§
(1) Subject as hereinafter provided, all young persons shall attend such continuation schools at such times, on such days, as the local education authority of the area in which they reside may require, for three hundred and twenty hours in each year, distributed as regards times and seasons as may best suit the circumstances of each locality, or, in the case of a period of less than a year, for such number of hours distributed as aforesaid as the local education authority, having regard to all the circumstances, consider reasonable:
Provided that—
§ (2) Any young person—
- (i) who is above the age of fourteen years on the appointed day, or
- (ii) who has satisfactorily completed a course of training for, and is engaged in, the sea service, in accordance with the provisions of any national scheme which may hereafter be established, by Order in Council or otherwise, with the object of maintaining an adequate supply of well-trained
792 British seamen, and, pending the establishment of such scheme, in accordance with the provisions of any interim scheme approved by the Board of Education, or - (iii) who is above the age of sixteen years and either—
- (a) has passed the matriculation examination of a university of the United Kingdom or an examination recognised by the Board of Education for the purposes of this Section as equivalent thereto, or
- (b) is shown to the satisfaction of the local education authority to have been up to the age of sixteen under full-time instruction in a school recognised by the Board of Education as efficient or under suitable and efficient full-time instruction in some other manner,
§ (4) Where a school supplying secondary education is inspected by a British university, or in Wales by the Central Welsh Board, under Regulations made by the inspecting body after consultation with the Board of Education, and the inspecting body reports to the Board of Education that the school makes satisfactory provision for the education of the scholars, a young person who is attending, or has attended, such a school shall be entitled to such exemption as he would be entitled to under this Section if he were attending, or had attended, a school recognised by the Board of Education as efficient.
§ (6) The local education authority may require in the case of any young person who is under an obligation to attend a continuation school that his employment shall be suspended on any day when his attendance is required, not only during the period for which he is required to attend the school, but also for such other specified part of the day not exceeding two hours, as the authority consider necessary in order to secure that he may be in a fit mental and bodily condition to receive full benefit from attendance at the school: Provided that, if any question arises between the local education authority and the employer of a young person whether a requirement made under this Subsection is reasonable for the purposes aforesaid, that question shall be determined by the Board of Education, and, if the Board of Education determine that the requirement is unreasonable, they may substitute such other requirement as they think reasonable.
§ (9) In considering what continuation school a young person shall be required to attend a local education authority shall have regard, as far as practicable, to any preference which a young person may express.
§ Mr. WHITEHOUSEI beg to move, in Sub-section (1, a), after the word "schools" ["the obligation to attend continuation schools"], to insert the words "in areas where the local education authority so decides." 793 The object of this Amendment is to give those local education authorities who are in a position to institute continuation classes, before the expiration of seven years, for young people between sixteen and eighteen, the power to do so. The House will remember that the concession which the President made to what is called the Lancashire opposition included the abolition of compulsory attendance at continuation schools for children between the ages of sixteen and eighteen for a period of seven years from the appointed day. The right hon. Gentleman well remembers that that decision was deplored in many quarters of the House, and an appeal was made to him at the Committee stage to at least allow the option to local education authorities in this matter. Unless this Amendment is accepted, no education authority, however progressive, however much the people it represents wishes it to act, will be able to institute compulsory continuation classes for any young person over the age of sixteen for a period of seven years. In announcing this change in the Bill, the right hon. Gentleman stated that it was not so great a change as it looked, because local education authorities would not be ready with their schools and with their teachers for a period of at least seven years. I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that there are many parts of the country where opinion is ripe for this change, and where the local education authority will be in a position to provide the necessary teachers and the necessary schools. It would be a distinctive educational loss if in those areas, where progressive authorities had made all arrangements and are provided with teachers, where a strong public sentiment exists in favour of their policy, I say it would be a great educational loss if, under the concession granted to the Lancashire opposition, these progressive authorities are to be prevented for seven years from the appointed day from instituting any continuation classes. I therefore hope that the House will be in favour of at least giving the option to those areas for local education authorities to begin these continuation classes.
§ Mr. KINGI beg to second the Amendment.
