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iftogal institution of <£reat Britain.
WEEKLY EVENING MEETING,
Friday, January 30, 1857.
u
William Pole, Esq. M.A. F.R.S. Treasurer and VicePresident, in the Chair.
Rev. F. D. Maurice, M.A. M.R.I.
Milton considered as a Schoolmaster.
Milton was an actual schoolmaster : his letter to Mr. Hartlib,
explains his idea of education. In the year 1639, after his return
from Italy, he took a house in St. Bride’s Churchyard; after
wards one in Aldersgate Street, for the instruction, first, of his two
nephews, and then of the children of some of his friends. Accord
ing to Dr. Johnson, several of Milton’s biographers have shown a
desire to shrink from this passage of his life altogether, and have
wished to represent his teaching as gratuitous. Johnson himself,
while he ridicules this folly, sneers at Milton for returning to Eng
land, because his countrymen were engaged (as he thought) in a
struggle for liberty, and then vapouring away his patriotism in a
private boarding-school.
4
The earliest biographer of Milton, Edward Phillips, his nephew
and pupil, is not open to the charge of regarding this occupation of
Milton as a disgrace, or of hinting that he undertook it without
remuneration. The others had probably had a notion that Alders
gate Street was not the place for a poet to dwell in, aud that his
work ought to be of a specially etherial kind. But Chaucer was
Comptroller of Petty Customs, in the port of London; Spenser
was born in East Smithfield, and died, it is to be feared, “for lack
of bread,” in King Street, Westminster; Shakespeare was busy at
the Globe Theatre during the most important years of his life;
and Milton himself was not only born at the Spread Eagle, in
Bread Street, not only received his education at St. Paul’s School,
but had evidently a lingering love for London, whenever for a short
time he was separated from it. There is clear evidence that he
preferred the Thames to the Cam. Even in the genial years that
�2
Rev. F. D. Maurice,
[Jan. 30,
he passed at his father’s house m Horton, when he was writing
“ L’Allegro,” “ Il Penseroso,” “ Comus,” “ Lycidas,” he was still
paying frequent visits to London, that he might perfect himself in
his father’s favourite study of music, and in the mathematics. And
finally, he left Italy, where he had passed so many months of
exquisite delight, and where he had received homage so unusual for
any dweller on this side of the Alps, as soon as he heard of the
probable meeting of the new (the Long) Parliament.
Johnson’s complaint is refuted by his own sensible opinion that
Milton taught for money, and not for amusement. Since he had
determined that he ought to oppose the measures of the Court, was
it not the duty of an honourable and prudent man to secure himself
against the bribes of the Court ? The patronage of Charles I. was
bestowed with liberality and discernment. The report that a young
man had come to London, who had received panegyrics from the
academies and from the most eminent men of letters in Italy, was
likely enough to reach the queen or the archbishop. There was
nothing in Milton’s previous career to render it improbable that he
might be induced to use his pen in their favour. Instead of de
nouncing court entertainments, he had written a mask; he could
be favourably spoken of by the family at Ludlow Castle. Money
was important to him, for he had tastes that were expensive. No
one would have felt more the charms of cultivated and refined
society. Might not his scheme of the private boarding-school then
be a very reasonable means of preventing him from vapouring
away his patriotism, first by making him independent of his pen ;
secondly, by making him a less creditable associate for those who
would have been glad to amuse themselves with his learning and
eloquence ?
We learn from Howell’s “ Londinopolis,” printed in 1657, that
Aldersgate Street “ resembled an Italian street more than any other
in London.” Phillips speaks of it as “ freer from noise than any
other.” Mr. Cunningham shows, in his Handbook, that it was the
residence of distinguished noblemen. Milton must have strained a
point to hire a house in such a situation. That he did so, is one
sign of the earnestness with which he entered upon his task. We
know, from his letter to Mr. Hartlib, that he regarded the building
in which the education was conducted as a part of the education
itself.
It is useless to speculate whether any of the friends to whom
his letters or his sonnets are addressed committed their sons or
kinsmen to bis care. The names of John and Edward Phillips are
all that have come down to us. Of these men, through the labours
of Mr. Godwin, we have more information than it is generally
possible to obtain respecting persons of their calibre. They were
the younger brethren of that “ fair infant whose death by a cough ”
is immortalised in one of Milton’s early poems. When his sister
married a second time, he took the boys into his house. Both
�1857.]
Milton considered as a Schoolmaster.
3
became industrious literateurs. Both, even before the Restoration,
became Royalists. Both for a time fell into the licentiousness
which so commonly accompanied that reaction. John Phillips
began with answering an anonymous reply to his uncle’s defence;
then wrote a vulgar satire upon Presbyterians ; became a travestier
of Virgil ; a dishonest translator of Don Quixote ; a hack of the
booksellers ; in one discreditable passage, a reviler of Milton.
No doubt the elevation of his uncle’s character may have ex
asperated the grovelling tendencies in him. If he had been under
the direction of a high-minded Royalist, he would probably
have become a self-willed Puritan. The flogging of Busby would
have been the most useful discipline for him. But he nowhere
attributes his disgust at Puritanism to Milton’s austerity. Edward
Phillips, who shared that disgust, proves such a notion to be impos
sible. Nearly the last of his long series of books was the biography
of his uncle. In it he recurs with affectionate reverence to the
education he had received in Aldersgate Street, gives an account
of that education, which shows that it embraced, as we might expect
it would, every kind of study; that the tone of the teaching
was noble, and that Milton knew when to unbend the bow as well as
to nerve it. Edward Phillips speaks with warmth, and something
of remorse, of the blessings which his school years might have been
to him if he had passed them aright.
Johnson, who knew nothing concerning the Phillipses, except
that one of them had written the “ Theatrum Poetarum,” speaks of
the small fruit which proceeded from the “wonder-working
academy ” in Aldersgate Street. The fruits may have been unripe
and unsatisfactory. Milton may have been disappointed in this as
in his other hopes ; other noble men have been so before and since.
No one ever doubted that his own Samson was the image of him
self ; that the strong warrior became the blind and despised
sufferer. But Samson was victorious in his death. There was a
<£ Paradise Regained ” as well as a “ Paradise Lost ” in Milton’s
history. His book on Education tells us what he learnt, and what
we may learn by his school experiments. He never pretended that
these worked any wonders ; he does not even allude to them in his
writings. His scheme of education certainly resembles in its prin
ciples that which Edward Phillips speaks of. It was not, there
fore, a mere paper scheme ; it referred to actual living boys, whom
he had seen and tried to form. But the scale of it is one which he
could never have attempted; and for aught that appears in the
letter, he may have been led to it as much by a sense of his
failures as by pride in his success.
