E 
 
 clwel Ernest Sadler 
 
 'Universi 
 
 Oxford 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ^ . c
 
 THE 
 
 EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE, 
 
 OUR WEAK POINTS AND OUR STRENGTH, 
 
 OCCASIONAL ESSAYS, 
 
 BY 
 
 J. P. NORRIS, M.A., 
 
 CANON OF BRISTOL, LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 
 AND FORMERLY ONE OF H. M. INSPECTORS OF SCHOOLS. 
 
 " Modo saltern homines et vires suas atque defectus etiam virium suarum probe et 
 prudenter nosse velint ; atque alii ab aliis inventionis lampada, non contradictionis torres, 
 accipiant." BACON, De Augm. Scient. 
 
 EDINBURGH: THOMAS LAURIE. 
 
 LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO.; 
 
 AND HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO.
 
 EDINBURGH : 
 
 PRINTED BY BAI.LANTYNE AND COMPANY, 
 PAUL'S WORK.
 
 Librarx 
 l-f\ 
 
 CONT ENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY, ... ... I 
 
 II. HOW FAR NATIONAL EDUCATION SHOULD BE COMPUL- 
 SORY, . . . . . . .17 
 
 III. NEED OF ONE SIMPLE LAW FOR THE REGULATION OF 
 
 CHILDREN'S LABOUR, ... . .30 
 
 IV. THE REVISED CODE OF EDUCATION MINUTES (1862), 47 
 V. EDUCATIONAL CONDITION OF STAFFORDSHIRE IN 1858, 57 
 
 VI. ADULT EDUCATION AND EVENING SCHOOLS, * . 74 
 
 VII. PRIZE SCHEMES, . . . .90 
 
 VIII. TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION, . . . .103 
 
 IX. GIRLS' INDUSTRIAL TRAINING, . . . ..114 
 
 X. THE NATIONAL SCHOOL SYSTEM IN IRELAND, . -135 
 
 XI. MIDDLE CLASS EDUCATION, . . . H5 
 
 XII. THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS OF THE PROFESSION.^, AND 
 
 MIDDLE CLASSES, . , . . J 59 
 
 824736
 
 iv Contents, 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 xin. THE TEACHERS' DIFFICULTIES, . . . .172 
 
 XIV. ON THE MOST EFFECTIVE MODE OF PROMOTING PRAC- 
 TICAL CHRISTIANITY THROUGH OUR PARISH 
 SCHOOLS, ... . 184 
 
 APPENDIX I. THE CONSCIENCE CLAUSE, . . . 197 
 
 II. AMSTERDAM PAPER ON OUR FACTORY LEGIS- 
 
 LATION, . . . . .202 
 
 III. THE WORKSHOP ACT OF 1867, . 211 
 
 IV. REPORT ON THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 
 
 OF THE PARIS EXHIBITION OF 1867, . 215
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 THE following chapters contain the substance of papers written 
 from time to time for special purposes on subjects connected 
 with Education. They pretend to no completeness. Their 
 only merit, if any, is, that they convey the fresh impressions of 
 one who was daily occupied in the examination of school- 
 children. 
 
 I was appointed to an inspectorship of schools in 1849, and 
 resigned it in 1864. Five years of comparative leisure have 
 since given me the opportunity, not only of " taking stock," as 
 it were, of my fifteen years' experience as an inspector, but also 
 of testing some of my conclusions in the care of a country 
 parish. A brief summary of these conclusions will form, per- 
 haps, the best preface to this volume. 
 
 Let me first speak of the education of the children of " the 
 independent poor" to adopt the phrase of the Royal. Com- 
 missioners of 1861 as distinguished from the "pauper and 
 vagrant" children on the one side, and from the children of the 
 " middle class" on the other side both of these latter classes 
 requiring separate treatment. As regards these children, then, 
 living in fixed homes, my conclusions are mainly the following: 
 
 i. If our purpose be, not merely to teach certain arts of 
 reading, writing, and ciphering, but also to civilise children by 
 wholesome training, the success of our school system, whatever 
 that system be, will depend on the character of the teachers.
 
 The Education of the People. 
 
 If kindly, God-fearing teachers be chosen, the schools will win 
 the confidence of the parents and prosper. If teachers of 
 another sort come to be appointed, the schools will fail, how- 
 ever perfect in other respects be their organisation. 
 
 2. Religious men and women will not, in our country, and 
 in that class from which our teachers must be drawn, seek the 
 office of teaching, unless direct religious instruction be included 
 in their work. If direct religious instruction cease to enter into 
 the daily routine, the character of our teachers will be altered for 
 the worse. Therefore, without going into the question whether 
 the children might not get a sufficient amount of religious in- 
 struction from their parents and Sunday-schools, I am per- 
 suaded that the day-school teachers would be deteriorated by 
 being relieved from responsibility for this portion of the 
 instruction. 
 
 3. For this, and for other reasons, it is very certain that 
 schools which had not a distinctly religious character would 
 not command the confidence of the parents. In the words of 
 die French Minister of Instruction of 1833, " By substituting 
 in schools what is called civil morality for morality based on 
 religion, we should not only be guilty of a great fault towards 
 the youthful population, but should excite most formidable 
 resistance ; we should render primary education an object of 
 suspicion, perhaps of antipathy, to a multitude of parents." * 
 
 In America, Mr Fraser reports "a growing feeling that more 
 distinctly religious teaching is required; and that even the 
 interests of morality are imperfectly attended to."t In 1857, 
 I spent some months in the south of France. I found the 
 Christian Brothers very generally supplanting the Government 
 teachers in the charge of the schools ; and I was everywhere 
 
 * Projet de Loi sur 1' Instruction primaire. 1833. 
 
 f Report to the "Schools' Inquiry Commission" on the Common School 
 System of the United States. 1867.
 
 Introductory. 3 
 
 told that the change was due to the strong feeling of the 
 parents, unwilling to trust their young children to secular 
 teachers. M. Guizot's prophecy was being fulfilled. Much 
 more would this be the case in England and Scotland. 
 
 4. The distinctly religious character of our schools can only 
 be preserved by what is called the " Denominational System ;" 
 i.e., by connecting our schools with the congregation. Before 
 the creation of the Education Department in 1839, it had come 
 to be a " cardinal idea that the school was an inseparable 
 element of the organisation of a Christian congregation."* 
 The government of that day most wisely adopted this consti- 
 tution of the day-school which had thus taken root and grown 
 up amongst us. But by its action in subsidising the school of 
 the congregation, the government developed a new idea, which 
 has come to be equally cardinal, viz., that the Nation also has 
 an interest in the school. 
 
 5. For twenty-five years these two ideas have been jostling 
 each other; the school managers struggling to preserve the 
 congregational character of their schools, the State trying more 
 and more to nationalise them. The denominations stipulate 
 that the distinctive religious character of their schools shall be 
 retained ; the State requires that the whole population be pro- 
 vided for, and contends that strictly denominational schools 
 can no more cover the area of a population than sixpenny 
 pieces can cover the area of a table, in other words, that 
 minorities too small to have a school of their own are left 
 unprovided for. The result ought to be, and must be, a com- 
 promise. And this compromise is to be found in what is called 
 a conscience clause. The true principle of a conscience clause 
 was admirably phrased by Mr Gladstone a few months ago : 
 " Perfect liberty of religious instruction to the teacher ; perfect 
 liberty of withdrawing his child from that instruction to the 
 
 * Sir James K. Shuttleworth, "Four Periods of Public Education," p. 440.
 
 The Education of the People. 
 
 parent." It was because the Education Department pressed 
 for more than this, and seemed inclined to guarantee the 
 child's liberty by infringing the teacher's liberty, that the con- 
 science clause was so strongly opposed, not only by extreme 
 men, but by many also of the more moderate clergy. * 
 
 6. But if the " religious difficulty " involved in a continuance 
 of the denominational system be thus obviated by a conscience 
 clause, there remains another difficulty its precariousness. 
 The denominational system is necessarily a voluntary system ; 
 and schools that depend in any large measure on voluntary 
 support, must ever be of precarious efficiency ; and can never, 
 therefore, (it is contended,) form the basis of a truly national 
 system of education. Let us see, then, how far we may hope 
 so to recruit and reinvigorate the voluntary system as to make it 
 a proper basis for a national education. My belief is that this 
 may be done by giving the parents a more direct personal interest 
 in the affairs of the school of their parish. Why have they 
 hitherto taken so little interest in it, careless about their chil- 
 dren's attendance, murmuring at its discipline, grudging the 
 school fee, and often preferring to pay a much higher fee to 
 some inferior private adventurer ? Chiefly, I am persuaded, 
 because they have been hitherto excluded altogether from a 
 share in the school management. 
 
 The parish school is the successor of the old " Charity 
 School ; " the associations of the old " Charity School " still 
 hang around it; and these associations the better sort of 
 parents do not like. The school is not an institution belong- 
 ing to their own class. It is provided for them by the gentle- 
 folk ; they have no voice in its management. The teacher and 
 
 * The letters printed in the Appendix to this volume will make my meaning 
 more clear. The modification of the conscience clause therein advocated was 
 adopted in the Duke of Marlborough's Education Bill of the last session, and 
 has, I believe, won the approval of most of the bishops and clergy.
 
 Introductory. 5 
 
 managers require from the parents, just as much as from their 
 children, implicit obedience to all their rules. If there is any- 
 thing in the working of these rules which they dislike or mis- 
 understand, the only way in which they can express their dis- 
 approval is by withdrawing their children ; and this they are 
 continually doing, to show their " independence," to the great 
 detriment of the school, and to the great hindrance of their chil- 
 dren's education. 
 
 I am persuaded, that the time has come for giving the v, 
 parents a direct share in the control of our schools, by admit- 
 ting them into our school constituencies. And this may be 
 done in the simplest possible way. In the trust-deeds of j 
 nearly all our schools there is now a clause, providing that the 
 committee of managers shall be elected by contributors of ten 
 shillings, at least, in the current year, to the funds of the school, 
 each contributor " being entitled to give one vote in respect 
 of each such sum of ten shillings." The clause also provides, 
 that the persons eligible as school managers shall be contribu- 
 tors of at least twenty shillings. 
 
 If it were ruled that the word " contribution" in these trust- 
 deeds, should be understood to include contribution in school 
 fees, (provided these school fees were paid quarterly in advance,) 
 numbers of parents would be at once taken into our school 
 constituencies; and any parent who chose to pay 53. a quarter 
 for one, or 23. 6d. each for two children,* would be eligible to 
 serve on the school committee. Thus, without any new law, 
 by a simple instruction of the Charity Commissioners, to be 
 explained by Her Majesty's Inspectors, a new character would 
 be at once given to the constitution of our schools. Those 
 who are now responsible for raising funds for the school would 
 have a direct interest in giving effect to the change ; for.where 
 
 * The average amount of the school fees in schools under inspection, aver- 
 aged, in 1866, 8s. 6d. a-head per annum.
 
 The Education of the People. 
 
 a considerable proportion of the parents were brought to avail 
 themselves of the privilege, the income arising from fees would 
 be thereby largely* increased. 
 
 7. But far beyond any pecuniary advantage, would be the 
 accession of moral strength which the school would thus re- 
 ceive. The parents would begin to regard it as an institution 
 belonging to themselves in a great measure. Hitherto, they 
 have felt that it is the parson, or the squire, or the mill-owner, 
 that is inviting them to send their children to his school. If 
 they send them to one school rather than to another, they have 
 a notion that they are in some way " obliging " the managers 
 of that school. Their attachment to a school in whose admin- 
 istration they have no concern is proportionately loose ; and 
 hence much of the evils complained of apathy, want of co- 
 operation with the teachers, irregular attendance, removal of 
 their children for the most frivolous reasons. 
 
 In the early years of my inspectorship, I laboured to induce 
 the school managers of my district to take the parents more 
 into their counsels, and give them some share in the school 
 management. 
 
 In my report for the year 1851, I called attention to the 
 benefits that might be expected from their co-operation : 
 
 " Of all the hindrances that thwart teachers in their efforts to 
 render schools more efficient, and of all the difficulties that besetmana- 
 gers in providing resources for their support, the greatest and most 
 universally complained of is, the want of co-operation on the part of 
 the children's parents. I have asked nearly every schoolmaster in 
 my district this question, ' What has been your greatest difficulty in 
 the conduct of this school ? ' and the answer has been, almost with- 
 out exception, ' The indifference of the parents.' Apathy, irregular- 
 ity of attendance, the early age at which they leave, all the char- 
 acteristic evils of our schools, are traceable, in a great measure, to 
 
 * Besides inducing parents to pay a slightly higher rate of fee, the pay- 
 ment in advance would save what is now lost by irregularity of payment.
 
 Introductory. 7 
 
 this one source. Again, I have often asked clergymen, whom I may 
 have found defraying a great part of their school expenses out of 
 very limited incomes, and raising money for the rest solely by their 
 own unwearied exertions, ' What prospect is there of this school 
 becoming in a greater degree self-supporting ? ' And in four cases 
 out of five the answer has been, ' If we could only teach the parents 
 to value the education offered to them, it might become so, or 
 nearly so, to-morrow.' Of two things I am convinced: (i.) that 
 "without parental co-operation, no endowments, no rate, no affluence 
 of school provision will really advance education ; and (2.) that 
 with parental co-operation, our schools, after being once fairly 
 started, might be in a great measure independent of any such ex- 
 traneous resources. The first of these propositions hardly needs 
 comment or support. Money will do much ; but it clearly will not 
 in itself make a good school. It may build the fabric, furnish it 
 with all possible appliances, and command the services of the best 
 teachers ; but it cannot fill the school with children, or secure their 
 regular attendance, or retain them to an advanced age, without the 
 concurrence of the parents. Unless the Legislature convert our day- 
 schools into boarding-schools, and compel the children into them, 
 (which will hardly be in England,) we cannot make ourselves inde- 
 pendent of the parents' co-operation ; nor indeed is it desirable. 
 That the parents ought to feel responsible for their children's edu- 
 cation is allowed by all. That the State, or the clergy, or a society, 
 or a patron, should take it out of their hands, and do it for them, 
 is clearly a second best expedient, an argument that something is 
 wrong, a concession to conditions (real or supposed) which we 
 must all deplore. Earnest men have ever felt this. Dr Chalmers, 
 perhaps one of the greatest authorities that I could cite on the 
 subject writes : ' The only way of thoroughly incorporating the 
 education of the young with the habit of families, is to make it form 
 a part of the family expenditure, and thus to make the interest, and 
 the watchfulness, and the jealousy of the parents, so many guaran- 
 tees for the diligence of the children ; and for these reasons do we 
 hold the establishment of free schools in a country to be a frail and 
 impolitic expedient.' (Works, vol. xii. p. 101.)" * 
 
 In my Report for the year 1853, I called attention to the 
 * Minutes of Committee of Council on Education, 1851-52, p. 724.
 
 8 The Education of the People. 
 
 success which had attended an effort made by a clergyman in 
 Staffordshire thus to associate some of the parents with him- 
 self in the management of the school. A few years later, I 
 tried the experiment myself with the best results, gaining thereby 
 a ready acquiescence in a proposal to double the school fees. 
 Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, who has probably done more than 
 any other living man to advance the cause of popular education, 
 has repeatedly recommended this admission of parents to a 
 share in school management. So did Dr Temple in the 
 " Oxford Essays " of 1856. 
 
 But the time was not then ripe for any such popular extension 
 of the basis on which our schools rest. In the last few years 
 apolitical interest in popular education has been awakened in 
 these classes which had little or no existence sixteen years ago. 
 Their recent admission to the Parliamentary Franchise will 
 greatly quicken this interest. Surely the time has come to admit 
 them freely to the electoral franchise of our national schools. 
 
 Thus in two ways both financially and constitutionally 
 the voluntary system would be reinvigorated by such an exten- 
 sion of the basis on which it rests. 
 
 Constitutionally, the school committee, (elected by the 
 parents as well as subscribers, and recruited by a few repre- 
 sentative parents,) would cease to be the unreal thing it often 
 now is. The recipients of the Government grant would no 
 longer be (as now) the clergyman and one or two charitable 
 members of his congregation, but an organic body more directly 
 representing those for whose good the public money is voted. 
 
 Financially, the schools would in a far larger measure than 
 heretofore become self-supporting. 
 
 8. This last position may seem to require further proof. 
 But the proof is at once forthcoming. A large class of schools 
 in my old district in which regularity of attendance and 
 punctuality of payment were assured by law I allude to the
 
 Introductory. 9 
 
 schools attended by half-timers under the Factory Acts be >/ 
 came, as a matter of fact, to a great extent self-supporting. 
 
 One-third of the school income was met by the Government 
 grant, and the remaining two-thirds almost covered by the 
 school pence. If the same regularity of attendance could be 
 made the rule in our rural districts, where the schools are of a 
 less expensive kind, one-half the school income might certainly 
 be realised by the parents' payments. 
 
 The expense of a school in country districts never need 
 exceed 253. a head, (except in very small schools which are ' 
 costly luxuries,) 203. in salaries, 53. in other expenses. Of 
 this 255., the Government grant at the present rate ought to 
 realise ios., and the school fees, (if the attendance were full 
 and regular,) another ios., leaving the school dependent on 
 voluntary subscriptions to the amount of one-fifth of its income 
 only.* If it be urged that ios. a-head is too much to expect 
 from the poorer class of parents, I have three answers : 
 
 First, that, as I said at the beginning of this chapter, I am 
 only considering the class of independent labourers, leaving the 
 pauper, quasi-pauper,*and vagrant classes for separate treatment. 
 
 Second, that there is nothing to prevent charitable people or 
 trustees of charitable[funds from helping orphans, widows, or par- 
 ents of very large families in the matter of their school payments. 
 
 And thirdly, that I propose to give the poor parent a direct 
 pecuniary interest in the schooling of his child. 
 
 This last proposal I will explain in the following section. 
 
 9. The time is ripe, I am persuaded, for rendering the prin- 
 ciple of the Factory Acts the principle, that is, of indirect 
 compulsion of making some amount of schooling a condition " 
 of wage labour co-extensive with our labouring population. 
 
 * See the specimen Balance Sheets under the Revised Code at p. 53, 54. 
 The actual average expenditure of aided schools in 1867 was i, 6s. 8d. a-head, 
 of which 8s. 6d. was met by the grant, 8s. 6d. by school-fees, 95. 8d. by 
 subscriptions.
 
 io The Education of the People. 
 
 How this may best be done will be discussed in the follow- 
 ing chapter. Suffice it here to say that if inspection of 
 primary schools were made universal, as it ought to be, it 
 would involve the inspectors in but little additional trouble 
 to give every child who passed his or her examination in the 
 4th Standard * of the Revised Code a certificate to that effect. 
 This certificate would be to the young English labourer what 
 his livret f is to the French workman. I would make it penal 
 to employ any boy or girl under a given age (say 15) in hired 
 labour of any kind without it. Such a law, well worked, would 
 do more than anything else to teach our independent labourers 
 to reckon some amount of schooling for their children among 
 the necessities of life. 
 
 io. Alongside of any such enactment, making education a uni- 
 versal condition of juvenile employment, common justice would 
 require two things : (i.) that decently good schools should be 
 everywhere accessible ; (2.) that, while the wage-earning boy or 
 girl is thus brought within the restraint of law, the idler be not 
 allowed to go free. 
 
 Ar\d,Jirsf, our bad schools must be improved, and our blank 
 places (if any such be still left) must be supplied with schools. 
 What I have seen done in a hundred neglected parishes, by 
 the simple process of sending into them a public inspector, 
 who was also something of a propagandist, convinces me that 
 
 * Fluent reading, writing from dictation on paper, and easy money sums. 
 
 f* This livret is a small book issued by the Prefecture in Paris, or by the 
 mayors in the departments. On the first page is set forth a full personal de- 
 scription of the recipient, together with his name, age, birthplace, and condi- 
 tion of life ; the remaining pages contain blank forms to be filled up by the 
 people in whose service he is employed. It is a penal offence punishable by a 
 fine of 5oof. for a first offence, and looof. for a second, to engage any servant, 
 workman, or workwoman, unprovided with a book of this kind ; and the master 
 is furthermore bound under penalties to fill up the blank forms in the book, 
 stating the day upon which the man or woman entered his service, and the day 
 on which he or she left it.
 
 Introductory. 1 1 
 
 much, if not all, that is needed to complete the network of 
 schools all over the country, might be accomplished by our 
 present system of voluntary effort and liberal building grants, 
 if only inspection were made universal. And when I speak 
 of inspection being universal, I mean not only that all existing 
 schools should be visited,. but that every parish should be 
 visited and reported on. If all places where schools were 
 wanting or manifestly insufficient, were reported to a Minister 
 of Instruction, and, through him, to the Lord-Lieutenant or 
 Chairman of Quarter Sessions of the county, and also (at the >/" 
 discretion of the Minister) to the Bishop of the Diocese, my 
 belief is that the blanks would be rapidly filled up, and all our 
 schools brought up to a decent level. At all events, it seems 
 to me mere folly to import into our country a new-fangled rate 
 system, which must, as it spreads, inevitably dry up and kill 
 for ever the voluntary system, until we have fairly tried whether 
 the old system may not be thus stimulated into completing its 
 work. My tenth conclusion, then, is this, that if inspection 
 were made universal, and building grants increased, if need be, 
 for a few years, to the old rate of 45. per square foot, with v 
 ;ico for teacher's residence, (i.e., to nearly half the cost of a 
 plain building,) the country would be speedily covered with 
 an adequate amount of schools. 
 
 ii. One other thing must in justice go along with any such 
 universal extension of the principle of the Factory Acts. While 
 we require the education of the wage-earning child, we must not 
 let the idler escape us, else it might be said that the law was 
 offering a premium to idleness. But here I take leave of the 
 class of which I have been thus far exclusively speaking the 
 independent, industrious poor and come to the class below 
 them the quasi-pauper and vagrant class, whose children, as I 
 said, need separate treatment. 
 
 Now, able-bodied children, who have been allowed to grow
 
 1 2 The Education of the People. 
 
 up to twelve or fourteen years of age, without the very 
 moderate amount of schooling that would procure for them 
 their livret or certificate for employment, are in no good way, 
 and may surely without unfairness be considered to belong 
 to the vagrant class. As such, I would commit them to Certi- 
 fied Industrial Schools, under Mr Adderley's Act, (20 and 
 21 Viet., c. 48,) which would need amendment in one or two 
 of its provisions. Lest the offer of board and lodging at such 
 a school should seem to be a premium on parental neglect, I 
 would have no children so committed until their fourteenth 
 year, i.e., until they have reached an age at which their services 
 begin to be pecuniarily valuable to their parents ; and then only 
 for such a period as shall suffice to give them that elementary 
 amount of schooling required for the employment ticket ; and, 
 wherever practicable, I would enforce the clause, (sec. 15,) 
 which recovers 33. a-week from the parent for the child's main- 
 tenance. As to the children of quasi-pauper parents, their case 
 would be met by making Mr Evelyn Denison's Act (18 and 19 
 Viet., c. 34) compulsory. This Act enables the guardians, if they 
 deem proper, to pay out of the poor-rate for the schooling of the 
 children of any out-door pauper. The Royal Commissioners of 
 1 86 1 recommended that this Act should be made compulsory, 
 and that such schooling be made a condition of out-door relief. 
 The amendment of these two Acts would provide a system of 
 direct compulsion for the children of the vagrant and pauper 
 classes ; and such a system seems to be the just and necessary 
 supplement of the system of indirect compulsion, which I am 
 recommending for the children of the independent labourers. 
 
 12. Thus for pauper, and vagrant, and homeless children, 
 we should have a compulsory system of education supported out 
 of our poor rate, borough rate, or county rate. Relieved of 
 these, the schools for the independent labouring classes might 
 safely be left to the voluntary system, subsidised, as at present,
 
 Introductory. 1 3 
 
 by Government grants, and reinvigorated in the two ways that 
 I have indicated viz., (i.) by the admission of the parents to 
 a share in the school management ; and (2.) by extending to 
 the whole country the wholesome principle of making some 
 amount of schooling a legal condition of juvenile employment. 
 
 13. But when all this is done, something will yet be wanting 
 to relieve the dead level of primary instruction, and to impart 
 to it that element of generous emulation without which no 
 system of education can have life and vigour. It was with this 
 view that the Staffordshire and Shropshire Prize schemes were 
 instituted seventeen years ago, and to a certain extent they have 
 supplied what is needed. About ^500 have been annually 
 
 subscribed by the iron and coal masters and manufacturers of 
 
 * / 
 
 those counties, and given in prizes after competitive examina- 
 tion. Some general rules for the administration of such prize 
 schemes will be found in chapter vii. But while I watched the 
 operation of these prize schemes with very great satisfaction, I 
 was all along aware that, for boys at anyrate, a far better form 
 of prize would be an exhibition to some school of higher in- \. 
 struction. What I saw of the foreign systems of technical 
 instruction, as a juror at the Paris Exhibition of 1867, quickened 
 and helped to give shape to this desire. Chapter viii. of this 
 volume was written on my return. Since then Mr Whitworth's 
 noble endowments, it may well be hoped, have given a fresh 
 impulse to the efforts of the Government to organise a com- 
 plete system of instruction in applied science for our own 
 country. The commercial importance of this is confessed on 
 all hands. The moral effect of thus opening a career to the ^ 
 more intelligent of our scholars, will, I am persuaded, in its 
 reaction on the primary school, be no less valuable. 
 
 14. For the daughters of our labouring class a unique type s 
 of school has grown up in England under the fostering influences 
 of the wives and daughters of our clergy, and landed proprietors,
 
 14 The Education of the People. 
 
 and master manufacturers half intellectual, half industrial 
 which really leaves nothing to be desired. Neither the Con- 
 tinent of Europe nor the United States of America can show 
 schools for girls at all comparable to the better sort of English 
 girls' schools ; so thoroughly domestic in their character, so 
 wholesome in their moral influence, so felicitously adapted to 
 the best instincts of our home-loving people. We owe these 
 schools, be it remembered, to the voluntary system. Any 
 uniform, municipal, rate-supported system would be fatal to 
 them ; and their loss would be irreparable. Of course, in small 
 parishes mixed schools must be a necessity ; but I am more 
 than ever persuaded that the separate girls' school is best, not 
 only for the sake of the industrial training, but morally. I 
 frequently insisted on this in my annual Reports : " It appears 
 to me that girls' schools have a great advantage over boys' 
 ' schools in the fact that nearly half the day is spent in industrial 
 work. Independently of the practical value of skill in needle- 
 work, it would be well worth while, for the sake of the effect 
 on the girls' characters, to occupy half their time at school in 
 this way. No one can have marked the quiet, domestic aspect 
 of one of our better girls' schools when arranged for needle- 
 work, the scrupulous cleanliness which their work necessitates, 
 the continual interchange of kindly offices, and that most 
 wholesome union, which a boys' school seldom presents, of 
 industry with repose, of a cheerful relaxation of mind, with the 
 most careful and decorous order, without seeing at once that it. 
 is here rather than during the morning lessons that the character 
 of the future woman is formed. When we add to these considera- 
 tions the paramount importance of skill in needlework, picturing 
 to ourselves the contrast that a few short years will show between 
 the slattern, in her cheap tawdry shop finery, and the white- 
 aproned tidy housewife, with her knitting in her hands, or a 
 shirt for her husband in her lap, we shall, I think, be more
 
 Introductory. \ 5 
 
 than ever anxious that this most valuable department of school- 
 work should not be neglected It has often occurred to me 
 that one serious objection to mixed schools is the great proba- 
 bility of the needlework being slighted. The girls thus brought 
 into competition with the boys regret the time spent away from 
 their books. And, besides, the afternoon sempstress will appear 
 to disadvantage when compared with the more intellectual 
 morning teacher ; her authority will come to be slighted, and 
 the discipline will be impaired. I have often found that in 
 these schools the girls get a notion that the needlework is of 
 little or no consequence, and with few exceptions all the schools 
 that produce the best needlewomen in my district are separate 
 girls' schools." (Report for 1855.) In chapter ix. of this volume 
 some further remarks will be found on the subject of girls' 
 industrial training. The point I wish here to insist on is, that 
 all hope of further progress in this direction depends on the con- 
 tinuance of our present type of English Girls' School. 
 
 15. I come, lastly, to the subject of middle class education. 
 But this subject seems to be exhausted by the recent Report 
 of the Schools Inquiry Commission. For a few years, I under- 
 took the occasional inspection of middle class schools for the 
 University of Cambridge. The results of this brief experience 
 were laid before the Commissioners, and will be found em- 
 bodied in chapter xi. of this volume. In this matter we have 
 little to learn from foreign countries. As with primary, so with 
 secondary schools, our hope lies in reforming what is indi- 
 genous, rather than in importing what is foreign to the genius 
 of our people. 
 
 We may be deeply thankful that, in our country, what may 
 be called the parental view of education has ever taken a 
 stronger hold of the national conscience than the civil or poli- 
 tical. The home is to our nation what the cell is to the plant 
 the essential element of its organisation. Beyond all things,
 
 1 6 The Education of the People. 
 
 let our schools possess the confidence of the homes from which 
 they draw. The more civilised the homes, the less need the 
 Government interfere with the education of the children. As 
 we ascend through the several gradations of schools, the con- 
 trol of the State should become less and less. This has been 
 the governing thought of the preceding pages. 
 
 In dealing with the lowest stratum of the population, I would 
 have compulsory education, pure and simple, and supported by 
 rates, the State being in loco par entis. In the next stratum the 
 Privy Council system seems to hit the happy mean between 
 central control and voluntary local effort. In the middle 
 schools, the Government has little to contribute except the 
 utilisation of existing endowments. In the higher schools, 
 emancipation from antiquated statutes, and absolute liberty to 
 follow the laws of supply and demand, is all that is desirable. 
 
 Following this order, I will briefly indicate, in conclusion, the 
 reforms that seem to me needed : 
 
 1. The amendment of the Industrial Schools' Act, and of 
 
 Mr Evelyn Denison's Act, and the entire separation of 
 the Parochial Union Schools from the workhouse. 
 
 2. The creation of a Ministry of Instruction, with authority 
 
 to institute an exhaustive inspection of the educational 
 resources and necessities of the country, so far as the 
 labouring classes are concerned. 
 
 3. The enforcement of a wisely-considered conscience clause 
 
 in all primary schools receiving Government aid. 
 
 4. The representation of the parents on the school committee. 
 
 5. The extension to the whole country of the principle of 
 
 requiring some amount of schooling as a legal condi- 
 tion of the hiring of young people. 
 
 6. A development of the means of technical instruction 
 
 under the auspices of the Science and Art Department. 
 
 7. An extension of the powers of the Charity Commission.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOW FAR NATIONAL EDUCATION SHOULD BE COMPULSORY. 
 
 WHEN we speak of the " Compulsory System," as applied to 
 Education, the phrase is equivocal. It may be used as the 
 opposite of the " Voluntary System," meaning a system under 
 which the State compels certain persons to establish and main- 
 tain schools, by rates or otherwise, for the benefit of the poor 
 of their neighbourhood ; or, it may mean a system under which 
 parents are compelled under pain of fine or the like to send 
 their children to school. Both these systems of compulsion 
 have their advocates. It is with the second of the two that 
 this chapter will chiefly deal. But as the two are closely con- 
 nected, I may be permitted, perhaps, to say a few words first 
 on the compulsory, as opposed to the voluntary system of 
 school maintenance. 
 
 The progress of England, in respect of popular education 
 during the last twenty years, may be thus briefly described. 
 Twenty years ago numbers of parishes were without day-schools; 
 and of the schools that existed only a few were under any 
 public supervision. It may now be said that schools of some 
 sort are within reach of all, and that one-half of them have 
 been brought under inspection, and raised to a fairly satisfac- 
 tory condition both as to buildings and as to efficiency. If it 
 be asked how this great change has been effected, the answer 
 is obvious. Public opinion has been more and more brought 
 to bear on the subject, finding expression in a system of State 
 subsidies, greatly improving the schools of those parishes that 
 
 B
 
 1 8 The Education of the People. 
 
 have availed themselves of aid, and shaming the rest into 
 having a school of some sort to show for their children. That 
 one-half of our parishes are still content with miserably in- 
 efficient schools is simply due to the extreme caution with 
 which the State has proceeded. It may be confidently asserted 
 that public opinion is now ripe for completing the work so well 
 begun, and pushing our admirable system of inspection into all 
 the parishes of the land. If daylight were thus let into all our 
 dark places, if all schools were brought under the wholesome 
 stimulus of publicity, the improvement already effected in one- 
 half of them would soon be forthcoming in all ; and that with- 
 out any other resources than those furnished by the Voluntary 
 System supplemented by Government grants. " Where there 's 
 a will there 's a way" has been unmistakably true in the matter 
 of schools ; and to create the will mere publicity is sufficient. 
 If complete reports of the educational condition of all the 
 parishes in the country were annually published under the 
 authority of a minister of public instruction, our landed pro- 
 prietors, and congregations, and municipal bodies would soon 
 bring up all our parishes to a fair level in respect of school 
 accommodation. England has now a better and more abund- 
 ant supply of trained teachers than any country in Europe, 
 thanks to the twenty years' operation of the pupil teacher 
 system. Whenever there is an opening for a teacher, a very 
 competent teacher may now be found to fill it. This was far 
 from being the case twenty years ago. I say then that for 
 getting schools established in adequate numbers all over the 
 country we need not yet despair of the Voluntary System. The 
 work is so nearly accomplished that we may well rely on In- 
 spection and Government grants for filling up all the remaining 
 blanks.* 
 
 * I assume that in all schools a conscience clause (giving perfect liberty of 
 instruction to the teacher and perfect liberty of withdrawal to the parent) should
 
 How far Education should be Compulsory. 19 
 
 But, the schools being established, two yet more important 
 questions remain how are we to maintain them financially, 
 and how are we to fill them with children 1 ? These are the 
 two questions which of late years have been principally occu- 
 pying our legislators. To meet the first, several schemes for 
 local school-rates have been brought forward, but all unsuc- 
 cessfully. To meet the second, many people desire that 
 attendance at school should be made compulsory. 
 
 My belief is, that if we can only succeed in solving this 
 second problem how to get our schools filled with children 
 we may safely let alone that first problem how to get them 
 supported. Let me try in a few words to justify this belief. 
 
 The present system of annual grants secures to a fairly good 
 school one -third of its annual cost, and the school pence 
 another third. Both these amounts might be increased. For 
 the remainder it is no hardship, but rather a most desirable 
 necessity, to depend on voluntary local subscriptions. This 
 last element of a school's income it is which really deter- 
 mines the question of its government. The school sub- 
 scriptions keep alive in its neighbourhood an interest in 
 its welfare, and place the control of its affairs in the best 
 possible hands a committee of the most benevolent people of 
 the place.* I say, therefore, that dependence on the Volun- 
 tary System within these very moderate limits to the extent, 
 say, of one-fourth of the school income is not an evil but a 
 benefit. The reason why so many are despairing of the Volun- 
 tary System, and wishing to supplant it by a system of local 
 rates, is that practically we are depending on it for one-half and 
 often more than one-half of the school expenditure, and this is 
 
 be inserted in the Trusts. This is clearly necessary to give Denominational 
 schools that national character which the public requires. (See p. 4, note.) 
 
 * In the School Committee I would gladly see a few of the parents included. 
 (See p. 5.)
 
 2O The Education of the People. 
 
 a strain it will not bear. So people tired of begging are crying 
 out for the comfortable security of a rate. The far better 
 remedy is to increase the fund arising from school fees ; and to 
 do this we need not increase the amount paid per child, but 
 only secure a fuller and more regular attendance of children. 
 Thus the problem of school maintenance resolves itself into 
 the problem of school attendance. If the Legislature can 
 only get the schools well filled, they may, as I said, safely 
 leave their finances on their present footing. 
 
 I have purposely approached the question of " Compulsory 
 Attendance" from this point of view in its connexion, namely, 
 with the financial question because it leads at once to the 
 answer which I believe the practical sense of England will give 
 to it. We can afterwards approach it from two other distinct 
 points of view ; and if all three approaches seem to lead up 
 to one and the same solution, this solution may be accepted 
 safely as the best. 
 
 Compulsory attendance may be of two kinds, direct and 
 indirect. A law of direct compulsion, pure and simple, may be 
 found in Prussia and in the New England States of America. 
 Any parent neglecting to send his child to school is to be fined 
 or imprisoned. In Prussia " registers of children within the 
 school age (6-14) are kept by the police, and periodically 
 compared by boards appointed for that purpose with the school 
 registers of attendance, and non-attendance is punishable by 
 fine or imprisonment of the parent." (Report of the Commis- 
 sioners of '1861, vol. i. p. 192.) 
 
 In Massachusetts " Every person having under his control 
 a child between the ages of eight and fourteen years, shall annu- 
 ally send such child to some public school at least 1 2 weeks, 6 
 weeks of such time being consecutive ; and for every neglect of 
 such duty (to be reported by the Truant Officers) the party
 
 How far Education should be Compulsory. 21 
 
 offending shall forfeit a sum not exceeding twenty dollars." 
 (Mr Fraser's Report to the Schools Inquiry Commission, 1867 
 p. 26.) 
 
 It need hardly be said that the requirement of school fees 
 cannot co-exist with such direct compulsion. " Rate-bills, as 
 they are called in America school fees as we call them in 
 England do not appear to be permissible under the law of 
 Massachusetts." (Ib., p. 22.) " Compulsory attendance is the 
 co-relative of free schools" (Ib. p. 39.) 
 
 Briefly, then, a system of direct compulsion involves neces. 
 sarily the American system of local rating ; and as local rating 
 and voluntary subscriptions could not co-exist the one killing 
 the other necessarily it would revolutionise not only the 
 financial system, but also with it the management of our schools. 
 For this revolution in the constitution of our schools England 
 is by no means prepared. 
 
 Regarded from this first point of view, therefore, direct com- 
 pulsion seems to be most objectionable. 
 
 Let us, in the second place, regard it from another point of 
 view from the labourer's cottage. When I hear politicians 
 invoking a system of compulsory education as the panacea of 
 all our social evils, I often wish I could take them into one of 
 our poor village homes, and let them there try to work out 
 their plan for a single week. Go into any one of those cottages 
 where there are two or three children between the ages of nine 
 and twelve. They are returned in my political friend's statistics 
 as " idle," being " neither at school nor at work." But what 
 is the fact 1 They are as indispensable to the home life of 
 that cottage as if they were earning three or four shillings a 
 week. One is going errands most necessary errands with 
 the father's meals, to the apothecary three miles off, to the 
 village shop. Another collects half the fuel they use, or acorns 
 for the pig, or manure for the garden. A third, and all in their
 
 22 The Education of the People. 
 
 turn, " mind the house," " mind the fire," " mind the baby/ 
 while the mother is out. We must think twice or thrice before 
 we roughly try to apply compulsory school attendance to such 
 a home as that. To require those parents to give up their 
 children's services would be simply tantamount to requiring 
 them to keep a servant girl at a cost of 25. 6d. a-week out of an 
 income of 1 25. a-week. 
 
 With a profoundly true insight into the real conditions of the 
 problem did the Prince Consort in 1857 thus speak of it: 
 " What measures can be brought to bear upon this evil (of 
 non-attendance at school) is a most delicate question, and will 
 require the nicest handling, for there you cut into the very 
 quick of the working man's condition. His children are not 
 only his offspring, to be reared for a future independent 
 position, but they constitute part of his productive power, and 
 work with him for the staff of life. The daughters especially 
 are the handmaids of the house, the assistants of the mother, 
 the nurses of the younger children, the aged and the sick. To 
 deprive the labouring family of their help would be almost to 
 paralyse its domestic existence." 
 
 Regarded, then, from this second point of view from what 
 may be called the home point of view direct compulsion 
 would in numberless cases be an intolerable hardship. 
 
 But there is a third aspect of the matter which a practical 
 legislator would do well to consider. There are some delight- 
 fully simple people, who seem to attribute to an Act of Parlia- 
 ment a kind of self-enforcing virtue of its own, imagining that 
 when once Queen, Lords, and Commons have said such and 
 such a practice shall be illegal, that practice ipso facto ceases 
 through the length and breadth of the land. Is drunkenness 
 a great social evil ? " Forbid it by Act of Parliament." So 
 they did in the State of Maine, and what is the practical effect ? 
 Simply that when one thirsty soul invites another thirsty soul
 
 How far Education should be Compulsory. 23 
 
 to a glass of gin, instead of saying, " Will you take a drink ? " 
 they have adopted the phrase, " Will you break the law with 
 me?" (Mr Fraser's Report, p. 39.) So it is with a com- 
 pulsory school law. Where people are inclined to obey it, it is 
 obeyed ; where they are disinclined, the law is a dead letter. 
 Such is the gist of Mr Eraser's " Report on America," and of 
 Mr Pattison's " Report on Prussia." Listen to the former 
 summing up his remarks on the compulsory law of Massachusetts, 
 (p. 38,) " The law, as will be observed, is emphatic enough, but 
 I believe that its provisions are nearly, if not quite, inopera- 
 tive. Public sentiment, so omnipotent in America, is not with 
 it, and it stands, therefore, almost a dead letter on the statute 
 book." 
 
 Mr Fraser also reports that in New York city there is a de- 
 partment of the police force, specially charged with the duty 
 of looking after truants, called " Truant Officers." But they are 
 only seven in number, " and quite unable to contend with the 
 mass of truancy and absenteeism that is asserted to exist in that 
 city." (P. 38, note.) In Prussia, Mr Pattison reported, that 
 though education might be said to be universal, it would be 
 the greatest mistake to suppose that this is due to the com- 
 pulsory law. " Though non-attendance is punishable by fine 
 and imprisonment of the parent, these regulations are practi- 
 cally unimportant, because they are rarely called into opera- 
 tion." "The schooling is compulsory only in name ; the school 
 has taken so deep a root in the social habit of the German 
 people, that were the law repealed to-morrow, no one doubts 
 that the schools would continue as full as they are now." 
 (Report of 1 86 1, p. 192.) On which the Commissioners re- 
 mark " It is thus obvious that the present state of education 
 in Prussia illustrates the results of a compulsory system, which, 
 having been established under a state of society altogether 
 unlike our own, has lasted long enough to have become super-
 
 24 The Education of the People. 
 
 fluous. It proves nothing as to the effects of introducing legal 
 compulsion into a nation previously unaccustomed to it." If 
 we turn to Switzerland, we find Mr Arnold reporting that in 
 the Canton Vaud, where the law is most stringent, his inquiries 
 led him to doubt whether the law is ever " really executed at 
 all;" and his conclusion is, that though primary instruction is 
 most prosperous in the Canton Vaud, "the making it compulsory 
 by law has not added one iota to its prosperity. Its prosperity 
 is due to the general comfort and intelligence of the popula- 
 tion. Where these are equally present, as in Geneva, the 
 prosperity of education is equal, though there is no compul- 
 sion ; where these fail, the compulsion of the law is powerless 
 to prevent the inevitable check inflicted on education by their 
 absence." (P. 195.) 
 
 In England, with a large class of our population really 
 struggling for subsistence, and with our habit of almost ab- 
 solute domestic liberty, it may be accepted as certain that the 
 Duke of Newcastle's Commissioners were right in their con- 
 clusion that " the Government would not be seconded by 
 public opinion in instituting and maintaining the minute system 
 of supervision, registration, detection of defaulters, and enforce- 
 ment of penalties, which would be requisite in order to carry 
 into effect a general system of compulsory education." 
 
 Horace sums it up, " Quid leges, sine moribus van&, pro- 
 fiicunt ? " Legislation is useless unless the popular conscience 
 go with it. And in England, alas ! that " Magnum pauperies 
 opprobrium" sadly dulls the conscience in the matter of chil- 
 dren's schooling " Virtutisque mam deserii ardutz" 
 
 Thus approaching the question of direct compulsion from 
 three several points of view, we are led to conclude 
 
 i. From the school point of view, that it would neces- 
 sitate an entire revolution in the constitution of our 
 schools.
 
 How far Education should be Compulsory. 25 
 
 2. From the parent's point of view, that it would involve 
 
 a great amount of hardship on the families of our 
 labourers. 
 
 3. From the legislative point of view, that the feeling of 
 
 the country not going with it, such a law would be 
 practically inoperative. 
 
 If this be so, if a system of direct compulsion would be 
 (i.) incompatible with our existing system of school manage- 
 ment, (2.) would be oppressive to poor parents, and (3.) would 
 be ineffectual in remedying the evil it was intended to cure, it 
 is tolerably certain that the practical sense of the nation will 
 reject any such legislative experiment. 
 
 Direct compulsion being out of the question, a system of 
 indirect compulsion remains to be considered. By indirect 
 compulsion is meant the plan of making a certain amount of 
 schooling a condition of employment for hire up to a certain 
 age. In recommendation of this system three things may be 
 said : 
 
 i st. It has been tried and found practicable in our manu- 
 facturing districts. 
 2d. It has there had a considerable effect in promoting 
 
 education. 
 
 3d. It is capable of indefinite improvement and extension. 
 A series of Acts of Parliament during the last quarter of a 
 century, beginning with the Factory Acts of 1833 and 1844, 
 and ending with the Workshop Act of 1867, have gradually 
 brought trade after trade within the purview of these educa- 
 tional requirements.* And now it may be said generally, that 
 no child under the age of twelve or thirteen can be employed 
 in any kind of manufacturing process without receiving some 
 amount of schooling. As to the quantity and quality of the 
 schooling required, these several Acts vary in their conditions ; 
 * See Appendices II. and III. at the end of this volume.
 
 26 The Education of the People. 
 
 they vary also widely in the degree in which they have been 
 found practically operative. Those that relate to cotton and 
 woollen factories and potteries are working successfully and 
 beneficially; the Printworks Act, the Mines Act, and I fear 
 the Workshops Act, are of little or no educational value. Still 
 the experience gained in all these cases is valuable, and there 
 is no reason why the Acts that have proved unsuccessful should 
 not be amended. 
 
 It remains to extend this kind of legislation to that large 
 field of juvenile employment which yet lies outside the pale of 
 the law agriculture. A royal commission is now inquiring 
 how this may best be done. Of course it is more difficult to 
 enforce such a law over scattered farms than in workshops or 
 factories. But I see no reasonable objection to a law requir- 
 ing that no boys or girls under fifteen years should be hired 
 for farm service of any kind, unless they could produce certifi- 
 cates, signed by a teacher and countersigned by a Government 
 School Inspector, that they had passed an examination in the 
 fourth standard of the Revised Code.* Of course, such a law 
 would require, as a precedent condition, that all schools should 
 be under inspection. But this in the opening of this chapter I 
 showed to be for other reasons most desirable, and in harmony 
 with the ripened feeling of the country. The pressure of this 
 requirement on such struggling parents as the Prince Consort 
 described in the passage before quoted, would be so slight as 
 to constitute no hardship. The school attendance requisite to 
 enable a child to pass in the fourth standard might be taken at 
 times least inconvenient to the parent. A couple of years of 
 steady attendance in the infants' school, and then an alternate 
 day attendance, or an attendance during the six winter months, 
 for three or four more years, would be sufficient to qualify most 
 children to pass in the fourth standard by the time they were ten 
 
 * Fluent reading, writing from dictation on paper, and easy money sums.
 
