Barred Till 16
The Minister of Education made no very strong case, in the course of the adjournment debate last week, for his Circular i68, forbidding boys (or girls) to take the new General Certificate of Education examination till they have reached the age. of sixteen. The case against the circular is threefold—that whereas the aim of education should be to develop a child's individuality this prohibition will inevitably tend to check the development of his intellectual capacity (the circular has not been called for nothing " the slacker's charter "); that it interposes the will of the State both between parent and child and between schoolmaster and pupil ; that it assumes, contrary to all experience, that a boy's or girl's attainments bear a close relation to physical age. One boy at sixteen may have the mentality usual in a boy of fourteen, another that usual in a boy of eighteen. It is futile for either parent or schoolmaster to study a child's individual characteristics and abilities and treat him accordingly if the Ministry of Education, whose officials know far less of practical education than schoolmasters, is to legislate for all children by one sweeping rule.
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