In England we have grammar schools, and what are called
commercial schools. In Germany there are gymnasia and real
schools. The idea of the letter to Mr. Hartlib is, that this division
is unnecessary and artificial, that the knowledge of words is best
obtained in union with the knowledge of things ; that each is helpful
�4
Rev. R. D. Maurice,
[Jan. 30,
and necessary to the other. His maxim that “ language is but the
instrument conveying to us things useful to be known,” might lead
us to think that he did not regard language as a direct means of
culture. This would be a hasty inference. He looked upon the
reading of good books as the best and only means of obtaining a
knowledge of language. He protests, therefore, against “ the pre
posterous exaction of forcing the empty wits of children to compose
themes, verses, and orations,” as a way to obtain a knowledge of
the language. But the author of a host of Latin elegiacs, the Latin
correspondent of foreign courts, is not so inconsistent with himself
as to despise such exercises. He regards them as “ the acts of ripest
judgment, and the final work of a head filled by long reading and
observing, with elegant maxims, and copious invention.” This is
not the language of a rebel against scholarship, but of a severe and
fastidious scholar. His compassion for boys is combined With horror
for their solecisms.
Milton’s idea of education is strictly Baconian : not in this
sense, that he had Bacon’s preference for physical studies to humane
or moral studies ; but in this, that he protests against that method
which starts from abstractions and conclusions of the intellect, and
maintains that all true method must begin from the objects of sense.
He may not have been well read in the “ Novum Organum; ”
but he could not have applied its maxims more strictly in a new
direction than he has done. Possibly his protests against making
logic and metaphysics the introduction to knowledge in the Univer
sities, when they ought to be the climax of knowledge, were more
suitable to his own day, when boys went to Cambridge or Oxford
at fifteen or twelve, than to ours. But if it be so, we ought to be
very careful that our youths do acquire the early experimental
training that he recommends, before they venture upon the higher
and more abstract lore : otherwise we may have to complain, as he
had, that “ they grow into a hatred and contempt of learning,” and
that when “ poverty or youthful years call them importunately their
several ways, they hasten to an ambitious and mercenary, or igno
rantly zealous divinity,” or to the mere “ trade of law,” or to “ state
affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue and generous breeding,
that court shifts and tyrannous aphorisms appear to them the highest
points of wisdom,” while “ some of a more airy spirit live out their
days in feasts and jollity.”
Passing from his principles to his application of them, we may
find abundant excuses for criticism, and, if we covet the reputation
of wits, for ridicule. He wished his college to be both school and
university; the studies therefore proceed in an ascending scale,
from the elements of grammar to the highest science, as well as to
the most practical pursuits. The younger boys are to be especially
trained to a clear and distinct pronunciation, “ as like as may be to
the Italian.” Books are to be given them like Cebes or Plutarch,
which will “ win them early to the love of virtue and true labour.”
�1857.]
Milton considered as a Schoolmaster.
5
In some hour of the day they are to be taught the rules of arith
metic and the elements of geometry. The evenings are to be taken
up “ with the easy grounds of religion, and the story of scripture.”
In the next stage they begin to study books on agriculture, Cato,
Varro, and Columella. These books will make them in time
masters of any ordinary Latin prose, and will be at the same time
“ occasions of inciting and enabling them hereafter to improve the
tillage of their country.” The use of maps and globes is to be
learnt from modern authors; but Greek is to be studied, as soon
as the grammar is learnt, in the “ historical physiology of Aristotle
and Theophrastus.” Latin and Greek authors together are to teach
the principles of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and geography.
Instruction in architecture, fortification, and engineering, follows.
In natural philosophy we ascend through the history of meteors,
minerals, plants, and living creatures to anatomy. Anatomy leads
on to the study of medicine.
The objections to some of these plans are too obvious to need
any notice. No one will suppose that natural philosophy is to be
learnt from Seneca, or agriculture from Columella. Every one
will admit readily that his own amazing powers of acquisition led
Milton to overrate the powers of ordinary boys. But it would
seem a poor reason for not availing ourselves of the hints that he
gives us, that we have means of following them out which he had
not: a poorer reason still for not profiting by the warnings which
he gives us against filling our pupils’ heads with a mere multitude
of words, that he perhaps asked them to take in more both of words
and things than they would be able comfortably to carry. If he is
an idealist, he is certainly also a stern realist. He would have us
always conversant with facts rather than with names. He aims at
the useful as directly as the most professed utilitarian. The pupils
are to have “ the helpful experiences of hunters, fowlers, fishermen,
shepherds, gardeners, and apothecaries,” to assist them in their
natural studies. These studies are to increase their interest in
Hesiod, in Lucretius, and in the Georgies of Virgil. The incentive
for studying medicine is, that they may perhaps “ save armies by
frugal and expenseless means, and not let the healthy and stout
bodies of young men under them rot away for want of this (medi
cal) discipline.”
Two other objections have been raised by Dr. Johnson against
this scheme of education. The first will, probably, not have great
weight with the members of the Royal Institution, for it turns upon
the comparative worthlessness of the physical sciences. The other
is expressed in some very elegant sentences, maintaining that the
formation of a noble and useful character is the true end of educa
tion. One cannot help deploring that maxims so good and welldelivered, should be so utterly thrown away. They are absurdly
inapplicable to Milton’s letter. It is throughout a complaint that
the existing education was not sufficiently directed to the purpose of
�6
Milton considered as a Schoolmaster.
[Jan. 30, 1857/
forming brave men and good citizens. It is throughout an assertion
that that is the only purpose which any education ought to aim at.
The classics are not resorted to for the purpose of forming a style,
but of instilling manly thoughts, which a higher wisdom may purify
and make divine. Because the Englishman is a poor creature when
he is busy with abstractions, and the strongest of all when he is
dealing jvith realities, Milton would have him trained in these.
All exercises and all recreations are to contribute to the same end.
The pupils are to learn “the exact use of their weapon,” both
as “ a good means of making them healthy, nimble, and well in
breath, and of inspiring them with a gallant and fearless courage,
which being tempered with seasonable precepts of true fortitude
and patience, shall turn into a native and heroic valour, and make
them hate the cowardice of doing wrong.” In their very sports
they are to learn the rudiments of soldiership.
Music is not recommended as a graceful recreation to a few,
but as an instrument of making all the pupils “ gentle from rustic
passions and distempered passions.”
Certainly whatever the errors of Milton’s system may have
been, its ends were as noble and as practical as those of any that
was ever conceived. An institution trained, as this is, to profit by
the experiments of honest seekers in natural science, even if those
experiments prove failures, will not despise the experiments of a
moralist and a patriot who may have committed mistakes which the
most ignorant may detect, who had a righteousness of purpose
which the wisest will be most ready to admire and most eager to
possess.
[F. D. M.]
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Milton considered as a schoolmaster
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 6 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: Lecture delivered at the weekly evening meeting of the Royal Institution of Great Britain on Friday, January 30th, 1857. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Education
Conway Tracts
Education
John Milton
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Text
C( 2z5?
SACRED HISTORY
AS A BRANCH OF
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION.
PART I.
ITS INFLUENCE ON THE INTELLECT.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price, Sixpence.
�I
�SACRED HISTORY
AS A BRANCH OF
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION.
UGHT the teaching of Sacred History, in its tra
ditional and biblical form, to be approved of or
maintained in the primary schools of a free and pro
gressive people 1
Such is the question which I propose to discuss.
