Unity of control; adequacy of area; schools of various types, sufficient in number, and suited to meet the need for the supply of the various services required by the State; a common basis in elementary education; means of higher education open to all who can profit thereby; selection of the best; restriction of those unable to benefit from higher education—these are the principles which must in the future guide the State organisation of the means of education.
FOOTNOTE:
[23] For a fuller discussion of this question, see Scotch Education Reform, by Dr. Douglas and Professor Jones (Maclehose).
CHAPTER IX
THE AIM OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION
"A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world. He that has these two has little more to wish for, and he that wants either of them will be but little the better for anything else."[24] In these words Locke sets forth for all time what should be aimed at in the physical education of the child, and in the light of modern physiological psychology the position must be emphasised anew that one of the essential conditions of sound intellectual and moral vigour is sound physical health, and that body and mind are not things apart, but that the health of the one ever conditions and is conditioned by the health of the other.
Moreover, at the present time, it is all the more necessary to insist upon the need for the systematic care of the physical culture of the child, since in many cases the conditions under which the children of the poor live in our great towns are most prejudicial to the full and free development of the organs of the body. The narrow, overbuilt streets in the poorer parts of our towns, the overcrowding of the people in tenements, the unhygienic conditions under which the vast majority of our very poor live and sleep, are all active forces in preventing the full and free development of the physical powers of the child. Thus the purely educational problem of how best to promote the physical health and development of the child by the systematic exercises of the school is involved in the much larger and more important social problem of how to better the conditions under which the very poor live. The agencies of the school can do little permanently to improve the physique of the children until, concurrently with the school, society endeavours to improve the social conditions under which the poorest of the population of our great cities herd together. For a similar reason much of the endeavour of the school to found and establish in the child's mind interests of social worth is counteracted by the evil influence of its home and social environment. If the physical, economic, and ethical efficiency of the children of the slums is ever to be secured, if we are ever to attain a permanent result, then concurrently with the creation of new and higher social interests must go hand in hand changes in the social environment of the child. Mere betterment of the physical conditions under which our slum population live is of no avail unless at the same time we have a corresponding change in the slum mind by the rise and prevalence of a higher ideal of the physical and material conditions under which their lives ought to be spent.
For experience has shown in many cases that the mere betterment of the material conditions under which the poor live without any corresponding change of ideals soon results in the re-creation of the miserable conditions which formerly prevailed. On the other hand, the mere instilling of new ideals into the minds of the rising generation will effect little, if during the greater part of the school period and altogether afterwards we leave the child to overcome the evil influences of his environment as best he may. The ideals of the school are too weak, too feebly established, to prevail against the ever present and ever potent influences of the environment unless side by side with the rise of the new ideals we at the same time endeavour to lessen, if we cannot altogether remove, the obstacles which prevent their realisation and prevalence. This problem of how to raise by education and by means of the other social agencies at work the children of the slums to a higher ideal of life and conduct and to secure their future social efficiency is the most urgent problem of our day and generation. Mere school reforms in physical and intellectual education will effect little unless the other aspects of the problem are attacked at the same time.