REPORTS ON ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 18521882 REPOETS ON ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 18521882 BY MATTHEW ARNOLD, D.C.L., LL.D, ONE OF HER MAJESTY'S INSPECTORS OF SCHOOLS EDITED BY THE EIGHT HON. SIR FRANCIS SANDFORD, K.C.B. TOUTOUS opous -rpfis icon\Ttov eis TTJV jraiSelar, -r6 re pttrov Kal rb Swarby Kal -rb irpiirov. ARISTOT. Pol. viii. 7. Uonton MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1889 The Bight of Tranilation and Reproduction it Beterved RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNOAY INTRODUCTION. MATTHEW ARNOLD was appointed one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools by an Order in Council dated the 14th of April, 1851. He re- signed on the 30th of April, 1886, after a service of thirty-five years, in the course of which he paid three visits to the Continent, at the request of successive Royal Commissions of Enquiry into our Educational System. These foreign missions resulted in the production of several official reports, and other valuable works which have been published separately. The present volume contains his nineteen General Reports to the Education Department on Elementary Schools in this country, omitting matters of only local, personal, or temporary interest. His yearly statis- tical summaries of the work of his district, the boundaries of which were frequently changed, as vi INTRODUCTION. the, number of schools under his inspection in- creased, are also left out. No conclusions of any importance could be drawn, at this date, from a recital of results produced from year to year, under varying conditions, in a limited number of schools ; or from a comparison of his first district, embracing one-third of England and Wales, with that under his charge when he resigned, confined as it then was to the School Board division of Westminster. It should be remembered, too, in reading these reports consecutively, that they refer to three distinct periods of administration; the original system introduced by the Minutes of 1846-7, under which Arnold entered on his duties, having been greatly modified by the Revised Code of 1862, ancj entirely transformed by the Act of 1870. In addition to his reports on Elementary Schools, he wrote twelve reports on the Wesleyan and unde- nominational Training Colleges for teachers. This latter series came to an end in 1870, when denomina- tional inspection was abolished, and the institutions he had hitherto visited were placed under the imme- diate supervision of the special Inspectors of Training Colleges; though he continued to take part in the annual inspection of the colleges situated in his INTRODUCTION. vii district. His reports of this class, as a rule, dealt merely with the life and history of individual col- leges for a single year, and would have no general interest. They are therefore not republished. But some extracts from them are retained, which relate to matters of principle, or appear for other reasons to be worthy of preservation. The publication of this volume has been called for by many of Arnold's old friends, as a contribution to the record of the life of one who was very dear to them ; and as a means of rescuing some interesting and characteristic work from the oblivion which so rapidly overtakes Blue Book literature, however valuable. It will, it is hoped, be welcomed by all those who had the good fortune to come under his influence in the discharge of their public duties > whether as Ministers of State, official colleagues, school managers, or teachers. One secret of that influence is to be found in his loyalty to the great principles contained in the motto * on the title-page ; 1 Thus translated by Professor Jowett : " Education should be based upon three principles the mean, the possible, the becoming, these three." The term mean, used here in the ordinary Aristo- telian sense, seems, as applied to elementary education, to be equivalent to what Mr. Forster called "a reasonable amount of in- struction " ; not confined to the three R's, on the one hand, nor trenching on the domain of secondary education, on the other. viii INTRODUCTION. its results are written in much of our past educa- tional history, and in the present working of our Schools. As to the future, many of his opinions and suggestions are specially commended to the careful study of those who, in Downing Street and Parliament, may have to deal with the great ques- tion on which he will continue to speak to them through these pages in his simple and telling style with so much knowledge of our own and foreign systems, with so sweet a reasonableness, and with so high authority as an expert. F. R. S. N.B. Permission to reprint these Reports was, when asked for, very courteously granted by Mr. Digby Pigott, the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office ; in whom the copyright of all Government publications has recently been vested by Letters Patent. CONTENTS. REPORTS ON ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1852. Formation of District High rate of Fees in "Wesleyan Schools ; its effects on Discipline, Instruction, and Class of Scholars "Welsh Schools ; English should be insisted on Organization ; Scholars should be retained in same Division for all subjects Want of Infant Schools Pupil Teachers : their health ; want of Intelligence ; neglect of standard English authors ; other Languages of little importance Pages 1 20 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1853. Efficiency of Schools Education of the masses Usual effect of a high Fee Fees may vary with circumstances of a locality Compulsion Want of recognized Text-Books ; e.g. in case of Grammar Mixed Schools Needlework Drawing. Pages 2131 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1854. Inconvenience of change in limits of a District How far should knowledge of local circumstances affect the Report on a School Uniformity desirable ; difficult from variety of details Moral Tone Existing plan would be modified under a National System Teachers gain by an exact method of reporting Pages 32 40 x CONTENTS. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1855. London Schools ; Manchester Schools Peculiar circumstances of former Want of supervision by Ministers of Religion ; and of good accommodation Organization improved New British Plan General Rules to be observed Is too much taught or attempted ? Over-teaching Attainments to be demanded of Teachers Pages 41 56 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1856. General rules as to growth and decay of Schools, open to continual exceptions Half-Time Schools Force of local circumstances Organization "Want of correspondence between School Divisions and Groups of Desks Pages 57 65 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1857. Country Schools Their difficulties ; how caused ? at present inevitable Not to be relieved by a body of low paid Principal Teachers For Schools of another class, Certificated Secondary Teachers needed ; will probably be forthcoming Improvement in Pupil Teachers Infant Schools Pages 66 74 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1858. Progress, Management, and Superintendence School Books, purchase of, by Scholars recommended Revision of Teachers' Certificates Attendance, and social rank, of Scholars Infants admitted too young Pages 7581 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1860. Visit to Continent Value of Pupil-Teacher system Reduction of Staff to be regretted Dirty and unhealthy state of our School- roomsGreat imperfection of School Books . . Pages 8289 CONTENTS. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1861. Cleanliness of London premises somewhat improved Pupil Teachers; their instruction in Grammar ; its proper limits ; their want of taste, as shown in paraphrasing ; remedy suggested. Pages 9095 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1863. Revised Code, introduction of Inspection and Examination, under the Old and New systems, contrasted Reading Books improved Culture of Pupil Teachers ; of English and Scotch Students in Training ; and of Teachers . . . Pages 96 108 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. Second Foreign Mission Impressions on return Want of life in English Schools, caused by Revised Code. Decline in supply and quality of Pupil Teachers Changed spirit of Teachers Prospect of fresh calls upon Them How to be met ? Effects of Code on Schools, Inspection, Elementary and Higher Instruction More free play wanted Payment by Results not sound Compulsory Education School Fees School Books, need of control Public and Private Schools, a con- trast Pages 109133 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1869. Results of examination Teaching by rote Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic as taught under Revised Code Minute of 20th February, 1867 Newcastle Commission Inspectors and mechanical teaching Test examinations Suggested change of Grants Compulsory and gratuitous schooling Religious Instruction Pages 134152 CONTENTS. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1871. Useful change in Standards A Grant-earning examination desirable Numbers in Standards Rate of failure Extra subjects ; their importance Use of Literature Returning favour to Profession of Teacher Pages 153161 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1872. Undenominational Inspection Improved Results in 1872 Special Subjects Recitation, its utility Latin desirable ; should be taught from the Vulgate Different Classes of Schools com- pared, as to Class of Scholars, Management, Organization, and Methods Drill Pupil Teachers Registers . Pages 162 170 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1874. Progress since 1872 Defective attendance Bishop of Manchester and Revised Code Effect of Literature on intelligence The Grammar Paper, as a literary Test ; unsatisfactory results Paraphrasing Parsing Remedy suggested Matriculation of Teachers Pages 171185 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1876. Code of 1876 Recitation Needlework Class Subjects Natur- Jcunde Extra Subjects The Three upper Standards objec- tionable Board Schools Spelling ; a Reviewing authority required Improvement in Schools ; and where it lags. Pages 186200 CONTENTS. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1878. Working of the schools Need of simplicity Natur-ku ndc ; what it ought to be for Elementary Schools Fourth Schedule Latin to be retained, and French Learning by heart, its formative use Cultivation of Intelligence Reading Grammar Exorbitant Cost of Education, especially in London, as compared with France Scale and proportion not kept in view Municipal control desirable Pages 201 224 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1880. English poetry ; its importance and popularity Choice of pas- sages The School course as a whole ; Fourth Schedule Number of subjects Obligatory and class subjects What a teacher should aim at Grammar as a part of training How to parse Scientific Subjects The short-time system School expenditure in London Pages 225 244 GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1882. Voluntary Schools in Westminster ; hold their own ; the useful ends served by them Advantages of payment for Schooling Useful connexion between Voluntary Schools and their Managers Evening Schools The New Code Overpressure ; how to guard against it The sense of creative activity " Knowledges " requisite ; and something more. Pages 245259 CONTENTS. EXTRACTS FROM REPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. REPORT ON THE WESLEYAN TRAINING COLLEGE, WESTMINSTER ; FOR THE YEAR 1853. Training of the Students Special objects pursued in this College Pages 261265 REPORT ON THE WESLEYAN TRAINING COLLEGE, WESTMINSTER ; FOR THE YEAR 1856. Efforts to reduce the disproportion between extent of Wesleyan operations in day and Sunday Schools Spirit of co-operation with Committee of Council Pages 266 269 REPORT ON THE TRAINING COLLEGE OF THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN SCHOOL SOCIETY IN THE BOROUGH ROAD ; FOR THE YEAR 1858. Prominence given to Study of Method Instruction in Domestic Economy Pages 270 27ti REPORT ON THE TRAINING COLLEGES OF THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN SCHOOL SOCIETY ; IN THE BOROUGH ROAD, FOR SCHOOLMASTERS, AND AT STOCKWELL, FOR SCHOOLMIS- TRESSES ; FOR THE YEAR 1861. Teaching of Domestic Economy Lectures Music and Physical Science as Educating Agents Pages 277279 REPORT ON THE TRAINING COLLEGES OF THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN SCHOOL SOCIETY ; FOR THE YEAR 1864. Teaching Lessons as given before the Inspectors. Pages 280282 CONTENTS. xv REPORT ON THE TRAINING COLLEGES OF THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN SCHOOL SOCIETY ; FOR THE YEAR 1867. Callisthenics and Gymnastics Pages 283 284 SPECIAL REPORT ON THE TRAINING COLLEGE OF THE CONGRE- GATIONAL BOARD OF EDUCATION AT HOMERTON ; FOR THE YEAR 1868. Scope of Visit Present circumstances of College History and Rules of Congregational Board Their Schools Evangelical meaning of this Denomination ; its identity with the general denomination of Protestant Schools in Germany. Pages 285291 REPORT ON THE WESLEYAN TRAINING COLLEGE, WESTMINSTER ; FOR THE YEAR 1868. Need of instruction in Universal history and history of Religion Narrow conception of Religious Instruction Contrast offered in German Schools Pages 292298 APPENDIX. MINUTES of 4th May, 1859 ; and 20th February, 1867. . Page 299 EEPOETS ON SCHOOLS. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE TEAR 1852. Formation of District High rate of Fees in Wesleyan Schools ; its effects on Discipline, Instruction, and Class of Scholars Welsh Schools ; English should be insisted on Organization ; Scholars should be retained in same Division for all subjects Want of Infant Schools Pupil Teachers ; their health ; want of Intelligence ; neglect of standard English authors ; other Languages of little importance. I HAVE the honour of presenting to your Lordships my general report upon the British, Wesleyan and other denominational schools * which have come under my inspection during the past year. The midland district, in which these schools are situated, is a new district, formed in 1851. Before that time, all the schools of this class in England and Wales were comprehended originally in one, afterwards in two districts. As the number of schools 1 Before the Act of 1870 was passed, every school, to which public grants were made, was required to be (a) in connection with some religious denomination, or (b) if undenominational, one in which the Scriptures were daily read. Mr. Arnold visited all schools not being Church, or Roman Catholic, Schools. B 2 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. receiving aid from your Lordships increased, this division into two districts was also found insufficient, and a third district was formed out of counties with- drawn from the two districts previously existing; this third district, which has been committed to my charge, comprehends the English counties of Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Stafford, Salop, Hereford, Worcester, Warwick, Leicester, Rutland, Northamp- ton, Gloucester, and Monmouth, with all those of North Wales except Flintshire and Denbighshire, and the whole of South Wales. Beyond the limits of this district I have visited, during the last fifteen months, nine schools in the East and West Ridings of Yorkshire. It will be obvious that an account of 104 schools scattered over this wide extent of country can have no pretensions to be considered an adequate account of the state of education within its limits; besides omitting altogether all schools connected with the Church of England, such an account fails also to embrace many Wesleyan and still more British schools situated within the limits of the district to which it relates, but not receiving aid under the Minutes of 1846. In Northamptonshire there is but one British or Wesleyan school receiving aid under those Minutes; in Shropshire but one; in Worcestershire, Herefordshire, and Monmouth- GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1852. 3 shire also but one; in the county of Rutland none. In other localities, such as the neighbourhoods of Derby and of Birmingham, in the mining district of South "Wales, in North Wales, and in the county of Lincoln, they are sown more thickly ; but even there they cannot be called numerous. With the general state of education in my district, therefore I cannot profess myself from personal observation familiar ; and even with respect to the 104 institu- tions which I have seen, and my observations on which supply the materials for this report, I feel that I am far from possessing that intimate acquaintance with them which I could desire ; the great majority of them I have as yet visited but once : and I therefore wish to be understood in this report as calling the attention of managers and teachers to those facts connected with their schools which have principally struck me, and which I shall chiefly notice on my future visits, rather than as confidently criticizing what I have seen in their schools. By a circular letter dated 14 October 1851, the attention of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools was particularly called to several subjects, among which that of school fees occupied the first place. With this subject I will begin, for the treatment of it will involve the mention of other matters on which I am anxious to make some remarks. B 2 4 EEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. Of the institutions which I have visited during the past year 47 come under the general designa- tion of British schools, though not all of them immediately connected with the British and Foreign School Society ; 35 are Wesleyan schools ; 22 are quite independent. The total income of 112 schools, representing little more than the total income of the institutions in- spected, is stated by the managers at 12,774. Is. Of this sum 6,192. 17s. is stated to have proceeded from the school pence, that is, in round numbers, one half of the total cost of these schools has been collected i from the scholars themselves. This is a large propor- tion ; and it would be still larger if the number of Wesleyan schools, among the 112 whose aggre- gate income is stated, were greater. The Wesleyan schools have established, generally speaking, a rate of payment on the part of their scholars higher than that which is made in the other elementary schools that I have seen. This rate of payment varies from 2d. to 8d. per week for each scholar; in some schools a majority of the scholars pay 3d, in others 4d. ; but in none less than 2d. It is obvious that these rates of payment must generally exclude the children of the very poor ; and although these are not altogether excluded (for arrangements are sometimes made in Wesleyan schools by which GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1852. 5 poor children are admitted at a reduced rate of payment, either by subscribers' tickets, or on the recommendation of members of the school committee) yet on the whole, the Wesleyan schools which I have seen must be considered as existing for the sake of the children of tradesmen, of farmers, and of mechanics of the higher class, rather than for the sake of the children of the poor. In fact, these schools are sometimes nothing else than private schools, in which the salaries of the teachers, the school furniture, and the books are provided out of the school pence, the managers supplying little more than the building in which the school is held. It is evident that schools of this kind have not the first claim to assistance from public funds, which are designed to promote the education of the poor. And I think it may well be a question for the managers of Wesleyan schools to consider whether it is not desirable for them to extend the basis of their educational opera- tions, and to confer on a wider circle the benefits of their excellent schools. A lower rate of payments would in my opinion greatly extend their sphere of usefulness, while their present high character for respectability need in no degree be impaired. But apart from this question of the exclusion of the poorest class of scholars, and taking the Wesleyan schools as they now stand, I wish to notice the con- 6 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. veniences and the inconveniences which I conceive to result from the present system of high payments. The conveniences are the better and more instructed class of children frequenting these schools as compared with that frequenting cheaper ones; the greater intelligence of their parents, and greater sense of the advantage of having their children educated, with consequently greater disposition, as well as greater means, to keep them longer at school. The inconveniences are the inconveniences of private schools in general the disposition of parents to interfere, and the diminished independence of the teacher. Parents who pay Qd. a week for the in- struction of their children are apt to criticize nicely, though not always judiciously, the institution where that instruction is given. They desire this and that for their child, and they object to this and that, and, being often not very reasonable persons, they greatly embarrass a teacher. They are exceedingly apt, for instance, to object to the employment of their children as monitors, on the ground that teaching takes them away from learning; yet, so long as the allowance of pupil-teachers to a school is not greater than at present, 1 the employment of a certain number of monitors is almost indispensable ; and, in my 1 At this date, one pupil-teacher was allowed for every forty or fifty scholars in average attendance. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1852. 7 opinion, to be employed as a monitor during a part of his time is most useful to the advanced scholar himself as well as to the school. To the less advanced scholar it is no doubt injurious; but it is in the case of the advanced scholar, where the payment is high, that the complaint arises. The teacher's independence is diminished, be- cause, when his salary is principally or entirely derived from the school pence, the favour of the parents becomes of the greatest importance to him; hence it arises that the children of these schools, though disciplinable, are often not well disciplined, owing to the master's fear of offend- ing parents by a strictness which may appear to them excessive. This is a most important matter. I am convinced there is no_class of child ren_so-_in- dulged, so generally brought up (at home at least) , without discipline, that is, withoui^habits of respect/ exact obedience, and self-control, as the children of the lower middle class in this country. The children of very poor parents receive a kind of rude discip- line from circumstances, if not from their parents | the children of the upper classes are generally brought up in habits of regular obedience, because these classes are sufficiently enlightened to know of what benefit such a training is to the children themselves ; but children of the class I am alluding to receive no 8 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. discipline from circumstances, for they are brought up amidst comparative abundance ; they receive none from their parents, who are only half educated themselves, and can understand no kind- , ness except complete indulgence ; and, in conse- quence, nowhere have I seen such insubordination, Isuch wilfulness, and such a total want of respect for their parents and teachers as among these children. The teacher's hands cannot be too much strengthened in the schools which this class frequents ; for, if they are not disciplined at school, they will, while young, be disciplined nowhere ; and a scale of fees is peculiarly undesirable, which makes the teacher dependent on the favour of their parents, and un- willing to risk that favour by introducing strict habits of discipline. There is another inconvenience arising out of the system of payments in these schools ; that is the instruction is disordered by it. This happens in the following way. Some children are admitted at a lower rate of payment than others ; those who pay least are to be taught least ; consequently, scholars perfectly capable of taking their place with the highest class, but unable to make the highest pay- ment, are thrown back into the lower classes, and comparatively neglected. Again, those who pay most are to learn most ; accordingly, those children GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1852. 9 who make the highest payments are put into the highest class, whether fit for it or no. They are often new-comers, very ill-taught, and wholly in- capable of profiting by lessons such as those given in the highest class ought to be. A plan more calculated to derange and dislocate the instruction of a school it would be difficult to imagine ; and the teacher who is responsible for that instruction ought, in my opinion, always to decline to adopt it. I shall not mention by name the particular Wesleyan schools in which I have found the highest rates of payment existing. I do not think it necessary to do so, for I hope at my next visit to find the rates lowered ; nor do I mean to deny that the Wesleyan schools in general are, even at present, very useful. I am most glad to see them in the receipt of government aid. There are many cases, indeed, in which the burden thrown on the local promoters of these schools is as heavy as that thrown on the local promoters of British or National schools ; but, at any rate, the advantages obtained from the employment, through government aid, of apprentices and certificated teachers, are such as the Wesleyan schools could hardly hope 'to obtain through any private pecuniary outlay ; and it is no doubt desir- able that the funds at your Lordships' disposal should, if possible, after assisting to provide the 10 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. means of education for the really poor, be used to improve the quality of education for a class in some- what better circumstances. What I have said above applies equally, of course, to those British schools in which the fees are on the same high scale as they are in most Wesleyan schools. Generally, however, they are on a lower scale in British schools, and these schools do certainly bear a large part in the elementary education of the poor strictly so called. Still it may be doubted whether even these thoroughly reach the lowest strata of society. In country places it is no doubt true that the resources of Dissenting as compared with those of Church schools are so inferior as almost to compel a higher rate of pay- ment in the former ; but in large towns this is by no means invariably the case ; here the British schools often have a large and wealthy body of contributors, and here it is that the unsectarian and neutral character of these schools peculiarly fits them to be common centres, in which the children of a popula- tion divided into innumerable sects may be harmoni- ously educated together. Since, however, this un- sectarian character of the British schools often practically operates to their disadvantage in point of support, one is the more anxious that schools based on an admirable principle should at least do GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1852. 11 nothing to render themselves difficult of access by the establishment of rates of payment higher than those in competing schools in the same locality. Before quitting the subject of school fees, I wish to mention a plan pursued in one of the schools under my inspection, and which, though not avail- able for elementary schools in general, I should be glad to see adopted in more schools of its own class. It is a school established for the children of the workpeople employed by an iron company x in a very remote part of the country. This school is not maintained by the company, nor by the payments of the children who frequent it; but a weekly deduction is made from the wages of every person employed in the works, whether married or single, to form a fund to defray the expenses of the school, of a library, and of medical attendance. Those who have families pay no more than those who have none, and any number of his children may be sent to the school by the head of a family without his having to pay any additional subscription. The school is regarded as existing for the common benefit of all, directly or indirectly, now or at a future time. The deduction, I was assured, is submitted to with- out reluctance. In other places, masters and agents have informed me that they should be afraid to 1 Llynvi Iron Company, Maesteg, South Wales. 12 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. attempt such a plan, dreading the discontent it would produce; but as it was an experience of its advantages, and not any superior enlightenment on the part of the workpeople, which made it succeed in the case I have mentioned, I am inclined to think it might be made to succeed elsewhere also, with a little management and patience at first introducing it. By such a plan, in localities where masters and companies cannot support schools at their sole expense, and where a rude population have little sense of the advantages of education to their children, and little disposition to make sacrifices for it, ample funds are raised for the support of a school, and it becomes the direct interest of the population to avail themselves of an institution to which they are in any case forced to contribute. The Welsh schools that I have seen are generally on the British system. Those connected with mining and manufacturing establishments stand on a peculiar footing of their own ; those not so connected generally charge low fees, are well attended, and may be con- sidered as really receiving the children of the poor. Indeed, the poer population of Wales is so entirely a dissenting population, that the British schools acquire a peculiar importance there, and they are filled with the same class of children that one sees in the National schools in England. The children GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1852. 13 in them are generally docile and quick in appre- hension, to a greater degree than English children ; their drawback, of course, is that they have to acquire the medium of information, as well as the information itself, while the English children possess the medium at the outset. There can, I think, be no question but that the acquirement of the English language should be more and more insisted upon by your Lordships in your relations with these schools as the one main object for which your aid is granted. Whatever encouragement individuals may think it desirable to give to the preservation of the Welsh language on grounds of philological or antiquarian interest, it must always be the desire of a Govern- ment to render its dominions, as far as possible, homogeneous, and to break down barriers to the freest intercourse between the different parts of them. Sooner or later, the difference of language between Wales and England will probably be effaced, as has happened with the difference of language between Cornwall and the rest of England ; as is now happening with the difference of language between Brittany and the rest of France ; and they are not the true friends of the Welsh people, who, from a romantic interest in their manners and traditions, would impede an event which is socially and politically so desirable for them. 14 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. With a view to enable pupil-teachers in Welsh schools the better to acquire a knowledge of English, the late Mr. Fletcher l proposed that they should be sent for six months in the middle or latter part of their apprenticeship to perform their duties in English schools. The great objection to such an arrangement is that English schools might not be very will ing to accept teachers imperfectly acquainted with the language in which they would have to teach. Difficulty, I think, would also often arise on the part of the parents of the pupil-teachers and the managers of the schools employing them, when arrangements came to be made for meeting the expense of their six months' residence in England. I myself cannot but think that it is from the masters of Welsh schools that the promotion of the use of English in their schools must come, and that at present the masters themselves of these schools, not knowing English thoroughly well, do not employ it in their intercourse , with their apprentices and scholars by any means so much as they should. If it were possible for Welsh students to be sent invariably to English training schools, and on leaving the training schools to be em- ployed for two or three years in English schools, before returning into Wales, that I think would be the plan 1 H.M. Inspector of Schools, Mr. Arnold's predecessor in his district. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1852. 15 most likely to bring about an increased use of English in the Welsh schools. Such students, possessing, it may be presumed, at least a fair acquaintance with English at the end of their apprenticeship, would increase it to a complete familiarity while residing at an English training school, and associating with English students ; they would thus be perfectly serviceable in English schools ; and a year or two's habit of teaching in English in these schools would give them that thorough mastery of the language which alone will induce them to speak it without reluctance and of their own accord. With respect to the organization both of British and of Wesleyan schools, I regard it as being at present in a state ofiransition. It tends, I think, to become eventually very much alike in both, as the! original masses in Wesleyan schools are broken up, and the original fractions in British schools are massed together. The vice of the strict Glasgow system is that numbers of children do not really come under teaching at all; of the strict British system, that numbers of children come under teaching so inadequate as to be hardly better than none. The problem is to discover an organization which shall maintain a just proportion between the teaching power in a school and the numbers taught in it. When this problem has been solved when the 16 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. children are finally arranged in divisions, neither too large nor too small I hope that the plan of retaining them in the same divisions for all parts of their work will be more extensively tried than it has been hitherto. At present there are few schools in which a child is not put into one division for reading, into another for writing, into another for arithmetic ; and masters seem to have no notion of the increased regularity and steadiness of attention that a child gains by going through his whole day's work with the same associates, and under the same teacher. I am convinced that the benefit to the children themselves and to the discipline of the school, which would result from retaining them in the same divisions, would more than compensate any additional trouble which the necessity of varying the instruction in particular subjects, such as arithmetic, to children equal in most subjects, and therefore classed together, might impose upon the teacher. In the institutions which I have visited during the past year, I have continually felt tkejwant of infant sc^ogls. It seems to me that more good schools are clogged and impeded in their operations by a mass of children under eight years of age, at the bottom of them, than from any other cause. Yet the parents will not send the older children without sending these also. The only remedy for the incon- GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1852. 17 venience, where the expense of two but not of three schools in the same institution can be supported, is to adopt the plan of having mixed schools. The older children of both sexes are then in one school, the infants of both sexes in another. The Wesleyan schools which follow this plan appear to me to gain thereby a great advantage, and one which the British schools often lose by their anxiety to separate the boys from the girls. I must say that I have never yet seen any inconvenience arise from bringing to- gether boys and girls in the same school, if their playgrounds are kept distinct. Indeed, the education of girls, when they learn with boys and from a master, appears to me to gain that very correctness and stringency which female education generally wants ; while a female teacher is no doubt the person best qualified to instruct infants of both sexes. The circular of 1851, before alluded to, called attention to the subject of industrial schools, besides that of school fees, and also to the state and prospects of female pupil -teachers. A subsequent circular directed attention to the subject of elemen- tary drawing. Industrial schools and drawing I hope to speak of in my next report. With respect to female pupil-teachers, I think it right to remark on the serious amount of ill- health, especially in the later years of their appren- C 18 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. ticeship, which I have found amongst them. Managers of schools cannot be too strongly re- minded that the physical qualifications of girls presented as candidates for apprenticeship require to be most carefully observed, and that the duties of pupil-teachers are such that delicacy of constitu- tion alone, without any positive infirmity, unfits a girl for discharging them without great risk. I am sure your Lordships cannot be too strict in guarding against the admission to apprenticeship of sickly children, boys as well as girls ; intelligent as they often are they always want many qualities which a teacher should never be without. It may be a question, perhaps, whether an affliction like lameness or the loss of a limb, where the general health is good, need always be considered as a disqualification for the office of pupil-teachers ; but where the general health is decidedly feeble (and the managers ought always to ascertain this) a child should never be presented as a candidate. On one other topic, in connection with the subject of pupil-teachers, I am anxious to touch in conclusion. In the general opinion of the ad- vantages which have resulted from the employ- ment of them, I most fully concur; and of the acquirements and general behaviour of the greater GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1852. 19 number of those of them whom I have examined I wish to speak favourably. But I have been much struck in examining them towards the close of their apprenticeship, when they are generally at least eighteen years old, with the utter disproportion between the great amount of positive information and the low degree of mental culture and intelligence^ which they exhibit. Young men, whose knowledge of grammar, of the minutest details of geographical and historical facts, and above all of mathematics, is surprising, often cannot paraphrase a plain passage of prose or poetry without totally misapprehending it, or write half a page of composition on any subject without falling into gross blunders of taste and expression. I cannot but think that, with a body of young men so highly instructed, too little attention has hitherto been paid to this side of education ; the side through which it chiefly forms the character ;J.he side which has perhaps been too exclusively attended to in schools for^the_ higher nl^gs^^a-pH to the development of which it is the boast of what is/ called classical education to be mainly directed/" I attach little importance to the study of languages, ancient or modern, by pupil-teachers, for they can seldom have the time to study them to much purpose without neglecting other branches of instruction which it is necessary that they should follow; but I\ c 2 20 REPORTS OX SCHOOLS. am sure that the study of portions of the best English authors, and composition, might with advan- tage be made apart of their regular course of instruc- tion to a much greater degree than it is at present. Such a training would tend to elevate and humanize a number of young men, who at present, notwithstand- ing the vast amount of raw information which they have amassed, are wholly uncultivated ; and it would have the great social advantage of tending to bring them into intellectual sympathy with the educated of the upper classes. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1853. Efficiency of Schools Education of the masses Usual effect of a high Fee Fees may vary with circumstances of a locality Compulsion Want of recognized Text-Books ; e.g. in case of Grammar Mixed Schools Needlework Drawing. MY estimate of the efficiency of the British and Wesleyan schools generally has certainly risen. While the abundance of work and the demand for labour have had during the past year an un- favourable effect upon the regularity of the attend- ance in them, I have still been more and more con- vinced of the thorough way in which, in the majority of cases, the elements of instruction are taught to the children frequenting them, and more and more struck with the acquaintance shown by the upper classes of these schools with gramma^ geography, and English history. With regard also to the desire of the authorities of the central institutions to make the sphere of usefulness of the schools connected with them as 22 KEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. wide as possible, and fairly to devote their main efforts to advancing the education of the actual poor, I believe that it is most sincere. As to "Wesleyan schools particularly, of the failure of which to reach the lowest classes of society I spoke last year, I have received from the authorities of the Wesleyan Institution at Westminster the strongest assurances in this respect. Nevertheless, while more and more convinced that the present elementary schools sufficiently educate the children who frequent them, and while more and more convinced that the central institutions sincerely desire to promote the education of the poor, I remain in the opinion which I last year expressed, that in the schools which I visit, and above all, in the Wesleyan schools which I visit, the^children of the actually lowest, poorest classes in this country, of what are called the masses, are not, to speak gene- rally, educated ; that the children who are educated A in them belong to a different class from these ; and that, consequently, of the education of the masses, I, in the course of my official duty, see, strictly speak- ing, little or nothing. I mention this, not for the purpose of casting blame upon any one, but simply as a fact which arises under the present state of things. The present schools supply, and on the whole efficiently GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1853. 23 supply, a demand which, no doubt, exists ; they are not to be blamed if they do no more than supply that demand. Small farmers, small tradesmen, skilled mechanics, desife~to iiave their '"cnHdren educated ; they are willing to pay a considerable school fee ; they often object as much as the classes above them to the contact, with their children, of children of the lowest class, of the class found in ragged schools ; their wants create a peculiar kind of demand, and that demand is answered by the present schools, and on the whole efficiently answered. Under the present system it is not to be expected that a committee which can fill its school with children paying 4td. or Qd. a week, will refuse to do so in order that it may admit children paying half, or less than half, that sum. It is not to be expected that a committee or a teacher should object to see their school grow more and more " respectable "; should object, as their suc- cess increases, to seeing that portion of it which is poorest, least profitable, most irregular in attendance, gradually eliminated to make room for a more desir- able body of scholars. A sdraoLis^ established, under the present system, at the pecuniary risk of its pro- jaooters ; this risk is, iujooanyoises, veryjywaside^able ; it is natural that they should be glad to see, at the same time that their school is efficient, the risk disappear. 24 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. I have no intention, therefore, as I have said, of blaming any one for the result mentioned ; still, as it is often said that this result has little or no con- nection with the rate of school fees established in a school, I am anxious to say a few words on this point. It is urged, and by persons for whose authority on matters of education I entertain a sincere respect, that it is not the high rate of payments which deters parents from sending their children to a school, but their suspicion that the education they get there is not much worth having ; that they would be willing, did they think more highly of that education, to make great sacrifices to secure it for their children ; and that these, sacrifices need not generally be greater in pro- portion than those which are made by many a family of small means in the middle classes, in order to send a son to school and college. And they add, that so far from poor parents objecting to a high school fee, the very suspicion they feel arises generally from the school fee being too low a one ; they cannot believe that anything can be worth much for which they are required to pay little or nothing. What is cheap, it is said, is always supposed by these poor people to be bad. And instances are brought forward, such as that of the King's Somborne school, in which the reputation of the school induced the labourers of the whole neighbourhood gladly to pay a high fee for GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1853. 25 the sake of sending their children to so excellent a school. I answer, that there is no doubt that all people will make great sacrifices to secure what is eminently desirable, or what is generally thought so ; and that if there existed in every parish in England a school possessing the high reputation of that at King's Sombome, a school much known and talked of, and at which it was a distinction to have been educated, then in every parish in England the poor would willingly make sacrifices to send their children to such a school. But to bring this about, we must also suppose in every parish in England a man like the present Dean of Hereford, with an energy in pro- moting education, and a genius for organizing schools, quite rare and exceptional. We must suppose that what is now the exception, and has of course attracted the greater interest on that account, will become the rule. But this will never happen. The real practical question to consider is, whether in ordinary cases, such as form the vast majority whether in cases when the managers are of fair average energy, the teachers of fair average merit, and the school of fair average reputation, a high school fee operates on the poor as an attraction. I feel quite convinced from all which I have seen and heard, that it does not operate as an attraction ; 26 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. that, on the contrary, there are numberless cases in which the poor are deterred by a high school fee from sending their children to school. It is not the high school fee which is the attraction, but it is the high reputation of the school which makes the poor willing to pay a high school fee ; in ordinary cases, where this high reputation cannot be expected, it is vain to imagine that a high school fee will have any effect but a deterring one ; the parents will feel clearly the inconvenience of having to make a high payment, while they will not perceive any corresponding advantage to compensate it. At the same time, of course, it is to be remem- bered, that what is a high school payment in one part of the country is a low one in another ; that 4sd. a week is a moderate school fee in South Stafford- shire, for instance, while in Dorsetshire it is a high one ; the school fee may fairly differ in different parts of the country, precisely in the same proportion in which the rate of wages differs. This is very neces- sary to bear in mind ; and I am far from imagining that a lower school fee, or even a free admission, would induce the poor universally to send their children to school. It is not the high payments alone which deter them ; all I say is, as to the general question of the education of the masses, that they deter them in many cases. But it is my firm GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1853. 27 convictieBy4hat education "vv ill sever, any mofe~tban vaccination, become universal in this country, until it i.s made compulsory. I should be glad to see the subject of school books receiving increased attention. The diversities of these are at present truly embarrassing. Almost every educational society has its own school books ; these are by no means universally adopted by the schools in connection with it, and a recognized text- book on any subject is nowhere to be found. To this state of things your Lordships alone can supply a remedy. The inconvenience now arising from it is extreme, and in subjects where classification and arrangement are of peculiar importance, as in grammar, the multitude of text- books, all following a different system, is of serious prejudice to the learner. I really think that it matters little, com- paratively, what the text-book is, so that it be uniformly adopted. Some of the books now in use are, no doubt, more perfect than others, but almost any one of those with which I am acquainted is adequate for its purpose. In grammar, for instance, the system of almost all of them has it? rationale, capable of being comprehended by the mind, if the mind is steadily kept to it, and of secvingas a clue to the facts ; but, under the present system, the same person often uses one grammar as a scholar, another 28 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. as a pupil- teacher, another as a student at a training school, another as a schoolmaster. Every one of these grammars following a different system, he masters the rationale of none of them ; and, in conse- quence, after all his labour, he often ends by possess- ing of the science of grammar nothing but a heap of terms jumbled together in inextricable confusion. I spoke last year of the want of infant schools. More and more I become convinced of the necessity of them, both for the sake of the infants themselves, so much neglected and mismanaged in their homes, and still more for the sake of the efficiency of the older schools. I retain my strong opinion, that when two schools only are possible, they should be not a boys' school and a girls' school, but an infants' school and an older mixed school. I think it is generally allowed by those who dislike mixed schools, that no actual harm arises to girls from attending them ; but it is said that those feminine qualities which are seldom developed in these girls in their homes, are not developed in a mixed school : I answer that this is true, but neither are they developed in a girls' school. When the infant school is sacrificed to the desire to keep the boys and girls in separate schools, it seems to me that the in- struction of all suffers, without any compensating advantage. It is important however that in the older mixed GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1853. 