Thus stated, it does not address itself exclusively to
any one nation, nor to any one Church. It is not a
criticism of one denomination, nor of one school-system
more than of another. It has no special reference to
the religious instruction of Catholics or Protestants as
such. Important and interesting for all sects and
parties alike, it is addressed alike to all, and the dis
cussion of it ought to be entirely free from party spirit
and sectarian prejudice.
To avoid misunderstanding, it may be well, here, at
the outset, clearly to define and to circumscribe the
subject proposed for consideration. The position which
I am to maintain would be utterly absurd, if it were
extended beyond the limits which are assigned to it by
the very title of this essay. There is no question, there
can be no question here, of any but the popular Sacred
History,—of Biblical History as it is commonly taught
O
�6
Sacred History :
in schools, and as we have all learned it in onr child
hood. I declare formally that I am not to treat of the
Bible, nor of Biblical History, as viewed in relation to
the science of Religion, as studied in our universities,
in our theological halls, and generally in the higher
walks of learning, by the light of comparative philology,,
of archaeology, and of all the other sciences which are
now made subservient to the science of history.
I most expressly restrict my subject to the now pre
vailing popular primary teaching of Biblical History;
and I shall accordingly take for reference, not this or
that learned work of historical, critical, or exegetical
interpretation of the Bible, but only the authorized
translation of it, which every one possesses, and which
is used in our schools.
It will be seen that this question, though bearing
closely upon the highest theological doctrines, presents
itself here in a totally different relation; for it turns, in
the first place and chiefly, upon a practical problem of
popular education. The discussion of such a question,
however various may be the opinions held regarding it,
ought to be cordially welcomed by every man in a free
country such as this, where true progress is universally
desired.
It is not difficult to discern and to state the principles
by which we ought to be guided in this discussion; and
there can scarcely be any dispute about these principles
when stated. All must agree that education, in every
stage from the lowest to the highest, ought to have a
twofold purpose—the culture of the intelligence, and that
of the moral conscience. Such ought especially to be
the design and the aim of the primary education which
addresses itself to the children of the people, among
whom, in the majority of cases, it is not likely to be
followed up by any other regular instruction. Before
these children, who can scarcely be expected to have
afterwards either the time or the means for completing
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
7
or correcting the ideas which have once been inculcated
on their minds, a teacher ought to say nothing, do
nothing, inculcate nothing, which may not have a good
effect npon the intellect or upon the heart,—nothing
but what may contribute to teach them either to think
aright or to act aright. To make men:-—\his is the
glorious task of the teacher in modern society. To
make men, is to develop, in the youths committed to
his care, enlightened intellects and upright consciences.
It is from this twofold point of view that we propose
to consider the study of Sacred History; it is by its
effects upon our two essential faculties, the intellect and
the conscience, that we propose to judge it.
I. The
influence of
Sacred History
upon the
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTELLECT.
Let us put ourselves in the position of a child who
is being taught sacred history, and endeavour to
realize and explain to ourselves the ideas of Humanity,
of Nature, and of God, which will thus be conveyed
to the mind of the child, in these three great depart
ments which complete the cycle of human thought.
Let us see, first, how the modern idea of humanity
will harmonize with that of a sacred history.
What is the meaning of this expression, sacred
history ? Wherefore sacred 2 In what respect is it
more sacred than other histories ? Is it that it will
present to us the ideal of sanctity or holiness in action?
Is it a history of the purest, the best, the most virtuous
men ? This title of sacred history would be intelligi
ble, if applied to a book which should present to our
view a gallery of portraits worthy to serve as models
to humanity, a series of biographies, such as those of
Joseph and of Moses among the Hebrews, of Aristides,
and of Socrates among the Greeks, of Cakyamouni in
Hindostan, of the great Roman Stoics, of the Christian
�8
Sacred History:
martyrs and missionaries, of a Spinoza, of a Luther, of
a Vincent de Paul, of all those in short who have lived
and died for the defence of their faith, their reason,
their conscience, their earnest convictions. We might
thus have an admirable collection of the benefactors of
the human race, of men devoted to their duty, taken
impartially from all periods, from all peoples, and from
all creeds. But these exalted and noble lessons are
not what men call sacred history. This history is thus
named, not on account of the holiness of the precepts,
or of the examples which it contains, but because it is
the history of a people who were not, like others, left
to their own resources, of a people who received, from
God himself, revelations, promises, supernatural lights,
who were, in a word, the “people of God.”
What idea is the child to derive from this title
alone ?
His first impression, if left to himself, will be that
God, like men, has His favourites, His proteges; that,
by an entirely unmerited choice, He honoured with a
special affection and care one nation to the exclusion of
all others. The child, with his simple, direct, and
wholesome logic, will say exactly what Calvin said.
“ Certainly,” wrote the great Reformer in his energetic
freedom, “ in that God of old adopted the seed of
Abraham, He has given a sufficiently clear proof that
He did not love the whole human race equally.
Having rejected all other nations, He loved one
alone.
He restricted His special love to a small
number, whom He was pleased to choose from among
the rest.” It is well known that, up to our own time,
this theory has been frankly accepted by the theologians
called orthodox. In these days, however, when it is
clearly becoming impossible to maintain such a theory,
a peculiar explanation has been adopted. The doctrine
of absolute predestination, which Calvin consistently
made the chief corner stone of the orthodox system, is
now rejected by many theologians as incompatible with
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
9
morality: and it is said that all nations and all men
have an equal share in the love of God,—that the
■provisional and exceptional election of the Jews is not
a privilege,—that Israel is chosen only as an instru
ment, not for himself, but for the benefit of the whole
human race,—as a monitor whom God employs for the
general instruction of all His children. Supposing this
latter interpretation to be the true one, it would in
some degree be a reply to the moral objection of the
Divine partiality, which we shall repeatedly find again;
but it does not at all remove the historical objection,
which is that the sacred history causes the child to
conceive a thoroughly false idea of humanity, by the
very fact that it teaches him to divide human history
into two parts, the one sacred, the other profane ; the
one, in which God speaks, acts, and shows Himself
directly or personally on every page; and the other,
in which He does not thus interfere, and in which He
acts only by the operation of natural laws.
Until recently, it was considered orthodox to see in
ancient history, the reign of God in Israel, and the
reign of the devil everywhere else; but it is now more
generally thought correct to recognise a negative pre
paration among the Gentiles, as well as a positive pre
paration in Israel. It is thus assumed that there have
been two distinct kinds of divine revelation, all the
other nations having been enlightened only by the dim
and indirect rays of natural light; while the Jews, on
the contrary, were alone privileged to be in constant
and immediate communication with God himself. See
how much is implied in the mere expression—sacred
history.
I do not at present inquire whether this notion can
be reconciled with that of divine equity; but I ask
whether it can be for a moment maintained in the face
of history. History now enables us to say with full
assurance, that humanity is one, in all the diversity of
its families; and that God, who is also One, has
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Sacred History :
spoken to man always and everywhere by the same
means, and in the same forms. He is the Father of
all men and of all nations, and has not shown himself
to some, nor concealed himself from others, any more
three thousand years ago than to-day.
