are quite explicable, but they do not detract from the importance of the fact, which is that the Higher Education is relatively a much more pressing question in the rural than in the urban portions of the country. In a busy commercial and industrial community there is abundance of remunerative work, even for boys or girls there are many outlets and avenues of promotion open to enterprising youth. In the remote pastoral and agricultural districts there is no such opportunity. The main, often the one, outlet is Education through the School to the University, through the University to the arena of life. Secondary Education is thus not only a more difficult matter to deal with in rural areas, but it is of comparatively much greater importance to the inhabitants than in towns. All this surely bears closely on the question of the relation of the management of Elementary and Secondary Education. In the rural area the latter is highly important. It cannot be dispensed with, and, as separate schools cannot be provided, it must be carried on along with the former in the same institutions, by the same teachers. From the nature of the case pupils cannot be transferred at a certain age from one school to another-from a rural to a central one-except in the few cases of selected pupils of comparatively mature age, say sixteen or thereby, who may be so sent with bursaries. It may be at once granted that a great central school with a specialised curriculum, specialists as teachers, and full equipment of laboratories and workshops, will impart a much more efficient course of Secondary training, especially in the various branches of science, than can the rural or village school, with at best a Secondary department. There may, it is true, be found some compensations in the smaller school and in the less complete apparatus. But neither of these facts is quite the point. The point is that the whole rural population interested in Secondary Education cannot be transferred bodily to centres. They cannot be taken to the education, the education must be brought to them. There is another reason which militates against central schools in rural areas which, even if in part sentimental, requires to be taken into account. The Scotch are a domestic people. Family life is dear to them. Much store is set by home influence. The family is not to be lightly broken up; when members leave it care has to be exercised that the influences to which they are exposed shall not be prejudicial to character. As often as not circumstances do not enable parents to make proper arrangements for board and oversight when children are obliged to reside away from the home. After a certain age children must in any case learn to look out for themselves, and here a careful upbringing ensures the development of moral qualities which are a safeguard against idleness and temptation at the period when parental restraint is of necessity removed. But the matter of age is the vital one. A boy of sixteen or seventeen may, perhaps, be able to fight his own battle, but not so one of twelve or even fourteen. Hence it becomes of great importance that pupils should be kept as long as possible at their local schools; that is, as long as a suitable curriculum can be provided and sufficient stimulus imparted. Their removal should be delayed as long as with safety was, 66 can be done. After all, moral risk is a much more serious matter than some shortcoming from ideal educational conditions. Knox saw this clearly, and the first "frute and commoditie" of the system he sought to establish the youth-head and tender children shall be nourished and brought up in virtue, in presence of their friends; by whose good attendance many inconveniences may be avoided, in the which the youth commonly falls, either by too much liberty, which they have in strange and unknown places, while they cannot rule themselves; or else for lack of good attendance and of such necessities as their tender age requireth ". The Parish School was a growth of the circumstances and necessities of the country, and the same conditions still hold to a considerable extent. The country still requires schools of this type, whether with or without modifications we need not here inquire. Along with this there will be schools of a more advanced character: a distinct Secondary department will be developed where the numbers of pupils admit of it. These, again, will lead up to conveniently placed central schools, fully equipped and manned for Secondary Education. All these must be in relation to one another. In many of the more remote schools Elementary and Secondary must to a certain extent, and up to a certain stage, go on together it will pass the wit of man to separate them in fact or in management. : A similar state of matters will prevail with the more fully developed Secondary department. The school to which it is attached will still be predominantly an Elementary School, and as such must be to some extent managed by the authority for Elementary Education. If another body is to be introduced there must be some scheme of joint-management. Only when we come to centres with distinctively Secondary Schools could we have a distinct management with a definite sphere clearly separated from the Elementary School. It is argued that if the central school, which draws its pupils from a wide area, be managed by a body representative of that area, i.e., district or county authority, the authority will not be in that close touch with the Elementary |