 How far Education should be Compulsory. 27 
 
 or eleven years old. An example made, here and there, of a 
 child being deprived of a situation for non-fulfilment of this 
 simple condition, would soon teach all the parents of the neigh- 
 bourhood to look carefully to the early schooling of their chil- 
 dren, and in a few years no parent would like his child to 
 leave school without his " certificate." I am sure, from my 
 knowledge of our rural parishes, that such a simple law as this 
 would soon work without any friction whatever, would be- 
 come, in short, after eight or ten years, the custom of the 
 country, carrying with it the feeling and approval of both em- 
 ployers and employed. 
 
 With "juvenile-labour laws" of this kind, made commen- 
 surate with the whole field of children's employment, whether 
 manufacturing, domestic, or agricultural, we should have 
 brought almost all our labouring population under the stimulus 
 of what I have called a system of " indirect compulsion" in the 
 matter of their children's schooling. I say " almost all" the 
 population, and not " all," because there is a residue whom 
 such laws will never reach ; and such residue (it will be ob- 
 jected) are precisely the class that we most need to reach, 
 I mean the idle ones. Vagabond or reckless parents, who do 
 not care that their children should seek regular employment, 
 would be untouched by such laws. They would require to be 
 supplemented, therefore, with a special view to such parents, 
 by other Acts. And the lines of such supplemental Acts are 
 already laid down in Mr Adderley's Industrial Schools Act, 
 (1857,) and Mr Evelyn Denison's Out-Door Pauper Act, (1855.) 
 The first Act empowers magistrates to commit to a certified 
 industrial school, all children brought before them as vagrants, 
 or as being "in no good way." The other Act empowers 
 guardians to pay for the schooling of the children of out-door 
 paupers out of the rates, and might be amended to make their 
 attendance at school a condition of such relief. Both Acts are
 
 28 The Education of the People. 
 
 permissive only. And it has been thought that the feeling of 
 the country was not ripe for making them compulsory. Now 
 that the law has come to deal with the children of the in- 
 dependent respectable labourer all over the country, I am 
 persuaded that the public will see the equity as well as policy 
 of tightening its compulsion of the children of the vagrant 
 class.* As I said, these latter Acts are the proper supplement 
 of those juvenile-labour laws. The two together will give us 
 precisely that system of indirect compulsion which the welfare of 
 the nation needs, and by filling our schools with a larger and 
 more regular attendance of children, enable them to become 
 more self-supporting, and so solve the problem of school 
 maintenance, which, at the opening of this chapter, I purposely 
 connected with the question of school attendance. 
 
 Thus, to sum up, I contend that (i.) the enforcement of 
 inspection in neglected parishes, and (2.) a further extension 
 of those laws by which we are now indirectly stimulating 
 school attendance, will be found sufficient to ensure the edu- 
 cation of our labourers' children. And I contend also that 
 this method of indirect compulsion has three paramount merits 
 as compared with direct compulsion. 
 
 1. It has been proved practicable, which direct compul- 
 
 sion has never yet been shown to be. 
 
 2. It does not alienate the parents, as any attempt at 
 
 direct compulsion certainly would. 
 
 3. It leaves untouched the constitution of our schools 
 
 which a system of direct compulsion must certainly 
 
 revolutionise. 
 
 On the first point, the impracticability of direct compulsion, 
 I can only express a strong opinion. Till trial has been 
 made none can say positively that the thing is impossible. 
 * See recommendations of the Royal Commissioners of 1861, vol. i. 383, 414.
 
 How far Education should be Compulsory. 29 
 
 On the second and third points I am content to rest my 
 case. 
 
 Our English schools have grown up amongst us as plants 
 native to our soil. The mothers of England are accustomed 
 to them, and give them their confidence. 
 
 Let us think twice and thrice before, in our impatience to 
 see more fruit, we pull them up to make way for a new-fangled 
 thing which might never take root, or taking root, might be 
 found to bear fruit of a kind that our nation is far from 
 desiring.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 NEED OF ONE SIMPLE LAW FOR THE REGULATION OF 
 CHILDREN'S LABOUR. 
 
 THE further extension of the educational principle of the Fac- 
 tory Acts, advocated in the last chapter, forces upon us the 
 question whether we should not do more wisely to extend it at 
 once to all hired service of children in manufactures, or in 
 agriculture, or in domestic service ; and so give universality to 
 the principle of making some amount of education a condition 
 of children's employment. 
 
 For many years thoughtful people have seen that sooner or 
 later this question must be raised and seriously answered by 
 the nation one way or another, for until it be answered all 
 other educational questions must be thereby embarrassed. 
 Raised it was, prematurely perhaps, by Mr Adderley's Bill in 
 1860 : answered it has not been. That Bill was rejected chiefly 
 because of the state of the public business at the period of the 
 session to which its second reading had been postponed, and 
 also because honourable members wished for more time to 
 consider the subject. Mr Gladstone, Sir James Graham, Sir 
 George Lewis, and others who opposed the second reading, 
 expressly said that they by no means wished to be understood 
 to negative its principle. 
 
 That the problem is a very difficult one may be at once ad- 
 mitted. It involves some of the most vexed questions of poli- 
 tical philosophy, leading up to that fundamental controversy
 
 Restriction of Childrens Labour. 31 
 
 which has divided political thinkers in all ages " What are 
 the functions of the State 1 What is the proper end of Govern- 
 ment ? Is it merely the protection of person and property ] 
 or is it the highest good of the greatest number 1 " 
 
 If this particular question of educational policy is to wait for 
 solution until that controversy is settled, it may wait till the Greek 
 Calends. Fortunately in England we do not decide everything 
 on first principles, or according to rules of logic. " Is it likely 
 to work well ? If so adopt it : it can be amended from time 
 to time, as experience may suggest." It is in this way that our 
 polity has grown up, and been gradually moulded into its pre- 
 sent form, and it seems likely that our national system of edu- 
 cation, if we ever attain to one, will be of the same concretion- 
 ary growth. Each step in this process of growth is sure to 
 encounter opposition ; and this need not be regretted. The 
 more political economy has come to be studied by us, the 
 more the rule of " let be," " let alone," " let each go his own 
 way," has come to be adopted in our legislation. And wisely, 
 for what is civilisation, truly considered, but self-control ? And 
 the more, a nation learns self-control, the less does it need to 
 be controlled by law ; nay, further, control by law becomes a 
 positive evil tending to weaken the principle of self-control. 
 Hence it is that nearly all the most valuable Acts of Parliament 
 of late years have been repealing Acts ; and amid this general 
 tendency towards relaxation, any proposal to create a new re- 
 striction, is rightly regarded with jealousy. The burden of 
 proving its necessity clearly lies on the proposer. 
 
 Nevertheless, it may be with this education question as it is 
 with the question of our fortifications. The doctrine of "let 
 be " may in the end only prove us " penny-wise and pound 
 foolish." There are enemies within our four shores far more 
 formidable than any foreign invader. Penny-wise and pound- 
 foolish indeed shall we be, if for fear of a very slight restriction
 
 32 The Education of the People. 
 
 on our productive industry, we allow ignorance and folly to 
 gain ground in the heart of our increasing population ! 
 
 I said, " The burden of proof lies on the proposer," and it 
 is not difficult to show that in this matter other motives on 
 which we have been depending have been tried and found 
 wanting. It is high time those who are practically conversant 
 with the work of education should speak out. We hear much 
 of the rapid progress of education, and in one way it is true. 
 Schools are being multiplied, teachers are being trained, large 
 sums are being spent. Inspectors examine these schools, 
 and in each school find a first class of fairly good scholars, 
 and report accordingly : and people suppose that all the 
 children before they leave will receive the education of this 
 first class. But what are the facts 1 I speak advisedly and 
 after careful inquiry when I say, that even in places where good 
 schools exist, not one in six of the children ever reach this 
 first-class. Ask the teacher of any of our annual grant schools, 
 and he will tell you that one-third of the children of the place 
 still prefer to go to dames' schools, and of those that are 
 entered on his books not more than one in four reaches the 
 first class.* Thus it is that the work done is by no means 
 commensurate with the means employed. The means are ex- 
 cellent, but they only reach one-sixth part of the population. 
 Nor do I perceive much prospect of improvement in this re- 
 spect. We have seen a rapid increase in the number of good 
 schools ; but in the proportion of the population that have 
 been willing to avail themselves fully of the education so 
 offered, we have seen little or no advance. My belief is that 
 if every parish in England had its good school, not more than 
 one-sixth, or at the very most one-fourth, part of the popula- 
 tion would care to get more than their present smattering of 
 
 * These figures are the results of a circular inquiry addressed to all the 
 pupil-teacher schools in the three counties which formed my district in 1860.
 
 Restriction of Children's Labour, 33 
 
 education ; and at present not more than one child in six 
 learns to read with sufficient ease to retain, or care to use, the 
 faculty in after life. 
 
 Now some commentators on the last educational census 
 would have us believe that industrial employment is not to 
 any great extent the cause of this neglect of education. In 
 the census of 1851 the number at school, and the number 
 at work, were far exceeded by the number neither at school 
 nor at work ; and the false inference, that employment is not 
 the main hindrance to schooling, has been largely accepted. 
 One would have thought it needed but little reflection to per- 
 ceive that numbers of those who happened to be neither at 
 school nor at work on the 3ist of March 1851, might be at- 
 tending school or working for wages, as thousands do, in a 
 desultory way. All who know anything of schools are aware 
 that most children are withdrawn, in the first instance, for the 
 sake of the odd work they may pick up. But on this point I 
 need not add another word ; it is abundantly notorious among 
 all who are practically conversant with schools, that it is the 
 labour market which draws away our children, and defeats our 
 efforts to educate them ; and as I said above, we see no proba- 
 bility of this difficulty being diminished ; on the contrary, the 
 demand for young children's labour seems likely to go on in- 
 creasing with the increase of machinery. 
 
 Admitting, then, that, unless good reason to the contrary 
 be shown, the rule of " let alone " is a wise rule in legisla- 
 tion, it seems to me that in this case good reason has been 
 shown for legislative interference. Without it the large sum 
 annually voted by Parliament, and the still larger sums raised 
 by the country to meet this vote, are proved to be, to a great 
 extent, unreproductively expended. We go on, providing 
 schools for children, and we neglect to provide children for 
 the schools. 
 
 C
 
 34 The Education of the People. 
 
 Setting aside, therefore, in this case the general rule of 
 " laissez faire" we have two other arguments against legisla- 
 tive interference to meet. First, the argument of the advocates 
 of the Voluntary System, pure and simple, who contend that 
 State interference with education is so wrong in principle that 
 no amount of expediency can justify it; and secondly, the 
 argument of the Economists, who deprecate the imposition of 
 any restriction on juvenile labour, for fear of enhancing the 
 cost of production. 
 
 For the first it might, perhaps, be enough to say, that their 
 principles have already been outvoted and overruled in this 
 country ; but in this matter we can afford to take up common 
 ground with the small minority who still protest, and show that 
 even they ought to be with us on their own principles. For 
 what does the " Voluntary System " mean ? It means a system 
 of schools that shall be locally governed, being independent of 
 State control ; and, as a necessary consequence, it means a 
 system of schools that shall be locally supported, independent 
 of Government grants : for those who pay must govern. Any 
 measure, therefore, which tends to make schools more [self- 
 supporting than they are at present, ought to be hailed by the 
 disciples of this philosophy as a step in the right direction. 
 Now, confessedly the reason why our schools are not at present 
 more self-supporting is, that the parents do not care sufficiently 
 for education to take full advantage of them, or pay their 
 school fees with regularity. Any measure that would fill our 
 schools with a steady attendance of children would render 
 them at once far more self-supporting and independent, and 
 ought, therefore, to have the hearty support of the Volun- 
 taries. 
 
 The opposition of the Economists is more formidable ; for, 
 disinterested and philosophical themselves, they have at their 
 back all the selfishness of the country. Heavily burdened as
 
 Restriction of Children's Labour. 35 
 
 we are, they say, and threatened by the competition of coun- 
 tries where labour is cheaper than in England, we must 
 jealously forbid interference with the labour market, leaving 
 it to be self-regulated according to the rule of supply and 
 demand. 
 
 Now here, as before, I might be content to answer, " The 
 question is no longer an open question, the principle of inter- 
 ference has been already sanctioned. To be consistent, you 
 must repeal your Factory Acts, which for a quarter of a 
 century have worked so well, your Printworks' Acts, your 
 Bleach works' Act, your Mines' Inspection Act, and your 
 Workshop Act." But, I go further; I claim the support of 
 the Economists, as I did that of the Voluntaries, on their own 
 principles. On economical grounds, and because of that 
 very competition which they dread, I appeal to the manu- 
 facturing interests of this country to support this educational 
 measure. 
 
 The Economists require that no manufacturing interest 
 should be placed under a disadvantage, as compared with 
 other manufacturing interests, in its command of labour. In 
 juvenile labour, as in other marketable articles, there ought to 
 be free-trade. But what is the state of the case ? Our manu- 
 facturers of clothing and hardware are trammelled by legislative 
 restrictions in their employment of labour, while our manu- 
 facturers of food are free. The farmer may employ children 
 at any age, for any number of hours in the day, while the pro- 
 prietor of the neighbouring factory or mine can only employ 
 them under certain educational restrictions. Clearly, I think, 
 so clearly that when stated it seems a truism, all or none 
 ought to be restricted. All are competing one against another 
 for the children's labour ; all desire to obtain it on the cheapest 
 terms. Is it fair that labour in the mill should be stinted by 
 law, while labour in the adjoining farm is entirely unre-
 
 36 The Education of the People. 
 
 stricted ? And yet such is the case. And what is the result ? 
 that the children are forsaking restricted employments, and 
 flocking into those that are unrestricted. The factory inspec- 
 tors, while they unanimously commend the educational effect of 
 the Factory Acts, confess at the same time that there has been 
 a serious diminution in the number of children employed in 
 mills. Since the passing of these Acts, numbers of children 
 have left their half-time employment in the mill, to seek full- 
 time employment at an earlier age in shop or farm service. 
 The same will be the case in our collieries. The difficulty 
 of finding an adequate supply of young hands is daily 
 increasing, and will go on increasing, if other employments 
 continue to be unrestricted. Thus, in some of the most 
 important branches of trade, (such as our cotton trade and our 
 coal trade,) the cost of production is unfairly raised by our 
 present partial measures. We must recede or advance in this 
 course of legislation. To recede to go back to the frightful 
 evils of the old factory and colliery system, described in the 
 Reports of the Children's Employment Commissioners, but now 
 happily a matter of bygone history, would be infatuation. 
 Advance we must ; political economy and education alike 
 demand it The Economist demands that all or none should 
 be restricted, and the Educationist demands that the undoubted 
 blessings of the factory legislation should be extended to other 
 classes of children. 
 
 But I claim the support of the Economists on other grounds. 
 I am prepared to show that by the enactment of such a 
 general law, while the price of children's labour would not be 
 increased, nor the supply diminished, its value would be greatly 
 enhanced. 
 
 And first, the price must ever depend on the supply. If I can 
 show that the supply will not be diminished, I may assume 
 that the price will remain the same. The prejudice to the
 
 Restriction of Children's Labour. 37 
 
 contrary that education will raise the rate of wages de- 
 manded by children is simply explained by the fact that 
 educated children are at present a minority, and can afford, 
 therefore, to ask higher wages. If education (i.e., a rudimentary 
 education such as we are asking for) became the rule instead 
 of the exception, children's wages would not rise, unless 
 indeed the age of labour were thereby much postponed. That 
 it would not be postponed by the operation of such a law I am 
 persuaded. In a few extreme cases, where at present children 
 are employed at an unjustifiably early age, the commencement 
 of labour would doubtless be delayed, but in the average it 
 would not, and, therefore, the average price would not be raised. 
 The effect of a law requiring that children should learn to read 
 and write and cipher before going to work, would simply be that 
 whereas parents are now careless how their children spend the 
 year or two immediately preceding the commencement of work, 
 they would, under the operation of such a law, find themselves 
 very materially and very largely interested in seeing that this 
 precious time was spent in regular attendance at school. And 
 if I am asked, " What then is the great advantage accruing to 
 education and to the moral worth of the labourer ? " I answer 
 that this early grounding in the rudiments is educationally 
 all-important The want of it is frustrating half our efforts 
 to provide wholesome recreation, and the means of self-cul- 
 ture to our young work-people ; and to secure it to them 
 would be to implant a germ of hope within their breasts 
 which would retain its vitality through many a year of hard- 
 ship. The youth who can speak with his pen to a parent or a 
 friend at a distance, and to whom a book is a living thing that 
 has much to say of deepest import for him to know, becomes 
 at once the " being of large discourse, looking before and 
 after," with a consciousness of powers and a sense of re- 
 sponsibilities that after all are his surest safeguards against
 
 38 The Education of the People. 
 
 vice and folly. That such a youth becomes thereby a worse 
 labourer few now believe ; that he becomes a wiser man and 
 better citizen fewer still will doubt. The experience of the 
 blessed results of education has not, it is true, reached as yet 
 into all the corners of our land; but where these have been 
 known and felt, there one surely finds along with them a con- 
 straining desire to impart the like to others, and a deep 
 conviction that England will be more prosperous, more 
 wealthy, more righteous, and more wise, as a nation, in pro- 
 portion as she secures to her young children their birthright of 
 knowledge. 
 
 To sum up and conclude. The advocates of a universal 
 juvenile-labour law claim a hearing because the experience of 
 five-and-twenty years has shown that it is not enough to create 
 good schools that the people will not take advantage of them 
 unless protected by law from the irresistible allurements of the 
 labour-market. 
 
 We claim the support or, at least, the silence of the Vol- 
 untaries, because they have already conceded, on a small scale, 
 what we wish to see enacted on a large scale ; and also because 
 by such a measure our schools will be made more self- 
 supporting, and consequently, more independent of State 
 support. 
 
 We claim the votes of the Economists, first, because our 
 present partial legislation is unjust, tending to raise the cost of 
 production in some of our most important branches of trade ; 
 and secondly, on the more general ground that educated 
 labourers are more steady, more trustworthy, and so more 
 valuable, as producers, than uneducated labourers ; and that, 
 therefore, to make some amount of education a universal con- 
 dition of children's employment, is a sound commercial policy.
 
 Restriction of Childreris Labour. 39 
 
 Note. The allusion to Mr Adderley's Bill on the first page 
 of the foregoing chapter will be best explained by the follow- 
 ing memorial on this subject, which I presented in the year 
 1860 to Sir George C. Lewis, the then Home Secretary. 
 The result was the Bill which Mr Adderley introduced, and 
 which was read a first time on the 26th April of that year, but 
 rejected on the second reading : 
 
 SIR, In the interview which you were so kind as to give me 
 last week, you said that my proposal of one simple comprehen- 
 sive law, for the protection of children, applying to all hired 
 employments, was something new, and had never been brought 
 under the consideration of the Legislature ; but that I might 
 draw up a memorial on the subject. 
 
 And first, I must put prominently forward the broad un- 
 deniable fact, that a very large portion (some say a majority) of 
 the children of the labouring poor still grow up to man's estate 
 without any permanent faculty of reading and writing. 
 
 After all that has been effected for the advancement of 
 education, something more needs to be done to convince the 
 working classes of its necessity. 
 
 Three Bills are now before the Legislature, containing special 
 provision for the education of young children employed in 
 three particular branches of industry : Mines, Bleach Works, 
 and Lace-making. 
 
 Supposing these measures to be carried, there will be, in all, 
 five departments of our national industry placed under legislative 
 restrictions in respect of the employment of young children. 
 
 i. For Factory Children, i.e., children employed in mills 
 where steam or water power is used for the manufacture of 
 yarn or cloth, a law has been in force now for sixteen years, 
 (7 Viet, c. 15,) requiring that none be employed under eight 
 years old, and that until their thirteenth birthday (or eleventh
 
 4O The Education of the People. 
 
 in the case of silk factories,) they shall attend school for 
 one-half of each day. This Act has confessedly worked 
 well. 
 
 2. For Printworks, an Act was passed fourteen years ago, 
 (8 and 9 Viet., c. 29,) requiring that children therein employed 
 should attend school for 150 hours, or 30 days, in each half- 
 year. This attendance proves to be so desultory, and so very 
 scanty, that it is of little or no educational value. 
 
 3. In Coal Mines, children's employment is forbidden under 
 the age of ten years, by the 5th and 6th Viet, c. 99. It is now 
 proposed by the Mines Regulation Bill, to extend to all children 
 under twelve years, employed in mines, the educational provi- 
 sions of the Printworks Act, so far modified as to require an 
 attendance at school of 20 hours per month. 
 
 4. Bleaching and Dyeing Works, which were specially ex- 
 cepted from the 7 Viet., c. 15, will be subjected to similar 
 regulations if Mr Crook's Bill be passed. 
 
 5. Lord Shaftesbury proposes to extend the like require- 
 ments to children employed in lace-making* 
 
 Now from this review of what the Legislature has done or 
 proposes to do for the protection of young children, two things 
 are evident : 
 
 First, that the principle of such legislative interference has 
 been conceded. 
 
 And next, that the desirableness of extending the principle 
 to some other industrial employments is recognised. 
 
 The principle upon which such legislation is to be justified, 
 may, I suppose, be shortly stated thus : that while, on the one 
 hand, Security of Property requires a minimum amount of inter- 
 ference with the production of wealth, Security of Person, on 
 the other hand, requires protection from every act which tends 
 
 * For our subsequent legislation in this matter of juvenile employment, see 
 Appendix III.
 
 Restriction of Children s Labour. 41 
 
 to impair the physical, moral, or intellectual happiness of any 
 class in the community ; and the latter, just as much as the 
 former, is the proper business of Government. 
 
 That such educational requirements as those of the Factory 
 Acts have been sanctioned in England, while a strong national 
 feeling continues to exist against any system of compulsory 
 education, is to be explained by the simple fact that the people 
 recognise at once the distinction between the interference of 
 the law betwixt employer and employed, (a public relation?) and 
 its interference betwixt parent and child, (a private relation.} Of 
 the former kind of interference we have numerous instances in 
 our Statute Book ; while the latter is foreign to our national 
 habits. 
 
 That the legislative principle thus conceded, and in the case 
 of factories, at all events, found to be so salutary, has not many 
 years ago been extended to other manufacturing or mining pro- 
 cesses, is clearly due to some or all of the following reasons : 
 
 1. The want of schools. 
 
 2. The opposition to such legislation on the part of the 
 
 employers whose particular interests were in each 
 case affected ; and 
 
 3. The expensiveness and cumbrousness, and, if I may 
 
 so speak, un-English character of the system of in- 
 spection, which seemed to be necessary to enforce 
 such laws. 
 
 Thus we see on one side a desire to have the legislative pro- 
 tection of children extended, and, on the other, three great 
 difficulties delaying, or seeming to delay, any such extension. 
 
 The first difficulty has ceased to exist. In the three counties 
 with which I am officially connected, there is no mining or 
 manufacturing district in which a child could complain that no 
 school was within reach. In the agricultural districts there are 
 very few parishes that are still without day-schools, none in
 
 42 The Education of the People. 
 
 which a school (competent at all events to teach reading, 
 writing, and ciphering) would not be speedily established if the 
 parishioners desired it. 
 
 My object is to show how, as I believe, the two latter diffi- 
 culties may be surmounted. 
 
 I will begin with the opposition of the employer. It does 
 not in the least surprise me ; nay, I confess, that if I were 
 a large employer of labour I should oppose such legislative 
 restrictions imposed on particular branches of industry as both 
 impolitic and unjust. When four or five trades are competing 
 with each other for " young hands" in the labour market, is it 
 just to put this or that trade under restrictions, while the others 
 are left free 1 
 
 Take, for instance, North Staffordshire ; there we have four 
 distinct trades bidding one against the other for the labour of 
 young children : 
 
 There is the coalmaster, forbidden by law to employ girls, 
 and allowed to employ boys only after their tenth birthday ; 
 
 The ironmaster, wholly unrestricted ; * 
 
 The potter, also unrestricted ; * 
 
 The silk manufacturer unrestricted in " the shades " where 
 sewing silk is made, and under all the provisions of the Factory 
 Act in the mill where power-weaving goes on. 
 
 If I were asked I should be wholly at a loss to say which 
 was the most injurious to the young child, the mine, or the 
 forge, or the pottery bank, or the silk shade. There is no reason 
 why one of these trades should be placed under the surveillance 
 of the law more than another. But howanomalous the state of the 
 law is ! The child who is shut out of the pit because he is under 
 ten, may at once find employment at the neighbouring forge 
 or pottery, at nine, or eight, or even seven years old. Again, 
 the child who is shut out of the silk mill under eight, or com- 
 * This was true in 1860, the date of this memorial.
 
 Restriction of Children s Labour. 43 
 
 pelled, if there employed, to go to school between eight and 
 eleven, may be employed without any restriction for 10, 12, or 
 14 hours a day at the tenderest age in the silk " shade," or the 
 " turning " shop. Now what is the effect of these anomalies, 
 commercially, educationally ? 
 
 1. Commercially, the effect is to keep up the price of 
 children's labour in particular trades at an unnaturally high 
 rate. 
 
 The coalmasters feel this at the present time to their great 
 cost : the competition of the unrestricted industries obliges them 
 to pay extravagantly for the labour of boys of ten years old, 
 and in some districts it is so difficult to obtain that Irish 
 children are coming to be largely imported. The employer 
 whose trade is placed under restriction, needs, in fact, protection 
 from the competition of the unrestricted employer. He has a 
 right to say, " restrict all or none ; to single out me for legisla- 
 tion, and let my neighbour go free, is unjust." 
 
 2. Educationally, what is the result ? Do the children kept 
 out of the colliery or the silk factory up to a certain age, go to 
 school ? Any one conversant with the facts will immediately 
 answer, No : they are at once absorbed by the other trades of 
 the district. Hence it is that in spite of legislation the school 
 age is still so lamentably low in these districts. Facts prove 
 how urgently the children need some more effectual protection. 
 So that these partial laws are both impolitic and unjust: unjust 
 to the employer, and impolitic as regards the children, because 
 at the cost of much vexatious interference, little or no educa- 
 tional benefit is obtained. Both children and employers need 
 the protection of a general and uniform law, equally affecting all 
 sorts of industry. 
 
 It is my belief, indeed I have authority for saying, that many 
 large employers of children's labour, who are prepared by all 
 constitutional means to obstruct/^/-//**/ legislation, would gladly
 
 44 The Education of the People. 
 
 support a uniform measure for the limitation of children's 
 employment. 
 
 It may sound paradoxical, but I believe that the practical 
 effect of such a law would be to lower the price of children's 
 labour at eleven or twelve years old to its natural level ; chil- 
 dren's wages at that age would be no higher than what children 
 now earn at eight or nine. Conscientious employers would 
 regard such a law as a relief; many have said to me, " We 
 disapprove as much as you do of the employment of children 
 at this tender age ; but how can we avoid it ? If we don't em- 
 ploy them, others will ; and the only result of our self-imposed 
 restriction will be that we shall have to pay a ruinously high 
 price for work that our neighbours get done very cheaply." 
 Such a law, then, would remove an injustice would be re- 
 garded as a protection both to the child and to the conscientious 
 employer, and would arrest the otherwise inevitable encroach- 
 ment which our competing industries are now making on the 
 infantine strength of children. 
 
 It appears, then, if these views are correct, that by legislating 
 at once comprehensively for all juvenile industries, instead of 
 endeavouring, as at present, to bring them one by one under 
 the control of the law, the first great difficulty the opposition 
 of the employers would be much diminished, if not entirely 
 obviated. 
 
 The other great difficulty remains to be considered the 
 question of inspection, with a view to the enforcement of the 
 law. I believe that this difficulty, far more than the first which 
 I named, has been the real hindrance to the extension of the 
 Factory Acts. 
 
 It must, I suppose, be conceded at once, that to cover the 
 
 whole face of the country with a complete system of inspec- 
 tion, such as now prevails over the small areas of the factory
 
 Restriction of Children's Labour. 45 
 
 districts, is out of the question. Parliament would be unwilling 
 to pay for it, and the country would dislike it. 
 
 But would it be necessary 1 Several reasons dispose me to 
 think that in case such a general law were carried, inspection 
 might be in a great measure dispensed with. 
 
 1. I believe, and I have endeavoured to show, that such a 
 law would be regarded with much more favour than the partial 
 laws, of which only we have thus far had experience. 
 
 2. If, by a uniform restriction, all were given a fair and equal 
 chance in the competition for boys' labour, there would be less 
 temptation than in the present state of the juvenile labour 
 market, to evade the law. 
 
 3. Public opinion is far more operative in behalf of educa- 
 tion now than it was when the first Factory Act was carried. 
 
 4. The mere existence of such a law declaring it penal to 
 employ children until they had received a certain amount of 
 schooling, would greatly strengthen the hands of Educationists 
 in their expostulations with parents or employers. 
 
 5. Here and there a prosecution would take place by way 
 of example, and local associations would, I doubt not, be 
 formed, comprising the Educationists and enlightened em- 
 ployers of each district, for the purpose of enforcing the law 
 upon the less conscientious employers. 
 
 In fact, in this matter legislation for a few is far more diffi- 
 cult than legislation for all. Conscientious employers are 
 obliged to resist the former, who would thankfully accept the 
 latter, As with the early closing movement among shop- 
 keepers, and indeed with all reforms affecting commercial 
 competition, it is a ca.se/or all or none, 
 
 The employers in each particular industry would regard such 
 a law as I am advocating, not as a restriction, but as a protec- 
 tion ; and, thankfully accepting it themselves, would, in their
 
 46 The Education of the People. 
 
 own interest, combine with the friends of education to enforce 
 it on others. 
 
 For these reasons I am disposed to believe that while par- 
 tial laws, affecting particular trades, must always require an 
 expensive system of inspection for their enforcement, a general 
 law might dispense with it. 
 
 Thus both the difficulties which must ever clog the Legisla- 
 ture in its present gradual and tentative mode of dealing with 
 this subject the opposition of the employer, and the objection- 
 ableness of inspection would, as I believe, disappear before a 
 bolder, simpler, and more general measure. 
 
 No law can work well, or be really efficacious, which to any 
 great extent anticipates public opinion ; but when the feeling 
 of the country is ripe for any measure as I believe it to be in 
 this case Parliament has only to speak the word, and the 
 law becomes at once adopted into the customs of the nation. 
 I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. P. NORRIS. 
 
 P.S. The proposed law should be to the following effect: 
 
 That no child, under the age of , be hired to work by 
 
 time or by piece in any manufacturing or agricultural process, 
 or in any mine, or in any employment whatever for wages or 
 hire, unless the employer have a certificate under the hand of 
 a competent authority that the child can read, write, and cipher. 
 Breach of this law should be punishable by a fine to be 
 recovered in the usual way before magistrates, in Petty Ses- 
 sions ; and it has been suggested to me that prosecution might 
 be facilitated by the appointment in each Petty Sessional 
 district of an officer, to be called " Examiner of Children's 
 Certificates."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE REVISED CODE OF EDUCATION MINUTES, OF 1862. 
 
 UNDER the Revised Code the principles upon which the in- 
 spection of church schools is based remain unchanged. The 
 clerical inspector is officially instructed to take precisely the 
 same view of a school's efficiency that he has ever taken. (See 
 " Letter of Instructions " to the Inspectors.) A school is to 
 be regarded first and foremost as a place of moral and religious 
 training. On this point he is to satisfy himself before he pro- 
 ceeds to more detailed examination. Taking, as heretofore, 
 the parish clergyman as his assessor, he is first to examine the 
 religious knowledge of the children and observe their discipline 
 and behaviour ; and if he find that the state of the school in 
 these respects is such as to justify a grant of public money, he 
 then proceeds to examine the children individually in those 
 necessary elements on which also the amount of the grant will 
 depend. 
 
 Thus his report falls under two heads, which may be roughly 
 but conveniently described as (i.) Inspection, (including under 
 this term collective questioning,) and (2.) Examination, or the 
 individual scrutiny of children who have attended 100 days, 
 in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The last, (the individual 
 examination,) together with the " average attendance " of 
 scholars, determines the amount of the grant with which the 
 school is to be credited. 
 
 The inspector's report under the first and more important
 
 48 The Education of the People. 
 
 head decides whether this grant shall be paid in full, reduced, 
 or withheld altogether. 'The details of the individual exami- 
 nation are forwarded to the Central Department, not only 
 as vouchers but as data also on which to calculate the grant. 
 The general recommendation of payment or the contrary 
 depends on the Inspector's own discretion. It results from this 
 arrangement that the Council Office takes direct cognisance of 
 the reading, writing, and arithmetic, while the responsibility of 
 estimating the moral and religious efficiency of a school rests 
 upon an officer appointed conjointly by the Archbishop and 
 Lord President, under the Order in Council of zoth August 
 1840. 
 
 So much for the form which the inspection of Church schools 
 has taken under the new measures, differing very slightly, as 
 will be seen, from that to which we had been accustomed. 
 
 I now come to the form which the grant of money to each 
 school assumes. Herein lies what may be regarded as the 
 very gist of the Revised Code. 
 
 Up to 1862 the grant had mainly taken the form of pay- 
 ments to particular teachers. It now takes the form of a con- 
 tribution to the general funds of the school the Government 
 declining to have anything to do with the payment of the 
 teachers. The reasons for this important change require some 
 explanation. 
 
 It has never been the policy of Government in this country 
 to supersede voluntary efforts in the matter of education. The 
 intention of the Committee of Council in framing the measures 
 of 1846, was to leave the schools mainly dependent on local 
 resources, and under local control ; while by small payments 
 appropriated to teachers trained under the Government system, 
 the State hoped to induce school managers to adopt an im- 
 proved organisation. 
 
 Thanks in a great degree to the cordial co-operation of the
 
 The Revised Code of Education Minutes. 49 
 
 parochial clergy, these measures have been strikingly successful. 
 Nearly half the schools in the country have voluntarily adopted 
 the organisation recommended by the Government ; and the 
 teachers trained under the minutes of 1846 have been accepted 
 by the nation. 
 
 While the new system still needed fostering, and the aided 
 schools were comparatively few, the complexity, partiality, and 
 expensiveness of the administration were not objected to. But, 
 as years went on, and the Government type of school came to 
 be the rule instead of the exception, these evils more and more 
 engaged the attention of Parliament. 
 
 The result was the Royal Commission of 1858, and a con- 
 viction on the part of a majority of the House of Commons that 
 the minutes of 1846, though admirably well suited to develop, 
 and bring into vogue, a new sort of school organisation, were 
 not adapted to form the basis of a permanent and national 
 system of Government aid. 
 
 The Government said, " If the nation really understands and 
 values our system, let school managers now undertake to work 
 it themselves ; and we will make to all managers who do so a 
 grant of public money, amounting to about one-third of the 
 whole expense of their school." 
 
 Thus the intention of the Legislature in 1862 was by no 
 means to supersede the educational scheme of 1846, but rather 
 to establish it all the more firmly by embodying it thenceforth 
 in the Voluntary System of the country. Though the Govern- 
 ment has ceased to work it in its details, direct encouragement is 
 offered to the adoption of it ; grants being given exclusively to 
 schools whose teachers have been trained, or at least accredited, 
 under the education scheme of 1846. 
 
 It is highly important that the principle of this restriction 
 should be understood. 
 
 In the Parliamentary debates, owing, I suppose, to the 
 
 b
 
 50 The Education of the People. 
 
 frequent repetition of that misleading phrase, " Payment for 
 results," some persons were so entirely blinded to the real 
 character of the new measure as to challenge Government to 
 be " consistent," and on " Free Trade principles " to throw 
 open their grants to all schools, however organised or taught, 
 so long as the reading, writing, and arithmetic were satisfac- 
 tory. 
 
 This would indeed have been a great and disastrous revolu- 
 tion in our educational policy, involving the total abandonment 
 of those principles that have hitherto guided us, and entirely 
 sacrificing that system which the Committee of Council, dur- 
 ing fifteen years of most difficult administration, have been 
 labouring to introduce and recommend to the country. It is, 
 doubtless, right and well that a certain attainment in reading, 
 writing, and ciphering should be required as a condition of 
 aid ; but these are not the results for which the nation is willing 
 to pay a million a year. The educational results which the 
 common sense of this country values almost beyond price 
 are the Christian principles and habits of attention, industry, 
 and order in which a good parish school endeavours to train 
 its children. And the one, and almost only possible, security 
 for these results which the State can have, is that the 
 school be under careful management and properly accredited 
 teachers. 
 
 It is notorious to any one who knows anything whatever of 
 schools, that success in teaching reading, writing, and arith- 
 metic by no means necessarily implies these higher " results " 
 of education. It is equally notorious, and was confessed em 1 
 phatically by the Royal Commissioners, that in securing these 
 higher " results " schools under certificated teachers have been 
 eminently successful. In the eighth and eleventh paragraphs 
 of the " Instructions " issued to H. M. Inspectors this view 
 of school " results " will be found to be carefully enforced.
 
 The Revised Code of Education Minutes. 5 1 
 
 Thus it will be seen that the Revised Code so far from 
 abandoning the education scheme of 1846 challenges the 
 country to take it up, and carry it on, upon the voluntary 
 principle, i.e., by local administration. To all schools that ac- 
 cept this challenge a premium is offered, varying according 
 to the efficiency of the school, but intended to amount on 
 the average to about one-third of the total cost of the school 
 establishment. This grant, as I have said, is made in one 
 lump to the school managers ; and on them now devolves 
 (what the Committee of Council previously undertook) the 
 appropriation of these moneys among the several items of 
 school expenditure. 
 
 The simplification thus effected is manifestly very great 
 indeed. 
 
 But this is of secondary moment; the really essential feature 
 in the change was the retirement of the State from direct inter- 
 ference between school managers and school teachers. The 
 importance of this can be scarcely over-rated. It seems to have 
 been, if I may so speak, the motive of the measure from first 
 to last. Those who had most carefully watched the operation 
 of the minutes of 1 846 had come to the conviction that sooner 
 or later this must be. At the outset those minutes were a happy 
 adjustment of the relations of the central Government to the 
 Country in the matters of education. But it was their inevitable 
 tendency, as the scale of administration became more extended, 
 that the province of the former should encroach more and 
 more on the province of the latter. The Education Depart- 
 ment was paying the entire cost of the teachers' education from 
 their thirteenth to their twentieth year, and after the comple- 
 tion of their training was retaining them in direct personal 
 relation to the State, by means of the augmentation grant. 
 While teachers thus paid were few and scattered, the protec- 
 tion seemed to be needed, and the balance between State and
 
 52 The Education of the People. 
 
 Country was not endangered. But, when their numbers rose 
 to many thousands, it began to be perceived that what had 
 been a wise and safe fostering of an infant system was rapidly 
 becoming an extension of State influence over a province of 
 our commonwealth that was still professedly and constitution- 
 ally under the Voluntary System. The question was how to 
 recede from this position ? The teachers had been swimming 
 on corks so long that they not unnaturally expected to go to 
 the bottom if this aid were withheld. The Education Depart- 
 ment, however, had more faith in their buoyancy ; and, con- 
 vinced that the measure was essentially beneficial to all 
 concerned teachers, managers, and children resolved to 
 withdraw what had long ceased to be any real support, and 
 abstain from interfering henceforth in the pecuniary contracts 
 between managers and teachers. 
 
 Thus the education scheme of 1846, with its tried and ap- 
 proved system of apprenticeship, training, and certificates, is 
 offered to the country. Inspection, collective examinations of 
 teachers, and grants in aid, continue to be available to assist 
 in working it. But the State declines henceforth to undertake 
 the direct patronage of the teachers. 
 
 The responsibility of school managers is doubtless much 
 increased ; but it is not found, now that the Code is fairly 
 in operation, that their pecuniary liability is heavier than 
 before. Schools had been carried on in very many instances 
 more expensively than was necessary. In some parishes the 
 services of female pupil teachers have been obtained on much 
 cheaper terms, while in others it is found more economical to 
 engage an assistant teacher, (who may also undertake the night 
 school,) or stipendiary monitors. While large town schools 
 continue to offer high salaries to older and more experienced 
 teachers, a cheaper class of teachers is available (under Art. 
 132 Revised Code) for small rural schools, entitling them to
 
 The Revised Code of Education Minutes. 5 3 
 
 the full amount of Government assistance, from which such 
 schools had been hitherto almost precluded. 
 
 To make these remarks still more practical, I will endeavour 
 to exhibit in the form of annual balance sheets the financial 
 operation of the Revised Code. 
 
 I will first give the income and expenditure of a liberally 
 conducted town school, having 360 children in average atten- 
 dance, with a night school of 40 or 50 : 
 
 39r. 
 
 Cte 
 
 s. d. s. d. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 SCHOOL PENCE. 
 120 Boys at 3d. and 
 
 Salary of Master . . . no o o 
 Ditto Mistress . . . . 70 o o 
 
 2d. a-week, say 60 o o 
 
 Ditto Infant Mistress . . 60 o o 
 
 1 20 Girls do. do. 60 o o 
 
 Ditto Assistant Teacher . 50 o o 
 
 120 Infants at 2d. 
 and id. do- do. 36 o o 
 
 Ditto Boy Pupil Teacher . 15 o o 
 Ditto 2 Girl ditto . . 20 o o 
 
 40 or 50 Boys at 
 night school, say 10 o o 
 
 Do. 3 Girl Stipendiary Monitors 1500 
 Books, Fuel, &c. . . . 100 o o 
 
 GOVERNMENT GRANT. 
 
 
 45. a-head on aver- 
 
 
 age attendance 72 o o 
 
 
 Say 55. 4d. a-head 
 
 * 
 
 on i So children 
 
 
 above 6 years 
 
 
 who pass on an 48 o o 
 
 
 average in two 
 
 
 eut of the three 
 
 
 subjects . 
 
 
 Additional grant 
 
 
 under Art. 46, b. 
 
 
 54, say . .1000 
 
 
 6s. 6d. a-head on, 
 
 
 say, 90 Infants . 29 5 o 
 
 
 75. 6d. a-head on 
 
 
 Night Scholars, 
 
 
 say . . . 15 o o 
 
 
 174 S 
 Voluntary Contributions and 
 
 
 Collections . . . . 99 15 o 
 
 
 ^440 o o 
 
 .440 o o 
 
 I will now give the balance sheet of a rural school, with an
 
 54 
 
 The Education of the People. 
 
 average attendance of 100 boys and girls under a master and 
 his wife, with a night school of 20, more economically con- 
 ducted : 
 
 
 
 School Pence, say . . .50 
 Government Grant on average 
 
 attendance . . . .20 
 Government Grant on those who 
 
 pass, say . . . .25 
 Government Grant on Night 
 
 Scholars 7 
 
 Voluntary Contributions . . 25 
 
 s. d. 
 
 .127 
 
 Cr. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Salary of Master and Sempstress qo o o 
 Salary of i Pupil Teacher . 1200 
 Books, Fuel, &c. . . 25 o o 
 
 Lastly, I will give the balance sheet of a rural school under 
 a mistress with 50 in average attendance : 
 
 s. d. 
 
 School Pence, say 
 Government Grant on average 
 
 attendance % 
 
 Government Grant on those who 
 
 pass, say .... 
 Voluntary Contributions . 
 
 70 o o 
 
 s. d. 
 Salary of Mistress . . . 50 o o 
 
 (under Art. 132 of Revised Code.) 
 Salary of Stipendiary Monitor 500 
 Fuel, Books, &c. . . . 15 o o 
 
 7 
 
 On comparing these accounts with those of similar schools 
 under the old code, it will be found that while the managers 
 of the first and second class of schools have not to increase 
 their voluntary contributions, the managers of the third class 
 have in many instances gained largely by the change, this 
 last sort of school having been, under the old code, almost 
 precluded from participation in the Parliamentary grant. But 
 however this may be, I am persuaded that, as years go on, the 
 clergy will find their relations to their teachers improved, and 
 the position of their schools more healthy and independent
 
 The Revised Code of Education Minutes. 5 5 
 
 than formerly. A much larger number of schools have been 
 brought within the sphere of Government aid ; and, what is 
 not unimportant, a large section of society, who have never 
 ceased to regard both schools and teachers with a jealous 
 eye, have been conciliated. 
 
 But after all it must be remembered that these aspects of 
 the change are unimportant compared with the question, which 
 all who earnestly care about education, will put foremost, " How 
 does it affect the children?" And if, as I have endeavoured 
 to show, the school is still regarded as a place of moral and 
 religious training ; if the inspection is still conducted on this 
 principle, showing the teachers and children that the work of 
 the school is viewed in this light by the Government ; if the 
 State still requires security that the teacher shall be no mere 
 adventurer, but one who has been properly trained and ac- 
 credited for his responsible office ; if in all these ways the 
 higher purposes of education are provided for ; then, I think, 
 all will acknowledge that the less ambitious scheme of instruc- 
 tion, and the greater strictness in testing the reading, writing, 
 and arithmetic, are calculated to enhance rather than lessen 
 the usefulness of the school as a place of training for the chil- 
 dren of the labouring classes. 
 
 But if the view of the Revised Code which I have put 
 forward in this chapter be a correct one, it will be seen that the 
 true interests of the children are consulted in a yet more im- 
 portant way. 
 
 If I were asked to give my reason for believing that the 
 English parish school is a better and healthier type of school 
 than could be created by any more uniform or systematic plan 
 of public instruction, I should answer that it gathers round 
 it, in a way that no State school could, the kindly influences of 
 the neighbourhood. Its support may press heavily on a few ; 
 but those few are sure to be precisely those who are best fitted
 
 56 The Education of tJie People. 
 
 to have the control over it. All that is most enlightened, most 
 benevolent, most Christian in the parish, sustains and animates 
 the work of the school. 
 
 It may well be doubted whether this could be secured on 
 any other than the Voluntary System. 
 
 The Voluntary System was becoming rapidly enervated 
 under the previous Minutes. The Revised Code, supplemented 
 by other measures recommended in the introductory chapter of 
 this volume, is, I believe, well calculated to reinvigorate it.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EDUCATIONAL CONDITION OF STAFFORDSHIRE IN 1858. 
 
 IT may not be uninteresting to reprint here, for the sake of 
 comparison in future years, a report which I drew up at the 
 request of the National Association for the Promotion of Social 
 Science on the state of popular education in Staffordshire in 
 the year 1858. Since then the hope with which the paper 
 ends that the principles of the Factory Act might be extended 
 to the manufactures of this county has been realised ; * and 
 I rejoice to think that in the Potteries at any rate the law is 
 working most beneficially. In South Staffordshire the results 
 of the Workshop Act have been, I fear, thus far hardly appre- 
 ciable. 
 
 Many circumstances combine to render Staffordshire pre- 
 eminently interesting in an educational point of view. 
 
 It is at once a mining, a manufacturing, and an agricultural 
 county. While it has long been the chief seat of the pottery 
 and the iron trade, it has been distinguished during many 
 years for the scientific cultivation of many of the estates of its 
 landed proprietors. Enthusiastic farmers, like the first Lord 
 Hatherton and the late Earl Talbot, have done for its agriculture 
 what the genius of Watt and Wedgewood did for its manufactures. 
 Its commercial prosperity has increased its population to such 
 an extent that, at the present time, the average ratio of its in- 
 habitants to its area is double that of the rest of England. 
 * See Appendix III.
 