I and my Friends just now dissociated ourselves from my hon. Friend. With all the more cordiality do I whole-heartedly support him on this occasion. I think 794 that really here we have an Amendment which we can confidently expect the President of the Board of Education to accept. I know he has the idea that we are all ready to support him in any difficulty, but do not let him presume upon his own success and our confidence. But there are limits. Take this question on its merits. Let the House notice this. These continuation schools are going to come into operation seven years after the appointed day. But when is the appointed day? The appointed day may be at any remote period. Ten years, and there is no reason it should not be 100 years! There is no reason why any of us, or any of our children, or grandchildren, should live to see the appointed day in any place, for any part of education for any scholar in this country. The indefiniteness of this Act coming into force cannot be exaggerated, and I really think that he might give a concession on this point so that, where there is a local authority that can put into force this provision earlier than seven years after the appointed day, it ought to be possible for it to put the continuation school education into real operation. I am sure when he considers that it is going to be conditional only on the real will and desire of the local authority, which will have to carry this through, he will understand the needs and possibilities of the case and give it sympathetic consideration.
Mr. FISHERWhile I sympathise with the educational zeal of the hon. Members who have respectively moved and seconded this Amendment, and with their desire to bring into operation at the earliest possible date a scheme for continuation education, I feel that it would be impossible for me to accept this Amendment without laying myself open to the charge of a great breach of faith. I gave to the House a pledge that compulsory continuation education would not be provided to young persons between the ages of sixteen and eighteen for a period of seven years after the appointed day, and I regret that I cannot accept the hon Member's Amendment.
§ Mr. ROWNTREEI regret very much that my right hon. Friend has not been able to accept the suggestion made by the two hon. Members. I think it could hardly be stated that my right hon. Friend would be charged with a breach of faith, because, after all, this is only a 795 power to enable authorities that desire to give such extended education, and my right hon. Friend, when he spoke on this question before, was addressing himself specially to Lancashire, and Lancashire authorities would not take advantage of this. From the educational standpoint, I did think that there would be very great advantages indeed in accepting the Amendment of my two hon. Friends. I believe that it would help the President in the desires that he has that some authorities should really get this scheme of extended education to work. I think it is known that there were some authorities that had carefully worked out the possibility of giving this education up to the age of eighteen, and, though they saw difficulties. I think they felt that those difficulties should be overcome. I rather expected my right hon. Friend to have raised objection to the Amendment on the ground of administrative difficulty. If he had done that I was going to remind him that in the measure he introduced a specific Clause would have enabled authorities to have extended the hours of the education that was given. I thought that a very valuable Clause indeed, and I regretted that it should have been withdrawn. My right hon. Friend knows as well as I do that his withdrawal of the Clause has caused disappointment to many of his educational friends, and remembering what he stated in that speech of his, when he warned the House of the serious results, or the serious handicap to a nation which had only educated people up to sixteen, as compared with the nation that educated its children up to the age of eighteen. I do wish that my right hon. Friend could have given a more sysmpathetic reply to this Amendment. I believe it is immensely important to try and encourage the local authorities to advance on the lines of educational experiment. There is a danger of our getting to one dead level, and I believe that nothing is more important in educational matters than tryong to encourage local authorities to step out and to experiment, and go as far as ever they can. I believe that the further educational authorities go the greater will be the success of their efforts, and the greater the desire of other parts of the country to follow their example.
§ Amendment negatived.
796§ Amendment made:
§ In Sub-section (1, a) leave out the word "such" ["after such period"], and insert instead thereof the word "that."—[Mr. Fisher.]
§ Mr. WHITEHOUSEI beg to move, in Sub-section (1), to leave out paragraph (b).
