Abstract
WE are glad to see that attention is being again directed to problems of the relation between education and national welfare. In his address as president of the Association of Technical Institutions, last year, Sir Norman Lockyer referred to the -deplorable national wastage that goes on after children leave the primary school, and pointed out that by permitting the half-time system the State is a consenting party to a cause of mental and physical weakness. This, as he remarked, is not a question of party politics-it is simply a question as to whether the nation is content to see the standard of height and the standard of weight of many children being reduced in order that employment of half-timers should be continued. As to the school-leaving age and the need for further education in continuation schools, Sir Norman Lockyer urged that something should be done to show that the real interests of the employers lie in the fact that if the children can be taught how to learn for a little longer time, all those in their employ, at whatever age, will be more useful to them. It was suggested that the Government should bobrought into operation in the same way-the same very definite and perhaps rather drastic way-as has been done in Germany. In Germany, as Prof. Sadler shows in the valuable work on “Continuation Schools” edited by him, employers of labour are obliged to grant to all their employees under eighteen years of age attending continuation schools arranged by the Government or the local authority, the necessary time for school attendance as prescribed by the authority in question. Attendances at continuation schools can be made compulsory for male persons under eighteen years of age by the bye-law of a district or town council; Only in five States, repre senting about one-forty-sixth of the population of the German Empire, is attendance at continuation schools wholly voluntary.
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Education and Employment . Nature 79, 491–493 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/079491c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/079491c0