Hasty generalizations from the study of _Punch_ throughout this period might easily lead one to the conclusion that the two great evils in national education were the craze for athletics in Public and Preparatory, and over-pressure in Board and Elementary, Schools. A more detailed examination of his pages tends to correct or modify this view. _Punch_ was in the main a firm believer in the public school system as an instrument of character-building, and he was no enemy of the ladder of learning which had been erected by Forster's Act of 1871. But while he detested snobbery, extravagance and complacent Philistinism, he was by no means satisfied that the State was getting good value for its constantly increasing expenditure on education. Thus to take the Elementary schools first, we find continual references, mostly unfavourable, to the administration and working of the Board School System. In 1875 he falls foul of the pedantry of over-zealous officials--the red-tape methods of inspectors, and the action of visitors who sent children back to school before they were free from infection. These inquisitorial activities roused _Punch's_ old democratic sympathies, and some ten years later we find him suggesting that a similar method might fairly be applied to the upper and upper middle classes--that what was sauce for the goose in the slums might be served up to the gander in the squares. [Illustration: PREDESTINED! NORTHERN MATRON (before the School Board): "I'm not against Eddication, Ladies and Gen'l'men. I al'ays make him take his Book o' nights. But reelly I calls it a flyin' in the face o' Providence to be keepin' a Boy out o' the Stables with such a pair o' Legs as his'n!!"]