This is the paragraph which carries out a further part of the concession which the President announced to the Lancashire opposition. The paragraph that I propose to leave out gives local education authorities powers to reduce the number of hours at which attendance at continuation classes may be required from 312 to 280 each year—that is, a little more than three-quarters of an hour daily. The original proposal of the Bill was moderate enough. It is deplorable that that number of hours should be reduced, and I would like to point out that the change which the President has made will have this undesirable result. We shall have some education areas which impose the full number of hours allowed under the Bill; we shall have other education authorities which impose attendance for only 280 hours annually. Some areas will be worse off educationally than other areas. We shall not have a uniform system. I move this Amendment, however, chiefly because the original proposals of the Bill were not over-liberal and none too adequate. The concession weakens the Bill in a place where it cannot stand weakening. May I suggest as a compromise to the President that if he cannot accept the Amendment which I am now moving, at least he will make it clear from his speech that in the view of the Board it would be deplorable, in the interests of the children, if advantage were taken generally of this Section?
§ Sir P. MAGNUSI beg to second the Amendment.
I do not think that the President will be breaking any pledge if he goes back to 320 hours instead of 280 hours. I must own that the amount of instruction that can be provided in the smaller limited number of hours in the Bill as it now stands does seem to me very inadequate. I did not quite realise, and I do not think that anyone did, the reasons which induced the President to lessen the number of hours as suggested in the original Bill. I think that it would be a very great advantage if the number of hours could now be increased, and for administrative purposes 797 I feel certain that this would be regarded by local education authorities as a great improvement.
Mr. FISHERI need hardly assure the House that were it possible I should be very glad to accept this Amendment. I feel, indeed, with my hon. Friend who moved the Amendment that 320 hours a year is not in itself an excessive amount to demand for the instruction of young persons, and if 320 hours a year is not excessive, 280 is still less so; but I think that I should expose myself to a charge of breach of faith if I were to depart from the undertaking that I gave to the House in this respect. I think that there would be very good reason for objecting on the part of hon. Members who had withdrawn their opposition to the Bill upon the series of concessions which I made when the Lancashire Amendment was being discussed. Apart from that, I would like to explain once more to the House the reasons which led me to make this particular suggestion. I have, of course, been exploring very carefully the practical difficulties in the way of carrying out continuation school proposals, and it has been found that there are certain industries—mining is a case in point—in which it is undesirable from the educational point of view, and it is extremely difficult, to arrange for two or three periods of education in the week. In these industries it appeared to be almost a necessity that the instructions should be confined to a single day, and in view of the fact that some of the young persons who will have to take advantage of that instruction will have a considerable walk from school it seemed to me that there was a case for allowing the local education authorities to adopt a scheme under which it would be possible for a young person to have seven hours a week instead of eight hours a week. If there were to be eight hours in a single day that would be rather a long period of schooling for a young person who has to walk a considerable distance to and from school. For those reasons we thought that it would be desirable to give a local education authority the option which is given by this Sub-section.
§ Captain Sir C. BATHURSTI am greatly relieved that the right hon. Gentleman has not seen his way to accept this Amendment, because I am quite certain that, for at any rate some time to come, the alternative proposal would not be 798 workable in the country districts. Already in this House I have put forward, on behalf of the Wiltshire Education Committee, the difficulties which we should feel in the matter of the provision of the necessary teachers and buildings if 320 hours were insisted upon as the period for the continuation instruction in the course of the year. It is going to be difficult enough to persuade your rural classes of the advantages of this educational progress as applied to themselves, but it is going to be more than difficult, it is going to be extremely unpopular, and it may be accompanied by considerable hostility in putting the Act into operation in rural districts, and if we had so large a number of hours we should create a considerable amount of prejudice against education generally at a time when it is more than ever necessary in agricultural districts that the advantages of education should be recognised in order to obtain a larger home production of food. I am quite sure if the right hon. Getleman had accepted this Amendment there would have been considerable dissatisfaction in the rural areas.
Mr. T. WILSONI am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has not accepted this Amendment. If he had done so he would have laid himself open to a charge of failing to observe the voluntary understanding which had been arrived at. While the miners in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and other districts are not backward in supporting educational proposals, yet the convenience of the people must be considered to some extent, and the fact that the right hon. Gentleman is resisting this Amendment will put education authorities in the mining area in a position to meet the requirements not only of the colliery proprietors, but also of the parents of the children.
§ Amendment negatived.