The Jews, indeed, affirm that they received, from
God himself, revelations of an entirely special and
supernatural kind, which are recorded in the Bible.
But the Brahmins, the Budhists, the Parsees, and I
may say all the nations of the east, are no less positive
in affirming the same pretension. There is not a single
nation of Asia, ancient or modern, which has not its
Bible, or which does not declare that it is the holy
people—the chosen people of God; not one which, in
support of this exceptional “ calling and election,” does
not appeal to miracles, to numerous interventions of
the Deity, to the testimony of thousands of their best
men, and finally to books divinely inspired.
When among so many Bibles, among so many Words
of God, you take that of the Jews as absolutely true,
and declare those of all other nations absolutely false,
can you say, in all sincerity, that you have investi
gated, with equal attention, patience, and seriousness,
the claims of all these nations to this pretended revela
tion—to this pretended office of “ special instrument ”
of the Deity? Especially with reference to primary
instruction, is it not manifest that neither the pupils
nor the teachers are in a position to make this com
parison between the Hebrew Bible, the Veda of India,
the Avesta of Persia, the Koran of the Arabs, and the
other sacred books of the East ? They are virtually
forced to regard the Bible as an isolated monument,
without even dreaming of the possibility of tracing the
connection between the sacred codes of the various
ancient religions. The children do not know, and,
according to the present system, nine-tenths of them
will never know, that there are as many sacred histories,
and as many chosen peoples, and as many divine revela-
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
11
tions, as there have been, nations in the east, and almost
in all antiquity. By far the greater number, thanks to
this early instruction, will probably remain, all through
life, ignorant or misinformed regarding the fundamen
tal idea of human history—the natural progressive
development of all the human races, a development
which each of them attributes in the first place to a
miraculous revelation, but which the comparative his
tory of civilizations shows to be governed by law's
common to all, according to a general plan of divine
providence.
But how can the immense religious superiority of
the Jews, over all other ancient nations, be explained
on historical and natural grounds ?
In the first place, this superiority is neither so
decided nor so manifest, except to minds which are
unacquainted with the study of the ancient civiliza
tions. It is quite superfluous to say that, if we select
the most beautiful of the Psalms, or the purest and most
admirable pages of the Prophets, to be compared with
some gross form of fetichism, or of primitive idolatry,
if the Jehovah of Isaiah be opposed to the Jupiter of
Lucian, our minds may well be impressed with the
contrast. But take a wider view. Compare the moral
precepts of the Mosaic law with those of Zoroaster, or
of Manu,—the Hebrew poems with those of the Big
Veda; trace and remark the analogies of almost all the
prescriptions relating to manners, to legal defilements,
to ablutions, to the whole system of ritual, among the
Persians for example, and among the Hebrews. It
will then be found that the imaginary abyss of separa
tion has been nearly levelled up; and, instead of an
immense contrast, there will remain only inequalities
of various degrees. The Hebrews will have the advan
tage upon one point, the Persians upon another, and
upon a third the Hindoos, or the Egyptians.
Let us, however, forget for a moment that the mono
theism of Zoroaster is as real, if not as precise, as that
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Sacred History:
of the Hebrews; that the Persians and Parsees, no
less than the Hebrews, have had a horror of any
sensible representation of the Deity; that charity was
recognized and preached in India at an earlier date than
in Judea; that the appreciation and esteem of purity,
of holiness, and of labour, were more ancient, and pro
bably also more complete, among the Persians than
among the Jews ; and that numerous passages can be
quoted from the Vedas, or from the Yatpias, which
would sustain, in moral sublimity, a parallel with the
most admirable pages of the Bible.
Let us forget for a moment all these patent facts,
and many others similar, which might be noted, and let
us suppose that, in religion, the Jews have had, over the
rest of humanity, a clear superiority, equal to that, for
example, which the Greeks have had in the domain of
aesthetics. Would it be absolutely necessary, in order
to explain such a difference, to place that nation out
side of the common conditions of humanity, or to intro
duce for them alone the supernatural into history 1 If
you can explain, without any miracle, the genius of a
Homer, or of a Phidias, as well as that of a Zoroaster,
of a Budha, or of a Confucius, why should the same
explanation not apply to the genius of a Moses or of
an Isaiah ?
Seriously, whether we consult our own common
sense, or whether we examine the past, can we believe
that this same God, who now speaks to all men in the
same language, employed a few centuries ago extra
ordinary means, to make himself known exclusively to
a small Semitic tribe dwelling in Palestine, while, over
all the rest of the globe, the thousands and millions of
human creatures, whom He had there brought into
existence, were left by Him to grope in darkness 1 If
we desire to give to our children our cherished modern
idea of the unity, equality, and fraternity of men of
every race, and of every time, of every colour, and of
every clime, is it wise or right to teach them to behold
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
13
in the past some nations abandoned by God, and others
enlightened by Him, a handful of elect specially sur
rounded with miraculous cares, and all the rest,—that
is to say almost the totality of the human generations,
—deprived by God of these exceptional favours ?
Confining ourselves to this general criticism of the
dualistic character, which sacred history introduces into
the notion of humanity ; let us now see whether it will
give to our children better instruction upon the subject
of nature, and whether it will impart to them a more
correct idea of the physical than of the human world.
I shall not here formally enter upon the question of
the supernatural. Although perfectly convinced, for
my own part, that there have never been, in any time
nor in any place, more miracles than are now to be
seen in our daily life, I respect and would not unneces
sarily offend those persons who still to some extent
believe in the supernatural. Thank God, history
shows us, with sufficient clearness, the progress of
humanity in this question. From age to age, the
supernatural steadily loses ground. At the commence
ment of civilization all is prodigy,—the thunder, the
wind, an eclipse, a comet, the smallest meteor. By
degrees, in proportion as men come to understand a
little better the causes or the nature of such phenomena,
the circle of miracle becomes narrower; until at length,
as among Christians of the present day, men feel them
selves compelled to refer miracles to a remote period of
legendary antiquity, there to wait until another step of
progress be accomplished, which shall cause them to be
entirely renounced. Let us patiently and hopefully
await, from the force of events and the development of
humanity, the final fall of the few, frail, and ruinous
refuges of supernaturalism which still survive. Hu
manity moves, and is now again stirring itself; but
God guides the movement, and, notwithstanding every
obstacle, He will assuredly cause yet another stride on
�14
Sacred History:
wards to be taken in due time. It is only a question
of time, and it is useless for us to struggle passionately
against it.
But, without pausing to inquire what degree of
belief still generally retains its hold upon the minds
of men, and judging it more useful to regard the matter
from the believers’ point of view, let us seek to ascer
tain what part ought to be assigned to miracles in
education, especially in that of the children of the
people. However much you may believe in miracles,
I would say to a believer, yet you regard them only
as exceptions. You of course acknowledge that in
general the world is guided by invariable, inflexible,
universal laws. Would it not be well to maintain the
same position in the instruction of childhood ? Is it
not necessary to insist infinitely more upon the rule
than upon the exception ? In the first place, thoroughly
impress upon the child that there are laws of nature;
and let his mind, which is so readily inclined to fantasy,
be familiarized with those laws, and accustomed to seek
everywhere and always the physical explanation of
phenomena. After this has been done, it will be soon
enough to teach him, if you think it right to do so,
that in a very small number of extraordinary cases, two
or three thousand years ago, some revocations of or de
partures from those immutable laws have taken place.
