It has been urged that in the Bell chairs at Edin burgh and St. Andrews education has been sufficiently recognised in these Universities; and it will now be asked what the result has been? It will not be difficult to show that these chairs, while left to starve by Government, notwithstanding solemn pledges, have not been awarded their due position in the University curriculum, and that any conclusion drawn from their past is therefore no index to their future, when their rightful claims shall have been allowed. Besides, it is well known that the University of St. Andrews is suffering from causes which affect all its chairs; and it would be marvellous if a new chair should not have been specially afflicted. During the present session it is gratifying to learn that a good attendance, all things considered, has been secured. But the energetic movement now being carried out in Dundee points to its new University College as the appropriate sphere to which to transfer the Education Chair at St. Andrews. In his evidence before the Commission Professor Meiklejohn states that while he had but 10 students at St. Andrews, a page 28 course of lectures given by him in Dundee was attended by 87.

But what of Edinburgh? That University illustrates in a most remarkable manner the difficulty which corporations have in adjusting themselves to the times, the tendency to go on in the old way, even when that way is shown to be no longer the best, nay, even when it is positively injurious to the body as a whole. No Scottish University has so much profited by the rapid extension of the Arts and Sciences as Edinburgh. In recent years seven chairs have been added to what in the Calendar is called the Faculty of Arts, representing various branches of modern investigation, thought, or culture. There are now in Edinburgh no less than eighteen chairs in the Faculty of Arts, yet of these only seven qualify by attendance for graduation. Why are the eleven others thus ignored or despised? Because of mediaeval traditions regarding the trivium and quadrivium of the old curricula.¹ Even these traditions are not strictly observed, else the Chair of Music should have been admitted into the magic seven, which number has ever been the perfect one in the Arts' course.² Surely the Executive Commission will teach all the Universities rightly to reflect the scientific and cultured aspect of the new professions, which have been so tardily recognised, or so persistently ignored, and will show Edinburgh how to group her chairs of

• History,
• Astronomy,
• Agriculture,
• Music,
• Philology,
• Engineering,
• Geology,
• Political Economy,
• Education,
• Fine Art,

page 29 and (last, but not least) Celtic, so that they shall no longer appear as mere excresences on the Faculty of Arts, but have their due influence allowed, and their true positions conceded.

The Chair of Education has suffered greatly because attendance on it conferred no academic distinction. Now to teachers, the class for whom the chair is specially designed, academic distinction is of the first moment. From its foundation, therefore, this chair has laboured under a disadvantage relatively greater than that of any of the other unrecognised chairs. Whatever excuse may be found for such treatment in the well-known conservatism of a University, there can be none for a disability to which the chair has been subjected by the Education Department. For some years the Education Department has recognised the attendance of Normal students at certain University classes in Arts and Science. The Department carries forward to the Training College examination in December, the Professor's mark for each student, and exempts the latter from examination in the same subject at Christmas. The Department also defrays a portion of the University fees. Will it be credited that the Department refuses to recognise in this way attendance on the Chair of Education? It was said that the principles of education were taught to these students in the Training Colleges. The reply was—So are Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, &C.¹ The Department then took refuge in the excuse that the Chair of Education was not recognised by the University itself as qualifying for graduation. But the choice of classes is regulated by the Code, under powers conferred by the Education Act of 1872, and not by the University; and the Code is moulded by the Department. Thus the Department has homologated what is either a fail page 30 ing or a fault in the University, and stultifies itself, when so much power is committed to it, by pandering to a relic of mediaeval scholasticism. And thus officialism has done its utmost to deprive of the advantages of this chair those for whom it is specially designed. But notwithstanding these disabilities the Edinburgh Chair of Education has been most successful under the direction of its able occupant. The class has steadily increased in numbers, and is now the largest optional class in the University. The writer has occasionally been privileged to listen to the Professor's lectures, and can testify that no more earnest class can anywhere be found than the 30 or 40 hearers there assembled. Among those who have attended the class are many distinguished teachers, and one of the medallists now occupies a Professor's chair in another University. We shall afterwards show how this success has influenced the English Universities, and caused them to take up a new position with respect to Education.