§ Mr. CATORI beg to move, in Subsection (2), after paragraph (ii), to insert,
(iii) who is above the age of fifteen years and has attended a continuation school in a rural area provided under Section three of this Act for not less than six hundred hours, or.This Amendment, which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Peto), is to meet the wishes of education authorities in rural areas, who feel in many cases that a certain amount of elasticity might be given to the Bill, that the case of a county area is entirely different from that of an urban area, and that the 799 local education authority should be in a position to deal with it accordingly. They urge that it would be better to have the option of giving six hundred hours' instruction in a continuation school during the winter months than to have a young person attending a continuation school as provided in the Bill. The object of this Amendment is to give effect to this view, so that, where desired, it may be possible to give a child of fifteen full-time education during the five months of the winter at thirty hours a week rather than compel that child to attend a continuation school for the longer period provided in the Bill.
§ Mr. PETOI rise to second this Amendment, because I wish to make a last appeal to the President of the Board of Education not to close his mind to what is the most suitable way, at any rate in the view of the education authorities in some of our rural areas, of dealing with this question of continuation education for young persons who will probably pursue agriculture as their vocation in life. There is no doubt that the proposal to give continuation education as part-time education, spread over a very long period, in its totality covering a period of four years, causes a great deal of apprehension in the minds of education authorities in rural areas, and in the minds of farmers themselves as to what would be the effect as to the possibility of employment and the amount of education which children will get in sparsely populated districts. In the Committee stage I reminded the right hon. Gentleman that some of the finest agriculturists that we have in this country, and, indeed, some of the finest that are to be found anywhere in the world, are north of the Tweed, and they are not by any means people who are deficient in ambitions for a full and complete education. Yet they have been brought up under the old system, which I believe is called the parochial system, under which there is a winter session which enables the children to be taught in a more or less concentrated manner at a time when their work is least needed on the land, while they do practical work during the summer months on the farm, and do not lose touch with their interests in rural life, do not lose touch with their interest in livestock, animals, and the things with which they will have to deal, and yet get a great deal of good education. I want it to be provided that an education authority, where it can see its way, may be at liberty 800 to provide a really suitable form of continuation class, concentrated into the twenty winter weeks with thirty hours' instruction a week. That seems to me to be a reasonable provision. The attendance of 600 hours should be, at any rate, a reason not why the child should not have any further continuation education, but why he should be exempted from the obligations under this Bill to attend continuation schools under this Act. This does not bind the education authority to provide these facilities, but, if the President would accept this Amendment, that where those facilities exist and where the child attends during a single year 600 hours—and I hope that the education will be more or less of a practical character and at any rate have some bearing on agriculture—he should be free for whole-time employment in agriculture after that.
I know that this has been sneered at in the Committee stage constantly as vocational education, and so on; but, as far as vocational education is concerned, that will not terminate at the age of fifteen even under my Amendment, because there is an immense amount connected with agriculture which can only be learned practically on the farm, and there is nothing to prevent education authorities from seeing that something of that kind applies when the system is in force, so that these children, after they leave their direct control, should have some sort of opportunity, at any rate, if not compulsion, to attend instruction of a practical character in all the various branches of agriculture. There is no question that agricultural science will advance enormously after the War. There will be an enormous increase in the number of people taking part, and the opportunities for people to take part, not a subordinate part as labourers, but a primary part as landholders in cultivating small or fairly small areas of land. Therefore, it seems to me most important that after the War, now that we have had the countryside denuded of all its labour for two years and of a great part of its labour for four years, we should give the education in the most concentrated form we can, and give to the largest possible number of these children, many of whom will be the children of the men who have been fighting for their country, the earliest possible opportunity of assisting their parents in forming the great army, which we hope to have, of skilful agriculturists throughout the 801 country who are farming, even if it is in a small way, on their own. I believe that the scheme outlined briefly in this Amendment is infinitely more workable and more suitable to country conditions than a system of children attending seven hours a week for forty weeks in the year. I believe that that would make employment on farms extremely difficult. I believe that it will involve the waste of a very large part of the total which will be subtracted from the practical work on the farm, whereas if we can concentrate the education of 600 hours in a single year we shall get a much better education, and the country will get much better value for the money which they spend upon it.