If, on the contrary, at the age when his reason is still
so tender, so pliant, and so unsteady, you speak to him
continually of miracles and of prodigies, there must be
great danger of reversing the parts, of making him take
the exception for the rule, and, worst of all, of banish
ing from his mind the idea of seeking for the rule.
It ought to be borne in mind that reflection has to
be learned by the child. His spontaneous conception
of everything is under the figure of a material image ;
and, “as he has not yet any notion of the true condi
tions of knowledge and of certainty, his faith is in
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
J5
proportion to the effect produced upon his imagination,
and not in proportion to the evidence. He believes in
what is marvellous more easily than in what is simple.
The extraordinary is not only most interesting, but
also most convincing to the mind of a child. Miracle
is the thing which he most readily comprehends. It is
sufficient to make a strong impression upon his imagina
tion in order to convince him. The more brilliant the
colours, the more readily will his young genius be
captivated therewith. Nurses know this instinctively,
and hence their incredible stories often remain graven
in the memories of children, while reasonable and
probable narratives make little or no impression.
Phantoms have a much stronger hold than realities
upon the minds of children; ghosts are to them much
more formidable than living men; and fantastic pic
tures make a far stronger impression than the clear and
distinct reality.” These reflections of a great modern
philosopher explain how very difficult it is for a child
to acquire the idea of a Nature governed by regular
laws, and not by miraculous caprice.
Such being the instinctive propensity of a child,
must it not be injurious to the development of his
reason to implant in his mind at first, as the basis of
intelligence, a thick stratum of the marvellous, which
cannot but tend strongly to stifle the faculty of
rational reflection, of which the culture and the growth
are already so difficult and so slow 1 This is precisely
the danger which, in my opinion, is presented by
sacred history. Taking possession, as it does, before
any other history, of the still vacant mind, it widely
diffuses and plants therein a taste for the miraculous,
instead of furnishing an antidote to that taste already
by nature so strong.
Recall to mind the impressions of your childhood,—
your first lessons of sacred history. You will find that
these fall into two great classes, both belonging to the
�i6
Sacred History:
marvellous ; on the one hand legends, and on the other
miracles properly so called.
By legends, I mean narratives which believers them
selves can no longer take in the literal sense, but are
now constrained to regard as allegorical, while attribut
ing to them a symbolism as profound as they may wish.
Bor example, Adam and Eve are placed naked and
innocent, in a delightful garden, at the centre of which
two mysterious trees spread their boughs. Do you
remember their magical peculiarities ? The one is the
tree of life, the other gives the knowledge of good and
evil. All at once a reptile, the serpent (for, do not
forget, Genesis does not say that this serpent was the
devil,—a personage who does not make his appearance
in the Jewish religion until a very much later time;—
it says merely that it was “more subtile than any
of the field,” Gen. iii. 1),—the serpent, then, caused
our first parents to eat the fruit of one of these trees.
It was the tree of knowledge ; and you know that, as
soon as they had eaten that fruit, it had indeed the
effect of making them know what they had till then
been ignorant of. Then, says the Bible :—
Gen. iii. 22-24.—“ The Lord God said, Behold, the man
is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now,
lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life,
and eat, and live for ever; therefore the Lord God sent
him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from
whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he
placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and
a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way
of the tree of life.”
Surely it cannot wound the religious feelings of my
readers to enquire simply, whether any of them can
here believe the Bible in the literal sense. Who can
now be found to maintain that there really did exist
two trees of which the magical fruits had these virtues,
the one to make man think, and the other to render
him immortal ? Who ever imagines now that the
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
17
knowledge of good and evil, which we all in some
degree possess, is actually derived, as Genesis says it is,
from a certain fruit eaten by our first parents 1 Who
can believe that God drove man out of Eden, for fear
that he should steal for himself immortality, as he had
already stolen knowledge ?—No one, assuredly. It is
so little believed, that, among modern theologians, it
is now generally thought necessary to apply a fanciful
interpretation to the whole of this primitive legend.
It has also been argued by some that it is impossible
to determine clearly what portion of this picture ought
to be taken literally, and what in a figurative sense.
Perhaps so; but that is precisely the character of a
myth. The phrase magical fruit, as here employed,
may be objected to, because there is no such expression
in the Bible; but then is not this one tree called the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that other
the tree of life ? These words must either signify
nothing, or else they suppose qualities very different
from those of ordinary trees. Doubtless you may
spiritualize all this •, but then, who hinders you from
doing the same with all the analogous myths of the
Vedas and of the Avesta? If you were to give this
story to the children, as you in reality take it your
selves,—as a beautiful myth,—as an ancient and
simple legend, enveloping a great moral truth, it might
then be all right and proper. But was it necessary
that God should intervene to dictate only myths ? If
so, what difference, of any value, can you establish
between the Word of God and mythology1? Among
two neighbouring nations you find the same cosmogonic
allegory under different forms more or less poetic : in
the one case it shall be only an imposture, while in
the other case it is celestial truth ! Is this reasonable?
Without insisting upon a crowd of other myths, to
which the same or similar reflections would apply, let
us come to the miracles properly so called.
May it not be said that the most important function
B
�18
Sacred History:
and aim of instruction ought to be, to make children
early practise the habit of putting to themselves always
these two questions,—WHY ? and HOW ? It is only
thus that they can acquire the knowledge that the things
which they learn from their teachers or from their
books, are truths and realities; and this alone is true
knowledge. It is only thus that they can be educa
tionally inspired with that thirst for the knowledge of
all things real and true, which is the mainspring of
human progress. It is only thus that their reasoning
powers, the highest faculties of their minds, can be
exercised, disciplined, trained, and developed.
But will a history composed of miracles, that is to
say, of things which cannot be explained—of which it
is impossible to know the why and the how ;—will such
a history tend to encourage or to extinguish the scien
tific curiosity of a child ? It has, to all his questions,
a stereotyped reply, which cuts short the spirit of
investigation:— Why.?—Because God willed it. How?
—As God willed it.
It is the peculiar character of the Semitic peoples,
and especially of the Jewish race, to disdain secondary
causes, and to prefer always, overleaping all intermedi
ate steps, to ascend at once to first principles, or to the
great First Cause. The necessary consequence of this is
a general want of relish for the detailed study of facts,
for the scientific observation of nature, for comparative
criticism and analysis. Ask an Arab how the grass
grows, how the stream flows, what produces earth
quakes, famines, or epidemics,-—a thousand similar
questions; and he will reply to you, astonished at your
ignorant curiosity,—Allah is Allah. Is not the reason
and cause of everything a decree of God ? What is the
use of climbing step by step in the series of secondary
causes ? Why not accept the will of God as a univer
sally sufficient explanation ?