 58 The Education of the People. 
 
 England is peopled at the rate of one soul to every two acres. 
 In Staffordshire we find, in round numbers, a population of 
 700,000 souls, occupying an area of 700,000 acres. Of this 
 population, a dense group of 100,000 occupy the northern 
 coal-field ; and a still denser group of 200,000 occupy the 
 southern coal-field. These districts, which may be respectively 
 called the " Potteries " and the "Hardware" district, present 
 educational problems of the deepest interest, and at the same 
 time of the most serious difficulty. 
 
 The general condition of the operatives of the hardware! 
 district, when I first entered it, was thus described in one of 
 my reports : 
 
 " My duties have led me to spend some portion of each of 
 the three last years among the village towns which lie between 
 Stourbridge and Wolverhampton. I have visited the colliers 
 and iron-workers both at their homes and at their work, 
 whether in the pits or at the forges, and have at the same 
 time been careful to put myself into communication with those 
 who seemed best to know the real condition of the people. 
 
 " I know that generalisations in these matters are for the 
 most part untrustworthy ; and with regard to other classes of 
 operatives, I have found it difficult, and sometimes impossible, 
 to sum up in one word their distinctive character; but in re- 
 spect of the miners and iron-workers of South Staffordshire I 
 have no such difficulty. Improvidence is too tame a word ; it 
 is recklessness. Elsewhere improvidence and sensuality exist to 
 a lamentable extent, but qualified, and, as it were, under pro- 
 test. Among the mill operatives of the cotton and silk dis- 
 tricts, these faults are beginning to be redeemed by a thought- 
 ful and almost reflective cast of countenance, which convinces 
 the visitor that counteracting influences are at work. In the 
 agricultural parts of my district, alongside of the notorious in- 
 continency of the farm-servants, one may often observe, in the
 
 Educational Condition of Staffordshire. 59 
 
 improved dwellings and neatly-kept gardens of the married 
 labourer, evidence that these vices are very generally giving way 
 to sobriety and thrift in later life ; but here, young and old, men 
 and women, married and unmarried, are uniformly, and almost 
 avowedly self-indulgent spendthrifts. One sees this reckless 
 character marring and vitiating the nobler traits of their nature ; 
 their gallantry in the face of danger is akin to foolhardiness ; 
 their power of intense labour is seldom exerted except to com- 
 pensate for time lost in idleness and revelry ; their readiness to 
 make ' gatherings ' for their sick and maimed comrades seems 
 only to obviate the necessity of previous saving ; their very 
 creed and, after their sort, they are a curiously devotional 
 people, holding frequent prayer-meetings in the pits often 
 degenerates into a fanatical fatalism. But it is seen far more 
 painfully and unmistakably in the alternate plethora and 
 destitution between which, from year's end to year's end, the 
 whole population seems to oscillate. The prodigal revelry of 
 the reckoning night, the drunnkeness of Sunday, the refusal to 
 work on Monday, and perhaps Tuesday ; and then the 
 wretchedness of their homes towards the latter part of the two 
 or three weeks which intervene before the next pay-day, their 
 children kept from school, their wives and daughters on the 
 pit-bank, their furniture in the pawnshop ; the crowded courts 
 and miry lanes in which they live, their houses often cracked 
 from top to bottom by the ' crowning in ' of the ground, 
 without drainage, or ventilation, or due supply of water 
 such a state of things as this, co-existing with earnings which 
 might ensure comfort and even prosperity, seems to prove 
 that no legislation can cure the evil. The whole character of 
 the people must be changed, and they must be taught early in 
 life habits of forecast and self-control. 
 
 " Happily, the cause and the remedy are no less patent than 
 the evil itself. The cause may be found in the reckless habits of
 
 60 The Education of the People. 
 
 t he people ; the remedy is to be sought in improvement of the home 
 and of the school? 
 
 I am thankful to be able to add, that in the course of the 
 last seven or eight years a most noticeable amelioration in the 
 condition of these people has taken place. It was only the other 
 day that the Lord-Lieutenant of the county, returning from a 
 meeting of magistrates in South Staffordshire, convened for 
 the purpose of considering how best the disagreements between 
 the masters and the men might be settled, mentioned the 
 remarkable fact that the present extensive strike,* unlike the 
 strikes of past years, had been unaccompanied by a single 
 act of violence ; and when I asked to what this was to be 
 ascribed, he said it seemed to be the unanimous opinion of 
 the magistrates that it was due to the spread of education 
 among the people, bringing their minds more than heretofore 
 under the influence of public opinion, and giving them more 
 correct views of their own interests. 
 
 In connexion with many of the great works of our manufac- 
 turers, reading-rooms have of late been established, where the 
 principal London journals can be read. The success of these 
 reading-rooms bears a twofold witness to the progress of educa- 
 tion. In the first place, their amount of custom shows that 
 the number of those who can read with ease and pleasure is 
 largely increased ; and in the second place, the way in which 
 they have displaced a quantity of pernicious penny literature 
 argues a more wholesome taste on the part of our reading 
 operatives. Another fact must have struck those who have 
 heard or read the addresses and circulars of the colliers, and 
 that is, that amongst much that is still irrational, they point to 
 many real evils which in previous strikes were not put promi- 
 nently forward ; for instance, one of their chief complaints now 
 is, that the butties, or contractors, pay them their wages in 
 * This was written in 1858.
 
 Educational Condition of Staffordshire. 6 1 
 
 public-houses, thus gratuitously throwing them in the way of 
 a strong temptation to drink ; another is, that through the 
 intervention of the butty-system, the iron and coal-masters see 
 so little and know so little of the men. 
 
 Along with these symptoms of improvement may be mentioned 
 the total discontinuance of bull and bear-baiting during the last 
 eight or ten years ; the rare occurrence of fights between man 
 and man ; the great popularity of excursion trips ; cheap con- 
 certs, lectures, and the revival of mechanics' institutes. It is 
 not a mere assumption on my part that these facts are con- 
 nected with the rapid extension of good schools in this district. 
 I could produce abundant evidence of this connexion, had I 
 space to do so. 
 
 The rapid extension of the means of popular education in 
 the South Staffordshire mining district appears in the fact that 
 within this district, comprising about 200,000 people, and 
 occupying an area of about ten miles square, there have been 
 built in the last ten or twelve years thirty new schools, capable 
 of accommodating about 8000 children, nearly all of them being 
 under certificated teachers, with apprentices, and annual grants 
 in aid of their support from the parliamentary fund. 
 
 If we turn from the hardware district of South Staffordshire 
 to the potteries, in the north of the county, the change for the 
 better is hardly less remarkable, though much, very much, re- 
 mains to be accomplished. 
 
 Those who remember the great outbreak of 1842, when the 
 miners of the North Staffordshire coal-field rose against their 
 employers, flooding the pits, plundering the provision shops, 
 insulting the clergy, and hardly yielding to the superior force of 
 the military who were called out to restore order ; those who 
 remember what the potteries were in those days, and witnessed 
 last year (1857) the quiet, patient bearing of the people during a 
 season of unexampled depression in the trade of the district,
 
 62 TJte Education of the People. 
 
 will confirm me in saying that the multiplied means of educa- 
 tion afforded to the people during the intervening period have 
 not failed to produce some good effects on the character of the 
 people. 
 
 Several schools were already in active operation when I first 
 knew the district in 1850 ; but they reached but few of the 
 children, and those who attended them were little better than 
 infants. Of 3538 children whom I found in these schools in 
 1852, one-half were under seven years old, and only nine per 
 cent, were above eleven. Their average term of attendance at 
 school was one year and eight months. 
 
 Out of ten boys' schools, having mo on the books, 476 
 had been withdrawn to work in the factories in one year. 
 The ages of these boys, when so taken to work, were as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 28 per cent, were under seven. 
 
 5 1 per cent, were above seven and under ten. 
 
 1 7 per cent, were above ten and under thirteen. 
 
 4 per cent, were above thirteen. 
 
 From eight girls' schools, having 817 on the books, 220 had 
 been taken to work in the factories in one year at the follow- 
 ing ages : 
 
 15 per cent, were under seven. 
 
 80 per cent, were above seven and under thirteen. 
 
 5 per cent, were above thirteen. 
 
 One school was reported to me as having turned over its 
 stock of children four times in two years and a quarter ! In 
 an infants' school of 200 children, only four were above six 
 years old, and of the girls only three were above five. The 
 mistress told me, in explanation, that at this age (five) they 
 were generally kept at home to replace their sisters of six or 
 seven, who then went to work ! 
 
 Now, although I believe the condition of the potteries' child
 
 Educational Condition of Staffordshire. 63 
 
 has been to some small extent improved ; and though I have 
 statistics to show that for some portion of them, at all events, 
 the period of schooling has been extended to a later age ; and 
 though here, too, as in South Staffordshire, the number of 
 elementary schools has been considerably increased about 
 ten new schools having been built in this district during the 
 last twelve years, and placed under efficient teachers yet I 
 cannot ascribe the improved morality of the potters and miners 
 of North Staffordshire so much to the direct action of the ele- 
 mentary day-school, as to the establishment of evening-schools, 
 adult classes, drawing-schools, and reading-rooms of late years. 
 In one parish I hear of a Working Men's Association, num- 
 bering 300 members ; in another, of cheap concerts given by 
 amateurs, and attended by many of the miners all through the 
 winter ; in connexion with the largest iron-works of the dis- 
 trict, (Lord Granville's,) day-schools, night-schools, a chaplain, 
 services in the works, and a reading-room, have been estab- 
 lished in the last few years, and what is still more important 
 residences for the operatives have been built on an excel- 
 lent plan. Night-schools are becoming very general, and are 
 largely attended in the winter months, especially by the young 
 workpeople and adults. At Stoke-upon-Trent, a school of 
 practical chemistry was established, with a large class of journey- 
 man potters and apprentices, and was rapidly becoming self- 
 supporting, when, unfortunately, the master was unexpectedly 
 obliged to leave the neighbourhood. It was only the other day 
 that one of the men employed in Minton's works came to me 
 to say there was a very general wish that it might be reopened. 
 The most successful day-school of the district is Kidsgrove. 
 Here the children stay to a more advanced age than elsewhere, 
 and their fees render the school almost self-supporting. Con- 
 sequently, education is in this place bearing its legitimate 
 fruits. Not an instance can be produced of a child educated at
 
 64 The Education of the People. 
 
 Kidsgrove daily schools, since their formation in 1839, having 
 been convicted as a felon. Formerly drunkenness prevailed in 
 this parish to a fearful extent ; now it very seldom occurs that 
 a man is fined for this vice. The workmen very generally 
 save their money, and great numbers have built themselves 
 good houses. 
 
 But, as I said above, the regular attendance of the children 
 at this and a few other schools to the age of twelve or thirteen, 
 is an exception to the general rule which obtains in both the 
 North and the South Staffordshire districts. For the most part, 
 the children leave to go to work at a deplorably early age. 
 And it is to this great evil, felt more or less throughout Eng- 
 land, that I now wish to invite attention. 
 
 In no part of England has the evil of premature employment 
 presented itself in a more aggravated form than in Stafford- 
 shire, and nowhere have more strenuous efforts been made to 
 counteract it. Here, therefore, the educational problems con- 
 nected with it may most profitably be studied. 
 
 No words of mine are needed to prove that the desultory 
 attendance of children at school, and the very early age at 
 which their schooling ceases, now form the main hindrance to 
 national education. Time was when want of schools was our 
 great difficulty : schools were built. Then we wanted a better 
 class of teachers : an admirable system for the training of 
 teachers was devised, and this need was supplied. With mul- 
 tiplied schools and superior teachers the annual expenditure 
 began to exceed the resources of the Voluntary System, and a 
 larger measure of grants in aid was accorded by the Govern- 
 ment. Meantime the nation, after making these really great 
 efforts to provide means of education for its children, was 
 naturally looking for results. I believe I am not wrong in 
 saying that some four or five years ago a very general feeling 
 of disappointment began to be felt. Crime was not dimin-
 
 Educational Condition of Staffordshire. 65 
 
 ished a good deal of conceit seemed to be engendered 
 domestic servants were not improved. Weak minds here and 
 there were losing their faith in education. Things were in 
 this state, and the further progress of this great national work 
 went near to be imperilled, when public opinion was most op- 
 portunely set right in the matter, and attention directed to the 
 real cause of our slow advance. It was no longer the want of 
 schools for children, but the want of children for schools, that 
 was now hindering us. Schools maintained at a great cost, 
 and capable of imparting an excellent education, were found 
 to be filled with mere infants, constantly coming and going, 
 and altogether withdrawn long before any real impression could 
 be made upon their minds or characters. This discovery of 
 the real difficulty, and this conversion and concentration of 
 public attention upon what had come to be the really import- 
 ant issue, were due, I believe, in a very large measure, to the 
 reports of the inspectors of schools. Without any precon- 
 certed purpose they echoed from all parts of England the 
 teachers' complaint, that while the children came so irregularly, 
 and left so prematurely, little or nothing worthy the name of 
 education would be effected. In the Education Conference held 
 in London, under the Prince Consort's auspices, last year (1857), 
 the new problem thus raised found still more public expression. 
 People inquired anxiously what measures had been taken to 
 counteract the evil, and what success had attended them. 
 Among other things, attention was called to the prize schemes 
 and the registration scheme of Staffordshire. Both had been 
 devised with a view to securing a more regular attendance of 
 children at school, and both had been in a certain measure 
 successful. In papers read before that conference, which have 
 since been published, and in a series of special reports to the 
 Committee of Council, these prize schemes, in their origin 
 and operation, have been so fully described, that I need 
 
 E
 
 66 The Education of the People. 
 
 not here do more than state a very few facts concerning 
 them. 
 
 In 1852 it appeared that Staffordshire was suffering more 
 than any other county in England from the early removal of 
 school children to work. Attention being called to this by 
 Mr Tremenheere in the south, and myself in the north prize 
 schemes were established in both parts of the county, sup- 
 ported by the liberality of the iron and coal-masters, and great 
 manufacturers, whose annual subscriptions for this purpose soon 
 reached a sum of nearly ^500. None are allowed to com- 
 pete for these prizes unless they are eleven years old or up- 
 wards, have been at least two years in regular attendance at 
 school, and can produce certificates of good conduct. Candi- 
 dates thus qualified are examined collectively by me each year, 
 and those who reach a certain standard of marks receive a 
 quarto Bible in their first year of competition, and ^3 in sub- 
 sequent years. After completing their fifteenth year, those who 
 won prizes while at school may return to my examinations, 
 and, if the testimonials from their employers are satisfactory, 
 may compete for a higher prize. Thus a career of merit is 
 opened to them, and encouragement held out to continuance 
 of study after leaving school. 
 
 The success of the prize schemes, now in their sixth year of 
 trial, may be stated under the following heads : 
 
 1. The number of candidates has gone on steadily increas- 
 ing. 
 
 2. The average age of the candidates has risen from eleven 
 years and six months, to thirteen years ; and that of the first 
 class in the several schools for nine years and three months, 
 to ten years and nine months. 
 
 3. Their attainments have advanced no less uniformly and 
 satisfactorily, especially in the boys' arithmetic, and in the girls' 
 needlework.
 
 Educational Condition of Staffordshire. 67 
 
 4. The attendance at school has been more regular. 
 
 5. The teachers have been encouraged and stimulated. 
 
 6. The parents have discovered for the first time that the 
 great employers of labour take an interest in their children's 
 education. 
 
 In one respect, and one only, have the results disappointed 
 us. Not much more than one-fourth certainly not more than 
 one-third of the prizes are won by those for whose benefit 
 they were specially intended, the children of the colliers and 
 iron-workers. 
 
 Our failure to reach the children of the mining class thus far 
 is an instructive failure. We cannot induce them to remain at 
 school over their eleventh year, but we may perhaps induce a 
 more regular attendance under this age ; and we may perhaps, 
 by an extension of the after-prize part of our scheme, encourage 
 them to make a better use than heretofore of such leisure time 
 as the intervals of work may allow them. And it is to be 
 remembered that the work of a collier is by no means so con- 
 tinuous as that of the spinner, or weaver, or potter. The collier 
 seldom works more than four, or at most five, days in the week ; 
 and his earnings being large, he can well afford the expense of 
 a night-school or mechanics' institute. If the colliers were 
 found unwilling to attend the better-dressed classes of a 
 mechanics' institute, " Colliers ' Institutes " might perhaps be 
 organised, with special classes for Monday, the leisure day of the 
 Staffordshire colliers and iron-workers. The after-prize offered 
 by these prize scheme associations would find many more com- 
 petitors if such Monday classes could be made general ; and in 
 this way the operation of our prize schemes might be invigor- 
 ated in the one point in which they have thus far fallen short of 
 success. 
 
 I now come to the other experiment which is being 
 tried in Staffordshire, with a view to induce a better attend-
 
 68 The Education of the People. 
 
 ance of children at our schools I mean the registration 
 scheme. 
 
 This originated in a wish to extend to the rest of the county 
 the sort of stimulus afforded to the mining and manufacturing 
 districts by the prize schemes. Money prizes over this wide 
 area were out of the question, but an issue of testimonial cards 
 seemed to be quite practicable. 
 
 The scheme may be very briefly described, its chief charac- 
 teristic being its extreme simplicity. 
 
 Canon Hutchinson, Mr Hand, (the Deputy- Clerk of the 
 Peace,) and I have undertaken the registration of such school 
 children as can show that they have been at least two 
 years in regular attendance at some school since their ninth 
 birthday. The children need not belong to any particular class 
 of schools. Their names may be sent in to the clerical 
 registrar, or to the lay registrar, as the school managers may 
 choose. On the receipt of their names, certificates of their 
 registration are forwarded to the children. Each additional 
 half-year that a child continues in regular attendance at school, 
 entitles him to an additional card. As a testimonial, the cards 
 will thus go on accumulating value. In fixing eleven as the age 
 at which children should first become eligible for registration, 
 we were guided by the consideration that to raise our standard 
 much above the actual standard of school age would ensure 
 our failure. If we wish to be in a position to go into the 
 labour market, and say to the employers of labour, " Here is 
 our registered article ; we ask you to give it the preference over 
 that which is not registered," we must take care that our supply 
 is in some measure commensurate with their demand. 
 
 Our object, therefore, is to get a large number of children 
 registered as rapidly as possible. Under protest, therefore, and 
 as a concession to the existing state of things, we have allowed 
 them to be registered at this very early age. Considering how
 
 Educational Condition of Staffordshire, 69 
 
 very young the children are, and how irregularly they attend in 
 most of our schools, and remembering that it must take some 
 time to make our plan generally known and understood, I con- 
 fess that the number already registered exceeds my expectation. 
 The number of schools that have sent in names is about 150 ; 
 the total number of children registered is 2476 ; and of these 
 a large proportion have continued to attend school for the sake 
 of receiving cards attesting a yet longer attendance. 
 
 The success of the experiment so far seems to be mainly 
 due to its extreme simplicity. We resolved to make the card 
 simply and merely attest the one fact of regular attendance for 
 a certain period. It was judged that to make it embrace con- 
 siderations of conduct or attainment, would complicate the 
 scheme, and render it liable to abuse and consequent dis- 
 credit. 
 
 I rejoice to be able to add, that nearly all the principal em- 
 ployers of labour in the county have signed a declaration that 
 they mean to recognise these cards as testimonials, and to 
 instruct their agents to ask all children applying to them for 
 employment whether they can produce their certificates of 
 registration. 
 
 A printed copy of this declaration, with the names of those 
 who have signed it, from the Duke of Sutherland down to the 
 wholesale grocer of the country town, is hung up in the several 
 schools. And thus an effort is being made in Staffordshire to 
 effect by the Voluntary System that which many are calling upon 
 the Legislature to make compulsory the postponement of 
 juvenile labour until a certain amount of schooling has been 
 secured.* 
 
 In concluding this notice of the prize schemes and the regis- 
 
 * A similar and still more successful scheme for the registration of deserving 
 school children has been instituted by the Hon. and Rev. S. Best, Vicar of 
 Abbott's Ann, in connexion with the Southern Counties Adult Education 
 Society.
 
 7O The Education of the People. 
 
 tration scheme of Staffordshire, I am anxious to say distinctly 
 what I have said from the first, that I cannot look upon them 
 as permanent institutions, or as adequate, on their present foot- 
 ing, to counteract in any great degree the evil against which 
 they are directed. 
 
 They have been started and sustained by a strong wish on 
 the part of several people in Staffordshire to attack the evil, and 
 to see what could be done by voluntary effort and individual 
 exertion, pending the establishment of more permanent and 
 effectual measures. 
 
 I know, from personal intercourse, that many of the leading 
 manufacturers, both in the potteries and in the iron district, 
 desire some legislative enactment for these districts analogous 
 to that which has been applied to the employment of children 
 in the textile manufactures of the north. 
 
 It has been proposed by some to apply the principle of the 
 Factory Act, requiring that young children shall only be em- 
 ployed in relays, attending school half their time. 
 
 It has been proposed by others, that the principle of the 
 Printworks Act should be rather adopted, making an attend- 
 ance at school of 150 hours (or thirty days) in each half-year a 
 necessary condition of employment. 
 
 After a very careful inquiry, I have no hesitation in saying, 
 that neither of these laws would be applicable to the manufac- 
 turing districts of Staffordshire. 
 
 The first would be simply impracticable, owing to the very 
 limited supply of hands and the nature of the work. The 
 second, in an educational point of view, would be worse than 
 useless. Such a desultory and capricious attendance at school 
 as it sanctions is not only worthless to the child, but most hurt- 
 ful to the efficiency of the school. 
 
 I am acquainted with several schools in Cheshire frequented 
 by printworks' children. The masters uniformly complain to
 
 Educational Condition of Staffordshire. 7 1 
 
 me that their attendance is useless to the children, and 
 injurious to the school. 
 
 It remains that some third plan should be proposed, free 
 from the objections attaching to the Factory or Printworks 
 Act. 
 
 I believe such a measure may be found suggested in the 
 registration scheme now at work, and accepted in Staffordshire. 
 
 Why should not all schools grant such certificates of schooling, 
 to be signed by the teacher, and countersigned by some competent 
 authority, such as a magistrate?* and why should not the 
 inspectors of mines be instructed to require all children em- 
 ployed in mines to produce these certificates ? 
 
 The extension of such a law to the potteries and iron-works 
 would involve the appointment of inspectors of these manufac- 
 tories ; and how far such inspection would be feasible, I am not 
 competent to say. But in the case of mines being already 
 under inspection I see no difficulty. The measure seems to 
 be recommended by its extreme simplicity, and by the fact of 
 its having been already tried, and found, so far as it has been 
 voluntarily adopted, to answer in Staffordshire. One of those 
 who assisted me most in carrying the scheme into operation in 
 the south mining district, was himself an iron and coal-master. 
 He brought it before other masters at their quarterly meeting, 
 and found very few disposed to object to it. 
 
 If I am asked how far I consider prize schemes a permanent 
 institution, I answer that I cannot expect them to take a per- 
 manent place among our educational institutions until they are 
 supported by endowments. In comparing our system of 
 elementary education with the system of higher education 
 carried on in our grammar schools and universities, the very 
 
 * This was written in 1858. As will be seen from chapters I. II. III. I be- 
 lieve the time is now ripe for making universal the legal requirements of such a 
 certificate as a qualification for labour for hire under the age of fifteen.
 
 72 The Education of the People. 
 
 first thing that strikes us is, that the latter is largely endowed 
 with prize funds, while the former is almost entirely without 
 such attractions. Why the child of a poor man should be ex- 
 pected to value learning for its own sake purely, while for the 
 son of the rich man it is accompanied with every sort of allure- 
 ment in the way of prizes, exhibitions, and fellowships, it is 
 not easy to understand. The Charity Commission now sitting 
 in St James's Square could not render a greater service to 
 popular education than by converting the bread charities, 
 clothing charities, apprenticing charities, &c., into permanent 
 prize bursaries for, or exhibitions in connexion with, schools 
 properly and permanently constituted, under regulations wisely 
 and carefully drawn up by persons competent to advise in such 
 matters. For it cannot be too carefully remembered that 
 prizes inefficiently or unwisely administered may be productive 
 of far more harm than good. 
 
 I must now bring these remarks to a close. I have endea- 
 voured to show how, in Staffordshire, we have had most strik- 
 ingly exemplified those hindrances to education which are being 
 more or less felt throughout England ; I have pointed out the way 
 in which voluntary effort has been directed against them in this 
 county, and with what measure of success this effort has been 
 attended ; from our prize schemes I have drawn a suggestion 
 for the application of some of our charitable endowments to 
 this purpose ; and in our registration scheme I think I see the 
 germ of a practicable and effectual measure for securing a 
 larger amount of education to our operative children. 
 
 On the whole, the progress made in the last ten years has 
 been steadily sustained, and far exceeds what even sanguine 
 people expected. But looking generally at the county, the 
 main result of the survey must still be a conviction that though 
 much has been done, far more remains to be done. Consider- 
 ing how many schools are still inefficient, and how in the best
 
 Educational Condition of Staffordshire. 73 
 
 schools the majority of the children leave before reaching the 
 first class, I fear I should be rather over than under the mark 
 if I said that even one-fifth or one-sixth part of the children of 
 the county are being reached by our improved system of educa- 
 tion. This fifth or sixth part are our future ^10 householders, 
 and we can scarcely estimate too highly the benefit our national 
 schools are conferring on this class. But the children of the 
 class below still need to be protected from the competition of 
 the labour market, and the children of the lowest class almost 
 entirely escape us. While this is so, I need hardly say that it 
 is in vain to expect much improvement in our criminal statis- 
 tics. We are slowly, and I think surely, working down towards 
 the crime-breeding stratum of society, but we have not yet 
 reached it. It is a premature and false conclusion, that educa- 
 tion is not the true remedy for crime ; our criminal classes 
 have never yet come within her influence. Once let her light 
 be fairly brought to bear upon the dark haunts of our crowded 
 population, and here, too,' she will assuredly fulfil the purpose 
 which Milton so magnificently assigns to her the purpose of 
 " repairing the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know 
 God aright, and out of that knowledge to love Him, to imitate 
 Him, to be like Him."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ADULT EDUCATION AND EVENING-SCHOOLS. 
 
 THE department of national education of which this chapter 
 treats, is at once new and old. Only since the date of the Re- 
 vised Code have evening-schools come to vindicate for them- 
 selves public recognition as a matter of national policy ; but in 
 the way of voluntary effort or private enterprise they are of 
 older date than people imagine. Before the days of even Bell 
 and Lancaster they were to be found in the towns of the north. 
 One of the oldest and most respected inhabitants of Bolton, 
 in Lancashire, told me that they were common in his youth, 
 and that he himself attended one of them more than sixty years 
 ago. It was held by a Mr Cunliffe, a self-taught mathemati- 
 cian, master of Hulton's Charity School, on his own account, 
 and was frequented by thirty or forty young men, chiefly of the 
 working-classes, whose early education had been neglected ; 
 my informant and two or three others went to learn Algebra, 
 paying a higher fee. The factory system, with its regularity of 
 hours and habits of association, naturally favoured the growth 
 of such institutions, and next to his " Sabbath School," the 
 Lancashire weaver to this day dearly loves an evening-school. 
 
 To what extent evening schools existed in other parts of 
 England I am unable to say ; if at all, it was only by way of 
 desultory effort. The Royal Commissioners of 1862 say, that 
 the first public recommendation of this kind of instruction 
 is to be found in a letter addressed by Bishop Hinds to Mr
 
 A dull Edtication and Evening- Schools. 7 5 
 
 Senior, and published in 1839. It was entitled, "On Supple- 
 mental Evening Schools," and proposed that ^500 be appro- 
 priated annually out of the parliamentary grant for their sup- 
 port. The suggestion was not, however, acted on ; and until 
 the year 1855 they received no direct recognition on the part 
 of the Committee of Council on Education. 
 
 In that year what is called the Night-School Minute was 
 passed, offering premiums, from $ to ^10, to teachers of 
 night-schools. This was in consequence of a strong recom- 
 mendation to this effect in my annual Report for 1854, in 
 which I called attention to the devotion and self-sacrifice of 
 the clergy and their families in the maintenance of evening- 
 schools, and their urgent need of assistance if the work was to 
 be made permanent. The purpose of the minute was to retain 
 in this province of elementary education " a class of men by 
 no means uncommon in the manufacturing districts men who, 
 under the constraining influence of religious feeling, or a strong 
 natural love of teaching, had, perhaps, for many years devoted 
 such time as they could rescue from the loom or from the shop 
 to the Sunday school or evening-school of the parish." Under 
 the encouragement of this minute, many persons of this de- 
 scription came forward, giving their evening service to the 
 work, and at the end of the year 1855 I was able to report that 
 forty night-schools were in operation in Cheshire and Stafford- 
 shire. 
 
 In 1859-60, the Royal Commissioners found a total of 
 2036 evening-schools in the country, with about 80,000 
 scholars, of whom two-thirds were in church schools. 
 
 This was a great increase on previous years, but still little 
 more than a beginning, a mere fragment, a mere twentieth-part 
 of the field of national education : 1,675,000 were found in 
 day-schools, and only 80,000 (one in twenty) in evening- 
 schools. However, the Royal Commissioners made emphatic
 
 7 6 The Education of the People, 
 
 mention of their importance in their final summary of recom- 
 mendations : they advised " that inasmuch as evening schools 
 appear to be a most effective and popular means of education, 
 the attention of the Committee of Council be directed to the 
 importance of organising them more perfectly and extending 
 them more widely than at present." 
 
 Accordingly, in the Revised Code we find them, for the first 
 time in their history, lifted into a position of co-ordinate im- 
 portance with the day-school, assumed in fact to be the rule 
 and not the exception. The opening words of the second 
 chapter of the Code are these : " Schools may meet three 
 times daily; viz., in the morning, afternoon, or evening.'' 
 Their scholars are admitted to examination, and grants are 
 offered on the results, as in the case of day-schools. 
 
 In theory, therefore, the evening-school is now an integral 
 part of the educational machinery of every parish. But the 
 discrepancy between our theory and our practice is enormous. 
 
 At the present time, with about two millions of children in 
 our public day-schools, we cannot show more than a hundred 
 thousand evening scholars.* 
 
 The recommendation of the Commissioners, " that evening 
 schools be more perfectly organised and more widely extended," 
 still lies before us unfulfilled. The Education Department and 
 the school manager are alike awaiting a solution of the pro- 
 blem. 
 
 However cheerful and hopeful may be the view we may wish 
 to take of our prospects, we must confess that evening-schools 
 are still experiments, struggling to maintain their existence, de- 
 pendent on the exertions and self-sacrifice of persons who 
 
 * The Minute of Feb. 1865 (see below, p. 88) has increased the number of 
 night-schools under inspection. In 1867, out of about 640,000 scholars pre- 
 sented for examination in England and Wales, 40,000, or i in 16, were night 
 scholars. But this proportion is far below what it ought to be.
 
 Adult Education and Evening- Schools. 77 
 
 ought not and cannot long be expected to endure the labour 
 of their support. 
 
 I say broadly and emphatically that every parish ought to 
 have its evening-school, and at the same time, that no parish 
 clergyman ought to undertake the task of carrying them on 
 without professional help. 
 
 Exhausted by the labour of these evening classes, and dis- 
 heartened by the apparent failure of results, many an anxious 
 clergyman is now asking himself whether, after all, the even- 
 ing school is so important as has been supposed. 
 
 The question has been asked in several places, whether, as 
 our day-schools increase in efficiency, the night-school will not 
 cease to be necessary ; whether the true function of the latter 
 is not, in fact, a temporary one, to instruct the remnant of an 
 old generation who attended no day-school in their childhood, 
 a generation which is rapidly passing away. This question was 
 asked and received a definite answer in South Staffordshire four 
 years ago. 
 
 A few years ago, an Adult Education and Evening-School 
 Association was formed in that district, under the active guid- 
 ance of Lord Lyttleton, with a paid organising master, 30 or 
 40 night schools in union, periodic collective examinations, 
 leading on to those of the Society of Arts, and a well-organised 
 prize scheme. The labours of the president, of the committee, 
 of the organising agent, of the teachers have been unremitting. 
 A most creditable proportion of the night scholars have been 
 successful. In its third year of operation 157 received local 
 certificates, and 51 those of the Society of Arts. Still, the 
 classes required constant stimulus ; still the volunteer teachers 
 fell off, or were overtasked ; still the working-classes seemed 
 hardly to value all this effort on their behalf. The question 
 was naturally asked, "Is it because the district has now enjoyed 
 excellent day-schools under certificated teachers for fifteen years
 
 78 The Education of the People. 
 
 or more, and so the need of elementary instruction for the 
 young workpeople is ceasing ? " To get a practical answer to 
 this question, a sub-committee was appointed in 1864, and 
 was charged to inquire into the attainments of the young oper- 
 atives in certain works, the proprietors of which had kindly 
 consented to the examination. 559 were examined, of whom 
 500 said they had attended day-schools before going to work, 
 their ages varied from 12 to 17. They were examined in read- 
 ing, writing, spelling, and arithmetic ; and were classed as 
 " good," " fair," and " failures ; " the standard marked as 
 " good," was the standard of the second class of a good 
 national school ; " failure " meant that the boy knew little or 
 nothing of the subject. The failures in reading were 41 per 
 cent. ; in writing 39 per cent. ; in spelling 62 per cent. ; in arith- 
 metic 67 per cent. Well, indeed, might this sub-committee say 
 that, from these results, it would appear that a very large pro- 
 portion of boys employed in manual labour, even of those who 
 had passed through our national schools, were still in need of 
 instruction in the simplest rudiments of learning ! 
 
 When one considers that the rapid forgetfulness of school 
 learning, indicated by these results, was proved to exist in a 
 district of highly-paid labour, abounding in excellent day- 
 schools, for whose encouragement a prize fund of ^300 had 
 been annually raised for the last thirteen years, it will, I think, 
 be admitted that the day is indeed far distant when the effi- 
 ciency of our day-schools will have rendered evening-schools 
 unnecessary. If they are so evidently necessary in such a dis- 
 trict as South Staffordshire, much more are they necessary in 
 our comparatively backward rural districts. 
 
 If proof were needed that our improved day-schools are by 
 no means diminishing the need of evening-schools, it would be 
 amply supplied by the evidence collected by the Royal Com- 
 missioners from all parts of England. Of 12,482 scholars in
 
 Adult Education and Evening- Schools. 79 
 
 317 evening-schools examined by the Assistant Commissioners, 
 10,706, or 83 per cent, had attended day schools, and yet 
 almost all were in need of the most elementary instruction in 
 reading, writing, and ciphering. Nor need this be wondered 
 at when it is remembered that " of the children who nominally 
 pass through our best day-schools, only one-fourth stay long 
 enough to reach the first class; three out of four leave with 
 only such a smattering of education as they may have picked 
 up in the lower classes." (Minute for 1859, p. 109.) 
 
 That evening-schools may supply an adequate remedy for 
 these defective results of our day-school education, is abund- 
 antly proved by the experience of the few places where they 
 have been effectively carried on for several consecutive years. 
 Nothing can be more decisive or encouraging than this experi- 
 ence. I could mention numbers of thriving clerks, contractors, 
 and master workmen, who have told me that they owed all 
 their success in life to what they learned at a night-school. I 
 have examined twenty or thirty such schools in towns and rural 
 villages, which seemed to me to be accomplishing a work at 
 least as important as that of the day-school, and far more 
 fruitful in immediate recompense to the conscience of the 
 teacher. Two only I will instance by way of sample of the 
 rest. One had been ten or twelve years in operation at Bol- 
 lington, in Cheshire, having survived changes both of teachers 
 and clergyman, and having in fact fairly taken root in the 
 place. There, as in so many places, it had gone hand in hand 
 with a good Sunday school. About fifty-five young factory 
 women attended regularly three nights in the week, one for 
 sewing, two for general instruction. The proceeds of the sew- 
 ing realised in one year ^42, and went far to support the day 
 school. The general superintendence was committed to the 
 certificated mistress ; the actual work of teaching fell chiefly 
 on a paid assistant, with a grant from Government, and three
 
 8o The Education of the People. 
 
 or four volunteers. The clergyman or his wife was generally 
 present, and read aloud some instructive and entertaining book 
 during the needlework. In the third year of its operation he 
 wrote to me : " The good influence of our efforts has shown 
 itself in many happy ways ; the night-school has deepened and 
 quickened the interest in the day-school ; the number of Sun- 
 day scholars has rapidly increased, and now amounts to 700, 
 of which number more than 100 are above twenty years of age, 
 and 120 regular communicants. The spirit manifested by the 
 night scholars is altogether pleasing; and I thankfully bear 
 witness to the great encouragement I have received from their 
 example and assistance in my ministerial labours." 
 
 My next extract from my annual reports relates to a school 
 at Congleton, St James', the first district created under Sir 
 Robert Peel's Act, people employed in silk mills. 
 
 The night-school had been eleven years in operation, and was 
 one of the best in my district. For some years it was under a 
 most efficient assistant teacher. (Minute of July, 1852.) When 
 he left, the clergyman (Rev. John Wilson) failing to find another 
 assistant teacher under the old minute, and preferring an older 
 man, appointed a silk-weaver under the minute of 1855. Of 
 the success of this evening-school, Mr Wilson says : 
 
 " Numbers of boys who have been scholars in it are now 
 grown up, and are filling respectable places as clerks, upper 
 servants in factories, &c. I can distinctly state that I know 
 the night-school has been the means of raising not a few from 
 the low and degraded state in which the parents and elder 
 brothers were content to remain. I now find myself sur- 
 rounded by a considerable number of young men who are 
 intelligent, well behaved, and vastly superior to what ' factory 
 lads' used to be. I may mention also that I readily recruit my 
 staff of Sunday teachers from among the most promising of the 
 night scholars.
 
 A dult Education and Evening- Schools. 8 1 
 
 "The subjects of instruction include occasional Scripture les- 
 sons, but not every evening, as nearly all the scholars attend 
 the Sunday school ; a class of them are now reading the ' Pil- 
 grim's Progress.' Reading and writing form an important part 
 of their evening lessons ; once or twice a week geography and 
 grammar ; but by their own choice the chief portion of their 
 time is given to arithmetic, in which they appeared at the last 
 inspection well advanced." 
 
 Mr Wilson adds, " Some of them are really good singers, and 
 I think they are all the better lads for having this talent culti- 
 vated. A relation of mine (an attorney) has taken great pains 
 with them, and none of the musicians have gone wrong in 
 moral conduct. The old piano, to which the more proficient 
 have access, jingles away, and it is wonderful how soon and 
 how much they learn on it. The young men's musical class 
 has lately developed into a brass band, of which I consider the 
 old piano the parent. A subscription for this purpose was 
 started : the youths themselves gave ^5 ; and though we are 
 not a rich people, but just now very poor, ^13 more was 
 kindly added to it by friends. The teacher must be a clever, 
 energetic fellow, and a really superior man, or else he will 
 never do for a town like this. But with only ^10 to add to 
 the pence, I almost despair of engaging such a man." 
 
 As I said before, I could multiply these instances of really 
 successful night-schools by thirty or forty ; and yet of scarcely 
 any of them could I say that they were on a secure and per- 
 manent footing. In no case are the school managers bound by 
 their trust-deed to maintain them. In nearly all they depend 
 for success on the clergyman, or the squire, or the manufac- 
 turer, or some members of their families. 
 
 Instead of multiplying particular instances, I will endeavour 
 to sum up the experience of those best informed on the subject, 
 giving the conclusions to which three distinct authorities per- 
 
 F
 
 82 The Education of the People. 
 
 haps the very best that I could have applied to, speaking of 
 three distinct kinds of population have furnished me with. 
 One is from H.M. inspector, Mr Stokes, who draws his con- 
 clusions from the most successful group of night-schools that 
 this country can perhaps show, the Roman Catholic night- 
 schools of Lancashire, one numbering 629 scholars, another 
 589, another 546, and eight others above 200 a very remark- 
 able group it must be admitted. He writes to me : 
 
 " In my report for 1860, I tried to say something to the 
 point on night-schools. For their success they rely on such 
 conditions as these : 
 
 " i. Regular habits of population, such as prevail in the fac- 
 tory districts where the hours of work are regulated by law. 
 
 " 2. Managers zealous, affable, enjoying confidence, willing 
 to attend nightly. 
 
 " 3. Respect for scholars' wishes, or even whims ; avoiding 
 the term ' school,' and calling it rather a ' Club, or Young 
 Men's Society ;' formally enrolling the members, terming their 
 fees ' subscriptions ;' excluding the absentees or defaulters 
 from the ' society ;' appointing the most respected to be 
 teachers. 
 
 " 4. Perseverance ; a new night-school is irksome at first, 
 with an established tradition it will almost work itself. 
 
 " On the other hand, excepting in a district of regulated 
 labour, or without a manager of the right stamp, or without a 
 light hand in the management, my experience leads me to hope 
 little for night-schools on a large scale." 
 
 These remarks (which seem to me of great value) are drawn 
 from a factory district, it will be observed, where the hours of 
 labour are regulated by law. Mr Baker, the well-known in- 
 spector of factories, whose reports are always full of valuable 
 matter, also lays much stress on the great advantage to the 
 night-school of our factory legislation. " Every year's experi-
 
 Adult Education and Evening- Schools. 83 
 
 ence," he says, " convinces me, from the clearest observation, 
 and from opportunities of becoming acquainted with the habits 
 of the working classes which have rarely been exceeded, that 
 night-schools will have to be increased, and all kinds of labour 
 will have to be shortened that they may be filled" 
 
 So much for factory districts. I next go to districts of irreg- 
 ular labour, mining or manufacturing districts, where the hours 
 of work are not regulated by law, seaport towns, watering- 
 places, and the like. The difficulty here is much greater. 
 Many of those whom we most wish to draw into our evening 
 classes are employed over-hours in shops or in service ; their 
 attendance will be most irregular. By way of giving the cream 
 of our experience of such places, I will transcribe the resolu- 
 tions which were come to by the sub-committee of the South 
 Staffordshire Association, (alluded to above,) Their inquiry 
 and their deliberations had been of the most careful kind, 
 spread over several months of this year, and the results they 
 arrived at seem to me most trustworthy. 
 
 They reported that the evening-schools of the district " had 
 to a great extent failed," and they ascribed their failure to the 
 following causes : 
 
 1. The indisposition of young people to attend schools after 
 their day's work is over. 
 
 2. The frequent calls for over-work. 
 
 3. The great variety of cheap attractions, such as wakes and 
 fairs, theatres, music-halls, clubs, and other places of amusement. 
 
 4. The indisposition of managers and teachers to carry on 
 evening-schools, in consequence of the uncertainty that prevails 
 as to their scholars continuing to attend school up to the period 
 of the Government inspection. 
 
 5. The want of suitable provision to make the evening-school 
 comfortable and attractive. 
 
 Their suggestions were as follow :
 
 84 The Education of the People. 
 
 1 . That this association shall press upon employers of labour 
 the desirableness of encouraging the boys in their employment 
 to attend evening-schools. 
 
 2. That school managers should print tickets entitling the 
 holder to evening instruction for six months ; and that packets 
 of these tickets be sold to employers of labour, at a cost of 
 half the usual night-school fee for six months, for distribution 
 among their younger workpeople. 
 
 3. That evening scholars be encouraged to prepare speci- 
 mens of writing, mapping, book-keeping, drawing, and other 
 school work, for an annual exhibition. 
 
 In the third place, I come to agricultural evening-schools, 
 and here my authority is one who will at once command atten- 
 tion. Mr Fraser, rector of Ufton, the ablest of the assistant 
 commissioners, and a diocesan inspector of schools, gives me 
 a desponding view of the prospects of rural night-schools. 
 That his own is an exception is clearly due to his untiring 
 energy. He writes to me : " In the neighbourhood in which 
 I live, and in others with which I am acquainted," (the dis- 
 trict assigned to him by the Duke of Newcastle's Commission 
 layin five of the western counties, purely agricultural,) " the con- 
 dition of night-schools makes no progress. I conceive that 
 the real difficulty still is to find teachers. The clergyman must 
 attend every night himself to sustain the thing ; and this is 
 often impossible. At the same time I am satisfied that the 
 demand, or at any rate the necessity, for night-schools is in- 
 creasing, not diminishing. We cannot keep our day boys 
 longer at school than we used to do ; and every year multiplies 
 the situations which cannot be held except by persons pos- 
 sessed of a certain amount of scholarship. Among my own 
 young men, who are not at all of a high type, I find great 
 avidity for instruction, a sense of the value of learning, and 
 much thankfulness for the opportunity afforded them."
 
 Adult Education and Evening- Schools. 85 
 
 I have now brought forward three authorities on this subject, 
 one speaking for factory districts, another for other town dis- 
 tricts, and the third for rural districts. 
 
 It will be seen that the difficulty of finding teachers presses 
 most heavily on the last, the rural parishes ; indeed, it is their 
 only serious difficulty. The difficulty of getting young people 
 to attend is undoubtedly greatest in the second, the ordinary 
 town districts, where the hours of the labourer are very irregular, 
 (far more so than in factories or in agriculture,) and where 
 there are many competing attractions. 
 
 The difficulties of any sort are, I think, least in the factory 
 districts, and there, in point of fact, all our most flourishing 
 night-schools are to be found. The regularity of the hours of 
 labour all the year round renders it possible to keep the even- 
 ing-school open all through the twelve months, and so makes 
 it worth while to engage a trained teacher specially for the 
 purpose : while the high rate of wages enables the managers to 
 charge such fees as will go far to pay his salary. These schools 
 being easily brought under inspection are profiting largely by 
 the capitation grants under the Revised Code. 
 
 This group, therefore, I dismiss, and confine my concluding 
 observations to evening-schools in ordinary towns not under 
 the provisions of any factory law, and rural parishes. Here the 
 night school can only be carried on in the six winter months ; 
 great energy is needed to get the young people to attend ; and 
 it is difficult to find a teacher of the requisite efficiency. The 
 only practical solution is, that the whole burden is thrown on 
 some zealous volunteer, and, when no such is forthcoming, the 
 night-school breaks down. 
 
 Where are we to find the right sort of teachers ? 
 
 How are we to pay them ? 
 
 To these two questions I now address myself. 
 