§ 8.0 P.M.
Mr. FISHERMy hon. Friend who moved this Amendment, and the hon. Member for Devizes who seconded it, are anxious that instruction under the continuation classes scheme should be concentrated in the winter months for those children or young persons who are destined for an agricultural career. There is nothing in the Bill as it stands to prevent that object from being achieved. It is perfectly open to the local education authority to concentrate the classes in the winter months, and I hope that in many cases they will see their way to do so. Where I join issue with the hon. Members is that they desire to concentrate the education of young persons engaged in agriculture in a single year, and they apparently think that it is in the best interests of agricultural science. I think that if you wish to spread practical ideas and practical knowledge of the science of agriculture among our rural population, it is very much better that that they should receive a certain amount of education during the whole of their school period, for instance, you want a young person engaged in agriculture to have a knowledge of plant life, of animal life, how to measure quantities, and some knowledge of agricultural machinery, and that could not be obtained if you concentrated the whole of the teaching between fourteen and fifteen into 600 hours; they could not acquire the knowledge which it is really necessary and desirable they should have. I submit that if you had a smaller amount of education in the winter months, over a larger number of years, it would be much more valuable to him than the plan put forward by the hon. Members. For that reason I cannot accept the Amendment.
§ Colonel YATEI am glad to hear the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that there is nothing in the Bill to prevent this instruction being carried out in the winter months, and I think that is a very valuable assurance. In Norway the children attend the schools in the winter months, and in the summer devote their whole time to agricultural pursuits. Norway is a democratic country, and the children there are very highly educated, and the system of giving instruction during the winter months, and not during the summer months, has been attended with results as good as they could wish them to be. I note with satisfaction that this can be done in country areas of this country, and that children may be limited for instruction to the winter months and be able to devote the summer months to proper agricultural work.
§ Sir C. BATHURSTI find myself very much in agreement with the criticism of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes as to the agricultural policy of the Government, but I find myself equally opposed to him when he comes to criticise the policy of the Board of Education in relation to the same community. His proposal means that there should be half-time education for one extra year, instead of for a period of two years, and the right hon. Gentleman suggests that the instruction may be concentrated in the winter months. I object to the first proposal, because if you were to stop the education of the country child at the age of fifteen you would be doing him a very serious injustice by comparison with the children of the rest of the community. Everyone knows that it is not necessary that a child in agricultural employment should remain for the whole of his life in such employment, and, that being so, it is only fair that he should have equal opportunities with other children, from an intellectual or educational point of view, to compete in other walks of life. If you look at what other countries are doing in this regard, you find that in no civilised country of Western Europe is there so small a measure of education meted out to the rural child as in this country, during the most teachable years of his life. I should be very sorry indeed if, at the age of fifteen, any child in a rural district it should be considered that his education is over, at that age, for the rest of his life.
The right hon. Gentleman says, and I think it is quite true, that the child engaged in agriculture should have knowledge 803 of various agricultural processes, including the handling of stock, and other light work, but the child cannot turn to handling stock and do it with success and become a successful stockman, horse-keeper, or shepherd, though there is no reason whatever why the child should not have plenty of time to handle stock and concurrently devote some portion of the day or week to more scientific training, to enable him to utilise on the practical side what he has learned on a scientific basis. A further reason against the Amendment is that the local authorities would find it very difficult, I am sure, to provide buildings and staff, if you are going to concentrate the whole of that education during the extension period into the winter months. I am convinced that if you want to make agricultural education scientific, effective, and of a national character; it is very much better to carry on the practical work concurrently with scientific instruction. I hope the House will not accept the proposal of the hon. Gentleman opposite, that the whole of this instruction should be concentrated into one year, and that the education of the rural child should cease at fifteen; and I hope, also, that neither will they accept the view of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Education that such instruction should be given in the winter months.
§ Amendment negatived.
§ Further Amendments made: In Subsection (4), after the word "Wales" ["University or in Wales"], insert the words "or Monmouthshire."