This is exactly the effect which sacred history inevi
tably produces upon the intellect of childhood. It
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
J9
accustoms the mind to dispense with the laborious
investigation of the how and the why, causing it to
refer things directly to God without any other explana
tion. Instead of being trained to see God in all those
secondary causes and natural laws, by which He con
stantly manifests himself to us,—instead of being made
to perceive that every pathway of science leads straight
up to the Author of all, the child is led, through the
irregular eross-roads and by-ways of miracle, to seek
God chiefly by imagination, and is hindered from
learning that He is rather to be found by reason on the
one hand, and by conscience on the other.
Suppose that a pupil were to ask the question,—
Why and how could there be a universal deluge 1—■
Instead of having imparted to him a few scientific
notions as to the natural character and physical causes
of the great changes and revolutions of the globe, his
legitimate and wholesome curiosity will be snubbed and
repulsed, and he will be instructed to behold and to
wonder at the act of God, whereby “the fountains of the
great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven
were opened,” (Gen. vii. 11). Will not that child be
very much enlightened ?
When the account of the appearance of the rainbow
after the deluge is the Bible-lesson for the day; this
might be a favourable opportunity for making the chil
dren understand, in opposition to their natural propen
sity for seeing miracles everywhere, that there is
absolutely nothing at all supernatural about the rain
bow, and that it was quite in the nature of things that
a rainbow should be produced at the time, for example,
when the rains of the deluge ceased. But listen to the
explanation of the matter which they will be required
to accept:—
Gen. viii. 13.—“ And it came to pass in the six hundredth
and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month,
the waters were dried up from off the earth.”
Gen. ix. 8-17.—“ And God spake unto Noah, and to his
�20
Sacred History:
sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my cove
nant with you, and with your seed after you; and with
every living creature that is with you: . . . neither shall
there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God
said, This is the token of the covenant. ... I do set my bow
in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant be
tween me and the earth : and it shall come to pass, when I
bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in
the cloud; . . . and I will look upon it that I may remem
ber the everlasting covenant between God and every living
creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.”
I do not insist upon the significance of this latter
clause, which, taken in its literal sense, as it must be
taken by children, will represent to them God looking
upon His bow in order that He may remember His
covenant. The myth, which is here put in the place
of natural causes, is of small importance for wellinformed persons, but the truly important consideration
is that it is presented to children as an absolute fact,
and that they are thus taught and accustomed to rest
satisfied with merely chimerical explanations of natural
phenomena.
What must be the influence of a primary education,
which turns thus continually upon an inexhaustible
stock of marvels 1 How can we expect the intellectual
faculties of our children to be awakened, confirmed and
developed, if, to all their questions about the nature of
things, the only reply is this,—God is God, and He is
omnipotent.
Master, the child will say, is it really true that there
have been men who lived more than 900 years ? Is it
really true that one or two men have ascended up to
heaven in a chariot of fire ? That two or three others,
being actually dead, have come to life again ?—What
presumption to ask if these things are true ! How can
you be so wicked as to doubt it ?—They are written in
the Bible.
Master, how can a she-ass speak?—Everything is
possible to God.
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
21
But that cruse of oil which never failed nor was
exhausted, how was that?—God is all-powerful.
And how could Jonah have been able to live three
days and three nights in the belly of a fish?—My
child, if the Bible said that Jonah swallowed the whale,
instead of being swallowed by it, it would still be
necessary to believe it.
It is thus that, while wishing to teach our children
to honour God, and to believe His Word, they are in
reality taught to learn nothing, but to bend their minds
in passive submission to this modern and Protestant
form of the worst feature of Popery,—the Bible says
so, or the Bible does not say so.
I have often heard it said that there is nothing
which children learn more willingly than sacred history.
I can easily believe it ; for, excepting fairy tales, there
is nothing better suited to please their childish minds :
it is so full of prodigies ! But will the recounting of
prodigies convey genuine instruction to the children?
Will they thus be taught to think, to reflect, to observe,
and to search always for truth and reality ? Or will
the influence of such teaching be exactly the reverse ?
You see it is a practical question, demanding the
most serious consideration. The teacher of a primary
school is in the presence of children, by far the greater
number of whom cannot be expected to acquire in after
life any regular knowledge of the natural, physical, or
mathematical sciences. It must certainly be injurious
to make such children believe that one day, at the end
of a battle between two Asiatic tribes, in order to con
fer upon a Jewish captain the signal advantage of
slaughtering a few more fugitives, God actually caused
the sun to halt in its diurnal motion through the sky,
and to stand still for “ about a whole day,” and that
He moreover set to work, (for the Bible says so, and
the children will take it in the most literal sense,)
to “cast dozen great stones from heaven,” (hailstones)
whereby more of the fugitives died than those who
�22
Sacred History:
were slain by the victorious Israelites. (Josh. x. 11-13.)
To confirm the impression of this prodigious miracle as
a literal fact upon their minds, the children will
probably be reminded of another occasion, when,
touched by the prayers and tears of a sick king who
had been told that he was about to die, God relented
so far as to promise him a supplement of fifteen years
of life, and, as a sign that the promise would be ful
filled, “ He brought the shadow ten degrees backward,
by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz,” (2
Kings xx. 11); “So the sun returned ten degrees, by
which it was gone down,” (Isaiah xxxviii. 8).
What man of common sense, if he will only give the
matter a serious thought, can ever be persuaded that
this profusion of miracles, bidding defiance to all the
conclusions of human reason, and even to the laws of
mathematics, is a wholesome education for the minds
of children, ignorant, credulous, imaginative, and con
fiding, who will probably never afterwards be in a
position to acquire a scientific notion of the laws of
nature, and to whom therefore and henceforth, it will
seem, as it did to the primitive peoples, quite natural
that a miracle should, at any moment, interfere with
and upset the regular course of nature ?
There are, however, some teachers who, on the con
trary, maintain that nothing is better fitted to form the
intellect and to improve the mind of a child, than the
study of miracles. The miraculous is, according to
them, one of the best means of culture. Such a thesis
can only be maintained by those who do not properly
understand what a miracle is. If a child sets himself
to reflect upon the miracle of Isaiah or of Joshua, how
ever little he may have been taught of the elements of
cosmography, it will immediately occur to him that, if
the Sun (or the Earth) had stood still or gone backwards
in space, there must have thence resulted, in instant
succession, throughout vast systems of worlds, endless
perturbations, huge catastrophes, universal destruction ;
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
23
and, rather than, suppose such impossibilities to serve
no purpose but to favour a petty Jewish king, or to
complete the massacre of a troop of Amorites, a child
who has been truly taught to reflect will think of these
miracles exactly what you think of those of all re
ligions, except your own.
It is impossible to find any mode but one, of recon
ciling the miraculous with good instruction ; and that
is to explain it, or, in other words, to deny it; and
this is what even the believers are now, in some
measure, forced to do. In these days, for example,
even among the orthodox, you will find very few
persons who believe in the plagues of Egypt. It is
not now uncommon to hear even fervent defenders of
miracle explaining, that these plagues arose from natural
causes which occur in Egypt every year but in smaller
proportions; that frogs, lice, locusts, water resembling
blood, etc., are well known there; and that the Bible
narrative only shows us God giving to these facts a
proportion and a fitness, which raised them to the
sphere of the miraculous. Well, be it so ; but having
once entered upon this path, how far are we to go ?
