e
individual, and its cost is too great in many cases to be wholly borne
by each individual parent. But this provision, organisation, and control
of the means of higher education by the State does not necessarily
imply that it should be free--that the whole burden should be laid on
the shoulders of the general taxpayer. Yet unless means are provided by
which the poor but clever boy can realise himself, then there is so much
loss to the community.

In the third place, the organisation of all forms of education and the
more extended provision of higher and especially of technical training
is necessary, if for no other reason than as a means of economic
protection and economic security.

Lastly, the better organisation of our educational agencies is necessary
as a means of securing a democracy capable of understanding the meaning
of moral and civic freedom and of using this rightly.

But while the concrete nature of the ends to which our educational
efforts are directed may vary in accordance with the needs of a changing
and progressive civilisation, nevertheless the general nature of the
ends sought to be attained by the education of the children of a nation
is permanent and unchangeable. That is, we have to recognise a universal
as well as a particular element in our educational ideals. Now, the
universal aim of all education is, or rather should be, to correlate the
child with the civilisation of his time; to lead him to acquire those
experiences which will in after-life enable him to perform ably and
rightly his duties as a worker, as a citizen, and as a member of an
ethical and spiritual community organised for the securing of the
well-being of the individual. And the higher the civilisation, the more
difficult, the more complex, and the more lengthened must be this
process of acquiring experiences necessary to fit the individual to his
environment. Hence, whatever the particular nature of the environment
may be, the aim of education must be the fitting of the individual to
his natural and social environments. Hence also any organisation of the
means of education must have as its threefold object the securing of the
physical efficiency, of the economic efficiency, and the ethical
efficiency of the rising generation. In short, as Mr. Bagley[7] puts
it, the securing of the social efficiency of the individual must be the
ultimate aim of all education. To be socially efficient implies that as
the result of the process