THERE is at first sight some lack of unity of purpose in an exhibition which undertakes to illustrate such diverse subjects as health and public education. This im pression will be in the present case confirmed partly by the postponement of the opening of the Educational Section to the month of June, and partly by the fact that the display of educational appliances will be held in the neighbouring building, the new Technical School of the City and Guilds of London Institute, and not in the galleries of the Exhibition building itself. A mere miscellaneous collection of objects more or less illustrative of school work, e.g. furniture, fittings, apparatus, and diagrams, would, however, prove of little general interest anc value, unless it were on a very comprehensive scale. The Executive Committee, therefore, have wisely decided to limit the scope of the educational part of the Exhibition of the present year, and to direct the attention of exhibitors mainly to the elucidation of a few special problems which possess exceptional importance or public interest at the present time. Foremost among these are the subjects of technical and scientific instruction, trade and apprenticeship schools, the teaching of art, and the Kindergarten with other devices for infant training. The accidental association of this part of the Exhibition with one devoted to the subject of health has also naturally suggested another class of illustrative display likely to prove particularly interesting to school managers and the public at this moment. While the Executive Committee has shown no disposition to encourage the absurdly exaggerated and not very sincere outcry which has been raised about the “over-pressure” of children in schools, they have shown much judgment in giving special prominence to those “exhibits” which are designed to illustrate the conditions of healthy life in schools. Accordingly, models of the best school buildings, appliances for warming, lighting, and ventilating, improved desks and fittings, contrivances for securing right posture for the limbs and for preventing injury to eyesight, precautions against disease in schools, will be largely shown. The whole subject of physical training will also, it is expected, be illustrated with unusual fullness and variety. Models and examples of the latest and best forms of gymnastic apparatus in use in England and in foreign countries will be shown; and arrangements are being made, with the sanction of the heads of the Admiralty and of the War Office, for the practical exposition of the methods of military drill in use in the great military and naval schools at Chelsea and Greenwich, on certain afternoons on which the boys can be spared for this purpose from their ordinary school duties.
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Open Access
May 13, 1886
Charles F Withington 