 To the first question I answer unhesitatingly with Mr Fraser,
 
 86 The Education of the People. 
 
 we must render the day-school staff of teachers available for the 
 night-school. " Schools may meet three times daily," the 
 Revised Code says. We must henceforth let this be distinctly 
 understood in engaging our certificated teachers, we hold them 
 responsible for the evening-school as well as the day-school. 
 But how do this without overtasking their strength ? " Give 
 up the afternoon school," Mr Fraser says ; but for this I am 
 not prepared. But that it may well be so shortened and 
 lightened during the winter months as to leave the head teacher 
 fresh for the evening I am persuaded. Let it be cut down to 
 two hours, the last hour or half hour is often a drowsy one, and 
 not worth much. Let the boys have some work corresponding 
 to the girls' needlework ; this I have often wished for other 
 reasons. I would break up all the classes, and let the boys sit at 
 their desks, each individually occupied either in private study- 
 and we are not half careful enough to teach our school children 
 the habit of private study or in mapping, drawing, book-keep- 
 ing, and the like. Where the latter kind of occupation was 
 adopted, the results might be shown to the parents and patrons 
 of the school at the annual exhibition about Easter. The master 
 would be present, and, in the course of the afternoon, should 
 give the whole school a good drilling for a quarter of an hour 
 in their playground, or a singing lesson, or both ; but on these 
 afternoons there should be no direct teaching on his part, 
 merely superintendence. The youngest boys might be in a 
 class-room under an assistant, or learning to knit with the girls. 
 Thus the afternoons of three or four days of the week on which 
 the night-school met might be greatly lightened, with no loss, 
 but as I believe rather a gain to the day scholars. Under the 
 Revised Code the master is allowed to teach his pupil teachers, 
 if he have any, during the night-school hours. Three hours of 
 steady lesson work in the morning, two light hours, such as I 
 have described, in the afternoon, and an hour and a half of
 
 Adult Education and Evening- Schools. 87 
 
 night-school need overtask no healthy man. It would be much 
 less than the daily work of an assistant-master at Eton, Harrow, 
 or Rugby. In the case of schoolmistresses, it would seldom be 
 difficult to find volunteers in the parish who would assist them 
 in their needlework, and so lighten very materially their after- 
 noon labour. 
 
 I now come to the question of expense. Any master thus 
 undertaking an evening-school during the winter months should 
 have ;i5 added to his income ; a mistress should have ;io. 
 
 The fuel and lighting of the schoolroom for an evening- 
 school of 30 or 40, would average about ^3 or ^4 for the 
 winter. Stationery, beyond what the scholars would buy for 
 themselves, would vary from i to ^2. As the numbers 
 increased, paid assistants would be needed, one such for a 
 night-school of 30, two for a night-school of 45, and so on, 
 allowing a teacher for every 1 5 scholars. These assistants would 
 in most places be abundantly paid at the rate of is. or is. 6d. 
 a night say $ for the season. They would be, naturally, 
 selected from the most promising old scholars of the day- 
 school, youths of sixteen or seventeen, who had got superior 
 situations some such almost every parish with a good school 
 can show. I calculate that the night scholars' fees ought, 
 exactly, to cover the expense of these assistant teachers, and 
 of the fuel and lights. Thus the varying element in the income 
 cancels the varying element in the expenditure. The payments 
 of the first 15 scholars would cover the expense of lights and of 
 one fire ; every additional 15 would require, and would pay for, 
 one additional assistant teacher, and a very slight additional 
 outlay in light and fuel. Thus, the only expense to be other- 
 wise provided for is the lump of ^15 to the master or ^10 to 
 the mistress. For this I look to the Government grant, the 
 whole of which might be given to the teacher, perhaps, in lieu 
 of any fixed sum. For night-schools, Government offers 25.
 
 The Education of the People. 
 
 6d. a head on the average attendance, and an additional 55. for 
 every scholar who has attended twenty-four times, and passes, 
 in any grade, in reading, writing, and cyphering. 
 
 But here we come to what on the first issue of the Revised 
 Code seemed to be a grand difficulty : How are night schools to 
 be inspected? They only meet in the winter months; and half 
 of our schools are, of course, inspected in the summer months. 
 They only meet in the evenings; and the inspector can seldom 
 stay and spend his evening in the place. Then there is a 
 difficulty, sometimes, in persuading these backward young 
 people to present themselves for examination to a gentleman 
 from London. 
 
 In February 1865, the Education Department removed this 
 difficulty by adopting my suggestion that night-schools should 
 be examined simultaneously, once in the year, on the system of 
 sealed papers, adopted by the Society of Arts with such per- 
 fect success. Two responsible persons are nominated for each 
 school, to guarantee, by their attendance, the integrity of the 
 examination; the Education Department sends to them, by the 
 previous post, a printed paper of questions in arithmetic, and 
 passages for dictation for each grade, together with instructions 
 as to the exercise in reading and elementary writing. Those 
 presented in the three lower standards do their work with a 
 lead pencil; those in the three upper with pen and ink; but all 
 on paper. On each student's paper is marked, also, whether he 
 passed or failed to pass in reading. These papers signed by 
 the teacher, and countersigned by the managers, as bond, fide the 
 work of those whose names they respectively bore are there 
 and then sealed up in a packet, and sent to the inspector, who 
 upon these results is able, on the occasion of his next inspec- 
 tion of the day-school, after conversation with the night-school 
 teacher, and after careful scrutiny of the registers and copy- 
 books, to fill up his report on the night-school. Thus all
 
 Adtilt Education and Evening- Schools. 89 
 
 evening schools have the advantage of being examined at their 
 usual place and hour of meeting, and that, too, in the best 
 month of the year, at the close of their winter session. The 
 difficulty, moreover, of getting the scholars to present them- 
 selves for examination to a stranger is thus avoided. 
 
 Thus, the problem of bringing the evening schools within 
 the operation of the Revised Code has been solved. And this 
 solves the financial difficulty. The pence and grant together 
 may realise about IDS. a head per scholar in a fairly successful 
 night-school; and this, where the numbers in average attend- 
 ance exceed thirty, would make the evening-school, in a great 
 measure, self-supporting; an additional ^5 might be needed 
 for the assistant teacher. A smaller school would, of course, 
 make a rather heavier demand on the subscription fund; but 
 in no case need the deficit in the night-school balance-sheet 
 exceed ;io. 
 
 By working this system it is my hope that we may be able to 
 reinvigorate the evening-school. With the encouragement arid 
 pecuniary assistance of these grants, it ought to form a very 
 important part of every school establishment. One of the 
 wishes of the day (if I may so speak) will thus be realised. An 
 evident need will be met. The night-school, instead of a 
 burden and anxiety to the clergyman, will become one of his 
 greatest pleasures. And an accession of strength will accrue to 
 our parochial system, by thus bringing into direct relations with 
 those who have their good most at heart, the very class whom 
 it is confessedly most difficult to reach I mean the young un- 
 married labourers of our towns and villages.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PRIZE SCHEMES. 
 
 IN dealing with questions which depend for their solution on 
 practical experience, it is well sometimes, in the absence of 
 ascertained principles, to put forward a theory, which, whether 
 it ultimately stand or fall, may serve in the meantime to pro- 
 voke discussion and to direct inquiry. 
 
 As far as I am aware, the subject of rewards, as a part of 
 the philosophy of education, has never been satisfactorily 
 cleared up.* At all events I find the greatest possible diver- 
 sity of opinion respecting their application, and very few of 
 the teachers or school managers with whom I have spoken on 
 the subject have been able to give any clear or consistent 
 reasons for the course they have chosen to pursue. The fol- 
 lowing are some of the principal points on which I have found 
 people divided : 
 
 1. Whether it might not be better to abolish prizes alto- 
 gether, as tending to substitute lower motives for higher 
 motives. 
 
 2. Whether feelings of emulation were to be encouraged or 
 discouraged. 
 
 * The question was opened in a very sprightly controversy which appeared 
 in the pages of the "English Journal of Education " some quarter of a century 
 ago, and is handled in several of the manuals of education which have more 
 recently appeared ; but most of the essays on the subject that I have happened 
 to read have seemed to labour under one of two faults an unpractical stoicism 
 which would refuse to admit any secondary motives, or a confusion of emulation 
 with jealousy.
 
 Prize Schemes. 91 
 
 3. Whether prizes should be given for moral or for intellec- 
 tual excellence chiefly. 
 
 4. Whether religious knowledge was a matter for which 
 prizes should be given. 
 
 5. Whether prizes should be given in money or in books. 
 
 6. Whether a few large prizes or many small prizes were 
 best. 
 
 I shall not hesitate to put the conclusions to which I have 
 been led by my experience of the working of prize schemes 
 into a dogmatic form, not because of the importance I at- 
 tach to them, but simply because this form will best facilitate 
 their discussion. 
 
 By stating briefly the way in which these questions have 
 been from time to time forced on my attention, I shall suffi- 
 ciently indicate the train of thought through which I have 
 arrived at my present notions on the subject. 
 
 Before the institution of the Staffordshire Prize Scheme I 
 had often observed how well a system of rewards seemed to 
 answer in one school, and how mischievous they appeared to 
 be in another. Generally speaking, I found a disposition to 
 retain them among old-fashioned teachers, and a wish to 
 abolish them on the part of the more skilled class of teachers. 
 On further inquiry, it most frequently appeared that they were 
 disapproved by these latter persons, not from any absolute 
 objection to the principle of rewards, but because the impor- 
 tunity of parents and the good nature of school patrons were 
 almost sure to lead to their abuse. Prizes given on exhibition 
 days, according to the results of a public examination, were 
 beginning to be almost everywhere condemned as fostering 
 conceit, and as being in two cases out of three unjustly 
 awarded. The form which was most generally approved was 
 a reward in the shape of a book given for a certain number 
 of marks or tickets for good conduct or place in class, gained
 
 92 The Education of the People. 
 
 during the preceding year or half-year. The most complete 
 example of this system that came under my notice was at the 
 Belmont Patent Candle Factory, where every kind of good 
 conduct seemed to have its proportionate reward attached to 
 it in the shape of farthing counters, for which books were 
 given at the end of the year. What I there saw led rne into 
 a correspondence with Mr James Wilson, whose authority, in 
 any matter connected with the moral training of youth, is of 
 the highest value. He did not admit the force of my objec- 
 tion that this system tended to enervate the moral principle, 
 urging scriptural warranty for it, and contending that what 
 was done at first for the sake of a prize would soon become 
 habitual, and the habit being once formed would be persevered 
 in from higher motives. 
 
 When the Staffordshire Prize Scheme was established, it be- 
 came my business to frame rules for its administration ; they 
 will be found in my special report for 1852. In each succeed- 
 ing year, in the constitution of new prize schemes, or the 
 revision of their rules, I was confronted, as it were, with the 
 subject ; and on each occasion I consulted the opinions of the 
 teachers, and ascertained as far as I could what the effects 
 had been on individual children. 
 
 In these ways my notions on the subject have been slowly 
 acquiring form. I shall state them, for the reasons mentioned 
 above, under distinct heads, in the inverse order to that in 
 which for the most part they occurred to me. 
 
 In every society there will be found among its members the 
 most various degrees of attainment in what is good ; and in 
 most societies common consent or public opinion will be found 
 to have fixed, rightly or wrongly, a certain level, above which 
 the several degrees are measured in order of merit, and below 
 which they are measured in an order of demerit.
 
 Prize Schemes. 93 
 
 Now, it is clearly the interest of a society to encourage its 
 members to rise above this level, and to deter them from fall- 
 ing below it. And not only so, but society requires, for its 
 own satisfaction as it were, to express publicly its approval of 
 more than ordinary merit, and its indignation at great demerit. 
 
 Hence arise systems of reward and punishment. 
 
 The purpose of rewards is to assert and raise as high as 
 possible the standard of what is good. The purpose of punish- 
 ments is to condemn and diminish as much as possible what is 
 bad. Each has its own range, if I may so speak, on the moral 
 scale ; and it is highly important that the range of the one 
 should be kept distinct from that of the other. 
 
 Hence my first practical rule for the right use of rewards* 
 in the education of children : 
 
 RULE I. " You should not reward children for doing what 
 you would punish them for leaving undone." 
 
 It is due, I believe, to the neglect of this rule that rewards 
 have in so many instances defeated their proper purpose, and 
 tended to lower, instead of to raise, the standard of what is 
 good. And yet the rule when stated seems so simple as almost 
 to be implied in the terms used. 
 
 If it is a merit to have reached any given degree of excel- 
 lence, it cannot properly be a disgrace to have failed to reached 
 it; and, conversely, if it is disgraceful to fall below a given 
 standard, it ought not to be accounted very meritorious to 
 attain it. 
 
 Even if the authorities of a school confuse the two, the 
 shrewd logic of the children will keep them well apart. " If 
 doing this deserve a prize, it cannot be so very bad to leave it 
 undone." The more the teacher from a mistaken wish to 
 encourage a greater number pulls down his standard of what 
 
 * Here, and wherever I have used the term, I wish material rewards to be 
 understood.
 
 94 The Education of the People. 
 
 is creditable, the more will the children push down their 
 standard of what is discreditable ; and thus the sure conse- 
 quence of making prizes too cheap is to demoralise your 
 school. 
 
 The simplest and most obvious way of guarding against this 
 depreciation of the prize is to adopt the principle of competi- 
 tion, whereby the candidates, in their efforts to surpass one 
 another, themselves push up the standard. But this principle 
 is open to the objection that it makes each one's loss his 
 neighbour's gain. 
 
 I am content, therefore, to secure a sufficiently high standard 
 of excellence by providing that it be readjusted from time to 
 time with special reference to the following rule : 
 
 RULE II. " Prizes should not be attainable without positive 
 effort." 
 
 I hold this rule to be of the greatest importance, because in 
 this effort lies, I conceive, the moral value of prize schemes. 
 When this rule is observed, the examination becomes a trial of 
 strength, a struggle after excellence ; it stirs all that is most 
 generous in a child, and whether he gain the prize or not, he 
 has tasted a new pleasure, a pleasure that will not soon be 
 forgotten, the pleasure of putting forth his best energies, one 
 of the most valuable experiences that can be given to a child 
 in the whole course of his education. 
 
 I now come to a point which to some may seem open to 
 question, but which to me appears to admit of little doubt, if 
 Rules I. and II. be conceded. 
 
 Should prizes be given for moral excellence ? The duty of 
 making children understand' the immeasurable superiority of 
 moral excellence over intellectual excellence, renders this a 
 most important question. 
 
 I answer, that indirectly they may be, and must be, con- 
 nected with moral excellence. For the very effort which they
 
 Prize Schemes. 95 
 
 ought to require, according to Rule II., is a moral one ; and 
 the previous training, which in a well-constructed prize scheme 
 success always implies, is a moral training, involving punc- 
 tuality in attending school, industry while there, honesty in 
 doing their own work, and other moral habits. And on this 
 ground, therefore, in schools for children, I should object to a 
 prize which could be won by mere cleverness, without necessarily 
 indicating any of these moral qualities. But directly, and apart 
 from other qualifications, I hold that moral excellence ought 
 not to bring a prize. My reasons may be very briefly ex- 
 pressed. In moral matters there can only be a right and a 
 wrong. The wrong should always be put before children as 
 something that deserves punishment ; and, consequently, ac- 
 cording to Rule I., the right should not receive a prize. Re- 
 warded it always will be, in a right state of things, by the 
 approval of the teacher, and by that happiest of all feelings 
 that a child can have the feeling that he is more and more 
 winning his teacher's confidence. But I am speaking through- 
 out of material rewards in the shape of prizes. In this sense, 
 therefore, I would say, that if idleness, falsehood, impurity, are 
 punishable ; then industry, truthfulness, chastity, are not to be 
 rewarded. The duty of being good is one of the earliest that 
 a child may be expected to understand. The duty of intel- 
 lectual exertion is seldom recognised until considerable pro- 
 gress has been made. Moreover, the value of virtue depends 
 almost entirely on its being practised for its own sake ; whereas 
 intellectual exertion bears valuable fruit from whatever motive 
 it is made. 
 
 If the Gospel parables are quoted- against me, as they have 
 been, as affording high authority for directly rewarding moral 
 excellence, I answer, these parables set forth a providential 
 arrangement in God's world, which will, so far as He sees fit, 
 extend itself to our little school world, without any intervention
 
 96 The Education of the People. 
 
 on our part. We should mislead our children if we taught 
 them to expect that as the Divine order connects holiness and 
 happiness together eternally, so goodness would surely be fol- 
 lowed by its reward in the affairs of daily life. Far more truly 
 shall we interpret our Lord's teaching, if in all moral matters 
 we accustom our children to say, when they have done all that 
 is commanded them, " We are unprofitable servants ; we have 
 done that which was our duty to do." 
 
 I therefore deprecate entirely the practice of giving children 
 prizes for good conduct, or for learning their daily lessons, as 
 tending to enervate their sense of duty. It seems to imply 
 that good behavionr is something exceptional ; whereas good 
 behaviour ought to be put before them as the rule, and mis- 
 behaviour as the exception. Indeed, the very way in which 
 persons who wish to give prizes for good conduct are forced to 
 measure it, viz., by the comparative fewness of the faults 
 recorded, seems to be a confession that it is at best a negative 
 good; and, if so, it is enough that, so far as mere outward 
 effects go, it should exempt from punishment, without entitling 
 to reward. 
 
 Now I can conceive no punishment for misbehaviour so just 
 or appropriate as exclusion from opportunities of distinction 
 that are open to all the rest. And, therefore, while I would 
 make the award of prizes exclusively depend on the in- 
 tellectual acquirements of the candidates, I would take care 
 that children of bad character were rigorously excluded from 
 becoming candidates. 
 
 I hope I have made it plain that I am perfectly consistent 
 in replying to the question raised about moral excellence by 
 the two following rules : 
 
 RULE III. Prizes should not be given for good be- 
 haviour.* 
 * One possible exception occurs to me, but it belongs rather to home or
 
 Prize Schemes. 97 
 
 RULE IV. Children of bad character should be excluded 
 from competition. 
 
 Where the examiner is not the same person as the school- 
 teacher, it is a matter of no slight difficulty to determine the best 
 form for the certificate of character. It must be free from am- 
 biguity, and yet not too peremptory, else qualifications will be 
 added by those who have to sign it, which will involve the 
 examiner in endless perplexity. 
 
 The form adopted in our Staffordshire examinations was the 
 following : 
 
 " bears a good character, and has been attentive to 
 
 his [or her] religious duties." 
 
 And to this the following note was appended : 
 
 "N.B. The responsibility of determining whether a candidate 
 deserves this certificate or not must rest with the minister and 
 teacher. No qualified certificate can be accepted. It is the earnest 
 wish of those who give these prizes, that no children should be ad- 
 mitted to the examination who have not shown, during the past 
 year, at least a marked endeavour to merit the approbation of their 
 pastors and teachers." 
 
 I now come to the question, "What is the most appropriate 
 subject-matter for prize examinations ? " One answer is self- 
 evident ; it must be something in which excellence can be 
 justly and definitely measured. And this simple condition will 
 limit our choice much more than people not practically con- 
 versant with the work of examining might be disposed to 
 imagine. If the violation of Rule I. explains the ill effects 
 that have attended prizes in many cases, the neglect of this 
 
 nursery education than to that of a school ; I mean the case of an individual 
 child, where some bad habit is to be broken, and where the effort required is so 
 great and so definite that a prize might be allowed according to the spirit of 
 Rule II.; but I should wish to regard it as a concession to the child's low 
 moral state in respect to some one particular duty. 
 
 G
 
 98 The Education o f the People. 
 
 obvious principle, of not attempting more than can be really 
 well done, has caused the mischief in many more. It were 
 better, a hundred times, to have no prizes, than that the 
 children should go away with an impression that the prizes 
 have been determined very much by chance. 
 
 From my experience in conducting the examinations that 
 have taken place in connexion with these prize schemes 
 hardly one of which has been free from some instructive 
 blunder I put forward the following suggestions with some 
 degree of confidence : 
 
 RULE V. " Where the result of an examination is to be a 
 classification of the candidates, the examination should be 
 confined to some one subject, or, at most, to some one class of 
 kindred subjects." 
 
 The following are my chief reasons for this rule : 
 
 1. Where many subjects are included, the examiner must 
 adopt his own rate of valuation for the several kinds of merit 
 shown ; and this rate is sure to appear to some arbitrary and 
 unfair. There will always be some who will say the result is 
 unfair, because a higher value ought to have been assigned to 
 this or that subject. What is arbitrary should be, as far as 
 possible, excluded from these awards. 
 
 2. If several departments of school work form the subjects 
 for examination, the absence of any one becomes a marked 
 thing, and gives rise to an inference that the examiners do not 
 attach to it much importance. The only way of avoiding this 
 evil is, either to examine in all (which would occupy many 
 days) or to make it quite plain upon the face of the prize, 
 that it only professes to certify excellence in some specific 
 subject. 
 
 3. My third reason is to be found in the moral effect of 
 success upon the children. 
 
 If the examination is limited to some one subject, (say arith-
 
 Prize Schemes. 99 
 
 metic,) every one knows what the prize means. It proclaims 
 the bearer to be excellent as an arithmetician. If, on the 
 contrary, the examination includes many subjects, no one 
 knows precisely what the prize means ; and not knowing 
 whether it means this thing or that thing or the other thing, 
 people go away with the loose notion that it means all, and 
 that the boy is so good a scholar that he cannot have much 
 more to learn. 
 
 Now I ask every one who is accustomed to children, whether 
 they have not found a reputation of the first kind good and 
 stimulating in its effects, and a reputation of the second kind 
 apt to foster conceit? The explanation of these opposite 
 effects lies, I believe, in this, in the one case the child knows 
 that people give him credit for what he really has ; in the 
 other case, he is conscious that people impute to him a good 
 deal that he has not, and he is strongly tempted to accept the 
 credit so given, in other words, to pretend to excellences that 
 he does not possess. Just praise invigorates, but flattery ruins 
 a child. 
 
 The intention of Rule V. would also require, that where the 
 range of any subject is considerable, either the examination 
 should be confined to some special department of it, sufficient 
 notice of this having been previously given ; or a large choice 
 of questions should be proposed, a small number only being 
 required to be answered. The necessity of this caution, to 
 exclude the risk of chance, is obvious. 
 
 The question is often asked, "What is the best kind of 
 prize for the children of an elementary school?" Some, I 
 find, object altogether to a money prize ; and if by this is 
 meant a present of pocket-money, I entirely agree that this 
 is the worst kind of prize that can be given. Nine people out 
 of ten wish to make the prize an occasion for putting some- 
 thing instructive into the way of the child, and choose,
 
 ioo The Education of the People. 
 
 therefore, the most useful book they can find. I am almost 
 disposed to think that this is a mistake. The book may be 
 read, or it may not ; it may suit the child's taste, or it may 
 not : it may be carefully treasured, or it may soon be lost. 
 There is, as it seems to me, one paramount consideration that 
 should guide us in the choice of the prize, and this forms my 
 Sixth Rule : 
 
 RULE VI. The prize should be of a kind to make a lasting 
 impression upon the child. 
 
 The kind of prize that I myself prefer is one that is purely 
 honorary, one that never can be diverted to any other use, 
 one that is, and must ever be, a prize, and nothing but a prize ; 
 such as a medal of intrinsic beauty. But I would not forbid 
 either money prizes or books ; they should be subject, however, 
 to these conditions: 
 
 1. If money is given, it must be of such amount as to put 
 its immediate expenditure out of the question ; so large as to 
 carry with it, perforce of its size, a sense of responsibility a 
 feeling of property ; and it should be accompanied with a 
 recommendation that it should be placed in a savings-bank, 
 and the teacher should take occasion to give the child a lesson 
 on interest and investment. This feeling of having become a 
 proprietor is probably something quite new to the child ; it 
 increases his self-respect, and initiates him into the pleasure of 
 husbandry. Many a shilling will be added to this store, which 
 it would otherwise have seemed hardly worth while to lay by, 
 and a habit is formed which will be invaluable in after-life. 
 Our experience of the working of the money prizes in Stafford- 
 shire quite warrants the belief that a sum of $ or ^5 may be 
 safely placed in the hands of a boy of twelve years old, where 
 a sum of 53. or IDS. would be almost sure to be wasted. 
 
 2. If a book is given, I would suggest that it ought to be, 
 if possible, a large heavy book a quarto Bible, for instance.
 
 Prize Schemes. 101 
 
 Its very size makes a strong impression on the child, and 
 at the same time renders it almost impossible that it should be 
 lost 
 
 3. Far better than either, for boys, would be an exhibition to 
 some school of higher instruction.* 
 
 I need hardly say, that I much prefer a few valuable prizes 
 to many small ones. 
 
 I have already occupied far too much space with this 
 subject ; but, before I dismiss it, I wish to enter a short 
 but emphatic protest against two objections to the use of 
 prizes, which, as they profess to be grounded on principle, 
 deserve to be treated with respect, although in the present 
 day one is almost aweary of that much abused phrase " on 
 principle." 
 
 Some object to giving prizes, as being a system of bribery ; 
 others object to them as fostering emulation, which they con- 
 sider unchristian. 
 
 Both objections rest, as it seems to me, not " on principle," 
 but on a confusion of thought. 
 
 The hateful character of a bribe does not consist in its being 
 a mercenary inducement to action, else the hiring of labourers 
 were gross bribery ; but, in this, that it is a mercenary induce- 
 ment to some action that is wrong. If it is morally wrong to 
 excel in arithmetic, then to offer a prize for arithmetic is 
 bribery. 
 
 So with respect to emulation or rivalry. The proper mean- 
 ing of the words I take to be, an ardent desire to equal or to 
 surpass another. Now there are obviously two ways of 
 equalling or surpassing another : one is to raise yourself up to 
 his level, or above it ; the other is, to pull him down to your 
 level, or below it. If emulation mean the latter, it is as un- 
 
 * See my suggestions for the promotion of technical schools in the following 
 chapter.
 
 IO2 The Education of the People. 
 
 Christian a feeling as can be ; if it mean the former, I see 
 nothing unchristian in it ; on the contrary, I find it not 
 unfrequently appealed to by our Lord and His apostles. If 
 any one says, " Could I feel sure that the feeling would take 
 the first form, I should not object : but is there not a risk 
 of its taking the second ? " I answer, undoubtedly there is, 
 just as there is a risk of the prize being gained by deceit. But 
 to give up prizes on this account would be not a whit more 
 reasonable than to abandon punishments because the wrong 
 feeling of anger might possibly be mixed up with the right 
 feeling of shame, or to relinquish any other means of good, 
 because it might possibly be mingled with evil. 
 
 Such are my views on the subject of school prizes. They 
 may be briefly summed up in this way : 
 
 The right purpose of school prizes is to stimulate children to 
 more than ordinary exertion ; and this chiefly in matters where 
 you could not well expect them, at their age, to understand 
 the duty of such exertion. And further, prizes should be, as 
 far as possible, attached to excellence in specific subjects, 
 and should be of a kind calculated to make a lasting im- 
 pression.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION. 
 
 BY technical instruction (the phrase is not a very happy one) 
 is, I suppose, meant that province of education which enables 
 the workman to use, not his hand and eye only, but his mind 
 also upon his work. The distinction is an important one, and 
 very noticeable. A farmer has in his employment two carters 
 they are equally strong, equally steady but one is worth 
 to his employer fifty per cent, more than the other. Somehow, 
 the first gets half again as much work out of his horses as the 
 second. How is this? Watch them loading their carts; one 
 throws half the load on the back of the shaft-horse, the other 
 places the weight evenly over the axle : one so couples a 
 second horse that half his work is spent in dragging down the 
 shoulder of the first, the other so adjusts the traces that he 
 pulls directly at the load. In a word, one uses his mind, the 
 other cannot. Or, again, there are two builders in your village 
 equally skilful in the use of their tools one of the two it is 
 quite a pleasure to have about your house ; you find in him 
 just the sort of adviser you want. " Shall this or that improve- 
 ment be made?" He takes out his rule, and not only his rule 
 (that the other could do) but his paper and pencil also, esti- 
 mates his quantities, and tells you on the spot the comparative 
 cost. You are alarmed by the bulge or " buckling out" of a 
 wall ; he can not only rebuild it, that the other could do, but 
 also counteract at once the thrust which caused it. In short,
 
 IO4 The Education of the People. 
 
 he understands something of the principles of construction : he 
 brings mind to bear upon his work. It is needless to multiply 
 illustrations. England is more and more awakening to the 
 fact that in a thousand ways she is wasting her resources her 
 resources in raw materal, as well as her resources in time and 
 muscle for want of more intelligence in their employment. 
 Those fires at the coal-pit mouth, the volumes of heat and fuel 
 thrown up our chimneys, the bad quality of our gas, the in- 
 crustation of our boilers, the frequent accidents in our mines 
 or in the use of machinery, our slowness to adopt new in- 
 ventions, (such as the reaping machine, or the Davy lamp, or 
 the electric light, or Bessemer's process in metallurgy,) and 
 most of all, the extreme difficulty of finding properly qualified 
 over-men in all provinces of manufacture, all these are signs of 
 the want amongst us of what is called "technical instruction." 
 
 And what is the consequence ? Listen to the almost unani- 
 mous opinion of the jurors whom we sent to the Paris Ex- 
 hibition in 1867 : : 
 
 " We have especially noted the progress of other nations in 
 those mechanical and constructive arts and trades in which in 
 1851 England exhibited pre-eminent excellence. We have to 
 record that in many of these some other nations appear to 
 have made much more rapid progress than ourselves, so that 
 we are relatively falling off. And we specially note that our 
 falling off is not in unimportant departments, but in some of 
 those which formerly constituted our staple excellence ; for in- 
 stance, in steel and iron steam-machinery, locomotive engines, 
 tools, manufacturing machinery in general." 
 
 Then as to the cause of this : 
 
 "We have not failed to notice that it is precisely those 
 nations which have been systematically giving a course of 
 preparatory training and education to their population in their 
 skilled trades, that have shown the most marked progress in
 
 Technical Instruction. 105 
 
 national industry in these successive exhibitions ; Prussia, 
 Switzerland, Belgium, France, seem to make progress in pro- 
 portion to their excellence of educational training ; Prussia 
 in steel, iron, and general engineering work ; Switzerland in 
 scientific engineering, machinery, watch and telegraph work, 
 and in textile manufactures; Belgium in metal-working and 
 mechanical trades j France in metal-work, and in steam- 
 engines, engineering structures, naval architecture, and in 
 steam-navigation." 
 
 Such is the verdict of some of the eminent men who, in 
 1867, examined the Exhibition in the Champ de Mars. What, 
 then, is needed on our part ? We must teach our youths in- 
 tended to be craftsmen those branches of applied science which 
 relate most nearly to the principles of their future craft. 
 
 It is important to define very exactly the kind of instruction 
 that is needed to make an intelligent artisan. It is a kind of 
 instruction that must touch the elementary school on the one 
 side, and the workshop on the other. This is its range ; and 
 to this range it must be limited. Now, what are these limits ? 
 
 1. A boy leaves the elementary school at twelve, and must 
 enter the workshop, say, at fifteen. His course of technical 
 instruction must be such as a boy of that age can master in 
 three years. Here is one practical limit. 
 
 2. Again, it must not require any preparation beyond what 
 an average village school supplies ; in other words, the first 
 steps in technical instruction must be such as a boy can master 
 who has learned little or nothing beyond reading, writing, and 
 arithmetic. Here is a second limit obliging us to be modest 
 in our programme. For I am very sure that to ask of the 
 primary school any further preparation in the way of natural 
 philosophy or the like, would be altogether in vain. 
 
 3. While our course should embrace nothing but what has a 
 direct bearing on the boy's future work, it must not trespass
 
 io6 The Education of the People. 
 
 on the workshop. Technical instruction does not imply the 
 practice of an art, nor even the learning of an art. Here is a 
 third limit, reminding us that no amount of science-teaching 
 can supersede the need of apprenticeship. 
 
 These three limits will be found to define very exactly what 
 we want and what we do not want. 
 
 Most emphatically, we do not want pure science as taught 
 in our universities. The physical sciences as taught in the 
 universities are too abstract, their professors are too fastidious, 
 for our purpose. On the other hand, as emphatically, we do 
 not want the mere teaching of empirical rules. The com- 
 mercial teachers, to whom (if to any one) our artisans have 
 hitherto looked for their training, have only loaded the memory, 
 without awakening the intelligence. What we do want is some- 
 thing intermediate between the two, the teaching of such 
 elementary principles as are involved in the processes of skilled 
 labour tending to convert the mere workman into the artisan 
 properly sd called. "Applied Science" is perhaps the best 
 term. It is precisely here that we English people are weak. 
 Philosophy we have in abundance ; manual skill we possess 
 abundantly. But we have not bridged over the interval be- 
 tween the two. On the contrary, there is a dead wall separating 
 our men of theory from our men of practice. This wall must 
 be taken down, and in its stead we must build up schools of 
 applied science. 
 
 The subject-matter of their lessons will, from what I have 
 said, be obvious to any one conversant with the requirements 
 of skilled labour. 
 
 For instance : 
 
 Mensuration is an " applied science," connecting together 
 the pure truths of geometry with the business of a surveyor. 
 
 Perspective brings the results of the science of optics to 
 bear on the work of the draughtsman.
 
 Techn ical Instruction. 107 
 
 Commercial arithmetic applies the abstract formulae of 
 algebra to the purposes of the counting-house. 
 
 Engineering manuals, founded on the French principle of 
 " work done," adapt the pure philosophy of statics and 
 dynamics to problems of construction and machinery. 
 And so forth. 
 
 What is wanted therefore is this : 
 
 i st. Really good manuals of applied science. Some we have 
 as good as can be desired, some greatly need improvement, 
 some are altogether wanting. These manuals should all be 
 so framed as to take up the pupil at the point where the 
 elementary school leaves him, and carry him onward. 
 
 2d. Teachers really competent to give lessons on these man- 
 uals. And, for the supply of such teachers, one or more normal 
 colleges, such as that of Cluny in France, are needed. For he 
 who is to teach with real simplicity must himself know much 
 more than he actually conveys to the pupil. He must teach as 
 a master, not as a scribe. He will then infuse so much of 
 principle into his lesson as will serve to arouse the intelligence 
 of his pupil, and create in him a reverence for knowledge. A 
 really excellent teacher hardly ever turns out conceited pupils. 
 3d. Schools where teachers so trained may give lessons on 
 these manuals ; schools, in short, of " technical instruction." 
 
 All this is being done under the energetic direction of M. 
 Duruy in France. 
 
 The law of 21 June 1865, ^Organisation de V enseignement 
 secondaire special"} with the supplementary decrees which fol- 
 lowed it, created 
 
 ist. A Superior Council* at Paris, under the presidency of 
 
 the Minister of Instruction, and consisting of some of the most 
 
 eminent men in France. Among the names may be found M. 
 
 Dumas, member of the Institute and founder of the " Central 
 
 * " Conseil de perfectionnement."
 
 io8 The Education of the People. 
 
 School of Arts and Manufactures ;" M. Charles Robert, Secre- 
 tary of the Ministry of Instruction ; General Morin, the well- 
 known director of the " Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers ;" 
 M. Dollfus, of Mulhouse, one of the most enlightened manu- 
 facturers in Europe ; M. Ph. Pompe'e, founder of the Profes- 
 sional School of Ivry ; M. Marguerin, Director of the Turgot 
 School. Subordinate to this, provincial Councils are also 
 established, reporting annually to the Superior Council, and 
 intended to give local requirements their due weight in the 
 administration. These councils will superintend the selection 
 of manuals and the programmes of studies. 
 
 2d. A normal college at Cluny, for the training of teachers, 
 supported partly by State grants, and partly by exhibitions con- 
 tributed by the several departments, and partly by the pay- 
 ment of self-paying students. None can enter it under the age 
 of eighteen, nor over the age of twenty-five. The course of 
 instruction occupies two years at least, and may be extended 
 to a third year. It embraces all the sciences bearing on agri- 
 culture, manufactures, mines, and commerce. Juries of ex- 
 aminers are constituted both for the admission of students 
 and for the award of the final diploma, without which no 
 teacher can undertake charge of a school of special secondary 
 instruction. The college occupies an old Benedictine Abbey, 
 " where there still linger the precious memories of piety, science, 
 and industry," (to a French ecclesiastic there must be a sound 
 of irony in this passage of the decree,) and where (this is per- 
 haps more to the purpose) they will have within easy reach the 
 vineyards and corn-fields of Burgundy, the great manufacturing 
 centre of Creuzot, the silk mills of Lyons, and the mines of 
 Saint Etienne. 
 
 The State has granted ^3000, and the Department of 
 Saone-et-Loire (in which Cluny is situated) ^4000 (besides 
 the Abbey) for the establishment of this normal college ; fifty-
 
 Technical Instruction. 109 
 
 five departments have already voted exhibitions out of their 
 rates for the support of students ; or rather, it seems, in most 
 cases have appropriated to this purpose exhibitions already 
 voted, but not needed, for their departmental training schools 
 of primary instruction. 
 
 3d. A circular to the prefects, dated ist June 1866, called 
 their attention to the fact that there were then in France, 
 available for the purposes of special secondary instruction, 251 
 communal colleges, where 12,000 students were already under 
 instruction, only needing specifically trained teachers such as 
 Cluny would, in a few years, be sending forth. There were 
 also, throughout France, 25,000 evening classes, attended by 
 600,000 youths or adults. At present these evening classes 
 are mostly occupied in making good the deficiencies of early 
 elementary education, and are conducted, for the most part, by 
 the certificated teachers of primary schools. But M. Duruy 
 expresses a confident hope that in a few years teachers of 
 applied science may find, in these evening classes, abundant 
 opportunity of spreading this kind of instruction over France. 
 
 Such is the enormous development which France is just now 
 giving to that commercial and technical instruction hitherto 
 given with such admirable results, though within far narrower 
 area, by the Polytechnic School, the Conservatoire, and the 
 Central School "des Arts'et Manufactures" 
 
 In Belgium, for ninety years, the education of engineers, 
 foremen (contre-maitres,} and mine agents, has been, to a limited 
 extent, provided for by the " Ecole des Arts et Manufactures, et 
 des Mines" annexed to the Liege University. I am told that 
 it is in all respects a model school of the kind. Fifteen years 
 ago, in a tour through* the mining districts of Belgium, I re- 
 marked again and again the superiority of their " sous-officiers," 
 as compared with the men holding a similar position in England. 
 
 The complete organisation which France is now giving to
 
 no The Education of the People. 
 
 this kind of training was accomplished in Prussia eleven years 
 ago, by M. Van der Heydt, the then Minister for Trade 
 Manufacture and Public Works. Since that date none can 
 be admitted to any post of responsibility without being certifi- 
 cated by one or other of the gymnasiums or higher citizen- 
 schools which are entitled by government to hold " dismissal 
 examinations," (Entlassungs Priifungen?) 
 
 Let us now turn our eyes homewards, and observe what 
 machinery we have already existing for these purposes, and in- 
 quire where specially it needs extension or modification. 
 
 First and foremost, we have our three admirable science 
 schools in London : 
 
 1. The Royal School of Mines in Jermyn Street, in con- 
 nexion with our unrivalled Geological Museum. 
 
 2. The Royal School of Naval Architecture and Marine 
 Engineering, under the able direction of Mr Merrifield and Dr 
 Woolley. 
 
 3. The Royal College of Chemistry, of which the late Prince 
 Consort was the first president. 
 
 With these may be grouped 
 
 4. The College of Science, in Dublin, 
 
 5. The Glasnevin Agricultural Training College, near Dublin, 
 
 6. The Agricultural College at Cirencester. 
 
 All these are excellent, and might be made at once available 
 for the purposes of Cluny and Lie'ge if local exhibitions to them 
 could be established. 
 
 In the staff of the Science Department, at South Kensington, 
 we have at once the nucleus of a " superior central council," 
 as well as an already existing machinery for holding simul- 
 taneous examinations all over the country. But this council 
 would need to be largely recruited, not from the universities, 
 but from the ranks of our great engineers, metallurgists, and 
 manufacturers.
 
 Technical Instruction. \ 1 1 
 
 With such infusion of a yet more practical element into the 
 counsels of the South Kensington Museum, their present system 
 of annual simultaneous examinations might be continued and 
 strengthened. 
 
 It is not sufficiently known by the general public what a 
 large measure of success has already attended these examina- 
 tions. They are held in May each year. 
 
 The eighth annual examination of teachers was attended 
 by 333 candidates for certificates as science-teachers, and of 
 these 198 were successful. The number of teachers who 
 now hold these science certificates is about 620, so that to 
 some extent we have for our country anticipated the results 
 of Cluny. Examinations of young people were held, in May 
 1866, in 121 provincial and 13 metropolitan centres. The 
 number examined was 3150, the examination being conducted 
 by local committees on papers prepared and sent down by 
 the authorities of South Kensington, and by them revised. 
 Captain Donnelly gives in his report an interesting analysis of 
 the work done, from which it appears that inorganic chemistry 
 is the favourite study, and next to that elementary mathe- 
 matics, practical plane and descriptive geometry, and mecha- 
 nical drawing. 
 
 Almost the whole number of these young people (2980 out 
 of 3150) had received their instruction from certificated 
 teachers, either in science schools or in evening classes. Of 
 the science schools, (of which there are now about 200 in the 
 country, with about 8000* pupils,) the most successful were 
 
 1. Hull Navigation School, which took 96 prizes, 3 gold, 
 
 1 silver, and i bronze medals. 
 
 2. Bristol Diocesan Trade School, (reorganised some twelve 
 years ago by Canon Moseley,) which took 83 prizes, i gold, 
 
 2 silver, and two bronze medals : and 
 
 * See Postscript.
 
 1 1 2 The Education of the People. 
 
 3. The Manchester Mechanics' Institute, which took 82 
 prizes, 2 silver and 2 bronze medals. 
 
 The following also are mentioned very favourably : 
 
 The Oldham Science and Art 
 
 School. 
 
 Newtownards Model School. 
 Oldcastle Endowed School. 
 San try Training School. 
 Glasgow Secular School. 
 Bolton Mechanics' Institute. 
 
 BethnalGreenNational School. 
 Islington Lower Road Public 
 
 School. 
 Plumstead Burrage Road 
 
 School. 
 
 Plymouth Science School. 
 Stroud Institute. 
 
 Here manifestly a good beginning has been made. But it 
 must be remembered that of these 200 schools, which appear 
 as " science schools " in the South Kensington reports, most 
 are schools of general instruction, whose teachers, having ob- 
 tained science certificates, in addition to their other certifi- 
 cates, can claim the aid of the Science and Art Department. 
 On a change of teacher, any of these schools may cease to be 
 included in this list. It is only by courtesy that we term them 
 science schools, and rank them with those that are specifically 
 instituted for the teaching of science, such as those at Bristol, 
 Hull, Oldham, Plymouth. Clearly, to satisfy the needs of the 
 country, we want something less precarious than this. Nor 
 do I think that this kind of instruction can well be grafted on 
 to that of an elementary school. Those whose philanthropy or 
 Christian zeal makes them the best possible managers of our 
 elementary schools are not likely to be the best directors of 
 scientific instruction. Nor would it be fair to ask of the volun- 
 tary system that it should undertake so large an addition to the 
 task which is already overstraining its resources. I do not see 
 why our town councils should not be empowered to levy a rate 
 for the establishment of these schools of applied science in all
 
 Technical Instruction. 
 
 our centres of manufacturing industry. The increased pros- 
 perity of their trade, which here, as well as in Belgium, Prussia, 
 and Switzerland, would surely follow the development of their 
 workpeople's intelligence, would abundantly repay the money 
 so spent ; while, in a few years, if we may judge by our Bristol 
 experience, these schools would be almost self-supporting. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 8000 was the number under instruction in May 
 1866; in May 1867 the number had risen to 10,000. An 
 analysis of the numbers (i.) under instruction, (2.) examined in 
 the several subjects, is subjoined : 
 
 SCIENCE AND ART DEPARTMENT. 
 SCIENCE EXAMINATIONS, MAY 1867. 
 
 Number of 
 Subject. 
 
 NAME OF SUBJECT. 
 
 Number 
 under In- 
 struction. 
 
 Number 
 Examined. 
 
 I. 
 
 Practical Plane and Descriptive Geometry 
 
 
 1749 
 
 786 
 
 II. 
 
 Mechanical and Machine Drawing 
 
 
 
 1409 
 
 7 6 S 
 
 J HI - 
 
 Building Construction . 
 
 
 
 
 
 862 
 
 467 
 
 'till. 
 
 Nuval Architecture 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 IV. 
 
 Elementary Mathematics 
 
 
 
 
 
 1436 
 
 854 
 
 V. 
 
 Higher Mathematics . 
 
 
 
 
 
 41 
 
 47 
 
 VI. 
 
 Theoretical Mechanics 
 
 
 
 
 
 433 
 
 229 
 
 VII. 
 
 Applied Mechanics 
 
 
 
 
 
 165 
 
 112 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Acoustics, Light and Heat 
 
 
 
 
 
 1443 
 
 609 
 
 IX. 
 
 Magnetism and Electricity 
 
 
 
 
 
 1434 
 
 728 
 
 X. 
 
 Inorganic Chemistry . 
 
 
 
 
 
 2380 
 
 IIIO 
 
 XI. 
 
 Organic Chemistry 
 
 
 
 
 
 638 
 
 144 
 
 XII. 
 
 Geology 
 
 
 
 
 
 303 
 
 212 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Mineralogy . 
 
 
 
 
 
 82 
 
 34 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Animal Physiology 
 
 
 
 
 
 1196 
 
 601 
 
 XV. 
 
 Zoology 
 
 
 
 
 
 S9i 
 
 130 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Vegetable Physiology and E 
 
 cono 
 
 nic E 
 
 otan 
 
 r 
 
 257 
 
 103 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Systematic Botany 
 
 
 
 
 
 195 
 
 79 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Mining 
 
 
 
 
 
 24 
 
 38 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Metallurgy . 
 
 
 
 
 
 117 
 
 63 
 
 XX. 
 
 Navigation . 
 
 
 
 
 
 672 
 
 169 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Nautical Astronomy . 
 
 
 
 
 
 610 
 
 94 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Steam .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 166 
 
 121 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Physical Geography 
 
 
 
 
 
 1349 
 
 941 
 
 Alternative subject. 
 
 H
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 GIRLS' INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. 
 
 Is it true that good maid-servants are more scarce than they 
 used to be ? Is it true that the poor man's wife is a worse 
 housekeeper than formerly? And if so, where does the fault lie ? 
 Is it traceable to the school ? Are we tfz^-educating, or are we 
 under-educating girls ? or is it that we are educating them in 
 a wrong direction ? Or does the blame rather rest with the 
 parents, or with our farmers, or is it due to the rapid growth of 
 our manufacturing system ? And, lastly, if the school is in some 
 measure in fault, how can we mend it ? Should it be more in- 
 dustrial in its character ? And, if so, how can it be made so ? 
 
 These are the questions to which I wish to address myself. 
 I have put them loosely, because it is in this loose form that 
 one hears them mooted in conversation ; and because, more- 
 over, this chapter does not pretend to the exactness of an essay. 
 And, by the way, it must be understood that, in speaking of a 
 girls' school, I shall mean throughout an elementary day-school, 
 such as one meets with in most of our parishes. I have had 
 but little experience of other sorts of girls' schools, such as 
 workhouse-schools, or the like, where girls are boarded and 
 lodged, and employed chiefly in industrial work. 
 
 Any suggestions I may have to make are the result of many 
 years' experience as an inspector of schools, during which time 
 some hundreds of girls' schools of the sort which nine out 
 of ten of our labourers' and small shopkeepers' children attend 
 have yearly come under my notice. I have talked the matter
 
 Girls' Industrial Training. 115 
 
 over in a great variety of places, with a great variety of people 
 in large manufacturing towns, in small country towns, in sea- 
 coast villages, in mining districts, in grazing districts, in highly- 
 farmed districts with landed proprietors, with clergymen, with 
 their wives, with teachers, with the children's parents ; so if my 
 notions are erroneous, they certainly have not the excuse of 
 being drawn from a limited field of observation. 
 
