Public Schools and the Empire
IT canseldom have happened that a policy has been -I- so generally approved and yet has suffered from such a diversity of views on the manner of its application as migration within the Empire.
Many schemes are in being which could be improved by co-ordination, and we dislike the idea of adding to them. Nevertheless, it is to be hoped that better means will soon be found to induce more boys and girls, as they leave our Public Schools and Secondary Schools, to seek their fortunes overseas. But they cannot be expected to do this without encouragement from their parents and their schools and without learning more than is now taught of the Empire and- its possibilities for enterprising and hardworking youth. If England could absorb in businesses-and professions all adolescents there would be no need for the writing of this article, but, as everyone knows, there is sadly little scope here and many promising young lives are being wasted in blind alley occupations or in search of employment. Why don't we do more to encourage our splendid " raw material" for pioneers, the boys who are good at games at school and bored with bookwork, to seek a livelihood and career for theinselves on the vacant and hungry lands of Canada and Australia ? A career overseas should become as much a purpose as any other profession or-calling, and those who choose it should be tested for it during at least their last year at school, when otherwise the only outlet for abounding physical energy will very possibly be overplaying of games. In nearly every school more use might be made of Empire Day and more time should be spent in opening the minds of adolescents by lectures, cinematograph and lantern, to the opportunities for a career to be found within the Empire. For those who volunteer for migration with the consent of their parents instruction might be given —preferably by one who has farmed in the Dominions —in the rudiments of agriculture, dairy work, stock and poultry keeping. The instruction should be out of doors in all weathers and accompanied by early rising.
This training might do little more than test the fitness of the volunteers and their liking for a life of hard work and " roughing it " ; but those whose keenness survived the test would certainly not be of the C3 variety nor the victims of deluded hopes created by specious advertisements.
In their curricula many schools are still hampered either by antiquated schemes, orders of the Board of Education, or prejudice from applying any of their endowments to subjects other than those usually taught. These difficulties can and should be overcome if the Empire is to continue. Now is the time for action. Something is already being done in our Public Schools. At Christ's Hospital, for instance, boys are being trained for farm life in the Dominions, about a 'dozen of them leaving each year, chiefly for New Zealand,- where they are" cordially welcomed and • are doing well..• - In October, 1923, the Clerk of Christ's Hospital wrote a letter to the Spectator urging other schools to follow the Horsham example : this gave rise to a correspondence which had some good effects, but there is certainly a need for ventilating the subject again, because there is no other Public School where boys desirous of emigrating can receive the necessary testing or training. They can, it is true, go to McGill University in Montreal and receive a sound and practical training in agriculture there, but c'est le premier pas qui cafe, and we cannot expect the Dominions to co-operate with us unless we do 'Something on our side. Cecil Rhodes had the wisdom and foresight to introdUce to OXford the flower of Overseas, youth, but he left it to others to show the Dominions of our best. Who will have the honour of doing that service to the Empire ?
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