensure that the transition from their sheltered citizenship to the
outside world shall not be of so abrupt a nature as to tend to render
unreal and remote the life in which the children have taken part.

Nearly all of the more recent experiments in regard to the school and
its kindred institutions are co-operative in principle and in method,
but it is probably Utopian to conceive an educational method which
shall achieve the highest success without having included within it
the element of competition. If competition is a method obtaining
outside the school it is bound to reproduce itself within it. The only
possible thing for the school to do is to restrict the influence of
competition to the channels where it can be beneficial.

The method by which elementary school children pass to the secondary
school is by means of competitive scholarships. In common with the
Consultative Committee of the Board of Education it is necessary to
accept the fact that at present "the scholarship system is too firmly
rooted in the manner, habits and character of this country to be
dislodged, even if it were thrice condemned by theory[2]." But, in the
interests of citizenship, scholarships should be awarded as the result
of non-competitive tests, if only to secure that every chil