In the succeeding
stages, the State, while it does not compel, must stimulate and
encourage; and above all must ensure that no supposed exigencies
of money-making, no selfish tyranny of the employing classes, shall
be allowed to interfere with mental or physical development, or to
divert the boy or the girl from any course of instruction by which
he or she is capable of profiting. This ideal Mr. Fisher's Bill, with
its plain enactment that education shall be free; with its precaution
against "half-time"; with its ample provision for Continuation
Schools, goes far to realize. Even if it is a "small" reform--and
I should dispute the epithet--it is certainly "on the lines and
in the direction" of that larger reform which the enthusiasts of
education have symbolized by the title of "The Golden Ladder."[*]
[Footnote *: Happily for Education, Mr. Fisher's Bill is now an
Act.]
III
_OASES_
My title is figurative, but figures are sometimes useful. Murray's
Dictionary defines an oasis as "a fertile spot in the midst of a
desert"; and no combination of words could better describe the
ideal which I wish to set before my readers.
The suggestion of this article came to me from a correspondent
in Northumberland--"an old miner, who went to work down a mine
before he was eight years old, and is working yet at seventy-two.
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