2. Men inspectors constantly examine children of four years old in arithmetic, and the “mental arithmetic of the baby class,” is constantly mentioned in reports. 3. Needlework is taught before five years old; two to three hours form the staple instruction. Needlework injures the eyesight at such a tender age, and two or three hours are a cruelty and a waste of time for tiny children. 4. Desks, blackboards, slates and books are everywhere in excess of “Kindergarten” occupations, and the “development of the spontaneous activity in the child” is twisted into the development of uniformity. To differ from the usual is to be naughty; every one must do the same thing at the same time. Every one must build a like house, a like table, a like chair; each brick must be on the table at the same minute. 5. Despite male inspectors, the babies sleep. They fall off their seats and bump their foreheads against the desks, and their spines are twisted and crooked as they lie on their arms, heads forward, upon the hard supports. Curvature must be produced in many cases, solely from these causes. 6. To maintain order, corporal punishment is habitual, and “fear” the chief motive for right-doing. To quote from a letter of Sir John Gorst’s:-- “The reform of this system is not a matter of sentiment. These babies are the future scholars of our improved schools that the Education Act is intended to produce, and the future citizens by whom our Imperial position is to be maintained. If we prematurely addle their intellects by schooling--for which their tender years are unfit; if we cripple their bodies by cooping them up in deforming desks; if we destroy their sight by premature needlework, and confuse their senses by over-study of subjects which they are too young to understand, we shall neither have fit scholars for our future schools, nor fit citizens to uphold the Empire.” Starting on these premises it will surely be acknowledged that women have an indisputable right to be inspectors of schools. They have the natural instinct to know what is best for the health and well-being of children, and they are also capable of correctly judging by that maternal sympathy which is their inherited gift, how a child’s mental abilities should best be encouraged and trained.