es of
knowledge, but with little or no training for the moral and civic
responsibilities of life. This is evident, it is urged, if we consider
how little the school does to counteract and to supplant the evil
influences of a bad home or social environment. What truth there may be
in these charges and what must be done to remedy this state of matters
will be discussed when we consider later the existing Elementary School
system. Here it is sufficient to point out that one of the causes at
work to-day tending to arouse a renewed interest in educational problems
is the feeling now beginning to find expression that the kind of
universal elementary education provided somehow or other fails, and has
failed, to produce all that was in the beginning expected of it--that it
has in the past been too much divorced from the real interests of life,
and that it must be remodelled if it is to fit the individual to perform
his duty to society.

A third fault often found with our existing school system is that in the
case of the majority of the children the process of education stops at
too early an age. The belief is slowly spreading that if we are to
educate thoroughly the children of the nation so as to fit them to
perform efficiently the after duties of life, something of a more
systematic character than has as yet been done is required, in order to
carry on and to extend the education of the child after the Elementary
school stage has been passed. For it is evident that during the Primary
School period all that can be expected in the case of the larger number
of children is that the school should lay a sound basis in the knowledge
of the elementary arts necessary for all social intercourse, and for the
realisation of the simpler needs of life. A beginning may be made,
during this period, in the formation and establishment of systems of
knowledge which have for their aim the realisation of the more complex
theoretical and practical interests of after life, but unless these are
furthered and extended in the years in which the boy is passing from
youth to manhood, then as a consequence much of what has been acquired
during the early period fails to be of use either to the individual or
to society.

Again, it is surely unwise to give no heed to the systematic education
of the majority of the children during the years when they are most
susceptible to moral and social influences, and to leave the moral and
social education of the yout