The presidential address at the annual meeting of the National
Union of Teachers, held at Aberystwyth, was delivered on Monday by Miss Isabel Cleghorn, of Sheffield, the first woman who has ever held this post. The most striking passage in her address was that in which she
condemned the notion that all the six millions in our schools were to be clerks or accountants, or that they were budding authors, preachers, or teachers. She therefore suggested that the school should educate not only for the Civil Service and the Post Office, but for plumbing, painting, bootmaking,
dressmaking and domestic service.
"Do let us rid ourselves of the idea that any kind of useful work is derogatory. We have as much right to prepare the lad whose future work will probably be in the mine with some knowledge of mining lore, safety lamps, fire-damp, to give the children in our villages some form of education related to life on the land, as to prepare the prospective merchant prince in German and French, the prospective clergyman in Greek and Latin, the prospective scientist in mathematics and chemistry."
This is sound advice admirably put. It was, if we remember aright, Mr. Gladstone who many years ago deprecated the tendency of our elementary schools to foster the notion that it was better to be an inferior clerk than an efficient artisan. Above all, we welcome Miss Cleghorn's powerful support to
the principle that the girls in our primary and secondary schools should in all cases learn the rudiments of Home Science.
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