and social qualities required by a State such as ours, which is becoming
increasingly democratic in character. Further, we are learning, partly
through experience, partly from the example of other countries, that the
period during which our children must be under the regulated control of
the school and of society must be lengthened, if we are to realise the
final aim of all education, which is to enable the individual on the
intellectual side to apply the knowledge gained to the furtherance and
extension of the various purposes of life, and on the moral side to
enable him to use his freedom rightly.

Lastly, as a nation, we are beginning to discover that without the
better technical training of our workmen, and especially of those to
whom in after-life will be entrusted the control and direction of our
industries and commerce, we are likely to fall behind the other advanced
nations in the race for economic supremacy.

But, in addition to these negative forces at work, tending to produce
dissatisfaction with our educational position, the opinion is growing
stronger and clearer that the education, physical, intellectual, and
moral, of the children of the nation is a matter of supreme importance
for the future well-being and the future supremacy of the nation, and
that it is the duty of the State to see that the opportunity is
furnished to each individual to realise to the full all the
potentialities of his nature which make for good, so that he may be
enabled to render that service to the community for which by nature he
is best fitted. Compulsory elementary education is but one stage in the
process. We must, as a nation, at least see that no insuperable
obstacles are placed in the path of those who have the requisite ability
and desire to advance farther in the development of their powers.
Moreover, if need be, we must, in the words of Rousseau, compel those
who from various causes are unwilling to realise themselves, to attain
their full freedom.

This demand for the better and fuller education of the children of the
nation is motived partly by the growing conviction that the freedom,
political, civil, and religious, which we as a nation enjoy, can only be
maintained, furthered, and strengthened in so far as we have educated
our children rightly to understand and rightly to use this freedom to
which they are heirs. Democracy, as a form of government and as a power
for good, is only possible when the mass of the peop