 At the outset, it must, I think, be confessed that a large 
 number of people have a notion that our attempts to supply 
 suitable training to the young women of the labouring class 
 have been, judged by the results thus far, a failure. 
 
 Some say they are more conceited, more giddy, more idle 
 than they used to be ; while others acquit them of being worse 
 morally, but complain that they grow up with less knowledge 
 of housework, and less taste for it than formerly. Let us con- 
 sider these two complaints separately ; the one refers to a fault 
 in their moral training, the other to a defect in what may be 
 called their special or professional training. 
 
 And, with regard to the first, I am very sure, from all that I 
 have gathered, that there is in the complaint a great deal of 
 injustice and exaggeration. In cases where I have traced it 
 home, I have generally found that it proceeds from masters or 
 mistresses who might much more justly have blamed them- 
 selves for the misbehaviour of their servants. One who governs 
 ill will be ill served. Careless masters or mistresses, who leave 
 the choice and management of the under servants to an un- 
 trustworthy upper servant farmers, who will wink at any 
 amount of misbehaviour in a dairymaid who makes a good 
 cheese shopkeepers and the like, who engage the cheapest 
 servants they can without ever asking for a character, these 
 people complain loudly, and no wonder, of the endless trouble 
 they have with their servants, and of the difficulty of procuring 
 good ones. Partly from idleness, partly from illiberality, they
 
 1 1 6 The Education of the People. 
 
 ascribe it all to education ; " making girls," forsooth, " inde- 
 pendent," and " giving them notions above their station." 
 
 Every generation has, I believe, complained in this way of 
 servants. In the novels and plays of the last hundred years, 
 or, still earlier, in the essays of the Spectator and Tatler, may 
 be found proof that this complaint is nothing new. The elders 
 of every generation have cried out against the conceit and new- 
 fangled notions of the younger ones ; masters and mistresses 
 have never failed to draw unfavourable comparisons between the 
 faithful old domestics who caressed them in their childhood, and 
 the troublesome servants they have to manage in their later life. 
 As regards, then, the complaint that servants are worse be- 
 haved than formerly, I am persuaded there is a vast deal of 
 exaggeration in it ; and as to the cause assigned, that it pro- 
 ceeds from over-education, I am convinced it is the very op- 
 posite of the truth. I mean, that so far from the moral faults 
 of this class proceeding from excess of education, it may, I think, 
 be very clearly proved that they arise from a deplorable defi- 
 ciency of education. 
 
 On this subject the extent to which education has been 
 carried in the present day there are some widely erroneous 
 notions abroad. 
 
 People whose knowledge of our schools and of what goes 
 on in them comes chiefly from newspapers or blue-books, are 
 apt to imagine that, since the introduction of the Government 
 scheme twenty-five years ago, every young woman who has 
 entered their service has been educated under this new system, 
 and may be taken as a sample of its results. 
 Whereas, what is the actual state of the case ? 
 Thus far our improved system of education has trained about 
 one in five of those old enough to enter service. 
 
 This is not a mere surmise, it is a careful inference from sta- 
 tistical inquiry.
 
 Girls 1 Industrial Training, 117 
 
 Out of any hundred girls of the labouring class you will find, 
 on an average, that some thirty have been at old-fashioned 
 dames' schools in the country, or private "adventure" schools 
 of a very inferior sort in the towns ; of the other seventy, who 
 have attended properly-constituted schools, you will find that 
 at least thirty were just entered in their infancy, and were with- 
 drawn by their parents in their eighth or ninth year as soon 
 as they could read words of two syllables, and write in a copy- 
 book. Of the remaining forty, you will find that one-half 
 attended so irregularly, and so continually unlearned at home 
 what they learned at school, that the teacher entreats you 
 not to consider them as fair samples of the school. Thus, 
 of our hundred girls, twenty remain who may fairly be taken as 
 representing the results of the improved system of education 
 girls who have for some years regularly attended a good school. 
 Now, may not the teacher of one of these schools fairly ask 
 that, before her school is blamed for the faults of one of these 
 servant-girls of whom complaint is made, people should inquire 
 to which of these groups she belonged ? 
 
 It would greatly tend to set public opinion right in the mat- 
 ter of education, if people would be at the pains to ascertain, in 
 every case where complaint is made, first, how much schooling, 
 and next, what sort of schooling the young woman had received. 
 
 I took the trouble to make this inquiry myself a few years ago, 
 in a neighbourhood where there was a general complaint among 
 the small farmers that " education was ruining their ser- 
 vants." 
 
 I asked one who knew the neighbourhood well, and was him- 
 self a farmer, to ascertain for me, in six farmhouses where a 
 servant-girl was kept, what her character was, and what school- 
 ing she had received/ 
 
 The result well illustrates my subject. I will call the girls 
 by the letters* of the alphabet.
 
 1 1 8 The Education of the People. 
 
 A, aged 18, excellent worker, and very trustworthy ; reads fairly, 
 
 writes but very little ; attended a small endowed village 
 school for two years. Parents good ; father a farm labourer. 
 
 B, aged 20, fair worker, character fair; reads fairly, but can 
 
 neither write nor read writing ; attended an inferior national 
 school in a town. Parents honest, but very poor. 
 
 C, aged 20, excellent worker, character indifferent ; can 
 
 neither read nor write to be any profit to her ; attended, 
 I believe, a national town school for a very short time. 
 An orphan. 
 
 D, aged 19, character bad, very refractory, sets all authority 
 
 at defiance ; can read only ; attended a dame's school. 
 Parents very poor. 
 
 E, aged 1 7, morally bad, entirely void of self-respect ; reads 
 
 and writes very fairly ; attended a village dame's school. 
 Parents poor, and of bad character. 
 
 F, aged 18, very indifferent ; reads and writes fairly ; attended 
 
 a village dame's school. 
 
 These facts, taken from a rural part of Staffordshire, need no 
 comment ; while they tend to justify the general complaint 
 about farm-servants, they show, unquestionably, that in these 
 cases, at all events, their faults were traceable, not to excess, 
 but to a lamentable deficiency of education. 
 
 Those three latter cases will represent the sort of training 
 which the majority of our young servants have received : they 
 have attended small, irresponsible dames' schools, where the 
 teacher filled her school by humouring the caprices and con- 
 ceits of the children and their parents calling her pupils 
 " Miss So-and-so," and allowing them to spend half their^ time 
 in crochet work or embroidery : no steady discipline, no good 
 habits enforced, often no religious instruction given. What 
 wonder that girls so trained turn out frivolous and conceited ? 
 And yet these are the very schools which we are labouring to
 
 Girls Industrial Training. 119 
 
 supersede, and which the opponents of education will persist 
 in encouraging. 
 
 I sum up this part of my subject, therefore, by conceding 
 that there is much ground for complaint as to the moral char- 
 acter of young women in service, maintaining, at the same time, 
 that the complaint is exaggerated, and that the fault is often 
 attributable to carelessness on the part of masters and mis- 
 tresses ; and for the rest, due, not to over-education, but to the 
 sad want of it. 
 
 Setting aside, then, those four-fifths of our girls, from whose 
 ranks mainly proceed our domestic servants, but for whom 
 (as I have shown) our new schools are not responsible, let us now 
 consider the case of the one-fifth for whom we are responsible. 
 It is a small proportion, but, as we hope, an increasing one. 
 What becomes of them ? Is it true that they seldom go into ser- 
 vice ? and, if so, is it because their course of training unfits them, 
 or gives them a distaste for housework, or is it from other causes ? 
 I am anxious to particularise the class of girls of whom I am 
 now speaking. 
 
 Any one who is familiar with our better sort of schools will 
 recognise the group. They stand at the head of the first class : 
 the mistress calls them " the remains of her old first class ; " 
 while others have come and gone, these have stayed on with her 
 long enough really to profit by their schooling. They are taller 
 and more tidy than the rest. If you are examining the school on 
 the gallery, you will perceive that it is from them that nearly 
 all the answers proceed. Besides being good readers, writers, 
 spellers, and needlewomen, they have learned to be attentive 
 and respectful, clean in their persons, punctual in their habits. 
 In them we see the results of our work. True, they are few in 
 number at present exceptions to the rule; but what these 
 few are now, that, we trust, in another ten years, a much larger 
 proportion will be. They represent the school of the future.
 
 1 20 77/i? Education of the People. 
 
 While we have time, therefore, let us pause, and consider 
 whether the results of our system, as shown in these girls, are 
 altogether satisfactory. Morally, the success of our schools has 
 been even greater than the most sanguine ventured to antici- 
 pate. Testimony comes to me from all sides to the good be- 
 haviour, in after life, of the girls who have attended our schools 
 regularly.* 
 
 But industrially, with a view, I mean, to their aptitude or in- 
 aptitude for housework, how do they turn out ? 
 
 And first, it must be admitted that, as a general rule, they 
 do not enter service. Why is this ? 
 
 Some places of service, such as too many of our dairy farms 
 and public-houses, are quite unfit for girls who have any self- 
 respect or sense of propriety. 
 
 But, for the rest, why is it that domestic service is not more 
 attractive to our girls ? 
 
 I have two explanations to offer. 
 
 First : well educated girls being, as I have shown, so small 
 a minority, there is just now even a greater demand for them 
 than, perhaps, there will be a few years hence, in other employ- 
 ments preferable to service. They are wanted as pupil teachers 
 or as nursery governesses, or as apprentices to various branches 
 of skilled female labour ; or, if they have comfortable homes, 
 and wish to stay there, they are willingly retained, being, as the 
 mothers say, "perfect treasures at home," while their less 
 steady sisters are gladly sent away into domestic service. 
 
 This competition with domestic service is sound and healthy, 
 forcing those who wish to have good servants to learn to treat 
 them more as members of their family, and less as hired work- 
 people. 
 
 None but the hopelessly selfish man can wish to cheapen 
 women's labour in England. 
 
 * See the Note at the end of this chapter.
 
 Girls Industrial Training. 121 
 
 My second explanation is that which claims our attention 
 chiefly. 
 
 Our present course of school training certainly does tend to 
 give girls a distaste for housework. It is too bookish, too 
 sedentary. How can this be remedied ? 
 
 My answer is a very simple one ; it was remedied in about 
 a dozen schools in the three counties which formed my district, 
 and might have been in nearly all. About a dozen day schools 
 came under my inspection which had engrafted industrial 
 housework into the school routine, and the effect, in every case 
 where it was judiciously done, was that the girls of that school 
 stayed longer, and much more generally sought domestic 
 service, and found excellent places. 
 
 I have no space here to describe in detail the plans which 
 have been found to work successfully. 
 
 I shall content myself with giving a few of the most valuable 
 results of this experience. 
 
 1. The industrial work done must be really useful work, not a 
 mere play ing at the thing. 
 
 2 . The principal teacher of the school must herself take a hearty 
 interest in it. 
 
 3. // must be made attractive to the girls. 
 
 4. Care must be taken to put them in the way of obtaining good 
 places when they leave school. 
 
 I will now show briefly how these rules may best be carried 
 out. 
 
 Except in special cases, where there happens to be a demand 
 for some particular product of female industry, opportunity for 
 industrial training will best be supplied by a model home in 
 connexion with the school. The mistress's house is obviously 
 the nucleus of such a home. The addition of a couple of 
 bedrooms for boarders, and a corresponding enlargement of the 
 kitchen, offices, &c., would at once supply a routine of house-
 
 122 The Education of 'the People. 
 
 work sufficient to occupy a dozen of the elder school-girls for 
 six or eight hours in the week. 
 
 They should divide the work amongst them, some in turn 
 being in the kitchen, some doing housemaid's work, some 
 washing, some baking, some marketing. The boarders (who 
 will probably be the daughters of small farmers or tradespeople 
 one or two of them, it may be, pupil teachers) should certainly 
 take part with the day scholars in the work. This will help to 
 make it the fashion among the day scholars. After the first 
 outlay, the plan need not be an expensive one. The payments 
 of the boarders will make it almost self-supporting. 
 
 Everything is purposely on a small and economical scale : I 
 regard this as most important : industrial apparatus may very 
 easily be too complete. The kitchen, laundry, and bakehouse 
 should be good of their kind, but of the cottage kind, so to speak. 
 
 The success of the scheme will entirely depend on the 
 measure in which it fulfils the four conditions above mentioned. 
 
 The first is clearly fulfilled in the plan which I have sketched. 
 There is the little household : its food must be cooked, its beds 
 must be made, its linen must be washed. 
 
 The second condition is more likely to be fulfilled in future 
 years than heretofore. More attention than formerly is now 
 paid to domestic economy in our training colleges. But any 
 one proposing to organise such a school should be especially 
 careful to select a mistress who has a taste for housework. 
 The actual labour of superintendence may be undertaken by a 
 paid assistant, but the principal teacher must animate and give 
 tone to the whole thing. If possible, the industrial superin- 
 tendent should be the mother or aunt of the schoolmistress. 
 
 In order to fulfil the third condition to render the work at- 
 tractive to the girls the industrial girls might be distinguished 
 by a rosette on the shoulder or in some other way ; one meal a 
 day might be given to them, according to the plan so admirably
 
 Girls' Industrial Training. 123 
 
 carried out by Mr Hawtrey at St Mark's School, Windsor, and 
 at Capesthorne, in Cheshire, in former years ; or a complete 
 suit of underclothing, made in the school, might annually be 
 given to each day scholar so employed ; or there might be a 
 school feast every year specially for the industrial scholars, as 
 at Alderley and Acton Schools in Cheshire, and at Freehay in 
 Staffordshire ; to which those who had gone into service should 
 be invited to return. The good fruits of the training, as seen 
 in these former scholars, returning once a year with happy 
 prosperous looks to their old school, would have much weight 
 with the children and with their parents. 
 
 And this leads me to the last point. The school must be a 
 servants' registration office for the neighbourhood. Some 
 trouble will be needed at first to push the girls into good places, 
 but as soon as the school has once obtained a name for training 
 servants, all experience shows that the difficulty will be rather to 
 meet the numerous demands made upon it. It is by active atten- 
 tion to this last point that school managers have in my district 
 overcome their greatest difficulty, the opposition of the parents. 
 
 Here -undoubtedly lies the most serious obstacle to the in- 
 troduction of any scheme of industrial training. The parents 
 can seldom be persuaded to set any value on it. They say 
 they can teach such things at home, and that they send their 
 children to school to be made into scholars. Now I have taken 
 especial pains in different parts of the country to ascertain how 
 much industrial training the girls receive at home. In few 
 respects does one district differ from another more than in this. 
 In some parts, where for instance the people have small farms 
 of their own, with two or three cows on each, the home offers 
 far better opportunities for the industrial training of the girl 
 than any school could supply. The same applies to many 
 homes where the mother keeps a small shop. Here, then, the 
 plea of the parent is reasonable and just. And in these cases I
 
 1 24 The Education of the People. 
 
 should strongly advise a half-time scheme for girls above eleven 
 years of age, so that they should make themselves useful at home 
 one-half the day, and attend school the other half; or, failing this, 
 at all events leave of absence on the washing-day or market-day. 
 
 In other parts of the country for instance, factory districts, 
 mining districts, or highly farmed districts, where the land is let 
 in large holdings the parents' plea that they can teach house- 
 hold work at home merely proceeds from their own low standard 
 and ignorance in the matter. 
 
 In such places, the establishment of a model-house, such as 
 I have described, in connexion with the school is most desir- 
 able. To overcome the foolish objections of the parents is the 
 great difficulty. But this difficulty will lessen every year, when 
 they begin to see that the children like it, and are helped for- 
 ward in the world by it ; and the gift of clothes or food at 
 the outset will go far to reconcile them to it. 
 
 And here I venture to throw out a suggestion, which may 
 perhaps be taken up, tested, and if desirable carried out by 
 some among the many excellent women, who in the present 
 day are to be found almost everywhere ready to occupy any 
 opening that may appear in the work of elevating our poor 
 neighbours. The presence of one such gentlewoman in this 
 home, who would throw her spirit into the domestic training of 
 the girls, and infuse some of George Herbert's Elixir into their 
 housework, teaching them that 
 
 A servant with this clause 
 
 Makes drudgery divine ; 
 Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws, 
 
 Makes that and the action fine, 
 
 such a presence would give to our girls precisely what we most 
 want for them a sense of the gracefulness and dignity of 
 household ministration.
 
 Girls Industrial Training. 125 
 
 Here, then, I close what I have to say about industrial train- 
 ing ; my plan for carrying it out in connexion with a national 
 girls' school is very much what I sketched in my report to the 
 Committee of Council in 1853. It has been partially carried 
 out in many places, and with excellent effect. The value of 
 the training consists not so much in the instruction given in any 
 specific art, as for example, the art of laundry work for this 
 the girls in our schools are for the most part too young 
 but rather in the cultivation of what may be termed the homely 
 instincts and virtues of the girl, alongside of her book learning. 
 We not only want her to be the steady, well-principled, intelli- 
 gent girl, described in the earlier portion of this chapter, but we 
 wish her also to be active and ready, with a quick eye for what 
 is wrong in a house, and a quick hand to put it right, helpful in 
 whatever is going on, sensible and trustworthy in matters of 
 household responsibility, and rejoicing to do her work well, 
 whatever it is. 
 
 I have purposely left to the last what I have to say about 
 needlework. 
 
 The plan that I find to work best is to classify the school 
 afresh in the afternoon, according to the girls' proficiency in 
 needlework. In the best schools the youngest children are 
 taught to turn down a hem as soon as they take a needle in 
 hand, and so throughout they learn the placing or fixing along 
 with each new sort of sewing. The first class is the " cutting- 
 out " class. No girl is promoted from one class into the one 
 above until she have produced a sampler of all the kinds of 
 work proper to her former class. Her progress is recorded in 
 a book kept for the purpose. 
 
 The difficulty of providing properly graduated work for the 
 girls is overcome (where there is no regular supply of work from 
 the school committee) by purchasing cheap stuffs and cottons
 
 1 26 The Education of the People. 
 
 at wholesale prices,* and making these up in the school into 
 articles of clothing, distributing the several parts of the work 
 according to the capability of the girls ; or, still better, allow- 
 ing each girl, if possible, to have the pleasure of beginning and 
 completing a separate article of clothing, so that she can point 
 to it and say it is entirely her own work.t These articles 
 of clothing are either made to order, and paid for by instal- 
 ments, as they are made up, by the children or their parents ; or 
 they are disposed of at a sort of auction on the occasion of the 
 school feast or otherwise. Certain afternoons in the week are 
 set apart for such work as the children may bring with them 
 from their homes. But this home-work seldom affords such good 
 practice to the girls as work selected by the mistress, suitable 
 to each one's proficiency, and cut out for them in the school. 
 
 I find the greatest possible difference of standard in different 
 schools in respect of needlework. It may serve as some sort 
 of guide if I state here the average standard of attainment in 
 needlework reached in the better sort of schools. 
 
 The first class are usually able to show the frocks or shirts 
 which they have cut out and made ; in some instances a pattern 
 has been given them, in others the cutting out has been done 
 by rule.| One-fourth of the school, sometimes one-third, are 
 able to make a shirt sleeve, (cut out for some of them,) plac- 
 ing the band on the gathers themselves, stitching a rounded 
 wristband, and making the button-hole. In our prize examina- 
 tions we used to expect all girls above eleven years old to be 
 able to do this the work being done under the examiner's eye. 
 
 * Remnants, or "fents," as they are locally called, can be bought by weight 
 in Manchester, at prices far below that of the piece. 
 
 ^ I borrow this hint from Mr Glennie's excellent pamphlet on school needle- 
 work, " Hints from an Inspector of Schools." Stanford, Charing Cross. 
 
 J One of the most lively and interesting lessons I ever heard given in a 
 school was a lesson on the cutting out of a shirt given to a class of girls about 
 twelve years old, at Leigh, in North Staffordshire.
 
 Girls' Industrial Training. 127 
 
 In many schools one-half can knit a stocking without any help, 
 and darn a hole. 
 
 These points will be sufficient to enable any one experienced 
 in these matters to form a notion of the standard aimed at, and 
 very generally attained, in our schools, in needlework. Fancy 
 work is seldom allowed in schools under trained teachers ; in 
 the old-fashioned schools it is still allowed to occupy far too 
 much time. 
 
 Of the paramount importance of needlework in a girls' 
 school there cannot be two opinions. One rarely now finds 
 among trained teachers that tendency to slight it which we 
 used to notice some ten or twenty years ago. 
 
 For girls who are to be domestic servants it is especially 
 desirable, and this for reasons which have a direct bearing on 
 the subject of this essay. Among the good habits which have 
 a tendency to keep a maid-servant (and especially a farm- 
 servant) out of temptation, not the least important is the habit 
 of making her own clothes. It occupies her leisure moments, 
 it keeps her from the temptation of shop finery, and it saves 
 many a shilling for the bank or the club. 
 
 And this leads me, in conclusion, to notice what certainly 
 ought not to be lost sight of in an inquiry like the present : 
 how much more full of risk is the position of a young 
 woman in the factory, and in some sorts of service, now than 
 formerly. While new temptations beset them, old safeguards 
 have been withdrawn. 
 
 For instance, in manufacturing districts, the factory system 
 has rendered girls' labour so valuable that, at the age of thir- 
 teen or fourteen, they become independent of their parents, 
 and able to go their own ways, lodging at home, or " down 
 the street," as they list. Parents' authority is relaxed ; the 
 home, which used to be to the girl a place of industrial train- 
 ing, is broken up ; the mother is at the mill ; the young children
 
 128 The Education of the People. 
 
 at the infants' school, or with some old dame, who makes a 
 livelihood by keeping a sort of public nursery. 
 
 Again, in agricultural districts the economy of farmhouses 
 has changed with the manners of the people. The farmer's 
 wife, instead of presiding at the mid-day meal at the upper end 
 of the large kitchen or " house-place," and spinning among her 
 maidens in the evening, now not unfrequently dines first with 
 her husband, or apart in the " parlour," and discarding the 
 spinning-wheel, buys all the household linen ready-made ; so 
 that farm-servants have much less the character of members of 
 the family, and much more that of hired labourers, than they 
 used to have. 
 
 Again, the relation between mistress and servant has been 
 still further loosened by the greater facilities for changing situ- 
 ation introduced by railways and newspaper advertisements. 
 The effect of this is clearly to remove what used to be a check 
 on misconduct ; and this in two ways : first, it makes the ser- 
 vant care less about losing her place, knowing that she can so 
 easily find another; and, in the second place, it makes masters 
 and mistresses, now that they can so easily change their ser- 
 vants, far less careful than formerly to ascertain their character: 
 thus in both ways a safeguard is withdrawn. Another tempta- 
 tion besetting young women more frequently than formerly is 
 the shop. When a woman's dress was for the most part home- 
 made, there was far less inducement than there is now to finery 
 and waste of pocket-money ; and not only so, but leisure time, 
 now spent in idleness, was then usefully occupied in making 
 and mending. Again, in the wealthier classes, it has become 
 the habit of the masters and mistresses to leave home for weeks 
 together once or twice in the year : these absences leave the 
 servants exposed to much temptation. 
 
 In these and in a variety of other ways, it may be shown 
 that in the present day a girl who starts in life without good
 
 Girls' Industrial Training. 129 
 
 habits and principles is exposed to greater danger than for- 
 merly ; and for this reason among others, it is a great and most 
 serious error to suppose that the same scanty amount of school 
 training is sufficient for girls now which sufficed for them fifty 
 years ago. Those who have given careful and dispassionate 
 consideration to the subject all agree, that if we wish to remedy 
 the evil of which people complain the deterioration of young 
 women in household qualities we must give far more attention 
 than hitherto to the girls' school. 
 
 I have one more plea to urge in behalf of girls' schools, and 
 I have done. 
 
 The more we investigate the social evils of the day, tracing 
 them to their causes, and so detecting a clue to their remedy, 
 the more convinced shall we be that reform, to be healthy, 
 must proceed from within rather than from without. Instead 
 of crying out for legislative interference, or organising new 
 associations, we must begin with the home. 
 
 The home is, if I may so speak, the seed-vessel of society 
 far more beautiful in its organisation than any institution of 
 man's contriving where the England of the next generation 
 must germinate, where the life of the nation must be developed. 
 If you wish to purify and to elevate the national life, you must 
 begin, therefore, in the home ; and if you wish to reform the 
 homes of the people, you must train up aright those who, for 
 good or for evil, will preside over them the daughters, the 
 future wives and mothers of the English workmen. Where 
 girls are already under good home influences, there let them, 
 under the mother's eye, have their industrial training, content 
 that in school-hours they should ply the book or needle. 
 But where this is not the case, where the home is corrupt 
 and its influences unwholesome, there, as we value our 
 national welfare, let us step in; the industrial teacher must 
 occupy the place which the mother has forfeited; the de- 
 
 i
 
 1 30 The Education of the People. 
 
 generacy of the home must be arrested by the ministry of 
 the school. 
 
 Note. The following extract from my Report for the year 
 1 86 1 illustrates what I have said in this chapter of the excel- 
 lent moral influence of our better sort of girls' schools : 
 
 I have from time to time in previous years, and especially 
 in my reports for 1856 and 1859, illustrated from the after 
 conduct of our young people, the good results of the moral 
 training they had received at school. 
 
 During the past year I was led to institute an inquiry respect- 
 ing the conduct of the girls who had passed through five of our 
 best girls' schools in Staffordshire and Cheshire. It was obvi- 
 ously a test which, in earlier years of the system, would have 
 been impossible, because the worth of a girl's moral training 
 is not proved until she has reached womanhood. I therefore 
 limited my inquiry to those who had passed through the 
 schools between the years 1850 and 1856; and further, that 
 the information might be really trustworthy, I selected such 
 schools only as had been from the year 1850 to the present 
 time under one and the same mistress. 
 
 I asked two questions : first, " How many girls in those five 
 years passed through your school, staying long enough to reach 
 your first class ?" And secondly, " How many of these girls 
 have subsequently forfeited their good name 1" taking care that 
 this last question should be distinctly understood, and allowing 
 two or three weeks for the reply. 
 
 I give the results. 
 
 The list from the first school (in a parish of small farmers) I 
 give entire, to show how carefully the inquiry was conducted. 
 The others I shall abridge. 
 
 i. Farmer's daughter ; good home ; ten years at school ; con- 
 firmed ; regular communicant, and in every way satisfactory ; living 
 at home and useful.
 
 Girls' Industrial Training, 131 
 
 2. Farmer's daughter; confirmed; now a pupil-teacher; well con- 
 ducted, and doing her work steadily. 
 
 3. Labourer's child ; confirmed ; now at home, and well con- 
 ducted. 
 
 4. Farmer's daughter ; good home ; ten years at school ; con- 
 firmed ; regular communicant, quite satisfactory ; now at home and 
 useful. 
 
 5 and 6. Farmer's daughters ; nine and ten years at school ; con- 
 firmed ; both now at home, and really useful and satisfactory. 
 
 7. Child of bad parents, only in the parish a short time ; now left 
 it, and gone to the potteries ; a most wilful girl ; do not know any- 
 thing of her now. 
 
 8. Farmer's daughter ; good mother-in-law ; always satisfactory 
 and well-principled ; confirmed ; was a nursery governess, now re- 
 spectably married. 
 
 9. Half-sister to the above ; good painstaking child ; now a 
 teacher in a good school at Nottingham, and working well. 
 
 10. Farmer's daughter ; father a confirmed drunkard, not mar- 
 ried to her mother ; lives at home, and working ; thoroughly well 
 conducted ; confirmed, and regular communicant. 
 
 11. Farmer's daughter; steady, good girl; confirmed; now at 
 home, and useful ; regular communicant. 
 
 12. Labourer's child; drunken father; confirmed; good girl; 
 several, months' illness patiently borne, and died. 
 
 13. Small farmer's daughter ; mother married secondly a wicked 
 man, and she died ; has been left to herself, and is perfectly steady 
 and well conducted ; no longer in the parish ; occasionally see her. 
 
 14. Labourer's child ; in service in the neighbourhood, with good 
 character. 
 
 1 5. Quite poor parents ; always thoroughly steady, and a very 
 good daughter ; has been in good places, and is now in service, 
 and has a high character. 
 
 16. Farmer's daughter ; good at school ; confirmed ; at home, 
 and useful, and well conducted. 
 
 17. Mother married second time a drunken blacksmith ; irregular 
 at school, and not for long ; made a bad marriage with a man much 
 older than herself, and not a good man. 
 
 1 8. Small farmer's daughter; good mother; confirmed, and a
 
 132 The Education of the People. 
 
 communicant ; at home, ready to go to service ; thoroughly well 
 conducted. 
 
 19, 20, and 21. Large farmer's daughters ; good mother ; father, 
 superior class ; all now at home ; the eldest has been out ; confirmed ; 
 all are communicants, and well conducted. 
 
 22. Labourer's daughter ; in service in good places, and very steady. 
 
 23. Sister of above ; always a good girl ; has been in a gentle- 
 man's service four years ; behaved exceedingly well under very 
 trying circumstances of an assault by a fellow-servant. 
 
 24. Daughter of small farmer ; painstaking girl ; parents left the 
 parish ; helps her elder sister in a school at Manchester, and doing 
 well. 
 
 25. Brought up by grand-parents, who are careless and unsatis- 
 factory ; very irregular at school, and ignorant ; still with them, a 
 useful drudge. 
 
 26. A labourer's child ; taken early from school to go to an aunt 
 in London ; came back ; went into service ; lately changed her place 
 unwisely, but always well conducted. 
 
 27. Sister of No. 12 ; thoroughly good girl ; confirmed, and con- 
 stant communicant ; been apprenticed to dressmaker at Acton ; at 
 home now dressmaking ; ready for service if health allows. 
 
 28. Another sister ; untruthful and sly at school ; been in farm- 
 service, andy#//<?#. 
 
 29 and 30. Daughters of a drunken blacksmith ; were not long 
 at school; live at home, employed in needlework and dressmaking; 
 quiet and well behaved ; confirmed, not communicants. 
 
 31. Labourer's child ; good mother, married second time ; un- 
 truthful and plausible child, and went out as dressmaker ; has 
 made a discreditable marriage. 
 
 32. Poor parents ; steady, trustworthy girl ; confirmed ; pupil- 
 teacher. 
 
 33. Small farmer's child ; confirmed ; at home, and really useful ; 
 well conducted. 
 
 34. Small farmer's child ; went to service, came home ill and 
 died ; a good girl. 
 
 35. Sister to No. 2 : nervous, has fits ; cannot remain in service. 
 
 36. Sister to the above ; very timid and shy ; in service, and well 
 behaved.
 
 Girls' Industrial Training. 133 
 
 37. Farmer's daughter ; not long at school ; now at home helping 
 her mother; quiet and well conducted. 
 
 38. Labourer's daughter ; went to service, and now married, and 
 lives in the parish respectably. 
 
 39. Farmer's daughter ; confirmed ; and lives at home and helps ; 
 well conducted. 
 
 40. Labourer's daughter ; not long at school ; been in service in 
 the parish ; now respectably married. 
 
 41. Labourer's child ; at service; steady. 
 
 42. Illegitimate child ; lived with a grandmother ; not a good girl 
 at school ; went to farm-service, and had to be looked after ; now 
 in a good family, and good hope of her. 
 
 Of this list of 42, only one is known to have fallen ; one is 
 lost sight of; and of two others the account is not satisfactory. 
 
 The next account is from an important girls' school in a 
 parish of large dairy farms. 
 
 Total number of girls who left between 1850 and 1856, 104; mar- 
 ried, 28; in gentlemen's service, 12 ; in farm-service, 46 ; at home, 
 6; dressmakers, 5; plain workers, 2; laundress, i; dead, i. Of 
 these, three have fallen. The mistress gives a very satisfactory ac- 
 count of nearly all the girls ; many of them are in the same situations 
 that they went to on leaving school. Two of the girls who went 
 wrong lived in a very rough farmhouse. It is hoped that all three 
 are now well conducted. 
 
 The third school made a return of 75 girls; but with respect 
 to 30 of these the information was rather imperfect ; 14 were 
 creditably married, 3 discreditably married, 2 had illegitimate 
 children. Of the 75, 22 either remained at home or were 
 dressmakers, 53 were in service. 
 
 The fourth schoolmistress reports that 
 
 " Of the 49 girls who left during these years, 34 had reached the 
 first class, the rest the second. Nine are employed at the silk fac- 
 tories ; 1 2, chiefly farmers' daughters, are at home ; two are married ; 
 and the rest are in service. I am very glad to find that only one 
 has gone astray. She is employed in farmhouse-service."
 
 1 34 The Education of the People. 
 
 The fifth school, in a mining and manufacturing district, 
 makes a return of 127. 
 
 Of these, 21 are married, 57 are at home with their parents, 24 
 in service, 13 pupil-teachers, 5 dressmakers, 2 emigrated, 5 dead. 
 " One only is known to have lost her character, the motherless 
 daughter of a drunken father, who went to service and was seduced 
 by her master. I think you may depend on this information as 
 strictly accurate. The result of the inquiry has given me great 
 ' cause for thankfulness. In the midst of temptations so great as 
 exist in this district, the wonder is not that any fall, but that so 
 many stand." 
 
 These results need no comment ; they speak for themselves. 
 The answer to my question is eleven out of WJ. 
 
 Those who know the daily aspect of our best girls' schools 
 the well-scoured floor, the perfect order, the cleanliness and 
 neatness, the animation and attentiveness of the classes, the 
 kindliness of association, the care of the little ones, the gentle 
 though firm bearing of the mistress : those who have followed 
 the girls to their homes, and seen as their mothers see, and like 
 to tell, how obliging and tidy they have become, how in all their 
 duties, " what the teacher would say," is ever in their thoughts, 
 the tearful evening when her look has been a grave one, the 
 gift of flowers on her birthday, the letters that must be written 
 to her in the holidays, who have met the girls in the road, or 
 sent them on an errand, and noticed the respectfulness, and, 
 above all, the steadiness of their manner : those to whom all 
 this is familiar will hardly need the evidence I have been giving 
 to assure them that, when childhood is over, and the girls so 
 trained have gone forth with woman's lot upon them to confess 
 the faith that they have learned at school, such early influ- 
 ences will not, cannot fail of their effect.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE NATIONAL SCHOOL SYSTEM IN IRELAND. 
 
 IN the year 1860 I spent a week as the guest of the Chief 
 Secretary for Ireland; and through the facilities so kindly 
 afforded me, and the courtesy of the Resident Commissioner, 
 I was enabled to visit and inspect several Irish schools, some 
 in Dublin, some in the provinces. 
 
 My impressions during that visit are embodied in this chap- 
 ter. They naturally fall under two heads : (i.) efficiency, 
 (2.) the constitution, of the Irish national schools. 
 
 EFFICIENCY. 
 
 In judging of the efficiency of the Irish schools, it must at 
 the outset be borne in mind that the Irish scheme of national 
 education is maintained at about one-half the cost of our 
 English scheme, estimated in proportion to the number of 
 children educated. This enormous disparity of expense is 
 explained, I believe, first, by the fact that the Irish teachers 
 are to a great extent self-educated, whereas in England the cost 
 of the teachers' training is in a large measure borne by the 
 State; and secondly, by the marked inferiority of the Irish 
 school buildings, and the comparatively small amount ex- 
 pended out of the Parliamentary fund in building grants.* 
 
 * In the year 1860 the number of paid monitors in Ireland was 1837 ; and the 
 grants on their account did not exceed ^8638. The amount of the building 
 grants in that year was only ^7345.
 
 136 The Education of the People. 
 
 School buildings. The buildings and premises of the schools 
 which I visited I noted as far below the English average. 
 Had these schools been in my district, I should have con- 
 demned two out of three as disqualified in this respect to 
 receive annual grants from the State. The model school at 
 Athy, the Phcenix Park girls' and infants' school, and the 
 Convent school in Baggot Street, would alone have received 
 favourable reports as to their material efficiency. I referred 
 to the Irish inspectors' reports for that same year, and found 
 that on their part also this was a very general complaint. It 
 appeared from their reports that 30 or 40 per cent, of the 
 schools were without proper out-buildings. I noted also the fre- 
 quent want of any class-room ; and considering the regulations 
 of the Board as to separate religious instruction, a class-room 
 would seem to be essential to the proper working of the 
 "mixed" system, and might very properly (one would think) 
 be insisted on by the Board in every case as a condition of 
 annual grants. 
 
 Irregularity of Attendance. In each case I looked over the 
 school-roll, and accustomed as I have been in my own district 
 to irregularity of attendance, I was by no means prepared for 
 the still greater irregularity of the Irish children. In England 
 we consider it an unsatisfactory state of things that the children 
 on the rolls should be absent one day in three or four. In 
 these Irish schools they appear to be, on an average, absent 
 half their time. (This is confirmed by the General Report for 
 1859: average number on rolls, 519,175; average daily 
 attendance, 269,203.) 
 
 There is another statistical point which I regard as most im- 
 portant. An inspector should in every case ask the question, 
 " What position in the school had the children who left in the 
 last twelve months severally attained ?" 
 
 In the Ring's End school (above par in efficiency) I found
 
 The National School System in Ireland. 137 
 
 that of 176 boys who had left the school in the last year, only 
 1 1 had reached the fourth (the highest) class, and only 1 2 the 
 third class ! 
 
 In the excellent Convent schools in Baggot Street, out of 
 743 who had left in the year, only 66 had reached the fourth 
 (highest) class. In the St Francis Xavier school, of 143 who 
 had left, 12 had reached this class. In the Athy model school, 
 where I expected a better state of things, I found that of 82 
 boys whose names had been struck off in 1859, icwere in the 
 fifth book, (the highest class,) 10 were in the fourth, 19 in the 
 third, and the rest below, /.<?., scarcely able to read. In the 
 Athy girls' school, out of 62 who had left, 12 had reached the 
 fourth book, and 18 the third. The worst case was that of 
 St Peter's, Whitefriars, Dublin; that school has 215 on the 
 rolls; an average attendance of only 96 ; 280 had come and 
 gone in the year ; and of those present the master told me he 
 could only name three who had been with him for a period of 
 twelve months ! 
 
 Organisation. The third point on which, were I an Irish 
 inspector, bringing to bear on these schools our English 
 standard, I should report unfavourably, would be the organi- 
 sation. I was surprised to find still lingering in Ireland the old 
 Lancastrian arrangement of desks. The inconvenience of this 
 system has been long confessed in England ; twenty years ago 
 it was given up in all but the " British and foreign" schools ; and 
 in the last five years these schools have been one after the other 
 adopting the plan which arranges the desks in distinct groups 
 one group for each class. Of the schools I saw in Ireland 
 only one was organised in this way, the model school at Athy. 
 
 Discipline. Perhaps connected with the last head, but not 
 to be altogether so explained, I note discipline as below the 
 English standard, more noise and less order than in an 
 average English school.
 
 138 The Education of the People. 
 
 Instruction. I now come to the teaching ; and on this 
 (after all, the most important) point, I should be disposed to 
 report very favourably, with the drawback, however, implied 
 in the statistics given above, showing how lamentably small 
 a proportion stay at school long enough to profit by it. 
 First of all, there is one specific branch of instruction which 
 in England is almost wholly neglected in our national schools, 
 and which in Ireland has been carried to a very high degree 
 of efficiency, I mean agriculture. The unrivalled normal in- 
 stitution at Glasnevin, with its model farm, and the several 
 model agricultural schools affiliated to Glasnevin throughout 
 the country, all under Dr Kirkpatrick's general superintend- 
 ence, form a distinct feature in the Irish scheme, to which 
 we have nothing parallel in England. I proceed, therefore, 
 to the ordinary subjects of school instruction, and I take 
 the group of schools which I examined to be a fair sample 
 of Irish schools generally, because I purposely included some 
 that had received unfavourable reports from their own in- 
 spectors. So far then as I may speak generally from this 
 limited experience, I should say that in grammar the Irish 
 standard is much above the English standard ; that reading is 
 more skilfully taught ; that in geography, arithmetic, writing, 
 and spelling, Irish schools are about on a level with English 
 schools ; in plain needlework, on a par with English schools 
 fifteen years ago, but decidedly below the standard we have 
 now attained to. I was much struck with the amount of use- 
 ful information which many of the children had derived from 
 the careful reading of the series of Irish reading books. In 
 one or two of the schools I was invited to examine the Pro- 
 testant section of the children in their knowledge of Scripture, 
 and in one I heard the teacher do so. In the last case the 
 teacher was himself so entirely ignorant of Holy Scripture, that 
 the examination was worth nothing. In the other cases I
 
 The National School System in Ireland. 1 39 
 
 confess I was much disappointed. And this leads me to 
 the second point, the constitution of the Irish national schools. 
 
 CONSTITUTION. 
 
 In considering the peculiar constitution of the Irish schools, 
 the " mixed system," as it is called, whereby children of dif- 
 ferent religious denominations receive secular instruction 
 together, and are separated during some one hour, or half-hour, 
 in the day, for religious instruction, two questions present 
 themselves : 
 
 1. Is it abstractedly a better system than our English 
 denominational system, in which the State assists each 
 denomination to improve to the utmost its own charac- 
 teristic schools without any restrictions on the religious 
 teaching 1 
 
 2. Is it the best system for Ireland, a country in which a 
 
 Protestant State is promoting the education of a popu- 
 lation, five-sixths of which are Roman Catholic ? 
 It will be seen from the remarks that follow, that if I were 
 asked the first question, I should still answer, " No ; in the 
 abstract I prefer the English denominational system." But 
 that to the second question, the results of my late experience 
 of Irish schools would lead me to answer unhesitatingly, "Yes; 
 the Irish system seems to me in every way far better suited to 
 the peculiar case of Ireland than that adopted in England, or, 
 indeed, than any other Government scheme of education that 
 I can conceive practicable." 
 
 I went to Ireland, I confess, with a strong prepossession 
 against " the mixed system," even for a country like Ireland. 
 My objections to it were 
 
 i. That I thought it must tend to realise precociously to 
 young children the religious differences which unhappily 
 divide us.
 
 140 Tfie Education of the People. 
 
 2. That the sharp distinction between the religious instruc- 
 
 tion and the secular instruction in a school must give 
 the child a notion that religion was a thing alongside 
 of and separable from his daily business, instead of being 
 intended to be fused into it. 
 
 3. That the practical effect of this system must be to secu- 
 
 larise the teacher, disposing him to regard the reli- 
 gious instruction as a matter of secondary importance, 
 put in to ^satisfy the clergy, on whom, rather than on 
 himself, rested the responsibility of this part of the 
 children's training; and if so, it could hardly fail to 
 follow that teachers thus viewing their responsibilities, 
 would neglect this side of their own training; and in 
 four cases out of five the result would be a lowering of 
 the teacher's religious, and, therefore, of his moral tone. 
 These were my prepossessions; and, so far as the abstract 
 question is concerned, my further acquaintance with the system 
 in practice has not removed them. I must still call them 
 prepossessions; it would be absurd to suppose that in so short 
 an experience I had collected sufficient observations to entitle 
 me to call them anything else. All that I can say is, that I 
 saw nothing in Ireland calculated to alter my belief that the 
 teaching of the Christian brother, or Wesleyan, or English 
 parish schoolmaster, is likely to be (cateris paribus) more 
 earnest and devotional, and to take a deeper hold on a young 
 child's mind and heart, than the teaching of the Irish national 
 schoolmaster. And as with the teaching, so with the discipline, 
 it is backed and enforced by more powerful sanctions. The 
 opening and closing of the school work by prayer, (which in 
 the Irish national schools seems to be found impracticable,) 
 the opportunity afforded to the teacher by the Scripture lesson 
 to allude with marked effect to any cases of misbehaviour 
 that may have recently occurred, and the friendly relations
 
 The National School System in Ireland. 141 
 
 between the teacher and their pastor, help, I am persuaded, to 
 promote the wholesome discipline, and to raise the moral tone 
 of an English parish school, and to attach the children per- 
 sonally to their teacher. 
 
 For these several reasons, if the question were " Is it 
 desirable to introduce this system of mixed schools into 
 England," I should still answer unhesitatingly, " No ;" nor is 
 it necessary; in English parishes, whose population or wealth 
 does not justify more than one school, the church school, 
 happily, in nine cases out of ten, is so liberally constituted and 
 so pacifically carried on, that the few dissenters there may be 
 are quite able and willing to avail themselves of it for their 
 children, without any conscientious difficulty; and the State 
 can, therefore, without injustice, recognise it as being in fact, 
 as well as in name, the national school of the place. 
 
 But in Ireland this is not the case; and, therefore, with 
 special regard to Ireland, and in answer to my second ques- 
 tion, I must confess myself a complete convert to the " mixed 
 system." 
 
 I seem to see now, what I did not see before, that for Ireland 
 there is no imaginable alternative that would work so well, or 
 do so much for the enlightenment and Christianising of the 
 people. In each parish or school district that I visited, I asked 
 myself this question " How would our English system work 
 here?" And in each case, with that group of children before 
 me, (four-fifths, or perhaps all, Roman Catholic,) and in the 
 background their parents and ministers, and the patrons, and 
 a Protestant Government, all complicating the question, the 
 answer came back sharp and clear, that to substitute our 
 English system would be scarcely possible, and if possible, 
 most undesirable, prejudicial to the best interests of the Roman 
 Catholic majority, and to the Protestant minority utterly 
 disastrous. Under no other system do I see how the Roman
 
 142 The Education of the People. 
 
 Catholic children could get so enlightened and liberal a train- 
 ing; and under no other system (that would be equitable) 
 could the small Protestant minorities have their rights and 
 interests so protected. 
 
 Viewed from the exclusively Protestant point of view, (not 
 that we have any business so to view the question,) the effect 
 of substituting a denominational system would be so ruinous 
 that I cannot conceive how any Protestant clergyman can 
 desire it. In three parishes out of four the Protestants are a 
 small minority; in many there are not more than ten or twenty 
 Protestant children. In what sort of position would k the 
 Protestant clergyman, or the Protestant squire, find himself 
 under a denominational system? He must do one of two 
 things; either maintain a separate school for these ten or twenty 
 children, with such a grant as the State could in equity give 
 him, or send his children to the school of the Roman Catholic 
 majority, without any of the safeguards against proselytism im- 
 posed by the present system. I cannot think that he would be 
 better off on the horns of this dilemma than he is at present. 
 For what is his present position under the "mixed" system? 
 He can send his ten or twenty children to a school where the 
 secular instruction is as good as local and public resources can to- 
 gether make it; where nothing offensive to his religious principles 
 can be obtruded on his children's notice; and where (if the 
 school be a vested one, i.e., built partly by local and partly by 
 State funds) for an hour each day the clergyman may go him- 
 self, or send one of his Sunday-school teachers, to give his Pro- 
 testant children instruction in the Bible or the Catechism, with- 
 out any restriction whatever. If I am right in my impression 
 (recorded above) that the standard of the religious knowledge 
 of the Protestant children attending the Irish national schools 
 is much below that of our English parochial schools, it can only 
 be explained in one or both of two ways; either the clergy are
 
 The National School System in Ireland. 143 
 
 less skilful in their lessons than professionally trained teachers, 
 or they do not avail themselves of the opportunities for 
 giving daily religious instruction afforded them by the 
 
 Board.* 
 
 If this be so, the defect will, one may hope, be remedied in 
 a great measure by the growing disposition, already observable, 
 on the part of the clergy to co-operate with the Board in the 
 administration of the national schools. But even if this can- 
 not be, and if the Protestant minority do not under the Irish 
 system receive so complete a religious training as they would in 
 England, still this evil is partially counterbalanced by the 
 better training of the Roman Catholic majority, by the amount 
 of sound moral principle indirectly conveyed to all the children 
 by the use of the series of reading-books drawn up by the 
 Board. Surely, viewing the question as we are doing, from 
 the Protestant point, it is no small thing that half a million 
 Roman Catholic children are for their daily lessons using a 
 series of books in which the most sensitive Protestant can 
 find nothing in the very least degree objectionable. Would 
 this be the case could it possibly be the case under any 
 other system? 
 
