Extracts from Addresses 373
education is going on at the same wonderful pace that the development
of your university education is going on.
Now, I have been asked to say something about the Fisher bill. The
Fisher bill is very remarkable, I think, as a symptom, because hitherto
the great difficulty in England has been to awaken an interest in educa-
tion. The number of people who really believe in education are rather
limited, and you could arouse interest in almost any question sooner
than interest in education. But the war has made people see the im-
portance of education. It has made people realize the deficiencies in
our own system of education. Hence not only the Fisher bill, but Mr.
Fisher himself, for the first time in our history, has become of public
interest, and for the first time in our history our education has been
entrusted to one who is himself a friend of the teachers and an expert
on the subject. Now, to put the provisions of the bill very briefly, what
they come to is this: the system will not come into full working for a
few years, half a dozen years, because the period after the war will be
a period of considerable difficulty, a great deficiency of teachers, among
other things; but when the system is in full working order, then it will
mean that instead of compulsory education ceasing, as it has heretofore
ceased, at fourteen, or even in some cases at thirteen, compulsory educa-
tion in one form or another will be continued until eighteen years of age.
That is an almost incredible advance.
Now, it is not merely that we have this new education bill, but we
have something that is equally encouraging. We have symptoms on every
side of the interest in education. If you go down to our great industrial
towns in the midland and north of England, places like Manchester,
Leeds, or Liverpool, you will find they are there organizing a most
ambitious scheme of secondary education. They are starting as many,
I am told, as six or even eight secondary schools of a new type in a
single town. The schools will be attended by pupils up to the age of
sixteen years, instead of the existing secondary schools, where they are
supposed to stay until eighteen. They will be a sort of intermediate
schools between the existing elementary schools and existing secondary
schools. They are schools of quite a new type, and they are going cer-
tainly to play a great part in the development of our education. Now,
sir, while all this is very encouraging and shows that on both sides of
the Atlantic there is a great interest in education, we must remember
that this may carry with it certain dangers. I dare say you all remember
the famous saying of Lord Palmerston. Lord Palmerston was Prime
Minister for a long time in England. He was Prime Minister when I
was a child, and few Prime Ministers have had a greater knowledge
of human nature than Lord Palmerston; and Lord Palmerston, on one