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Ontario Educational Association Conference, Toronto 29th March, 1937.

I am very glad to have the chance of addressing an audience which I consider to be composed of my colleagues. All my life I have had to do with educational questions. For a quarter of a century I was partner in a publishing house, whose work lay very largely in educational literature, and for eight years I represented the Scottish Universities in Parliament. Also as a Scotsman I hope I may claim a traditional interest in the subject, for ever since the days of John Knox Scotland has set before itself a high educational ideal, and to a large extent has realised it. I like the story of the visitor from the south who, looking over a wide expanse of bleak moor and Gag, turned to a Highland shepherd beside him and said , "In God's name, what does this country produce?". The sheperd solernnly removed his cap and said, "Sir, in God's name it produces educated men."

I welcome the chance of meeting you today, for all who are concerned in this great task should stand shoulder to shoulder. The difficulties of the teacher's profession do not decrease as time goes on. The Greeks had a proverb, "Whom the gods hate they make schoolmasters"! and I daresay that some of you at times, in your work, have suspected this divine malevolence. Your business is with the things of the mind and the character. In a world desperately busied with making a livelihood these things are not always held at their proper value. The philistine regards with suspicion the seeker after truth, and the materialist looks askance at the idealist. The wares that we of fer in the market place are apt by

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the crowd to be disregarded, or to be priced too low. The mind of the ordinary man is understood to be in a groove, with the result that there is no lateral extension, and it cannot look beyond its narrow interests. (You remember the story of the Mayor of the famous American city, etc.) Moreover in that groove it has no prospect ahead. I have heard more than one business man declare that single point he had to consider in his work was profit, profitabability. Well, if you define profitability wisely and generously that way aa very good sloga. But the man who, in his business, considers only what is called in the terrible American phrase, "experiential cash value", is no better than a fool, and he is moving fast towards that failure which he will richly deserve.

You have another difficulty to face. National education must be highly organised, and there is always a risk that, when you create an elaborate mechanism, the machinery tends to be cherished for itself so its ultimate purpose is forgotten. System you must have, but in any great service system may come to be regarded as an end in itself, and worshipped for its own sake. All of us, you and I, are apt at times to play with counters rather than with realities. We seize upon some detail, some specific reform, shall I say? and because it fits readily into our scheme we give it an importance that it does not deserve. I remember that the famous Cambridge classical scholar and poet, the late A. E . Housman, once criticised an Oxford colleague for his use of texts, with that acerbity which unhappily appears in classical scholarship, especially when the disputants belong to different universities. "Mr. so-and-so," he said, "uses texts much as a drunk man

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I confess I find it a little difficult to know what to say to you today. There is no subject on which it is more easy to talk loosely and platitudinously than education. In the British House of Commons a few years ago, having had to make many speeches on the topic, I felt impelled to say that, having said all the things about education that I knew to be true, and a good many things that I knew to be untrue, I proposed in the future to hold my tongue. I cannot talk to you today about Canadian problems, for I am still in the position of a learner. I hope I may have something useful to say about them before I finish my term of office here, but that time is not yet. I thought of speaking to you about the teaching of history, for that is a matter which lies very near my heart. I believe that some understanding of the past is necessary before we can understand the present or forecast the future. If I may adopt a metaphor, which any fishermen here will understand, in throwing a fly the merits of a forward cast depend upon the merits of the back cast. I should like also to talk to you about the teaching of English. It has always seemed to me that the first thing education must do for any child is to teach him to express his thoughts clearly and accurately in his own language - a gift just as important for the business man as for the politician and the writer. But these are large topics and would take up more time than you can give me. So today I would only offer you a few general reflections which I am afraid will be of little value, for I am sure that you will all have thought of them for yourselves.

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uses lamp-posts, not for the purpose of illumination, but to correct his instability." That is a comment, I think, that we might all take to heart.

I confess I find it a little difficult to know what to say to you today. There is no subject on which it is more easy to talk loosely and platitudinously than education. I remember that In the House of Commons a few years ago, having had to make many speeches on the topic, I felt impelled to say that, having said many things that I knew to be untrue, I proposed in the future to hold my tongue. I cannot talk to you today about your own Canadian problems, for I am still in the position of a learner. I may have something useful to say about them before I finish my term of office here. So today I would only offer you a few general reflections, which I am afraid will be of little value, for I am sure you will all have thought of them for yourselves.

We shall not differ, I think, about the aim of education. It can never be the mere acquisition of learning. There is an old saying of the two older English Universities that in the one they have read nothing and know everything, and in the other they have read everything and know nothing. I do not know which result is the more disastrous. I think that we often tend to exaggerate grossly the value of knowledge as such. The object in education is to train the mind, not to crowd the memory. It is not to manufacture ammunition wagons, receptacles for storing up material, which by itself is useless. It is to make guns with which to fire off the

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Put broadly, the problem is how to combine humanism with technique. Bv humanism in education I mean the study of man in all his relations, as thinker, as artist, as a social and moral being; and by technique I mean the study of what may be called brute fact. Humanism is primarily a question of values. There is, of course, a great deal of technique in all human studies. Take, for example, the study of the Latin and Greek classics. There, apart from the literary and historical side, you find a great crop of supplementary techniques - palaeography, epigraphy, numismatics, archaeology and so forth. But the primary purpose of humane studies is the understanding of human nature, the broadening of the human interests and the better appreciation of the values of human life. Technique raises none of these questions. It is the mastery of brute fact for a definitely utilitarian purpose. Its concern is with material things and not with those of the spirit.