 I can entirely understand how an Irish clergyman, after 
 visiting an English parish, and examining the children of a 
 good church school in their knowledge of the Old and New 
 Testament, may go back to Ireland, saying to himself, " Oh 
 that I had such a school in my parish here !" and how under 
 the influence of this feeling the real merits of the question are 
 often forgotten. Indeed, I cannot describe how sensibly I 
 myself missed the Bible element in the Irish schools which I 
 visited. In our best schools the children's minds are, as it 
 
 * The good results of a frank and hearty acceptance on the part of the 
 clergyman of the position assigned to him by the regulations of the National 
 Board, were most evident in Dr Sadler's excellent school in the Phoenix Park.
 
 1 44 The Education of the People. 
 
 were, moulded by it; the Gospel story, and the Old Testament 
 biographies, are the children's literature; here they find their 
 history, their poetry, their moral philosophy. Their language 
 (as one finds in whatever subject one examines them) is largely 
 coloured by the Bible language. I believe we owe to this what 
 is most peculiar in the character of the English peasantry 
 what foreigners often remark, and what some reproach us with 
 a sort of austerity or puritanism, as they call it, or as it 
 might be more favourably described, a habit of referring action 
 and principle to a Bible standard. I confess to being English 
 enough to value this peculiarity very highly; and I should be 
 sorry indeed that the Bible should cease to be, on this side of 
 the water, our " Child's own Book." But in Ireland it cannot 
 be so not because of the system of education there adopted, 
 but simply because the Irish are in the main a Roman Catholic 
 people. Keeping this fact steadily in view, the " mixed " 
 scheme of education must, I think, appear to any fair observer 
 to be, not only in theory, but in its operation, admirably suited 
 to the country. I left Dublin with the belief that, however 
 strongly I might still deprecate its introduction into England, 
 yet to the Irish people -it was practically securing a far more 
 enlightened training and culture than would be possible under 
 any other system.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 MIDDLE CLASS EDUCATION. 
 
 IN the year 1832, Dr Arnold addressed two letters to an in- 
 fluential journal in the West Riding of Yorkshire " On the 
 Education of the Middle Classes." The Reform Bill had just 
 been carried, and Dr Arnold felt with all thoughtful men that 
 there were few questions of greater national importance than 
 the education of the classes whose power had been so largely 
 increased and consolidated by that measure. " I wish exceed- 
 ingly," he said, " to draw public attention to it, and to impress 
 most strongly on those engaged in conducting it the difficulty 
 of their task, as well as its vast importance ; how loudly it 
 calls for their best exertions, and how nobly those exertions, 
 wisely directed, may hope to be rewarded." He then adverted 
 to the very unsatisfactory position of the middle class schools, 
 contrasted with the schools for the richer and the schools for 
 the poorer classes pointing out that while both the higher 
 grammar and the parish schools were under the direction of 
 the clergy, the middle school did not offer to the public even 
 this security for its respectability. " The old provision " (he 
 continued) " which rendered it unlawful for any man to teach 
 without a licence from the bishop of the diocese, has naturally 
 and necessarily fallen into disuse ; and nothing has been done 
 to substitute in its place one that should be at once practicable 
 
 and beneficial The masters of our English or commercial 
 
 schools labour under this double disadvantage, that not only 
 
 K
 
 146 The Education of the People. 
 
 their moral but their intellectual fitness must be taken upon 
 trust. I do not mean that this is at all their fault ; still less do 
 I say that they are not fit actually for the discharge of their 
 important duties ; but still it is a disadvantage to them that they 
 have no evidence of their fitness to offer beforehand. They 
 feel this inconvenience themselves, and their pupils feel it also ; 
 opportunities for making known their proficiency are wanting 
 alike to both." Dr Arnold then shows how this want of guar- 
 antee degrades the business of education : " For a schoolmaster 
 of a commercial school, having no means of acquiring a general 
 celebrity, is rendered dependent on the inhabitants of his own 
 immediate neighbourhood : if he offends them, he is ruined. 
 This greatly interferes with discipline ; the boys are well aware 
 of their parents' power, and complain to them against the 
 exercise of their master's authority ; nor is it always that the 
 parents themselves can resist the temptation of showing their 
 own importance, and giving the master to understand that he 
 must be careful how he ventures to displease them." 
 
 Having thus shown in his first letter the moral evil arising 
 from this irresponsible position of the commercial schoolmaster, 
 Dr Arnold in his second letter traces to the same cause an in- 
 tellectual fault in these schools, viz., their exclusive attention 
 to what may be called professional, as distinguished from 
 liberal, studies. " Every man has two businesses : the one his 
 own particular profession or calling, be it what it. will that of 
 soldier, seaman, farmer, lawyer, mechanic, or the like ; the 
 other, his general calling, which he has in common with all his 
 neighbours, namely, the calling of a citizen and a man. The 
 education which fits him for the first of these two businesses, is 
 called professional ; and that which fits him for the latter, is 
 called liberal." Parents are almost universally anxious that 
 their boys should have the first, while of the second they 
 understand but little ; and the middle schools, depending as
 
 Middle Class Education. 147 
 
 they do on the parents' favour, are forced to adopt this narrow 
 one-sided view of the work of education. 
 
 This was Dr Arnold's complaint thirty-six years ago : it is 
 melancholy to think how little has been done in the interval 
 to remedy so unsatisfactory a state of things. This interval of 
 thirty-six years has witnessed thanks mainly to Dr Arnold a 
 most remarkable improvement in the higher grammar school ; 
 it has seen too, under the auspices of the Government, a yet 
 greater advance in the efficiency of the elementary school. 
 But between these two, the middle school has been almost 
 stationary. As then, so now, it is sadly dependent on the 
 favour, and therefore on the caprice or prejudice of the parents ; 
 as then, so now, discipline is thereby injuriously interfered 
 with, and the course of studies miserably narrowed to what is 
 showy or commercially profitable. 
 
 Two efforts have been made of late years to remedy these 
 evils. The first, and so far as regards the middle classes, the 
 most important, perhaps, was the establishment of the College 
 of Preceptors in 1846. The second was the institution of 
 the Oxford and Cambridge local examinations in 1858. The 
 College of Preceptors aims at remedying the moral evil by 
 examining and certificating the schoolmaster, with a view to 
 giving him a recognised social position, and so rendering him 
 more independent of the parent The universities (and the 
 College of Preceptors also) endeavour to remedy the intellectual 
 evil by examining and certificating the pupils, hoping thus to 
 react on the school, and encourage a more sound and liberal 
 course of study. 
 
 I do not now mean to discuss either of these important 
 agencies, but to describe briefly a third effort which the Univer- 
 sity of Cambridge has in the meantime been making to in- 
 fluence and improve the middle schools of the country. 
 
 On the zyth of March 1862, a grace was passed by the
 
 1 48 The Education of the People. 
 
 Senate of the University of Cambridge, authorising the Syndi- 
 cate already charged with the administration of the local ex- 
 amination scheme " to entertain applications for the appoint- 
 ment of one or more persons who should examine the scholars 
 of the school that makes the application, and who should make 
 a report of the result of the application to the Syndicate, it 
 being understood that all the expenses should be borne by the 
 school." 
 
 Consistently with the cautious character of this university, 
 the authorities abstained from taking any steps to make public 
 this resolution. The Syndicate (or committee of the Senate) 
 was ready to receive applications, but declined to invite them 
 publicly. The scheme was an experiment, and it seemed 
 desirable that its extension should be very gradual and ten- 
 tative, and that the first overtures should be from the schools 
 to the university, rather than from the university to the 
 schools. 
 
 It will be readily believed, however, that so novel an enter- 
 prise had not been decided on by the university without much 
 previous discussion. 
 
 Five years ago, when Cambridge was invited to follow the 
 lead of Oxford in organising the scheme of local examinations, 
 some wished, myself among the number, that instead of examin- 
 ing schoolboys at central places away from their schools, the 
 schools themselves should be examined by a properly appointed 
 University Inspector. In a printed letter addressed to my 
 friend the Public Orator, I stated as briefly as I could the 
 
 reasons for such a modification of the scheme.* 
 i 
 
 * The following extract from my letter to the Public Orator will explain the 
 scheme which I suggested in 1857, and which the grace of 1862 has in its main 
 features realised : 
 
 "The Senate should appoint two or more inspectors Masters of Arts on 
 the recommendation of the Syndicate. They would enter into an extensive 
 correspondence with the teachers of middle schools, inviting applications for in-
 
 Middle Class Education. 149 
 
 It was thought, however, and wisely, as I now believe, that 
 in the first instance it was better to adopt the Oxford plan, 
 
 spection. Such teachers accustomed as they are to look round every year for 
 some examiner ab extra, to classify their pupils, or award their prizes would, 
 I am persuaded, accept very generally and very thankfully such an offer. Each 
 school so inviting inspection should pay a small fee to the university say a 
 guinea for every ten boys on its books and so furnish a fund which in the 
 first year might be expected to realise some 300 or ^400, and which would go 
 on increasing in proportion as the scheme extended itself over the country, 
 rendering it self-supporting. 
 
 The inspectors would then plan their tours of inspection ; during the first 
 year the work might perhaps be accomplished by two or three men in a tour of 
 a few months ; in succeeding years it might require more men or more time. 
 
 At the close of each year the inspectors would report to the Senate, and we 
 should have a Blue-book fully as interesting as any that ever issued from the 
 Queen's Printing-office, and of a sort that would be highly valued by the friends 
 of education. 
 
 The success of the scheme would entirely depend on the right men being 
 chosen, and on their doing the work in a cautious and friendly way. They 
 would naturally in each case endeavour to win the confidence of the teacher, 
 being perhaps his guest for the preceding night, or at all events entering into 
 friendly conversation with him before examining his boys, so as to learn the 
 character and speciality (so to speak) of his school ; and after their examination 
 I should be disposed, were I one of them, to show my report to the teacher, and 
 ask him whether he would wish it to appear in print at the end of the year. 
 
 Being armed with no powers, and having no public money to dispense, I 
 should think this degree of discretion in reporting essential. If, where they 
 could not praise, they were for the most part silent, I apprehend few schools 
 would decline to appear in print. For the mere advertisement would be very 
 valuable to them. Nor would the honesty or value of the report be compro- 
 mised by such reticence ; because in the inspector's general observations, which 
 would precede his tabulated reports on particular schools, he might comment 
 as strongly as he liked on such faults as he might find of so general occurrence 
 as to require animadversion. 
 
 One word about the terms inspector and middle school. Much would depend 
 on our making it plain that by inspector we meant one who would come as the 
 school's friend and well-wisher, not as a mere fault-finder. The term ' ' visitor, " 
 if preferred, might be substituted. 
 
 By middle schools, I mean schools that range between classical schools, pro- 
 perly so called, on the one hand, and elementary schools on the other. The 
 term has reference to the kind of instruction given, not to the social class of 
 those who attend them. This being understood, I cannot think the term 
 middle school need be objected to."
 
 1 50 The Education of the People. 
 
 (with one or two not unimportant improvements,) this plan 
 being less likely than that proposed in my letter to be mis- 
 understood by the schoolmasters of the country. The success 
 and general favour which attended the operation of the local 
 examination scheme, induced the Syndicate, in the year 1862, 
 to ask for powers to engraft upon it the further scheme of 
 school examination, and the result was the above recited 
 grace. 
 
 For the reasons already mentioned the scheme was not. 
 advertised, and in the first year of its operation only eleven 
 schools applied for examination. The Syndicate having asked 
 me to undertake these first examinations, I employed part of 
 my vacation of that year in the task, and visited seven of the 
 eleven schools. In all I met with a most cordial and friendly 
 reception, and abundant evidence that the scheme was well 
 suited to meet a very general wish on the part of parents as 
 well as teachers. 
 
 The question that most urgently demands the attention of 
 those who are watching over this experiment is this, How are 
 the schools, and especially the character of their studies, likely 
 to be effected by such examinations ? Some fear that uni- 
 versity graduates fresh from the lecture-rooms of Oxford and 
 Cambridge, so far as they may win any influence over the 
 studies of the schools they examine, will almost inevitably tend 
 to give them a more academic, and therefore, it is feared, a less 
 practically useful character. Now, although I believe this 
 apprehension to be of but little moment, still I think it desirable 
 that we should so far respect it as to abstain from prescribing 
 the subjects in which we offer to examine ; it seems to me 
 better that we should invite each school to send in beforehand 
 its course of study ; and should shape our examination ac- 
 cordingly. One school will ask to be examined in advanced 
 mathematics, English composition, geography, and perhaps
 
 Middle Class Education. 1 5 1 
 
 chemistry : another will ask for Latin and Greek, English 
 history perhaps, and elementary arithmetic. The university 
 examiner should be prepared to adapt himself to each, making 
 it his business to test the quality of the instruction, rather than 
 seek to alter it. Still it is doubtless the case that a popular 
 and successful examiner does almost unconsciously influence 
 in some measure the institutions that he examines in favour of 
 those departments of knowledge to which he happens himself 
 to attach most weight. 
 
 It may be expected that these university examinations will 
 tend, just in proportion to the degree of favour which they may 
 win for themselves, to depreciate the merely professional, and 
 to raise in estimation the liberal studies, in this class of schools. 
 Parents whose only care is that their boys should be made into 
 clever machines, good penmen and rapid accountants, with a 
 view to obtaining eligible situations as clerks, will regret this. 
 Those who take a broader view of education, desiring that 
 their boys should learn to think clearly and coherently, and 
 express themselves accurately and carefully, should be accus- 
 tomed early in life to distinguish wisdom from folly, things of 
 importance from trifles, truth from falsehood, referring whatever 
 questions come before them, whether in sermons or in news- 
 papers, to certain fixed principles, those in short who, in Dr 
 Arnold's language, wish their sons to be fitted not only for 
 their professional business, but much more and above all for 
 their business as men and as citizens, those parents will re- 
 joice if the studies pursued in our middle schools acquire 
 hereby a more liberal and permanent character. 
 
 All knowledge may be divided into what is permanent and 
 what is progressive ; and it is the study of its permanent por- 
 tions that in the true sense of the term helps to educate the 
 mind of a youth. The dead languages^are fixed for ever ; their 
 grammar, their forms of eloquence and beauty are permanent ;
 
 1 5 2 The Education of the People. 
 
 this cannot be said of any living languages, which are continually 
 changing according to the fashion of the day. The principles 
 of arithmetic and Euclid's Elements of Geometry are fixed and 
 immutable ; whereas the systems of modern accounts, and the 
 arts of land-surveying, book-keeping, and the like, are liable to 
 alteration from time to time. Nothing can be more fascinating 
 than chemistry and electricity ; but inasmuch as these are 
 progressive sciences, it may well be doubted whether they are 
 so improving to an uninformed immature mind as the geometry 
 of the conic sections, which has held its ground since the days 
 of Archimedes, and has formed the basis of the whole system 
 of modern astronomy and navigation. 
 
 And as these permanent studies are the best fitted to fix 
 thought, giving a boy clear perceptions and confidence in 
 his knowledge, so they are moreover most unquestionably the 
 best subject-matter for examination. 
 
 Those questions are best in an examination which admit of 
 a definitely right or wrong answer ; and of these again, those 
 are pre-eminently the best which cannot be answered by a mere 
 effort of memory, but require the application of an old rule to 
 a new case : for in this way you most surely test the boy's 
 understanding of his old rule. 
 
 Now grammar and mathematics fulfil these two conditions 
 better, perhaps, than any other provinces of knowledge. 
 
 A boy is asked to translate the sentence, " Wisdom is more 
 to be desired than riches," into Latin. His answer is gramma- 
 tical or ungrammatical, right or wrong, as he will himself at once 
 recognise when the reasons are explained to him. This is one 
 advantage. Again, he never saw this particular sentence turned 
 into Latin, but he remembers other sentences of analogous 
 form which he has translated, and from them he has gathered 
 certain general principles of translation which, if they are un- 
 derstood, he can apply here. Thus the examiner is testing not
 
 Middle Class Education, 153 
 
 merely the boy's memory, but also his clearness of thought and 
 power of reasoning.* 
 
 So with mathematics. A boy is asked to find the side of a 
 square that shall be double a given square. He knows that 
 his answer must be right or wrong ; there is no possibility of 
 deceiving his examiner, or of evading the question, or pretend- 
 ing to know more than he really does. And again, mere 
 memory will not help him ; he never saw the question before ; 
 he must needs exert his mind, and seek about for certain rules 
 or principles which he has previously mastered, capable of 
 being here applied; and on his clear and firm grasp of those rules 
 and principles will depend his success in solving the problem. 
 
 Now, contrast either of these questions with one in history 
 or geography. Any one familiar with the task of examining 
 knows how difficult it is to frame questions in these subjects 
 which shall admit of a definitely right or definitely wrong an- 
 swer, and yet not be mere tests of memory. If, wishing for a 
 \yery definite answer, I ask for the date of a battle or the 
 pedigree of a king, I merely test the memory. If in my anxiety 
 to avoid this I ask the boy to trace the causes or results of 
 a civil war, I get perhaps in answer a cloud of words from 
 which it is almost impossible to form a true estimate of his 
 knowledge ; and so with all inexact sciences. 
 
 For purposes of early study, therefore, and especially for 
 purposes of examination, no provinces of knowledge can be 
 compared with grammar and mathematics. And the univer- 
 sities will, I think, be serving the true interests of our middle 
 schools, and of those who are there educated, if by means of 
 these examinations they indirectly tend to encourage liberal 
 studies as opposed to such as are merely technical or profes- 
 
 * Latin grammar and easy translations are all I ask for in these schools. 
 Any acquaintance with Roman literature (most valuable for the purposes of 
 higher education) is too much to expect where the years of study are so limited.
 
 154 The Education of the People. 
 
 sional. Not only will boys so trained turn out wiser men and 
 better citizens, but in the long run they will prove more suc- 
 cessful lawyers, farmers, or tradesmen, than if they had nar- 
 rowed their education more exclusively to the purposes of these 
 several callings. 
 
 From my conversations with the masters of such schools, I 
 well know how anxious many among them are to give their in- 
 struction more of this character ; and how difficult and almost 
 hopeless they_find it to combat single-handed and unsupported 
 the prejudices and short-sighted wishes of the parents. Such 
 men will gladly accept the support of the university, over-ruling 
 the prejudices of the parent by the weight of acknowledged 
 authority, and conciliating him by the offer of an honourable 
 distinction. 
 
 Such is the purpose of this Cambridge school examination 
 scheme. 
 
 Two years after the Cambridge experiment, which I have 
 been noticing, came the " Schools' Inquiry Commission," whose 
 invaluable report, it may well be hoped, is only the precursor 
 of a careful and extensive reform of our middle school educa- 
 tion. Being asked by Lord Taunton to furnish the commis- 
 sion with my views as to " the best subjects of instruction " for 
 the schools under their inquiry, I will here repeat the substance 
 of my reply. 
 
 Preliminarily I deprecate the terms " middle class school, 
 middle class education," so frequently used in speaking of 
 these schools. They are indefinite and invidious : and, what 
 is more, misleading, when one comes to consider the subject. 
 
 Tell a man to prescribe three several courses of instruction, 
 one for the aristocracy, another for the middle class, and a third 
 for labourers' children ; and the wiser the man, the greater will 
 be his bewilderment. But ask him to organise three several 
 courses of instruction, one for youths who will be under tuition
 
 Middle Class Education. 155 
 
 until they come of age, another for those whose education will 
 be continued up to fifteen or sixteen, and a third for those 
 whose schooling must be completed at twelve years old, and 
 he will at once know what he is about j each course, the three 
 years' course, the six years' course, the twelve years' course, 
 must be complete in itself, and therefore, to a great extent, 
 distinct from the others ; for if the first be a mere fragment of 
 the second, and the second of the third, the result will be a 
 failure ; each, so far as it goes, must be an organic whole. 
 
 The school which a serisible man, so applied to, would 
 organise for the middle group, I call a middle school. 
 
 It seems to me most desirable to adopt this term (thus in- 
 terpreted), instead of " middle-class-school." Our definitions 
 would then stand thus : 
 
 An elementary school would be a school suitable for those who 
 have to be content with the smallest amount of schooling ; 
 who have to go to work at twelve or thirteen. 
 
 A middle school would be one suitable for those who aim at 
 a middling amount of schooling, having to enter on the busi- 
 ness of life at fifteen or sixteen. 
 
 A classical school would be a school of the highest kind of 
 instruction, such as cannot profitably be attempted unless likely 
 to be continued up to twenty-one or twenty-two. 
 
 (I am not speaking of girls' education.) 
 
 If, then, I were offering advice to one about to take charge 
 of a middle school (for boys,) thus defined, I should say to 
 him 
 
 i. Your time being so limited, be careful that what you put 
 into it be what is (in the true sense of the word) educational, 
 i.e., good discipline to a growing mind, training it to habits of 
 active, clear, patient thought. 
 
 Now, for learning to read thoughtfully and to express one's- 
 self also thoughtfully, there is confessedly nothing like transla-
 
 156 The Education of the People. 
 
 tion from one language into another, and for learning to sustain 
 attention and reason carefully there is nothing equal to the 
 study of mathematics. 
 
 2. Attempt nothing that cannot be completed in Jive or six years. 
 This cuts out Greek altogether, versification in Latin, and of 
 mathematics all that requires the higher calculus. 
 
 3. So far as you can, without trespassing against the first 
 rule, aim at what will be useful in after life. Therefore 
 
 a. If you have not time for both Latin and French, choose 
 
 French ; and in French let the translations be partly 
 of the conversational and epistolary sort. 
 
 b. Of mathematics give the preference to what leads on to 
 
 practical applications ; of pure mathematics what is 
 needful hereunto and no more ; then, commercial 
 arithmetic, (book-keeping, interest, discount, stocks, 
 &c. ;) mensuration of surfaces and solids, (for which 
 logarithms would be needful,) and of mechanics, 
 hydrostatics, and optics, enough for the explanation 
 of common machines and instruments. 
 
 c. Having regard to the probability of an active rather than 
 
 a studious life, by all means associate with your 
 mathematics as much skill as possible in drawing and 
 in the use of instruments. Thus associated with 
 science, these arts become (what in themselves they 
 are not) educational, and so fulfil the first rule. 
 But this rule of usefulness is to be limited not only by the 
 first rule, but also by the two following : 
 
 4. The studies of the class-room must be those wherein 
 progress can be definitely measured by examination. For 
 examination is to the student what the target is to the rifleman 
 there can be no habit of definite aim, no real training with- 
 out it. 
 
 This cuts down the number of subjects which " Rule 3 "
 
 Middle Class Education. 157 
 
 might otherwise suggest, more than one inexperienced in the 
 work of examination might anticipate. Trials of skill in pen- 
 manship and drawing may be obviously included at once in an 
 examination. For the rest those questions only are suitable 
 for purposes of examination which admit of answers definitely 
 " right " or " wrong." And again, those questions only are 
 desirable which cannot be answered well without active thought ; 
 without, in other words, the application of old principles to 
 new cases. 
 
 It will be seen at once how singularly excellent in both these 
 respects are grammar and mathematics. The boy has never 
 before seen the passage he is asked to construe, or the pro- 
 blem he has to work ; but all that is required for either is the 
 application of the principles which he has learned ; and the 
 value of his answer in either case can be definitely measured 
 by marks. 
 
 It will be understood also how unsuitable for examination 
 are all subjects which admit of loose and wordy answers, or 
 which test mere memory alone. 
 
 If examinations were restricted to subjects really suitable 
 for examination, we should hear no more of that bane of 
 modern education, ''cram" 
 
 Geography, history, political economy, physiology, and the 
 like, are delightful matters for private study, and for lectures ; 
 and should be encouraged to the utmost by way of prize 
 essays, but should never enter into the subject-matter of an 
 examination which is to issue in an order of merit. Got up 
 for an examination, their effect on the mind is merely stupe- 
 fying. 
 
 In this last group I would include religious knowledge; and 
 so suggest (by the way) a solution of much administrative 
 difficulty. For if religious subjects were lifted out of the class- 
 room into the lecture-room, and encouraged, not by examina-
 
 158 The Education of the People. 
 
 tions, but by prize essays, few parents would object to what 
 was left of the religious element in the daily devotions and 
 discipline of the school. 
 
 5. One more limiting rule there is, the importance of which 
 might, perhaps, be overlooked by one unaccustomed to school 
 keeping. 
 
 The boys should as much as possible be driven in a team, 
 i.e.) be following the same course of instruction. Out-riders 
 are a great encumbrance, not only wasting the teaching-power, 
 but also making just classification, and therefore discipline, 
 very difficult. Parents are ever asking for this or that kind of 
 instruction with a view to this or that business in life. The 
 answer should be, " Your boy conies here for instruction, not 
 for apprenticeship? Such subjects as chemistry, botany, agri- 
 culture, should be relegated into the recreation hours. 
 
 To sum up what practically results from my five rules : My 
 middle school should teach all its boys by way of staple : 
 (i.) French and Latin ; and (2,) the lower mathematics, lead- 
 ing on to practical applications. 
 
 Alongside of 'this there should be, in the way of occasional 
 lectures and prize essays, encouragement given to the study of 
 divinity, history, geography, English literature, and any other 
 specialty to which the master might have a bias. 
 
 And for recreation, a gymnastic ground, a field-garden, and, 
 if possible, a laboratory.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS OF THE PROFESSIONAL AND 
 MIDDLE CLASSES. 
 
 THE general attention which the subject of girls' education 
 has received of late in our magazines and journals, is significant 
 of a want, and (what is more) of the consciousness of that 
 want on the part of those whom it most concerns. The higher 
 education of girls is not what it ought to be ; and women 
 are themselves convinced of it. Nor need this backward- 
 ness of girls' education excite surprise. It was only in the 
 last generation that England began to be ashamed of the dead 
 low water in which, for a whole century or more, education of 
 all kinds had been stranded. Slowly the tide of public opinion 
 was seen to rise. The first to be floated into more intellectual 
 life were the two ancient universities. Twenty years later our 
 great public schools were launched on a career of reform not 
 yet completed. During another twenty years the rising flood 
 swept over the parishes of the land, and our elementary day- 
 schools were reorganised. Quite lately the tidal wave of im- 
 provement has been trying to force its way into the great 
 Mediterranean of middle class schools so long closed to it. 
 What wonder if now at length, and not till now, we see it 
 rippling into the narrow creeks and shallow bays in which the 
 education of our sisters and daughters has, wisely or unwisely, 
 been hitherto secluded ? 
 
 It is doubtless to the privacy and retirement of girls' educa- 
 tion that its comparative backwardness is to be ascribed.
 
 1 60 The Education of the People. 
 
 Wherever circumstances have brought it forward into the light 
 of the day, it has quickly appropriated and profited by all the 
 best influences of the age. The measure of success which has 
 attended the classes at Queen's College in Harley Street, and 
 the Ladies' College in Bedford Square, and (lately) the 
 Cambridge experimental examinations ; and still more strik- 
 ingly the efficiency of those highly organised institutions the 
 like of which no other nation can as yet show our training 
 colleges for schoolmistresses, afford evidence how capable of 
 improvement is this feminine side of national education. 
 
 Let any one who wishes to be convinced of the inferiority of 
 the private education now for the most part given to our girls, 
 especially those of the middle classes, visit these training col- 
 leges, and contrast what he will there find with what goes on 
 in his own schoolroom at home, or in the boarding-school to 
 which he may have sent his daughters. In the training colleges 
 he finds all the methods and appliances which the latest experi- 
 ence has suggested; an apparatus and a literature which their 
 own intelligent requirements may be said to have created ; 
 animated collective lectures alternated with silent study ; oral 
 instruction with written reproduction ; a staff of teachers who 
 have not only much mental cultivation, but also professional 
 skill in developing the intelligence of those whom they teach ; 
 and, above all, the results of this teaching frequently tested and 
 fixed by a searching and thorough-going system of examination. 
 
 It may be very safely asserted, and without any imputation 
 of blame when all the circumstances are taken into account, 
 that in our own daughters' schoolrooms or boarding-schools 
 we should find little or nothing of all this. We should find 
 highly accomplished most painstaking governesses, and here and 
 there an apt pupil advancing rapidly under their care ; but, as 
 a rule, a very small amount of professional skill, an inferior set 
 of schoolbooks, a vast deal of dry uninteresting task-work,
 
 Education of Girls of the Middle Classes. 161 
 
 rules put into the memory with no explanation of their prin- 
 ciples, no system of examination worthy of the name, a very 
 false estimate of the relative value of the several kinds of 
 acquirement, a reference to effect much more than to solid 
 worth, a tendency to fill or adorn rather than to strengthen 
 the mind. Many of our best governesses would -be among the 
 first to confess the truth of this contrast. How should they, 
 with their limited sphere of opportunities, compete with those 
 professionally-trained teachers ? How few of our governesses 
 how few of the teachers in our girls' boarding-schools have 
 had any kind of specific training for their work ! And if more 
 of them had it, how very few parents would value them one 
 whit the more on that account ! Here, in truth, in the parent 
 far more than in the teacher lies the blame. In any reform 
 there is much more hope of having the teachers than of having 
 the parents on our side. 
 
 How, then, are we to reach the parents ? How are we to 
 open their eyes generally to the worthlessness of mere accom- 
 plishment as a means of mental training? It is to be done in 
 three ways first, by the discussion of the subject in our 
 periodical literature ; secondly and chiefly, by a judicious and 
 very carefully organised system of examination, conducted by 
 some body of examiners whose reports will at once carry 
 weight and authority ; and lastly, by the silent but surely pro- 
 gressive influence of example. 
 
 With regard to the first the public discussion of the subject ; 
 where the matter itself is so delicate, and where the sensibilities 
 of the public are naturally so susceptible, it is most important 
 that it should be treated simply, modestly, and practically ; any 
 declamation, or mere theory, or admixture of what may be 
 called ulterior matter, will only damage the cause. An essay 
 or an address that began with a comparison of the intellectual 
 powers, or of the social status of men and women respectively,
 
 1 62 The Education of the People. 
 
 would do nothing but harm ; would set all the more sensible of 
 the public dead against us. Whereas a writer or speaker who 
 fastened on some particular blot on arithmetic, for instance, 
 in which it is admitted on all hands that girls are very defec- 
 tively instructed and proceeded to teach us how to mend the 
 defect, would do great good, would be far more likely to arrest 
 and conciliate the attention of parents, and so lead on to 
 further reform. 
 
 Some, however, there are who speak with a weight of 
 authority on this subject that none will venture to gainsay. All 
 sensible people will listen with deference when a man like the 
 late Professor Faraday tells us that the credulity which ascribes 
 to supernatural influences the thaumaturgic tricks of table- 
 turning, spirit-rapping, second sight, and the like, argues an 
 amount of ignorance, and a confusion of thought, which would 
 be ridiculous if they were not so deplorable. Parents will 
 hearken with anxiety when men of the highest medical eminence 
 like the late Sir Benjamin Brodie tell us that very much of 
 the hysteria and hypochondria of women is due to the want of 
 a more invigorating discipline of the mind in early life. Econo- 
 mists and philanthropists will admit the logic of our statistics, 
 which reveal hundreds of thousands of women compelled to 
 earn their livelihood at unfairest disadvantage, owing to the in- 
 completeness and inaccuracy of their education. A homely 
 proverb often goes farther than all the reasoning in the world ; 
 and " A man is what a woman makes him," is a truth that 
 might well (one would think) lead us to consider very seriously 
 the quality of the education that we are giving to the mothers 
 of the next generation. 
 
 In an age of free inquiry, and almost boundless mental 
 activity, it behoves us to remember a fact which history most 
 surely teaches, that the moral and spiritual progress of mankind 
 has ever been the healthiest when mothers, wives, and sisters
 
 Education of Girls of the Middle Classes. 163 
 
 have been the intellectual companions of their sons, their 
 husbands, and their brothers. Two such periods, notably, 
 England has seen ; the Elizabethan age, and the present. In 
 both it was her good fortune to be governed by a woman of 
 great intellectual power and statesman-like training. Such 
 example in such high place did not fail three hundred years 
 ago, and is not now failing to stimulate the women of England. 
 The age of Elizabeth produced Lady Jane Grey, whose know- 
 ledge of Greek so delighted the venerable Ascham ; Sir 
 Anthony Cook's four illustrious daughters, one, the mother of 
 Bacon, another, the wife of Burleigh ; that " subject of all 
 verse, Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother ; " the blighted Mary 
 of Scotland ; the Killigrews, famous through three successive 
 generations ; and many others ; a constellation of women such 
 as we have rarely seen, who far more largely than is supposed 
 influenced the destiny of this nation. Let us hope we have 
 already good ground to hope that our present age will be 
 similarly distinguished. But much has yet to be done to 
 remove the unreasonable prejudices which a hundred and fifty 
 years of indifference to woman's mental culture have ingrained 
 in modern public opinion. And as was before said, the more 
 quietly, and modestly, and practically it is done, the surer and 
 the more lasting will be the progress. 
 
 And this brings us to the most important of the means of 
 improvement above mentioned a judicious and very care- 
 fully organised system of examinations for girls. And here, 
 indeed, we touch the matter in the very quick ; and the 
 greatest caution will be needed. But, that examination of 
 some kind must come first, is to any one conversant with 
 education an evident necessity. Let us examine what is old 
 before we introduce a single thing that is new. He who 
 changes least is nearly always the best reformer. The true 
 method is to bring forward what is good in the education actually
 
 164 The Education of the People. 
 
 going on ; the bad will by that very process fall into the rear. 
 Not only in a few training colleges here and there, but in very 
 many of our best private boarding-schools, and still more in 
 the homes of our higher gentry, there is doubtless it would be 
 preposterous to question it much real education of a very 
 high order going on, which, if it were only made known and 
 more widely diffused, would leave nothing to be desired. The 
 misfortune is that those who have attained to this excellence 
 as teachers of girls form no sort of commonwealth, give no 
 currency to their valuable ideas, fail to influence the thousands 
 of others. And these thousands of others, how are they to 
 become aware of their comparative shortcomings ? Or if they 
 are aware, how are they to know where to apply for better 
 counsel and example ? Or how for here, too, as in the lower 
 trades, supply will follow demand how are the parents to 
 know the successful from the unsuccessful, the efficient from 
 the inefficient teachers ? 
 
 For all these several purposes, to inform public opinion, 
 to attest good teachers, to make inferior teachers conscious of 
 their inferiority, and show them exactly where they need im- 
 provement, to guide parents in the choice of schools or teach- 
 ers, and above all, to give more fixedness of purpose to girls' 
 studies, some scheme of independent periodic examination is 
 unquestionably needed. 
 
 This last motive for providing such regular examinations for 
 girls, namely, to give a more definite aim to their reading, 
 will be understood and appreciated by all who are engaged in 
 the work of education. Dr Arnold seems to have felt it. In 
 1841 he wrote to Sir John Coleridge as follows : 
 
 " I feel quite as strongly as you do the extreme difficulty of giving 
 to girls what really deserves the name of education intellectually. 
 
 When was young I used to teach her some Latin with her 
 
 brothers, and that has been, I think, of real use to her ; and she
 
 Education of Girls of the Middle Classes. 165 
 
 feels it now in reading and translating German, of which she does 
 a great deal. But there is nothing for girls like the degree exami- 
 nation, which concentrates one's reading so beautifully, and makes 
 
 one master a certain number of books perfectly I do not 
 
 see how we can supply sufficient encouragement for systematic 
 and laborious reading, or how we can ensure many things being 
 retained at once fully in the mind, when we are wholly without the 
 machinery which we have for boys." 
 
 So wrote Dr Arnold with curious appositeness to our subject 
 twenty-eight years ago. 
 
 Professor Plumptre (whose experience not only as one of 
 our most eminent theological teachers, but also more especially 
 as Dean and Director of the Queen's College in Harley 
 Street, makes his opinion most valuable) said four years ago : 
 
 " Girls desire knowledge and self-knowledge for their own sakes. 
 They wish their knowledge not to be hollow, superficial, or merely 
 ornamental, but solid and substantial. This, I think, shows itself 
 in the eagerness with which the experimental examination of De-* 
 cember was welcomed by the girls. They have their examinations 
 in their own colleges, and they enter very warmly into them. 
 Even in colleges where the whole system of prizes has been 
 from the very first excluded, I find that they enter into exami- 
 nations with the utmost possible eagerness. But I feel that the 
 work of teaching and the work of examining are best separated. 
 There is a danger, when their teachers are also their examiners, 
 lest their work should be too much limited to special lines of 
 thought or reading. They need some external standard, something 
 to satisfy them that they are not merely pleasing their own teachers : 
 they desire that kind of knowledge which will satisfy an examiner 
 who has no prejudices in their favour, and who is prepared to test 
 the knowledge of those who have been taught in different places 
 and by different teachers," 
 
 Of what sort, then, should these examinations be ? First of 
 all, for the reason given by Professor Plumptre, namely, for 
 the girl's own satisfaction, and still more for the satisfaction of 
 the teachers, of the parents, and of the public in order that the
 
 1 66 The Education of the People. 
 
 examination may not only be but may also be known to 
 be thoroughly honest and impartial, it is necessary that it be 
 external to the schools. This is so self-evident that no more 
 need be said on this point. The annual examinations, held by 
 inspectors, of students in training colleges ; those held by the 
 Society of Arts, of students in mechanics' institutes and the 
 like ; those held by the two universities, of boys in the pro- 
 fessional and middle classes afford examples of the facility 
 and absolute fairness with which a central board of examiners 
 thanks to our postal system can hold simultaneous and 
 identical examinations all over the country. On a given day, 
 at a given hour, a set of printed questions on English grammar, 
 for instance, is received at twenty or a hundred different 
 places up and down the country. The questions are answered 
 on paper in absolute silence, in the time specified, by a group 
 of students in each of those twenty or hundred places ; the 
 written answers are sealed up, without being read, and posted 
 that same day to the examiner in London who set the ques- 
 tions ; and he, in the following week or fortnight, reads over 
 the aggregate of papers, marking the merit of each answer. So 
 with arithmetic, and so with each other subject ; each subject 
 being committed to a separate examiner. This plan of exami- 
 nation might almost be called one of the great discoveries of 
 our day. It unites three remarkable advantages : first, the 
 greatest possible economy of labour ; second, absolute uni- 
 formity of standard ; and third and this especially recom- 
 mends it as suitable for the purpose we are considering all 
 the security of the utmost publicity in one sense, combined 
 with the very strictest privacy (if desired) in another sense. 
 This last point needs perhaps further explanation. None of 
 the students need appear personally before the examiner ; in 
 their own schoolroom if they are school-girls ; if not, then in 
 some large room in some country town (as, for instance, the
 
 Education of Girls of the Middle Classes. 167 
 
 room where they meet for dancing lessons) they may answer 
 the questions ; the only requirement is that it be done under 
 the eye of some person whose presence is a sufficient guarantee 
 to the public that the work is done honestly the clergyman 
 of the parish, or a committee of ladies, for instance. They 
 need not even, if it be thought desirable, affix their names to 
 their papers ; a number serving to identify the girl to her 
 teachers and friends is all that need be seen by the examiner 
 or appear in the printed class list. But whether the girl's 
 name appear or not, the name of her school, if it be at all a 
 considerable one, should undoubtedly be appended. With 
 these securities for the privacy, if desired, of each individual 
 girl, the printed list might be circulated all over the country. 
 Each girl and her friends would know where she stood in the 
 order of merit, and therefore what the comparative worth of 
 her instruction had been ; and the public would observe what 
 schools appeared to have most pupils occupying a high place. 
 So much for the kind of examination : there remains the 
 more difficult question, Who should be the examiner ? Before 
 this question is answered, there is a consideration of the highest 
 importance which should be taken into account. Those who 
 have not been much experienced in examinations may not be 
 altogether aware how universally, how inevitably the exami- 
 nation reacts on the studies of those examined. This 
 necessary tendency of examination constitutes at once their 
 great value and their great danger. Not only does the board 
 of examiners tend to become a sort of council of reference for 
 the guidance of the teachers, but the character of their ques- 
 tions one year will certainly influence the character of the 
 studies during the next. If they happen to give prominence 
 to any one branch of knowledge in their papers of questions, 
 that branch of knowledge will receive increased attention on 
 the part of the teachers ; if they happen to omit, or to touch very
 
 1 68 The Education of the People. 
 
 slightly, any one subject of instruction, that subject will be 
 neglected. The experience of the inspectors of schools, and 
 the experience of the university local examiners, proves this 
 unmistakably. 
 
 Now this inevitable tendency throws a very heavy responsi- 
 bility upon those who shall undertake to conduct these exami- 
 nations of girls. Whether they wish it or no, they will be 
 influencing and modifying girls' education at least girls' 
 studies all over the country. Before all other qualifications 
 for the task, it behoves them to have the qualification of wis- 
 dom, of a right and healthy judgment in this matter of girls' 
 education. " Shall we set a paper on Latin, or shall we not?" 
 " How far shall we go in mathematics?" " Shall we propose 
 an exercise in needlework?" " Shall we give higher marks to 
 English grammar, or to drawing?" "How shall we test 
 music?" " Of what sort shall our examination in religious 
 knowledge be?" " What form shall our list of merit assume?" 
 " Shall the standard be absolute or competitive?" Such will 
 be the kind of questions they will be expected to answer. To 
 whom will the teachers, to whom will the nation, intrust with 
 confidence the determination of these problems ? 
 
 It has been proposed to confide the examination to the boards 
 who conduct the university local examinations. And when one 
 considers the admirable way in which they are discharging their 
 present task, one can hardly be surprised at the suggestion. 
 
 But, assuming for one moment, what is so improbable as to 
 be almost out of the question, that the two universities were to 
 consent to undertake this very novel task,* would this viewing 
 the matter from the girls' side be desirable? Any one who 
 
 * While these sheets are going through the press, I learn, to my infinite sur- 
 prise not knowing which to admire most, the courage or the gallantry of my 
 university that Cambridge has undertaken the task ; and that in July next 
 not merely school girls, but " women who have completed the age of eighteen 
 years " will be admitted to the local examinations, under the superintendence
 
 Education of Girls of the Middle Classes. 1 69 
 
 approaches the question from the point of view here suggested, 
 and weighs well the very heavy and novel responsibility of the 
 task, will hesitate before he intrusts it to a committee of junior 
 fellows of colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, who, though 
 admirably conversant with boys' studies and habits of thought, 
 of girls, and their requirements, know little or nothing. Of 
 course, if the country is content that the girls' examination 
 should be in all respects assimilated to that of the boys, so 
 that the only responsibility thrown on the university examiners 
 should be the printing of a few more questions, and the revision 
 of a few more answers, then their want of special fitness for the 
 task would be unimportant. 
 
 But even in this case it may be doubted whether this indi- 
 rect connexion, or even any possible association of the matter 
 in the public mind, with the two universities is desirable. John 
 Bull has a wholesome conviction that human machines, as well 
 as other machines, accomplish their work best when confined 
 to the uses for which they were originally intended. Oxford 
 and Cambridge were intended to educate men. Of women's 
 education they profess, as universities, to know nothing. Cam- 
 bridge, of her courtesy, may have delighted to lodge Mrs 
 Somerville in Newton's chamber, when that illustrious lady 
 visited Trinity College ; but Mrs Somerville would be the last 
 to ask, and Cambridge (even if competent) would be the last 
 to consent, that she should be examined in their Senate House 
 as a candidate for mathematical honours. 
 
 But seriously, do the women of England desire that the 
 course of girls' study should be altogether assimilated to that of 
 boys ? And at the risk of weariness it must be repeated, that 
 every subject omitted in this examination will more or less go 
 to the wall in consequence; so that it will be of no avail for 
 
 of committees of ladies at the various local centres. I fear the remainder of 
 this chapter will appear to many of my friends already out of date. But I 
 have no wish to unsay what I have written.
 
 1 70 The Education of the People. 
 
 parents or teachers to say, "You will not be examined in 
 needlework, nor in vocal music, nor in domestic economy, but 
 we wish you by no means to remit your attention to these subjects 
 during the year." Assimilated more and more the two courses of 
 study will inevitably be, if one and the same board of examiners 
 undertake both. And is this what the nation wishes ? 
 
 Is not the true end of education to make the best of the 
 growing human creature after its kind? Is not the highest 
 excellence of man to be manly, and of woman to be womanly? 
 Is not a masculine woman as much a failure as an effeminate 
 man? Are not the two sexes, in mental constitution as in all 
 else, marvellously, beautifully, distinctly supplemental, one to 
 the other? Did any, except One only, ever combine in a 
 single pattern the highest excellences of each? Surely the dif- 
 ferences between men and women are differences of kind, not 
 of degree; anything like competition between the two would 
 be as unwholesome as it would be unmeaning. Let men and 
 women, by all means, if they wish it, study the same branches 
 of knowledge with a most absolute liberty; but let them do it 
 each in their own way, following each their own nature freely; 
 and then, under nature's free unconscious guidance, each will 
 develop their own congenial excellence, and the self-adjusting 
 balance of humanity will not be disturbed. 
 
 It seems desirable, then, considering how certainly examina- 
 tion reacts on study, that, as men and men's schools have de- 
 veloped their own system of examination, so women and 
 women's schools should develop theirs. Let women ask the 
 assistance of men in this particular or in that, by all means; 
 but let the two organisations be distinct, for fear of gradually 
 and unconsciously forcing into one groove what nature meant 
 to be in two. As was before said, it would be unreasonable to 
 assume that in the many excellent girls' schools scattered over 
 the country, we cannot find the type of examiner that we want.
 
