The lecture explores how schools could, and should, benefit the whole community by giving pupils a happy, clean environment which serves as a model for what the home should be, and by giving them the knowledge and skills in order to work towards solving practical and social problems in their communities.

He illustrates this point with detailed descriptions of the Rachel MacMillan Nursery School in Deptford, London, and the Training School for Village Teachers at Chapra, Bengal. The former, Thomson argues, demonstrates a happy, clean environment for 350 young children while the latter represents an ambitious attempt to train teachers to act as broader welfare workers to improve conditions for entire village communities.