Page:An address on compulsory education.djvu/14

10 many have now—simply their carnal senses as a means of enjoyment, but their mental faculties would be developed, and the vast storehouses of knowledge to which only educated persons have access, would be open to all. Then I believe we should see less vice, less drunkenness, and less poverty. Men would become better parents and better citizens. Besides this, the advancement of science and its application to almost all kinds of labour demands from a man in these days not merely strength, but skill. In the use of our military weapons and in the modern modes of warfare, we require not only animal courage and dogged perseverance, but the cultivated intelligence of educated men. We have seen this wonderfully exemplified in the educated soldiers of victorious Germany. But are our recruits, many of whom are "the dregs of society," educated men? Let us have compulsory education, and then I think greater influence and greater prosperity will eventually accrue to our country.

We, as teachers, know too well, and more especially those who have schools in agricultural districts, that the greatest obstacle to our successful teaching is the irregularity of the attendance of the children. How different would be the aspect of our schools, and how much more could we teach, if this difficulty were surmounted. Let theoretical educationists aver that physical science and other cognate subjects should be taught in our elementary schools, and let cynical writers assert that our schools are below the standard imagined in their impractical mind; but as long as the normal average of attendance remains at two-thirds of the number on the books, and as long as the majority of our children are allowed to leave school before they are eleven years old, the educational standard must be low, and the curriculum of instruction must be mainly confined to the essential R's.

Therefore, in conclusion, I would say to all teachers who wish to magnify their office, and to all those who earnestly desire the education of the poor as a means to enhance the reputation and prosperity of our noble empire, endeavour to obtain a universal system of compulsory education.