38 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
this subject has not yet received the attention which it merits. I believe 
‘hat it is a matter of the utmost importance for the perpetuity of our insti- 
cutions, the maintenance of our free government, and the general pros. 
perity of our nation, that the study of civil government should be carried 
on and carefully attended to in all of our grammar schools. 
I therefore recommend the subject, with great earnestness, to the 
thoughtful attention of all the distinguished educators who have honored 
shis congress and this occasion with their presence. 
I'l VALUE OF THE FLEMENTARY SCHOOL FOR 
THE SOCIAL VIRTUES AND FOR TRAINING FOR 
THE RIGHT EXERCISE OF THE DUTIES OF CITI- 
ZENS. 
BY MISS CATHARINE H. SPENCE, OF ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA. 
THERE is little need, before an assembly like this, of spending time in 
defining what education has been and what it ought to be. We may 
presume that, as we have outgrown the old idea that education is merely 
learning what other people have told us, we ought to outgrow also the 
more recent idea that education is merely to give us tools for our own 
advancement and success. The value of the three R’s has been enormous 
in a society where every one had not mastered them. Now it must take 
‘he negative form that, in our present circumstances, every child who does 
aot know how to read and write and to cast accounts intelligently is 
handicapped in the race of life, and placed at a disadvantage at every turn 
of fortune’s wheel; and all civilized nations are agreed that this minimum 
of school teaching shall be given to all children, and that school attend- 
ance shall be enforced by law. But it depends on the use that is made of 
all knowledge, even of these barest and most elementary elements of edu- 
zation, whether their exercise is a bane or a blessing to himself or to the 
community in which he lives. If a man prefers to read bad books to 
good ones ; if he writes lies and slanders, or commits forgeries by means of 
clever penmanship, and if he uses his proficiency in figures to cheat other 
people not so clever as himself, his three R’s are a curse and not a blessing. 
Therefore, I think more of the tone of the school than of the attain- 
ments of the pupils; and the tone may be so individualistic as to atrophy 
she natural social instinets. And the desire to outstrip all competitors 
may be so encouraged by praise and rewards, that the seeds are sown in 
school which take root in after life and make self-advancement the whole 
luty of man. 
If we transcend the elementary three R’s, we must see that we work 
coward the development of what our French fellow-educationist happily