ABSTRACT
“The problems are numerous and urgent. A school is at once a physical environment, a training-ground for the mind, and a spiritual society. Are we satisfied that in each of these respects the primary schools of today are all that, with the knowledge and resources at our command, we have the power to make them? Are their buildings and physical surroundings as conducive to health and vitality as may reasonably be demanded? Is their curriculum humane and realistic, unencumbered by the dead wood of a formal tradition, quickened by inquiry and experiment, and inspired, not by an attachment to conventional orthodoxies, but by a vivid appreciation of the needs and possibilities of the children themselves? Are their methods of organization and the character of their equipment, the scale on which they are staffed and the lines on which their education is planned, of a kind best calculated to encourage individual work and persistent practical activity among pupils, initiative and originality among teachers, and to foster in both the spirit which leaves the beaten track and strikes fearlessly into new fields, which is the soul of education? What are the deficiencies, if any, which most hamper their work?”