29 school, the needlework of the girls should be care- fully attended to. I hear indeed great complaints of the inefficient teaching of needlework, not in mixed schools only, but in girls' schools also, and even in the female training schools. But, be this as it may with regard to the training schools, there is no doubt that the needlework of the girls in elementary schools is not at present in a satisfactory state. At the in- spection of a school the main stress is necessarily laid on other branches of the school- work; thus, the teacher is perpetually tempted to direct her chief efforts towards bringing forward her pupils in these. The parents also, in general, seldom have much value for plain needlework, nor do the mothers teach it at home to their daughters ; the only kind of needlework which the parents admire, and which the children are anxious to practice, is crochet- work and ornamental needlework ; this is comparatively useless, and managers and teachers should, in my opinion, utterly prohibit it in school. The importance to a poor family that the daughters should be skilful in plain needlework is obvious to all ; yet their ignorance of it is something incredible. I heard the other day in a Lincolnshire village of a pauper family, in which were several daughters living at home ; the family were actually in receipt of parochial relief; their debts were collected, and among them was 30 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. found a considerable one to a dressmaker, who, it appeared, made all the clothes of the female part of the family. And Miss Martineau, in an admirable paper in Household Words, has well shown what dis- comfort of all kinds is produced by the ignorance, in the female part of a family, of needlework and other matters of domestic economy, even in homes of a comparatively comfortable class in towns. Of industrial schools and of drawing, subjects which I barely noticed in my last year's report, I have this year also little to say. No industrial school has come under my inspection during the past year, and in the study of drawing no consider- able progress has yet been made in the greater part of the schools which I visit. The establishment of drawing schools is, however, likely rapidly to promote it ; and of the advantages which they offer many schools in my district, those in the potteries especially, are anxious to avail themselves. This study is one which at present finds great favour among the most influential promoters of education. It is one which it is most important that those children in elementary schools who show any aptitude for it should have the means of pursuing ; but I will venture to remark that it is possible, by insisting upon it too much, to cause time to be wasted in it, by those who have no such aptitude. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1853. 31 I have already found instances in which the time so spent had clearly been wasted : and, when it is remembered how short is the time which the child- ren in elementary schools have to pass there ; how ignorant they generally are at their first coming to school ; how irregular is their attendance afterwards and how many subjects they have to gain some knowledge of; that any of their school time should be unprofitably employed must be a matter of deep regret. It is the opinion of many persons at the present day, that every child should be taught to draw, as every child should be taught to read and write. It may be so : but I will venture to express my hope that they may, at any rate, be taught to read and write first. Your Lordships have done much to better the quality of education in this country, by improving the instruction in the existing elementary schools ; what is now perhaps most urgent, is to make this improved instruction universally available ; to widen -\ the sphere of the elementary schools, and to extend J the benefits of them to the masses. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1854. Inconvenience of change in limits of a District How far should knowledge of local circumstances affect the Report on a School Uniformity desirable ; difficult from variety of details Moral Tone Existing plan would be modified under a National System Teachers gain by an exact method of reporting. I HOPE that the present arrangement of districts may continue unchanged for some time. The changes which have taken place have been, no doubt, of the greatest convenience to me personally, by transforming into a manageable district what was at first a most laborious and embarrassing one, and I am under great obligation to your Lordships for sanctioning them. Change was, indeed, necessi- tated by the work of inspection of British and Denominational Schools out-growing in quantity the physical powers of those who were set to do it ; so that what at first could be done by one Inspector now demands the labour of four. Still, every change, though necessary, has not been without its GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1854. 33 transient inconvenience ; each has entailed, at first, a certain amount of irregularity on the Inspector's part, pending the complete arrangement of his time to meet all the claims of his new district, in visiting some of the schools under his inspection : hence delays in the transmission of annual grants, and inconvenience to teachers and apprentices. There is an advantage also in the same Inspector, where it is possible, continuing to see the same school year after year ; he acquires in this way a knowledge of it which he can never gain from a single visit, and he becomes acquainted not with the instruction and discipline only of the school, but also with its local circumstances and difficulties. These local circumstances and difficulties, it is of advantage, no doubt, that the Inspector should know them : it is a most important question, and one the necessity of a clear resolution of which becomes daily more and more apparent to me, in what manner and to what extent this knowledge should affect his report on a school to your Lordships. I constantly hear it urged that consideration for local difficulties and peculiar circumstances should induce him to withhold the notice in his report of short- comings and failures, because these may have been caused by circumstances for which neither managers nor teacher were to blame, and because the state- D 34 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. ment of them may unfavourably affect a struggling school. There is some plausibility in this plea for silence ; but it is based, I feel sure, on a misconcep- tion of what the peculiar province and duty of an Inspector is. His first duty is that of a simple and faithful reporter to your Lordships; the knowledge that imperfections in a school have been occasioned, wholly or in part by peculiar local difficulties, may very properly restrain him from recommending the refusal of grants to that school ; but it ought not to restrain him from recording the imperfections. It is for your Lordships to decide how far such imperfec- tions shall subsequently be made public ; but that they should be plainly stated to you by the Inspector whom you employ there can be, I think, no doubt at all. It is said that the Inspector is sent into his dis- trict to encourage and promote education in it ; that often, if he blames a school, he discourages what may be, from local difficulties, a struggling effort, and an effort whose inferiority is owing to no fault of its pro- moters. I answer, that it is true that the Inspector is sent into his district to encourage education in it : but in what manner to encourage education ? By pro- moting the efficiency, through the offer of advice and of pecuniary and other helps, to the individual schools which he visits in it ; not by seeking to maintain by undeserved praise, or to shelter by the suppression of GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1854. 35 blame, the system, the state of things uuder which it is in the power of this or that local hindrance to render a school inefficient, and under which many schools are found inefficient accordingly. A certain system may exist, and your Lordships may offer assistance to schools established under it ; but you have not, surely, on that account committed yourselves to a faith in its perfect excellence ; you have not pledged yourselves to its ultimate success. The business of your Inspector is not to make out a case for that system, but to report on the condition of public education as it evolves itself under it, and to supply your Lordships and the nation at large with data for determining how far the system is successful. If, for fear of discouraging voluntary efforts, Inspectors are silent respecting the deficien- cies of schools respecting the feeble support given to this school, the imperfect accommodations in another, the faulty discipline or instruction in a third, and the failure of all alike to embrace the poorest class of children if everything is repre- sented as hopeful and prosperous, lest a manager should be disappointed or a subscriber estranged then a delusion is prolonged in the public mind as to the real character of the present state of things, a delusion which it is the very object of a system of public inspection, exercised by agents of the Govern- D 2 36 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. ment on behalf of the country at large, to dispel and remove. Inspection exists for the sake of finding out and reporting the truth, and for this above all. But it is most important that all Inspectors should proceed on the same principle in this respect that one should not conceal defects as an advocate for the schools, while another exposes them as an agent for the Government. If this happens, besides that the general picture of the state of education will be unfaithful, there is also a positive hardship inflicted on the schools which are frankly reported on ; they will appear at a disadvantage compared with other schools, not because these are really in a better state, but because the statement of their defects is softened down or altogether suppressed. It is an ungrateful task to seem to deprecate, under any circumstances, consideration and indul- gence. But consideration and indulgence, the , virtues x>f the private^jman, may easily become the vices of the public servant ; and I have ventured to submit the foregoing remarks to your Lordships because I think that in the inspection of schools there is a peculiar temptation to exercise these qualities unduly. A factory or a workhouse is, to most people, a less interesting and attaching object than a school ; it has less power of making a friend GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1854. 37 of its visitor, and of leading him, often half in- sensibly, to become its advocate rather than its reporting Inspector. The character of school in- spection, too, is, it appears to me, at present such as to render difficult the adoption of a uniform principle in reporting by all the Inspectors. The inspection of a school is now, upon a plan founded when a far smaller number of schools were under your Lordships' supervision than at present, carried out into such detail as to afford every facility to an Inspector, desirous to give a favourable report upon a school, for doing so, by enabling him to call atten- tion to special points of detail in which the school may be strong, rather than to others where it may be weak, or to its general efficiency, which may be small. At present, for instance, an Inspector finding an advanced upper class in a school, a class working sums in fractions, decimals, and higher rules, and answering well in grammar and history, constructs, half insensibly whether so inclined or not, but with the greatest ease if so inclined, a most favourable report on a school, whatever may be the character of the other classes which help to compose it. But it is evident that the attention of your Lordships is especially concentrated on those other classes, and that an elementary school excites your interest prin- cipally as it deals with these ; as it deals with the 38 KEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. mass of children who, remaining but a short time at school, and having few or no advantages at home, can acquire little but rudimentary instruction ; not as it deals with the much smaller number, whose parents can enable them to remain long at school, to pursue their studies at home, to carry on their education, in short, under favourable circumstances, and who therefore less need the care and assistance of your Lordships. The difficulty of obtaining an exact report on a school is still further complicated, if the Inspector is to think himself bound to ascertain (in a single morning) what is called the moral tone of a school, and to make the condition in which he imagines himself to have found this tell considerably upon the character of his report. Should a state of things ever arise which placed a very greatly increased number of schools under your Lordships' supervision; should your Inspectors ever have to work under aigally national system of education ; the range of details to which tKeir atten- tion in inspecting each particular school is now addressed would no doubt be necessarily narrowed. Variety of judgment would then be less probable, when that which had to be judged of was less various. They would then, perhaps, have to look only to certain broad and ascertainable things : on the one hand, the GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1854. 39 commodiousness of the school buildings, the con- venience of the school fittings, the fulfilment of the necessary sanitary conditions ; on the other, the competence of the teacher, the efficiency of the dis- cipline, the soundness of the elementary secular, and (in certain cases) of the elementary religious instruc- tion. But they would not occupy themselves in inquiring with what success the three or four head boys (sons, probably, of tradesmen in good circum- stances) out of a school of 100 or 150 children, could work an equation, or refer words to their Greek or Latin constituents. Until this time arrives (if it ever should arrive) the true duty of an Inspector towards your Lordships, the truest kindness towards the managers and teachers of schools, seems to me to be this that the Inspector, keeping his eye above all upon the most tangible and cognizable among those details into which he is directed to inquire, and omitting, as much as possible, the consideration of what is not positive and palpable, should construct a plain matter-of-fact report upoi each^ school which he visits, and should place ii without suppression, before your Lordships. But, although I thus press for the-moat unvarnished and literal. .jepor_t_ on their schools, I can assure the teachers of them, that it is from no harshness or want; of sympathy towards them that I do so. No one 40 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. feels more than I do how laborious is their work, how trying at times to the health and spirits, how full of difficulty even for the best : how much fuller for those, whom I too often see attempting the work of a schoolmaster men of weak health and purely stud- ious habits, who betake themselves to this profes- sion, as affording the means to continue their favourite pursuits : not knowing, alas, that for all but men of the most singular and exceptional vigour and energy, there are no pursuits more irreconcilable than those of the student and of the schoolmaster. Still, the quantity of work actually done at present by teachers is immense : the sincerity and devotedness of much of it is even affecting. They themselves will be the greatest gainers by a system of reporting which clearly states what they do and what they fail to do ; not one which drowns alike success and failure, the able and the inefficient, in a common flood of vague approbation. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1855. London Schools ; Manchester Schools Peculiar circumstances of former Want of supervision by Ministers of Religion ; and of good accommodation Organization improved New British Plan General Rules to be observed Is too much taught or attempted ? Over-teaching Attainments to be demanded of Teachers. THE schools in the most important part of my district, in London, I have now inspected three times ; and the present appears to me a good op- portunity for making one or two remarks upon their condition. I am more and more impressed with the idea that they are not in so satisfactory a state as they should be ; that not only do they not as a whole surpass country schools, but that they do not even, as a whole, rise to their level. Ex- cellent schools there are, no doubt, among those under my inspection in London, as elsewhere ; but excellent schools everywhere are few in number, and pretty much on a level in excellence one with 42 EEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. another : it is of schools neither excellent nor very bad, of schools of average character, neither the highest nor the lowest, of the great majority, there- fore, that I speak. In London these schools seem to me not to reach so high a standard as schools of the same class in many parts of the country. Yet this is at first surprising. It appears, at first sight, as if the schools of a metropolis had advantages over schools in the country, which ought to ensure to the former the superiority. They exist in a great centre of wealth and intelligence, where their promoters have remarkable facilities for com- bination of effort; the teacher, often cheerlessly isolated in the country, has in London the best opportunity for self-improvement, and for help and stimulus from others of his profession; the school children always quick-witted in large towns, where the daily spectacle of a varied and powerful life passing before their eyes sharpens their intelligence particularly alert and quick-witted in London, have besides in London this special advantage, that their reading, in spite of some faults of pronunciation, has a purity and delicacy of tone and accent which is quite remarkable. And of the work produced in /^elementary schools, how great a part consists in the Jt reading; and what an advantage for making a 1 favourable impression on the spectator have those GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1855. 43 _ elementary schools in which the tone and accent o the reading are agreeable. Yet, notwithstanding this advantage, an ordinary London school does not, I repeat, make a favourable impression upon the spectator when he contrasts its instruction and dis- cipline with those of an ordinary school in the country. Manchester is but the metropolis of a province ; and in Manchester schools, certainly, the school- children do not start with any advantage in point of their reading accent : yet the recent examination for Queen's scholarships seems to show, that the life and intelligence of even this provincial metropolis com- municate themselves to the schools within it in a manner which ensures to them a superiority over others excluded from like benefits. The schools of London do not show the same relative superiority. Is it that the excitement and intensity of London life are too powerful ; that they operate on those connected with elementary schools not as stimulants, but as distractions ; that, in London, managers are so overwhelmed with the pressure of business, with the calls of other pursuits, that they find it peculiarly difficult to bestow on their schools more than a hurried and intermittent attention ; that teachers have so many sources of interest offered to them outside their schools, so little encouragement and 44 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. supervision from their managers within them, that they too find it harder here than elsewhere to bend themselves to the hearty performance of a uniform, unpretending, and laborious duty ; that school- children, in their turn, are here particularly in- accessible to prolonged influence and regular discipline ? Is it, in short, that the activity of all kinds, which in other large towns exerts a favourable effect on the development of elementary schools, exists in London in an overpowering degree, and becomes prejudicial to them ? This question I will not now discuss. I pass on to name two special points in which, apart from all consideration of the general influence of London and London life, the schools under my inspection in this metropolis, as compared with those elsewhere, appear to me to stand at a real disadvantage. The first point is, the want of supervision by ministers of religion. It is well known what an advantage the National schools enjoy in the constant visits of the parish clergyman, of whose pastoral duties the care of his schools is now almost universally considered to form a main part. He is the member of the school committee generally the best qualified in all respects, always the best qualified in point of leisure, to attend at the school ; for that attendance, which with lay members of the com- GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1855. 45 mittee is an interruption of their ordinary day's business, is with him a part of his ordinary day's business. And the advantage of this supervision to the teacher, not merely in keeping him at work and vigilant, but in the cheerfulness and encouragement conferred by the presence of one who presents him- self (as, to the honour of the clergy be it said, is generally, I believe, the case,) as a fellow-labourer, rather than as an overlooker, is so evident that I need not enlarge upon it. But this supervision, far too often wanting in the British and Wesleyan schools which I inspect in the country, is, I regret to say, almost wholly wanting in those which I inspect in London. I believe, indeed, that with Dissenters the personal care of schools is not so universally considered one of the first and indispensable functions of the minister, as it now is with members of the Church of England. And I am aware too, that with regard to many of the British schools which I inspect, there exists a special reason for that absence of the ministers of religion of which I complain, namely, that in these schools the minister has adhered to the voluntary principle when the lay members of his committee have abandoned it; that they have connected their school with the Committee of Council against his will, and that he therefore has relinquished all participation in the 46 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. management of it. This may, in many cases, account for the absence of the minister of religion in British schools ; but that absence is not, because it may thus be accounted for, less unfavourable to the welfare of the schools. "With Wesleyan schools the case is different. The Wesleyan body, as represented by their educational committee, have accepted the prin- ciple of connection with the Committee of Council : there is not among them, I believe, any important body of malcontents on this point ; indeed, it would be hard to discover in the tenets of the Wesleyans, who are very different in this respect from the Independents and others, any ground for opposition to this principle. Consequently, in the committees of Wesleyan schools under inspection the lay and clerical members of the Wesleyan body are united ; and there is no reason why I should not meet in the schools which I inspect Wesleyan ministers as well as Wesleyan laymen. Indeed, the attendance of ministers in Wesleyan schools is, I know, strongly encouraged and inculcated by their general education committee, and by the authorities of their central institution at Westminster. And in Wesleyan schools in the country, accordingly, it is becoming, I am glad to say, a more and more frequent occurrence for me to meet the minister in the school ; and more than this,, to find that he habitually visits it, and GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1855. 47 attends to it. In the Wesleyan schools in South Staffordshire, particularly, I find that the Wesleyan minister attends as regularly as the parish clergyman in the National school. But at Wesleyan schools in London it seldom happens that I meet a Wesleyan minister ; it seldom happens that I hear of his visits and personal attention being bestowed upon the schools throughout the year. The second point in which I find the majority of London schools at a disadvantage is the want of good school accommodation. In no school premises any- where, so far as my observation goes, is want of space, want of cleanliness, want of ventilation, want of playgrounds, so much felt as in school-premises in London. One would have hoped that the difficulty of obtaining extensive school-premises in London, arising out of the great value of space, would have been counterbalanced by the facility of obtaining in London a more numerous and a more wealthy body of subscribers : one would have hoped at any rate that cleanliness and ventilation might be provided for, even though the school-premises were incon- venient and insufficient. But this does not prove to be the case. Yet nowhere are good school-buildings, and, above all, a good playground, such a potent means of attraction to scholars as in London ; for nowhere are the benefits of air, light, space, and free 48 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. means of exercise, so scantily possessed by them in their homes. The spacious playgrounds attached to the Wesleyan practising schools in Westminster, in the midst of a densely crowded and poverty-stricken locality, form, in my opinion, one of the most delight- ful features of that institution ; and form also one of its best agents in the work of humanizing and civilizing the neighbourhood in which it is placed. If in respect of school-buildings the country parts of my district are more fortunate than London, yet in London no less than in the country I begin to find, I am glad to say, a more satisfactory state of things than formerly with regard to school-fittings and school organization. Increasing experience leads me more and more to prefer the Battersea plan of school organization the plan now usually adopted in National schools with some modifications, to any other. The new model of organization proposed by the Wesleyan education committee for their schools, follows this plan in its main features; so far as it departs from it by introducing a large gallery, and diminishing in consequence in school-rooms of ordinary size the number of the rows of desks, it is, in my opinion, inferior to it. But this large gallery is a point by which the Wesleyan body hold fast : they declare it an indispensable agent in their system of conveying religious and moral instruction ; and as GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1855. 49 with this part of the instruction in their schools your Lordships have bound yourselves not to inter- fere, before this declaration I have only to incline myself and be silent. The plan of organization followed in the model schools of the British and Foreign School Society in the Borough Road, and adopted by many British schools, is altogether different from that followed in National and Wesleyan schools. It was recom- mended by the late Mr. Fletcher, and a full account of it by him was published in your Lordships' Minutes 1 ; but he died before he had had much ex- perience of the mode in which it worked. I will frankly avow, that I find several inconveniences in it. It appears to me to provide too little desk accom- modation, to occasion too much moving about, too many changes of place ; and to cause a distribution of the school in which the main divisions are too large, and the subdivisions too small To illustrate my objections, I will take the case of a school of 150 children organized on this plan. Of these, 50 will be on the gallery, 50 in the desks, and 50 on the floor. The better a school is, the more of the work done in it is work which is best done at the desk by the scholar in a permanent station, with the means of writing conveniently : in a good school of 150 1 See Minutes for 1851-2, page 301. E 50 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. children, there will be more than 50 scholars whose work is advanced enough to make it desirable that they should have this advantage. Then, in order that each body of 50 may have the benefit of the desks in its turn, it is obvious that several changes of place will be necessary during the day ; these re- peated changes of place must occasion noise, wear and tear of floors, temporary interruption of studies ; all avoided when the organization is such as to permit the scholar to have his fixed place at a desk. Again, the school is divided into three bodies of 50 ; each of these is too large to be adequately handled by one teacher ; accordingly, they are in fact broken up into small divisions, not always sufficiently differ- ing either in respect of their numbers, or of the inadequate teaching power necessarily assigned to them, from the drafts under monitors on the old monitorial system. The general rule on which I insist is this ; the scholar, to get on, should have a fixed place, and that place at a desk. This rule I have gathered from all the experience which I have had ; and I find, indeed, that the teachers of schools organized on the new British plan practically acknowledge its force, by giving to the highest and most advanced division of their school the greatest number of hours at the desks. But what I say is, that in a good school there is a GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1855. 51 greater number of the children than one third who are capable of profiting by this advantage ; and the result of the present plan often is, that while one- third of the school, the highest division, having this advantage, is very well brought on, the other two- thirds, the middle and the lowest division, are handled too much like divisions of infants, and exhibit, in proportion to the rest, too low a rate of attainments accordingly. I have no hesitation in enlarging upon this matter of school organization, because experience impresses me more and more with a sense of its importance. Next after the character of the master (long after it, certainly, but next after it), that which acts most powerfully to determine the condition of a school is, I think, its organization. It is hardly possible ade- quately to describe to those who have not experienced it the sense of relief and satisfaction felt on entering a school, which one has formerly known ill-arranged and ill-organized, for the first time after it has been re-arranged on a good plan. What was formerly/ intricate, confused, difficult to discipline, difficult to I inspect, now lies before you simple, clearly divided, comprehensible : to every one his labour is lightened ; the teacher himself can hardly comprehend how what seemed a mere mechanical alteration can have led to so great a moral effect. I appeal to the teachers of E 2 52 KEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. those schools in my district where a new plan of organization has been introduced with eminent success, whether they themselves were prepared for the extent to which they have reaped benefits from the organization of their schools. Experience alone has convinced them of it, as it has convinced me also. This is a matter, too, in which it is hard to conceive that party spirit should operate. No one can have any desire but that the best plan of organization should prevail : all the old plans have been found inadequate : of these old plans, the original British plan was, in my opinion, eminently the best, and the old National plan eminently the most inefficient : but all have failed to answer the present requirements of elementary schools, and a new plan has gradually evolved itself, which has been 'the slow fruit of experience, which is even yet not fully matured, which is the especial property of no sect or society, although by National schools it has now, I believe, very generally been adopted. The standard of attainment in the schools under my inspection continues generally at much the same level as in the year 1854, and is satisfac- tory. The needlework in girls' schools has, I am glad to think, been more attended to, and has improved. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1855. 53 I hear many complaints that too high a standard of attainment is now required in elementary schools ; that the exact point up to which it is desirable to instruct the children attending them has been con- siderably outpassed ; that the children are more and more instructed in subjects injudiciously chosen, and in a manner to unfit them for their future station and business in life. These complaints have in them, I think, some- thing true and something false. It is not true, I think, that the course of instruc- tion in elementary schools generally embraces too many subjects, or is carried on in any of these subjects too far. Certainly it is not true with regard to those elementary schools which I inspect. These are not attended, as I have repeatedly said, by the lowest and poorest class of children : they are attended often by children who might well lay claim to an instruction of a more comprehensive and advanced kind than that which they obtain in them : they are attended universally by children who may well lay claim, on the score of social position and future prospects in life, to be instructed not only in reading, writing, and the elements of arithmetic, but also in the higher rules of arithmetic in geography, in English gram- mar, and in English history. I do not mean to affirm it as my opinion, that there are degrees of instruction f <~J 54 REPORTS OX SCHOOLS. exactly proportioned to the degrees in society ; but I i place myself in the point of view of the complainants \themselves, and I say, that the children in those schools which I inspect belong to a class for which the complainants themselves would allow that such an instruction as they receive was neither improper nor over-ambitious. But it is true, that where schools profess to teach industrial work, or to train children for a certain occupation, and do not teach that work, or teach it inadequately, do not train the children for that occu- pation, or train them inadequately, then there is ground for complaint. In industrial and reformatory schools, for instance, instruction in a certain industrial work is the main object of the institution : there is cause for complaint if that main object is missed, whether it is missed because the special instruction has been in itself bad, or because it has been thrust out by the teaching of other subjects. In girls' schools, again, there is, there must always be, a branch of industrial instruction indispensably professed instruction in needlework : if this is given ill, if the girls cannot do plain work well, there is cause for complaint : it is no excuse that time has been occu - pied in teaching other branches of instruction well, if one indispensable branch has been neglected. In all these cases it is necessary to define clearly what the GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1855. 55 aim of the school is, or should be, and to judge the school accordingly as it attains or misses that aim. Much of the exaggeration respecting the over- teaching in elementary schools arises, I think, in the following way. People read the examination papers, which are printed from year to year in your Lordships' Minutes, and exclaim at the rate of attainment demanded ; as if the rate of attainment demanded by those examination papers was the rate of attain- ment demanded in elementary schools. They forget that these examination papers are for teachers, not for scholars. Yes ; but, they say, why demand so much learning from those who will have to impart so little ? why impose on those who will have to teach the rudiments only of knowledge to the children of the poor, an examination so wide in its range, so searching in its details? The answer to this involves the whole question as to the training of the teachers of elementary schools. It is sufficient to say, that the plan which these objectors recommend, the plan of employing teachers whose attainments do not rise far above the level of the attainments of their scholars, has already been tried. It has been tried, and it has failed. Its fruits were to be seen in the condition of elementary education throughout England, until a very recent period. It 56 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. is now sufficiently clear, that the teacher to whom you give only a drudge's training, will do only a drudge's work, and will do it in a drudge's spirit : that in order to ensure good instruction even within narrow limits in a school, you must provide it with a master far superior to his scholars, with a master whose own attainments reach beyond the limits within which those of his scholars may be bounded. To form a good teacher for the simplest elementary school, a period of regular training is requisite : this period must be filled with work : can the objectors themselves suggest a course of work for this period, which shall materially differ from that now pursued ; or can they affirm that the attainments demanded by the certificate-examination exceed the limits of what may without over-work be acquired within the period of his training, by a man of twenty or twenty- one years of age, of fair intelligence, and of fair industry ? GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1856. General rules as to growth and decay of Schools, open to continual exceptions Half- Time Schools Force of local circumstances Organization "Want of correspondence between School Divisions and Groups of Desks. THE chief result of my experience as to the growth of schools, and the fluctuations in their condition, has been to establish the conviction that the general rules which one so often hears others lay down, and which one is so often tempted oneself to lay down, respect- ing the elements of growth and decay, of efficiency and inefficiency in this or that class of schools, are unsound, or at least that they admit of so many exceptions as to be practically of little value. The hasty generalizations to which the observer is led by the first contemplation of the present system of elementary schools in England are perpetually being corrected ; life appears at isolated points where one least expected to find it; decay takes place where one entertained least apprehension of it. I have sometimes thought, for instance, that schools 58 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. not especially connected with any religious body whose fortunes it might partake and in whose permanence it might share, had a natural tendency, when the first impulse which led to their establishment had died away, to be neglected and to decline. With a constant enemy to contend with in the sectarian tendencies of the English people, with the constant danger, while they had no perpetual official promoter like the clergyman, of losing their original promoters by death, removal, decay of zeal in what was from the first a -purely volun- tary labour, or from other causes, these schools seemed likely to run a certain course, and when they had exhausted the special impulse which set them in motion, gradually to slacken speed and at last to stop. But I have seen schools of this kind, which appeared to be approaching the last stage of their course, recover themselves suddenly and start afresh. I have sometimes thought, again, that in schools where the bulk of the children were half-timers, the school-work was necessarily inferior in neatness, finish, and accuracy, to that of the children in schools where the half-time system is not in operation, and where the scholars had the benefit of a longer daily practice in their work. But in the British school at Milford, in Derbyshire, I found GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1856. 59 a school of half-timers where the school-work is eminent for these very qualities of neatness and finish, and may vie in these respects with that of the best schools, of whatever class, under my inspection. The fact is that at the present moment all is so undetermined in England with respect to public education one system, one body of persons is so little in possession of the entire field that every- thing depends, in each locality, on special local circumstances, which are continually changing, and on individual agencies, which cannot be calculated beforehand. Public education is perhaps too vast a ; v matter to be advantageously left to these individual agencies, but, where it is left to them, it is) absolutely necessary to take into account their inherently fortuitous and independent character. It is necessary to leave each of them to produce freely its natural fruits, without attempting to prejudge J its character and chance of success. Amongst the local efforts for the promotion of public education which I have witnessed in my district during the last five years, none, perhaps, is so remarkable as that which the Wesleyan Methodists have been making during that period in South Staffordshire. In no part of my district, except in London, are the schools under my inspection 60 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. so thickly scattered ; in none are they so well attended ; in none have they multiplied so fast and improved so rapidly in efficiency. Mr. Tremenheere's reports on the state of the mining population have sufficiently made known the moral and social condition of the working-classes in South Stafford- shire; and, while that condition is such as it is there described, the elementary schools in that part of the country will not, as a body, be equal to the best elementary schools in other parts of the country. The home education of the children must make itself felt. But that these South Staffordshire schools have attained, as a whole, the thoroughly respectable and satisfactory condition in which I now find them, a condition of efficiency quite out of all proportion with the barbarism of the district in which they are found, does infinite credit to the zeal of their promoters and to the labour of their teachers, and cannot fail in the end to tell powerfully upon the ! civilization of the neighbourhood. When first these schools came under my inspection in 1851, the rate of attainment which I found in them was far lower (with one or two striking exceptions) than that which I found in any other part of my district ; it was so low that, in order to obtain pupil-teachers here at all, I was in many cases forced to recommend the admission of candidates whose deficiencies would else- GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1856. 61 where have ensured their instant rejection. The rate of attainment in these schools generally is now, as I have said, equal to that of respectable schools in the best parts of my district ; I am enabled to demand the same proficiency of candidates for apprenticeship here as elsewhere; the actual apprentices perform, with credit, the same examination as others. And the new aspect of the school buildings (often, with the neighbouring Wesleyan chapel, the only considerable edifices, except the furnaces, in their locality) sufficiently indicates how recent is the effort which has produced these results. In nearly all these schools the fittings adopted are more or less in conformity with the JBattersea plan, which, as I have stated in former reports; appears to me, of those at present in use, by far the most convenient. In some cases they are entirely in accordance with this plan ; in others they approach more nearly to the plan followed in the model school of the Wesleyan institution at Westminster, a plan which is a modification of the Battersea system, designed to meet the requirements of Wesleyan schools in respect of large galleries and collective instruction. But I constantly observe that, although a sound plan of fittings may have been adopted, the teacher has not organized his scholars in accord- ance with that plan, and that the organization, 62 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. therefore, of the school remains imperfect, although iis fittings may have been made all that can be wished. In these cases the managers have done their part, but the teacher has not yet adequately performed 'his. It is, indeed, a matter of some difficulty at once to organize a body of children in accordance with a plan which was not in use at the institution where the teacher was trained, and it is a very venial shortcoming to have failed in at once doing this perfectly ; but the excellence of this plan of fittings is that it is so simple and so precise that, in a school where it has been adopted, the mode of arranging the scholars in conformity with it suggests itself at once to the eye, and it seems as if a school so fitted would almost organize itself, if the teacher would allow it. The failure is generally in the following particular; the divisions do not correspond with the groups of desks; one division considerably overlaps its own group of desks and invades the next group, another division does not half fill its own group. In fact, the scholars have not been re-organ- ized to meet the requirements of the new plan, but the same division of them is continued which was in use before the improved plan of fittings was introduced. Teachers must not forget that the excellence of the Battersea plan consists in this that it facilitates the establishment of a system GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1856. 63 of uniform clearly defined classes ; and, if the facilities which it offers for doing this are not taken advantage of, the mere introduction of a number of new desks and benches into a school is of no great benefit. The reasons generally alleged by teachers for not making their divisions correspond with the groups of desks may be reduced to two main points ; one, that the scholars are of such different degrees of attainment that they cannot be classed in bodies of uniform number ; the other, that the want of a sufficient supply of pupil-teachers compels them to enlarge, beyond measure, certain divisions, that they may have the benefit of the superior instruction of the pupil-teachers, and to contract beyond measure other divisions, that as small a body of scholars as possible may be subjected to the inferior handling of monitors. With regard to this second point, it is true that a group of desks will not properly accommodate more than from twenty-five to thirty scholars, and that, in schools where the allowance of pupil-teachers does not exceed one to every forty scholars, the allowance is inadequate to meet the requirements of the Battersea plan of fittings. But in schools not enjoying this allowance, it is far better, in my opinion, to divide regularly all but the youngest and least advanced children into classes corresponding with the groups of desks, 64 REPOKTS ON SCHOOLS. and to throw together the youngest children into one large body, capable of being chiefly taught on the gallery, by collective methods and under one teacher, rather than to divide the whole school from top to bottom in an unsystematic manner, which generally leaves the largest bodies of scholars at the top of the school, and the smallest at the bottom. With regard to the first-mentioned point, namely, the different degrees of attainment of the scholars alleged as a bar against combining them in equal bodies, the answer to this is the same as the answer to the objection urged against the plan of retaining the scholar in the same class for all parts of his work. In both cases the answer is, that, uniform bodies can be formed of scholars having a sufficient degree of correspondence in their attainments to render their working together perfectly practicable, and that far greater advantages result to the discipline and training of the scholar from placing him in a system of uniform, clearly defined classes, than result to his instruction from placing him in a system where the different shades of proficiency are made the basis of the organization of the scholars, and where the classification is as various and as little uniform as are the attainments of individuals. I cannot conclude this report without recording GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1856. 65 my satisfaction at what has been accomplished in the repair, refitment, and re-organization of the schools under my inspection in London, during the past year. In my last report I spoke unfavourably of the London schools in these respects. Some of them continue to deserve that unfavourable men- tion ; but I am bound to say that the great number of them merit it no longer. As I visited one of them after another in the course of last summer, I had perpetually the pleasure of finding a school which I had known dirty, ill furnished with fit- tings, and in bad repair, now wearing a totally new face. Some, too, even of those which were best provided before, had actually transformed them- selves by additions and improvements : and amongst these last it is but just to mention the great Jews' free school in Bell Lane, in the improvement of which no cost and no pains have been spared, and which has been now reconstituted on a scale worthy of its great resources and of its wide sphere of usefulness. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1857. Country Schools Their difficulties ; how caused ? at present inevitable Not to be relieved by a body of low paid Priucipal Teachers For Schools of another class, Certificated Secondary Teachers needed ; will probably be forthcoming Improvement in Pupil Teachers Infant Schools. MY experience has hitherto lain chiefly among schools in towns ; on this account, I look forward with pleasure to the opportunity of becoming better acquainted with another class of schools, in the country and in somewhat remote situations, the state of which must always form a most important element in our calculations, when we attempt to estimate the general condition of elementary education. From what I have thus far seen of them, it strikes me that in the circumstances of this class of schools lies the main obstacle to the success, either of a purely volun- tary system of education, or of a system like the present, combining state-aid with voluntary local contribution. The promoters of these country schools are often both few in number and far from wealthy ; GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1857. 67 the funds which they can raise, therefore, even though they may tax themselves severely, are far from con- siderable ; and the more inconsiderable are their own means, the more inconsiderable becomes the assist- ance which they receive from the state. For their poverty renders them unable to perform the all-im- portant first step, to engage a well-trained teacher ; the indispensable requisite to enable them to obtain an efficient school ; the indispensable requisite, also, to enable them to obtain Government aid. Here, then, may be seen the real pressure, the real financial difficulty, which is comparatively absent in the schools under my inspection in towns ; for the town schools have not only in general a wealthier body of supporters to appeal to, but this body can at any time be considerably enlarged by a resolute and per- severing exertion. But in country districts the body of contributors is in all cases necessarily limited ; it is generally in the case of schools not connected with the Church of England, and deprived, therefore, of the aid of the clergyman and the squire a body far from wealthy. Such a body of school-managers often invite inspection in the hope of obtaining a prelimin- ary aid towards the payment of an efficient teacher's salary, which no form of aid at present sanctioned by the Minutes of the Committee of Council can supply ; and in their extreme difficulty, and in their vexation F 2 68 EEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. at finding no provision whereby assistance from Government can reach them, their language is often that of bitter disappointment. " We have overcome," they say, " for the sake of the wants of our ill-pro- vided neighbourhood, the prejudices against state- connection in which we were reared, and after we have made this sacrifice of feeling, and have admitted Government interference, we find the Government refusing to help us, and reserving all its help for those who, far more than we, can help themselves." They forget, nor would it much console them to remember, that it is in great measure to their own jealousy, to their own past and now confessed prejudices, that their difficulty is attributable. Such an assistance as they demand amounts, in fact, very nearly to the maintenance and support of their school at the expense of the state. The state would contribute the bulk of the funds, and they would contribute the management. The principle of a school system reposing on voluntary local effort is thus abandoned. But what has hitherto made it im- possible for the Government in this country to found a national system of education ? The loudly-avowed preference for a system of voluntary local effort. And had the Government been inclined to offer an entire support to those schools which should demand it, what would have rendered such a course difficult GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1857. 