 Education of Girls of the Middle Classes. 171 
 
 Let a beginning be made; let some of the professors who have 
 lent their aid in Harley Street or in Bedford Square, with the 
 superintendents of any three or four girls' schools of acknow- 
 ledged excellence, meet together; let them ask some three or 
 four whose names would carry great weight with the country 
 such as Sir John Coleridge, or the Archbishop of Dublin, or 
 Professor Maurice to join them. Let these form a council of 
 female education, and meet at all events before and after each 
 annual examination, say three or four times in the year. Let 
 them select from their own number (to which they should have 
 power to add) a sub-committee of examiners; the whole council 
 should determine the subjects and revise the questions before 
 they are printed, as well as the annual report; but the actual 
 labour should devolve on the sub-committee, who should re- 
 ceive the fees. Do not tie them down with too stringent regu- 
 lations at first; but let the thing grow like a plant, gathering and 
 assimilating the nourishment of experience and of criticism as it 
 goes on. And a far more wholesome start would be made than 
 if any ready-made organisation were borrowed for the purpose. 
 One word, in conclusion, on the last head the progressive 
 influence of a good example. If any one objects to this plan 
 that it would be slower in its early operation, and would carry 
 less prestige at first, than an organisation already ramified over 
 the country, and inscribed with the name of the two univer- 
 sities, the objection is in fact the greatest recommendation. 
 Gamaliel's principle is ever the best principle in a free country. 
 All that a new institution really wants in England is to be " let 
 alone." If our counsel be foolish it will come to nought; if it 
 meet a real need, it will prevail, and no early difficulties will 
 overthrow it. Let the thing be tried; the more quietly and 
 modestly the better. Whatever credit, and whatever extension 
 it is good that it should have, it will best and most surely 
 win for itself.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 THE TEACHER'S DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 No one can have seen much of the work of elementary schools, 
 especially in the mining and manufacturing districts, without 
 being aware that indeed the teacher's task is in no ordinary 
 degree an arduous one. I have seen him at the end of his 
 day's work, pale with the impure air and confinement of a 
 crowded school, exhausted by over tension of mind and con- 
 tinual trials of temper, pained and disspirited by the wayward- 
 ness and carelessness of his children ; returning wearily to his 
 home or his lodging, where his scanty means deny him the 
 refreshments he so much needs, and where perhaps he sees 
 written in the faces of his wife and infants evidence of the 
 domestic sacrifice in which his work involves him ; and worst 
 of all, feeling that he has to bear all this alone, that he has no 
 redress, little or no compassion or kindly encouragement to 
 look for ; that if he goes to the parents of those children for 
 whom he is spending his strength, he will meet with indiffer- 
 ence or perhaps abuse ; if to the managers, whose confidence 
 he has a right to claim, he will find himself regarded as their 
 pensioner rather than their almoner, and most cruel mockery 
 will be met by an ill-concealed or perhaps openly-expressed 
 doubt, whether all his schooling is not doing more harm than 
 good. All this I have seen and felt ; and I have gone to my 
 lodging myself too at the end of a day's inspection, disspirited 
 and dejected to think how little I had done or could do to
 
 The Teacher's Difficulties. 173 
 
 help and cheer that good man under the pressure of his daily 
 load. 
 
 Glad indeed shall I be if any teacher, who may have thought 
 this description in some points applicable to his own case, 
 may, by reading these pages, see more clearly how to face his 
 difficulties, and with God's help to overcome them. 
 
 The teacher's difficulties may be considered under four prin- 
 cipal heads: (I.) the children; (II.) the parents; (III.) the 
 public ; and (IV.) the teacher's self. 
 
 I. For the first class of difficulties, those connected with the 
 children, I might dismiss them at once by saying, that for a 
 teacher to plead difficulty here is to confess inefficiency in his 
 art, inasmuch as his proper business confessedly is to convert 
 naughty ignorant children into well-behaved intelligent chil- 
 dren ; and to say that he finds a difficulty in doing this is only 
 saying, in other words, that he is so far a bad teacher. But I 
 am unwilling to dismiss this complaint so summarily : I have 
 heard this sort of difficulty so often pleaded and this by men 
 of the most conscientious industry, and not seldom of more 
 than ordinary skill that I have felt bound to listen to their 
 plea with more respect. 
 
 The plea has generally been urged in such cases as the fol- 
 lowing : A school is undergoing inspection, and being ex- 
 amined on the gallery; the children appear very ignorant, 
 making the strangest blunders in matters which their teacher 
 assures the examiner they ought to know thoroughly. Anxious 
 to ascertain whether it be due to want of skill in the teacher, 
 the examiner asks him to break them up into their classes, and 
 to go on with the usual lessons. He listens attentively to 
 the master's instruction, finds it skilfully imparted, and out of 
 a well-stored mind, and feels sure that such lessons ought to 
 make a strong impression, and to be remembered. Here then 
 the case seems to be fairly made out the fault lies with the
 
 1 74 The Education of the People. 
 
 children ; and in despair, as if there were a sort of fatality 
 about the children of that neighbourhood, the master gives 
 notice to the managers, and seeks another school. Let us 
 watch his successor. He is a man, it may be, of inferior 
 ability; but the boys like his sanguine good-humoured face 
 better than the pale anxious countenance of their former 
 master. His first business is to introduce some quick lively 
 songs with a dash of humour in them. He takes occasion 
 now and then though sparingly, and only when the good 
 behaviour of the school enables him to do it without risk, like 
 a careful housewife who has a balance in hand, and can afford 
 some little indulgence to have a hearty laugh with them, by 
 way of showing them that he is made of the same flesh and 
 blood that they are. 
 
 He asks the managers if he may purchase a set of Robinson 
 Crusoes, in gilt cloth, and allow all the boys, who like to buy 
 them at a reduced price, to form a separate reading class, 
 using this book for a while, instead of the old book of extracts, 
 of whose brown cover they are so tired. Out of school he is 
 equally fertile in resources ; only here he takes especial pains 
 that each new scheme shall appear to originate with the boys 
 themselves. He finds opportunity to tell one or two of the 
 more spirited and lively of the boys, how, when he was at 
 school, they formed an eleven at cricket, and beat several of the 
 neighbouring schools ; or how they got up a flower show once 
 a year among themselves, and had prizes for the best auriculas ; 
 or how they got some fifes and a drum, and formed a band. 
 The suggestion thrown out by the way is picked up, as it were, 
 by the boys, talked over among themselves, and brought in 
 due time before the master for his approval. He applauds 
 their notion, suggesting that they should form a committee 
 among themselves, and draw up certain rules for the regulation 
 of the scheme, with self-imposed fines for those who break them.
 
 The Teacher's Difficulties. 175 
 
 In these and a hundred other ways, which will occur to 
 any one familiar with a school's inner life, he infuses a new 
 spirit into the school, giving the boys a hearty attachment 
 to it ; and, as a natural result, in all his school work, he is with 
 the grain instead of against the grain ; and at the inspector's 
 next visit, his instruction, such as it is, will appear to have 
 made far more impression on the children than the more in- 
 tellectual lessons of his predecessor. 
 
 I would ask, then, every desponding anxious teacher, who 
 complains of the difficulty he finds in attaching the boys to 
 himself and to their work, to consider whether his own anxiety 
 and depression is not affecting the cheerfulness of his school, 
 and so increasing the very evil he is lamenting. I would ask 
 him first and foremost to seek to exhilarate himself by more 
 regular exercise, or by some diverting course of private study, 
 or if he can, by a short trip to the sea-side ; and then to en- 
 deavour with as much inventiveness as possible to exhilarate 
 and reanimate his school. 
 
 II. But secondly, we come to a new class of difficulties, of 
 which it may seem hardly fair to say that their presence argues 
 inefficiency in the teacher. For take a first-rate teacher : con- 
 ceive the two characters I have been sketching moulded to- 
 gether, so as to combine the intellectual excellence of the one 
 with the sanguine temperament of the other. He might still 
 say, " I have done all you suggested ; I have, I believe, made the 
 boys fond of their work, and attached them to myself and to 
 the school ; but I almost despair of really educating them or 
 seeing them turn out as I wish, while the cupidity and careless- 
 ness of the parents make their attendance so irregular, and 
 their time of leaving so premature, and while the evil influence 
 of their homes more than counteracts the good influence of 
 the school." 
 
 These are indeed most formidable difficulties ; and in some
 
 1 76 The Education of the People. 
 
 districts where the demand for children's labour is very great, 
 it may be they can only be effectually met by the intervention 
 of the law as in the case of the Factory Acts protecting the 
 children against the greed of gain, which would sacrifice their 
 future welfare for the sake of the few shillings they can earn 
 each week in childhood. 
 
 But without waiting for the very tardy operation of the Legis- 
 lature, an active and sensible teacher may do much, I am 
 convinced, to arrest the evil, and conciliate the parents' co- 
 operation. Here more than anywhere there is need of fertility 
 of resource and power of self-adaptation to local requirements ; 
 what succeeds admirably in one place might entirely fail in 
 another. Any general rules, therefore, are out of the question. 
 I can only throw out a few suggestions by way of example. 
 
 i. And first I may mention visiting the children's homes, 
 and taking every opportunity of cultivating friendly relations 
 with the parents ; and if the master find it difficult to pursue a 
 middle path between reserve and the imputation of pride on 
 the one hand, and too great familiarity on the other let this 
 be his rule : always to remember himself, and let not the 
 parents forget, that he visits them as the schoolmaster of their 
 children. Let this be his standing ground, and it will at once 
 make plain the social relation between himself and them, and 
 give him the best access to the parent. Let him convince 
 them that he takes an interest in their children individually ; 
 that his aim is not so much to have a good school that will 
 do him credit, but rather to let Mrs Smith see and feel that 
 he takes a personal interest in her son Harry, and Mrs Brown 
 that he rightly understands both the faults and the virtues 
 of her son Edward. It was in this way that many a village 
 dominie of the olden time won an amount of adhesion and 
 support from the parents that his more modern successor might 
 well envy.
 
 The Teacher's Difficulties. 177 
 
 a. There is another lesson, too, that we shall do well to learn 
 from the masters of the old-fashioned adventure schools. They 
 were quick to find out what part of all the instruction the 
 parents valued most it would probably be whatever made 
 the most palpable show, whatever they could see with their 
 eyes and handle with their hands, the copy-book or the ac- 
 count book, or the coloured map this they took care to put 
 most prominently before the parents, choosing it for the home 
 task, and sending it to them when finished ; and contriving 
 that the good and regular boys should have much to show in 
 this way, and the careless irregular boys but little. 
 
 3. Then again I have gained another hint from the older 
 race of teachers. I have found them keeping careful count of 
 the after progress of their former scholars, how many are ap- 
 prenticed well, and of how many they have received such and 
 such testimonials of good conduct and usefulness from their 
 employers. This sort of register of old scholars should always 
 be kept, and when occasion serve, laid before the parents. 
 The school will soon get a name for turning out well-con- 
 ducted, useful lads, and so come to be viewed as an avenue to 
 better kinds of employment. The effect of this will be invalu- 
 able on the parents. Induce them to attend some evening ; 
 and before them and before the children let some one of the 
 managers or supporters of the school, who may have most in- 
 fluence in the place, read out the names and characters of those 
 former scholars who are doing their school most credit. 
 
 4. In connexion with this, I may also mention the experi- 
 ments in the way of prize schemes that have been tried in 
 South Staffordshire. In chapter vii. I have endeavoured to 
 point out what I conceive to be the right use and the wrong 
 use of prizes. Indiscriminately given, they may do infinite 
 mischief: wisely administered, they may, I believe, be a power- 
 ful instrument towards securing the parents' co-operation. 
 
 M
 
 1 78 The Education of the People. 
 
 III. The teacher's difficulties, which I have classed under 
 my third head, are those that he meets with in his relations to 
 the public : difficulties, I mean, arising from the estimation in 
 which he and his work are held by his school managers, it may 
 be, or by his neighbours generally, causing him to be hindered 
 rather than supported by the public opinion of the place. I 
 need hardly say that I am not speaking of the rebuffs and 
 snubs that one's personal vanity meets with occasionally : 
 these are wholesome checks to conceit, and are not for a mo- 
 ment to be classed among the teacher's difficulties. The evils 
 of which I am speaking are real evils, and of a kind that the 
 noblest natures are most sensitive to. The great historian 
 Niebuhr, apologising for Cicero's sensitiveness to fame, has 
 said that, "It is natural that a deserving man should meet with 
 acknowledgment ; for as truly as it is the will of nature that 
 we should not lie, so also is it her will that we should honour 
 noble acts and acknowledge them;" and he adds, quoting 
 Plato, " The last garment which a pure man puts off is the love 
 of fame." 
 
 We all honour a man who feels an inward protest when right 
 and noble efforts meet with discouragement where they have 
 most right to claim support. I believe that one of the most 
 righteous causes of complaint among the teachers of the present 
 day, and one of the greatest hindrances to the progress of our 
 national education, is the unjustly low estimate which is formed 
 of the value of the teacher's work. Those who have a true 
 appreciation of education and a hearty faith in its results, are 
 still quite the exceptions. Again and again 1 have been 
 astonished and disappointed to find people, who take en- 
 lightened and benevolent views of most matters, betraying a 
 secret mistrust of education. There is an insidious scepticism 
 confusing men's view, and unnerving their efforts, where clear- 
 ness of vision and unity of effort are most needed. Equally
 
 The Teacher's Difficulties. 179 
 
 ominous of a wrong state of things is it to find, not unfre- 
 quently, the most forward champions of education among 
 those whose opinions on other matters we are least inclined to 
 subscribe to or respect. 
 
 We must speak plainly, Are we, the friends of education, 
 altogether free from blame in this matter? I do not say, "Are 
 we altogether to blame for this ? " Certainly not ; large blame 
 rests elsewhere. But with the blame that rests elsewhere I do 
 not wish to meddle; in all that I have said I have endea- 
 voured to keep within our own province, and confine myself 
 to that for which we educators are mainly responsible. And 
 therefore I ask again, " Are we not in some measure to blame 
 for this misprision of a matter so essentially good as educa- 
 tion ? " In a natural and healthy state of things it would be 
 accepted as an axiom, that the education of all our youth was 
 most desirable, most right and just, most necessary. It would 
 be one of those self-evident propositions which a man would 
 be accounted mad for denying. If it has ceased to be so, 
 clearly the word education must have lost its native golden 
 meaning : it is no longer a legal tender ; it has been dishon- 
 oured and discredited among us. And therefore again I ask, 
 Are we not in some degree responsible for this? Have we 
 always paid on demand that for which our endorsements as 
 educators made us responsible? Have we not sometimes 
 passed off a counterfeit under the name of education ? so that 
 the true thing and the false thing have become confused in 
 men's minds, and hence the discredit of the term, and the mis- 
 giving about its value, and the depreciation of its agents. No 
 greater proof of this could be adduced than the controversy 
 about secular and religious education. Had the word educa- 
 tion retained its proper meaning, such a separation could never 
 have been conceived, any more than a divorce of man's spirit 
 from his body. But into this controversy I do not wish to
 
 1 80 The Education of the People. 
 
 enter ; I wish only to clear up the right meaning of the word 
 education. 
 
 And first, it is something essentially English. I believe that 
 in the matter of education, England, all too backward though 
 she be, is far in advance of any other nation. The contrary 
 has been so often asserted that this sounds almost para- 
 doxical. I will explain myself. There is a distinction between 
 national education and public instruction. Other nations 
 have their systems of public instruction very completely organ- 
 ised, and in some cases almost commensurate with their popu- 
 lation. Bufr this is a totally different thing. In England we 
 have nothing that can be called a scheme of public instruction, 
 (except perhaps it be found in our recently established schools 
 of design;} and the reason why we have not is this, that some 
 thirty years ago, when continental governments began to con- 
 stitute their systems of public instruction, the English Govern- 
 ment found that we had already indigenous among us a system 
 of education, dating as far back as our Reformation in the six- 
 teenth century, which, if fostered and encouraged, might do the 
 work still better than the new schemes of instruction which 
 were superseding education abroad. This, then, is the essen- 
 tial difference between a school in England and a school abroad : 
 the continental school is an institution established by the cen- 
 tral government for the instruction of its citizens ; the English 
 school is an institution established by the people themselves, 
 in their congregations or otherwise, for the education of their 
 children. The one is a place where a professor, or institutor, 
 to use their own term, gives class instruction at certain hours 
 of the day in this or that set of subjects. The other is a place 
 where to use our good old English words a master or a mis- 
 tress, or both, gather round them a household of young people, 
 and live among them as parents among their children. Thus 
 the continental teacher derives his authority from the State,
 
 The Teacher 's Difficulties. 1 8 1 
 
 the English teacher derives his authority from the parent, 
 who may send or not send his child to the school, as he 
 pleases. 
 
 And this is the second point to which I am anxious to come. 
 By maintaining this national and traditional view of education, 
 the English teacher gains a natural authority, a sort of divine 
 right, in his relation to his children, which, if he prefer to be- 
 come a mere professor of sciences, he must abdicate. The Eng- 
 lish schoolmaster stands to his children in the place of a parent. 
 The parents have delegated to him this trust ; so far forth as he 
 fulfils this trust, does he fulfil the work of education properly so 
 called. And only then can he be said to educate a child, when 
 he gives to him what a wise and good parent would most wish 
 for him, good habits, good principles, and such instruction as 
 may be most useful for him. 
 
 And now, let me once more ask, Have we been sufficiently 
 mindful that this was our proper work, and the only right and 
 English meaning of the word education ? And if we had been 
 sufficiently careful to put it prominently forward in this sense 
 in our thoughts and words and deeds, would the thing itself 
 have fallen into the discredit and jealousies that have so much 
 impeded it? The more the teacher feels that he stands in the 
 position of a parent towards his children, the more his light 
 so shines among his neighbours, that they may see clearly how 
 deeply he feels this parental responsibility, the more will his 
 office be respected, and rightly valued in the public opinion of 
 this country. 
 
 IV. And this leads me to the last, and perhaps the largest 
 class of a teacher's difficulties, I mean those that are connected 
 with his own self; so large a class, indeed, that it may well be 
 questioned whether it be a class at all, and do not rather em- 
 brace all those other classes that we have enumerated. For 
 those difficulties connected with the children did they not re-
 
 1 82 The Education of the People. 
 
 solve themselves into this, that the teacher found it difficult to be 
 himself sufficiently cheerful and inventive to engage and sustain 
 his children's interest in their work ? And those difficulties with 
 the parents did it not appear that they might be much les- 
 sened by greater considerateness and attention on his part in his 
 dealings with the parents ? And thirdly, in the difficulties that 
 beset him with respect to public estimation is it not at least 
 open to question, whether it be not in part his own miscon- 
 ception of his true position which has led others to misconceive 
 in turn of him ? And, to conclude, may not many other evils 
 incident to the lot of a teacher, such as want of health, de- 
 pression of spirits, differences with school managers, frequent 
 change of situation, be also in a great measure overcome by 
 efforts on the teacher's part ? 
 
 It would, perhaps, be more just to say, that from my strong 
 desire to make my words practically useful to teachers, I wish 
 to consider these difficulties only so far as they may be over- 
 come, or at least lessened by their own efforts. For to picture 
 school buildings more commodious and roomy than they are, 
 or to describe how school managers might bear themselves more 
 justly and more reasonably than they do, or to conceive how 
 the work of education might be carried on under other and 
 more favourable laws or conditions than those which now exist, 
 would be a mere waste of time. And if, in venturing to speak 
 of what most nearly touches the teacher's self, I seem to use 
 too much boldness or plainness of speech, I shall still claim 
 his indulgence, feeling assured that I should be paying a poor 
 compliment to his sincerity and manliness, if I sought rather 
 for words and topics that might be easier for me to express, and 
 pleasanter for him to read, and failed to speak out what is 
 really in my mind on this matter. 
 
 In conclusion, then, may not all those many difficulties that 
 beset and hinder and depress those who are labouring in the
 
 The Teacher 's Difficulties. 183 
 
 work of education, be traceable to one great fault a want of 
 single-mindedness ? If we had more singleness of purpose, 
 more simplicity of aim, more of that one purpose and that one 
 aim of which I have spoken, which is to do a parent's work for 
 each child with whom we have to deal, trying to destroy what 
 is evil in him, and to nurture all that is good, if we en- 
 deavoured to subordinate all other purposes, our reputation, 
 our gains, our advancement, our comforts, to this one purpose, 
 looking upon each child so gained as ample reward and com- 
 pensation for whatever toil or whatever disappointments we 
 might have endured should we not be most surely happier, 
 and more successful than we are ? 
 
 Or if we may attain to that other and yet higher view of the 
 work of education, that after all it is not our work, but God's 
 work, that He wills it, and that His Holy Spirit will make it 
 prevail, counting it, indeed, a blessed privilege to be, in ever 
 so small a measure, employed by Him in carrying it on, but 
 caring chiefly that, with our service or without our service, the 
 work itself shall go forward, will not this give us a faith in 
 education, before the light of which all the shadowy difficulties 
 that we have been considering difficulties in our own little 
 world, or in the larger world around us, difficulties with others, 
 or in the recesses of our own heart one and all, by God's 
 blessing, will be dispelled !
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ON THE MOST EFFECTIVE MODE OF PROMOTING PRACTICAL 
 CHRISTIANITY THROUGH OUR PARISH SCHOOLS. 
 
 IN writing on this subject my thoughts at once revert to 
 those three or four hundred schools with which, for a period of 
 fourteen years, I was so familiar as a school inspector in three 
 of our northern counties. Among those three or four hundred 
 schools, some stand out in my memory, in clear and strong 
 relief, as emphatically Christian schools. Let me explain what 
 I mean by this. All the schools under my inspection were 
 conducted on Church principles ; of more than half I could 
 say that they had reached a very satisfactory state of efficiency ; 
 but of some of them I could say more than this to an extent 
 that I can hardly perhaps explain, I felt that, over and 
 above mere efficiency, they were animated by a religious spirit 
 so strikingly, that one came away glad at heart, and only 
 wishing that more children could breathe such daily influences. 
 The countenances of the children, their relation to their teachers, 
 the earnest and thoughtful way in which they addressed them- 
 selves to their work, and still more, what I heard of their after- 
 career, the letters of former scholars, what the clergyman told 
 me of his confirmation classes, and of the indirect effect on 
 the state of the parish in the course of time all this went to 
 make up the impression on my mind of which I speak. 
 
 Here clearly, necessarily, there was at work some " effective
 
 Practical Christianity in our Parish Schools. 185 
 
 mode of promoting practical Christianity through our parochial 
 schools." What was it ? 
 
 To answer this question, I must try to analyse as best I can 
 that sacred influence for good, of which whatever it was the 
 results were so manifest. 
 
 I. First and foremost need I say it ? it was due to the 
 character of the teacher. In all these schools, so distinguished 
 in my retrospect, the master or mistress was a God-fearing 
 Christian. In all these schools, not in the religious lesson 
 only, not in school-hours only, but throughout the day, the 
 children saw that their teachers had the fear of God before 
 their eyes. The children saw in them no change of manner, 
 no increased anxiety, when visitors or school inspectors entered 
 the room. During the morning and evening prayers, whether 
 the children were praying or not, one thing was clear, the 
 teacher was praying for them. Another thing I may mention 
 under this same head : in all these schools the teachers had 
 been many years at work ; this kind of influence is not to be 
 won in a year or two. A teacher who is often migrating never 
 wins it. 
 
 II. In the second place, I put the relation of the teacher to 
 the parents. Often and often elsewhere I heard the teachers 
 complaining even within the hearing of the children of the 
 parents. In these schools of which I am speaking, never. 
 Not that they escaped annoyance far from it ; but they lived 
 it down by patient perseverance. I remember one mistress 
 telling me how a parent had really persecuted her for years ; 
 until one day the child fell sick, and was laid up for some 
 weeks : the teacher's visits to the home during that sickness 
 entirely won the rough parents heart, and she had no more 
 trouble in that family. A common plan, and a very good one, 
 is to send weekly or monthly reports of the child's conduct 
 and progress to the parents, noting especially how many hours'
 
 1 86 The Education of the People. 
 
 or days' schooling the child has lost through irregular attend- 
 ance. When the parents see this in the lump, and the result- 
 ing backwardness brought into direct relation to it, their eyes 
 are opened to the mischief of such irregularity. But however 
 wayward and foolish the parents are, it is of golden importance 
 to remember the fifth commandment ; numbers of teachers, 
 and of the clergy too, err in not remembering that after all the 
 parent's authority is paramount to theirs. When the wayward- 
 ness and foolishness go so far that harmonious action becomes 
 impossible, the child should leave the school, rather than risk 
 the scandal and harm of conflict between the two authorities. 
 
 III. My third head is discipline, in which I include the 
 whole moral government of the school. All those teachers 
 whom I have in my eye just now were strict disciplinarians. I 
 never heard them talking sentimentally about " ruling by love." 
 That many of the children did love them was evident, but they 
 feared them too. There was an uncompromising steadiness in 
 their administration which made the children fear them. This 
 is wholesome and right. Nay, a child will never deeply love 
 a teacher or parent whom he does not also fear. Reverence 
 is love mingled with fear ; and beyond all things Christianity 
 requires of us to train our children to feelings of reverence. 
 On this matter of discipline a volume might be written. I 
 must dismiss it with one or two practical remarks. A really 
 religious teacher may entirely fail for want of skill. There is 
 no matter in which self-made teachers so commonly fail. The 
 saving that may be effected in time and temper, and in the 
 pain of punishment, by skilful methods of discipline, is of un- 
 told value. I remember a most conscientious, tender-hearted 
 teacher coming to me almost m distress because of the amount 
 of punishment he found necessary in his school. He said 
 that for moral faults, untruth, cruelty, and the like, the inflic- 
 tion of punishment gave him comparatively no pain ; it seemed
 
 Practical Christianity in our Parish Schools. 1 87 
 
 right and wholesome thus to redress the moral balance of the 
 school. But for faults in lesson, carelessness, forgetfulness, 
 and the like, he longed to dispense with punishments, and yet 
 how could he ? I suggested that he should visit a neighbour- 
 ing school, where there was an admirable system of marks in 
 operation, given for all the work, with deductions for such 
 faults as he mentioned, the totals resulting in an order of merit 
 at the end of the half-year. He took the hint, studied and 
 adopted the system, and the next year told me most gratefully 
 that his punishments were now almost entirely confined to moral 
 faults. 
 
 Above all, in this matter of discipline, let a teacher remember 
 that his purpose is not merely to repress disorder, but to create 
 in his children habits of order. For the first, general rules 
 and a sort of military drill may suffice ; for the second, some 
 study of individual character is needed, and for this a carefully 
 kept journal of alt the children's individual progress will be 
 found of the greatest assistance. 
 
 IV. I come now to what some might have expected to find 
 first in order of importance, the religious lessons. I advisedly 
 postpone this matter to those three others which we have been 
 considering. In those schools which I have characterised as 
 so distinctly and emphatically Christian in their spirit and in- 
 fluence, I cannot certainly say that what we call the religious 
 knowledge of the children that is, their knowledge of Scripture, 
 the Catechism, and the Liturgy was beyond that of all other 
 schools. Knowledge even of the most sacred subjects may be 
 given to a child without any real training of that child's character. 
 
 The effect religious or irreligious of the school lessons on 
 a child's character depends far more on the spirit in which they 
 are given than on the quantity of the directly religious instruc- 
 tion included in them. I have been sometimes pained and 
 shocked to find a school passing a really admirable examina-
 
 1 88 The Education of the People. 
 
 tion in what we call religious knowledge, when morally and 
 religiously the school was in an unsatisfactory state. 
 
 But given, first and foremost, the Christian-hearted teacher, 
 working in sympathy with the parents, and maintaining a con- 
 scientious discipline, we may then safely say that the hour spent 
 each morning over the Bible and Church Catechism will be a 
 very powerful influence for good in forming the Christian char- 
 acter of the children. 
 
 That they may be so, three things are mainly needed, that 
 the instruction be reverently given, sufficiently elementary, and 
 directly connected with the daily life of the children. 
 
 1. The religious instruction must be reverently given. 
 There should be a marked difference between the teacher's 
 manner of conducting these lessons and his manner of con- 
 ducting other lessons. In other lessons he wants to see how 
 sharp and active his scholars can be ; in these he wishes them 
 to be thoughtful and serious. Taking of places, show of 
 hands, simultaneous answering, and other artificial stimu- 
 lants to attention, may be dropped. The repose of the lesson 
 will help to make the children like it. They should be lifted 
 easily over mere mechanical difficulties of reading and pronun- 
 ciation. The backward, slow children [should feel that here 
 they are put on a level with the forward, quick children, that 
 mere quickness has here no merit in the teacher's eye. For 
 their sustained attention he must trust to awakening their deeper 
 interests. A few earnest words now and then, reminding them 
 that they are in the presence of Him of whom they are read- 
 ing, will suffice to correct any levity of tone or manner. In the 
 junior classes there should be no painful spelling out of Scrip- 
 ture : the teacher should read it aloud to them. 
 
 2. The religious instruction should be sufficiently elemen- 
 tary. We must take no previous knowledge for granted. A 
 child comes to school at eight years old, and is put into a class
 
 Practical Christianity in our Parish Schools. 189 
 
 that is reading through St Matthew's Gospel. I examine 
 that child at the end of six months, and find he knows the 
 narrative and the parables really well; but I chance to ask 
 him some elementary question : " But who was this Jesus 
 of whom you are reading ? " or, " Where is He now ? " or, 
 " What is the good of saying prayer ? " or, " Did you ever 
 speak to God ? " or, " What becomes of people when they 
 die ? " and I find, and the teacher is surprised and shocked to 
 find, that the child has really none of those elementary notions 
 of religion that we have been all along taking for granted. 
 
 Only the other day I found that some of the most intelligent 
 girls in the first class of a good school, who had just passed an 
 excellent examination in the four Gospels and the Acts, were 
 in the habit of repeating, by way of prayer, every night by their 
 bedsides, " Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed that 
 I lie on," &c. 
 
 It is with a view to supplying this foundation-knowledge that 
 our Church Catechism is such an indispensable supplement to 
 the Bible lesson. 
 
 The teacher there has occasion to go to the heart of the 
 matter at once, whereas in his Scripture lessons he may take 
 the child through a long course of lessons without having direct 
 occasion to go into these rudiments. The Church Catechism 
 well and thoroughly taught is beyond question the most valu- 
 able lesson in the school. The false position into which the 
 controversies of politicians have thrust it, as a piece of distinc- 
 tive sectarian teaching, about which Christians may fairly differ, 
 is deeply to be regretted. It is the common property of all the 
 Protestant Churches of the land, dating from times anterior to 
 our divisions. With the single exception of the Baptists, (or, 
 more properly, Anabaptists,) none have dissented from its 
 teaching. Ponet, Colet, and Overall were the spiritual ances- 
 tors of all our orthodox communions, whether conforming or
 
 190 The Education of the People. 
 
 non-conforming. But of this by the way. Wisely and dis- 
 creetly used with some slight verbal alteration for the children 
 of Baptists I hardly ever found Dissenters object to their 
 children learning it.* Dissenting parents have been present 
 while I was examining the children in it, and have said it was 
 the most interesting part of the examination. But I pass on. 
 
 3. The religious instruction must be directly connected 
 with the daily life of the children. 
 
 Nothing has interested me more, in overhearing the re- 
 ligious lessons of schools, than the way in which some of the 
 teachers illustrated the precepts of the Bible from the familiar 
 occurrences of the children's daily life. It is difficult to say 
 which gained most, the Scripture text or the daily life. The 
 Scripture text gained a reality and a hold on the conscience ; 
 the daily life gained a solemnity of sanction, and a basis of 
 principle, that were clearly of the highest value. But this must 
 be done very carefully, and without any risk of lowering the 
 Scripture on the one hand, or of exaggerating trifles into undue 
 importance on the other. 
 
 The great thing is to get at the principles which underlie the 
 moral teaching of our Lord and His apostles. Unhappily, I 
 know of no simple commentary which supplies this help to 
 teachers. The text-books on the Gospels which I find on the 
 few shelves of a teacher's library are of the most unsatisfactory 
 sort. They give him far more curious learning about the topo- 
 graphy and customs of the Holy Land than he is ever likely 
 to need, encumbering his mind, and consequently his lesson, 
 with all sorts of odds and ends of knowledge. But as to any 
 
 * While it is my conviction that very few parents will ever care to avail them- 
 selves of the liberty of withdrawal conceded to them, I rejoice that the principle 
 of a conscience clause, as worded in the Puke of Marlborough's Bill, may now 
 be said to have been accepted by a large majority of the bishops and clergy. By 
 this acceptance we have, as I believe, purchased for ourselves, what otherwise 
 would have been impossible, a fresh lease of the denominational system.
 
 Practical Christianity in our Parish Schools. 191 
 
 help how to apply the transcendant lessons of the Sermon on 
 the Mount to the low levels of the life around him, he looks 
 in vain for it ; or, worse still, is left quite unaware that there 
 is any difficulty in such application. 
 
 It is not one teacher in ten that can give a really wise lesson 
 on such passages as these : " Take no thought for the morrow ;" 
 " If a man take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also ;" 
 " Judge not, that thou be not judged." 
 
 Here, the deeper knowledge of scriptural ethics which a 
 clergyman's training has given him may be of great use. And 
 this leads me to my last head. 
 
 V. The Co-operation of the Clergyman with the Teacher. In 
 none of those schools which I have in my mind's eye did the 
 clergyman take the religious instruction entirely out of the hands 
 of the teacher. Nor do I advise it. On the contrary, I depre- 
 cate it most earnestly. It lowers and secularises the position of 
 the teacher, both in his own eyes and in the eyes of his pupils. 
 If he be a religious man, you would be taking away his greatest 
 pleasure : if he be not, the sooner he goes the better. The best, 
 and indeed the only conclusive argument against what are called 
 secular schools that is, schools where the religious instruction 
 is relegated to Sundays, or to the minister's teaching out of 
 school hours is, that it lowers and unbaptizes, so to speak, the 
 office of the schoolmaster. None of the mothers of England 
 would care much for a teacher who never took the Bible into 
 his hands. The mothers of France rebelled against the system 
 ten years ago, and in half the communes of France invited 
 back again the Freres Chretiens, whom the State-trained 
 teachers had supplanted. I would therefore, as a clergyman, 
 make it clear to my teachers that I held them responsible for the 
 religious instruction of the children. Nay, further, to make 
 this plain to children as well as teacher, I would often sit by, 
 during the Scripture lesson, and thank him for it at the close,
 
 192 The Education of the People. 
 
 or in some other way show my interest in it. And in the long 
 run the children, depend upon it, will in this as in other things 
 make more progress under a professionally-trained teacher than 
 under one who teaches, as we clergy do, by the light of nature. 
 
 At the same time, I would ask leave now and then to give 
 the children a lesson, and in that lesson seek to exhibit to the 
 teacher some quality of teaching in which I had observed him 
 deficient; as, for instance, in that matter of which I was speak- 
 ing just now, the application of Scripture precepts to daily 
 duties. Of course, any remarks on such defects in the teacher's 
 lessons would be made in private, and with such modesty as 
 becomes an untrained man speaking to one who has been 
 professionally trained for the work. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest help that a clergyman can render to his 
 teacher is by periodic examinations of the children, not only in 
 religious knowledge, but in all their work. 
 
 And here I would suggest that he should often make this 
 examination an individual one; seating himself in the class- 
 room, and having the children in, one at a time, for five or 
 six minutes each. Three advantages would be thus gained : 
 
 1. He would not only test more thoroughly than in any other 
 
 way the results of the teacher's work, but he would also 
 be helping his teacher and himself to bear in mind the 
 real end of that work, as viewed from a religious point 
 of view not a good school, but good children. 
 
 2. He would find that it strengthened his hands in his visits 
 
 to the parents to be able to speak thus definitely of the 
 progress of their individual children. And 
 
 3. He would find in these private interviews with them a 
 
 very happy opportunity for speaking of subjects, and 
 asking them questions, which would be hardly suitable 
 for the public school, as, for instance, about their private 
 prayers.
 
 Practical Christianity in our Parish Schools. 193 
 
 In these ways a clergyman may assist his teachers most 
 effectually. But, after all, the most precious kind of aid he can 
 render them, will be giving them his friendship. Friendship 
 may seem a strong word, but I decline to lower it. A clergy- 
 man who has the highest good of the children of his parish at 
 heart, will never rest till he has found for them a teacher whom 
 he can in all ways regard as his friend and fellow- worker. 
 
 So I end as I began. As the teacher is, such will the school 
 be. I have tried to gather under five heads the several condi- 
 tions on which a school's effectiveness "in promoting practical 
 Christianity " depends. But I might have well-nigh grouped 
 them all under that first head : // depends on the teacher. A 
 really Christian teacher will create a Christian school. And a 
 Christian school it is, emphatically, that the parents of Eng- 
 land desire for their children, and to which alone they will give 
 their confidence. 
 
 To sum up and conclude : In the wholesome Christian 
 influences which surround our schools under their present con- 
 stitution, lies our strength ; in the parents' carelessness about 
 their children's attendance, lies our only serious weakness. 
 If by further legislation we can correct the latter without com- 
 promising the former, we shall have a system of education at 
 once national and religious, in a great measure self-supporting, 
 and in thorough harmony with the genius of our people.
 
 APPENDIX.
 
 APPENDIX I. 
 
 LETTERS ON THE SUBJECT OF THE CONSCIENCE CLAUSE. 
 
 October 11, 1866. 
 
 MY DEAR LORD ARCHBISHOP, For several reasons I regret that 
 I am unable to attend the Congress at York, and chiefly because I 
 would gladly have made one more effort to clear away the almost 
 universal misunderstanding in which unceasing declamation has 
 involved the question of the Conscience Clause. Our experience at 
 the Norwich Congress last year showed how difficult it is to win 
 the ear of the clergy, even for ten minutes, to any quiet, sober ex- 
 planation of the real merits of the question ; and the consequence 
 is, that nine-tenths of them still draw their notions of it from one- 
 sided misrepresentations ; and we are not safe from drifting into a 
 disastrous rupture between Church and State in the matter of edu- 
 cation, which a few words of explanation (if they could only be 
 made to reach the minds of the clergy) would obviate. And the 
 matter is capable of the briefest explanation. 
 
 The denominational system, when applied to a parish containing 
 a dissenting minority so small that they cannot have a school of 
 their own, is on a dilemma. Shall the child of the Dissenter be 
 left out in the cold ? Or shall the Church school be so modified as 
 to admit him without offence to the parents' conscience ? 
 
 The Government, with the nation at its back, adopts the latter 
 alternative. 
 
 What, then, is the modification to be ? Shall the teacher be 
 asked to withdraw from his teaching all sectarian matter ? Or shall 
 the parent be allowed to withdraw his child from all that he con- 
 siders sectarian lessons ? 
 
 The clergy with one voice decline the first, and most rightly. 
 
 The State, therefore, must adopt the second ; and this is the true 
 principle of a conscience clause, absolute liberty to the Church
 
 198 Appendix. 
 
 teacher to teach what he likes, and absolute liberty to the Dissenting 
 parent to withdraw his child from so much of the teaching as he 
 dislikes. 
 
 It was the compatibility of these two principles that Lord Gran- 
 ville tried to make clear to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in their 
 recent correspondence, and somehow failed, owing probably to the 
 impracticable character of the conscience clause as worded by the 
 Department. 
 
 But once get the clergy to understand that under this clause (very 
 slightly altered in its wording) the responsibility of the exemption, 
 i.e., the withdrawal of the child) would rest, not upon the teacher 
 or clergy, but upon the parent exclusively, and surely all objection 
 to it would vanish. 
 
 The clause would impose no obligation whatever on the clergy- 
 man or teacher except this, that if a parent send him a written re- 
 quest that his child be allowed to be absent from such and such a 
 kind of lesson, he must answer, " Yes." 
 
 Of course, if one lived in an ecclesiastical Utopia, one would 
 prefer to exclude all symptoms of dissent from the inside of one's 
 school. But, with the distinction between church-goers and chapel- 
 goers so patent to the children outside the school, surely it is but 
 a slight additional evil to have it showing itself in one or two cases 
 inside the school. 
 
 Anyhow, putting this evil into one scale, and a rupture of the 
 educational concordat between Church and State, and the estab- 
 lishment perhaps of a secular system of schools all over the 
 country, (as in Belgium,) into the other, there can be little doubt 
 as to which scale preponderates. I have the honour to be, my 
 dear Lord Archbishop, yours faithfully, J. P. NORRIS. 
 
 The Most Reverend the Archbishop of York. 
 
 November 15, 1866. 
 
 MY LORD, From an imperfect report of your Lordship's reply 
 to the Conscience Clause Deputation last Tuesday, I gather that 
 you would be glad to receive any suggestion for the solution of the 
 difficulty in which the State is placed in aiding to establish schools 
 in what may be termed " Single-school parishes," containing Dis- 
 senters.
 
 Appendix. \ 99 
 
 The only solution thus far proposed is the Conscience Clause as 
 drawn up by the Education Department. 
 
 To this a very large majority of the clergy object. But this large 
 majority is made up of two portions a small portion, who would 
 equally object to any compromise whatever, (these, the non pos- 
 sumus party, being few in number and &<nrov8oi., may be neglected), 
 and a large portion, well worth conciliating, who would accept a 
 modified conscience clause. 
 
 What, then, is it in the present Conscience Clause which so many 
 of the more reasonable clergy object to ? 
 
 It is that in accepting it they would be binding themselves 
 potentially to more than they could practically perform. The ex- 
 emption is too sweeping ; so much so that it might be impracticable 
 to comply with it. That from which they might be required under 
 this clause (worded as it is) to exempt a child, penetrates and per- 
 vades the whole work of a Church school, or might be alleged to 
 do so. A parent might choose to find dogmatic teaching in the 
 daily prayers, in the mode of enforcing discipline, in the whole 
 school life ; and might (if so minded) make a vexatious use of the 
 "powers thus allowed him. 
 
 Let the clause be more definitely worded, and this difficulty 
 would vanish. 
 
 All schools are worked according to a fixed routine or time-table, 
 every hour or half-hour having its definite lesson ; and this time- 
 table is accessible to the parents. 
 
 Let the clause be worded thus : 
 
 " The said committee shall be bound .... but such orders shall 
 be confined to the exemption of such children from attendance at 
 church, and from such lessons as their parents, on conscientious 
 ground's and in writing, object to ; and shall not otherwise interfere 
 with the religious instruction given in the school." 
 
 Such a modification would redeem the clause from the only 
 reasonable objection to it. viz., that it might, in extreme cases, 
 be made a source of constant annoyance to a conscientious 
 teacher 
 
 The insertion of such a clause in the trust-deeds of Church schools 
 seems to me a price well worth paying for the continuance of that 
 prerogative in the case of single-school parishes, which it is so
 
 2OO Appendix. 
 
 much the interest of the nation to accord to the Established Church. 
 I have the honour to be, my Lord, &c. J. P. NORRIS. 
 
 The Earl of Derby, K.G. 
 
 To the Editor of the Times. 
 
 December 12, 1867. 
 
 SIR, In your leading article to-day you say that if any verbal 
 amendment of the Conscience Clause could be suggested that would 
 tend to make its non-interference with the religious lessons of a 
 school yet more clear, it might be well to adopt it. 
 
 Since my .retirement from the office of Inspector of Schools, 
 nearly four years ago, I have had opportunities of discussing these 
 matters with my brother clergy more freely than I could as an 
 inspector. 
 
 As regards this particular question of the Conscience Clause, the 
 clergy may be divided into three groups. There is a small group 
 whom no sort of compromise would conciliate, hopelessly pre- 
 judiced in the matter. These, as you say, may be safely neglected. 
 There is another group, (smaller, I believe, than you suppose,) who 
 are prepared to accept the Conscience Clause as it stands. There is 
 a third, and very large group, containing, as I believe, numbers of 
 wise and moderate men whom a very slight modification of the 
 clause, such as I am about to suggest, would at once conciliate. 
 
 The ground on which these men object to the clause as it stands 
 has never, I think, been rightly apprehended. 
 
 The clause, as it stands, exempts A. B. from any religious 
 instruction to which his parent objects. That is, a clergyman 
 adopting it, binds himself not only to allow A. B. to sit aside 
 during particular lessons, but guarantees him from having any 
 such instruction given to him directly or indirectly. He feels that 
 in making this promise, he is promising more than he can possibly 
 perform. In the prayers with which the school is opened, in some 
 accidental address to the whole school about a breach of discipline, 
 in the common reading lesson, a troublesome, controversial parent 
 may discover that some doctrine to which he objects has been 
 indirectly conveyed to his boy. who clearly cannot sit aside on all 
 these occasions.
 
 Appendix. 201 
 
 Let the clause, therefore, exempt the child, not " from any re- 
 ligious doctrine to which the parent objects," but simply, "from 
 any lesson to which a parent on conscientious grounds objects." 
 
 This would be simpler, and in case of complaint, would raise a 
 practicable issue in a court of law. The issues that might be 
 vexatiously raised on the clause as it now stands whether, for in- 
 stance, a schoolmaster had, in using prayers out of our liturgy, 
 offended the conscience of a Unitarian parent, or in a lesson on 
 Charles II.'s reign had implied opinions to which a non-conforming 
 parent objected would be simply impracticable. 
 
 The slight alteration I have suggested would satisfy all sensible 
 parents, and would make the clause acceptable to all sensible 
 clergymen, as I believe. I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. P. N ORRIS. 
 
 To the Editor of the Times. 
 
 Dec. 14, 1867. 
 
 SIR, When I wrote the letter which you were so good as to 
 publish this morning, I had no copy of the Conscience Clause by 
 me. I now have it before me, and can therefore explain the 
 verbal amendment, which seems to me desirable, still more ex- 
 plicitly. 
 
 The clause, as now worded, stands thus : " The managers shall 
 be bound to make such orders as shall provide for admitting to the 
 benefits of the school the children of parents not in communion 
 with the Church. But such orders shall be confined to the ex- 
 emption of such children, if their parents desire it, from attendance 
 at public worship, and from instruction in the doctrine or for- 
 mularies of the said Church, and shall not otherwise interfere with 
 the religious teaching of the scholars." 
 
 The words which I have put in italics are the words I would 
 alter, substituting, ''from any lesson to which the parents on con- 
 scientious grounds object." 
 
 The effect of the alteration will be evident to any one familiar 
 with the subject. 
 
 Numbers of moderate and sensible clergymen have said to me, 
 " As the clause now stands, it asks me, (or might in a court of law 
 be interpreted to ask me,) to promise, not only that the Dissenter's
 
 2O2 Appendix. 
 
 child shall have liberty to withdraw from certain lessons, but also 
 that, whether he choose to withdraw or no, he shall never hear one 
 word of distinctive doctrine in my school. That is more than I can 
 or will promise. What I am perfectly willing to promise is this, 
 that I will exhibit the time-table of the school to any parent who 
 desires it, and allow his child to be withdrawn from any lesson 
 therein specified to which he on conscientious grounds objects." 
 
 The Conscience Clause, altered as I have suggested, would at 
 once satisfy such a clergyman, and would surely be sufficient to 
 meet the scruples of any conscientious Dissenter. 
 
 As for the very few clergy who would think it right still to pro- 
 selytise indirectly under a conscience clause so worded, no trust- 
 deed, however stringently framed, could protect parents from such 
 mala fides. 
 
 It hardly needed Mr Lake's justly indignant letter to assure the 
 public how few they are. I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. P. NORRIS. 
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 THE following paper, sketching the history of our English Halj- 
 time system for children employed in manufactories, was written at 
 the request of the " Association Internationale pour le Progr^s des 
 Sciences Sociales ;" and was read at their Amsterdam Congress in 
 1864 ; and is reprinted from the transactions of the Association. 
 
 Memoir de M. J. P. NORRIS, ancien inspecteur des ecoles de Sa 
 Majesty a Londres. 
 
 Nous appelons, en Angleterre, The half-time system, le partage 
 du temps des enfants ouvriers entre le travail de 1'ecole et le travail 
 de 1'atelier ; ainsi les enfants passent alternativement de 1'atelier a 
 1'ecole, et de I'e'cole a 1'atelier. 
 
