A COUNTESS ON SCHOOL REFORM

Evening Star, Issue 14512, 2 November 1910, Page 8

A COUNTESS ON SCHOOL REFORM

The Countess of Warwick was one of the speakers before the great Trades Congress at Sheffield last month- In the course of an eloquent address she said that the people were excluded from the older universities to-day, very largely because their primary education was not planned so as to effect their real emancipation. There was something lacking to-day to the worker’s chilli —somthing whidh neither home nor school supplied. There was an agency which would supplement the home, and would offer the advantages of healthy life to the child of th© poorest. This new agency was the school clinic. The clinic would supplement the home, and also give to the primary education of to-day all that could make it worthy to be the beginning of real secondary and higher education. Let them look at Oxford to-day, and taka the objections of these who did not desire to admit the poor. They said the standard of life differed so much between the upper class and the workers that the former could not adapt themselves to a way of living that would make it possible for the workers to share their life.—(“ Shame.”) “Don’t send your elementary children to us,” they cried; “ they lower the standard of our schools; they have no esprit do corps; they are not trained in the same way as regards personal habits. Their very way of speaking is different. We will not mix the classes.” They had listened to this, and resented it. But it was not enough to resent it. Was there any truth in these charges? If there was, it would not mend matters by calling the head masters of secondary schools a race of snobs. They must get a remedy and must have clinics, where the nurse, teacher, and doctor should jointly take care of the child. The children of Die workers must be taught how to live. Her proposal was far more radical than “mixing the classes.” She wanted to equalise the opportunities of all children.—(Cheers.)