With regard to the passage of the Red sea, the
physical possibility of this famous miracle may be
explained to the children by the action of the tides
combined with violent winds. As to the manna and the
quails it may be said that in winter innumerable flocks
of quails reach the warm countries, and that the manna
appears to have been the savoury fruit of a shrub which
grows abundantly in thedesert of Arabia. Elsewhere, the
teacher may explain to his pupils that the art of discover
ing springs of water, and of rendering the water drink
able, still continues to be a requisite qualification for the
guide of an army or of a tribe in the sands of Arabia, etc.
It is thus that some of our Protestant theologians
are now disposed to treat sacred history, while others,
more conservative, are ready to exclaim,—Take care
what you do, to explain a miracle is to reject it, and
�24
Sacred History:
all the miracles hang together, so that if you reject
one of them, you reject them all.
Very true; and, likewise, if you adopt one of them,
you adopt all the others. Human history is one great
book, of which every page is full of miracles. How
can the supernatural be preserved whole and entire in
a single one of these pages, when it is banished with
out hesitation from all the others? Tf God has
performed miracles among the Jews, why deny that
He may have done the same among the Hindoos and
among the Persians, among the Celts and among the
Germans, as the ancient writings of all these peoples
abundantly affirm that He did ?
Then you had better say at once that, in the name of
science and through hatred of the supernatural, you mean
to deprive us of the whole Bible, Old and New Testaments.
No, this discussion has no tendency whatever to
deprive you of the Bible, but only of the superstition
of the Bible. Even you who profess so absolutely to
revere the Bible as the “Word of God,” do you think
it would be difficult to make you confess that you
reject many passages of it as containing indefensible
errors? Do you believe, for example, that the hare
and the rabbit are ruminants ? It is not merely Moses
however, it is God himself who, according to two
formal texts of the Bible (I speak always of the Bible
which is in every hand), directly affirms that both these
animals chew the cud, (Lev. xi. 4-6; Deut. xiv. 7).
If there be one single error in the Bible, there may
be two, there may he ten, and we thenceforth differ
from one another only about a question of number;
which amounts to saying that no person can any longer
maintain the absolute infallibility of the Bible; and,
if it contains errors, then there is nothing, even from
the believers’ point of view, to hinder us or them from
regarding the supernatural as one of these errors.
Upon the third point, it is often affirmed that sacred
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
25
history abundantly compensates, in precious advan
tages, for all the objections which can otherwise be
brought against it. There are many who admit that
it presents deficiencies and inaccuracies with regard to
the knowledge of humanity and of nature, while main
taining its entire perfection with regard to the know
ledge of God.
I do not forget that Biblical history, suitably treated
from the Christian point of view, often serves admir
ably to impress upon the children these two grand ideas,
—that of the one God, and that of the living God.
Even here, however, is there not some illusion ?
Among the men of three or four thousand years ago,
the notion of God evidently was not, could not be,
that which it has become with the progress of humanity.
In the earliest times of which the vestiges have been
preserved to us in certain books of the Bible, it bore
the stamp of a rude anthropomorphism. But, however
rude it may have been, it is not we who shall forget
that, in its time, anthropomorphism was a progress,
and that it marked the first dawn of religious and
philosophical thought.
We do not at all wonder to see God humanized in
the most ancient pages of this same Bible, in the later
portions of which we shall find the purest and highest
expression of the religious sentiment, precisely because
we know that the Bible is neither an exceptional book,
nor even the work of one single period ; but merely a
collection of Hebrew literature from its first attempts
to its highest development.
In the earliest portions, everything bears the trace
of a primitive social state, everything there has, so
to say, the tone and the aspect of childhood; but by
degrees the images change, the symbols are purified,
and the worship, as well as the literature of the nation,
becomes more elevated and more spiritual. If this
development be taken into account, the differences
which appear between Genesis, for example, and the
�q.6
Sacred History:
poetic writings of the later period, are not greater nor
more surprising than the interval which separates the
Niebelungen from Klopstock and from Goethe, or than
the contrast between the “ legends of the round table ”
and the works of our modern historians. If, on the
contrary, this successive and progressive character be
abstracted from the books of the Bible, then sacred
history becomes a chaotic mixture of sublime and of
rude ideas, and then it must tend, upon many points,
to mislead the mind of a child.
If the Bible is a human book, its anthropomorphism
is not only no reproach, but must even be admired, as
it is admired in the commencements of other ancient
religions. When I read therein, God repents, God is
angry, God forgets, and God remembers, God is glad,
and God is grieved, when I read on every page, God
speaks, or God appears, I easily reduce to their true
value these various symbols, while fully appreciating
their ingenuity or simplicity, and the beauty or the
truth which they may contain. But when you give
these same symbols to a child, as so many supernatural
facts, derived from a book which not only is true, but
which is the very Word of God, then the danger com
mences, and it is necessary to protest against this sub
stitution of ancient Hebrew anthropomorphism for
eternal and pure truth.
God is not only thus humanly personified in the
Bible, but He is therein sometimes materialized to an
extent which is now almost inconceivable to us, who
are accustomed to contemplate Jehovah only through
the light of Gospel times. For example, when Noah
came out of the Ark, he offered a burnt-offering of
many animals to God ; “ and the Lord smelled a sweet
savour
“ and the Lord said in his heart, I will not
again curse the ground any more,” (Gen. viii. 21).
Would the most fervent imitators of the Biblical style
now venture to employ such an expression, even
under the pretext of symbolism ?
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
27
It would be more than wearisome to collect here all
the traces of a similar materialism, all the texts in
which corporeal forms are attributed to God. Think
of the burning bush; think of Sinai, where, from the
midst of cloudsand of thunders, with “the voice of
the trumpet exceeding loud,” God gives, with his own
hand, to Moses, two tables, written, says Exodus,
“with the finger of God,” (xxxi. 18 ; xxxii. 16). Think
especially of the prominence given to this idea,—
majestic, if its poetic symbolism be understood, but
extremely rude if taken literally as given in the Bible:
—no man can see or hear God without instantly
dying: one single people has been able to hear him,
one single man has been able to see him—without
perishing. Would it be easy to explain the following
passages, so that they shall not have, at least for
children, a sense decidedly too material ?
Exod. xix. 18-24.—“And Mount Sinai was altogether
on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire:
and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace,
and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice
of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder,
Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the
Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the
mount; and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the
mount; and Moses went up. And the Lord said unto
Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break
through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish.
And let the priests also, which come near unto the
Lord, sanctify themselves, lest the Lord break forth upon
them........... Thou shalt come up, thou and Aaron with
thee; but let not the priests and the people break
through to come up unto the Lord, lest he break forth
upon them.”
Exod. xx. 18-21.—“And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and
the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they
removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses,
Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God
speak with us lest we die..............And the people stood afar
�Sacred History:
off: and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where
God was."