 L'origine de cette mesure se trouve dans un bill pre'sente' au Par- 
 lement par le premier Sir Robert Peel, et passe" en loi en 1802, qui 
 limita les laches de tous les apprentis des deux sexes, employes
 
 Appendix. 203 
 
 dans les manufactures de coton et de laine, a douze heures par jour, 
 et de'cre'ta qu'ils recevraient 1'instruction e'le'mentaire, pendant quel- 
 que partie de chaque jour ouvrable, et 1'enseignement religieux, le 
 dimanche. A cet acte, en succe'da un autre, en 1819, qui interdisait 
 aux proprie'taires desdites manufactures d'employer aucun enfant 
 age" de moins de neuf ans. 
 
 On croit ordinairement que les maux sociaux qu'on a voulu 
 restreindre par ces lois resultent des developpements qu'a pris 
 1'industrie par suite de 1'invention de la machine a vapeur, k la fin 
 du xviii* siecle. Mais ces abus sont de plus ancienne date. Je 
 puis appuyer cette assertion sur 1'autorite de notre historien Lord 
 Macaulay. Dans le premier tome de son histoire, (p. 419,) il dit : 
 " L'usage d'employer les enfants pre'mature'ment dans les manufac- 
 tures, usage que 1'Etat, protecteur Idgitime de ceux qui ne peuvent 
 pas se prote'ger eux-memes, interdit aujourd'hui, avec une bienfai- 
 sance salutaire, e'tait repandu, au xvii" siecle, a un degre" incroyable. 
 A Norwich, le centre de la fabrication des tissus, on mettait ordi- 
 nairement au travail un gamin de six ans. Plusieurs e*crivains 
 contemporains, dont quelques uns ont une grande reputation 
 d'humanite", se glorifient du fait que, dans cette seule ville, le travail 
 des petits enfants creait un revenu net de trois cent mille francs par 
 an ! Plus on approfondit 1'histoire du passe, ajoute Macaulay, plus 
 on s'61oigne de 1'opinion de ceux qui attribuent a notre epoque tant 
 de nouveaux maux sociaux. Le fait est que ces malheurs sont, 
 presque sans exception, d'une date ancienne. Ce qui est nouveau, 
 c'est Tintelligence qui les discerne et I'humanit6 qui y rem6die." 
 
 Les lois de 1802 et de 1819, faute d'une surveillance sumsante 
 pour en assurer 1'execution, furent inefficaces. Toutefois, ce grand 
 principe fut affirme, comme dit Lord Macaulay, que " 1'Etat est le 
 protecteur 16gitime de ceux qui ne peuvent pas se prot%er eux- 
 memes." Du reste, il est remarquable, en passant, que 1'honneur 
 de cette restriction morale du commerce, revient au pere du minis- 
 tre illustre a qui appartient 1'honneur de son affranchissement fiscal. 
 II n'y a, d'ailleurs, aucune contradiction entre 1' esprit du libre- 
 echange et 1'esprit de cette legislation tut&aire. 
 
 Cependant, le mal grandissait. Les commissions de 1833 et de 
 1844, charg6es de faire une enquete sur la condition des ouvriers 
 manufacturiers, rev61erent des abus qui r6clamaient, d'une manie're
 
 2O4 Appendix. 
 
 pressante, une legislation plus rigoureuse. Les actes de 1833, de 
 1844 et de 1847, dont 1'ensemble forme aujourd'hui le code du 
 travail manufacturier, furent successivement vot6s. Leur execution 
 est assured par un systeme d'inspection bien organist, ce qui man- 
 quait aux lois anteVieures. 
 
 Je vais esquisser a grands traits ce qui, dans ce code, a rapport 
 au systeme du demi-temps. Par le mot manufacture, il faut en- 
 tendre surtout un Edifice dans lequel il se trouve des machines a 
 vapeur, ou a eau, ou a autre moteur m6canique quel qu'il soit, pour 
 la filature ou le tissage du colon, de la laine, de la soie, du poil, du 
 lin, du chanvre et de 1'etoupe. Aucun enfant, ag6 de moins de huit 
 ans, ne peut etre admis dans ces ateliers ; et au-dessous de treize 
 ans, ne peut etre employ^ plus de six heures et demie, s'il travaille 
 tous les jours, ni plus de dix heures, s'il travaille de deux jours 1'un. 
 Un enfant, travaillant tous les jours, doit etre & 1'ecole pendant trois 
 heures par jour ; celui qui ne travaille que de deux jours 1'un, doit y 
 passer cinq heures. Sous peine d'amende, 1'entrepreneur d'industrie 
 ne peut recevoir un enfant sans un certificat d'ecole. Pour suppl6er 
 & 1'absence momentane'e de ses ouvriers enfants, 1'industriel organise 
 un double service ; il a deux groupes d'enfants ; pendant que 1'un 
 travaille & la manufacture, 1'autre est & 1'ecble. 
 
 Tel est le systdme du demi-temps, selon les conditions r6glees par 
 la loi des manufactures, dans la Grande-Bretagne. Ce syste'me a 
 ete applique, par 1'acte de 1860, aux blanchisseries et aux teinture- 
 ries ; et tout recemment, en 1863, aux fabriques de dentelles ; et en 
 1864, aux usines de poterie, de papier-peint, d'allumettes chimiques, 
 de cartouches et de capsules percussion, toujours sous la surveil- 
 lance r6guliere de 1'autorite. II est & croire que les autres manufac- 
 tures seront peu & peu rangees sous la mdme regie. 
 
 En g6n6ral, on peut dire que ces actes ont eu un succes bien 
 remarquable. La seule objection s6rieuse, c'est qu'ils n'offrent pas 
 assez de garantie de la qualite des 6coles que frequentent les 
 enfants. Lorsqu'il se trouve une bonne cole dans le voisinage de 
 1'atelier, les fruits du systeme alternatif sont tout ce qu'on peut 
 d^sirer : le travail se pr6sente comme un delassement apres 1'instruc- 
 tion, et 1'instruction de meTne apres le travail ; de sort que celui qui 
 ne passe que la moiti6 du temps a 1'ecole, fait & peu pres les mmes 
 progrds que celui qui y passe toute la journee. Ce r6sultat est telle-
 
 Appendix. 2C$ 
 
 ment constat dans les rapports des inspecteurs, qu'il y en a qui 
 voudraient abreger universellement les heures d'enseignement & 
 1'ecole, meme quand il n'est pas indispensable de les alterner avec 
 le travail ; ils alldguent que les jeunes gens apprennent autant, et 
 mme plus en trois heures, qu'ils ne font en cinq ou six heures par 
 jour. Pour moi, je suis convaincu qu'il y a de 1'exageration dans 
 une telle proposition, et que les progres de ces enfants sont dus, non 
 pas i la diminution du temps consacr6 h 1'enseignement, mais 
 plutot la regularite parfaite avec laquelle ils frequentent 1'ecole. 
 En faisant 1'inspection de ces ecoles, j'ai bien souvent demande a 
 Tinstituteur, comment il se rendait compte de ce paradoxe, que les 
 6coliers demi-temps etaient presque au meme niveau que ceux qui 
 jouissaient de tout 1'enseignement. On m'a repondu, qu'on 1'attri- 
 buait sans doute en partie 1'ardeur qu'inspirait aux enfants la 
 transition du travail & 1'instruction, mais encore davantage & leur 
 assiduit6 aux lemons. 
 
 C'est un des avantages du systeme du demi-temps que la fre- 
 quentation de 1'ecole est assured ; et voil un point bien digne de 
 notre attention. Certes, rien ne retarde plus serieusement 1'avance- 
 ment des eleves, dans nos ecoles 61ementaires, que leur inexactitude. 
 Aux meilleures ecoles, les enfants ne passent que quatre jours sur 
 cinq ; fl la plupart, la fr^quentation moyenne ne donne que trois 
 jours sur cinq. II va sans dire qu'une telle inexactitude rend 
 presque impossible un cours d'enseignement rgulier. Une moindre 
 duree d'instruction, regulierement assuree, vaudrait bien mieux ; 
 C'est precisement 1'effet de la loi du demi-temps. Le parent 
 n'ose pas retenir son enfant chez lui, sachant bien que, de- 
 faut du certificat de presence 1'ecole, il perdra le salaire de la 
 semaine. 
 
 L'importance de cette clause salutaire du code manufacturier est 
 evidente. Les actes ant6rieurs, faute d'une pareille precaution, 
 n'ont porte aucun fruit. 
 
 La loi de 1 846, par example, sur le travail des enfants employes 
 dans les ateliers d'impression de toile peinte, exige que trente jours 
 de chaque semestre soient passes & l'6cole. De me*me, la loi de 
 1860, intitulee, Mines Regulation Act, demande quatre jour 
 d'ecole, par mois, aux enfants qui travaillent dans les mines. Mais, 
 malheureusement, ces deux lois laissent aux parents le soin de dis-
 
 206 Appendix. 
 
 tribuer ce minimum de frequentation a leur gr6, d'ou il arrive que 
 1'instituteur ne peut pas y accommoder ses lecons, et que la presence 
 incertaine des jeunes ouvriers ne fait que deranger 1'ordre des 
 classes. L'inutilit6 notoire de ces deux actes, en fait d'6ducation, 
 prouve incontestablement qu'une frequentation d'ecole irreguliere 
 ne vaut presque rien, et demontre la superiorite du systeme du 
 demi-temps. Car, il faut bien le remarquer, ce regime, en laissant 
 aux entrepreneurs le choix d'alterner le travail avec 1'instruction ou 
 par demi-journee, ou par journ6e, exige absolument qu'on y tienne 
 avec une r6gularite parfaite. Dans Fun et 1'autre cas, 1'ouvrage se 
 continue par le systeme des relais ; par example, les uns travaillent 
 le matin, les autres 1'apres-midi ; le tour change par semaine ou 
 par quinzaine. 
 
 Un autre avantage accessoire qui se rattache au systeme, c'est 
 que le paiement des frais d'ecole se fait de rigueur, par prele'vement 
 sur les salaires des enfants. Ces retenues ne peuvent pas exc6der 
 deux pence par semaine. 
 
 En somme, on peut dire generalement que si, d'un cot6,les enfants 
 ne consacrent que la moitie du temps a 1'instruction ; de 1'autre, se 
 pr6sentent les compensations suivantes : 
 
 1. La dur6e de 1'instruction se prolonge au dela du terme or- 
 dinaire, c'est a dire jusqu'a 1'age de treize ans ; 
 
 2. Les enfants se rendent \ 1'ecole regulierement ; 
 
 3. Leur application, pendant les heures de classe abr6gees, est 
 plus vive et plus fraiche qu'on ne la trouve ailleurs ; 
 
 4. Les frais d'ecole sont payes rigoureusement. 
 
 ' Pour bien apprecier 1'utilite, en fait d'education, de notre code du 
 travail manufacturier, il faut cependant avouer qu'il manque a 
 notre loi, pour qu'elle puisse servir de modele, une garantie suf- 
 fisante de la bonne organisation des ecoles frequentees par les 
 enfants, et, en outre, que le systeme des relais exige qu'on emploie 
 deux fois autant d'enfants que n'en reclamerait le service r6gulier 
 des manufactures ; d' ou il arrive quelquefois que le chef d'atelier 
 prSfere ne pas se servir du tout des enfants ages de moins de treize 
 ans. 
 
 En parlant du code du travail manufacturier, j'ai borne mes 
 observations a ce qui touche au systdme du demi-temps. II n'y 
 avait pas a insister ici sur la partie des prescriptions qui ont pour
 
 Appendix. 207 
 
 objet de sauvegarder la sante des ouvriers plus ages, en limitant la 
 dur6e du travail ;\ dix heures par jour pour les femmes et pour tous 
 les ouvriers au-dessous de dix-huit ans ; ces dix heures doivent 
 etre comprises entre six heures du matin et six heures du soir. On 
 ne saurait nier que, sans cette limitation du travail pour les adultes, 
 le regime du demi-temps pour les enfants serait tout & fait in- 
 complet. Ce regime donne, il est vrai, les premiers rudiments de 
 1'instruction ; mais ce sont les moments de loisir revendiques par 
 la loi pour les adultes, qui leur permettent d'en d6velopper les 
 bons fruits. 
 
 Voila done le systdme du demi-temps, qui, joint au principe du 
 temps limite pour les adultes, a produit tant de bien depuis trente 
 annexes. 
 
 Quant aux interns materiels du pays, loin d'avoir remarque un 
 ralentissement dans les progres des branches d'industrie soumises 
 a ces restrictions, nous les avons vues, au contraire, s'accroitre 
 avec une rapidite plus que quadruple des progres obtenus par 1'en- 
 semble des autres industries. En 1860, le colon fabriquemontait & un 
 demi-billion de kilogrammes, et le nombre des ouvriers employe's 
 dans cette seule fabrication 6tait estime & quatre cent mille, dont 
 le salaire s'evaluait & 287,500,000 francs. 
 
 En face de ces faits, personne ne peut dire que cette legislation 
 ait compromis le commerce. Mais, (qu'on s'en souvienne bien,) 
 il ne s'agit pas seulement de faire de 1'ouvrier un instrument de 
 richesse : il s'agit de faire de 1'homme un citoyen. Au point de 
 vue physique et moral, les r^sultats de ces mesures restrictives 
 eclatent a tous les yeux ; au lieu de cet affaiblissement de la sante, 
 des maladies precoces et souvent incurables, des epines dorsales 
 devices, des hommes rabougris et sans vigueur, la population en- 
 tiere de ces districts manufacturiers s'est rajeunie, pour ainsi dire. 
 Voili pour le physique. Et pour ce qui est de 1'intelligence 
 et du cceur, il est a peine croyable combien on a constat6 
 d'amelioration. 
 
 En veut-on la preuve? Qu'on jette les yeux sur 1'histoire des 
 trois dernieres ann6es. Pourquoi retracer cette crise fatale, le 
 blocus americain, 1'enche'rissement rapide, la disparition du coton, 
 une industrie sans pareille, frappee et presque aneantie ? Et ces 
 quatre cent mille ouvriers, comment se sont-ils comport6s ? A-t-on
 
 208 Appendix. 
 
 vu une seule emeute ? Oue dis-je ? A-t-on ou'i s'echapper un seul 
 murmure ? Quand on ecrira 1'histoire de cette epoque, on n'aura a 
 faire que le long recit de privations heroiquement supportees, et 
 d'une charit<3 inepuisable et sublime. J'ai visite moi-meme les villes 
 du Lancashire dans la crise de la " famine ;" j'ai demande aux ouv- 
 riers, aux chefs d'etablissements, aux magistrals, au clerg6, a quoi 
 on pouvait attribuer cette patience extraordinaire. Us repondaient 
 tous : " Cest a 1'education qu'on le doit : tout le monde sait lire ; 
 chaque famille s'abonne & son journal, qui ne coute que deux sous 
 et fait comprendre les vraies causes de la disette ; de la vient 
 cette resignation intelligente du peuple." Voila un temoignage 
 frappant du succes de notre legislation industrielle. 
 
 Tel est, dans ses traits generaux, 1'aspect, et tels sont les effets 
 du systeme du demi-temps, applique legislativement aux manu- 
 factures. 
 
 La mention que je viens de faire de ces resultats physiques et 
 moraux m'amene naturellement a la dernie're question que je me 
 propose de traiter. Pourquoi ne pas etendre des prescriptions si 
 salutaires & toutes les industries qui emploient les enfants, y com- 
 prise 1'agriculture ? 
 
 Pour les petits ateliers dissemines oil I'activit6 manuelle est 
 seule en jeu, c'est-a-dire ceux qui n'ont pas pour auxiliaire la force 
 de 1'eau ou de la vapeur, pour le travail de la terre, pour le service 
 domestique, 1'Etat ne met aucune restriction, n'impose aucune 
 barriere a 1'exploitation abusive des forces de 1'enfance. 
 
 Pourquoi ne pas introduire partout le mdme systeme ? 
 
 En 1860, M. Adderley presenta a la Chambre des Communes un 
 projet de loi destin6 a etendre universellement les bienfaits du 
 Half-time system. Le Parlement anglais le rejeta. D'ou, vient 
 cette inconsequence ? Je tacherai d'en expliquer les raisons. 
 
 D'un cot6, il fut admis que le gouvernement, comme tuteur 
 special de tout ce qui est faible et mineur dans 1'Etat, pouvait, a la 
 rigueur, interdire universellement 1'emploi premature des forces de 
 1'enfance. II fut admis que cette restriction, a 1'egard des manu- 
 factures, avait eu un grand succes. II fut admis que, bien que le 
 Parlement efit ainsi limite le cercle des industries soumises a la loi, 
 il r6servait toujours au gouvernement le droit d'appliquer ces re- 
 strictions atoute autre Industrie dans laquelle on reconnaitrait un
 
 Appendix. 209 
 
 besoin de protection pour 1'enfance. Mais, d'un autre c6te, on 
 allegua que jamais, en Angleterre, on n'avait pretendu rendre 
 1'enseignement obligatoire ; c'etait une question trds-grave que de 
 porter atteinte a 1'autorite paternelle ; la legislation devait, sans 
 doute, s'opposer a 1'abus que des parents avides peuvent faire de 
 leur autorit6, au prejudice de leurs enfants ; mais ce devait etre 
 settlement pour le cas ou le mal Itait certain et le remade assure. 
 Dans les manufactures (ou, le moteur n'ayant pas de repos oblige 
 pour re"parer sa force, il y a tendance & porter le travail au deli 
 des bornes du labeur de 1'homme,) le mal d'un travail illimite etait 
 certain, et le reme'de, au moyen de 1'inspection, 6tait assure. Mais, 
 dans les petits ateliers dissemin6s et surtout dans 1'exploitation des 
 fermes 6tendues, ni 1'une ni 1'autre condition ne se trouvaient 
 remplies. On pourrait fadlement faire inspecter une grande manu- 
 facture oil rassemblent des centaines d'enfants ; mais une -visite 
 domiciliaire a la campagne, c'tkait une affaire aussi delicate que 
 difficile. On se trouvait en presence des privileges de la famille. 
 Quelles dispositions prendre qui ne fussent pas inquisitoriales ? 
 Quelles peines infliger qui ne fussent pas illusoires ? 
 
 Tel fut le raisonnement qui dtkida le Parlement anglais & rejeter 
 le bill pour 1'extension du regime du demi-temps & toutes les in- 
 dustries. On pourrait en formuler le principe, en disant que 
 1'esprit de notre legislation est repressif, mais non pas coactif ; que 
 la loi, chez nous, defend de faire le mal, mais n'exige pas qu'on 
 fasse le bien. " Ce qui frappe le plus, a dit un etranger, dans les 
 institutions anglaises, c'est le libre mouvement qui les enfante et 
 qui serait 6touffe le jour ou. le gouvernement y mettrait la main." 
 Nous avons voulu sauvegarder, autant que possible, ce principe du 
 laisser-faire. L'tat a voulu se borner rechercher si, parmi les 
 industries qui abusaient de leurs franchises, il n'en existait pas 
 qu'on pfit faire entrer dans les cadres de la loi en vigueur. C'est 
 un grand t6moignage en faveur de la politique du laisser-faire, que 
 nous avons des proprietaires (je puis nommer notamment Lord 
 Egerton of Tatton, le feu Lord Hatherton, et M. Paget, membre du 
 Parlement) qui ont applique volontairement le syste'me du demi- 
 temps aux jeunes ouvriers agricoles sur leurs terres. De plus en 
 plus, on voit nos grands proprietaires, ainsi que nos grands 
 fabricants, se faire un cas de conscience de procurer le bien-elre &
 
 2io Appendix. 
 
 ceux qu'ils emploient, de veiller sur leurs Smes autant que sur 
 leurs corps. Prices 1 Patent Candle Company, The London Lead 
 Company, ainsi que la Societe" industrielle de Mulhouse, ont depuis 
 longtemps adopte voluntairement de pareilles restrictions enfaveur 
 de leurs jeunes ouvriers. 
 
 Voici done les conclusions generates que nous dicte notre ex- 
 perience : 
 
 1. Afin que le travail professionnel n'empiete pas sur le domaine 
 de l'6ducation, il faut des concessions mutuelles comme celles que 
 j'ai dScrites ; 
 
 2. Pour les grandes industries, qui se servent d'un moteur in- 
 anim6, et dans lesquelles un systdme d'inspection est praticable, 
 cette concession doit e"tre assuree par la loi ; 
 
 3. Pour 1'agriculture et pour les petites industries domestiques, 
 qui echapperont toujours aux prescriptions d'une loi restrictive, une 
 telle legislation resterait lettre morte ; * 
 
 4. Dans ce dernier cas, il est k espe>er que ce que la loi ne peut 
 pas faire, se fera, de plus en plus, volontairement sous 1'influence 
 de 1'opinion. 
 
 D'apre"s une experience de quinze ans, comme inspecteur 
 d'6coles du gouvernement anglais, je suis convaincu que, si 1'on 
 veut reellement faire de notre Education une ceuvre durable, on 
 doit adopter de plus en plus, soit legislativement, soit voluntaire- 
 ment, le systeme du demi-temps. Sans une telle garantie, les 
 lecons de 1'ecole laisseront & peine quelques traces. Par des 
 methodes plus rapides, on pourrait, je 1'admets, apprendre aux 
 enfants a, lire et ecrire ; mais, pour ce qui constitue la vraie 
 Education, pour que nos enfants se pendtrent des croyances morales 
 et des idees traditionelles dela civilisation, il faut leur assurer une 
 fr6quentation de 1'ecole plus assidue et plus prolongee ; c'est seule- 
 ment ainsi que nous pourrons poser le couronnement de 1'edince de 
 1'instruction primaire, eleve' au prix de tant d'efforts. 
 
 * I am here speaking of a Half-time law. A certificate of some amount of schooling 
 night well be required by law as a condition of farm-service. See chapters i. and ii.
 
 Appendix. 2 1 1 
 
 APPENDIX III. 
 
 To bring the foregoing sketch of our legislation affecting children 
 employed in manufactures down to the present date, 1868, I append a 
 memorandum by Alexander Redgrave, Esq., one of Her Majesty's 
 Inspectors of Factories, explaining the progress of legislation for the 
 protection of the labour of women, young persons, and children ; 
 and for the education of children. 
 
 The first Factory Act (42 Geo. III. c. 73, 1802) was an attempt 
 to remedy the evils of excessive labour in cotton and woollen fac- 
 tories only ; and for years afterwards the manufacture of textile 
 fabrics only was placed under legislative restrictions. Thus the 
 Factory Acts of 1833 and 1844, with their amending Acts, dealt 
 only with labour in the actual spinning and manufacture of textile 
 fabrics, as they existed at the time, viz., of cotton, wool, worsted, 
 hemp, flax, tow, silk, or jute. The next series of Acts had still 
 reference only to textile fabrics, viz., printworks, and the bleaching, 
 dyeing, and finishing of textile goods. Various modifications of 
 the Factory Regulations were conceded to these works, on the 
 ground of their inapplicability to the peculiarities and necessities 
 of the trades. An inquiry is now being made into the validity of 
 the grounds upon which these modifications were permitted, with a 
 view to remedy many defects which have been greatly complained 
 of. Another Act, the first-fruits of the Children's Employment 
 Commission, was passed in 1864. This extended the Factory 
 Regulations to a variety of trades, viz., to the manufacture of 
 earthenware, of lucifer matches, of percussion-caps and cartridges, 
 to the employments of paper-staining and of fustian-cutting. In 
 all these trades the greatest satisfaction has been expressed by the 
 masters at the results of the application to their premises of Fac- 
 tory Regulations. They co-operate with the inspectors, and have 
 experienced none of the inconveniences and difficulties which they 
 had anticipated, while the operatives are no less satisfied at the 
 beneficial operation of the new system. 
 
 Following very closely the outline of the Act of 1864, the Legis- 
 lature endeavoured in the session of 1867 to cope with every kind
 
 2 1 2 Appendix. 
 
 of labour, exercised in the way of trade, for the production of an 
 article for sale. 
 
 First, the "Factory Acts Extension Act, 1867," which places 
 under the regulations of the Factory Acts the following premises, 
 viz.: 
 
 Blast furnaces, copper mills, iron mills and forges, foundries ; 
 premises whereon steam or water power is used to manufacture 
 machinery, or any article of metal, or of India-rubber or gutta- 
 percha ; premises in which are carried on paper, glass, or tobacco 
 manufactures ; letterpress printing or bookbinding. In addition 
 to the preceding, any other premises on which at least fifty persons 
 are employed on any manual labour, for any process in the prepar- 
 ing or finishing of any article for sale. 
 
 The Government, in the first instance, and afterwards the Com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons, considered with great attention 
 the representations made from the different trades proposed to be 
 brought under restrictions, of the inconveniences and injuries 
 which would be caused to many trades by a strict and close ad- 
 herence to the Factory Regulations as in force in cotton and other 
 factories, and various temporary modifications were granted for the 
 purpose of making the transition from unlimited to limited labour 
 more gradual. Other permanent modifications were also agreed to, 
 in order to provide against very serious interruptions to processes 
 of manufacture, and disturbance of existing customs and habits, 
 which were threatened by the strict Factory Law. 
 
 But the following regulations are absolute : 
 
 1. The prohibition of the night-work of women and children. 
 
 2. The limitation of the night-work of young persons in some 
 specified trades, such as blast-furnaces, paper-mills, &c., to not 
 more than six nights in a fortnight, and the prohibition of day-work 
 during the night turn. 
 
 3. The limitation of the hours of work of children to half the day, 
 with the obligation of daily school attendance. 
 
 4. The limitation of the hours of work of young persons and 
 women to 10.30 hours per day, and 60 hours per week. 
 
 5. The other ordinary rules as to meals and holidays, dangerous 
 machinery and accidents. 
 
 6. The original Factory Acts made no provision for securing
 
 Appendix. 2 1 3 
 
 proper ventilation and cleanliness, but by the two last Acts, 1864 
 and 1867, these two important conditions must be observed; and 
 by the last Act, 1867, the further obligation is enacted, that means 
 shall be provided for preventing the inhalation by workmen of 
 dust, gas, or other impurities caused by any process of manufacture. 
 
 Workshops Act. The preceding Acts embrace all the large arid 
 important classes of factories. Their administration has been 
 placed under the supervision of the Inspectors of Factories, and 
 the machinery of the Factory Acts applies to them all. The details 
 as to surgical certificates as proof of age the registration of names, 
 &c., in factories of the smallest class would be irksome and to a 
 great extent unnecessary. The Legislature therefore proceeded to 
 lay down rules to be observed in all these minor classes of labour, 
 which are not included in any of the above Factory Acts, without 
 the minute details to which the larger works are subjected, and 
 passed the "Workshops Regulation Act, 1867." 
 
 This Act applies to all manual labour exercised by way of trade 
 in preparing or finishing any article for sale. 
 
 The main features of the " Factory Acts Extension Act, 1867," 
 are adopted, except that the labour of young persons and women 
 may be extended to twelve hours per day, between wider limits than 
 under the Factory Acts, i.e., they may commence at five a.m. and 
 need not cease until nine p.m. ; and on Saturdays work may be 
 continued after the regular hours in shops wherein more than five 
 persons are employed in repairing articles ; the school attendance 
 of children need not exceed ten hours per week instead of fifteen, 
 as under the Factory Acts. Temporary and permanent modifica- 
 tions very similar to those in the " Factory Acts Extension Act of 
 1867 " are also included in the Workshops Act. 
 
 The administration of the Workshops Act is not placed in the 
 hands of the Inspectors of Factories, but is enjoined upon the 
 Local Authority, whether mayor, provost, board of health, vestry, 
 or whatever may be the governing body of the locality. It is of 
 great importance that these various bodies should accept the "duty" 
 imposed upon them by the Act, for in their hands now rests the 
 power of creating a school-seeking race of children. Every child 
 who performs any manual labour (except in agriculture) is bound 
 now to attend school concurrently with its daily occupation, but
 
 2 1 4 Appendix. 
 
 the system cannot be inaugurated unless by the influence and 
 pressure of some governing body. The Inspectors of Factories are 
 empowered to enter workshops and consequently to enforce the 
 provisions of the Act, but the intention of the Act seems rather that 
 they should ascertain whether the regulations of the Act have been 
 administered by the Local Authorities. There is one provision of 
 the Workshops Act which may be of great importance. It is that 
 relating to the disqualifying of schoolmasters. Under the Factory 
 Acts, an inspector is empowered to disqualify a schoolmaster " by 
 reason of his incapacity to teach the children to read and write, 
 from his gross ignorance, or from his not having the materials 
 necessary to teach reading and writing, or because of his immoral 
 conduct," &c. The cause for disqualification is here clearly enough 
 defined, but it reaches only the very worst class of cases, about 
 which there could be no kind of doubt in the mind of the inspector. 
 The Workshops Regulation Act enlarges very much the grounds 
 of disqualification, and it should be observed that no authority is 
 given in respect to schools, and school certificates, to the Local 
 Authority, these subjects being placed entirely under the control 
 of the Inspectors of Factories. After repeating as grounds for dis- 
 qualification the not filling up of certificates and immoral conduct, 
 the schoolmaster may be disqualified, if in the opinion of the In- 
 spectors " he is unfit to teach children by reason either of his 
 ignorance or neglect, or of his not having the necessary books and 
 materials." Under these terms there would be ample ground to 
 disqualify many schoolmasters, who cannot be interfered with under 
 the Factory Acts, but whose continuance as schoolmasters is disas- 
 trous. This power of disqualification, however, must be exercised with 
 great caution and discretion, and should be used in most cases as a 
 hidden source of influence, rather than as a direct act of authority. 
 The above Acts form a code of legislation unexnmpled in any 
 country in the world. The young and the weaker sex are absolutely 
 secured from excessive labour: children must and do attend school * 
 all are protected from injuries, and the unhealthiness of processes 
 is lessened. 
 
 * I fear Mr Redgrave's sanguine expectations are far from being realised in the case 
 of the Workshops Act. There is '' many a slip 'twixt cup and lip " in this sort of legis- 
 lation.
 
 Appendix. 21-5 
 
 APPENDIX IV. 
 
 REPORT on APPARATUS and METHODS used in the INSTRUCTION 
 of CHILDREN. (Class 89 of the Paris Exhibition 1867.) 
 
 THE educational department of the Exhibition is divided into 
 two portions Class 89 contains all that concerns the instruction 
 of children ; Class 90, what concerns that of older persons. The 
 report which follows relates exclusively to Class 89. 
 
 France, Prussia, Saxony, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Spain, and 
 Italy are the nations of the Continent which have contributed most 
 largely to this portion of the Exhibition. 
 
 Taking these nations in the above order, I shall briefly notice 
 such of their contributions as have seemed to me most deserving of 
 our attention. 
 
 I. FRANCE. 
 
 Beyond all doubt the most striking and the most instructive 
 sample of French primary instruction is to be found in the large 
 building in the park (near the Grande Porte) dedicated to the iron- 
 works of Creusot. Here Messrs Schneider and Company exhibit a 
 most complete account of their magnificent schools. The statistics, 
 methods, rules, time-tables, and works done by the scholars are 
 ranged along the west wall. The schools are maintained chiefly, 
 but not exclusively, for their work-people's children. These pay yd. 
 per month ; strangers, I4d. There are 2,219 boys, and 1,846 girls 
 in attendance. The boys are taught by twelve masters, the chap- 
 lain attending to give religious instruction ; the girls by the Sisters 
 of St Joseph de Cluny. 
 
 Each of the two principal schools numbers about 900, and is di- 
 vided into nine classes. The mean age of the highest class of boys 
 is fourteen ; of girls, thirteen. The mean age of the lowest class of 
 boys is eight ; of girls and infants, four. The course of instruc- 
 tion is fourfold :
 
 216 Appendix. 
 
 1. French, occupying ten or twelve hours in the week. Under 
 this head come reading and committing to memory ; and for the 
 older children grammar and composition. 
 
 2. History and Geography, occupying about three hours per 
 week of the girls' time, and from eight to four hours of the boys', 
 the younger boys giving more time to it than the elder. A course 
 of Bible history is included in this department. 
 
 3. Science, occupying five hours of the girls' week, and from six to 
 ten of the boys' ; in the girls' school " Science " means arithmetic 
 and bookkeeping ; in the boys' school it means arithmetic and geo- 
 metry throughout, and for the elder boys it includes one hour of 
 natural philosophy and mechanics, one of chemistry, and two of 
 algebra. 
 
 4. Arts, occupying twelve hours per week in each school. For 
 the girls an hour every day of needlework and another of writing,' 
 with two hours of music ; for the boys, writing, drawing, and 
 music. On Thursdays and Sundays the children have holidays, 
 with home tasks, which are corrected the next morning. 
 
 Good marks are given for lessons, and deducted for misconduct. 
 These are carefully registered in the teacher's journal, together with 
 his private observations. In August every year the marks of the year 
 are counted up and added to the results of a general examination ; 
 the result determines the prizes. To these the boys look forward 
 with much interest ; but a far greater incentive to industry and good 
 conduct is the admirable system of patronage. To the most de- 
 serving boys who leave the school an honourable career is opened 
 in the company's employment as clerks or as engineers, to the next 
 most deserving employment as workmen, while the undeserving have 
 to seek their living elsewhere. This patronage is exercised rigor- 
 ously according to merit : the poorest boy in the school knows that 
 he may rise to situations of the highest responsibility in the com- 
 pany's service. To this the company ascribe the very remarkable 
 success which has attended the schools. Punishments are seldom 
 needed. Where loss of marks fails to suffice, a letter is written to 
 the parent, and the child's attendance at the school is suspended 
 for a while. In 29 years not more than three cases occurred in 
 which final expulsion was found necessary. 
 
 In 1863 a night-school for adult workmen was instituted, with an
 
 Appendix. 217 
 
 attendance of 100 ; last year the attendance had risen to 260, and 
 they had asked to have special lessons in machine-drawing. The 
 result of the children's work, drawings, needlework, and copy- 
 books seemed to me admirable. 
 
 From the Creusot school I pass into the main building. There, 
 near the Rue des Pays Bas, is to be found the rest of the 
 French educational exhibition. On the wall will be seen very 
 complete plans of school buildings by M. Uchard, an architect, 
 (under No. 8 of the catalogue.) The question of ventilation is yet 
 unsolved in France as in England. Ventilators in the roof are 
 condemned, and ventilating flues running alongside of the smoke- 
 flues preferred. But the success of this system depends on the 
 length of the flue ; and here the French schools, two or three 
 stories in height, have a great advantage over our single-story 
 schools. Where the rooms are one over the other, several stoves 
 combine in winter to increase the upcast draught, and the air-flue 
 sucks the vitiated air through the floor-grates very powerfully ; 
 while the warm air-chamber of the stove is continually sending a 
 fresh supply into the room. In summer, when the stoves are not 
 lit, valves into the air-flues may be opened in the walls near the 
 ceiling. A specimen of one of these ventilating stoves may be seen 
 under No. 105. But an open grate (such as those made by Hyde, 
 of Winchester, with hot-air chambers behind them) would fulfil 
 the requirements of this system of ventilation quite as well. 
 
 Passing to what concerns instruction, Taupier's method of teach- 
 ing writing (No. 5 1) well deserves attention. His copy-books are pub- 
 lished by the great school publisher, Hachette (Boulevard St Ger- 
 main, 77.) As in the best copy-books of all nations, the child traces 
 a few lines over pale letters before he trusts himself to write un- 
 aided, pale lines guide the slope of the letters, and their spaces 
 also throughout the earlier books. The more advanced copy- 
 books embrace invoices, addresses of letters, elements of grammar, 
 &c. 
 
 In arithmetic, admirable facilities for teaching decimal weights 
 and measures, the relation of the whole to its metric base being 
 made obvious at once to the child's eye, may be seen in M. Demkes' 
 staircase, (No. 76,) and in M. Carpentier's cabinet, (No. 79.) This 
 last is most complete, having a pair of scales in which the several
 
 2 1 8 Appendix. 
 
 equivalents can be made manifest to the child's eye, each being 
 also brought into relation with the base-metre. 
 
 In geography, Gervais' atlas of outline maps, to be filled up and 
 coloured by the pupil, (No. 22,) should be especially noticed. The 
 maps are most beautifully engraved, with the mountains in admir- 
 able relief, and cost only a penny a-piece. (M. Gervais, Rue du 
 Rendez-vou, 53, Paris.) 
 
 Among the results of scholars' work but little needlework ap- 
 pears.* The results of the boys' work are very satisfactory. The 
 portfolio of drawings, especially the machine drawings, from M. 
 Barbier's school in the Rue Neuve-Coquenard, Paris, (No. 198,) as 
 well as some excellent drawings and maps from the Algerian 
 schools of Oran, well repay attention. But if an Englishman 
 wishes to see the magnificent effort which France has made in the 
 last three years to connect together the school and the workshop, 
 he should pass on to Class 90, and there examine the results of the 
 " enseignement secondaire special," to which the law of June i, 
 1 865, is giving such a completely efficient organisation. The profes- 
 sional and technical schools take up the children at the point 
 where the primary school leaves them. Here the girls learn book- 
 keeping,-r wood engraving, porcelain painting, millinery ; the boys 
 machine-drawing, physics, and generally the principles applicable 
 to whatever trade they are about to engage in. It is clear that the 
 necessity of this kind of education for artisans is better appreciated 
 in France than in England. These schools do not, it is true, be- 
 long to Class 89 ; but this higher course of instruction is beginning 
 to react downwards, on the primary schools, requiring of them a 
 more scientific teaching of the A B C of design. Some results of 
 this may be seen from M. Delahaye's primary school in the Boule- 
 vard des Batignolles, 24, (No. 201.) 
 
 The rapid extension of evening-schools all over France in the last 
 two years has been most remarkable. In April 1866, M. Duruy 
 was able to report 22,980 evening-schools, for men, and 1706 
 
 * Last month a law was passed requiring all communes of more than 500 
 inhabitants to have a separate girlf school under a mistress, and all smaller 
 communes to provide a sempstress for their mixed schools. 
 
 \ The book-keeping of the French tradesmen is almost entirely intrusted to 
 women.
 
 Appendix. 219 
 
 for men, attended by 552,939 men and 42,567 women. These are 
 mainly supported by voluntary effort three-fifths of the schools 
 being gratuitous. The law of last month offers a premium to any 
 teacher of a day-school thus volunteering to open an evening- 
 school. 
 
 II. PRUSSIA. 
 
 In a white house in the park a room has been furnished by the 
 Prussian Government with all that a school needs. It might, per- 
 haps, have been better done in some respects ; but the admirable wall 
 maps of Kiepert, published by Reimer of Berlin, cannot fail to ar- 
 rest attention. There is an excellent school atlas by Diel of Darm- 
 stadt, price is. 2d. ; and another by Haester, still cheaper. The 
 reading-books, carefully prepared in a graduated series by the 
 teachers of the Miinsterberg normal school, are marvellously cheap. 
 So also are the very complete sets of arithmetic books by Bohme, 
 used all over Prussia. Bohme also exhibits some curious tin slides, 
 to be used in infant schools instead of the ball frame. 
 
 A school at Ahrensberg sends a quantity of needlework, done 
 by the scholars, of the highest excellence, and giving evidence of 
 very sensible teaching no fancy work, all of the plainest utility. 
 
 Diagrams for teaching the working of pumps, &c., and of the 
 electric telegraph, may be seen on the walls. 
 
 III. SAXONY. 
 
 In a little temple in the park is a modest but very excellent exhi- 
 bition of school-books and apparatus sent by Saxony, the cradle of 
 German education ; for here in the i6th century were sown the 
 seeds of that system of popular instruction which has since spread 
 over Germany. In the centre is a model of the Gymnastic School 
 of Dresden. On the counters and walls are to be found Lange's 
 excellent atlas, (Leipsic,) giving a full account, physical and com- 
 mercial, of Saxony ; Delitsch's elementary Atlas of the World, 
 a marvel of cheapness, (six maps for I4d. ;) Liiben's Atlas of Botany, 
 which they seem to teach carefully in the Saxon schools ; Schnorr's 
 Bible woodcuts ; and much else worthy of attention.
 
 220 Appendix, 
 
 IV. SWEDEN. 
 
 The Swedish Government has furnished the lower chamber of a 
 most picturesque little wooden house so as to represent one of their 
 small village schools. Since 1842 education has been obligatory in 
 Sweden ; the entire absence of dissent makes it possible for the 
 government to work the schools through the ecclesiastical organ- 
 isation of the country. Each parish is rated according to its 
 requirements, as reported by the clergyman and approved by the 
 inspector. If we may judge by what is here seen, the furniture is 
 of an almost sumptuous kind. Each child has a small desk and 
 seat to himself ; the desk holds his books, &c. ; the seat has a back. 
 The teacher thus passes freely among all the children. In the 
 larger schools of more thickly-peopled countries this would be of 
 course impossible. 
 
 The maps of Scandinavia are perhaps the most striking school 
 maps in the whole Exhibition. They are by Mentzer of Stockholm, 
 (No. II.) The stove is of earthenware, as in their houses, warm- 
 ing the air by conduction, not by radiation. 
 
 V. DENMARK. 
 
 From Denmark I find a very complete collection of scholars' 
 work from the various primary schools of Copenhagen. The boys' 
 drawing and writing-books are good, the girls' needlework admir- 
 able. In all the schools the English character of writing is taught 
 as well as the German. 
 
 An excellent adult night-school, supported by voluntary subscrip- 
 tions, for teaching drawing, also sends good results. In England 
 a school for teaching drawing would hardly draw forth the chari- 
 table contributions of our gentlefolk. 
 
 VI. AUSTRIA. 
 
 The well-stored assortment of school apparatus sent by the 
 Austrian Government is nearly all under glass, and difficult to 
 examine. 
 
 The best globes of every size and price are from Austria. Stein- 
 hauser's maps of physical geography, Frobel's " Kindergarten,"
 
 Appendix. 221 
 
 Patek's apparatus for teaching arithmetic, from the St Anna School 
 at Vienna, all deserve notice. I never saw in an English school 
 the Vienna frame for teaching vulgar fractions. It is like a ball- 
 frame ; only in the wires, instead of balls, you have divisible reeds. 
 The uppermost is undivided, and represents the integer. From 
 those below, which are divided into fractional parts, and run on 
 the wires, the child sees at once (for example) that three-fourths 
 are equal to six-eighths, greater than two-thirds, less than four- 
 fifths, &c. 
 
 In large portfolios are to be found specimens of drawings in every 
 stage. Better methods of teaching drawing in connexion with 
 ornamentation can hardly be conceived. In this respect the 
 Austrian exhibition seems to me unrivalled. I may also mention 
 very cheap telluriums and planetariums, from 305. to $, sold by 
 Felkl, of Prague. By lighting the lamp and turning the handle, 
 the whole theory of day and night, of the seasons, and of eclipses, 
 is shown to the child at once. One of the cheaper sort might well 
 be in every village school. All the Austrian school apparatus seems 
 to be far cheaper than that of France or England. 
 
 VII. SPAIN. 
 
 In the upper room of an elaborately carved and turreted house in 
 the park is to be found the Spanish school exhibition. Without an 
 interpreter it is difficult to understand it. The eye is at once caught 
 by a school-desk, long enough for five children, supported by five 
 simple cast-iron standards. Instead of a bench, as in England, 
 with all the attendant inconvenience of stepping over, there are five 
 round seats, each seat resting on a continuation of the iron stan- 
 dard, like so many music-stools before a pianoforte. When the 
 class is told to stand, each child stands at once by the side of his 
 seat, and can leave or resume his place without difficulty. When 
 used for needlework, cushions are attached to the desk, to which 
 the girls may pin their work. Under No. 87 will be found a cheap 
 box of geometrical solids of walnut-wood, the best, perhaps, in the 
 exhibition. 
 
 Morenilla's method of teaching reading, (No. 73,) and Iturzaeta's 
 writing copies (No. 91) appear to be good. Avendano (No. 88) is
 
 222 Appendix. 
 
 their great publisher of school-books at Madrid, and Bastinos, of 
 Barcelona, (No. 33,) is a well-known house for all sorts of school 
 apparatus. There is a society (or junta) of noble ladies at Madrid 
 who maintain a normal school, and have founded numerous ele- 
 mentary schools, also represented, though inadequately, in this ex- 
 hibition.* 
 
 VIII. ITALY. 
 
 The exhibition from Italy indicates a rapid and satisfactory pro- 
 gress in the last few years. The Minister of Instruction and Wor- 
 ship sends a very complete assortment, including a full account of 
 their recent legislation in favour of education. Paravia, the great 
 publisher at Turin, sends text-books of every sort ; those of Lam- 
 bruschini and of Carbonati are reported to be excellent. Perrin, of 
 Turin, (No. 13,) sends copy-books as good as any in the Exhibition, 
 to be had for half the cost of English copy-books. Luca, of Naples, 
 (No. 38,) sends very good books on geography. All their older 
 educational societies have been recently consolidated into the 
 Italian Association for the Education of the People, which (under 
 No. 21) exhibits good evidence of progress. The architectural and 
 ornamental drawings from the schools of Naples, Venice, and Padua 
 are most beautiful. 
 
 It is to be regretted that some other countries in which educa- 
 tion has already made, and is now making, great progress, are so 
 inadequately represented. 
 
 BELGIUM sends but little : The school-books of Braun, (No. 2,) 
 and Willequet, (No. 16,) Joly's Atlas, (No. n,) and Callewaert's, 
 (No. 3) should be noticed. 
 
 HOLLAND and SWITZERLAND, both nations honourably distin- 
 guished for what they have accomplished in the cause of popular 
 education, send nothing. 
 
 CANADA sends excellent school-books (note especially the com- 
 mercial copy-books) from the upper province, and school apparatus 
 from the lower. There is also an interesting model of the village 
 of St Anne, showing the great agricultural school and its system of 
 
 * It is a curious commentary on the very complete exhibition of Spanish school-ap- 
 paratus, that, according to their census of 1860, 65 per cent, of their males, and 86 per 
 cent of their females were unable to read or write.
 
 Appendix. 223 
 
 husbandry. The model was made by the teachers of the institu- 
 tion. 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Nothing belonging to this class 
 had arrived at the date of this report, May 14. 
 
 Such are my principal gleanings from my month's study of this 
 portion of the Exhibition. But, in conclusion, I must record my 
 strong impression, that any educational exhibition of this kind 
 must be, from the nature of the case, unsatisfactory ; as a test of 
 comparative progress it is clearly untrustworthy. Nations whose 
 administration is highly centralised are sure to appear to advan- 
 tage as compared to those which trust chiefly to voluntary effort ; 
 and of the work done it is the material, i.e., the least important re- 
 sults only, that can be properly represented. How, for instance, can 
 a teacher's success as a disciplinarian be made to appear in such 
 an exhibition ? Even of the mechanical appliances a trustworthy 
 judgment can hardly be formed unless one has a practical teacher 
 by one's side to answer the question, " How do they work ? " And 
 of the real tools of a teacher, his school-books, it is of course im- 
 possible to make any profitable examination while standing before 
 a glass case. Still Class 89 contains abundantly enough to inter- 
 est an English schoolmaster, and the above report may perhaps 
 help to direct him to what will best repay his attention. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 BALLANTYNK AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

 
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