69 or impossible ? The outcry that voluntary effort on the part of self-supporting and independent schools was to be swamped by the competition of schools maintained by the state. Only one way, therefore, was left open by which the state might, in part, remedy the shortcomings of voluntary effort, and that was by affording its aid only in correspondence with voluntary contribution. Thus schools were to depend for their existence upon themselves, and only for a higher development of their efficiency were they to de- pend upon the Government. Even this arrangement has been accused of injustice to independent schools, by unfairly placing them in competition with schools improved and highly developed through Government aid. What would have been said of an arrange- ment which not only improved and developed such competing schools, but actually founded them and maintained them in existence ? It is, however, certain, that the present arrange- ment, imposed as it has been on the Government by the necessity of circumstances, and rendering as it has rendered all the benefit possible under those cir- cumstances, fails to assist certain schools which stand greatly in need of assistance. Professing as it does to improve the quality rather than to increase the quantity of elementary schools, it is most sufficient and successful in large towns and populous neigh- bourhoods. In these principally I had, until lately, 70 EEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. . witnessed its operation, and by its success in these I had been profoundly impressed ; for here it is, above all, the quality of elementary education which needs improvement. On becoming more acquainted with its operation in poorer and more thinly peopled dis- tricts, I cannot but be impressed with the conviction, that its adequacy is here no longer the same ; for here it is the increase in the quantity of education, it is the very establishment and maintenance of schools which is in many cases the thing required. The high rate of payment which the services of a trained teacher now command forms the obstacle in the case of schools of the poor class just mentioned, to their acquisition of such a teacher, and, therefore, to their participation in your Lordships' grants. To improve the position of the teacher in respect of his salary as well as in other respects, has been a con- stant endeavour of your Lordships, and that this endeavour has been crowned with success is a public benefit. The formation of a class of principal teachers paid at a low rate is by no means to be desired ; and, therefore, while I lament the difficulty in which their inability to pay a high salary to a teacher places the managers of certain poor schools, I should be sorry to see that difficulty removed by any change which lowered the present standard of principal teachers' salaries. For the wants of these schools, therefore, it is not easy, under the present system, to suggest a provi- GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1857. 71 sion ; there is, however, in the higher class of schools under my inspection, a want which is at this moment strongly felt, and to which it lies, I think, in your Lordships' power in some degree to afford relief. In this higher class of schools there is a great and grow- ing demand for regularly trained secondary or assistant teachers, which is at present most inadequately supplied. Such teachers would be employed under the super- vision of the principal teacher whose salary would re- main at the present rate ; but the richest body of school- managers is generally unable, even were it desirous, to pay the assistant at the same rate as the prin- cipal. But the increase in the number of schools aided by your Lordships, and requiring trained teachers, is at present so rapid, that it still fully keeps pace with, or even outstrips, the supply of such teachers; a student in a training school, therefore, after he has finished the shortest period of training which is permitted, finds no difficulty in at once obtaining his appointment to an elementary school at a principal teacher's salary. There is not at present left, after the existing elementary schools have been provided with principal teachers, any class of students unprovided for, and willing, therefore, to accept a less remunerative, although, for them^ more instructive and more improving employment. For not merely is the teacher of a large and 72 REPOETS ON SCHOOLS. important school greatly benefited by the service of a highly trained student, infinitely superior in training, information, and authority, not alone to the class of pupil-teachers, but also to the class of assistants established by your Lordships' Minute of July 1852, but the student too, on his side, may be greatly benefited by such service. Under the successful and experienced teacher of a large and thriving school he may learn what the training school cannot teach him, what his own ex- perience can only teach him slowly and after many mistakes the practical methods by which great schools are made and kept thriving. It is well worth his while for the sake of such knowledge, for the sake of learning, in a good practical school, how to manage children, how to deal with parents and managers it is well worth his while, in consider- ation of such advantages, to content himself for a year or two with a somewhat lower salary. The time will no doubt arrive when the present extension of the pupil-teacher system will bear its natural fruits, and when, after all the principal- teacherships of elementary schools are occupied, there will yet remain ^ear by year a considerable class of students not posted as principals, and will- ing, therefore, as in Holland and Prussia, to begin their career as assistants ; but this period has not yet GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1857. 73 arrived. Its arrival will greatly benefit elementary schools, and will benefit in a scarcely less important degree the trained students also. Even under the present circumstances, I have been greatly struck with the keen and just sense which I have found existing among the students themselves of the advan- tage to be derived from serving for a certain period under an experienced master in a formed and success- ful school ; more than one student has expressed to me his readiness to forego the higher rate of salary which he might obtain as a principal teacher, for the sake of obtaining this invaluable experience as au assistant. At present, however, it is only in a school of the very first order, and offering, therefore, to the student the most extraordinary advantages as a place of practical training, that I feel warranted in urging him to accept an engagement as assistant, to the temporary detriment of his condition as respects salary. Indeed the authorities of the training schools would at present be opposed to any extensive employment of their trained students as assistants ; for not only are they naturally unwilling to allow them to forfeit the tangible benefit of the best-paid situations offered, but they cannot leave the schools in connection with them without principal teachers, which they would do if they now diverted to other employment any considerable portion of their yearly supply of students. 74 KEPOETS ON SCHOOLS. It is desirable, however, and I am sure your Lord- ships will feel it to be desirable, to encourage as much as possible among the managers of schools their growing wish for this highly trained and efficient class of assistants ; this only aid which can con- siderably lighten the labours of a chief teacher, or enable him to feel really at ease with respect to the management of those parts of his school which are not for the moment under his own personal tuition and superintendence. I find, I am glad to say, the committees of British schools becoming more and more alive to the importance of the establishment of infant schools; more and more disposed to admit the undoubted truth, that the admission to their institutions of the older children of a family makes it incumbent upon them to make some provision for the education of the younger ; to admit, further, that this educa- tion needs a separate methodized system of its own, and that the presence of a large body of infants in an ill-taught and ill-trained mass, at the bottom of their older schools, inflicts injury on the whole school, and not merely on the infants themselves. The Wesleyans continue and extend their activity in the establish- ment of infant schools ; that department of element- ary education in which they have already done so much, and with such happy results. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1858. Progress, Management, and Superintendence School Books, purchase of by Scholars recommended Revision of Teachers' Certificates Attendance, and social rank, of Scholars Infants admitted too young. WITH the progress of the body of schools under my inspection I have abundant cause to be satisfied. If the superintendence afforded to British and Wesleyan schools by their managers is in some respects not so active as that which National schools enjoy, the con- dition of comparative independence in which the teachers are thus left is not without its advantages, when the teachers are of such a class as those gene- rally found in the best British and Wesleyan schools. They form and pursue their own plans with entire security and consecutiveness ; and occupy in the eyes of their scholars, and of the parents of their scholars, a position of undivided dignity and authority. There are some teachers who cannot safely be trusted with entire independence ; some institutions which cannot thrive without the constant intervention and fostering 76 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. care of their managers. I have in a former report observed that the usual course of management followed in British and Wesleyan schools is not per- fectly adapted to teachers and institutions of this kind. But there are also some teachers who can be safely trusted to walk alone ; there are some institutions so securely fixed, so efficient, and so popular, that the best thing which their managers can do for them is to leave them to themselves. Of this latter kind are now many of the teachers and many of the institutions under my inspection in London ; and for such the operation of the ordinary British and Wesleyan system of manage- ment is decidedly beneficial. It has now become a common practice, through- out my district, for the scholars to buy their own school-books. The advantages of the practice are obvious; the children are found to take more care of books which are their own ; above all, books which are the property of the scholar can be taken home by him in the evening, and the study of them continued out of school. But I have remarked in some schools where this practice was followed that several children, even in the higher classes, were without books altogether. They and their parents could not or would not buy them, and there was no public stock of which they could have the GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1858. 77 use in school; but such a state of things as this should in no case be suffered. If the children are of a class rich enough to be fairly expected to buy their own books, either they should buy them, if such is the rule of the school, or their attendance at the school should not be permitted. But I know scarcely one British or Wesleyan school in which there are not some children on whom it might be a hardship to make the purchase of books imperative. I think that in all schools there should be a public stock of books, from which those who cannot beyond a doubt afford to buy for themselves should be sup- plied. It might safely be left to the teachers and managers to discriminate what children had a fair claim to be supplied from this source. Of all other scholars, the purchase of the necessary books might then be strictly required. Almost every teacher under my inspection is now certificated. Great interest is created among this able and active body of persons by the arrival of the period fixed by your Lordships for the first revision of certi- ficates. A promotion of even one division is of great importance to a teacher. How powerfully, therefore, is his position affected by regulations which render possible, in some cases, a promotion of no less than three divisions ! I believe that this periodical revision of certificates may prove a most powerful means to 78 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. promote the efficiency of teachers. I propose to re- serve, in revising certificates, the highest promotion for the very best teachers in my district; to award the promotion of three divisions, only when the teacher has given proof of distinguished excellence of some sort; whether of distinguished fidelity in adhering to the same school, or of distinguished success in con- ducting it. There are many cases in which a teacher's merit in adhering for five years to the same school cannot be considered sufficient, although joined to a fair degree of merit in the conduct of his school, to entitle him to the highest reward at your Lord- ships' disposal. In endowed schools, for instance, the certainty of his stipend, the fixed number of his scholars, often render it so directly the teacher's in- terest to keep his situation, that continuance in it for five years can hardly be accepted as a proof of merit. In such cases, distinguished merit in the conduct of his school may fairly be demanded, in addition to his five years' service in it, of a teacher who seeks the highest promotion. On the other hand, where a teacher has continued in his school for his school's sake, when inclination or profit might have suggested a wish for change, such continuance is clearly in itself meritorious, and deserving of the highest encourage- ment and reward. The attendance of the scholars in the schools under GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1858. 79 my inspection is, on the whole, surprisingly good. This regularity of attendance is, no doubt, in part, owing to the fact that many of my best schools are mainly recruited from a class of society in which pa- rents exercise much the same supervision over their children's proceedings as that which is generally ex- ercised in the richer classes. The children have thus a much better home-training than the children of the classes below them, and their general conduct is com- paratively regular. I am more and more convinced that benefit arises from the admission of schools con- taining children of this middle class to a participation | in grants, and from their consequent liability to inspec- tion. I must notice at the same time that teachers do not always show perfect judiciousness in dealing with children of this description. I have heard such children addressed by their teachers with the title of " miss " and " master," ah absurdity which would not for a moment be tolerated in English schools for the highest classes : but, on the other hand, I have ob- served that truly able teachers in dealing with chil- dren of this class, find it possible to inspire them with a genuine interest in their work, a good taste and a self-respect, which it is the highest office of education to inspire, and which I had never before witnessed, except as the result of the more prolonged and sys- tematic training of the richer classes. 80 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. I am glad to remark a steady improvement in the needlework of girls' schools. The importance which recent regulations have given to the careful in- struction in needlework of female pupil-teachers has much contributed to its general improvement in the schools where they are employed. I was informed, on remarking the excellence of the needlework in the girls' Lancasterian school at Loughborough, which I inspected the other day, that the girls in that school now often bring to school with them work done by their mothers, in order to pick it out and to do it better, and that this takes place with the full appro- bation of their mothers, who are delighted with their daughters' progress, and no longer remain satisfied with the clumsy needlework which would a few years ago have perfectly contented them. For, until lately, in the homes of these girls little care was felt for ex- cellence in plain useful needlework ; their daughters' proficiency in ornamental needlework alone excited the pride and interest of the mothers. There is a prospect, I am glad to say, that the desk accommodation in ordinary Wesleyan schools, which I have more than once noticed as deficient, will be somewhat increased. The infant school system of the Wesleyans continues to bear the most excellent fruits; and the attention of the managers of British schools is increasingly directed GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1858. 81 to the establishment of separate departments for children of this age. In all the infant schools which I visit, there is, however, a tendency to allow the admission of children too young even for an infant school. The mothers put, no doubt, a great pressure upon infant school managers in this respect, but the pressure should be resisted. Children under three years of age should certainly not be admitted to an infant school, unless it is provided with a baby-room or creche, such as is attached to infant schools in France. Two attempts at the establishment of this appendage I have wit- nessed in infant schools in England ; neither attempt was fully successful ; but in neither case was there, I think, an adequate provision of attendants and fittings. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1860. Visit to Continent Value of Pupil-Teacher system Reduction of Staff to be regretted Dirty and unhealthy state of our Schoolrooms Great imperfection of School Books. HAVING with your Lordships' permission, been em- ployed on the Continent during a great part of the year 1859 as an Assistant Commissioner under the Royal Commission for inquiring into the State of Popular Education, I last year presented no general report on the schools under my inspection in this country. My experience of foreign schools impressed me with nothing more strongly than with a sense of the advantage which our primary schools enjoy from the institution of pupil-teachers. The contrast between our classes of 30 and the French classes of 100, and often far more than 100, struck me more than any other single feature of difference in comparing the primary schools of Paris with those of London. It is not, I am bound to say, that this inferiority in the GENERAL REPOET FOR THE YEAR 1860. 83 number of teachers is in Paris accompanied by a corresponding inferiority in the quality of instruction ; but in order that this may not be the case, a strain is put upon the principal teachers greater than they can properly bear. On my return to England I found the teachers of my district greatly disturbed by your Lordships' Minute of the 4th of May 1859, 1 restricting the allowance of pupil-teachers hitherto under certain conditions enjoyed. It was particularly represented to me by the teachers of practising schools in connection with normal colleges, that this restriction told upon them with especial severity, as they have to devote so much time and attention to the supervision of students employed in their schools, that the assistance of a strong staff of pupil-teachers to conduct the regular business of the school is peculiarly necessary. I regard the service of pupil-teachers as so useful, both to the school and to the apprentice himself, that it is with regret that I see any reductions made in it. Still the teaching power in our primary schools is, even at present, numerically much superior to that in the best and most favoured schools which I have seen on the continent ; superior even to that in the schools of Holland, where the institution of pupil- teachers took its beginning. In Holland, however, 1 See Appendix. G 2 84 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. the employment of certificated adult assistants is much more general than with us ; but it may, perhaps, be doubted whether the English schoolmaster shows the same aptitude for the management and use of these adult assistants, which he shows for that of pupil-teachers. Still, even were the employment of adult assistants (certainly susceptible of a development in our schools beyond that which it has yet received) carried with us as far as it is carried in Holland, our schools would find themselves, supposing their allow- ance of pupil-teachers to be at the same time reduced to the Dutch standard, with a force of assistance considerably less than that which they enjoy at present. In former reports I have spoken of the improve- ment which has gradually taken place in the school- buildings of my district ; and, so far as their buildings are concerned, the elementary schools under my inspection in London have, perhaps, no reason to envy those of Paris. I wish I could say the same as to the state of cleanliness and good repair in which they are kept. The English, who pride themselves on their personal cleanliness, appear not to take the same pride in the cleanliness of their public institutions ; in France the solicitude for the cleanliness and neatness of these is exemplary. Poverty and remote- ness may in France as in England occasion in rural GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1860. 85 schools neglect and untidiness : I have seen very ill- kept school-rooms in distant French villages; and never shall I forget the state of dirt and disorder in which I once found the master, scholars, and school- room of a village school in Anglesey, which I entered on a day when I was not expected. But in Paris the public primary schools are in general excellently kept ; while there are few, indeed, of the schools under my inspection in London which I could show to a Parisian inspector without apologizing for their want of clean- liness. Paint and whitewash are doled out with a very sparing hand, and walls and wood-work show this ; yet it is especially in the poorer and crowded districts of London, with their want of good light and good air, that paint and whitewash, the latter especially, are real blessings. In the poorer quarters of Paris the establishment of manufactures and the use of coal more and more crowds the population and thickens the air as in London ; yet I remember no fresher, cleaner, and wholesome school interiors than those which I saw in the Faubourg St. Antoine. The truth is, voluntary managers are apt to be satis- fied with a standard of cleanliness for school premises which would by no means satisfy a Government or an efficient municipal body ; a municipal body like that of Paris, for instance, which spends on its primary schools nearly 100.000/. a year. Voluntary managers 86 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. in London will repeat with complacency that they paint the inside of their school premises once in seven years, and that leases engage the tenants of private houses to do no more ; forgetting that the interior of a house occupied by a single private family, and the interior of a school occupied by some hundreds of poor children, many of them by no means clean, are not precisely in the same condition, and have not precisely the same requirements. Then they plead that they lay out as much money on these public schools as private persons, helped by a certain limited rate of public aid, can be expected to spend on them. This may be true, and may excuse individual managers for the dirty and unhealthy state of their school-rooms ; yet, perhaps, if Fleet Street were ill- lighted, the citizens of London would hardly rest satisfied with such a defect, because they were told that private benevolence, assisted by a small public subsidy, could not afford to light it any better. The candour with which school inspectors in France avowed to me their dissatisfaction with the school-books in use there, led me to reflect on the great imperfection exhibited by our school-books also. I found in the French schools good manuals for teaching special subjects a good manual for teaching arithmetic, a good manual for teaching grammar, a good manual for teaching geography; GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1860. 87 what was wanting there, as it is wanting with us, was a good reading-book, or course of reading-books. It is not enough remembered in how many cases his reading-book forms the whole literature, except his Bible, of the child attending a primary school. If then, instead of literature, his reading-book, as is too often the case, presents him with a jejune encyclopaedia of positive information, the result is that he has, except his Bible, no literature, no humanizing instruction at all. If, again, his reading- book, as is also too often the case, presents him with bad literature instead of good with the writing of second or third-rate authors, feeble, incorrect, and colourless he has not, as the rich have, the cor- rective of an abundance of good literature to counter- act the bad effect of trivial and ill-written school- books; the second or third-rate literature of his school-book remains for him his sole, or, at least, his principal literary standard. Dry scientific dis- quisitions, and literary compositions of an inferior order, are indeed the worst possible instruments for teaching children to read well. But besides the fault of not fulfilling this, their essential function, the ill- compiled reading-books I speak of have, I say, fo the poor scholar, the graver fault of actually doin what they can to spoil his taste, when they ar nearly his only means for forming it. I have seen 88 REPOKTS ON SCHOOLS. /school-books belonging to the cheapest, and therefore most popular series in use in our primary schools, in which far more than half of the poetical extracts were the composition either of the anonymous com- pilers themselves, or of American writers of the second and third order ; and these books were to be some poor child's Anthology of a literature so varied and so powerful as the English ! To this defectiveness of our reading-books I attribute much of that grave and discouraging deficiency in anything like literary taste and feeling, which even well-instructed pupil-teachers of four or five years' training, which even the ablest students in our training schools, still continue almost invariably to exhibit ; a deficiency, to remedy which, the progressive development of our school system, and the very considerable increase of informa- tion among tke people, appear to avail little or nothing. I believe that nothing would so much contribute to remedy it as the diffusion in our elementary schools of reading-books of which the contents were really well selected and interesting. Such lessons would be far better adapted than a treatise on the atmosphere, the steam-engine, or the pump, to attain the proper end of a reading-book, that of teaching scholars to read well ; they would also afford the best chance of inspiring quick scholars with a real love for reading and literature in the only way in which such a love is GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1860. 89 ever really inspired, by animating and moving them ; and if they succeeded in doing this, they would have this further advantage, that the literature for which they inspired a taste would be a good, a sound, and a truly refining literature ; not a literature such as that-K of most of the few attractive pieces in our current \ reading-books, a literature over which no cultivated .) person would dream of wasting his time. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1861. Cleanliness of London premises somewhat improved Pupil Teachers ; their instruction in Grammar ; its proper limits ; their want of taste, as shown in paraphrasing ; remedy suggested. IN my last report I complained of the dirty condition in which school premises in London were too often permitted to remain, and I contrasted them unfavour- ably in this respect with the school premises which I had seen in Paris. In the course of the year just ended, the managers of several London schools under rny inspection have exerted themselves to remove the stigma thus cast upon them, and I can now report a somewhat improved state of things. There is still, however, a great disposition on the part of managers to consider sufficient for public school premises a degree of cleanliness which is really not sufficient ; to think that all which is necessary is something far less, at any rate, than what is proper. And I venture to pre- dict that the greater the " liberty of action " given to GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1861. 91 managers in fixing the standard of needful school cleanliness, the dirtier will our public schools become. In my examinations of pupi] teachers during the last year, I have been struck with the commonness of the failure in grammar. This failure has been yet more evident to me in the papers (which I have just been revising) of the candidates for Queen's scholar- ships at the recent Christmas examination. In general the pupil-teachers seem to me to do worse in this branch of their instruction than they used to do. Many objections have been raised against the teach- ing of grammar in our elementary schools, and I believe that there are even inspectors who somewhat discourage it. But I confess that I should be very sorry if this study should be discontinued, or should be suffered to decline. With the tendency to verbi- age and to general and inexact answering to which all persons of imperfect knowledge are, when exam- ined, so prone, it is a great thing to find for their examinations a subject-matter which is exact ; every answer on which must be right or wrong, and no answer on which can have any value if it keeps to vague generalities. Arithmetic as well as grammar has the merit of being an examination subject of this kind. But grammar has an advantage even over arithmetic, in that it is not only exact it not only compels the pupil examined in it to show 92 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. himself clearly right or wrong, as knowing the rule or as ignorant of it but it also compels him, even more than arithmetic, to give the measure of his common sense by his mode of selecting and apply- ing, in particular instances, the rule when he knows it. And the common sense of pupil-teachers cannot be too much exercised. I am inclined to think that for the ordinary pupil- teacher the text books of grammar which he uses are much too elaborate. These aim at showing the rationale of grammar and of the terms and laws of grammar; but this is a stage of doctrine for which the pupil is, in this case, seldom ripe ; he has memory to master the rules of grammar, but seldom understanding to master its metaphysics. What he has understanding for is the application of the rule when he has learnt it ; and it is within these limits that we should address ourselves to exercise his un- derstanding. Therefore it is to be lamented that there is not one uniform text book for pupil- teachers studying grammar, even if that text book treated grammar less philosophically than some of the existing text books, not more philosophically than the old Eton grammar ; for what the pupil- teacher wants is the rule as a positive fact before him, and no rules acquire this force so well as those of a universally employed text book. It matters less GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1861. 93 that the rule should be intelligently stated to him, than that it should be intelligibly and briefly stated ; for he wants it as a law, not as a theorem. The metaphysics of grammar may come later for him, at the training school. Perhaps our examinations, too, extend themselves over too wide a field, ask questions too numerous, and regard the rationale of grammar in a way for which the pupil-teacher is hardly ripe. Perhaps they should limit him more, make him concentrate himself more on that for which he is ripe. He will hardly write a good essay on the nature of the preposition or the adverb. He will hardly analyse an intricate passage correctly according to the metaphysical principles of Dr. Morell's Analysis. But he may be brought if his teaching takes in somewhat less and keeps him to this more steadily, to parse a sentence a great deal better than he does now. And the true aim of a boy's mental education to give him the power of doing a thing right will in this way best be followed. The best intelligence of the rationale of grammar is that which gradually comes of itself, after such a discipline, in minds with a special aptitude for this science. Such minds are few ; but the minds with some aptitude or other for which the discipline of learning to do a thing right will be most beneficial, are numerous. And to the 94 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. young, grammar gives this discipline best when it limits itself most. Rhetoric and grammar are allied, and what may be called the rhetorical exercise of paraphrasing a passage of prose or poetry often finds a place in our grammar examinations. In general a pupil- teacher paraphrases a passage even worse than he analyses it, and in the examination for Queen's scholarships this year no exercise in paraphrasing was given. We all complain of the want of taste and general culture which the pupil-teachers, after so much care spent upon them, continue to exhibit; and in their almost universal failure to paraphrase ten lines of prose or poetry, without doing some grievous violence to good sense or good taste, they exhibit this want most conspicuously. Here too, perhaps, the remedy will be found to lie, not in attempting to teach the rules of taste directly a lesson which we shall never get learnt but in introducing a lesson which we can get learnt, which has a value in itself whether it leads to something more or not, and which, in happy natures, will probably lead to this something more. The learning by heart extracts from good authors is such a lesson. I have often thought of it as a lesson offering an excellent discipline for our pupil-teachers, and I rejoiced to see it instituted by one of the regulations of the much attacked GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1861. 95 Revised Code. This regulation at any rate, I think, no one will be found to attack. Nay, it is strange that a lesson of such old standing and such high credit in our schools for the rich, should not sooner have been introduced in our schools for the poor. In this lesson you have, first of all, the excellent dis- cipline of a lesson which must be learnt right, or it has no value ; a lesson of which the subject matter is not talked about, as in too many of the lessons of our elementary schools, but learnt. Here, as in the case of the grammar lesson, this positive character of the result is a first great advantage. Then, in all but the rudest natures, out of the mass of treasures thus gained (and the mere process of gaining which will have afforded a useful discipline for all natures), a second and a more precious fruit will in time grow ; they will be insensibly nourished by that which is stored in them, and their taste will be formed by it, as the learning of thousands of lines of Homer and Virgil has insensibly created a good literary taste in so many persons, who would never have got this by studying the rules of taste. Pupil-teachers will then be found to paraphrase well, whom no rules supplied by their teachers will ever teach to para- phrase well at present. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1863. Revised Code, introduction of Inspection and Examination, xinder the Old and New systems, contrasted Reading Books improved Culture of Pupil Teachers ; of English and Scotch Students in Training ; and of Teachers. THE great school event of the year has of course been the introduction, in the latter half of it, of the new system of examinations prescribed by the Revised Code. I have not hitherto applied to your Lordships for any help in conducting these exami- nations in my district, but have, so far, accomplished them all myself, because I was anxious fully to observe their working. I have not to make any remarks upon their financial working, its effect upon schools, and its acceptability to managers. I confine myself entirely to their practical working as a system of school examinations, and to points in which they make the inspection of a school now a different matter from what it used to be formerly. It might have been wished and intended, per- GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1863. 97 haps, that the old inspection should take place just as before, and that the examination should be merely a new thing stiperadded to it. Prac- tically this is not so, and I think, without a very large increase in the body of inspectors, and a strict discrimination of their separate kinds of function, it cannot be so; practically the old in- spection tends, and I think will tend more and more, to disappear. I am speaking of the old inspection considered as an agency for testing and promoting the intellectual force of schools, not as an agency for testing and promoting their disci- pline and their good building, fitting, and so on. For their discipline and for their material suit- ability, the new system furnishes the same or nearly the same means of care as the old one. For their intellectual force it furnishes no longer the same means of care, but a different one ; I do not say a means of care less valuable or not more valuable than that furnished by the old inspection, but a different one. It is important to point out this difference, in order that one undoubtedly useful sort of care which inspection used to provide for the intellectual progress of schools, but which it provides no longer, or in a much lesser degree than formerly, the managers may take measures to provide in some other way. H 98 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. Inspection under the old system meant some- thing like the following. The inspector took a school class by class. He seldom heard each child in a class read, but he called out a certain number to read, picked at random as specimens of the rest; and when this was done he ques- tioned the class with freedom, and in his own way, on the subjects of their instruction. As you got near the top of a good school these subjects became more numerous; they embraced English grammar, geography, and history, for each of which the inspector's report contained a special entry, and the examination then often acquired much variety and interest. The whole life and power of a class, the fitness of its composition, its handling by the teacher, were well tested; the inspector became well acquainted with them, and was enabled to make his remarks on them to the head teacher; and a powerful means of correcting, improving, and stimulating them was thus given. In the hands of an able inspector an inspector like Dr. Temple, for instance (one may particularize Dr. Temple without invidiousness, for he has ceased to be an inspector x ) this means was an instrument of great force and value. 1 The present Bishop of London had recently been appointed Head Master of Rugby. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1863. 99 The new examination groups the children by its standards, not by their classes; and however much we may strive to make the standards correspond with the classes, we cannot make them correspond at all exactly. The examiner, therefore, does not take the children in their own classes. The life and power of each class as a whole, the fitness of its composition, its handling by the teacher, he therefore does not test. He hears every child in the group before him read, and so far his examination is more complete than the old inspection. But he does not ques- tion them; he does not, as an examiner under the rule of the six standards, go beyond the three matters, reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the amount of these three matters which the standards themselves prescribe; and, indeed, the entries for grammar, geography, and history have now altogether disappeared from the forms of report furnished to the inspector. The nearer, therefore, he gets to the top of the school the more does his examin- ation, in itself, become an inadequate means of test- ing the real attainments and intellectual life of the scholars before him. Boys who have mastered vulgar fractions and decimals, who know some- thing of physical science and geometry, a good deal of English grammar, of geography, and his- H 2 100 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. tory, he hears read a paragraph, he sees write a paragraph, and work a couple of easy sums in the compound rules or practice. As a stimulus to the intellectual life of the school and the intellectual life of a school is the intellectual life of its higher classes this is as inefficient as if Dr. Temple (to recur to him again for illustration), when he goes to inspect his fifth form, were just to hear each boy construe a sentence of delectus, conjugate one Latin verb, and decline two Greek substantives. I know that the aim and object of the new sys- tem of examination is not to develop the higher intellectual life of an elementary school, but to spread and fortify, in its middle and lower por- tions, the instruction in reading, writing, and nrithmetic, supposed to be suffering. I am not contesting the importance of this subject, or the adequacy of the means offered by the new exam- ination for attaining it. I am only pointing out the real value of a certain mode of operation on schools which the old inspection undoubtedly supplied, and which the new examination does not and by its nature cannot supply. It will be said that we must conjoin the old inspection with the new examination; undoubt- edly we must so far as we can. But I think no one who is much acquainted with schools and GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1863. 101 examinations will imagine that we can do this at all completely. The whole school felt, under the old system, that the prime aim and object j of the inspector's visit was, after insuring the fulfilment of certain sanitary and disciplinary conditions, to test and quicken the intellectual life of the school. The scholars' thoughts were , directed to this object, the teacher's thoughts I were directed to it, the inspector's thoughts were directed to it. The scholars and teacher co- operated therefore with the inspector in doing their best to reach it ; they were anxious for his judgment on their highest progress, anxious to profit by this judgment after he was gone At present the centre of interest for the school when the inspector visits it is changed. Scholars and teacher have their thoughts directed straight upon the new examination, which will bring, they know, such important benefit to the school if it goes well, and bring it such important loss if it goes ill. On the examination day they have not minds for anything else. If it were possi- ble for the inspector to make the old inspection, unaltered so far as he was concerned, precede the new examination, it would no longer be the same inspection, for he would no longer have the children's spirit in it, and without ; 102 REPORTS OX SCHOOLS. this he could no longer make the same test of their intellectual life ; he would no longer have the master's whole interest and attention in it, and without these he would no longer criticize and counsel with profit, and so be able to stimulate the school's intellectual life for the future. I think, if the peculiar valuable effect of the old inspection is to be retained, this inspection ought, on these grounds, to be dis- joined from the new examination. But on other, and purely material grounds, it must be disjoined from it. The new examin- ation is in itself a less exhausting business than the old inspection to the person conducting it ; it does not make a call as that did upon his spirit and inventiveness; but it takes up much more time, it throws upon him a mass of minute de- tail, and severely tasks hand and eye to avoid mistakes. Few can know till they have tried what a business it is to enter in a close-ruled schedule, as an examination goes on, three marks for three different things against the names of 200 children whom one does not know one from the other, without putting the wrong child's mark in the wrong place. Few can know how much delay and fatigue is unavoidably caused before one can get one's 600 communications GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1863. 103 fairly accomplished, by difficulty of access to children's places, difficulty in seeing clearly in the obscurer parts of the school-room, difficulty of getting children to speak out sometimes of getting them to speak at all difficulty of resisting, without feeling oneself inhuman, the appealing looks of master or scholars for a more prolonged trial of a doubtful scholar. Then there are inquiries and returns to be made by the inspector about log-book, portfolio, accounts, pupil-teachers' engagement and stipends, which had not to be made formerly. An inquiry has just been added respecting the means and position in life of school children's parents, to discover whether they are proper objecte of state aid. All this makes the new examination a business of so much time and labour, as to deprive the inspector of the needful freshness and spirit (to conduct the old inspection properly needed a good deal of spirit) for joining with it, on the same occasion, the old inspection. If I insist on this, it is that I may exhort managers themselves to supply, in case of need, a mode of stimulus to their schools, which was very useful to them. The clergy, who are the usual managers of National schools, could probably supply what is wanted without difficulty ; and I think the managers of British and 104 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. Wesleyan schools, with a little exertion and good- will, might find means to supply it to their schools also. I have been struck by one result of the practical working of the new examinations which I am sure your Lordships never intended. I mean the peculiar severity with which they tell upon the younger classes in a school owing to the timidity natural to this age. When a boy of 11 or 12 years of age is so shy that he cannot open his mouth before a stranger, one may with- out harshness say that he ought to have been taught better and refuse him his grant ; but when a child of seven is in this predicament one can hardly, without harshness, say the same thing, and to refuse him his grant for a timidity which is not, in his case, a school fault, seems to be going beyond the intention of your Lordships, who designed the refusal of your grants to be a punishment for school faults. The attention which has been drawn by the Revised Code to the elementary subjects of read- ing, writing, and arithmetic has already had the happiest effect in improving the quality of school reading books. At last the compilers of these works seem beginning to understand that the right way of teaching a little boy to read is not by GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1863. 105 setting him to read such sentences as these (I quote from school works till lately much in vogue) : " the crocodile is viviparous," " quicksilver, antimony, calamine, zinc, &c., are metals," "the slope of a desk is oblique, the corners of the door are angles ; " or the right way of teaching a big boy to read better, to set him to read : " some time after one meal is digested we feel again the sensation of hunger, which is gratified by again taking food ; " " most towns are supplied with water and lighted by gas, their streets are paved and kept clean, and guarded by policemen;" "summer ornaments for grates are made of wood shavings and of different coloured papers." Heading books are now published which reject all such trash as the above, and contain nothing but what has really some fitness for reaching the end which reading books were meant to reach. Some of them even go a little too far in the effort to avoid dryness and pedantry and to be natural and inter- esting ; they contain rather too many abbrevia- tions, too many words meant to imitate the noises of animals, and too mucb of that part of human utterance which may be called the interfectional. The little children, for whom the books are designed, are apt to be rather puzzled by words of this kind, and, even if they were not, it is a fault in 106 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. a short reading lesson to contain too much of them. But this fault, which certainly some of the best of the new reading books do not quite avoid, has at least the merit of being a fault on the right side. No more useful change has in my opinion ever been introduced into the programme of the pupil- teachers' studies than that which has lately added to it the learning by heart of passages from some standard author. How difficult it seems to do anything for their taste and culture I have often said. I have said how much easier it seems to get entrance to their minds and to awaken them by means of music or of physical science than by means of literature ; still if it can be done by lit- erature at all, it has the best chance of being done by the way now proposed. The culture both of the pupil-teacher and of the elementary school- master with us seems to me to resist the efforts made to improve it and to remain unprogressive, more than that of the corresponding class on the Continent. Ignorance is nothing ; such a blunder as this of an English student, " Pope lived a little prior to the Christian era," a French or Swiss student might also commit; but the hopeless want of tact and apprehensiveness shown by such a sentence as this, "I should consider Newton as a great author; firstly, on account of the style and value GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1863. 107 of his works ; secondly, on account of his most "valuable and wonderful discoveries, coupled with the pains he took to diffuse his self-acquired knowledge among the people" no French or Swiss student, who had read the books and heard the lectures which the English student who wrote that sentence had heard and read, would in my opinion ever equal. It is true that if you take the bulk of the scholars, even in schools for the richer classes, the rate of culture is very low; but then it is to be remembered that our pupil-teachers and students are a select body, not the bulk of a class, and have gone through a careful training and schooling. This is not the place to speculate on the causes) of this inferiority, but I will make one observa-\ tion. These shortcomings in taste and culture naturally show themselves more manifestly in the student's grammar and composition papers than \ in any other. I have just looked over nearly a thousand of these papers, and the Scotch students, especially perhaps those of the training schools of the Scotch Established Church, seem to me to have in general both more of positive culture and more of capacity for culture than their English fellows. It is not that they give one the impression of having worked harder or done more to get infor- mation; their papers are often worked in rather a slovenly style, in all externals they have by no 108 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. means the neatness and smartness which the papers of students from the best English training schools exhibit (I take this opportunity of saying that the handwriting of the Scotch students as a body greatly needs improvement), but they certainly have Vmore culture. I attribute this to the effect in- sensibly produced on all classes in the country by the long establishment of education for all, as a matter of public institution and national impor- tance, in Scotland. */ In England it is among the teachers that the desire for a better culture, and the attainment of it, most shows itself. It shows itself in those in my district by more and more numerous efforts to pass the examinations which the London University, with a wise liberality, makes accessible to so large and various a class of candidates. I gladly seize every opportunity to express the satisfaction which the sight of these efforts gives me. To the able, the ardent, and the aspiring among the young teachers of schools under my inspection, I say : Your true way of advancing yourselves, of raising your position, of keeping yourselves alive and alert amidst your trying labours, is there. And the more the Government certificate comes to be regarded as a mere indis- pensable guarantee of competency, not as a literary distinction, the better ; literary distinction should be sought for from other and larger soures. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. Second Foreign Mission Impressions on return Want of life in English Schools, caused by Revised Code. Decline in supply and quality of Pupil Teachers Changed spirit of Teachers Prospect of fresh calls upon Them How to be met ? Effects of Code on Schools, Inspection, Elementary and Higher Instruction More free play wanted Payment by Results not sound Compulsory Education School Fees School Books, need of control Public and Private Schools, a contrast. SEVERAL years have elapsed since last I made a general report. During those years I have a second time visited officially the schools of the Continent, having been employed for this purpose by the Schools Inquiry Commission of 1865, as I was previously employed for it by the Commission on Popular Education in 1859. The object of the more recent visit was not, as in 1859, the primary school; it was the school for the middle and upper classes. Still it was natural that I should not pursue my inquiries respecting secondary and superior in- struction abroad without in some degree renewing 110 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. my acquaintance with primary instruction, its legisla- tion, and its actual condition. It was natural, too, that in returning to the in- spection of primary schools in England, I should have in mind both my former return to them after a similar visit to the Continent, and the experi- ence which each of my visits to the Continent had afforded me. I cannot say that the impression made upon me by the English schools at this second return to them has been a hopeful one. I find in them, in general, if I compare them with their former selves, a deadness, a slackness, and a discourage- ment which are not the signs and accompaniments of progress. If I compare them with the schools of the Continent I find in them a lack of intelli- gent life much more striking now than it was when I returned from the Continent in 1859. This change is certainly to be attributed to the school legislation of 1862. That legislation has reduced the rate of public expenditure upon schools, has introduced the mode of aid which is commonly called payment ty results, and has with- drawn from teachers all character of salaried public servants. These changes gratify respectively one or other of several great forces of public opinion which are potent in this country, and a legisla- GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. Ill tion which gratifies these ought perhaps to be pronounced successful. But in my report to the Royal Commission of 1859 I said, after seeing the foreign schools, that our pupil-teachers were, in my opinion, "the sinews of English public instruc- tion ; " and such in my opinion they, with the ardent and animated body of schoolmasters who taught and trained them, undoubtedly were. These pupil- teachers and that body of schoolmasters were called into existence by the school legislation of 1846 ; the school legislation of 1862 struck the heaviest possible blow at them ; and the present slack and languid condition of our elementary schools is the inevitable consequence. The rate of pupil-teachers to scholars in our elementary schools was, in 1861, one pupil-teacher for every thirty-six scholars ; in 1866 it was only one pupil-teacher for every fifty-four scholars. Throughout all the training colleges only 1,478 candidates presented themselves for admission last Christmas, whereas 2,513 candidates presented them- selves in 1862. Yet the number of schools recruiting their teachers from this source had risen from 6,258 iu 1861 to 8,303 in 1866, and the average popula- tion of such schools from 919,935 to 1,082,055. The performance of the reduced number of candidates is weaker and more inaccurate than was 112 KEPOETS ON SCHOOLS. the performance of the larger number six years ago, and for the last year or two has been becoming weaker and weaker. No inspector can be surprised at this who compares the present acquirements of the vast majority of the pupil-teachers of his dis- trict in the yearly examinations which they have to pass before him with those which he remembers ten years ago. Nor, again, can this difference in their acquirements surprise him when he com- pares the slackness, indifference, and loose hold upon their profession which is to be remarked in the pupil-teachers now, and contrasts it with what he remembers ten years ago. The service of the pupil-teacher was then given under an indenture which he was accustomed to regard as absolutely binding him for five years ; now it is given under an agreement which expressly declares itself to be always terminable by notice or payment. He then had seven and a half hours of instruction every week from the principal teacher, out of school hours and when all the attention of the principal teacher could be given to him ; now he has only five hours of instruction, and these may be given in the night school, when the principal teacher's atten- tion is divided. The work of teaching in school is less interesting and more purely mechanical than it used to be. But, above all, the pupil-teacher has GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. 113 continually before him, he continually sees and hears, a master who ten years ago was rewarded for teach- ing him, was proud of his own profession, was hopeful, and tried to communicate this pride and hope to his apprentice. Ten years ago the school- master was under the impulse given by the celebrated letter of instructions of the Secretary to the Com- mittee of Council in 1848, which, in establishing the certificate examination, said : " For the first time in this country schoolmasters will be assembled by the invitation of the Government, as candidates for the formal recognition of their capacity to instruct the humbler classes of her Majesty's subjects, and, as a consequence of such recognition, to receive immediately from the State an annual stipend proportioned to their merits and exertions. It is important that the assembled candidates should be impressed with a conviction of the anxiety of Government, by means of a higher description of moral and religious education, to improve the condition of the poor, and of their determination, as an indispensable means to this end, to elevate the position of the elementary teacher, by qualify- ing him to occupy a higher station, and by rewarding his more efficient services by superior endowments. They ought to receive from the inspectors the impres- sion that they are called upon to co-operate with I 114 EEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. them and with the Committee of Council on Educa- \ tion for the attainment of great national objects." To the trainer thus rewarded, thus animated, thus encouraged to value his profession, thus proclaimed a fellow-worker with the national Government, has succeeded a trainer no longer paid or rewarded, a trainer told that he has greatly overrated his importance and that of his function, that it is most inexpedient to make a public servant of him, and that the Government is determined hence- forth to know no one in connection with his school but the managers. Is it wonderful that such a trainer should be slack in seeking pupil-teachers whom he has to instruct without reward ; that he should communicate to what pupil-teachers he has his own sense of the change in the schoolmaster's position, his own slackness, his own discouragement ; and that under these influences the pupil- teacher's heart should no longer be in his work, that his mind should be always ready to turn to the hope of bettering himself in some more thriving line, and his acquirements meanwhile weak and scant ? At a moment when popular education is at last becoming a question of immediate public interest, and when the numbers, spirit, and qualifications of our teaching staff will have a great call made upon them, it is important to take precise note of GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. 115 their actual condition and prospects. Undoubtedly the present educational movement finds us ill- prepared for it, in so far as our teaching staff is less vigorous in spirit, is more slackly recruited, and with weaker recruits, than it was a few years ago. Complaints and recriminations as to the measures which have led to this falling-off are now vain; let it be conceded that these measures may have had grounds which made them, in spite of this falling-off, politic and sound. But it is still most desirable to see if this falling-off cannot be stopped, and what are the means which afford the best hope of stopping it. My colleague, Mr. Cowie, says in his last report : " In cases where the managers have, with a wise fore- sight, continued to the masters of their schools the allowances formerly made by the Government, and paid them so much for teaching the boys, so much for teaching the pupil-teachers, and so much for the result of the inspector's examination, I think the system works well." If managers were universally or even frequently to be found who could and would take the best means for the creation and preservation of a good teaching staff, there would be no necessity for a Committee of Council on Education. It is just because it is of the first importance for a system 12 116 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. of popular education to have and to maintain an abundant and a well-trained supply of teachers, and precisely in ensuring this supply the voluntary and undirected efforts of private bodies of managers come short, that the plan of appropriated grants augmentation grants to certificated teachers, stipends to pupil-teachers, and gratuities to the principal teacher for instructing them was resorted to. The diminution in the amount of Government aid puts it out of the power of many school managers to continue, of their own motion, the plan of appropriated grants, which, I agree with Mr. Cowie, is a plan that acts with the happiest possible stimulus upon the teacher. Even if they have the means of meeting the expenses of such a plan, they have not always the knowledge and school experience, nor can they always give the time, thought, and attention requisite for originating and regulating it. Particularly is this the case with British and Wesleyan school managers, who are in general business men, perfectly to be relied on for carrying into effect the direct requirements of the Education Department and their own under- takings with it, and for the most part liberally enough disposed, but hardly capable of supplementing the action of the Department where it falls short, and of remedying by their own efforts and inven- GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. 117 tiveness any weakness against which the Depart- ment does not directly provide. In general, with the minimum of teaching power fixed by the Department they will be satisfied; and if their principal teachers represent to them that it is impossible or very difficult to find pupil-teachers, they will acquiesce. At the same time, the rate of payment for pupil-teachers having formerly been indicated to them by the Department, they are very apt, having no wish at all to screw their teachers closely, to maintain this rate unabated for the pupil-teachers whom they are bound to employ. But their action in respect of the teaching staff cannot, in general, be relied on for much more than this. Some schools in my district have adopted what seems to me the judicious plan of paying a pupil- teacher the same sum, in all, which the Committee of Council formerly paid him, but distributing it differently over the years of apprenticeship; paying a sum considerably below the old rate in the first year or two of apprenticeship, and a sum consider- ably above it in the later years. For a boy of thirteen who would very likely stay on in the first class any way, a stipend of Ql. or 71. is sufficient, and if he abandons his engagement at the end of a year or two there is not so much money thrown away. On the other hand, at the age when his services are getting valuable, and openings in other Hues begin 118 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. to present themselves to him, there is the higher rate of stipend to tempt him to stay. This arrange- ment, if more generally adopted, might tend somewhat to fix pupil-teachers; and the great interest which is now directed to popular education will also again create in this country, and on a far wider scale than formerly, a sense of the importance of the teacher and his function, and will tend to make his function an object of ambition rather than of avoidance. This, with time, will undoubtedly attract a better supply of pupil- teachers to the profession. Still, however, the main obstacle to their steady recruiting and good training remains unaffected the indifference of the principal teacher to seeking them out, taking pains with them, and inspiring them with a zeal for their calling. To meet this it would be very desirable, in my opinion, to stipulate that whenever the managers have to provide a pupil- teacher they should also have to provide a gratuity to the principal teacher for instructing him. The rate of gratuity to the principal teacher, like the rate of stipend to the pupil-teacher, might be left, as at present, to be settled by the managers. In my district, the Committee of Council having fixed that the teacher should have a gratuity, managers would very generally follow for this the old rate established by the Committee of Council, just as they follow the old rate established for pupil- GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. 119 teacher stipends. It would be well worth while, by a small increase in the rate of the Government grant, and not attaching to the increase such elaborate conditions as those which surround the grant offered by the Minute of February, 1 to facilitate the accept- ance by managers of this new rule. In return, the principal teacher should be bound to furnish at least six hours a week of instruction to his pupil-teacher, and this should be, as formerly, instruction given with his attention undivided, and not amid the distractions of a night school. To pass from the teachers to the schools. I can- not, with the recollection of the Continental schools, and of what the schools of my district formerly were, fresh in my mind, say that the operation of the Revised Code has been in my opinion good for the schools if not for the teachers. My colleague, Mr. Bowstead, says in his last report that on his best schools the Revised Code has produced little or no effect ; on the great majority of his schools, which were neither very good nor very bad, it has produced an unfavourable effect; on his worst schools it has produced a good effect. In the best schools in my district the decay and discouragement of the teaching staff has not been without some bad effect on the school. I agree, however, with Mr. Bowstead that the instruction in these schools 1 See Appendix. 120 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. is in great measure independent of Government action, and is maintained at a high standard by the demands of the parents, in general of a class quite removed from poverty and fairly intelli- gent. I agree with him that in the majority of schools, neither very good nor very bad, the in- struction has sensibly deteriorated. I hesitate to agree with him that even in the worst it has improved. In these schools the children's irregular attendance and premature leaving are and were the great causes of the school's badness, and not the insufficient attention paid to the younger children by the teacher. Children brought back for examination after a two months' absence fail, and children who have attended very irregularly fail, whatever care the teacher may have bestowed on teaching them ; and meanwhile the better instructed top class, composed of children who stayed long enough to profit by careful teaching, who received this teach- ing, and who became, when they left school, a little nucleus of instruction and intelligence in their locality, has for the most part disappeared. The truth is, what really needed to be dealt with, in 1862 as at present, was the irregular attendance and premature withdrawal of scholars, not the imperfect perform- ance of their duties by the teachers; but it was far easier to change the course of school instruction and inspection, and to levy forfeitures for imperfect school GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. 121 results upon managers and teachers, than to make scholars come to school regularly and stay there a sufficient time. The mode of teaching in the primary schools has certainly fallen off in intelligence, spirit, and inven- tiveness during the four or five years which have elapsed since my last report. It could not well be otherwise. In a country where every one is prone to rely too much on mechanical processes, and too little on intelligence, a change in the Education Department's regulations, which by making two-thirds of the Government grant depend upon a mechanical examination, inevitably gives a mechanical turn to the school teaching, a mechanical turn to the in- spection, is and must be trying to the intellectual life of a school. In the inspection, the mechanical/ examination of individual scholars in reading a short passage, writing a short passage, and working two or three sums, cannot but take the lion's share of room and importance, inasmuch as two-thirds of the Government grant depend upon it ; yet I find, that of this examination, into which, in schools like British and Wesleyan schools where the religious in- struction of the children is withdrawn from inspection, the whole inspection tends to resolve itself, more than 49 per cent, of the children in average attend- ance in the schools inspected by me this last year 122 KEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. had no share. More than 14 per cent, of the children in average attendance were under six years of age, and therefore not examined for the grant ; more than 27 per cent, of them did not appear on the capita- tion schedule at all, not having attended school often enough ; there are left, therefore, as subjects of examination, not more than about 58 per cent, of the scholars. The inspection, therefore, is not now that stimulus to the whole school which it was when a proportion of each class, picked at random by the inspector, were freely examined by him. In the school teaching the decline of intellectual life caused by a more mechanical method of instruc- tion shows itself in increasing weakness in even those very matters which our changes were designed to revive and foster. In my district the proportion of children presented in the three higher standards and doing their work, therefore, on paper, and that presented in the three lower standards, and doing their work on slates, were as nearly as possible the same last year as the year before. Just 27 per cent, last year were in paper-work, and 73 per cent in slate-work; the year before, 26'7 per cent, were in paper-work, and in slate-work 73'3 per cent. The proportion, therefore, remained as nearly as possible the same ; but I find that whereas of the children presented in paper-work only 14'9 per cent, failed GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. 123 the year before last, 18 per cent, failed last year. Among the children presented in slate-work the in- crease in the rate of failure is smaller, but an increase there is ; 10 '8 per cent, failed the year before last, 11 ' per cent, last year. The total rate of failure, which the year before last was H'9 per cent., rose last year to 13 per cent. Meanwhile, the matters of language, geography, and history, by which, in general, instruction first gets hold of a child's mind and becomes stimulating and interesting to him, have in the great majority of schools fallen into disuse and neglect. The Minute of last February, 1 which makes them subjects of a grant- bringing examination has, by recalling attention to them, made manifest into what decay they had sunk. That Minute is, in my opinion, chiefly valuable as an indication to school managers and school teachers that the Education Department thinks these matters of importance. The grant is so trifling, and is sad- dled with such conditions, that many of the schools in my district decline, as I have said, to avail them- selves of it. But even if they availed themselves of it, I doubt whether a decline of intellectual life, itself due chiefly to the mechanical mode of examination the Revised Code has introduced, can be well cured by a palliative, which, while it 1 See Appendix. 124 REPORTS ON" SCHOOLS. extends the examination beyond the elementary matters, yet arranges it, for the higher matter as for the elementary ones, in such a way as to give it the character of an intricate and mechanical routine. More free play for the inspector, and more free play, in consequence, for the teacher, is what is wanted ; and the Minute of February with its elabor- ate mechanism of the one-fifth and the three-fourths makes the new examination as formal arid lifeless as the old one. In the game of mechanical contrivances the teachers will in the end beat us; and as it is now found possible, by ingenious preparation, to get children through the Revised Code examination in reading, writing, and ciphering, without their really knowing how to read, write, or cipher, so it will with practice no doubt be found possible to get the three- fourths of the one-fifth of the children over six through the examination in grammar, geography, and history, without their really knowing any one of these three matters. I observe one or two of my colleagues say in their reports that school managers get pleased with the new mode of examination, and with the idea of payment by results, as they become familiarized with it. I think this is very true ; the idea of payment by results was just the idea to be caught up by the ordinary public opinion of this country and to find GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. 125 favour with it; no doubt the idea has found favour with it, and is likely perhaps, to be pressed by it to further application. But the question is, not whether this idea, or this or that application of it suits ordinary public opinion and school managers; the question is whether it really suits the interests of schools and of their instruction. In this country we are somewhat unduly liable to regard the latter suitableness too little, and the former too much. I feel sure, from my experience of foreign schools as well as of our own, that our present system of grants does harm to schools and their instruction by resting its grants too exclusively, at any rate, upon an individual examination, prescribed in all its details beforehand by the Central Office, and necessarily mechanical; and that we have to relax this exclusive stress rather than to go on adding to it. The growing interest and concern in education will of itself tend to raise and swell the instruction in the primary schools ; if we wish fruitfully to co-operate with this happy natural movement we shall, in my opinion, best do so by some such relaxation as that which I have indicated. Throughout my district I find the idea of com- pulsory education becoming a familiar idea with those who are interested in schools. I imagine that with the newly awakened sense of our shortcomings 126 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. in popular education a sense which is just, the statistics brought forward to dispel it being, as every one acquainted with the subject knows, entirely fallacious the difficult thing would not be to pass a law making education compulsory; the difficult thing would be to work such a law after we had got it. In Prussia, which is so often quoted, edu- cation is not nourishing because it is compulsory, it is compulsory because it is flourishing. Because people there really prize instruction and culture, and prefer them to other things, therefore they have no difficulty in imposing on themselves the rule to get instruction and culture. In this country people prefer to them politics, station, business, money- making, pleasure, and many other things ; and till we cease to prefer these things, a law which gives instruction the power to interfere with them, though a sudden impulse may make us establish it, cannot be relied on to hold its ground and to work effect- ively. When instruction is valued in this country as it is in Germany it may be made obligatory here ; meanwhile the best thing the friends of instruction can do is to foment as much as they can the national sense of its value. The persevering extension of pro- visions for the schooling of all children employed in any kind of labour is probably the best and most practicable way of making education obligatory that GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. 127 we can at present take. But the task of seeing these provisions carried into effect should not be committed to the municipal authorities, less trust- worthy with us than in France, Germany, or Switzer- land, because worse chosen and constituted. I think high school fees in elementary schools a check to popular education, and steadily to be discouraged. In Prussia the average fee for a scholar in these schools is about a penny a week. In France the average fee is higher, I believe, than in any other country as high as fourpence a week. But a large number of children receive free schooling by virtue of having their names entered on a list of indigent children which the authorities of every commune have to make. It is found that many parents strongly object both to the high rate of school fee and to having their children placed on the indigent list, and they do not send them to school at all. The French Minister favours the plan of making the school- ing free for all, not as paupers, but as taxpayers. The Prussian plan, however, of exacting a small school fee seems to me preferable, but it should be a small one. The foreign plan of making school fees payable in advance, either monthly or quarterly, has unquestionable advantages ; it is far too little followed in this country, and the 128 - REPORTS OX SCHOOLS. Education Department would do well, I am sure, to promote it by all the means in its power. The system of weekly payments joined to the touting of rival schools for scholars, and joined also, I must say, to the pernicious notion fostered among parents by our present mode of making our grants, that a child confers a favour on the school managers by earning money for them; all these combine to create an insecurity in our elementary schools, a slightness of hold upon the school children, and an inversion of the proper relations between them and their teachers, which has no parallel anywhere else. It has occurred to me that it would be well if the Education Department were to make a stand against this baneful state of things by refusing to pay grants to an aided school which admits children removed on frivolous pretexts from another aided school in the same place ; the inspectors being directed to receive complaints of such improper admission, and to forward them, with their own comments, to the Council Office. With the increase of schools, the supply of books designed to meet the requirements of the examina- tion instituted by the Education Department in- creases, and becomes a lucrative and important business. These books are very often compiled by persons quite incompetent for the undertaking. It GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. 129 seems to me very desirable that the Education Department should here, as in other countries, exercise some control over school books in aided schools ; and all the more so because, with our pre- sent system of grants, these books profess to be in immediate correspondence with our requirements. It is very usual for the scholar to have to purchase his reading book, which is often the only book of secular literature in his possession ; it is important to do what we can to ensure its being a good one. Perhaps it may be permitted to an ex-professor of poetry to remark that in general the choice of poetry in these books is especially bad ; I print in a note l a specimen of popular poetry from the Fifth 1 MY NATIVE LAND. She is a rich and rare land, Oh ! she is a fresh and fair land, She is a dear and rare land, This native land of mine. No men than hers are braver, The women's hearts ne'er waver ; I'd freely die to save her, And think my lot divine. She's not a dull or cold land, No, she's a warm and bold land ; Oh ! she's a true and old land, This native land of mine. Oh ! she's a fresh and fair land, Oh ! she's a true and rare land. Yes, she's a rare and fair land, This native land of mine. K 130 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. Standard book of a series much in vogue. In the Fifth Standard the scholars have, as is well known, to read poetry aloud for an examination. When one thinks how noble and admirable a thing genuine popular poetry is, it is provoking to think that such rubbish as this ehould be palmed off on a poor child for it with any apparent sanction from the Educa- tion Department aad its grants. In this country, where little importance is attached to the science of public administration, a public department is apt first to attempt to exercise a criti- cal function with insufficient means, and then, when the result appears unsatisfactory, hastily to retreat altogether from exercising it. The better way, perhaps, would be to exercise it properly. Nothing is more remarkable in the school administration of Germany than the care with which every branch is confided to experts, and experts of recognized expertness. The control of school books and school examinations in literature is there strictly given to persons of proved qualifications in letters ; the control of school books and school examinations in the mathematical and natural sciences to persons of proved qualifications in those sciences ; and so on. It would surely be well if we followed this example, instead of either exercising this control with imper- fect instruments, or abandoning it altogether, and GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. 131 suffering private speculation to have unchecked play. The stamp of plainness and the freedom from charlatanism given to the instruction of our primary schools, through the public character which in the last thirty years it has received, and through its having been thus rescued, in great measure, from the influ- ences of private speculation, is perhaps the best thing about them. It is in this respect that our primary schools compare so favourably with the private adven- ture schools of the middle class, that class which, Mr. Bright says, is perfectly competent to manage its own schools and education. The work in the one is appraised by impartial educated persons; in the other, by the common run of middle-class parents. To show the difference in the result, I will conclude by placing in juxtaposition a letter written in school by an ordinary scholar in a public elementary school in my district, a girl of eleven years old, with one written by a boy in a private middle-class school, and furnished to one of the Assistant Com- missioners of the Schools Inquiry Commission. The girl's letter I give first : DEAR FANNY, I am afraid I shall not pass in my examination ; Miss C says she thinks I shall. I shall be glad when the Serpentine is frozen over, for we shall have such fun ; I wish you did not live K 2 132 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. so far away, then you could come and share in the game. Father cannot spare Willie, so I have as much as I can do to teach him to cipher nicely. I am now sitting by the school fire, so I assure you I am very warm. Father and mother are very well. I hope to see you on Christmas Day. Winter is coming; don't it make you shiver to think of? Shall you ever come to smoky old London again ? It is not so bad, after all, with its bustle and business and noise. If you see Ellen T will you kindly get her address for me. I must now conclude, as I am soon going to my reading class ; so good bye. From your affectionate friend, M . And now I give the boy's : MY DEAE PARENTS, The anticipation of our Christmas vacation abounds in peculiar delights. Isot only that its " festivities," its social gatherings, and its lively amusements crown the old year with happiness and mirth, but that I come a guest com- mended to your hospitable love by the performance of all you bade me remember when I left you in the glad season of sun and flowers. And time has sped fleetly since reluctant my departing step crossed the threshold of that home whose indulgences and endearments their temporary loss has taught me to value more and more. Yet that restraint is salutary, and that self-reliance is as easily learnt as it is laudable, the propriety of my GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1867. 133 conduct and the readiness of my services shall ere long aptly illustrate. It is with confidence I promise that the close of every year shall find me advancing in your regard by constantly observing the precepts of my excellent tutors and the example of my ex- cellent parents. We break up on Thursday the llth of December instant, and my impatience of the short delay will assure my dear parents of the filial sentiments of Theirs very sincerely, N . P.S. We shall reassemble on the 19th of January. Mr. and Mrs. P. present their respectful compliments. To those who ask what is the difference between a public and a private school, I answer, It is this. GENERAL REPOftT FOR THE YEAR 1869. Results of examination Teaching by rote Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic as taught under Revised Code Minute of 20th February, 1867 Newcastle Commission Inspectors and mechanical teaching Test examinations Suggested change of Grants Compulsory and gratuitous schooling Religious Instruction. DURING the school year more than 25,000 children passed under my inspection; of these, about 13,000 were presented for examination grants. Nearly one-half of these children had been less than one year at school, one-fourth had been at school over one year and less than two years, the remaining fourth had been at school more than two years. Nearly one-half of the children, again, were under nine years of age ; of the other half, two-thirds were between the ages of nine and twelve, the remaining third were twelve years old and upwards. The num- ber of children present on the day of inspection con- siderably exceeded, as usual, the number in average GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1869. 135 attendance. The number presented for examination grants was nearly 66 (65*77) per cent, of the average attendance. In the previous year the number pre- sented had been greater by 3 per cent. But in both years the proportion of children examined for grants was to the number actully present on the day of inspection 14 per cent, less than to the number in average attendance. The proportion of children in the higher and lower standards was almost exactly the same as at my last report ; close upon 27 per cent, of those examined were in paper work, close upon 73 per cent, were in slate work. The rate of failure is for the scholars in paper work 2 per cent, less now than at my last report ; for the scholars in slate work it is If per cent. less. The exact figures are : rate of failure in 18667, in slate work 1T2 per cent., in paper work 18 per cent. ; in 1868-9, in slate work y*5, in paper work 16 per cent. The intervening year 1867-8 was a bad one ; the rate of failure was in slate work 12'8 per cent., in paper work 19'4 per cent. The total rate of failure which in 1866-7 was 13 per cent., rose in 1867-8 to 14'56 per cent., but declined in 1868-9 to 11 '3 per cent. Of last year's failures 20 per cent, were in arithmetic, 7'7 per cent, in writing, and 6 per cent, in reading. This gradation not ill represents the degrees of difficulty in teaching by rote the three matters of 136 REPOETS ON SCHOOLS. arithmetic, writing, and reading. I have repeatedly said that it seems to me the great fault of the Revised Code, and of the famous plan of payment by results, that it fosters teaching by rote ; I am of that opinion still. I think the great task for friends of education is, not to praise payment by results, which is just the sort of notion to catch of itself popular favour, but to devise remedies for the evils which are found to follow the application of this popular notion. The school examinations in view of payment by results are, as I have said, a game of mechanical contrivance in which the teachers will and must more and more learn how to beat us. It is found possible, by in- genious preparation, to get children through the Revised Code examination in reading, writing, and ciphering, without their really knowing how to read, write, and cipher. To take the commonest instance : a book is selected at the beginning of the year for the children of a certain standard ; all the year the children read this book over and over again, and no other. When the inspector comes they are presented to read in this book ; they can read their sentence or two fluently enough, but they cannot read any other book fluently. Yet the letter of the law is satisfied, and the more we undertake to lay down to the very letter the requirements which shall be satisfied in order to earn GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1869. 137 grants, the more do managers and teachers conceive themselves to have the right to hold us to this letter. Suppose the inspector were to produce another book out of his pocket, and to refuse grants for all the children who could not read fluently from it. The managers and teacher would appeal to the Code, which says that the scholar shall be required to read "a paragraph from a reading book used in the school," and would the Department sustain an in- spector in enforcing such an additional test as that which has been mentioned ? The circle of the children's reading has thus been narrowed and impoverished all the year for the sake of a result at the end of it, and the result is an illusion. The reading test affords the greatest facilities for baffling those who imposed it, and therefore in read- ing we find fewest failures, but the writing test is managed almost as easily. Let us take the middle of a school, generally the weakest part, and the part which requires most careful teaching the scholars in the Third Standard. There are books of the Third Standard which, what with verse, pages of words for spelling, exercises for dictation, and sums, contain for the prose reading-lesson less than fifty pages of good sized print. The writing test for scholars of the Third Standard is to write from dictation a 138 BEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. sentence from that same lesson of their reading-book in which they have just previously been set to read. Verse is not commonly used for the reading of the Third Standard ; an examiner would hardly choose to set the very dictation exercises given in the lesson book ; there remain the fifty prose pages which the scholar has been reading and re-reading all the year. His eye and memory have become familiar with them ; he has just refreshed his acquaintance with one of them by reading it ; from this page he is now set to write a sentence slowly dictated to him by a few words at a time. Can it be said that because a child can spell this sentence tolerably and thus pro- duce the required result, he may therefore be set down as able to write easy sentences from dictation ? and must we not own that this result also is in great measure an illusion? We see accordingly, that though the rate of failure in writing does exceed that in reading, yet it exceeds it very slightly, and both are quite inconsiderable. In arithmetic, the rate of failure is much more considerable (20 per cent, in arithmetic, to 7'7 per cent, in writing, and 6 per cent, in reading). To teach children to bring right two sums out of three without really knowing arithmetic seems hard. Yet even here, what can be done to effect this (and it is not so very little) is done, and our examination in GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1869. 139 view of payment by results cannot but encourage its being done. The object being to ensure that on a given day a child shall be able to turn out, worked right, two out of three sums of a certain sort, he is taught the mechanical rule by which sums of this sort are worked, and sedulously practised all the year round in working them ; arithmetical principles he is not taught, or introduced into the science of arithmetic. The rate of failure in this branch also will thus, in all probability, be gradually reduced, but, meanwhile, the most notable result attained will be that which has been happily described by my colleague, Mr. Alderson, when he says, " Unless a vigorous effort is made to infuse more intelligence into its teaching, Government arithmetic will soon be known as a modification of the science peculiar to inspected schools, and remarkable chiefly for its meagreness and sterility." Those who know the German schools know the extreme care taken there to teach elementary matters in such a way as to develop as much as possible the intelligence of the children, and to give them some real mental power. M. Baudouin's report to the French Government on the primary and secondary schools of Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium, a work which is, I believe, in the library of the Department, exhibits in full detail illustrations of 140 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. this prominent feature in German teaching. In my opinion, the want of it in English schools is, and long has been, at least as real a shortcoming in them as their imputed neglect of the lower and more back- ward children. Not less than this neglect it needs, and has long needed, on the part of the Education Department, some action to correct it. The Minute of February 20th, 1867, 1 was meant to correct that impoverishment of the instruction, which was due to the mechanical routine brought in by the Revised Code examination. But it proceeds just in the same course as that examination proceeds. It attempts to lay down, to the very letter, the requirements which shall be satisfied in order to earn grants. The teacher, in consequence, is led to think, not about teaching his subject, but about managing to hit these require- ments. He limits his subject as much as he can, and within these limits tries to cram his pupils with details enough to enable him to say, when they pro- duce them, that they have fulfilled the Departmental requirements, and fairly earned their grant. The ridiculous results obtained by teaching geography, for instance, under these conditions, may be imagined. A child who has never heard of Paris or Edinburgh, will tell you measurements of England in length and 1 See Appendix. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1869. 141 breadth, and square mileages, till his tongue is tired. I have known a class, presented in English history, to take the period from Caesar's landing to the Norman Conquest, and to be acquainted in much detail with the Roman invasion of Anglesey ; but Carnarvon, on the coast opposite Anglesey, being mentioned, they neither knew what Prince of Wales was born there, nor to whom the title of Prince of Wales belonged. Another class took the period from Caesar's landing to the reign of Egbert, and knew the history of this period, or what passes for its history, minutely, but only one of them had heard of the battle of Waterloo. It is true, for this sort of unsound performance inspectors pluck candidates for the sup- plementary grants much more freely than they pluck candidates for the main grants. But this is only because these supplementary grants are so insigni- ficant that managers and teacher care comparatively little whether they are obtained or not, and mean- while, the object of the Department, to counteract the narrow, unintelligent mode of instruction en- couraged by the Revised Code, is not attained. Great stress has been laid on the declaration of the Duke of Newcastle's Commission, that " the object is to find some constant and stringent motive to induce teachers to do that part of their duty which is at once most unpleasant and most important." This 142 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. unpleasant and important part of their duty, accord- ing to the same Commission, is, "to see that all the children under their charge really learn to read, write, and cipher thoroughly well." And some of my colleagues speak as if this undoubtedly important and desirable object were certainly attained by giving to our examinations their present character, and as if whoever wished to modify that present character, contested the importance and desirability of that object. " If children are not well taught and trained in the lower classes," says Mr. Duport, " they will never be taught at all." And again, " First, let a school be thoroughly in working order from top to bottom as regards accuracy of elementary grounding." Undoubtedly ; but is a child's elementary grounding in thorough working order, because he can read fluently a sentence in a short book which he has been reading and re-reading all the year? But perhaps it is only meant that the elementary grounding is in thorough working order comparatively with what it was formerly, before the legislation of 1862. This is a hard comparison to make with accuracy, so as to be sure that the improvement in question has actually taken place. To say with confidence yes, one ought to have known well a district of schools, and the same district, for at least five or six years before the legis- lation of 1862 as well as after it ; whereas some of GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1869. 143 those who say yes with most confidence, seem but, before 1862, to have been well acquainted with one school. However, no one questions the advantage of an individual grant-rewarded examination, or that the Newcastle Commissioners did well in suggesting it, or that the Education Department did well in giving effect to this suggestion ; the real question is, and it is eminently a question for educationists, since the general public has neither care nor skill for it, and is sure to be perfectly satisfied as soon as it hears of paying by results the real question is, whether we have not somewhat overdone this sort of examination by attaching to it so overwhelming a share of our grants, and consequently so overwhelming an import- ance ; and whether some improved mode of combining it with the old inspection might not be hit on. It is urged, indeed, that the remedy is in the inspector's hands, because " it can only be by the ex- press recommendation of an inspector that any school obtains its full grant while it produces nothing better than mechanical results, and if, after due warning, any school continues to do so, the reason must lie in the inspector's acting on only half of his instructions." So it is the inspector's neglect of duty which appears to be in fault. But I ask again Suppose the in- spector were to produce a book out of his pocket, and to pluck all the children who could not read fluently 144 KEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. from it, would the Department sustain him ? The managers would appeal to the Code, which says, that the scholar shall be required to read " a paragraph from a reading book used in the school." It is just the weakness of a system which attempts to prescribe exactly the minimum which shall be done, and which makes it highly penal to fall short of this minimum, that when the minimum is somehow produced, there seems a good deal of hardship in still exacting a penalty. If the inspector inflicted deductions to any such extent as really to grapple with the evil of mechanical teaching, I cannot but think that he would find himself in collision with that very neces- sary official notification concerning the power of in- flicting deductions, which he received at the outset My Lords do not wish this power to ~be exercised in any but serious cases. Again, it is urged that an inspector is not forbidden by the Revised Code to retain " a liberal and intelli- gent inspection " along with the new examination, and that an inspector who has an assistant has ample time for such inspection. But the question is, not whether an inspector can make such an inspection, but whether the school will care much for it when it is the new examination which brings the grant, and whether it will do as much good as it formerly did when it is no longer much cared for. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1869. 145 All test examinations, it is said again, may be said to narrow reading upon a certain given point, and to make it mechanical. If a man wants a certificate or diploma of you, you say you will give it him if he learns this and that, which you prescribe ; and you may be said to cramp his studies by thus limiting them. Certainly, if a man wants a certificate, or a diploma, or honours, of you, you must fix just what he shall get them for, which is by no means of the same extent as a liberal education. But this is a reason against making an excessive use of such test examinations, of turning too much of a man's read- ing into reading for certificates, diplomas, or honours. This is why our University system of examinations, competitions, and honours, is so little favoured in Germany. 1 But, at any rate, to make a narrowing system of test examinations govern the whole in- spection of our primary schools, when we have before us, not individuals wanting a diploma from us, but organizations wanting to be guided by us into the best ways of learning and teaching, seems like saddling ourselves with a confessed cause of im- perfection unnecessarily. Admitting the stimulus of the test examination to 1 The least studious of German countries, Austria, is the one most abounding in university examinations like our own. " Le pays a examens, I'Autriche, est precisiment celui dans lequel on ne travaille pas," says M. Laboulaye. (M.A.) L 146 EEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. be salutary, we may therefore yet say that when it is over-employed it has two faults : it tends to make the instruction mechanical, and to set a bar to duly ex- tending it. School grants earned in the way fixed by the Revised Code by the scholar performing a certain minimum expressly laid down beforehand must inevitably concentrate the teacher's attention on the means for producing this minimum, and not simply on the good instruction of his school. The danger to be guarded against is the mistake of treat- ing these two the producing this minimum success- fully and the good instruction of a school as if they were identical. The safeguard seems to be in re- ducing the overwhelming preponderance of this examination and its results, at the same time that we retain all its useful stimulus. In my report two years ago I said, " More free play for the inspector, and, in consequence, more free play for the teacher" As long as the whole grant-earning examination turns on results precisely and literally specified by the Department beforehand, so long the inspection will be mechanical and unintelligent, and it will inevitably draw the teaching after it. It will be remembered that the Duke of New- castle's Commission attached great importance to leaving inspection just as it was, the new capitation grant examination being therefore kept subordinate GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1869. 