15.594.  What  our  witnesses  have  usually  told  us  is  that  with  clever  boys
it  does  not  matter ;  you  can  move  them  on  from  one  school  to  another ;
but  that  the  average  boy*s  education  is  very  much  injured  if,  when  he  is
going  to  leave  school  early,  he  has  to  begin  subjects  with  boys  who  are
going  on  with  them  later.  That  is  not  your  view,  I  understand  p — I  do
not  fear  that  he  would  suffer  very  much,  if  he  had  anything  like  a  year  for
them  in  the  new  school.  There  might  be  a  little  friction  at  the  beginning,
but  I  think  he  would  gain  more  tiian  he  would  lose  by  his  new  associations,
by  the  new  atmosphere  into  which  he  is  taken,  by  the  mixture  of  classes
and  so  on.
15.595.  But  after  14,  you  think  that  if  a  boy  is  to  leave  at  16  the
education  may  be  taken  on  quite  the  same  lines  as  if  he  were  leaving  at
18,  so  far  as  it  goes?— There  is  very  little  real  essential  diflbrenoe
between  the  secondary  school  of  what  is  called  the  second  grade  type  and
the  third  grade  school  in  all  the  lower  parts  of  the  school ;  and  not  so
great  a  difference  as  is  sometimes  made  to  appear  between  the  lower  classes
of  a  secondary  school  and  the  upper  classes  of  on  elementary  echoed  -  so
that  I  do  not  think  the  friction,  or  loss  of  time,  or  the   "     '


MINUTES  OP  EVIDENtTR.  8S9

involved  Ib  bo  great  as  people  wLo  are  not  engaged  in  education  someliinerli
l^nagine  it  to  be.
