Professor Jebb made an interesting speech on Tuesday at a
"higher-grade school," which has been erected by the Wolver- hampton School Board, in which he explained that he regarded higher grade schools as a kind of cross between a proper secondary school (of which the object is to train the mind rather than to impart useful knowledge) and the technical school, of which the object is to impart knowledge useful for the arts. He thought that the cleverer children of the primary schools might come up to the higher-grade schools without having distinctly made up their minds whether they were going to fit themselves for practical work in the arts, or whether they were going to obtain for themselves a liberal education. If they found themselves more and more drawn towards the technical classes, they could of course pursue the line of fitting ihemselves for skilled labour. But if they were more drawn towards the classes which endeavour to train the mind than to those which impart practical skill, then they ought to be able to pass an examination (not competitive) which would gain them a scholarship in a proper secondary school. He regarded the higher-grade schools, in short, as the watershed between training for the arts and training for the purposes of pure culture.
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