147 to it, and committed to a subordinate functionary ; for when, practically, the substantive result of the inspector's proceedings in a school is the grant for this examination, it will, whatever the Department may say, efface everything else. The Newcastle Commission proposed 15s. per head as the maximum grant to be earned per scholar. Our actual maximum is 12s. per head, the grant under the Minute of February being so insignificant (about 13,000, I think, last year for the whole of England), that it is not .worth taking into account. Of this 12s., 4s. is maintenance grant, paid on average attendance ; 8s. is capitation grant on examination in reading, writing, and ciphering. Some such plan as the following seems to me calcu- lated to temper what is excessive and retain what is useful in the system now in force : Suppose, the 4s. grant on attendance being left as it is, the examina- tion grant were reduced from 8s. to 6s. ; 2s. on read- ing, 2s. on writing, 2s. on arithmetic, instead of 2s. Sd. on each of these branches as at present. To the 2s. thus saved let there be added a third shilling, making a 3s. grant on average attendance, to be paid if the inspector finds the school taught with intelligence, if he finds proper extent given to the instruction, if he finds the work done in good form and style, and if, L 2 148 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. finally, the staff of pupil-teachers is not less than one for every forty scholars after the first twenty-five. The inspector to have the power to recommend the re- duction of this higher instruction grant by thirds for failure in any one of the three first points specified. The fourth point to be a condition of the grant being paid at all. The stipulation in point the third (that as to form and style of work) would give the Department an opportunity of checking the inspector's recommenda- tions and verifying their accuracy, because the paper work of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Standards, in which this merit of form and style would chiefly appear, is sent up to the Department. But some confidence must be reposed in the inspector if the inspection is to have any life at all. Thus there would be three grants, an attendance grant of 4s., an elementary examination grant of 6s., a higher instruction grant of 3s. ; total grant to be earned, 13s. The need for grants under the Minute of February, and for that Minute itself, would cease. The reduced grant for elementary examination might, perhaps, be made earnable by schools not under cer- tificated teachers, if they were reported healthy, properly fitted, and conducted with due order. The Department might with advantage recom- mend managers to pay out of the higher instruction GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1869. 149 grant a sum to the principal teacher not less than the sum he would formerly have received as gratuity for instructing his pupil-teachers. The recommenda- tion would be sufficient in general without an abso- lute appropriation of the grant or a part of it ; but the Department might also reserve the power of withholding the grant altogether in cases where it appeared from the inspector's report that the recom- mendation was disregarded without fully sufficient cause. Some encouragement of this kind to make teachers seek diligently for pupil-teachers, and cordially instruct them, I look upon as almost indis- pensable if our pupil-teacher system is again to become what it once was, and what our coming wants require. The institution also of a system of super- annuation grants for teachers cannot be much longer delayed. Several of my colleagues have said how acceptable and useful the yearly volume of minutes and reports issued by the Committee of Council would be to the teachers of schools under inspection. Blue Books are often reproached with being costly to produce and unread when produced ; it seems a pity not to convey the Education Blue Book to quarters where it would be read with keen interest and turned to practical use. The questions of compulsory schooling, gratuitous schooling, secular schooling, are rapidly passing out 150 EEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. of the sphere of abstract discussion, and entering into the sphere of practical politics. In that sphere, however they may be settled, it will not and cannot be on their merits ; and it seems vain to repeat the considerations proper to one sphere when the matter is about to be settled in another. As to compulsory schooling, I will only say that in no country is the text " The "bread of the needy is their life ; he that de- priveth them thereof is a man of blood," felt with so much force as here ; that a law of direct compulsion on the parent and child would therefore, probably, be every day violated in practice ; and that, so long as this is the case, to a law levelled at the parent and child, a law levelled at the employer is preferable. As to gratuitous schooling, which is supposed to follow necessarily upon compulsory schooling, I will only remark that in Prussia, where schooling is com- pulsory, and really compulsory, there is no primary school which does not levy a school fee, though a low one. There remains the question of secular schooling, and this is a question of which the solution is above all likely to be governed by politics, lay or religious, and, by being so governed, may do serious harm to education. I address myself on this point to the managers of British schools, with many of whom I have an acquaintance of now nearly twenty years. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1869. 151 One of the main objects for which their schools were instituted was to promote the knowledge of the Bible. That this or any other branch of instruction will be really provided for by the Sunday school no serious educationist believes ; but neither is it really provided for if it is withdrawn from inspection. My own observation, my inquiries, and the entries of the teachers in their log-books, all convince me that the knowledge of the Bible in British schools is not what their managers would wish it to be. The other day, in a school where the managers were so solicitous for this instruction that they begged me to hear and take part in an examination in it, the question was asked in the boys' school, " Of whom was it said, ' Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile,' and who said it?" Not a boy could tell. The same question was asked in the girls' school in the after- noon with the same result. This does not surprise me, for it follows naturally from the Bible knowledge of the children being wholly excluded from the matters which appear in the school's inspection. Let the managers of British schools set an example which other managers also, if they are wise, may follow. Let them make the main outlines of Bible history, and the getting by heart a selection of the finest Psalms, the most interesting passages from the historical and prophetical books of the Old Testa- 152 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. ment, and the chief parables, discourses, and exhorta- tions of the New, a part of the regular school work, to be submitted to inspection and to be seen in its strength or weakness like any other. This could raise no jealousies; or, if it still raises some, let a sacrifice be made of them for the sake of the end in view. Some will say that what we propose is but a small use to put the Bible to ; yet it is that on which all higher use of the Bible is to be built, and its adoption is the only chance for saving the one elevating and inspiring element in the scanty instruction of our primary schools from being sacri- ficed to a politico-religious difficulty. There was no Greek school in which Homer was not read ; cannot our popular schools, with their narrow range and their jejune alimentation in secular literature, do as much for the Bible as the Greek schools did for Homer ? GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1871. Useful change in Standards A Grant-earning examination desirable Numbers in Standards Rate of failure Extra subjects ; their importance Use of Literature Returning favour to profession of Teacher. [February, 1872. BY instructions dated the 14th of October last, I am told to report on the working of the Code l of 1871 in my new district, between the 1st of May and the 31st of August 1871. A good deal of this period was taken up with the inspection of returns ; so I have desired my excellent assistant, Mr. Healing, in order that I might get a somewhat larger basis of facts whereon to ground my observations, to draw out for me tables showing the results of the examinations held by us up to the end of the year. This he has done with much labour and 1 The New Code which followed the Act of 1870. Denominational inspection was now abolished, and Mr. Arnold henceforth visited all Public Elementary Schools in his district, which compiised the Metropolitan Division of Westminster and three outlying census divisions. 154 KEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. great exactness. The results thus ascertained I com- pare with the results for the year when I last made a report, the year 1869, in which the Revised Code, and not, as at present, the New Code, was in operation. A great change has been made by the abolition of the old First Standard, and by beginning the grant- earning examination with what used to be the Second Standard. I find that whereas, in 1869, 65'77 of the average attendance appeared on the examination schedule, in 1871 under the New Code only 48'63 appeared there. In schools for infants the grant-earning examination has naturally dwindled to something very small in- deed. Whereas this examination in 1869 reached 33'44 per cent, of the average attendance in these schools, it has reached under the New Code but 8-22. I regard the abolition of the old First Standard as a benefit. The examination for it consumed time and labour out of proportion to the good done. To enable children to pass in the new Standard I. the teacher must have attended to the matters required for the old one ; and to make this assurance stronger, I still test by the examination of the old First Stand- ard a certain number of the children who, under the former Code, would have been in it, Of this GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1871. 155 number, ray assistant or I pick one-half at random ; the other half we allow the teacher to select. Of course he selects the best, and we can thus judge him fairly enough. At the same time the hardship alleged against a grant-earning examination that it reckons as ignorance what may simply be natural nervousness disappears in that case where alone it can be alleged plausibly and reasonably, the exami- nation of the youngest children. Nevertheless, I do not wish the grant-earning examination to be entirely lost for any school; it supplies a stimulus of a special and valuable kind. I wish the infant schools under my inspection to have a small class for presentation in the new First Standard ; this may be easily managed, and they will find it of use to them. The proportion presented in the First Standard is of course greater now than ever, for it comprises those who, but for the New Code, would have been pre- sented in two standard?. In 1871, under the New Code, I find 39'20 of the examinees were in Standard I., 23'44 were in Standard II., 17'66 were in Stand- ard III., 10'93 were in Standard IV., 6'1 5 were in Standard V., 2'61 were in Standard VI. In 1869, under the Revised Code, there were 29'41 in Standard I., 23-90 in Standard II., 19'64 in Standard III., 14'25 in Standard IV., 7'31 in Standard V., and 4'28 in 156 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. Standard VI. In 1871, 37'35 of the children pre- sented were examined on paper ; in 1869 only 27-05. The New Code of course deranged a good deal, at first, the calculations of teachers, whom it compelled to present children, at short notice, in standards for which they had not intended them. In every stand- ard the rate of failure was higher than in 1869 ; and the total rate of failure was 18'81 per cent., against ll'Sl per cent, in 1869. The rate of failure was highest in arithmetic still, as it always has been; the failure in this branch of study being five times as great as the failure in reading, and twice as great as the failure in writing and spelling. In the extra subjects fixed by the fourth schedule of the New Code, all the examinees, except those presented in recitation, were examined on paper. The rate of failure in the paper- work was nearly 40 per cent. ; 902 papers were examined, and 358 of them were marked failure. This schedule of extra subjects is very valuable ; by it, and by it alone, does the Department extend its care beyond the providing the mere instruments of knowledge to the providing knowledge itself. The order and plan by which this is provided is of the very highest importance. The schedule cannot at present be regarded as furnishing more than an GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1871. 157 inchoate plan ; it will require to have all its parts developed and co-ordered, and better text-books than those now in use will have to be created. I showed to a distinguished physiologist the papers in physiology which had been worked under the present schedule ; he told me that every one was quite worthless, and that apparently the method and text-books by which the subject had been taught were quite worth- less too. If this is the case with branches of knowledge so distinctly marked off and so clearly conceived as the natural sciences, how much more is it the case with that immense indeterminate field called literature. Here, above all, neither plan nor order of study exists, nor any well-conceived choice of books ; yet here, above all, these are necessary. What is comprised under the word literature is in itself the greatest power available in education ; of this power it is not too much to say that in our elementary schools at present no use is made at all. The reading books and the absence of plan being what they are, the whole use that the Government, now that its connection with religious instruction is abandoned, makes of the mighty engine of literature in the edu- cation of the working classes, amounts to little more, even when most successful, than the giving them the power to read the newspapers. 158 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. On the schedule of extra S2cbfects, as we call them, but which everywhere in the well-educated countries of the Continent form part of the regular programme of elementary schools, the attention of educationists should be fixed as the most important matter, in con- junction with the pupil-teacher broadsheet and the syllabus for the training school examination, of all that is done or attempted by the Government for ele- mentary education. I have never concealed from your Lordships my opinion that our mode of payment by results, as it is called, puts in the way of the good teaching and the good learning of these subjects, almost insuperable difficulties. I am not going to enlarge on that point now, and I know how conve- nient the plan of payment by results is found for many purposes to be. What I wish to insist on is, that studies and books are among the matters of first importance to engage your Lordships' attention in dealing with elementary schools; more important than those political, ecclesiastical, and administrative questions, which from the necessity of the case do occupy your Lordships' attention so much more. For consulting, for collecting information, and for advising upon this matter of studies and books, the class of Senior Inspectors x which your Lordships have lately created might, perhaps, in conjunction with the Inspectors of 1 Mr, Arnold was one of them. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1871. 159 training schools, be employed with advantage. They might also perhaps be found useful, and might relieve the Central Office, if they were placed in direct commu- nication with the school boards of their division, as the Schul-Rath, or representative of the Education Department, is a member of all school boards in Germany. I do not say that the divisional Inspec- tor should in this country be an ex-officio member of the school boards of his division, at any rate he should not, I think, be a voting member; but he might with advantage be put in close connection with them, and take part in many of their deliberations. The school boards will have to deal with this matter of books and studies, and some of the principal school boards are so composed as to be singularly well qualified for dealing with it. I am sure they would wish to act in concert with the Education Depart- ment, which has long and wide experience at any rate. The limited and local action of school boards will exempt them in dealing with the question of school books, from the weight of pressure and of odium which the central department, if it attempts to deal with it, must bear ; this may make the school boards better principals in the matter than the De- partment. On the other hand there is an inconve- nience either in the Department merely following the lead of the school boards, or in its allowing books 160 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. which the school boards have rejected as worthless ; and both these alternatives might be avoided by a concert such as I have suggested between the school boards and the Department. I feel sure the school boards, on their side, would welcome it. The growing concern for popular education, and the growing sense of the magnitude of the interests which depend upon it, of themselves do much to direct notice to the profession of teacher, to invite aspirants to it, and to free it from the disfavour which in these last years it had incurred. There is no doubt that it is becoming easier to obtain pupil- teachers, and this return of the tide has probably by no means yet reached its highest point. No policy could more judiciously further this happy movement than the policy which the school board of London is announcing its intention to follow. By offering to the teacher, in addition to his fixed salary, a moiety of the examination grant, it proposes to restore his augmentation ; by offering to him special payments for the instruction of pupil-teachers, it proposes to restore his pupil-teacher gratuity. It is well known how heavy a discouragement the withdrawal by the Revised Code of the augmentation grant to teachers was felt by them to be ; it is well known how the withdrawal of the gratuity for instructing pupil- teachers diminished the zeal in finding them. It may GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1871. 161 well be urged that local boards can employ with ad- vantage a system of appropriated grants which, when it reached a great scale, became inconvenient for the central government to employ, and the force of this plea for the Revised Code I by no means underrate ; but still it may be permitted us, who remember the Minutes of 1846, to see with satisfaction that a body of men like those who make up the London school board, desiring to attain that primary and essential requisite for popular education, a supply of good teachers, revert to the Minutes of 1846 and to they policy of their author. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1872. Undenominational Inspection Improved Eesults in 1872 Special Subjects Recitation, its utility Latin desirable ; should be taught from the Vulgate Different Classes of Schools com- pared, as to Class of Scholars, Management, Organization, and Methods Drill Pupil Teachers Registers. I HAVE now had under my inspection for an entire year my new district, comprising schools of all denominations. It has been very interesting to me, after an acquaintance of so many years with one division only of public elementary schools, to make acquaintance with the others. In no quarters, so far as I have been able to observe, has the change to a common system of inspection been received with hostility, and personally I feel that I owe thanks to the managers of my new schools for the frank- ness, kindness, and cordiality with which they have accepted the visits and the observations of a stranger. My assistant, Mr. Healing, has as usual furnished me with statistics showing the results of the examina- tions held by us during the year ending the 31st of GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1872. 163 August, 1872, and comparing these results with those of the previous year. From these returns it appears that the total average rate of failure in the main examination was not very different in the two years. The rate was 18 "81 in 1871, and 16'30 in 1872. The difference, therefore, is in favour of this last year, and shows improve- ment. In every Standard there is this improvement, except in the Sixth, but the scholars in the Sixth Standard form less than 3 per cent of the whole number examined. The general rate of failure con- tinues to be lowest in reading, highest in arithmetic. In the so-called special subjects the rate of failure was almost exactly the same in both years. " Recitation " is the special subject which produces at present, so far as I can observe, most good. The great fault of the instruction in our elementary schools (of the secular part of it, at any rate) is, that it at most gives to a child the mechanical posses-' sion of the instruments of knowledge, but does nothing to form him, to put him in a way of making the best possible use of them. As things now are, the time is not ripe for laying down a theory of how this is to be thoroughly done and following it ; all that can be said is, that what practically will be found to contribute most towards forming a pupil is familiarity with masterpieces ; familiarity with M 2 164 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. for the less advanced pupil, in a very limited number and with each object of his study standing singly; for the more advanced pupil, in a series arranged according to some well-planned order. If the " reci- tation " is carefully watched, as to the authors and pieces selected, it does give us something, though only a commencement, of that which for the less advanced pupil is needed. I can already see the good effects of it, and they may be extended much further. Music, now that instruction in it is made universal, ought to lay the foundation in the children of our elementary schools of a cultivated power of perception ; " recitation," in the present absence of any attempt even to raise their reading into some- thing of a literary study, must be relied upon for carrying the power of perception onward. It may seem over-sanguine, but I hope to see Latin, also, much more used as a special subject, and even adopted, finally, as part of the regular instruc- tion in the upper classes of all elementary schools. Of course, I mean Latin studied in a very simple way ; but I am more and more struck with the stimulating and instructing effect upon a child's mind of possessing a second language, in however limited a degree, as an object of reference and com- parison. Latin is the foundation of so much in the written and spoken language of modern Europe, that GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1872. 165 it is the best language to take as a second language ; in our own written and book language, above all, it fills so large a part that we perhaps hardly know how much of their reading falls meaningless upon the eye and ear of children in our elementary schools, from their total ignorance of either Latin or a modern language derived from it. For the little of languages that can be taught in our elementary schools, it is far better to go to the root at once ; and Latin, besides, is the best of all languages to learn grammar by. But it should by no means be taught as in our classical schools; far less time should be spent on the grammatical framework, and classical literature should be left quite out of view. A second language, and a language coming very largely into the vocabulary of modern nations, is what Latin should stand for to the teacher of an elementary school. I am convinced that for his purpose the best way would be to disregard classical Latin entirely, to use neither Cornelius Nepos, nor Eutro- pius, nor Caesar, nor any delectus from them, but to use the Latin Bible, the Vulgate. A chapter or two from the story of Joseph, a chapter or two from Deuteronomy, and the first two chapters of St. Luke's Gospel would be the sort of delectus we want ; add to them a vocabulary and a simple grammar of the main forms of the Latin language, and you have a 166 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. perfectly compact and cheap school book, and yet all that you need. In the extracts the child would be at home, instead of, as in extracts from classical Latin, in an utterly strange land ; and the Latin of the Vulgate, while it is real and living Latin, is yet, like the Greek of the New Testament, much nearer to modern idiom, and therefore much easier for a modern learner than classical idiom can be. True, a child whose delectus is taken from Cornelius Nepos or Csesar will be better prepared, perhaps, for going on to Virgil and Cicero than a child whose delectus is taken from the Vulgate. But we do not want to carry our elementary schools into Virgil or Cicero ; one child in 5,000, with a special talent, may go on to higher schools and to Virgil, and he will go on to them all the better for the little we have at any rate given him. But what we want to give to our elementary schools in general is the vocabulary, to some extent, of a second language, and that language one which is at the bottom of a great deal of modern life and modern language. This, I am convinced, we may give in some such method as the method I have above suggested, but in no other. I strongly urge the teachers of our leading elementary schools, and all who are interested in raising the instruction in these schools, to reflect on what I have here said. I have naturally been led to compare the new GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1872. 167 classes of elementary schools brought now under my inspection with that class with which I have been for so many years familiar. British and Wesleyan schools are generally supposed to draw their children from the lower middle class much more than National schools, and to have on that account some advantage in the quality and home- training of their scholars. As regards London schools, at any rate, I find this to be less the case than I had been led to expect. In the quality and home condition of the children there is not very much difference, I think, between a good National school in the west of London and a good British or Wesleyan school. In the Roman Catholic schools the children do much more decidedly belong to the poor, and very many of them to the Irish poor, who are a class by themselves. Ragged schools, I think, rather than National schools, take the really poor of London who are not Roman Catholics. In British and Wesleyan schools there is in general more of self-government, and of the life and vigour that go with self-government, than in National schools. They are more created by the class that .uses them, and managed by that class, than are the National schools, which are, in general, created for the class that is to use them by people above it. But I find that in really good schools belonging to 168 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. the Church of England success does practically establish for the teacher an independence much the same as that which is enjoyed by the successful teacher of a British or Wesleyan school ; the teacher is not over-meddled with, and is free to put forth all the vigour and initiative he can find in himself. As specimens of elementary schools, I am particularly pleased with some of the large National schools for girls which have come under my inspection in London. As to school organization, two things strike me in National schools. The first is, that they do not use the gallery enough, and do not, in infant schools, make it large enough. The Methodists use it, perhaps, too much, and make it too large, to the inconvenience, often, of their schoolrooms for older children. But their use of it for infants is excellent, and may be profitably studied by the managers of National schools. And even for older children the use of the gallery has its advantage for many school purposes. The other matter of school organization which I notice in National schools is connected with this insufficient use of the gallery. It is the retention . of what I must call dame-school methods, in the use of loose benches put in squares on the floor for classes that are neither in desks nor on the gallery. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1872. 169 Now, in general, when the floor is not occupied either by gallery or by desk-group, it should be clear ; and the class which is neither in gallery nor in desk- group should stand. It is often well to have a class standing ; but a class sitting on loose benches has neither the smartness of a class standing nor has it the rest and the conveniences for work of a class seated at desks. Inattentiveness and lounging on * the one hand, and on the other hand bad habits in writing, come from the use of benches without desks attached to them. I am glad to say that I find drill more and more taught. I think it would be well to allow a certain time taken for drill or calisthenics, whenever these are regularly and properly taught, to count as part of the school time for girls' schools as well as for boys' schools. The supply of pupil- teachers is improving, and so also, I hope, are the prospects of the elementary teacher in general. I should like to see school boards make it a rule to pay, in all cases where they employ pupil-teachers in their schools, the old gratuity to the head teacher for instructing them. No part of his money was better earned, and I am sure that the managers who restore it to him will receive the fruit of it both in the better supply of pupil-teachers and in their better instruction. 170 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. I conclude with a remark on school registers. I am afraid that it is desirable to employ every mechanical safeguard possible for the strictly accu- rate keeping of these. Such a safeguard would be the adoption of a rule that both absences and pre- sences should be always distinctly marked; the former by an 0, and the latter by a cross, not a dot. An excuse for false totals would thus be taken away, which the indistinct state of the registers, as at present kept, now too often supplies. GENEKAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1874. Progress since 1872 Defective attendance Bishop of Manchester and Revised Code Effect of Literature on intelligence The Grammar Paper, as a literary Test ; unsatisfactory results Paraphrasing Parsing Remedy suggested Matriculation of Teachers. AT the beginning of the year 1873 I was absent on leave for four months, and my inspection of my district was consequently in that year very incom- plete. I therefore omit the year 1872-3, and institute a comparison, not with that year, but with the year preceding it. The intervention of a year between the periods compared makes the comparison, perhaps, more instructive and interesting. 1. The total percentage of failure in the main examination is somewhat lower than it was, being 14-51 in 1873>4, to 16'30 in 1871-2. The improve- ment is in every Standard except the Third. It is most in reading, least in arithmetic; yet even in arithmetic there is much improvement in Standards IV., V., and VI. 2. The proportion of scholars presented in the 172 KEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. higher standards has decidedly risen. Nearly 41 per cent, are in the four higher standards in 1878-4 ; in 1871-2 only 36 per cent. 3. The special subjects (of which I observe that geography, grammar, and recitation supply 95 per cent.) are attempted much more generally and with much better success. In the past year the scholars taking them were more than half as many again as in 1871-2. The percentage of failures in them was 40'84 in 1871-2 ; during last year it was only 23'21. On the other hand, although there are more children attending the schools now than there were in 1871-2, the number of those who have made their 250 attendances has slightly diminished. It appears that of the total number of children re- turned as the average attendance for 1873-4, 17*02 per cent, did not attend 250 times, and 10'90 per cent, were not present on the day of inspection, although they had attended 250 times. But it is well known that the average attendance is made up out of a number of scholars much larger than it seems to indicate, and in fact, during the last year, the total number present on the day of inspection in the schools of my district exceeded by 14'92 per cent, the total average attendance. So that of the children present at my inspections during the past year only 6273 per cent, had their names in the GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1874. 173 schedule, either for examination in one of the standards or as infants. This points to that slightness of hold upon the body of the children attending them, which is the weak side of our schools, and constitutes the great difficulty of our teachers. No manipulation of the Code will diminish this difficulty or cure this weak- ness. An increased sense of the general necessity of instruction, leading to a general enforcement of school attendance, is the only remedy for them. Public opinion is advancing in this sense, and in my opinion the desirable thing, even still, is to promote in every possible way its advance, rather than to risk outrunning and checking it by stringent legal enactments. To recognize the real cause of weakness in our schools is of the highest importance, because mis- taking it may lead, and I think has led, to grave errors in dealing with them. The Bishop of Manchester, 1 whose voice in these matters has great and deserved weight, was at the beginning inclined, I think, to view the Revised Code of 1862 with favour. He thought that the backwardness observed in the instruction of children in the lower part of an elementary school arose from the teacher's neglect of them, and that it would be 1 The late Dr. Eraser. 174 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. cured and the schools benefited by the Revised Code. He now thinks, as I understand him, that the Revised Code has acted injuriously on the instruction in elementary schools, and that before the Code came this instruction was better. Such has always been my opinion. The weakness is in the unawakened and unin- formed minds of the majority of our school children, even of those who can pass the examination in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and sometimes in an extra subject or two besides. This exceeds, so far as my observation goes, anything of the kind to be found in the schools of other countries. In a school of seventy children which I visited last year, a school with annual grants and pupil-teachers, there was not one single child who knew the meaning of the word feeble. The longer my experience, the more I discover how prevalent among our school children is the condition of mind which this sort of ignorance indicates. The composite character of our language may go for something towards ex- plaining it, the past life and circumstances of our poorer classes may go for something. But it exists, it is an obstacle of the most fatal kind to instruc- tion, and so far as it is due to the mixed character of our language, it is quite conquerable. Children of the classes that are better off get over it readily GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1874. 175 here ; in America, so far as one can hear, it has been got over universally. So far as it is due to the life and circumstances, past or actual, of our poorer classes, it should be the school's great business to grapple with it, to get over it; and it should be the great business of an Education Department to help the school in doing so. The animation of mind, the multiplying of ideas, the promptness to connect, in the thoughts, one thing with another, and to illustrate one thing by another, are what are wanted ; just what letters, as they are called, are supposed to communicate. For this purpose I always look with special interest at the grammar papers of candidates for admission at the training schools. These candidates have been in general picked scholars of our elementary schools ; they have been retained under instruction till the age of eighteen of nineteen ; they have taught in our elementary schools as assistants, and they are des- tined to teach there as principals. The grammar paper is that paper in their examination which most directly deals with letters, properly so called, and which best shows us, therefore, the amount of the candidate's hold upon letters, and the chance of his communicating the power of letters to others. The candidate has to paraphrase a passage of English poetry, and no exercise can better show 176 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. his range of ideas and quickness of apprehension. He has to parse and analyse sentences, and no exercise can better show his clearness of under- standing and his power of reasoning. He has to answer a few questions about our own language or literature. Altogether, the paper is one which tests his information, judgment, and taste more thoroughly than any other of his papers tests them. The grammar paper, then, is eminently a test of mental activity and resource, and hence its im- portance. To work successfully a sum in stocks requires, comparatively, but a narrow division of the whole extent of our faculties to be called into play ; to work a grammar or literature paper suc- cessfully requires a much larger one. If this is so, the grammar papers of candidates for admission at the recent examination are most disappointing. I have looked over several hundreds of them ; at no time since I have been a school inspector have I known them worse. It seems as if during the last four and twenty years there had been effected no progress at all towards giving to our elementary schools what they most want, the mental appre- hensiveness and resource which letters impart. The number and hopes of those destined for the profes- sion of teacher may have now revived, but with this revival mental quickening has not come ; it seems, GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1874. 177 even, as if the picked scholars of our elementary schools were further off from it now than they were twelve years ago. The candidates were told to paraphrase that stanza of Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming which begins : " Far differently the mute Oneyda took His calumet of peace and cup of joy ; As monumental bronze unchanged his look." I dislike the practice of culling in an official report absurd answers to examination questions in order to amuse the public with them ; what I quote will be for the purpose of illustrating the defect of mind to which I have been calling attention, and I shall quote just what is necessary for this purpose and no more. "His demeanour was as unchangeable as ornamental iron-work," is a good specimen of the style of paraphrasing "As monumental bronze un- changed his look," which prevailed in the papers. One candidate paraphrased it in this way : " His countenance was fixed as though it had been a memorial of copper and zinc " ; and this scientific way of presenting the equivalent for bronze is noticeable. It happens that the scientific equivalent for bronze is not given, I believe, correctly ; yet, had it been given correctly it would have been no better. Sir John Lubbock, a very distinguished advocate for N 178 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. the teaching of the natural sciences in schools, says : " Mathematics tend to make the mind exact ; the classics, besides their other advantages, give a know- ledge of human nature, but neither of these cultivate or strengthen the powers of balancing probabilities and of observation." Cultivate or strengthen them he means, as the natural sciences do. Yet surely it is precisely observation, the tact acquired by observa- tion, which tells us that the scientific equivalent for bronze is here out of place and ludicrous. And one may study the natural sciences and not have the observation to feel this ; but any one with what is called a tincture of letters will feel it. It really seems to me that to paraphrase passably a few lines such as those from Campbell is as good a proof of general intelligence as any that could be required or given. To paraphrase them eminently well may be a proof of a special faculty, and not necessarily indicative of a general intelligence of an eminent order. But to paraphrase them passably is at least a good negative proof, a proof that one's mind is not so poorly furnished and so dull of movement that one must be pronounced wanting in general in- telligence. It must be remembered, no doubt, that the lines in question are taken at hazard, and not from a poem which the candidates have been before- hand told to study. It would be extremely interest- GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1874. 179 ing to make a raid among the youth of the wealthier classes, whether at their schools and universities, or at their scenes of amusement, to catch five or six hundred of them from the age of eighteen to that of twenty-five and to subject them to the same test of their general intelligence to which, by this passage of poetry to be paraphrased, the general intelligence of the candidates from elementary schools is subjected. It would be most interesting, and opinions may differ as to the results which such an application of the test would show. All I say is, that the test seems to be in itself as good a test as can be found of a young person's general intelligence, and that when tried by it, the candidates for admission into the training schools, the picked scholars of the elementary schools, fail most lamentably. The whole of the grammar paper was ill-done ; the parsing and the questions where memory and information were tried, gave no better result than the paraphrasing. The ignorance or the mistakes sometimes showed originality, or were monstrous enough to be amusing. The candidates were asked to distinguish between adverbs and conjunctions, adverbs and prepositions, adverbs and adjectives. One of them answered : " If a word is used to con- nect sentences, to govern nouns and pronouns, to point out any quality or circumstance respecting the N 2 180 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. noun, it is clearly not an adverb ; there is, however, a rule which says that if a word is not wanted in a sentence for any of the above ways, it shall be thrown into the common sink, which is adverbs." Thrown into the common sink, which is adverbs, has really a kind of merit. The candidates were asked to account historically for the presence of so many words of foreign origin in the English language. To this one of them answered : " In the early times Anglo-Saxon was the language introduced here ; as time rolled on, Greek prevailed, and a few Greek words are now used which have been retained since the Greeks left, as physics, metaphorphosis (sic), &c." This is comical enough to give one at least some sensation beyond the mere tedium which is all that the mass of bad answers has to offer. But bad the answers for the most part are ; bad, both in the eases where memory and information are chiefly tested, and also in the more important cases where general intelligence is tested. The grammar paper in question suggests remarks of which some concern the Education Department and others the schools. To begin with what con- cerns the Education Department. The stanza from Campbell is too much for candidates for admission, coming to them as a passage they have never seen before. The stanza is a good one, but the poem GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1874. 181 from which it comes has no great merit and is by no means universally read, even by educated people. Probably, therefore, the candidates have not read it, and the stanza from it is in that case too hard for them, although an educated person, from the greater range of his general reading, might paraphrase it quite well at sight. Why should not the yearly syllabus which gives notice to the students in- training colleges of the matters in which they will be examined, name some short classical work of English poetry to be read by candidates for admis- sion, and from which the passage for paraphrase, and one or two questions, will be taken ? Then the grammar paper has too many of those questions which are answered by producing extracts of a grammar learnt by heart ; questions about the classification of pronouns, for example, or about the nature of adverbs or conjunctions. We have no English grammar of such a standard value that it is worth learning by heart ; to learn their actual gram- mars by heart does the candidates no real good and tells nothing about their real proficiency. Questions of this sort might well be reduced to two for the whole paper. Then as to the distribution of marks. It is highly undesirable that for repeating a page of grammar learnt by heart about the classification of pronouns, a candidate should be able to get as many 182 REPORTS OF SCHOOLS.' marks as for a good paraphrase, which tests his general intelligence, or for the parsing exercise, which tests his practical power of applying all the grammar he has learnt. There should be a gradu- ated scale of marks for the questions, the parsing exercise and the paraphrase receiving at least twice as many marks as any other question ; and the candi- date should have notice how the marks are allotted, that he may not spend too much time and pains over the less-important questions. Now for what concerns the schools. Whatever develops the general intelligence of the pupil- teachers, and of the higher classes in the school, should be studied. I have remarked in a former report how well fitted is the study of a second lan- guage to do this. French is beginning to appear as an extra subject ; but I hope to see the time when Latin, sensibly taught, will be a part of the regular instruction of all pupil-teachers and of all top classes. To begin, however, with the instruments we have at present at our disposal. The great majority of my schools now take, I am glad to say, recitation as an extra subject. It is, in my view, that part of the work in elementary schools which does most, under our existing circumstances, to promote general intel- ligence. But the passages to be learnt are by no means chosen with sufficient care, and the learner is GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1874. 183 still, although there is improvement in this respect, very insufficiently taught the sense and allusions of what he recites. More and more the recitation should be turned into a literature-lesson. None but classical poetry should be taken ; we are far too much afraid of restriction and uniformity. The young ought in school to be as much as possible restricted to good models ; the merit of the old classical education was that it kept the pupil in continual contact with a few first-rate models. We laugh at the French Minister who took out his watch and said with satis- faction that in all French lycdes the boys were at that moment doing the same thing. But really, is it so lamentable to think that all schoolboys should at a given moment be reading the fourth eclogue of Virgil ; or is it so delightful to think that at a given moment all schoolboys may be reading different pieces of rubbish, out of innumerable and equally accepted collections of it ? If the Education Department would yearly name N in its syllabus a short work of classical English poetry for the candidates for admission, this work might with great advantage be adopted for the recitation and literature-lesson in the school. Thus carefully studied it would have a good chance of being appropriated and assimilated by both pupils and pupil-teachers, 184 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. pand only thus can such a work produce its due effect. Its due effect, when produced, is invaluable, and is precisely that of which our elementary schools stand most in need. These are details; but it is attention to these details of study, and not to details of mere adminis- tration, which we so much need. I limit myself even as to these details of study, because it is easy to attempt too much, difficult to get teachers to attend to more than one thing at a time. One other point, however, I must touch upon in conclusion. The rate of general intelligence in schools and pupil-teachers depends mainly, of course, upon the rate of general intelligence in the head- teachers. This will depend upon their continuing and extending the cultivation with which they have started. In no way can they so well do this as by working for a definite object, which will give them matters of study definite and on the whole well chosen. The schoolmasters of my district know how I have always encouraged them to try the matricula- tion-examination at the London University. The Greek in that examination was, as Greek is studied, terrifying to those who had learnt no Greek as boys ; it was a great obstacle. The obstacle is now removed, and I believe that the languages now required for GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1874. 185 matriculation are Latin and French, with a third language, which may be either German or Greek. Latin, French, and German are an excellent and by no means over-difficult study for our young school- masters, and the rest of the examination will present nothing but what is comparatively easy to them. It is my strong hope that it will soon become the rule for every young schoolmaster in my district to matri- culate at the London Universitv. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1876. Code of 1876 Recitation Needlework Class Subjects Natur- Tcunde Extra Subjects The Three upper Standards objec- tionable Board Schools Spelling ; a Reviewing authority required Improvement in Schools ; and where it lags. I PASS to observations suggested by the working of the New Code, 1 which has been in force since last spring. 1. The requirement of recitation in Standards V. and VI., as a part of the reading exercise, might now, I think, with advantage disappear. It was inserted in order to preserve the valuable require- ment of learning by heart, which had been struck out of the fourth schedule of the New Code in its first form. But it has now been replaced there. There is no object, therefore, in retaining recitation as a part of the standard work, where it is a novelty, and a somewhat embarrassing one. The pass is called a pass in reading, and it is rather awkward to pluck in 1 The Code of 1876, by which the course of study had been considerably changed and enlarged. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1876. 187 reading a child who reads well, but who has learnt his recitation imperfectly. It tries managers and teachers ; and, indeed, a child presented in the Fifth or Sixth Standard, who has left school for a month or two, but returns for the examination, may fail in his recitation without any fault on the part of his managers and teachers. If they have enabled him to read well and to retain that power, they have, I think, done their part so far as the pass in reading is concerned. I would rather have had learning by heart thrust into the standard work than thrust out of the school course altogether, but now that it has again found a place in the fourth schedule, I should like to see the standard work relieved of it. 2. The new grant for needlework requires female help for the proper award of it. No one will seriously maintain that a set of men are the fit judges either of plans on which to teach needlework or of results of examination in it. All an inspector can fitly do in regard to this branch of instruction is to insist on its importance, and to see that in regulating and rewarding it the judgment of experts of the other sex, whose province it is, decides. In former reports I have spoken of the jealous care with which, in Ger- many, the regulation of the several matters of instruc- tion is reserved to persons of known expertness in them. On the Continent there are inspectresses ; 188 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. but even without inspectresses it is possible to give seriousness to the needlework grant by placing it under the direction of its proper judges. We shall now have, it may be hoped, a public school authority for every locality. Every such authority should have its female superintendent of needlework, and she, or competent persons delegated by her, should hold the examinations for the needlework grant, and should decide on the scholar's success in them. On the certificate of these experts the inspector should recommend the payment of the needlework grant. Scholars and schoolmistresses will otherwise soon come to regard the examination for this grant as in general a mere formality, and the payment of it as a matter of course. The same experts should approve the plan for teaching needlework which a school- mistress adopts. I myself am so strongly averse to make-believe examinations and matter-of-course cer- tificates that I follow even now, so far as I am able, a plan of the kind above-mentioned. I refer the approval of the needlework programme, and the cer- tificate of creditably passing the needlework exami- nation, to the award of experts of the other sex. I inspect several girls' schools, however, where needlework, though well taught, is not taken as a class subject for earning the 4ts. grant. I hope that more and more girls' schools will follow this good GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1876. 189 example. Taking needlework as a class subject for girls means dropping as a class subject for girls either grammar or geography. They certainly ought to learn both, and needlework besides, and if they do not take needlework as a class subject, they still learn it ; whereas if geography or grammar is not taken by them as a class subject, it is in most cases, I fear, not learnt by them at all. And this brings me to the topic of the class subjects in general. 3. The introduction of the class subjects has been of great benefit. It has done away the notion that the work of a primary school consisted of certain minima of reading, writing, and arithmetic ; that everything else was extra subject. The spread of in- terest in education was already doing much to re- awaken and re-invigorate our schools, bound in a narrow routine and dispirited as many of them cer- tainly were. The introduction of the class subjects of grammar, geography, and history, has also done much in the same direction, and will do more. Grammar and geography should be the first of the class subjects chosen, and in the schools under my inspection they generally are so. I cannot understand the doubts of some of iny colleagues as to the use of teaching grammar. The programme of a French elementary school is notoriously scanty, but it always includes the elements of French grammar. Grammar is an 190 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. exercise of the children's wits ; all the rest of their work is in general but an exercise of their memory. To learn the definitions and rules of grammar is, indeed, but an exercise of memory. But, after learn- ing the definition of a noun, to recognize nouns when one meets with them, and to refer them to their definition, that is an exercise of intelligence. I observe that it animates the children, even amuses them. Indeed, all that relates to language, that familiar but wonderful phenomenon, is naturally in- teresting if it is not spoiled by being treated pedantically. In teaching grammar, not to attempt too much, and to be thoroughly simple, orderly, and clear, is most important. The teacher, I have often said, should be fettered as little as possible, and our Codes tend to fetter him too much. But the pre- scription of what is to be taken, in the way of grammar as a class subject by Standard II., the lowest Standard where grammar is taken at all, has worked well. I have watched its working closely, making it my habit to examine this Standard, when- ever I can, myself; and the prescription has worked well, because what it prescribes is so small in amount ? so definite, and such a good beginning of things. Left to themselves, the teachers would have probably at- tempted something a good deal less simple, more extensive, and more vague. The same may be said GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1876. 191 of the grammar prescribed for Standard III. ; its prescription has worked well, and for the same reasons. Above Standard III. the system of precisely fixed requirements from each Standard, does not, in my opinion, work well. Class teaching should pre- vail, and should be as free as possible, without any pressure upon the teacher to break up his scholars into three divisions with a fixed modicum of know- ledge in every branch for every division. I should like to see all mention of analysis dropped, and all division of geography and history into three portions, for three Standards, dropped also. That the scholars above the Third Standard should be properly taught grammar, geography, and English history, and that at least half of them should pass creditably in two subjects selected, is what I would require. I should like to see what the Germans call Natur-kunde knowledge of the facts and laws of nature added as a class subject to grammar, geography, and English history, and I would require the teaching of all four as class subjects in every elementary school to all scholars above the Third Standard, girls as well as boys. For the Second and Third Standards I would have grammar as at present, and, in addition to grammar, the elements of Natur-kunde. For the scholars above the Third Standard, the Inspector's examination for the 4>s. grant should test in alternate 192 EEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. years their knowledge of their four class subjects, taking two of the subjects in one year and the other two in the next. If this were done the fourth schedule might with advantage be greatly simplified. It is really a sche- dule of extra subjects. In the instruction of a child under thirteen the number of extra subjects ought to be very small ; the excuse for making it large was that our range of obligatory subjects was so miser- ably narrow. But when grammar, geography, English history, and Natur-Tcunde are added, as they ought to be, to reading, writing, and arithmetic, as part of the regular school course, little more can with advantage be asked for from the school children whom we have to deal with. If we have Natur-Jcunde as a part of the school course, we do not require for such children animal physiology, physical geography, and botany, as extra or specific subjects. If we have good and free class teaching of arithmetic, the teacher giving to this branch what extension he likes and can, we do not require, for our children under thirteen years of age, mathematics and mechanics as extra or specific subjects. As extra subjects in the fourth schedule I would have four only : a second language, learning by heart, health, and domestic economy. None of them can well, I think, be made part of the regular course in GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1876. 193 our existing schools. A second language will at pre- sent very rarely be taken, but it is important to place in view the value of such an acquisition. To learn by heart first-rate pieces of poetry and of prose must surely do a child good, and he ought to be encouraged in it. The great practical importance of some know- ledge of the rules of health and of domestic economy, above all to the children whom our elementary schools educate, no one will gainsay. It is now required that every girl taking extra subjects shall take domestic economy as one of them. As to health there is an admirable little text-book, On the Personal Care of Health, written expressly for the young by an admir- able man whose loss science deplores, Dr. Parkes of Netley. It has been recently published by the Christian Knowledge Society. I should like every boy who goes through a school under my inspection to read that text-book and to pass an examination in it. 1 So far as to the practical working of the New Code and as to the points where further improvement of the Code seems attainable. The introduction of the .class subjects was an excellent measure, but we must not suppose that it can by itself remedy all the mis- chiefs caused by the Revised Code. So long as Standards IV., V., and VI. remain as at present, those 1 The pages on vaccination and on the opposition to it are particularly practical and valuable. (M. A.) O 194 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. mischiefs will still be felt. Above the Third Standard, free class-teaching, depending on the cir- cumstances of the school and the judgment of the teacher, but tested of course by inspection, is what is wanted. It is by no means the case that in all schools the children above the Third Standard are with advantage to be distributed into three divisions as indicated by the Code, and that their instruction, particularly in arithmetic, is, with advantage, to be organized as there laid down. Every experienced teacher feels this. Scholars who in their scanty term of school years might make much more progress are kept back in order that they may not miss a standard and the grant for passing in it. The whole teaching is governed by preparation for passing the standards. And after the first six months of the school year a teacher, as a very experienced schoolmaster, whose school was many years ago under my inspection, has lately pointed out to me, can form a pretty good estimate what scholars are likely to make the attend- ances required for a pass, and upon those scholars, for the last six months of the year, the power of the teaching staff is concentrated. This is a great evil in the present system of payment. Undoubtedly it leads to the neglect of scholars who enter when the school year is somewhat advanced, or who cannot attend regularly. It tells very severely upon those GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1876. 195 older scholars who are perhaps attending school for their last year, who cannot make 250 attendances, but who have already learned a good deal and are of an age, if carefully taught, to secure and extend what they have learned. They are neglected for those who may pass the standards ; and in their last school year, instead of improving, they rather go back. I look forward to the time when it maybe possible to abolish all standards beyond the first three, and to substitute for the last three standards classes and class-teaching without tying the teacher's hands. I attach no importance to the objection that the examination for Standard IV., or for any other standard, is required for the purposes of Labour Acts. A test examination for the purposes of those Acts, identical, if necessary, with the examination now fixed for Standard IV., may quite well be re- quired without saddling all the schools in the country with it. The schools will be found, however, to have taught what the test requires without having had their instruction bounded and hampered in sub- servience to it. I have at present no sufficient experience to en- able me to compare board schools with others. My district has hardly any board schools. Whatever the future may have in store for us, I feel certain that a good many years must elapse before, by any natural o 2 196 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. process, in districts such as mine, the old type of schools will have expended all the life which is in it, and will perish on that account. A school authority in every locality is of course most desirable. This the new Act * will, I hope, give us. And I hope that one of the first acts of such a school authority will everywhere be, if possible, to impose a penalty on parents withholding their children from school without good cause on the day of examination. At present they are frequently withheld, sometimes from vindictiveness, oftener from mere caprice, and nothing can well be more vexatious or more unfair to teachers and managers. The attention of teachers is being much called to a proposed reform in spelling. No doubt, English spelling has great irregularities. Its acquisition is exceptionally difficult to an adult foreigner on that account. It is not clear to me that it can thence be inferred, or that experience proves, that it is also, therefore, exceptionally difficult to an English child. At any rate, even if it were, the English nation will not be induced, in the hope of making it easier, to take to writing Leed uz not intu temtaishon. What changes are made will certainly not be made in view of making spelling easier to children. They will be made because certain things in our present spelling - The Act of 1876. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1876. 197 are irrational. At present the printers in great measure fix our spelling according to their sense of what is symmetrical. The practical advice I would give to teachers, as to spelling, is to take every opportunity for remarking when our present spelling is erroneous through blunder. Both they and their scholars will learn a great deal by doing so. For in- stance, we find almost universally connection, reflection, instead of connexion, reflexion. This the printers give us from the analogy of words like affection, collection, and for the sake of symmetry. But collection comes from a Latin participle in ectus, and reflection from a Latin participle in exus, and to give the two nouns the same termination is a pure blunder in grammar. We shall never find these terminations confounded in French. Again, it is almost impossible to induce a printer to print " a forgone advantage " ; he insists on making it foregone, because we speak of " a fore- gone conclusion." But a forgone advantage means an advantage gone without ; a foregone conclusion means a conclusion anticipated. In forgone we have the German ver, the Latin sine; in foregone the German vor, the Latin ante. I merely indicate two cases out of many which occur to me, where the teacher may remonstrate against our present spelling in a way really fruitful to himself and his scholars. Our absence of any authority with such a function 198 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. as the reviewing our spelling and the making it rational is well known. Englishmen generally pro- fess to be proud of it. I am myself disposed to think that a Royal Commission might with advantage be charged, not indeed with the absurd task of invent- ing a brand-new spelling, but with the task of reviewing our. present spelling, of pointing out evident anomalies in it, of suggesting feasible amendments of it. But such a Commission should be permanent, with the function of watching our language, by no means of stereotyping it; and, though appointed by Government in the first in- _stance, it should recruit itself, as vacancies arose, by cooptation. A stir of life is certainly more and more visible again in our schools. Scholars and teachers alike show it, and I have good hopes for the future. In what is properly to be called culture, in feeling, taste, and perception, the advance is least; and this is, perhaps, inevitable. Even second year students still show, in this respect, an astonishing crudeness. '' Doctor, can you fulfil the duties of your profession in curing a woman who is distracted ? " or again, " Can you not wait upon the lunatic ? " these are paraphrases of Shakespeare's Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, from which I am even now fresh. " The witches who are under the control of Hecate, GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1876. 169 and who love the darkness because their designs are best accomplished then, have assembled at their meeting place with no other protection than a wolf for their sentinel, and by whose roar they know when their enemy Tarquin is coming near them." It seems almost incredible that a youth who has been two years in a training college, and for the last of the two years has studied Macbeth, should, at his examina- tion, produce such a travesty of the well-known passage in that play beginning, Now witchcraft celebrates. Yet such travesties are far too common, and all signs of positive feeling and taste for what is poetically true and beautiful are far too rare. At last year's meeting of the British Association the President of the Section for Mechanical Science told his hearers that, " in such communities as ours, the spread of natural science is of far more immediate urgency than any other secondary study. Whatever else he may know, viewed in the light of modern necessities, a man who is not fairly versed in exact science is only a half-educated man, and if he has substituted literature and history for natural science, he has chosen the less useful alternative." And more and more pressure there will be, especially in the instruction of the children of the working classes, whose time for schooling is short, to substitute natural science for literature and history as the more useful alternative. And what a curious state of 200 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. things it would be if every scholar who had passed through the course of our primary schools knew that, when a taper burns, the wax is converted into car- bonic acid and water, and thought, at the same time, that a good paraphrase for Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, was, Can you not wait upon the lunatic ! The problem to be solved is a great deal more complicated than many of the friends of natural science suppose. They see clearly enough, for instance, how the working classes are, in their ignorance, constantly violating the laws of health, and suffering accordingly ; and they look to a spread of sound natural science as the remedy. What they do not see is that to know the laws of health ever so exactly, as a mere piece of positive knowledge, will carry a man in general no great way. To have the power of using, which is the thing wished, these data of natural science, a ian must, in general, have first been in some measure moralised; and for moralising him it will be found not easy, I think, to dispense with those old agents, letters, poetry, re- ligion. So let not our teachers be led to imagine, whatever they may hear and see of the call for natural science, that their literary cultivation is un- important. The fruitful use of natural science itself depends, in a very great degree, on having effected in the whole man, by means of letters, a rise in what the political economists call the standard of life. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1878. "Working of the schools Need of simplicity Natur-kunde ; what it ought to be for Elementary Schools Fourth Schedule Latin to be retained, and French Learning by heart, its formative use Cultivation of Intelligence Reading Grammar Exorbitant Cost of Education, especially in London, as compared with France Scale and proportion not kept in view Municipal control desirable. THE number of scholars who make at least 250 attendances is on the increase. The average attendance, however, is but 7o - 87 per cent, of the numbers on the school register. Some of the absent scholars have no doubt left the school and may be attending another ; but the absentees may safely be said to be as many as one-fifth of the children on the register. As the number present on the day of inspection exceeds by 12'3 per cent, the number in average attendance, a good many absences from school must still be put down to causes which are avoidable. 202 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. The proportion of scholars presented in the four higher standards is increasing, though very slightly. It is not satisfactory, certainly, that more than half of the scholars over seven years old should be in Standards I. and II. However, the great number of raw children whom the board schools are obliged to present in the lowest standards, must for some time to come keep these standards disproportionately full. Perhaps enough care is not always taken to ascertain whether the raw new-comers in a board school have not actually passed, in some other school, the low standard in which it is proposed to present them. The number of raw new-comers now brought into school and the consequent fulness of Standard I., where reading is always weakest, may probably account for the somewhat increased failure in read- ing last year. The handwriting has improved. The spelling has gone back in almost every standard. In arithmetic there is a slight improvement, except in Standard IV., the standard which has to work sums in the common weights and measures. Our system of weights and measures is indeed such an absurdity, that one is disposed to say reform it altogether, rather than to suggest means for working sums in it with more facility. But I am assured, and I believe it, that if the scholar had actually before GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1878. 203 his eyes the weights and measures with which his sums deal an ounce, a pound, a pint, a quart, a foot, a yard he could work his sums in weights and measures more intelligently and more successfully. " Our schools deal with children of from four to thir- teen years of age." We should constantly have this thought present to our minds, and the more so, the more our system of primary schools becomes a great and complicated affair and attracts the attention of a number of ingenious and active-minded persons. Our system may be highly complicated, and the educationists, as they call themselves, who take an interest in it, may be highly ingenious ; but the matter in hand is, after all, the instruction of children between the ages of four and thirteen, and this is a plain and simple affair, and the more we compel ourselves to conceive and treat it as such, the better. The one word which I feel disposed at present, as an inspector of primary schools, to keep perpetually repeating, for my own benefit and for that of others, is this : simplicity ! Simplicity, first, as to the instruction of the chil- dren, and for the sake of making this as effective as possible. Turgot used to say that if one taught children nothing but what was true, and if one talked to them of nothing but what they could comprehend, there would be hardly any minds with 204 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. unsound judgment. We shall not arrive just jet at such a consummation ; but to simplify our teaching, to present to our children's minds what they can comprehend, to abstain from pressing upon them what they cannot, is the right way towards it. In my last report I proposed that what the Germans call Natur-kunde some knowledge of the facts and laws of nature should be taught as a class-subject in addition to grammar, geography, and English history. This has been treated as a proposal to amplify our present programme ; it was really a proposal to simplify it. Natur-kunde an elementary knowledge of nature was to be admitted, but its admission was to be accompanied by a revision of our ambitious fourth schedule, and by the exclusion from it of mathematics, German, mechanics, animal physiology, physical geography, and botany. Mathematics, Ger- man, mechanics, animal physiology, physical geography and botany, for children under thirteen, and children moreover, who from the circumstances of their bring- ing-up have an especially narrow mental range ! I have mentioned in a former report the surprise it gave me to rind a school in which not one single child could tell the meaning of the word feeble. I have ceased to feel surprise at any failure of that kind, so thoroughly has experience convinced me of the excessive scantiness of vocabulary which is the GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1878. 205 rule amongst our school children. It is the signal feature of their mental condition, and constitutes their real inferiority to the children of the cultivated classes. The ignorance of what we are accustomed to con- sider things universally known is on a par with this want of words and of the ideas which go along with the words. I found the other day a school not at all ill-instructed in the positive matters of examina- tion, but it chanced that a mention of the Stuarts in the reading lesson led to a question who they were, and it appeared that not one child in the upper class had ever heard of the Stuarts, had ever heard of Charles the First, had ever heard that a king of England had had his head cut off. - It was a girls' school : the girls in the head class were from eleven to thirteen years old, well dressed, well behaved, paying a high school fee. This, I say, could not happen with a class of girls of that age in a higher social sphere, however defective their instruction might in many respects be. It is with children under thirteen that we have to deal, and with children of whom, in general, the mental condition is such as has been above indicated. Evidently such children are not subjects for what is commonly meant by mathematics, German, mechanics, animal physiology, physical geography, and botany. The excuse for putting most of these matters into 206 KEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. our programme is that we are all coming to be agreed that an entire ignorance of the system cf nature is as gross a defect in our children's education as not to know that there ever was such a person as Charles the First. Now our ordinary class-programme pro- vides, or at any rate suggests, some remedy against the second kind of ignorance, for history is one of our class-subjects ; it provides none against the first. This is a blot ; we ought surely to provide that some knowledge of the system of nature should form part of the regular class course. Some fragments of such knowledge do in practice form part of the class course at present. Children in learning geography are taught something about the form and motion of the earth, about the causes of night and day and the seasons. But why are they taught nothing of the causes, for instance, of rain and dew, which are at least as easy to explain to them, and not less in- teresting ? And this is what the teaching of Natur- kunde or natural philosophy (to use the formerly received, somewhat over-ambitious, English name for the kind of thing) should aim at ; it should aim at systematising for the use of our schools a body of simple instruction in the facts and laws of nature, so as to omit nothing which is requisite, and to give all in right proportion. Of course the best agency for effecting this would be a gifted teacher; but as GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1878. 207 gifted teachers are rare, what we have most to wish for is the guidance of a good text-book. Such a text- book does not at present, so far as I know, exist ; some man of science, who is also a master of clear and orderly exposition, should do us the benefit of providing one. But meanwhile there is no reason for delaying the attempt to teach in a systematic way an elementary knowledge of nature. Text- books abound from which a teacher may obtain in separate portions what he requires ; there can be no better discipline for him than to combine out of what he finds in them the kind of whole suited to the simple requirements of his classes. Some teachers will do this a great deal better than others, but all will gain something by attempting it; and their classes too, however imperfectly it is at first often effected, will gain by its being attempted. For school-children under thirteen as much of me- chanics, animal physiology, physical geography, and botany as they need, may surely be comprised in their class-lessons in elementary Natur-'kunde. The right place for mechanics, animal physiology, phy- sical geography, and botany is not, it seems to me, in the programme of the elementary school, but in the programme of the evening classes which the scholar should attend after he is past thirteen and has left the elementary school. The right place for German, also, 208 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. is surely in the programme of such evening classes. Latin and French stand, I think, on a different footing. Every one is agreed as to the exceptional position of Latin among the languages for our study. Our school boy of thirteen will do little with his rudiments of Latin unless he carries on his education beyond the scope of our elementary schools and their programmes. But if he does carry it on be- yond that scope, Latin is almost a necessity for him. By allowing Latin as a special subject for a certain number of scholars in oar elementary schools, we are but recognizing that necessity, and recognizing as surely we very properly may, that for some of the better scholars in our schools the necessity will arise. French, too, has a special claim. To know the rudiments of French has a commercial value. A boy who is possessed of them has an advantage in getting a place. He knows this himself, and his parents know it ; a little French, in addition to good at- tainments in reading, writing and arithmetic, is a recommendation for a place. A little Latin is not, a little German is not, a little botany is not ; a little French is. Here is a reason for admitting French to our list of extra subjects, closely limited though this list ought to be. French has the edu- cational value for our school children of being a second language ; it has also an educational value for GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1878. 209 us from its precision and lucidity, qualities in which the expression of us English people is often deficient ; and it is, besides, a matter of instruction which has the advantage of much commending itself to the minds of our scholars themselves and of their parents, as a help to a boy's start in life. Learning by heart is often called, disparagingly, learning by rote, and is treated as an old-fashioned, unintelligent exercise, and a waste of time. It is an exercise to which I attach great value, and it tends, I am glad to say, to become general iu the schools of my district, partly, perhaps, because the teachers know that I am strongly in favour of it. Poetry is almost always taken for this exercise, not prose ; and when so little is done in the way of learning by heart, poetry should certainly have the prefer- ence. The pass in reading might, I think, with advantage be relieved of that condition requiring the scholar to have also learnt passages by heart, which at present in the two highest standards com- plicates it. Then recitation would probably be almost universally taken up in our schools. That is to say, in almost all inspected schools, in my district at any rate, the whole upper part of the school would each year learn by heart from one to three hundred lines of good poetry. The advantage of this seems to me indisputable. p 210 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. If we consider it, the bulk of the secular instruction given in our elementary schools has nothing of that formative character which in education is demanded. As regards sewing, calculating, writing, spelling, this is evident. They are necessary, they have utility, but they are not formative. To have the power of reading is not in itself formative. It is neces- sary to have it, and here is the defence of our promiscuous reading books and of allowing them all to be used freely; the power of reading has to 'be acquired by the pupil, and for acquiring the power of reading it must be owned that our reading books, with the promiscuous variety of their contents, serve well enough. But for a higher purpose, to serve in any way to form the pupil in addition to giving him the mere power of reading, no serious person would maintain that our reading books are at present fitted. But good poetry is formative ; it has, too, the precious power of acting by itself and in a way managed by nature, not through the instrumentality of that somewhat terrible character, the scientific educator. I believe that even the rhythm and diction of good poetry are capable of exercising some formative effect, even though the sense be imperfectly understood. But of course the good of poetry is not really got unless the sense of the words is known. And more and more I find GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1878. 211 it learnt and known ; more and more it will be easy to refuse to let the recitation count for anything unless the meaning of what is recited is thoroughly learnt and known. It will be observed that thus we are remedying what I have noticed as the signal mental defect of our school-children their almost incredible scantiness of vocabulary. We enlarge their vocabulary, and with their vocabulary their circle of ideas. At the same time we bring them under the formative influence of really good litera- ture, really good poetry. We must not, of course, be so rigid as to exclude all poetry but the very best. Poetry like that of Scott or Mrs. Hemans for instance, is no doubt of texture different from that of the best poetry, yet it has excellent qualities, and qualities to which our school-children are very sensible ; we may be glad to have them learning it. Still an effort should be made, for this one exercise, to fix the standard high. Gray's Elegy and extracts from Shakespeare should be chosen in preference to the poetry of Scott and Mrs. Hemans, and very much of the poetry in our present school reading books should be entirely rejected. Every one is agreed that " efforts should be made to cultivate the intelligence of the scholars, and to strengthen their powers of observation, reflexion, and comparison." The question is how this may really P 2 212 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. be best done. Complaint is made that efforts of the kind "meet with scant recognition or reward from the present Code." I am no ardent partisan of the Code, and indeed I am glad of any opportunity of repeating that I hope some day to see abolished all standards above the three lowest, and to see substi- tuted for the three upper standards classes and class- teaching, without tying the teacher's hands. But the question is, how is a sensible teacher likely to effect most practical good. Is it by betaking himself to the scientific teachers of pedagogy, by feeding on generalities such as I have just above quoted, by learning that we are to "disuse rule-teaching, and adopt teaching by principles," that we are to teach things "in the concrete instead of in the abstract," that we are to walk worthy of the doctrine long ago enunciated by Pestalozzi, that "alike in its order and its methods education must conform to the natural process of mental evolution " ? The worst of such doctrines is that everything depends upon the practical application given to them, and it seems so easy to give a practical application which is erroneous. The doctrine of Pestalozzi, for instance, may be excellent, and no one can say that it has not found ardent friends to accept it and em- ploy it; and the result is that one sees a teacher holding up an apple to a gallery of little children, GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1878. 213 and saying: "An apple has a stalk, peel, pulp, core, pips, and juice; it is odorous and opaque, and is used for making a pleasant drink called cider." In virtue of like "doctrines," new methods of spelling, new methods of learning to read, new methods of learning arithmetic are called for. Some of them are ingenious. We must always remember, how- ever, that their apparent conformity to some general doctrine apparently true is no guarantee of their soundness. The practical application alone tests this, and often and often a method thus tested reveals unsuspected weakness. Then there is, besides, the difficulty of getting new methods which are unfami- liar substituted for old methods which are familiar. The best thing for a teacher to do is surely to put before himself in the utmost simplicity the problem he has to solve. He has to instruct children between the ages of four and thirteen, children, too, who have for the most part a singularly narrow range of words and thoughts. He has, so far as secular instruction goes, to give to those children the power of reading, of writing, and (according to the good old phrase) of casting accounts. He has to give them some knowledge of the world in which they find themselves, and of what happens and has happened in it ; some know- ledge, that is, of the great facts and laws of nature, 214 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. some knowledge of geography and of history, above all of the history of their own country. He has to do as much towards opening their mind, and opening their soul and imagination, as is possible to be done with a number of children of their age and in their state of preparation and home surroundings. There is the problem for him. He will find that in seeking to solve it he can quite well work on the old lines without busying himself with new and (so- called) scientific theories of education. It is not true that he must of necessity begin geography, for instance, with the geography of a child's own parish if he is to interest the child in geography. He will find he can interest him in it quite well by beginning with the old-fashioned four quarters of the globe, and coming round to the child's own parish by way of Africa and Zululand. But the great thing is to give the power of reading. It may be doubted whether this is not given more seldom than the power of writing and of casting accounts, although more children fail in the examination in these than in the examination in reading. The power of reading, as has been already said, is not in itself formative. Neverthe- less, a power of reading, well trained and well guided, is perhaps the best among the gifts which it is the business of our elementary schools to bestow; it is in their power to bestow it, yet it is bestowed in GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1878. 215 much fewer cases than we imagine. Time is much better spent on enlarging and securing, by copious, well-chosen and systematic readings, our school- children's power to read, than in giving to them, at their age, the rudiments of this or that new science over and above the simple instruction in Natur- kunde on which I have already insisted. The reading lessons should be used not only to secure the bare power of reading a most valuable power, yet capable, no doubt, like other good things, of being employed amiss later on in the pupil's life as well as of being employed for his good. Nor should they be used only to increase a child's stock of what is called information. They should be treated as in con- nexion with the good and sterling poetry learned for recitation, and should be made to contribute to the opening of the soul and imagination, for which the central purchase should be found in that poetry. The more the teacher extends his own culture the better he will be able to do this, and here is an additional reason for extending his own culture. Lastly, the teacher should use grammar as a very simple logic, affording him the means of opening a child's understanding a little, and of planting the beginnings of clear and accurate thinking. I have never been able to understand the contempt with 216 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. which what is even now effected in grammar itt our schools, is regarded. The grammar required for the lower standards is spoken of as quite ridicu- lously insufficient. Yet is it so insignificant a mental exercise to distinguish between the use of skelter in these two phrases : " to shelter under an umbrella," and " to take shelter under an umbrella " ? I do not think so ; and this is the sort of elementary logic which the grammar for the Second Standard demands, which the children attain to, and which does thern^ in my opinion, a great deal of good. But, of course, as the teacher will open the children's soul and imagina- tion the better the more he has opened his own, so he will also clear their understanding the better the more he has cleared his own. My word for all teachers of elementary schools who will listen to me is therefore this : simplify. Put before yourselves as simply as possible the problem which you have to solve ; simplify, as much as you are at present allowed to simplify them, your means for solving it, and seek to be allowed to simplify them yet more. But it is not only to the teachers that I would address this exhortation to simplify. I would address it to the school boards throughout the country, and, above all, to the London School Board, the operations of which begin now to come under my notice in West- GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1878. 217 minster. I would even venture to address it to your Lordships also. I have before me a very interesting volume just issued, giving the statistics of elementary education in France at the present time. It is impossible not to be led to one or two comparisons. The population of France at the last census was in round numbers 37 millions, that of England and Wales was 24| millions. The last report issued by your Lordships states that we have in England and Wales 3,154,973 scholars on the school-registers, and that the whole number of scholars for whom school-places are required may be estimated at not less than 4 millions. It is very curious that the French report just issued estimates the total of children of school-age in France at this very same number: 4 millions. And this with a population of 37 millions as against a population in England and Wales of only 24^ millions. The number of children actually on the school-registers in France is 3,823,000. It is true that the limits within which school age is reckoned are wider with us than with the French reporters. School-age with them does not begin until the child is six years old ; school-age goes from six to thirteen. Neverthe- less, the proportion of children to population is really much larger in England than in France. Taking 218 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. the French school-age of from six to thirteen, we find that while there are in England 160 children of such age for every 1,000 of population, in France there are but 122 of them ; and the proportion of children to population was larger in England at the last census than at the census before. The number of children between six and thirteen, which in 1871 was 160 for every 1,000 of population, was in 1861 only 155. Some people may think that this very large pro- portion of children to population is an advantage to us, and that it is to be hoped it will be continued and even increased. I by no means think so. This great production of children may be, like our over-production in other kinds, a sign of vigour indeed, but of vigour put forth blindly and recklessly, without forethought and foresight ; and a lower rate of production may come with a higher standard of life. But, meanwhile, the proportional expense of elementary education must of necessity be greater in England than in France, the proportion of subjects for it being greater. All the more is economy requisite for us in deal- ing with this expense. In England the State grant to elementary schools was in round numbers a million and a half sterling for the last school year, in France it was 420,OOOZ. The cost of maintenance of our ele- mentary schools, with their 3,154,973 children on the GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1878. 219 register, was altogether nearly four millions sterling (3,915,450*.). The cost of maintenance of the French elementary schools, with their 3,823,000 children on the register, was under two millions and three quar- ters sterling (2,726,000*.). With us the State contri- butes 39 '41 per cent, of the total expense ; school- fees contribute 29'07 ; voluntary subscriptions 20'08, rates 11*43. In France school fees contribute 27'68 per cent, of the total cost of maintenance a pro- portion much the same as that which school fees con- tribute with us. The State contributes 15'41 per cent. ; the departments, or counties, contribute 10'04 per cent.; voluntary subscriptions, T40 per cent. only. All the rest is provided by the com- munes out of the communal resources and a school- rate. Our voluntary local subscriptions, however, may perhaps be considered as in great part a parochial or communal school-rate under a voluntary form. But the difference between us and France in the cost for each child educated is what will most strike every one. The cost in France is 18s. Id. per child. And this is the cost, after including all charges whatever for elementary education ; not only the grants paid by the State and by the departments for the direct maintenance of schools, but the whole outlay of all kinds upon elementary education building grants, normal schools, pensions, the cost of 220 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. administration and inspection. In England the cost per child for the whole country is 35s. 3%d. But in board schools in London the cost per child rises as high as 53s. 5d. In board schools in the country the cost is 41s. 4>^d. per child. In these calculations the State expenditure on building grants, normal schools, pensions, administration and inspection, is not counted in. If this is counted in, the cost per child will be increased by about 2s. Qd., and we shall have the astounding figures of 55s. lid. as the cost of education for each child in board schools in London ; 43s. lOJrf. for each child in board schools in the country ; 37s. 9|rf. per child as the rate for the whole of England and Wales. That is to say, we spend, on the whole, for each child more than France spends for two children, and the London School Board spends for each child more than France spends for three children. This comparison speaks for itself. Let us allow for great difference of circumstances between France and England. Still there is really no great difference be- tween the state of instruction of an average boy of thirteen who leaves a communal school in Paris, and that of an average boy of thirteen who leaves a board school in London. It cannot be right, it is extra- vagant and absurd, that the London boy's education should be so managed as to cost three times as much as that of the Paris one. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1878. 221 It is only during the last year that the operations of the London School Board have come much under my immediate notice in Westminster. I am quite sure that the board needs the advice, simplify. I am quite sure that they ought to conceive in a simpler way the problem before them, and the means of work- ing it out. I am quite sure that their conception of what is requisite in the way of accommodation, studies, salaries, administration, is pitched too high. Both in London and elsewhere, school boards are apt to con- ceive what is requisite in these respects rather as benevolent, intelligent, and scientific educationists in Utopia, than as practical school -managers. A member of the Birmingham School Board proposes seriously to send up every sum worked for examina- tion by all the four millions and a half of children for whom school-places have, it is said, to be found in this country, to the Education Department in Whitehall to be looked over. Such a proposal shows just the defect to which our great school boards valuable as they are and grateful as we ought to be to them for their gratuitous services are, it seems to me, prone; it shows a defective sense of scale and proportion. Elsewhere this sense of scale and proportion is practically taught by the conjunction of secondary and superior instruction, as public services, with 222 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. elementary instruction. The three have to be in some measure co-ordered, and this teaches scale and pro- portion. It is evident that secondary and superior instruction must come to be on an insupportable scale of expense, if the expense of even elementary in- struction is to be 55s. llc a year for every scholar. In England secondary and superior instruction are not public services. They are left to be what they can, and to cost whatever they may happen to cost. But really this is a reason not for throwing a heavier burden upon the middle-class ratepayer, but for throwing a lighter one. If rates and State grants do nothing for his children's education, and are at the same time employed with prodigality for the education of the children of the working class, he is the more a sufferer. I am desirous of seeing secondary instruction made a public service. But the prodigality of our present outlay on elementary in- struction interposes an obstacle. Public elementary instruction costs so much, that people are alarmed at the notion of making any other instruction a public charge too. Elsewhere, moreover, the sense of scale and pro- portion is also supplied in another way. Public elementary education is properly a municipal charge, and abroad it is treated as such. It is co-ordered with the other branches of municipal expenditure. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1878. 223 A measure and a check are thus obtained. Tn Paris, for instance, the communal schools are under the municipality of Paris, and are managed by a com- mittee of that municipality. Such a committee is responsible not only to universal suffrage, from which the whole municipality springs, but also to the municipality itself. Our school boards spring directly from household suffrage. Household suffrage can elect them or reject them, but it cannot properly re- vise their operations, and to municipal revision they are not liable. True, it was not practicable to give to the school boards a municipal constitution, because in England we have no proper or complete munici- pal system. But here is only another reason for get- ting a proper and complete municipal system ; our school boards are " in the air " without it. They have not, and cannot well have, a due sense of scale and proportion ; they proceed as if they were educationists in Utopia. I am convinced that our rate of cost per scholar ought not to exceed 35s. at the outside, and that it may be brought within that limit without loss of efficiency. But to bring it within that limit we must simplify. Popular education has had its moment of high favour in this country, and nobody has asked questions about its cost, so long as the pros- perity of the country was increasing by leaps and 224 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. bounds. I confess I am afraid of the cold fit following the hot one, in a season of less prosperity. I am afraid of a storm of discontent and obloquy raised against our very expensive system of elementary schools, and of the outlay upon them being as much over-shrunk as it is now, I think, over-swoln. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1880. English poetry ; its importance and popularity Choice of pas- sages The School course as a whole ; Fourth Schedule Num- ber of subjects Obligatory and class subjects What a teacher should aim at Grammar as a part of training How to parse Scientific Subjects The short-time system School expendi- ture in London. I FIND that of the specific subjects English litera- ture, as it is too ambitiously called in plain truth the learning by heart and reciting of a hundred lines or two of standard English poetry continues to be by far the most popular. I rejoice to find it so; there is no fact coming under my observation in the working of our elementary schools which gives me so much satisfaction. The acquisition of good poetry is a discipline which works deeper than any other discipline in the range of work of our schools ; more than any other, too, it works of itself, is independent of the school teacher, and cannot be spoiled by pedantry and injudiciousness on his part. Q 226 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. Some people regard this my high estimate of the value of poetry in education with suspicion and displeasure. Perhaps they may accept the testimony of Wordsworth with less suspicion than mine. Wordsworth says, "To be incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is to be without love of human nature and reverence for God." And it is only through acquaintance with poetry, and with good poetry, that this " feeling of poetry " can be given. Good poetry does undoubtedly tend to form the soul and character; it tends to beget a love of beauty and of truth in alliance together, it suggests, however indirectly, high and noble principles of action, and it inspires the emotion so helpful in making principles operative. Hence its extreme importance to all of us ; but in our elementary schools its importance seems to me to be at present I quite extraordinary. I hope that, instead of its being confined to children in the Fifth and Sixth Standards, this excellent discipline of poetry will be retained for the children of the Fourth Standard, and brought into use universally for at least these three standards. Happily, the poetry exercise has, as I have said already, become popular in schools, and it will, I am confident, become more and more so. Sir John GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1880. 227 Lubbock says that in some board schools in Lam- beth he asked the children which they preferred of four of their subjects of instruction grammar, history, geography, and elementary science and that a very large majority were in favour of ele- mentary science. I do not quite understand how he took his comparison ; he does not mention whether the children whose votes he took were all of them learning all these four subjects or not. But, at any rate, if he will come into Westminster and will ask the children in the schools there who are taking two class subjects and two specific subjects, poetry being one of these latter, which of the four they prefer, I think I can assure him that he will find a most decisive majority for poetry. The choice of passages to be learnt is of the utmost importance, and requires close and intelli- gent observing of the children. Some years ago it was the fashion to make them learti Goldsmith's Deserted Village, at the recommendation, I believe, of the late Lord Lyndhurst ; or rather, he had given high praise to this poem, and recommended it as a poem to be got by heart, and so it was supposed that the children in our elementary schools might with advantage learn it. Nothing could be more completely unsuitable for them, and this being soon proved by the event, the use of the poem for the Q 2 228 REPORTS OK SCHOOLS. purpose in question has happily almost ceased. That the poetry chosen should have real beauties of expression and feeling, that these beauties should be such as the children's hearts and minds can lay hold of, and that a distinct point or centre of beauty and interest should occur within the limits of the passage learnt, all these are conditions to be insisted upon. Some of the short pieces by Mrs. Hemans, such as The Graves of a Household, The Homes of England, The Better Land, are to be recommended, because they fulfil all three conditions ; they have real merits of expression and sentiment, the merits are such as the children can feel, and the centre of interest, these pieces being so short, necessarily occurs within the limits of what is learnt. On the other hand, in extracts taken from Scott and Shakespeare, the point of interest is often not reached within the hundred lines which is all that children in the Fourth Standard learn. The judgment scene in the Merchant of Venice affords me a good example of what I mean. Taken as a whole, this famous scene has, I need not say, great power ; it is dramatic poetry of the first order, it is also well within our school children's comprehension, and very interesting to them. Teachers are fond of selecting it to be learnt by heart, and they are quite right. But what happens is this. The children in the Fourth Standard begin GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1880. 229 at the beginning, and stop at the end of a hundred lines ; now, the children in the Fourth Standard are often a majority of the children learning poetry, and this is all their poetry for the year. But within these hundred lines the real interest of the situation is not reached, neither do they contain any poetry of signal beauty and effectiveness. How little, there- fore, has the poetry exercise been made to do for these children, many of whom will leave school at once, and learn no more poetry ! The conclusion I wish to draw is, that the teacher should always take care that the year's poetry of a class shall contain the best poetry in the piece chosen for them, and the central point of interest in it ; not be mere prelude and introduction to this centre of interest. To secure this, the teacher may without scruple plunge into the middle of a scene or a passage, and make his children take their hundred lines there explaining to them, of course, the situation at the point where they begin. If they remain another year, they can take a new passage or scene under the same conditions. This is a far better course than to throw a year away, as is frequently done now, upon comparatively ineffective poetry, with the intention that the child, if he remains at school, may next year continue the same passage and reach the point of interest. 230 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. I insist at such length upon this poetry exercise, because of the increasing use of it, and because of its extreme importance. Stress is laid upon the neces- sity of the children knowing thoroughly the meaning of what they recite, and it is assumed that to secure their knowing this is the simplest matter in the world, and that not to secure it proves inexcusable negligence in the teacher. I am more and more re- fusing to pass children who do not know the meaning of words which occur in what they recite, but I pro- ceed gradually and with caution. If I had begun by rigidly rejecting every child ignorant of the meaning of every word in what he recited, I should never have got the poetry exercise established in my schools at all. The scanty vocabulary of our school children, and their correspondent narrow range of ideas, must be known and allowed for if one is to guide their in- struction usefully. I have found in London schools children of twelve years old, able to pass well in reading, writing, and arithmetic, who yet did not know what " a steed " was. I found in a good school the other day a head class of some thirty, only one of whom knew what " a ford " was. " Steed " is a literary word, " ford " is a word of country life, not of town life ; still they are words, one is apt to think, universally understood by every one above five years old. But even common words of this kind are not GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1880. 231 universally understood by the children with whom we deal. Very many words are in their reading lessons passed over as certainly known to them, to which they attach no meaning at all, or a wrong one. The poetry exercise is invaluable by causing words to be dwelt upon and canvassed, by leading the children to grasp the meaning of new words, and by thus extend- ing the range of their ideas. But the slowness and difficulty of the process, which are as incontestable as its high value, must be borne in mind, and we must have patience with that slowness and difficulty. I should like, above all, to see this poetry exercise made no longer an extra subject, but a part of the regular work of the school, which would then consist of the three elementary matters, of the class subjects, and of this. And I repeat what I said in my last re- port, that I see no good reason at all for keeping the fourth schedule, or schedule of extra subjects, on its present footing. Provision is now made in the Code for teaching elementary science as a class subject ; grammar, geography, physical geography, history, and domestic economy are also class subjects. Others may be added at pleasure; and the fourth schedule is really, therefore, superfluous in respect of jnany of its subjects, since why should physical geography, domestic economy, and certain branches of natural science do double duty, both as class subjects and as 232 EEPORTS ON SCHOOLS. extra subjects ? Extra subjects ought properly, as the name implies, to be subjects not for whole classes and sections of a school, but for certain forward scholars who may with advantage go on to a higher school, and need some previous preparation for it. I think the Manchester Grammar School requires, from boys admitted to it from elementary schools, besides the matters of elementary school instruction, some knowledge also of geometry, French, and Latin- And this, in my opinion, suggests just what our fourth schedule should be ; it should be designed to meet the case of the few picked scholars who win a passage up into higher schools, and it should include only these matters of geometry, French, and Latin, without which the higher schools will not admit them. Algebra, mechanics, mensuration, and German are not required for a boy's admission to a higher school. But they are not class subjects, it will be answered, and unless you put them into the fourth schedule, there will be no provision for teaching them at all. I answer that for the children in our ele- mentary schools, children under thirteen, there is no need or use of a provision for teaching them at all. But Sir J. Lubbock says that we wish our own children to study a variety of subjects, and why not the children in elementary schools ? And an earnest and widely lamented friend of popular education said GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1880. 233 once, I remember, that he should like to have Greek and Sanscrit taught to the children in board schools, if it were possible. Aspirations safeguarded by an if it 'were possible cannot, it may be thought, do much harm ; nevertheless such aspirations do tend to make us lose sight of the actual present conditions of our problem in popular education, and so far they do harm. Sir John Lubbock talks of the variety of subjects which we make our own children study, and I am not at all sure that we do not make them study too great a variety. But at any rate, there is this difference : take thirty of our own children between the ages of ten and thirteen, and you will not find one of them who does not know what a steed is or what a ford is. You have therefore a totally different material to work upon. And even to talk of lessons in Greek and Sanscrit for such scholars as those whom in our elementary schools we have to deal with, is dangerous trifling, because it tends to make us forget the pressing reality. Not that the ideal which we should propose to our- selves for the school-course in these schools is not a high or a large one. It is the ideal admirably fixed long ago by Comenius, an early and wise school re- former, who is now too much forgotten. " The aim is," says Comenius, " to train generally all who are born men to all which is human." Without 234 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. pedantry and without platitudes, we should all seek to reach this aim in the most practical manner. It may be said that there are at present but three obligatory subjects in our schools, fewer, by much, than in the schools anywhere else. Our only obli- gatory matters of instruction are reading, writing, and arithmetic. An aided school is not required to teach anything besides these. But additional grants are offered for teaching as class subjects any two of the following : geography, natural history, physical geo- graphy, natural philosophy, history, social economy, grammar, and, in the case of girls, needlework. To this list additions may be made. Grants are further offered for teaching as extra, or specific, subjects any two of the following : English literature, mathematics, Latin, French, German, mechanics, animal physiology, physical geography, botany, and, in the case of girls, domestic economy. Finally, a grant is offered for teaching music. Evidently there is here a very com- plicated arrangement ; but I will not touch upon that now. The point for notice is that we have three matters of instruction which are obligatory, and nineteen or more which are optional, or, as our French neighbours say, facultative, but encouraged by grants. However, for only five of these faculta- tive matters can grants be claimed in one and the same year by a school : for two class subjects, two GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 18SO. 235 extra or specific subjects, and music. Apparently it is thought by many people that, except religious in- struction, no instruction whatever will be given for which a grant cannot be claimed. And Sir John Lubbock is afraid that if the fourth schedule is swept away, a child will get no secular instruction except in the three obligatory matters, in two of the facultative matters assigned as class subjects, and in music. And this is plainly insufficient. A girl of twelve ought not to be learning too many things, but she ought to be learning more than reading, writing, and arithmetic, a little English grammar, needlework, and singing. A boy of twelve ought to be learning more than the matters here enumerated, even though geography or elementary natural science be in his case added in lieu of needlework. It is not my province to discuss our present mode of making grants, which leads to such diffi- culties in forming a proper programme of school instruction. I will only remark, in passing, that of our forms of payment for results by far the best form is the grant for class subjects, which turns upon the performance not of each individual child, but of the class. Only there should be provision for withholding this grant in respect of a class which decidedly fails to earn it, while paying it to 236 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. the classes which do earn it. At present there is no such provision ; the grant has to he paid for the whole body of classes claiming it, or refused for the whole body. But what I wish now to do is to suggest to teachers the sort of programme they should strive to establish for the instruction in their schools, leaving the Government grants to adjust themselves to that programme as they may. Besides the obligatory matters laid down in the Code, and leaving out of view religious instruction, needlework for girls, domestic economy, cookery, technical instruction of whatever kind, and drill and gymnastics, a teacher should in general endea- vour to teach to all children of the Second and Third Standards something of poetry or poetic literature, grammar, geography, Natur-kunde or elementary natural science, and music. For the standards above he should add to these history. So that, in general, our school children, of from eight years of age to ten, should all be receiving instruction in these eight matters, reading, writing, arithmetic, poetry, or poetic literature, grammar, geography, Natur-kunde, and music. Our school children of from ten years of age to thirteen should all be receiving more advanced instruction in these eight matters, with history, as a ninth matter, added. And a picked few of these older children should be GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1880. 237 taught, farther, the rudiments of French and Latin, and elementary geometry. Religious instruction stands by itself, and will be regulated in each school according to circumstances. The other matters which I have left out of view needlework, domestic economy, cookery, technical instruction, gymnastics and drill have all of them their importance as things to be taught, some of them their necessity. But parts of mental training they none of them directly are ; and however the Code may mix them up with such, they should resolutely, in the teacher's view, be kept separate from them. A school earns the. bulk of its grant on passes in the three obligatory matters, and on the attendance. The attraction of the smaller grants for class sub- jects and extra subjects should not be allowed to waste the teaching of a school, and to make it in- tricate and confused. A rational programme, simply carried out, should be the great object : five or six matters added, as a part of the regular school course to the three elementary matters, and taught to the children in their classes. A teacher may say : " Oh, but the Code tells me to prepare a class of children to pass, say, in physical geography as a class subject, and then to prepare, again, the same children to pass individually in physical geography as a specific subject. I must find time for both, and the kind of 238 REPORTS OlST SCHOOLS. preparation required for earning the two grants is not the same." Or a teacher may say : " You advise me to make poetry a part of the regular school course, but the Code will not let a girl bring us a grant for poetry unless she first gets up a handbook of domestic economy, a subject not in your programme, and for which I have not time." I answer : " The Code does not compel you to do as you say ; it offers you a few shillings for doing so. If in this respect the intricate arrangements of the Code conflict with the due following out of a good programme, dis- regard them, and sacrifice the few shillings of grant." School boards, which have other public re- sources than the parliamentary grant, should cer- tainly adopt this course as regards the grants for class subjects and specific subjects. Their first object should be a sound programme of instruction simply followed out ; if our over-complicated ma- chinery for grants on class subjects and on specific subjects is found to interfere with the due following out of a sound programme, that machinery is likely in process of time to be amended, and meantime, the programme should not be sacrificed to it. The remarks on school studies which come from the in- spectors of the London School Board seem to me to be in general full of good sense. These inspectors should do their utmost to get good programmes GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1880. 239 established, not dependent on the Code's regulation of its minor grants ; and the board should assist their action. In some directions I cannot but think the board's outlay excessive, but I should welcome some outlay for a purpose like this. I see it urged by the National Union of elemen- tary teachers that to require parsing from children of the Fourth Standard, who are examined in grammar, is too much, and that it is enough if these children learn the parts of speech. I watch with great in- terest the representations with regard to school in- struction which come from teachers, and on several important points in which the teachers desire a change, I am, as I have often declared, in agree- ment with them. As to this particular point of the grammar to be required in the Fourth Standard, I notice it because I attach such great importance to grammar as leading the children to reflect and reason, as a very simple sort of logic, more effective than arithmetic as a 'logical training, because it operates with concretes, or words, instead of with abstracts or figures. In general, I am not at all averse to a proposal that we should require less from the learner and that what he learns should be learned better; and I think that some of what we now require in grammar is over-subtle and unpro- fitable. 240 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. But parsing is the very best of the discipline of grammar, and it is not too hard for Fourth Standard children if it is taught judiciously. The analytic character of our language enables a teacher to bring its grammar more easily within a child's reach ; and advantage should be taken of this analy- tic character, instead of teaching English grammar as was the old plan, with a machinery borrowed from the grammar of synthetic languages. I am glad to observe that in the instruction of pupil- teachers the analytic method of parsing is coming into use more and more. The metaphysics of mood arid tense are what puzzle children ; now, the real characters of mood and tense are remarkably absent from our language, and of what remains of them an important part, the subjunctive mood, is more and more passing out of actual use. In the expressions, " If he live," " If he be dead," live and be are real subjunctives ; but we are more and more ceasing to use them, and we say, " If he lives," " If he is dead." To call " He may love," or " He might love," subjunctives or potentials because " amet," or "amaret" are subjunctives or potentials in Latin, is as absurd as it would be to call /ieXXere airoOvrjcrKeiv in the relaxed Greek of the New Testament (If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die), a future tense be- cause the future would have been used in classical GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1880. 241 Greek. Teachers will find that by following the analytic method in English grammar they save the children's minds from much puzzle, enable them to understand more readily the employment of case, mood, and tense, where they do occur, and beget in them an interest in what is one of the most natu- rally interesting of things language. And at the same time they are teaching English grammar in the true philosophical way. The teachers object, again, to the rule that class subjects shall be taught through reading lessons and according to schemes previously approved by the inspectors. They would prefer to have a scheme laid down in the Code for graduated exami- nation in them. Sir John Lubbock, who speaks with great authority upon such a matter, observes that, at any rate, "to teach scientific subjects through reading lessons is the worst way in which they could be taught." He says, that on these sub- jects "it is much better that the instruction should be given orally and with the aid of the black- board." I have myself the greatest respect for oral teaching with the aid of the blackboard, and am inclined to limit its freedom neither by reading lessons to serve as texts, nor by schemes of my own devising, nor even by any schemes laid down in the Code. I shall show the utmost readiness in R 242 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. accepting practical endeavours to teach class subjects according to the wants and capacities of the classes to be taught. But as elementary science is new as a class subject, I should be glad if the teachers of my district would bear in mind, in making their plans for teaching it, that here is a line where our proceedings must at first be tentative, and where we have great need to keep our eyes and minds open. Tentative, indeed, should very much more of our school proceedings be considered than the lessons in elementary science only. It is impossible to see an institution like the district school at Norwood, which I had lately the pleasure of visiting with Mr. Chadwick, without feeling that the case of the advocates for short-time schooling, balanced by an equal or nearly equal time of industrial training and of well planned bodily exercise, deserves, at any rate, serious attention. Industrial training, domestic economy and cookery should not be mixed up with the school work proper, but they have a very high value when well arranged as a whole by them- selves, to alternate with it and balance it. Bodily exercise, also, and recreation, deserve far more care in our schools than they receive. We take too little thought for the bodies of our school children, we are too intent on forcing more and still more GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1880. 243 into their minds, unregardful how easily the atten- tion, at their age, may be over-tired. True, the children in our elementary schools are not like the boys whom I saw exercising to the sound of music at Norwood boys, very many of whom have to be weaned by judicious physical training from a native preference for sitting still in corners telling one another Jack Sheppard stories. But neither are they like the boys in the schools where we ourselves were brought up, boys living under such favourable conditions that their physical development may in general be trusted to take care of itself. In Lon- don at all events, and in our great towns generally, the children frequenting elementary schools are by no means living under such favourable conditions. Short-time schooling, organized as in large towns it is easy to organize it, and balanced by industrial training and bodily exercises, is actually more effec- tive, so its advocates maintain, than our present long-time schooling, besides its evident advantages in giving health and hardiness, and besides its great saving of expense. A large urban school with two sides to it, a school side and an industrial and gymnastical side, built for a thousand children, be- comes available for twice that number if one half of the children use each side for one half of the day, and the other half for the other. R 2 244 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. The question of expense, as I said in my last report, is a very serious one, and becomes more and more serious. The cost on each child in average attendance in the London board schools is now very nearly SI. for London in general, and above 3. for my own district, Westminster. But on the grave topic of the board's expenditure I shall not now enlarge. Meanwhile the teachers must not take an old friend for their enemy, because he says that the impossible cannot last, and that in attempt- ing to put the immense, ever-extending service of popular education on such a footing of expense as the board does, it attempts the impossible. I hope for and I foresee a good future for our teachers, but not by those means. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1882. Voluntary Schools in Westminster ; hold their own ; the useful ends served by them Advantages of payment for Schooling Useful connexion between Voluntary Schools and their Managers Evening Schools The New Code Overpressure ; how to guard against it The sense of creative activity " Knowledges " requisite ; and something more. WHAT distinguishes the district of Westminster from other divisions of London is that the voluntary schools, instead of suffering and sinking under the competition with board schools, hold their own, and in cases where they at first suffered from the com- petition seem now to be recovering. They have in general raised their fees, but they obtain the higher fees without difficulty, and the numbers attending them increase. I have been used to voluntary schools for now so many years, and have seen so much good done by them, that I cannot but be glad that they should thus bid fair to last my time, 246 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. in my own district at any rate. Westminster has, of course, in the wealth of its inhabitants, excep- tional advantages for enabling the clergy to main- tain their schools in spite of the check given by the levy of school rates to the flow of voluntary contributions. But the prosperity of the voluntary schools in Westminster gives me pleasure, not be- cause it is a gratification to the clergy and to great people to retain them, but because they serve real needs and do good. One might expect that the class of people for whose children these schools are required would prefer public rate-supported schools to others, as being schools which they support (so far as they pay rates) themselves, and which in no way make them dependent on private charity. One might expect that teachers would prefer schools where they both get, in general, higher salaries than in voluntary schools, and are free, besides, from the control of private and clerical managers. In a report written many years ago by me after seeing the elementary schools abroad, I said that for parents and teachers to prefer really public schools seemed the natural thing, and that they would with time come in this country also to prefer them. And so, in fact, per- haps, it is the natural thing, and they will in the end come to prefer it. GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1882. 247 Yet experience shows that where funds are forth- coming for the support of voluntary schools, they at present hold their own and are sought after. Parents send their children to them, although the fees are higher than at other schools within reach. Teachers continue in them at lower salaries than they could earn in board schools. That this should be so, proves the moderation of the English character, proves the absence, in general, of arbitrariness and meddlesomeness on the part of managers, the absence of irritable vanity on the part of parents and teachers. A strong element of irritable vanity on the one side, or of arbitrariness on the other, would be fatal to voluntary schools. But the moderation, the English moderation, on both sides, keeps those elements of ruin out ; and so long as they are kept out, and the voluntary schools prosper, these schools serve, I think, several important ends, of which I shall here mention two only. One is economic, the other moral. It has so often been said that people value more highly, and use more respectfully, what they pay a price for, that one is almost ashamed to repeat it. But the advocates of free education seem never to have heard or at least considered it. In a country where there is public support for the education of one 248 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. class only, as in our country, to defend a very high expenditure upon it by the very high expenditure on publicly supported education abroad, where it is for all classes, is, of course, a mere blunder. To have an expensive public education for one class of the com- munity only, and to make it gratuitous, is practi- cally to fall in with the ideas of Jack Cade. But suppose that public schools are provided for the whole community, and that schooling without fee is then defended on the plea that parents have suffi- ciently paid for their children's schooling by paying rates and taxes. Even then, unless the payment is so made by a direct school tax that both in form and in amount it comes to much the same thing as the payment of a school fee, I doubt whether its effect upon the payers is so wholesome as the payment of a school fee. In our board schools fees are paid, but they are in general much lower than in volun- tary schools, and there is pressure constantly being applied to make them lower still, or even to get rid of them altogether. A certain number of free schools and a certain number of free places in paying schools there ought to be ; but I hope that school boards will not discontinue the school fee generally, and that where it is now too low, and less than parents can fairly pay, they will raise it. The high character of voluntary schools in Westminster is GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1882. 249 certainly very much due to the value set upon a schooling for which what is felt to be a real and adequate price has to be paid. I do not say that the price paid in board schools ought to be so high as in those voluntary schools, it ought not; but it ought to be as high relatively to the means of the parents to pay, and I do not think it is at present. I visited the other day a voluntary school with a sixpenny fee, where a penny had just been added to this for school stationery, which the boys had hitherto provided as they could. They got it much better for the extra penny, they felt themselves to be paying for it, and they were greatly pleased with it. I could not help reflecting how wholesome this kind of pleasure is, and how it is quite lost in board schools, where the gratuitous distribution of stationery is the rule. And as with stationery, so with the rest of what is furnished at school. Another source of strength to voluntary schools is the natural and intimate connexion between the schools and their managers, and the influences thence arising. The more experience I get, the higher I value this source of strength. In a town like London especially, many a man must feel that while others, as Solomon says, " have many friends/' he himself "is separated from his neighbour"; and the feeling that in their manager they have really a 250 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. " neighbour " who knows them, and to the best of his power will help them, is an influence which tends to keep both teacher and scholar faithful to voluntary schools. It is an influence of a very valu- able kind. Of course it is not exercised in every case where it might be, but, on the whole, it is exercised to an extent and with a power beyond one's expectations. Teachers will remain at salaries below the board-school rate, and scholars will pay fees above the common board-school fee, while they feel this influence. I have schools in my district where every teacher and every child in the school feel that in their manager they have a friend, and this is no little thing in London. One school I will mention because this has been so eminently the case there, and because I so much regret to lose by his removal to another charge, the manager who long exercised so admirable an influence. In the schools of the northern district of the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, every teacher and every child felt that they had in Mr. Maul a personal friend, never cold, never tired, and never absent. They could not but be attached to an institution so managed. This kind of influence counts in a child's school- life, as well as instruction. Those who value such influence complain much of the rule which sets a boy of ten years free to go to work if he has passed GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1882. 251 the Fourth Standard. Whatever byelaws there may be, they say, for obliging him still to pass a part of his day in school, they are not, as a matter of fact, enforced, not in Westminster at least. A boy of ten years who has passed the Fourth Standard finds himself free to bring his schooling to an end alto- gether, and his school sees him no more. He escapes at ten years old from any further tuition by his pastors and masters, and he escapes from their influence as well. But no one will say, that, even if passing the Fourth Standard proves that a boy has knowledge enough to be safely set free from further tuition, it can prove also that he may safely be set free from further training. The training for the three years after ten, the hold then acquired upon the boy by his pastors and masters, was, it is said, one of the best things in his school-life, and it is now much more often lost than formerly. The conclusion is that some authority should see that a boy of ten who goes to work does really, up to the age of thirteen, continue to pass a part of each day at school. If he does this, his going to work is nothing but good for him. A valuable agency for retaining influence over the learner, even after the age of thirteen, is the evening school. Great alterations are made in respect to grants for these schools in the New Code, and I 252 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. therefore take the present opportunity for saying a few words as to the work hitherto accomplished by them in my district, and as to their prospects for the future. The evening schools examined and aided in my district have been of two kinds. First there are the schools of which the chief function is to teach youths whose education has been neglected. Of such schools I have had several in the neighbourhood of London, while my district extended to other parts of Middlesex besides Westminster at Enfield, Southgate, Winchmore Hill, Highgate ; and several in Westminster itself, chiefly in and about Soho, These schools formerly presented for examination a good many youths in the lowest standards, but they are in general small, of late years they have been getting smaller, and as school attendance becomes more and more enforced the need for them will gradually disappear. Much more important is the second class of evening schools, the schools which have been instituted to enable youths to cany on further the education begun in the ele- mentary school. In Westminster there is one very good specimen of this class, the St. Stephen's Even- ing School. This is the only school known to me which will be able to meet fairly the new rules, and to profit by them. In the past it has done much good work which the Education Department could GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1882. 253 not recognize and recompense. Now it will get its reward. This winter-session the school has enrolled 397 pupils, of whom 100 attend French classes, 60 attend classes in shorthand, 30, classes in book-keeping, and 20, classes to prepare candidates for the Civil Service examinations. There are also small classes in Latin, Greek, and German, and all this irrespec- tive of the large classes in the elementary subjects, where the work of the day school is revised and perfected. Now, if all the schoolmasters in that part of Westminster insisted on having evening schools of their own, the result would be a number of small, struggling, partially efficient schools, with little suc- cess and no reputation. But instead of this, St. Stephen's draws the teachers for its evening classes from all the schools round, all uniting to make one central school flourishing and distinguished. Unless a like course is followed by the London School Board, I fear that the numerous schools set up by them this winter, in the hope of profiting by the enlarged grants for evening schools, will not succeed. To succeed, an evening school must win a repu- tation. It should have an ample staff, not one teacher struggling with as many grades as there 254 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. are pupils. Let some central school of the board be chosen for the experiment, let the teachers be selected from all the schools available within a certain area all the schools, moreover, having to advertise by printed notice the evening classes, and to direct applicants to the place where they are held. In this way the evening school will become efficient and well known, and will succeed. An energetic schoolmaster, like Mr. Baker at St. Stephen's, should be at the head, but to organize and direct rather than to teach classes himself. If some sympathetic supervision and influence can be added, the good work will be complete. Unless, I say, the promoters of evening classes follow a course of this kind, it seems to me likely that many of the new evening schools will disap- pear as rapidly as they have sprung up. The New Code will cause changes not in evening classes only, but along the whole line of elementary school instruction. We shall gradually adapt our- selves to it, both teachers and inspectors; and I wish the teachers of my district to be guided by their own experience as to the best methods for working it, rather than by instructions, given be- forehand and without positive experience, from me. I am not afraid of finding the teachers of my dis- trict too little disposed to follow what wishes I may GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1882. 255 express as to the course to be taken by them in their schools. On the contrary, they follow them so willingly, that I feel the more bound to recollect how in these matters we are all learners together, and how their daily practical experience gives them at many points means for forming a judgment which I have not. I will, however, take the oppor- tunity of the promulgation of a New Code for saying briefly again that which I have at various times said before : at what the teacher of a public elementary school should, in my opinion, chiefly aim, and where it behoves him to have firm and clear principles, and to resist pressure. Fresh matters of instruction are continually being added to our school programmes ; but it is well to re- member that the recipient for this instruction, the child, remains as to age, capacity, and school time, what he was before, and that his age, capacity, and school time, must in the end govern our proceedings. Undoubtedly there is danger at present of his being over-urged and over-worked, of his being taught too many things, and not the best things for him. I am very glad that the New Code confines the grant for specific subjects to the standards above the fourth. This is a defence against the danger of teaching too much, and for children in the Fourth Standard the specific subjects are in general too much. Teachers 256 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. know very well, however, that the strain upon a learner's mind arises not only from the quantity of what is put into it, but also from the quality and character; and that the strain may be relieved not only by diminishing the quantity, but also by altering that quality and character. This is an extremely important matter. Attention has lately been called to the break down, in India, of a number of young men who had won their appointments after severe study and severe examination. No doubt the quantity of mental exertion required for examinations is often excessive, but the strain is much the more severe, because the quality and character of mental exertion required are so often injudicious. The mind is less strained the more it reacts on what it deals with, and has a native play of its own, and is creative. It is more strained the more it has to receive a number of " knowledges " passively, and to store them up to be reproduced in an examination. But to acquire a number of "knowledges," store them, and reproduce them, was what in general those candidates for Indian employment had had to do. By their suc- cess in doing this they were tested, and the exami- nation turned on it. In old days examinations mainly turned upon Latin and Greek composition. Composition in the dead languages is now wholly GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1882. 257 out of favour, and I by no means say that it is a sufficient test for candidates for Indian employment. But I will say that the character and quality of mental exertion required for it is more healthy than the character and quality of exertion required for receiving and storing a number of " knowledges." And the candidate whom the former test brings to the front is likely to be a healthier man in body and mind, both then and afterwards, than the man whom the latter test brings to the front. Of such high importance, in relieving the strain of mental effort, is the sense of pleasurable activity and of creation. Of course a great deal of the work in elementary schools must necessarily be of a me- chanical kind. But whatever introduces any sort of creative activity to relieve the passive reception of knowledge is valuable. The Kindergarten exercises are useful for this reason, the management of tools is useful, drawing is useful, singing is useful. The poetry exercise, if properly managed, is of very great use, and this is why I have always been in favour of it and am glad to see further development given to it by the New Code. People talk contemptuously of "learning lines by heart"; but if a child is brought, as he easily can be brought, to throw him- self into a piece of poetry, an exercise of creative activity has been set up in him quite different s 258 REPORTS ON SCHOOLS. from the effort of learning a list of words to spell, or a list of flesh-making and heat-giving foods, or a list of capes and bays, or a list of reigns and battles, and capable of greatly relieving the strain from learning these and of affording a lively pleasure. It is true, language, and geography, and history, and the elements of natural science are all capable of being taught in a less mechanical and more in- teresting manner than that in which they are com- monly taught now ; they may be so taught as to call forth pleasurable activity in the pupil. But those disciplines are especially valuable which call this activity forth most surely and directly. As to "knowledges," a teacher should, in my opinion, aim at having every child who passes through an elementary school not only taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, but furnished in addition with some knowledge of the English language and of grammar, and also with some instruction in natural science, geography, and history. A select class capable of being carried further with profit should be formed for specific subjects. But governing the teacher's whole design of instruction in these knowledges should be the aim of calling forth, by some means or other, in every pupil a sense of pleasurable activity and of creation ; he should resist being made a mere lader with "information." GENERAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1882. 259 There is an admirable sermon of Butler's, preached in 1745 on behalf of the charity schools of London and Westminster, which every one concerned with popular education ought to read. It is far too little known ; the Christian Knowledge Society would do well to reprint it, as they have reprinted Bishop Wilson's manual. Every point is taken in it which most needs to be taken : the change in the world which makes " knowledges " of universal neces- sity now which were not so formerly, the hardship of exclusion from them, the absurdity and selfishness of those who are " so extremely apprehensive of the danger that poor persons will make a perverse use of even the least advantage, whilst they do not appear at all apprehensive of the like danger for themselves or their own children, in respect of riches or power, how much soever; though the danger of perverting these advantages is surely as great, and the perversion itself of much greater and worse consequence." But there is perhaps no sentence in the sermon which more deserves to be pondered by us than this : " Of education," says Butler, " infor- mation itself is really the least part." EXTRACTS FROM REPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. REPORT on the WESLEYAN TRAINING COLLEGE, WESTMINSTER; for the Year 1853. Training of the Students Special objects pursued in this College. THERE can be no question as to the advantage which the students enjoy in the lectures of their head-master, or as to the zeal and ability with which the other officers of the institution discharge their duties. Neither can there be any question as to the acquaintance with all subjects of ordinary secular instruction shown by most of the students, both when examined themselves, and when giving lessons in the practising schools. The secular instruction here is no doubt well and adequately given ; those who conduct the institution are anxious to perfect 262 EEPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. their students in it, and are of opinion that the attention which is paid to religious teaching will not affect their success in doing so. And the institution has been so recently established, that it cannot, perhaps, yet be determined what that success will be. But the whole spirit of the proceedings in this insti- tution, the language held by its promoters, the subjects constantly preferred by the students on which to give their lessons, the tenor of these lessons themselves, the very arrangement and organization of the practising schools, remind the observer that this is not the sole, nor even the chief thing aimed at. The Wesleyan Education Committee, and the connexion on behalf of which they act, put it forth as their first principle, " that the week-day schools should secure the means of religious as well as secular instruction, in such a manner as to make the latter strictly subordinate to the former." And again, "religious teaching is the leading and paramount object in the system of week-day schools, which it is the business of the committee to promote." And, therefore, as " religious character is the primary con- sideration in the selection of the students, it is also the main end regarded in their discipline and train- ing." The daily attendance at morning and evening worship required of every student, their weekly con- versations with the principal on religious subjects, WESLEYAN COLLEGE, 1853. 263 their meetings for prayer among themselves, the supplementary examination paper on Scripture doc- trines and Scripture history, set by the Wesleyan committee to all candidates examined at their institu- tion for Government certificates, are all of them so many endeavours towards securing this end. For this end too, the committee placed the institution where it is, rather than in a less miserable and necessitous neighbourhood, because, to use the prin- cipal's own words, " they did not wish their students to be spoiled in training ; and by a lengthened resi- dence away from the dwellings of the poor, and amongst the attractions of superior life, disinclined and rendered unfit to undertake the arduous and self-denying duties of school teachers. They hoped that, surrounded as their students are at Westminster by the families of the poor, their want of education, with its attendant degradation and misery, would excite their best feeling." A moral end, then, a moral effect to be produced upon the student, was in view, even in planting the institution where it now stands. It is right to remember these things when one notices, perhaps, points in the proceedings of the training college or of the practising schools which seem unfavourable to the perfection of secular instruction ; when a spectator, attending exclusively 264 REPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. to this, remarks that the galleries are too large, the number of children collected in them too great, the lessons on religious subjects or which are made to take a religious turn too frequent, the method of the teacher too often one of exhortation and lecture, rather than one of searching question and answer ; it is right to remember that much of this is done with special aims, in the view to produce a special result both in the teachers and in the children ; that it was because they had these special aims that the Wes- leyan connexion, like the Church of England, for the most part withheld their assent from the principle of British schools, to establish schools of a strictly connexional character. And, perhaps, considering how far more important to the young is the personal influence of the teacher than the things taught ; considering, too, how narrow is the range of subjects in which it can be expected that the children of the poor shall really acquire instruction in school, it is no matter of regret that a training college should be established with these aims, even though the pursuit of them should cause it to send forth somewhat less finished scholars, if the same pursuit enables it to send forth more formed and serious men. But, however this may be, by no member of the Methodist body will it be esteemed a reproach to WESLEYAN COLLEGE, 1853. 