Secondary Schools as a Preparation for Technical Schools.

The best preparation for technical study is a good modern secondary school of the types of the Manchester Grammar School, the Bedford Modern School, and the Allan Glen's Institution at Glasgow. Unfortunately, our middle classes arc at a great disadvantage, compared with these of the continent, for want of a sufficient number of such schools. The transfer of the functions of the endowed schools commissioners to the charity commissioners has not had the effect of increasing the rate of progress in the reorganization of our secondary schools. We consider it to be essential that steps should be taken to insure that this work shall be carried on with greater vigor in the future than it has been hitherto. We learn that there are still endowments available for education, amounting to upwards of 200,000l, per annum, which have not been dealt with by the commissioners. In the schemes for the new schools the subjects of science and modern languages should form a very prominent part : and it would be desirable in some of these schools, especially in Large towns (where classical schools are not wanting), in order to provide for the fuller teaching of these subjects, more particularly of mathematics, that the classical languages should be altogether excluded from the schemes of instruction. But the existing endowments are very unevenly distributed over the country; in many of the large manufacturing centres no resources of the kind exist; private enterprise is clearly inadequate to do all that is required in establishing such schools, and we must look to some public measure to supply this, the greatest detect of our educational system. It is to be desired that, in the proposed reorganization of local government, power should be given to important local bodies, like the proposed county hoards and the municipal corporations, to originate and support secondary and technical schools in conformity with the public opinion for the time being of their constituents.

Intelligent youths of the artisan classes should have easy access to secondary and technical schools by numerous scholarships, and the more promising students of them again to the higher technical colleges.