§ Leave out the words "be entitled to such exemption as he would be entitled to under this Section," and insert instead thereof the words "for the purposes of this Section be treated as."
§ In Sub-section (9), after the word "person" ["a young person may express"], insert the words "or the parent of a young person under the age of sixteen."—[Mr. Fisher.]
Sir M. SYKESI beg to move, at the end of Sub-section (9), to insert the words,
and if a young person or the parent of a young person under the age of sixteen represents in writing to the local education authority that he objects to any part of the instruction given in the continuation school which the young person is required to attend, on the ground that it is contrary or offensive to his religious belief, the obligation under this Act to attend that school for the purpose of such 804 instruction shall not apply to him, and the local education authority shall, if practicable, arrange for him to attend some other instruction in lieu thereof or some other school.This Amendment is based on the hypothesis that in future education will get more and more advanced, and, that being so, history, philosophy, and other subjects will probably come within the scope of general education, in a more advanced way. Again, one has to remember that although one's religious views generally do not alter very much, yet, in regard to philosophies, there are some kinds which some people would regard as odious, and they would seek to protect themselves and their children against them. There is no doubt that in future education certain biological subjects will have to be taken into consideration. Eugenics will come within the scope of education sooner or later, and that is a point where materialists and people who hold opinions contrary to those of materialists will come to a very definite divergence of views; and the object of this Amendment is to give people the opportunity of avoiding not only having their feelings hurt, but their whole scheme of life challenged in the instruction given to their children.
§ Captain Viscount WOLMERit seems to be a reasonable proposition that no one should be forced to attend school where his religious beliefs would be outraged. This Amendment, in my view, does not go beyond a mere conscience Clause, and I hope the President of the Board of Education will accept it.
§ Sir W. ESSEXI would have been glad to have given full support to my Friend in the object of his Amendment, with which I am in the heartiest sympathy, if I could have felt that it did not lay us open to the principle of certain persons desiring to avail themselves of it to take themselves away from these continuation schools on the trumpery plea of religious or philosophic reason. The final words in this Amendment say that supplementary education may be given if a convenient place is found therefor. I think something should be done to make it perfectly clear and certain that no child is being withdrawn with, so to speak, the tongue in the cheek. The last two lines say "if practicable." I would like to make it stronger than that, because I have found already with regard to conscience Clauses that they are often used as a subterfuge to 805 mask disinclination for education and a desire to withdraw children from it for other purposes. I hope my Friend will not misunderstand me, as I am as anxious as he is to preserve religious feeling.
Mr. FISHERI have great pleasure, on behalf of the Government, in accepting this Amendment. I feel that if the State imposes any compulsory form of education upon young people, it must take care to see that religious conscience is not violated in any form. It is perfectly true that the instruction contemplated in these continuation schools is instruction of a secular nature, but it still might remain possible for some part of instruction to be given in such a manner and in such a spirit as to offend the religious traditions and conscience of the pupils concerned. Consequently, I feel it is only right that pupils who are in compulsory attendance at these schools should have the protection afforded by this Clause. I think it would be very difficult to go further than the Clause suggests. Obviously the local education authority cannot exceed the bounds of practicability in making alternative arrangements. This is an injunction upon local education authorities to make arrangements for alternative instruction wherever practicable. I do not think we could improve upon the phraseology of that.
§ Colonel GRETTONI entirely agree with the intention and spirit of this proposed Amendment. There is one objection which strikes me. Why should a young person under sixteen, without the sanction of parent or guardian, be allowed to lodge his own objection? A young person between the ages of fourteen and sixteen is probably not a person well endowed with judgment and is, at any rate for other matters, under the control of parents and guardians. I suggest that there is something to be said for parents' authority and by those who are responsible for these young persons in other matters, and that they should act and raise an objection of this kind.
