London, June 17.
Those who went to school years ago, and have not been home to this country since, will probably be surprised to find the innovations which have been introduced nowadays into the education of the young.
Nursery schools for young children are quite common and although the Board of Education has not adopted them on any large scale, they are rapidly becoming part and parcel of our national education. As regards the older children, innovations are general. Thus it is quite common in schooltime for children to be taken to public places of instruction; to the picture galleries; to museums and the House of Parliament, where they can be instructed' on rather less routine lines than would be possible were the information given in the ordinary way. Indeed, the visit of children to the Houses of Parliament has become a regular feature and they are taken over very often in batches of hundreds and encouraged afterwards to write competitive essays on their experiences. Visits to the National Gallery are also encouraged, as well as to the Botanical Gardens, while only this week 1 was proposed at one educational establishment to take a class of children to see a cricket match at Lord's, on the ground that they would learn the power of disciline and ce-operation. The proposal was negatived, but there is a good deal to be said for it.
Open air lessons in the parks are common; botany is usually imparted by excursions into the country, while any branch of instruction which can be stimulated by direct contact with the objects on which the instruction is given, is always modelled on the lines which will most interest the scholars by appealing to their instincts, rather than by imparting text book information.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.