The discussion on the New Education Code which preceded Mr.
Mandella's statement on Monday night, was a very mis- cellaneous and vagrant one. Sir John Lubbock was, as usual, opposed to the limitation which prevents School Boards from presenting children for examination in more than two of the extra subjects, of which English must be one ; he wished to permit these Boards to send children for examination in any of the extra subjects in which they might think it their interest to present them. But here we think Sir John Lubbock wrong. There is great danger, in so new and so gigantic a school system as ours, of enlarging too much the area both of instruction and of examination, with the effect of making both the one and the other very miscellaneous, superficial, and inadequate. Nor does the con- tention that the School Boards will understand best their own in- terest, even if it were true, cover the whole ground. More and more, under the new conditions, must depend on the Inspectors ; and in order to make inspection efficient, you must not widen needlessly and dangerously the surface over which it is to extend. Some fear was expressed that the new Standard VII. would prove an inducement to the middle-classes to send their children to elementary schools. We fear that this is not very probable,—the English caste feeling being too narrow and too
intense. But if it did often happen, we are sure that the middle-class would not absorb nearly as mach of the grants intended for the working-class, BA they would give back in the equivalent of a better understanding between class and class.
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