§ Sir C. BATHURSTI was going to raise the very point which the hon. and gallant Member for Rutland (Colonel Gretton) has put to the House. I welcome the suggestion that there should be a conscience Clause in this Education Bill applying to continuation instruction. But it appears to me that this Amendment is so worded that it may be really carried 806 further than he intends to go. I would rather suggest that before the Bill reaches another place there should be some consideration as to whether it could not be expressed in such a way as to make it more watertight than it is at present. As the hon. and gallant Member has just pointed out, as at present expressed it is quite possible for any young person at the ago of fifteen, or less than fifteen, to obtain entire exemption from a school by merely representing to the local authorities that he objects to any part of the instruction which in his opinion is contrary to his religious belief.
§ Sir C. BATHURSTIf it is impossible in many cases, as it is in rural districts, for the local education authorities to find any school to send him to, his education will cease altogether.
§ Sir C. BATHURSTLet us take it at that. He can claim to have alternative instruction, but how can you prevent this being subject to abuse? Here is a boy of fourteen who, whether he has a conscience or not, whether he does or does not conscientiously believe that a particular subject is offensive to his religious beliefs, has only to say that and he may call upon the local education authority to provide him with alternative instruction or alternative schools. The hon. and gallant Member referred to a subject in which I am particularly interested. He referred to the possibility of instruction in some questions dealing with biological evolution. That is a very important branch of evolution which affects the whole of our practical agriculture at the present time—Mendelism. I think as worded this may be carried too far, and I suggest that before it reaches another place some more convincing words may be adopted.
§ Mr. KINGI was rather surprised at the course this discussion has taken. I am rather surprised at the action of the Treasury Bench. We are discussing conscientious objectors. If there is a conscientious objector who objects to killing another man anybody who stands up for him is called a traitor, but if a certain child objects to a doctrine being taught he is a hero. I cannot understand the inconsistency of certain Members. I have always stood up for the conscientious 807 objectors. But let us fully understand one thing. I am going to support it, first of all, in, its integrity. I believe that a child of fifteen is very often more intelligent, more conscientious, and more able to form a judgment than many a man or woman of fifty, and therefore I am going to say that young children, if they have a conscientious objection to any form of education, have as much right as an older person to state it, and that it must not be only what their parents allow them to object to. I stand for the independence and integrity and conscientious objection of the young person, and I hope there will be no whittling away of the Amendment, and that the President will accept no modification to make it more watertight. The whole object of this thing is that this Clause shall not be watertight, and that it shall let independence run out. There is another aspect of this question which has not been raised. We had a discussion a little time ago on military training in these schools, and over twenty Members, I think, voted against any form of military training being given in these continuation schools. If you get twenty Members objecting to it here you will get 200,000 objecting to it in the country, and you are very likely going to have a great number of conscientious objectors to military training in these continuation schools. I therefore heartily welcome the opportunity it gives to these conscientious objectors of getting away from some of the Prussianism that is invading British civilisation and liberty to-day. It is therefore with very great pleasure that I support the Amendment, and congratulate the Government on accepting it so readily, and I hope they will not, either here or in another place, allow it to be whittled away.
§ Mr. WHITEHOUSEI should be sorry for this Amendment to be accepted without my saying a word of thanks to the Government for accepting it and offering very respectfully my humble congratulations. I have tried in this House when it was a less popular thing than it is at this evening's sitting, to champion the cause of conscience, and therefore it is especially gratifying to find that the Government, though somewhat late in the day, have now become a convert to the same principle. I cannot help pointing out that there is certainly an anomaly in the present situation. A conscientious objector 808 who has reached the mature age of eighteen is disfranchised under the recent legislation of this House, but if he has attained the age of fourteen only, the conscientious objector is given special facilities in the Bill and is allowed to write himself out even of a form of secular or religious instruction to which he objects. I wholly support the Government in giving this right to the conscientious objector, but I think the House should note the triumph of a great principle, especially as I have the privilege of speaking in the presence of the learned Attorney-General. The cynical historian of the future will call attention, I have no doubt, in writing the story of this Parliament, to the discrepancies and anomalies in its legislation, and if that historian should happen to be the Attorney-General—I am sure he would not then be cynical—I am sure he will be quite capable of proving that behind and beneath these apparent contradictions and anomalies there is a deep spiritual unity.
§ Amendment agreed to.