The War and Education
It is often said that the last war brought education forward in this country, whereas the present war has set it back. Both proposi- tions are true, and the second seems likely to remain so, despite the fact that in Mr. R. A. Butler we have for the first time for many years a President of really high calibre at the Board of Education. In the early years from 1939 onward the school system of the country was dislocated at both ends—at the day school end by the evacuation from the larger towns (which left a large proportion of the children behind with no schools to educate them) and at the boarding school end by the Government's requisitioning of buildings. The former, though its past effects must for great masses of ex- children be beyond remedy, has now been increasingly dealt with through the reflux (otherwise undesirable) of the evacuees. The latter still goes on intermittently, and the single greatest outrage by way of requisitioning is quite a recent one. Mr. Butler in speaking on the Education Vote had to say as little as he could on these topics, and dwell rather on the tasks of organisation and curriculum, which can be planned now, even if their execution in most cases awaits the end of the war. Some of them, e.g., those which involve replacing bad old school buildings by good new ones, will not be easy to carry out in the immediate post-war years, when air-raid destruction and war-time housing arrears may for long have first claim on our building resources. Yet .it is satisfactory to have the need for them so frankly placed in the foreground.
