The Archbishop of Canterbury made a good speech on Tuesday
in opening a new Polytechnic school at Croydon. He explained that its object was not to teach children trades, but to train them in that flexibility and receptiveness of body and mind which would make them much more useful when they began their apprenticeship to any trade,—in short, to teach them some general scientific principles, some quickness in grasping scientific ideas, some power to turn their hands to different kinds of work, and their minds to different kinds of study. The Germans, he said, greatly surpass Englishmen in this sort of flexibility; indeed, he declared that he knew a German village in which every peasant-home and every room is lighted by the electric light. He pointed out that in certain mines, children of only eight years of age are able by looking at five heaps of ore, and weighing them in their hands, to tell ap- proximately the worth of each heap of ore. No doubt English children and English men are very deficient in skill of this kind, very deficient in adaptability to different kinds of work. We heartily hope that training may give it ; but there are, unfortunately, too many Englishmen and Englishwomen whom no training would teach either to draw, or to play music, with even tolerable success.
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