265 have sacrificed something of intellectual smartness and showy acquirement in the paramount endeavour to train a band of serious and religious men to send among the poor ; of that body, which already in other ways has laboured so long and so well in this cause ; of that body, which from the first has devoted itself above all to matters of religious concernment, just as, even in its separation from the established Church, it was actuated by spiritual, and not by political, grounds. REPORT on the WESLEYAN TRAINING COLLEGE, WESTMINSTER; for the Year 1856. Efforts to reduce the disproportion between extent of Wesleyan operations in day and Sunday Schools Spirit of co-operation with Committee of Council. IN 1855 was instituted a meeting, to be held annually in London in the month of May, on behalf of Wesleyan education; and I am glad to see that in the resolutions of this meeting great stress is laid on the establishment of day-schools. This is, indeed, in strict conformity with the desire manifested of the plan of education sanctioned by the Wesleyan Conference in 1841, that " all possible care and effort should be used in each district to promote the formation and success of week-day and infant schools;" but still the number of 45,000 scholars in attend- ance in Wesleyan day-schools bears far too small a proportion to the number of 400,000 scholars in attendance in Wesleyan Sunday-schools. But the Wesleyan Education Committee have shown that they are alive to the urgent need of reducing this WESLEYAN COLLEGE, 1856. 267 grave disproportion a disproportion, be it remarked, which does not exist in the school operations of their missions. I cordially unite with them in the hope that the extinction of their debt, and a growing sense, among the members of their connexion, of the necessity of promoting the day-school no less zealously than the Sunday-school, may enable them to extend their operations in the establishment of schools. So long as the present denominational system of schools shall continue in force, there is no school system to which I wish success more sincerely than to theirs. They have made and are making the greatest efforts for the promotion of a system of infant-school education; they desire that the time may come when every scholar received into the older school should have previously received a training in the infant school. With those efforts, and with that desire, I heartily sympathise. They have, in my opinion, most sensible views as to the management of infants ; what I have sometimes heard made a matter of reproach against their infant schools, that they are play-schools, is really, in my opinion, the highest praise ; it means that " they do not seek to develop prematurely and forcibly the faculties of the mind not developed in the young child, but employ their attention mainly in the direction of faculties which nature teaches the child 268 REPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. vigorously to put forth, perception, observation, and curiosity." l Their infant-school system, accordingly, is in my opinion a healthier and a more successful one than that of any other educational body. But, besides this, their school system has, in my judg- ment, as at present conducted, another signal merit, of especial value under present circumstances, where the work of elementary education is carried on, not by the regulation of a central authority, but by a process of co-operation and mutual effort between the Committee of Council and the different educa- tional bodies. Those at the head of the Wesleyan school system appear to me, I am bound to say, to conduct its operations in a spirit singularly free, so far as their dealings with the Committee of Council are concerned, from all jealousy and hostile mistrust ; in a spirit which may truly be called peaceable and easily entreated; in a spirit which proves, I hope, the consciousness in them that they have been fairly dealt with by the Committee of Council, and which certainly renders it a matter of pleasure, rather than of difficulty, to deal with them. I find, also, this spirit eminently present in the great body of Wesleyan teachers with whom I have to deal; I 1 From an " Address to the Students of the "Wesleyan Training Institution at the commencement of the Session of 1856," by the Rev. John Scott, the principal. (M. A.) WESLEYAN COLLEGE, 1856. 269 believe that it is a spirit fostered in them by their training, nay, by the principles and tendencies of Wesleyanism itself. Their training is studiously addressed to " form in them habits of right feeling and of good conduct, as well as of correct thinking ; " to develop in them a spirit of peaceableness and affectionateness ; " the spirit of teaching for the good of others as well as for their own livelihood." l They are exhorted to labour, "not only that they may have their schools in a creditable state at the visit of the inspector, but that their scholars, when they come to be men and women, may remember their school-days with pleasure, may think of their teacher with affection and mention him with honour, when blue-books are shelved and forgotten." 2 This is the spirit which, I truly believe, those who con- duct the Wesley an training institution do their best to develop and to promote ; it is with sincere plea- sure, therefore, that I report to your Lordships the improved efficiency of its secular instruction, and the continued growth of its prosperity. 1 From the " Address " quoted on preceding page. From the same. REPORT on the TRAINING COLLEGE of the BRITISH AND FOREIGN SCHOOL SOCIETY, in the BOROUGH ROAD ; for the Year 1858. Prominence given to Study of Method Instruction in Domestic Economy. AT my recent inspection I was certainly not less struck than formerly with the ability shown in the lectures which I heard ; but I was above all struck with the evident pains taken by the lecturer, not only to inform his hearers, but also to fit them to reproduce in their future school lessons the in- formation which they had gained. Increased atten- tion was evidently paid to the inculcation of correct methods of teaching; faults of exposition, faults in questioning, into which inexperienced teachers are liable to fall, were brought into clear light, and sedulously examined. I observed this in lectures both in the male and in the female department. For example, I heard Mr. Fitch, the principal, say BOROUGH ROAD COLLEGE, 1858. 271 to the female students in the course of a lecture on grammar: "Never consider your lesson prepared, unless, besides getting the rules by heart, which I see you have all done, you have also provided your- selves with an example of your own for each rule." This is just the sort of admonition which these girls want. In his remarks to the male students upon a criticism lesson, I heard him again and again caution the students to avoid vagueness in their comments upon the lesson under discussion. " Do not," he said, "accustom yourselves to say that such and such a thing in the lesson was good or bad, without alleging precise grounds for your opinion." And in his own resume" of the lesson, Mr. Fitch illustrated his meaning by giving instances of faults in the lesson just delivered, in every one of which he for- tified, by clear, definite reasons, the censure which he passed. Again, in a lecture on school manage- ment, I heard him insisting, with great good sense and clearness, on certain signal faults in teaching, on the want of arrangement in lessons, and the attempt to crowd too much matter into single lessons; on the want of management by which scholars are allowed to answer by a single technical word, with- out paraphrase or explanation, or by which the willing are allowed to give all the answers, and the unwilling left without notice ; on the faulty habit of 272 REPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. questioning, by which the teacher, adopting in his questions an incomplete elliptical form of expression, encourages the pupil to adopt the same in his answer ; on the want of consecutiveness in lessons ; " Every teacher," he said, "should arrange a two or three months' course beforehand on a definite plan ; " finally, on the injudicious use of the gallery for lessons for which it is quite unsuited. I remarked how the mathematical tutor practically exemplified in his own teaching the best methods of giving instruction in arithmetic, by his clear explanation of the principles of the rules of decimal arithmetic, on which he was lecturing; by the way in which he continually tested them by the rules of vulgar frac- tions ; and then, when he had been through two or three sums on the black-board, set a sum for the students to work by themselves, and went round to examine their slates. I noticed how Miss Scott, in a lecture on infant-school management, instead of dealing in generalities about the faculties of children and their development, interested her hearers, and practically showed them how to interest others, by a natural lively account of Pestalozzi's early pro- ceedings, and by practical suggestions about object lessons and the formation of cabinets of objects. Lecturers, in order to select and pursue such a line of remark as this, must previously have made the BOROUGH ROAD COLLEGE, 1858. 273 theory and practice of teaching the object of their close observation. A letter and memorandum were addressed by your Lordships' Secretary in February, 1858, to the managers of schools under inspection, on the sub- ject of needlework and domestic economy. That letter and memorandum related to the instruction of female apprentices and candidates for Queen's scholarships. They assigned to the examination in these branches a wider range than formerly, and a greater stringency. They were followed, in Decem- ber last, by a communication to the managers of training colleges for females upon the same subject. In this was announced the desire of your Lord- ships to give a more searching and practical cha- racter to the examination of female students in the details of domestic economy. The examination, with this new character, would necessitate the devotion by the female students of more time to the study of domestic economy; the provision, by the training school authorities, of increased appli- ances for teaching it. At present there do not exist in this training college the means for teaching the practical details of industrial work in the way indicated by your Lordships, although lectures on the theory of domestic economy form a part of the regular course of instruction. T 274 REPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. The managers are disinclined to establish the laundry, bakehouse, &c., requisite for carrying into operation a practical system of industrial training. The female students would be disinclined, were such a system established, to sacrifice for its sake a portion of their intellectual instruction. The majority of them pass but one year in the training college ; they have a severe examination to undergo at the end of that year ; many of them begin their year's course with inadequate preparation, and have to make up for lost time. Intellectual instruction is what above all they come to obtain ; their prac- tice in the model schools, and the present amount of their instruction in needlework and domestic economy take already as much time away from their intellectual instruction as they are willing to spare. Still, were these students about to undertake the charge of rural schools, or of urban schools for the poorest class of children, so great would be the benefit of good methods of domestic economy in the families of the poor, so grievous is at present the want of them, that it might be advisable to take any measures requisite for the formation of a body of instructors qualified to teach such methods, even at the risk of doing some violence to the in- clinations of the managers and students of training schools. BOROUGH ROAD COLLEGE, 1858. 275 But students from this institution do not, in general, find themselves placed in charge of schools of this kind. They find themselves in charge of schools frequented by a class of children who come to school for an intellectual, not for an industrial, training. The parents of these children would not willingly consent that their daughters' school time should be taken up with learning the details of prac- I tical housekeeping. In this middling class of society girls grow up, no doubt, with a lamentable ignorance of these details. So they do in the richer classes ; and, in the richer classes, one hears people sometimes lament that girls are not taught to bake, to cook, and wash. But these very people would be indignant if they found that their daughters' school time was actually occupied with learning cookery or clear starching, instead of languages or music. So it is with the middling class of society from which British schools are mainly recruited. Doubtless, girls in this class are ignorant of domestic economy ; but this is not the ignorance which their parents send them to school to remove ; rightly or wrongly, they think that their position in life may enable them to dispense with a practical knowledge of any branch of industrial work, except needlework, and to find others who will perform such work for them. What they want for their daughters, what they T 2 276 EEPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. send them to school to acquire, is what is called a liberal education. I think, therefore, that the indisposition of the authorities of the Borough Road Training College o o o to undertake the teaching of industrial work, and the indisposition of the female students to spend time in acquiring a knowledge of it, would be at least equalled by the indisposition of parents send- ing their children to British schools, to permit their daughters to reap the benefit of such know- ledge, when acquired. REPORT mi the TRAINING ^COLLEGES of the BRITISH AND FOREIGN SCHOOL SOCIETY in the BOROUGH ROAD, for SCHOOLMASTERS, and at STOCKWELL, for SCHOOLMISTRESSES; for the Year 1861. Teaching of Domestic Economy Lectures Music and Physical Science as Educating agents. EXCELLENT provision has been made at Stockwell for teaching domestic economy. The arrangements of the laundry are really beautiful, and I inspected with a pleasure which the objects of inspection do not always awaken, the wash-room, the ironing-room, the drying closet, the wringing- ground, the large and enclosed drying-ground of this department. Here too the students are employed by batches of six. All the ironing and starching are done by them. A practising kitchen has been provided, but it is not yet in operation. Perhaps all lectures tend to be somewhat too much of lectures, and too little of examinations of 278 REPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. the pupil in a matter prepared by him. Lectures to young men may be allowed far more liberty in this respect than lessons to boys; but when the hearers of the lectures are young men whose busi- ness it will be to give lessons to boys, perhaps this liberty should be exercised more sparingly than in general it is. Both Mr. Alderson and I remarked that the students who taught classes in our pre- sence were perpetually falling into the error of lecturing too much. The evil of this habit in teach- ing boys is that you do not ensure the pupil's learn- ing anything at all ; for he listens, or not, as he feels inclined. We had good evidence, in the note- books of the students which we examined, that this evil does not exist in their case ; still, were it but as a model for the student to follow in the primary school hereafter, we both think that the training college lecture might with advantage be made somewhat more of an examination. It seemed to me that the principal examined considerably more than either of the lecturers. The students receive one lesson in the theory, one in the practice, of singing from notes ; they are formed for each lesson into two classes. We heard a singing lesson ; and here, as in a chemistry lesson which I heard given, I had occasion to re- mark what I have remarked so often, how musical BOROUGH ROAD AND STOCKWELL COLLEGES, 1861. 279 and physical science seem each of them to awaken young men of the class to which these students belong ; to be capable of " striking the electric chain " in them, in a way in which no other part of their instruction can. No doubt it is because of this capacity that the civilising power of music has always been famed so highly; for instruction civi- lises a raw nature only so far as it delights and enkindles it. Perhaps it will be found that physical science has, for such natures, something of a similar power, and that we may well make more use of both agents than we do at present. Undoubtedly no refining influence is more powerful than that of literary culture ; but this influence seems to need in the recipient a certain refinement of nature at the outset in order to make itself felt; and with this previous refinement music and physical science appear able to dispense. REPOKT on the TRAINING COLLEGES of the BRITISH AND FOREIGN SCHOOL SOCIETY in the BOROUGH KoAD,/or SCHOOLMASTERS, and at STOCKWELL, for SCHOOLMISTRESSES ; for the Year 1864. Teaching Lessons as given before the Inspectors. I CALL the exercise in teaching, which the second year students have to perform before the inspec- tor, important, because the student's power of teaching is in itself, no doubt, very important, and because this exercise counts for a good deal in his examination ; but as a means of enabling the inspector really to test the student's power of teaching, it more and more, every year that I witness it, seems to me unsatisfactory. The fault of our elementary schools in general is that the teacher tells the pupil too much, instead of forcing him to learn, and simply ascertaining whether he has learnt ; this fault the exercise in teaching, as now performed by the students, seems to me just BOROUGH EOAD AND STOCKWELL COLLEGES, 1864. 281 calculated to perpetuate. To a class of some thirty children, with whom they have very little acquaint- ance, they have to give a set public lesson on some subject or other for twenty minutes ; a sketch of this lesson is prepared beforehand and given to the in- spector. I htive several such sketches now before me : a sketch of a lesson on the " Hand," a sketch of a lesson on the " Isle of Wight," a sketch of a lesson on the "Crocodile," on the "Honey Bee," on the " Cause of Day and Night " ; inevitably the lesson becomes a means of showing the student's own knowledge of his subject and power of arranging it, rather than his faculty of teaching; of this, with a class of children before him who do not profess to have learnt the lesson beforehand, who cannot there- fore be examined in it, who cannot, certainly, be taught it in twenty minutes, and who are wearied and bewildered by being made the apparent object of a number of these performances one after another, it is really scarcely any test at all. The inspector would learn far more of a student's power of teaching by seeing him give to a single pupil a reading lesson of five minutes, or by watching him hear half a dozen pupils say a lesson which they had learnt than by witnessing this much more pretentious perform- ance. It is well, no doubt, that their Lordships should in every possible way mark their sense of the 282 REPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGE?. great importance of the student's learning to teach ; and perhaps the teaching lesson is even now im- portant as marking this; but as enabling the inspector to judge what it professes to enable him to judge, it seems to me very unsatisfactory, and I never witness it without wishing for some change. REPORT on the TRAINING COLLEGES of the BRITISH AND FOREIGN SCHOOL SOCIETY in the BOROUGH ROAD, for SCHOOLMASTERS, and at STOCKWELL for SCHOOLMISTRESSES ; for the I ear 1867. Callisthenics and Gymnastics. THE Stockwell students have regular lessons in callisthenics, to their great advantage. At the Borough Road College gymnastics are not taught, and there are neither room nor appliances for teach- ing them. To one who has recently seen the training schools of Germany and Switzerland, and who knows the value there attached to cultivating, through gymnastics and out-door exercises, the physical development of the future schoolmaster, above all, of the future primary schoolmaster this omission cannot but be matter of regret. No public normal school for primary teachers would in Germany or Switzerland be allowed to exist without adequate 284 REPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. provision for teaching gymnastics to the students. The buildings of Kussnacht, the primary normal school for Canton Zurich, would make a poor show beside those of the Borough Road College, but attached to them is a good gymnasium and a good garden for the students. The students there have one hour's instruction in gymnastics every week, and two hours' military exercising ; all through the fine time of the year they have three hours a week of gardening. In great towns in Germany, where there can be no garden and gardening, the time given to gymnastics is proportionably augmented. SPECIAL REPORT on the TRAINING COLLEGE of the CONGREGATIONAL BOARD OF EDUCATION at HOMERTON ; for the Year 1868. Scope of Visit Present circumstances of College History and Rules of Congregational Board Their Schools Evangelical; meaning of this denomination ; its identity with the general denomination of Protestant Schools in Germany. October, 1868. IN compliance with the Lord President's directions, I visited, at the beginning of this month, the Train- ing College and Practising Schools at Homerton belonging to the Congregational Board of Education. I was directed to report whether the college and its practising schools seemed to me, after inspecting them, an institution which the Committee of Council might now fairly begin to aid; and particularly whether the past management of the institution appeared to have been sufficiently good to warrant the Committee of Council in admitting to examina- tion the former students of Homerton College, with- 286 REPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. out requiring the two previous inspections to which they would, in strictness, have to submit. It was in June last that the Congregational Board unanimously resolved to apply to the Committee of Council for admission of the Training College at Homerton, and of the elementary schools of Congre- gationalists, to a share in the Parliamentary grant. But before this there had been a period of much uncertainty as to the course to be followed by the Board, and as to the future prospects of the Homerton College. During this uncertainty the admission of fresh students naturally ceased ; and, since the Board came to its decision, sufficient time has not passed for a body of fresh students to form itself, and to appear in definite working order. The present state of the training department, therefore, affords no standard by which to judge the college, either as it was while it proceeded regularly upon its old footing, or as it probably will be when it shall have definitely estab- lished itself upon its new one. Dr. Unwin, the prin- cipal, has shown the greatest possible willingness in furnishing me with all information for which I asked ; but the forms in which training colleges, already in the regular receipt of grants, are required to exhibit the account of their income and expenditure, cannot well this year be filled up for the Homerton College. But, nevertheless, amply sufficient data are afforded HOMERTON COLLEGE, 1868. 287 to enable me to form an opinion upon the points to which the instructions of the Lord President have, on the present occasion, immediately directed me. I will preface that opinion with a very short account of the Homerton College and of its promoters. The college belongs, as I have said, to the Con- gregational Board of Education. This Board was formed in 1843, "to promote popular education, par- taking of a religious character, and under no circum- stances receiving aid from public money administered by Government." These are the words of the first of the twelve rules by which, up to the present year, the operations of the Board were governed. The sixth of those rules lays down as follows the chief objects for which the Board was constituted : "1. The establishment of normal schools for training male and female teachers for day and infant schools. " 2. The inspection of day schools in connexion with the Con- gregational body. " 3. The collection of educational statistics respecting Congre- gational day, Sabbath, and infant schools. " 4. The establishment or aiding of schools by grants of money, books, or otherwise. " 5. The recommendation of the most approved books for schools, and, if necessary and practicable, the compilation of such as may be desirable. " 6. The advancement of popular education by public meetings, deputations, the press, and by any other means approved by the Board." 288 REPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. The seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth rules relate to the religious character of the college and schools in connexion with the Board, and to the religious instruction given in them. It is provided that no candidate shall be eligible for admission to the college who is not in communion with some Christian church, or whose Christian character is not otherwise well attested. The Board, though constituted to act denominationally as a Congregational Board, pro- fesses to "entertain the most cordial consideration for all other Evangelical denominations who may be willing to co-operate with it in friendly emulation for the public service," and (so the rule, as it originally stood, went on) which, " rejecting Government aid," will co-operate also with it " to present a firm and general resistance to State interference in educational matters." The ninth rule sets forth that " the edu- cation given in schools connected with the Board shall be conducted on Evangelical views of religion ;" but that " neither the learning of any denominational formulary nor attendance on any particular place of worship shall be a condition of admittance into them ; " and the tenth rule adds that " all schools in which the religious teaching is Evangelical, although not entirely Congregational in their management, shall be eligible for union with the Board." This rule originally stipulated that such schools, besides HOMERTON COLLEGE, 1868. 289 offering the above-mentioned religious character, should " receive no aid from the State." Finally, the rules provide, as a fundamental regu- lation, "that all arrangements as to the substance and manner of teaching, with the whole of the in- ternal government of schools, shall be in the hands of the local committee." The course of events, to which no wise man will obstinately refuse to adapt his own course, led to the resolution of last spring, by which the Board and its constituency determined to refuse no longer the aid of the State to their schools an aid which involves no interference of any kind whatever with the reli- gious instruction given in them. All provisions as to the rejection of State aid have now, therefore, disappeared from the rules. What remains, and what the Committee of Council has to do with, is a system of schools with a conscience clause, and with a denominational character ; their denomination being properly Evangelical. They are unlike the Church of England schools, or the Wesleyan schools, in that they are not merely for Anglicans, or for Wesleyans, but for those who hold "Evangelical views of religion." They are unlike the schools of the British and Foreign School Society, because, being for those who hold "Evangelical views of U 290 REPOKTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. religion," they exclude Socinians and Roman Catho- lics. The distinction is remarkable, because the denomination thus in fact adopted is identical with the denomination common to all the State-aided Protestant Schools of Germany, and under which all bodies of Protestant Christians in that country unite. State-aided schools in Germany are divided into Evangelical schools and Catholic schools ; and, in my opinion, this is the very best division which can be adopted, recognizing essential differences and effacing non-essential ; and it is, I think, one which, though it might be distasteful to certain parties and individuals, would on the whole recommend itself, if it could be followed, to the feelings and judgment of the people of this country. It is true, Germany has in Luther's Short Catechism a formulary which all Evangelical bodies agree to unite in using, and this is a great advantage. For want of some formu- lary of this kind the religious teaching of Con- gregational schools has to depend on the Bible gallery lesson; and it may well be thought that too much is thus left to the individual teacher. Still in seizing this notion of Evangelical Protestantism as the basis of the religious character of their schools, and in guarding this, so far as they could, from being a mere unreal colourless thing, made HOMERTON COLLEGE, 1868. 291 up of vague generalities, 1 the Congregational Board have had the merit of conceiving a type of popular school better suited, probably, to be the public school of the bulk of the people of this country than either the so-called National schol or the Wesleyan school on the one hand, or than the British school, or, still more, than the Secular school, on the other; and their conception has in it, in my opinion, elements of utility which may well bear fruit in the future. 1 " The character of the teaching ought not to be so general as not to involve the distinctive truths of revelation. No satisfaction can be afforded by vague generalities. To practise reserve as to what is vital in Christianity is to give the children a stone when they ask for bread." Inaugural Discourse by the Rev. Dr. Unwin, Principal of Homerton College. u 2 KEPORT on the WESLEYAN TRAINING COLLEGE at WESTMINSTER ; for the Year 1868. Need of instruction in Universal history and history of Religion Narrow conceptions of Religious Instruction Contrast offered in German Schools. '. HAVE often remarked how the great failure in joth our elementary and our normal school teaching is the failure to awaken in those who are taught any real intellectual life and interest by means of the instruction they receive ; and yet to awaken this is the really humanizing and civilizing part of the work of instruction. I cannot but think that this ack of life and interest is in part due to the over- mechanical character of our training school instruc- tion, and that there are two points in which training schools for British and Wesleyan teachers might with advantage study the example set them by training schools in Germany. One point is the teaching of universal history ; the other point is the religious teaching, so far as this is historical rather than dogmatical. The apprehension of what is WESLEYAN COLLEGE, 1868. 293 called " the religious difficulty," and the desire to exclude from this instruction all that might give rise to it, has needlessly, in my opinion, limited and impoverished our training ^school course. Perhaps there is nothing so animating, nothing so likely to awaken a man's interest and to stimulate him to active research on definite points, as the broad views over the history of our race and its general course and connexion which universal history gives. With all its faults, and though it is written, of course, from a Roman Catholic point of view, I know few books more stimulating than Bossuet's Universal History ; there are in use in Germany other manuals of universal history by Protestants, some of which have great merit, and one of them, Weber's, is, I think, translated into English. The use of some text-book of universal history, in connexion with the detailed teaching of certain parts of history, prevails everywhere in German places of instruction ; in places of instruction for adults it is above all insisted on. This is because the Germans conceive instruction so much more systematically than ue do ; and they make instruction so much more penetrating and interesting than we do, just because they conceive it more systematically. None of our training schools, I believe, teach universal history. Religious instruction, in so far 294 REPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. as it connects itself with universal history and shares the significance and interest proper to this study, is almost equally neglected by them. I speak of it as a regular part of the training school course, tested by the Christmas examination. The papers set for the Church of England training schools sufficiently show that these schools have little conception of a general and historical religious instruction of this kind, as distinguished from par- ticular and dogmatic religious instruction. In training schools for British and Wesleyan teachers, no religious instruction at all comes into our Christmas examina- tion; and though I know that the Wesleyan Edu- cation Committee examine their students in religious knowledge, yet this by no means gives what is wanted, a view of religion in its historical aspect and connexion, and a systematic acquaintance with its documents. In German training schools, whether Catholic or Evangelical, to give this view and acquaintance is always attempted. At Kiissnacht, the training school of the Protestant Canton of Zurich, students of the first year have, as a part of their regular course, three hours a week occupied with the history of the Hebrew people and the reading of the Old Testament ; second-year students, three^ours a week occupied with the life of Christ and the reading of the New Testament ; third-year WESLEYAN COLLEGE, 1868. 295 students, the same time with the study of the relation between the Old and New Testament, the rise and development of Christianity, and Church history. In training schools in Germany this course is sometimes carried yet further, and embraces the history of all the leading systems of religion and philosophy which have appeared in the world. No doubt, this is much to attempt; but we do not enough consider how the mind is stimulated by having a great design of this sort even presented to it, and what it gains by being lifted out of the dulness which attaches to all mere cramming with what is called " useful knowledge." The same is to be said on behalf of giving to religious instruction a substantive place in the work -plan of elementary schools ; chords of power are touched by this instruc- tion which no other part of the instruction in a popular school reaches, and chords several and various, not the single religious chord only. In all German schools, a catechism, either Protestant or Catholic, is learnt. The enemies of catechisms have perhaps never considered how a catechism is for the child in an elementary school his only contact with metaphysics ; it is possible to have too much meta- physics, but some contact with them is to every active mind suggestive and valuable. The Bible, again, is for the child in an elementary school 296 KEPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. almost his only contact with poetry and philosophy. In British and Wesleyan schools the Bible teaching does not come under inspection; what there is of it, the Wesleyan gallery lessons, for instance, on Ananias and Sapphira and the Prodigal Son, has a directly moral and religious design ; but neither in these schools nor, I believe, in Church of England schools, is anything like the use made of the Bible, considered simply as an instrument of education, which might be made of it, and which is made of it in Germany. What I saw in Germany struck me the more because it exactly corresponds with the sort of use of the Bible in education which was approved and followed by my father. Even in the lowest classes the children in a German Protestant I school begin learning verses of the Psalms by heart, ; and by the time a scholar reaches the top of the school /he knows by heart a number of the finest passages from the Psalms and from the prophetical and his- torical books of the Old Testament, and nearly all the principal Gospel discourses and parables of the New. These have become a part of the stock of his mind, and he has them for life. What a course of eloquence and poetry (to call it by that name alone) is this in a school which has and can have but little eloquence and poetry ! and how much do our ele- mentary schools lose by not having such a course WESLEYAN COLLEGE, 1868. 297 as part of their school programme ! This at least, one would think, might be effected and inspected in all Protestant schools without occasioning any " religious difficulty ; " and all who value the Bible may rest convinced that thus to know and possess the Bible is a most sure way to extend the power and efficacy of the Bible. The denomination of Evangelical, which I have mentioned in my report on the Homerton Training College, is a real wide bond of union just so far as it implies a belief in this permanent value of the Bible itself, and of the knowledge of the Bible. Evangdisch in Germany means simply the man who goes to the New Testament, and to the Old Testa- ment as seen and applied from the point of view under which the New Testament teaches us to see and apply it, for his religion, in contradistinction to the man who goes to any other authority for it the authority of the Church, of tradition, of the Pope. Undoubtedly it is in this sense that schools,] not Roman Catholic or Jewish, should adopt thek denomination Evangelical, and it is in this sense alone that the State in its relations with schools should consent to employ the term. It happens that an important and, in many respects admirable, section of the English Church, believing that a certain scheme of doctrine which it has gathered 298 REPORTS ON TRAINING COLLEGES. from the Bible represents the essence of the Bible, has taken to itself this denomination of Evangelical, and hence arises a misunderstanding, as if to de- nominate a set of schools Evangelical was to deno- minate them as belonging to this body and professing its doctrine. This is not so. A body in Germany with similar doctrine has in like manner claimed for itself the special title of Evangelical, but the claim has not been conceded and ought not to be conceded. This noble and attractive name of Evan- gelical belongs not to the adherent of any doctrinal essence of Christianity supposed to be already extracted from the Bible, but to the adherent of the Bible and Christianity themselves, in the un- exhausted significance which the progressive develop- ment of the world more and more brings to light J(ili the Bible and Christianity. Therefore it is that the thorough study and appropriation of the Bible, | both in itself and in all the course of its relations I with human history, is of so great fruitfulness and importance. In my opinion, they are the best friends of popular education, as well as the best construers of the word Evangelical, who, however attached to their own particular Church or confession, yet can recognize this fruitfulness and importance most fully, and who show the greatest largeness of ^nind in giving effect to their sense of it. APPENDIX. MINUTE of the 1th day of May, 1859. BY THE LORDS OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION, OP HER MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL. THEIR Lordships resolved : 5. To cancel section 9 in the Minute of 20th August, 1853, and in no school to allow pupil-teachers to be hereafter apprenticed at the expense of the Parlia- mentary fund (a) in a greater proportion than one pupU-teac/ier for every forty scholars in average attendance during the year preceding the date of inspection, nor (b) in a greater proportion than four pupil-teachers to the same master or mistress. EXTRACT FROM INSTRUCTIONS TO HER MAJESTY'S INSPECTORS, dated 5th May, 1859. 5. There are few schools in which apprenticeships are completed, that do not now furnish Queen's scholars. The reasons for special encouragement, which were legitimate in an earlier stage of the present system, have ceased. In returning to one uniform rate, their Lordships have determined also to limit the number of apprentices 300 APPENDIX. whom they will allow to be engaged at the public expense to the same teacher at one time. It is not, as a rule, desirable to build single school-rooms on a scale to contain several hundreds of children. But where such rooms exist, the place of pupil-teachers (after the first four) must be supplied by probationers, or by monitors paid by the managers out of the capitation grant ; or a second certificated teacher must be retained. The number of pupil-teachers must be regulated with some regard to the ultimate demand for trained school- masters and schoolmistresses ; and, as apprenticeships become general throughout the schools of the country, the standard of allowance in individual schools must be from time to time reviewed. MINUTE BY THE LORDS OP THE COMMITTEE OF HER MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL FOR EDUCATION. At the Council Chamber, Whitehall, the 20th day of February, 1867. Their Lordships, having considered : 1. The present ratio of teachers to scholars in the elementary day schools under inspection, and the state of instruction in such schools ; also 2. The present supply of candidates qualified for admission into the Normal schools for training masters Resolved : I. To provide in the estimate for public education for an additional grant of \s. d. per pass in reading, APPENDIX. 301 writing, or arithmetic, up to a sum not exceeding 81. for any one school (department) upon the following conditions beyond those now specified in the Code, viz. : (a) The number of teachers must have allowed, throughout the year, at least one certificated or one assistant teacher for every eighty scholars, or one pupil-teacher for every forty scholars, after the first twenty-five of the average number of scholars in attendance. (6) The number of passes in reading, writing, and arithmetic must 1. Exceed 200 per cent, of the annual average number of scholars in attendance who are over six years of age. 2. Fall under Standards IY. -VI. to the extent of at least one-fifth part of the whole number of passes. (c) The time-tables of the school, in use throughout the year, must have provided for one or more specific subjects of secular instruction beyond Article 48. The inspector must name the specific subject or subjects in his Report, and must state that at least one-fifth part of the average number of scholars over six years of age have passed a satisfactory examination therein. ****** III. To provide for certain new grants to elementary schools wherein it should appear from the inspector's 302 APPENDIX. last Report that the number of teachers had been suffi- cient to satisfy section (a) in paragraph I. of this Minute ; such grants to be at the rate of 10. for every male pupil-teacher admitted from the said schools into any Normal school under inspection from candidates placed by examination in the first class, and 51. for every male pupil-teacher so admitted in the second class. IV. To offer certain further new grants to the same schools for every male pupil-teacher who, having been admitted from them into a Normal school under inspec- tion, should at the end of his first year's residence, be placed in the first or second division ; such grants to be at the rate of 81. for every student placed in the first division, and 51. for every student placed in the second division. RICHARD CLAY AND SON8, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNOAY. INDEX. ASSISTANT TEACHERS, students do well to begin career in that capacity, 72 Attendance, on the whole good, owing to class of scholars, 79 see Compulsory education BIBLE, often the sole literature in our schools, 87 ; imperfect knowledge of, in British Schools, 151 ; no one seriously believes that it can be pro- vided for by Sunday School alone, ibid ; course of instruc- tion proposed, ibid Books, require attention, 27 ; and control, 129 ; often bad, and spoil taste, 87 ; uniformity desirable, especially in gram- mar, 27 ; should be bought by scholars, 77 ; good reading books wanted here as in France, where manuals are good, 86 ; improved by Re- vised Code, 104 ; incompe- tence of compilers, 128 British Schools, lower fees than in Wesleyan Schools, 10 ; de- fects of organization, 15, 49 ; general efficiency, 25 ; do not reach the masses, 22 CERTIFICATES, revision of, pro- motes efficiency of teachers, 77 ; should reward continu- ance in same school, 78 Classification of scholars ; they should be kept in the same division for all their work, 16 Class-subjects, value of, 189 Codes, working ot Code of 1871, 158; of 1876, 186; of 1882, 254 Compulsory education, 27, 125, 127, 173 ; easy if instruction is valued, 126 ; law should attack employers, 150 Cost of, French schools, 219 ; London Board School, 220 ; elementary instruction in Eng- land, 222 ; excessive, 220, 224 ; remedy proposed, 223 ; should not exceed 85s. per scholar, 223 Country schools, their difficul. ties, as bearing on voluntary system, 66 Culture, want of, 106 ; even in high -class schools, 107; among teachers, 106 ; pupil teachers, 19 ; and students, 107, 198 ; higher standard in Scotland, 107 Curriculum, proposed for ele- mentary school, 192, 234, 236, 258; should be settled by age, capacity, and school-time of children, 255 DISCIPLINE, necessity for, and obstacles to, 7 304 INDEX. District, first, 1 ; until Act of 1871, 153, note; bad effects of change in limits, 33 Drawing, time often wasted on, 30 ; should follow reading and writing, 31 Drill, useful for girls, 169 EDUCATIONAL STANDARD, not too high for class of scholars, 53 Evening schools, 251 ; of two kinds, 252 ; combined organ- ization necessary, 253 Extra subjects, value of, 156 ; why required, 232 ; should be limited in number, 231 ; "re- citation" does most good, 163, 183, 209, 229 Extravagant cost of education, in England and London, as compared with France and Paris (1878), 219 ; how to be remedied, 223 FEES, 3 ; high in Wesleyan Schools, 4 ; effects, 6 ; on dis- cipline, 7 ; and instruction, 8 ; should be discouraged, 127 ; rate of, in France and Prussia, 127 ; advantage of prepay- ment, ibid Foreign missions, 82, 109 ; im- pressions on return from, 110 France, proportion of children, 217 ; cost of schools, 219 ; rate of fees (1867), 127 ; manuals good, but reading books bad, as with us, 86 Free schools, 149, 247 ; not ne- cessary because education is compulsory, 150 French, claims of language in our schools, 208, 232 GEOGRAPHY, the teaching of, 214 Grammar, importance of study, 91, 176, 189 ; text -books too elaborate, and not uniform, 92 ; papers of students show want of culture, 107 ; on the teaching of, 241 Grant-earning examination, de- sirable, 143, 155 ; but not too exclusive, 125, 143 Grants, system of, proposed, 147 Growth, and decay, of schools, 57 HALF-TIME SCHOOLS, 58 ; at Norwood, 242 Holland, 83 INFANT SCHOOLS, want of, 16, 28 ; increasing in number, 74 ; a feature of Wesleyan system, 80 ; scholars admitted too young, 81 Inspection, under the Old Code, 98 ; under the Revised Code, 101 Inspector, his province and duty, 34 ; his reports, 35 ; uniform- ity of system desirable, 36 ; his functions under a national system, 39 ; should have more free play, 124 Inspectors, Senior, should be put closely in connection with School Boards, 159 LATIN, in elementary schools, 164, 208 ; should be taught from the Vulgate, 165 Learning by heart, from good authors recommended, 94, 163, 257 ; a lesson to be learnt, and not talked about, 95 ; encouraged by Revised Code, 106 see Extra subjects Literature, not attended to, 157 ; its formative use, 163 ; need of in our schools, 174 ; taste for, corrupted by our reading books, 88 London schools, the average, inferior to country, 42 ; com- pared with Manchester, 43 ; INDEX. 305 why inferior ? want of super- vision by ministers of religion, 44 ; and of good premises, 47 ; improving, 65, 90 ; their want of cleanliness and repair, 84 see Cost Lubbock, Sir John, on variety of subjects studied, 232 ; op- posed to teaching science through reading books, 241 MASSES, the education of, our great object, 37, 142 ; not reached by many schools, 22 Mechanical teaching, 121, 136, 145 Middle-Class Schools, of inferior character, why ? 131 ; the wil- fulness, insubordination, and want of respect for parents, among children of the lower middle-class, 8 Minute of 20th February, 1867, 123, 140 Mixed schools, 17, 28 Monitors, employment of, useful to school, and children, 6 Municipal organization, educa- tion should, as a public ser- vice, be connected with, 222 ; would check prodigal cost of elementary instruction, 223 ; municipal authorities should not be entrusted with compul- sion, because worse chosen and constituted than abroad, 127 Music, 164 NATIONAL SCHOOLS, as compared with British and Wesleyan, 47, 167 Nature-Kiinde, 191, 204 Needlework, needs attention, 29 ; improved, 52, 80 ; in- dispensable, 54 ; organization required for inspection of, 187 ; weakness in, not to be excused by attention to other sub- jects, 54 ORGANIZATION, importance of, 51, 62 ; in state of transition, 15 ; Glasgow system 15 ; British, 15, 49; Battersea plan, 48 ; Wesleyan, 48 Over-teaching, exaggerated ideas as to, how caused, 55 PARAPHRASING, valuable, 175 Parsing, 93, 240 Payment by results, 110 ; grants should not be paid too exclu- sively on individual examina- tion, 125 ; fosters mechanical teaching, 130, 143, 235 Pedagogy, 212 Poetry, bad choice of in school- books, 129 ; formative, 209, 215 ; as to selection of passages, 225, 227, 230 ; should not be made an extra subject, 231 Private Middle-Class Schools, contrasted with Public Ele- mentary Schools, 131 Prussia, 126-7, 150, 159 Pupil-teachers, ill-health of girls, 17 ; low mental culture and intelligence, 19 ; should study best English authors, 20, 94 ; importance of system, 52, 82, 111 REGISTERS, absence should be recorded as well as presence, 170 Results see Payment by Revised Code, introduction of, 96 ; object to make instruction general, 100 ; effects on in- spection, 99, 102 ; examina- tion, 103, 121, 125, 146; intellectual life of school, 101, 110 ; teachers, 113 ; pupil- teachers, 111 ; scholars, 101, 104, 119, 122; reading-books, 104 ; school finance, 116, 123 ; instruction beyond 3 R's, 123 ; style of teaching, 136 306 INDEX. Revision of Certificates see Certificates SCHOOL BOARDS, could not have a municipal constitution, in absence of proper or complete municipal system, 223 ; some are Utopian in ideas, 221, 223 School books see Books School course see Curriculum School fees see Fees School staff, numerical supe- riority in England, 83 Scotland, students show more culture, and capacity for cul- ture, 107 ; papers slovenly, and writing bad, 108 Secular schooling, 150 Simplicity, necessity for, 203, 213, 216 ; in work of London School Board, 221 Specific subjects see Extra subjects Spelling reform, 196 Standard of instruction, 53 Standards, upper, should be abolished, 195 TEACHING by rote, 135 Test-examination, necessary, 145 Training of teachers, high stand- ard required, 55 UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, teachers do well to attend examinations, 108, 185 VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS, hold their own in Westminster, 245 ; their moral and economic ad- vantages, 247 WELSH LANGUAGE, its disap- pearance politically and so- cially desirable, 13 Welsh schools, generally on British system, 12 ; English should be insisted on, 13 Wesleyan schools, high fees in, 4 ; class of scholars, 5 ; general efficiency, 31 ; organization of, 48 ; infant schools, 80 WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 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