deal with them so fully and clearly, being the work of skilled and
vigorous thinkers, that it would be idle for me to enter in a short
introduction upon those topics which they have discussed with special
knowledge far greater than I possess. All I shall attempt is to
present a few scattered observations on the general problems of
education as they stand to-day.

The largest of those problems, viz., how to provide elementary
instruction for the whole population, is far less urgent now than it
was fifty years ago. The Act of 1870, followed by the Act which made
school-attendance compulsory, has done its work. What is wanted now
is Quality rather than Quantity. Quantity is doubtless needed in one
respect. Children ought to stay longer at school and ought to have
more encouragement to continue education after they leave the
elementary school. But it is chiefly an improvement in the teaching
that is wanted, and that of course means the securing of higher
competence in the teacher by raising the remuneration and the status
of the teaching profession[1].

The next problem is how to find the finest minds among the children of
the country and bring them by adequate training to the highest
efficiency. The sifting out of these best minds is a matter of
educational organisation and machinery; and the process will become
the easier when the elementary teachers, who ought to bear a part in
selecting those who are most fitted to be sent on to secondary
schools, have themselves become better qualified for the task of
discrimination. The question how to train these best minds when sifted
out would lead me into the tangled controversy as to the respective
educational values of various subjects of instruction, a topic which I
must not deal with here. What I do wish to dwell upon is the supreme