Labour and Higher Education There is much in the Labour
Party's education pro- gramme which is excellent, including the raising of the school age, the improvement of school buildings, the reduction of the size of classes, and other reforms that the Labour Party when in office did little to carry nut. But its ambitious spokesman at the Southport Conference went much further. He was bent on including the Education Minister in the circle of dictators. The Minister of Education, according to Sir Charles Trevelyan, should not only fill a more important role than the Minister of War, but exercise his functions, it appears, in the same commanding manner. He should have under his control all the Universities and public schools, and so, apparently, sweep away at one stroke the self-govern- ing bodies which at present, for better or worse, control these institutions. And that he really wishes this Minis- terial control to be complete, and to assert itself even in the direction of courses of study, was made clear by his proposal to eliminate all teaching" calculated to encourage militarism or Imperialist ideas." Who is to determine what teaching is calculated to have these pernicious effects ? Of course, the Socialist Minister of Education. Our Universities, firmly regimented, are to be turned into schools preaching the pure doctrine of Socialism. Herr Hitler is finding strange imitators.
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