A PLAN FOR EDUCATION
Sra,—Granting tnat the Public Schools of this country are guardians of a great tradition and their products men of a high order of character and intelligence, and that the failings once attributed to them of snobbery, bullying, restricted curriculum and poor equipment are by- gones which should be allowed to be bygones, is it not still true that many intelligent parents have chosen the State-aided day schools for their boys preference to the more famous foundations? And why? In the lase forty years has it not been generally the schools under local authorities that have been the pioneers in adopting methods of teaching and discipline and a standard of equipment suitable to the times?
Free secondary education, a system of interchange of teachers with those from abroad, special methods and schools for backward children, some attempt, by the ladder, to make La Corriere ouverte aux talents, the trying out of the Dalton plan, the Cambridgeshire village experi- ment, and finally, equal educational opportunities for girls as for boys, are only some of the things which have been tried, not =fruitfully, under the aegis of the State
It is accepted that in the teaching of modern languages, of science and in physical culture the Public Schools were forced, in the interests of self-preservation. to emulate the Secondary Schools. The associated Public Schools have not produced, or at least not made public, any formulated policies comparable to the Hadow and the Spens Reports. Both systems are inadequate to the needs of today and the sponsors of the State system planning for the national education of the future, would no doubt welcome the co-operation, long overdue, of the Public Schools. It is a little difficult to know on what grounds they should now accept their proffered leadership, or to see any reason for their wearing white shirts in the presence.—Yours faithfully,
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