But first let us again direct attention to the proceedings of the College of Preceptors, a body which has done much for middle-class education in England. Under their auspices the late Mr. Joseph Payne delivered a series of lectures year by year beginning in 1873. Examinations were held and diplomas awarded. Besides examinations in general knowledge and in special selected subjects, candidates were examined in Logic, Mental and Moral Science, Physiology, and the History of Education. Since the death of Mr. Payne lectures have been regularly given by distinguished educationalists, among whom we may name Mr. Fitch, Mr. Quick, Mr. Sully, the Rev. Canon Daniel, Mr. Oscar Browning, Professor Meiklejohn, Mr. James Ward, &C.¹ The diplomas are valued, the training is more valuable still; but the experience of the College of Preceptors, like the early experience of the Educational Institute of Scotland, showed that page 31 a University connection was necessary to enable the diploma to carry weight. The success of the Edinburgh Chair encouraged the College of Preceptors to apply to the University of London, and in January, 1879, the Convocation of that University appointed a committee to inquire—

(1)	Whether it was advisable to institute examinations in the theory and practice of education?
(2)	What was the best form for such examinations to take?

Meanwhile the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge had been observing the movement in Scotland and London. In Oxford the Council took some steps to inaugurate a scheme, but both Oxford and London were soon distanced in the race by the speed of the Cambridge "Teachers Training Syndicate," which arranged for three courses of lectures followed by examinations for diplomas. The first lectures were delivered in 1879 and 1880 by Mr. Quick, Mr. Fitch, and Mr. Ward. The lectures of Mr. Fitch have been page 32 published, and form a most acceptable addition to our educational literature. Among the subsequent lecturers have been Mr. Oscar Browning and the Rev. Canon Daniel. For details, see Appendix F.

A year ago the Education Department, watching the progress of events in London and Cambridge, suddenly informed the Training Colleges that Logic and Psychology would henceforth form the greater portion of the examination of senior students in the paper on School Management. Their programme is "the training of the "senses and of the memory; the processes of reasoning; "the order in which the faculties of children are developed; the formation of habits and of character;—all "considered in their application to the methods of teaching and of moral discipline." The lecturers in Training Colleges are advised by the Department to illustrate educational principles by reference to the works of Pestalozzi, Fröbel, Arnold, etc.; and two of the papers set at Cambridge on the Theory and Practice of Education are reprinted in the English Blue Book for last year, with the intimation that "most of these questions "should not be beyond the reach of the average student "if the subject has been steadily taught throughout his "training." As shown by the questions set in December last¹ the Department interpret their programme as including Logic Deductive and Inductive, Psychology and Ethics as applied in Education—in fact, the scientific principles on which our practice is based, or the philosophy from which we deduce our methods, and estimate their value. A hint is given that even junior students will be expected to prepare some portion of a course in which education is treated from the philosophical standpoint. Keen is the irony of fate! Twenty years ago the chief of the Education Department declared there was no science of education; ten years after, his successors announced themselves favourable to Chairs of Education, but unable to aid them; page 33 ten years later still, they compel students to be taught, and ask them to believe in, the science of education, because it is recognised in Cambridge. Who can tell what ten years more will accomplish? At present Scottish ideas are not entertained unless they come by way of Cambridge and London. Yet none the less have Scottish ideas triumphed, though fifty years have been lost, and due acknowledgment has not yet been conceded. The constant agitation of the past, the present partial recognition, the inconsistent position of the Education Department, the well-known candour of Mr. Mundella and the energy of Lord Rosebery, and also the unanimity of clergymen, professors, doctors, lawyers, and teachers in congress at Aberdeen, should encourage the Institute anew to formulate its views, and approach with confidence the Endowed Schools Commission, and the Universities' Executive Commission, as well as the Education Department itself, assured that, in the interests of the country, their righteous demands can no longer with safety be refused.