Sir Henry Craik's Report on Secondary Education in Scotland, issued
as a Blue-book, has many interesting features. While reporting favourably as to the results of the annual inspection, and stating that the progress made in recent years is on the whole very satisfactory, Sir Henry Craik notes as one of the most serious difficulties in secondary education in Scotland the premature withdrawal of pupils. There is, he notes, a growing dissatisfaction in Scotland at the imperfect education of youths entering a mercantile career, but he contends that the educational machinery of the country can never have a fair chance until merchants in a body set their faces against the practice of putting boys into business at thirteen or fourteen, and until, in selecting apprentices, they give preference and reasonable encourage- ment to those who can produce evidence of having profited by their school training,—a contention which forestalled one of the points in Sir Norman Lockyer's address. But the most serious feature revealed by the inspectors is the steady growth of over-pressure in the upper classes of many of the secondary schools, boys and girls often spending five or six hours nightly on home lessons. The ultimate cause lies in the effort to attain a very high degree of efficiency in too wide a range of subjects. Non multa sed malturn is evi- dently a maxim needed in regulating the curriculum of such secondary schools.
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