Deut. v. 24-26.—“Behold, the Lord onr God hath
shewed us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard
his voice out of the midst of the fire: we have seen this
day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth. Now,
therefore, why should we die ? for this great fire will con
sume us : if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any
more, then we shall die. For who is there of all flesh that
hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the
midst of the fire, AS WE have, and lived? ”
And, as a commentary upon this scene, as grand
and imposing, as it is possible for an exhibition of
symbols to be, addressed only to the senses through
the imagination, let us see how Moses afterwards sums
it up and estimates its importance:—
Deut. iv. 32-36.—“ Ask now of the days that are past,
which were before thee, since the day that God created
man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of heaven
unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing
as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it. . Did ever
people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the
fire, as thou hast heard, and live? .... Out of heaven he
made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee :
and upon earth he shewed thee his great fire; and thou
heardest his words out of the midst of the fire.”
Elsewhere it is not the voice, it is the sight of God
which kills. It is said to have happened, in a small
number of quite exceptional cases, that God has con
sented to let himself be seen, and seen by the eyes of
the flesh. These miracles are accordingly narrated to
us with the greatest solemnity.
One day, the seventy elders of Israel followed Moses
up into “ the Mount of God.” Moses, however, alone
went up to God in the mount, but the elders went up
so far, that, according to the text,—
Exod. xxiv. 10. 11.—“ They saw the God of Israel: and
there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a
sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
29
clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he
laid not his hand : also they saw God and did eat and drink."
Moses alone,—and it was this which gave him in the
eyes of his people a supernatural character,-—was able
to penetrate into that cloud where resided “ the glory
of God,” and out of which God appeared like a con
suming fire. God himself renders to him this testimony,
that He would speak with him “ mouth to mouth" even
apparently, and not in dark speeches,” (Num. xii. 8.)
This peculiar privilege is repeatedly described —“The
Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as -a man speaketh
unto his friend,” (Exod. xxxiii. 11; Deut. xxxiv. 10,
&c.).
Such declarations as these, and many more such
might be quoted, have a character thoroughly and
undeniably materialistic, if regarded as records of literal
facts, and not as poetic fictions; but even these are
Dot the worst. The material conception or representa
tion of God has been carried to a degree of still more
astounding grossness. Witness that passage which
equals, in primitive rudeness, anything which the most
barbarous nations have written about the nature of
their, gods. Moses had long conversed with God, but
hitherto he had not seen him. He said to God one
day, “ I beseech thee, show me thy glory! ” God did
not reply that his essence being incorporeal cannot be
seen ; but, on the contrary, He consented to pass before
Moses, and to let him hear his voice: but, added He,—
Exod. xxxiii. 20-23.—“ Thou canst not see my face; for
there shall no man see me and five. And the Lord said,
Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon
a rock: and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth
by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will
cover thee with my hand while I pass by : And I will take
away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts; but my
face shall not be seen.”
Would it not be highly irreverent and even profane
to regard this passage as a literal, and divinely inspired,
�30
Sacred History:
and therefore infallible record of facts ? What would
be said of such a story, if it were found anywhere else
than in “ the Holy Bible I ”
When people and teachers come to see, in all these
pretended miracles of Horeb and of Sinai, only their
true character of tragic and sombre poetry, there will
no longer be any question about the propriety of putting
them into the hands and heads of children, any more
than there is at present about the ‘ Prometheus ’ of
TEschylus, or the 1 Inferno ’ of Dante, or Milton’s
‘ Paradise Lost.’ But, once more, do you not perceive
what an abyss there is between admiring myths as
myths, and accepting them as supernatural facts dic
tated by God himself?
Elsewhere, God is represented as a man obliged to
make personal inquiry as to whether a rumour which
has reached him is correct or not:—
Gen. xviii. 20, 21.—“ And the Lord said, Because the
cry of Sodom and Gomorrha is great, and because their sin
is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they
have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is
come unto me; and if not, I will know.”
Again, men began to build a tower, whose top should
reach unto heaven :—
Gen. xi. 5-7.—“ And the Lord came down to see the city
and the tower, which the children of men builded. And
the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all
one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing
will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to
do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their
language.”
And it is thus that the famous confusion of languages
is explained !
Surely the specimens which I have quoted, though
the series might easily be largely extended, are amply
sufficient to show, to those who require such proof,
that not everything in the Bible is fitted to convey to
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
31
our children such a pure and spiritual notion of God as
it has been customary to believe. Some one will hasten to reply:—11 But we never
read these passages in the schools, we suppress them,
or we suitably modify them in our lesson-hooks.”—I
am fain to believe that in many cases it is so; but,
whether you teach these things or not, they are never
theless in the Bible, and are there by the same title as
the most admirable passages; so that they suffice to
show to us clearly, in its true aspect, the degree of
civilization and of enlightenment, to which the books
containing them belong.
And then, although you may, in some measure,
suppress such passages as bear too visibly their date
upon them, you do not suppress those innumerable
revelations, apparitions, or manifestations of God, of
which the Bible is full, and you cannot deny that they
all (excepting perhaps some of the prophecies which,
moreover, do not come under the denomination of
sacred history) address themselves to the senses through
the imagination.
From one end of the Bible to the other, God speaks
to patriarchs, to judges, to kings, to warriors, to priests.
Is it by the voice of conscience 1 No, it is by a vision,
a “ sign,” by a miracle, by a dream. When He
speaks to all his people, it is by blessings or cursings
of a temporal kind. It is not from within, it is from
without that He governs : it is not by love, it is by fear.
Ah ! my readers, is there not still a necessity, even
after so many centuries of Christianity, for a fresh and
vigorous effort to extirpate that superstitious instinct,
which even now makes so many people tremble at the
noise of thunder and at the flash of lightning, as if God
were then either more present or more to be feared
than when the sun shines clearly in a serene sky ?
Must we still continue to propagate, in our families or
in our schools, that false idea which is the very soul of
the primitive history of every nation, and of the- Jews
�32
Sacred History:
as of the others :—if you suffer, God is punishing you :
if you prosper, God is blessing you: if an epidemic, a
famine, or an earthquake ravages a country, God is
angry : if the harvest is double, God is favourable : you
have been victorious, then the Eternal has fought upon
your side : vanquished, it is because He has abandoned
you 1
One of the masterpieces of Semitic literature, which
has been and must ever be in all ages admired,—the
poem of Job,—presents to us the first recorded protest
of the human conscience against this idea. Job is struck
with plagues and afflictions, and his friends thence infer,
according to the custom, that God is thus punishing
him for his sin. But Job replies with indignant
eloquence—“ No, I am not guilty. No, my suffering
is not an expiation.”
Job xiii. 15-18.—“ Though he slay me, yet will I trust
in him ; but I will maintain (in the margin, prove or argue)
mine own ways before him. He also shall be my salvation ;
for an hypocrite shall not come before him..............Behold
now, I have ordered my cause: I know that I shall be jus
tified.” (Read also ch. xxxi. &c.).
Every one knows that, at the end of the poem, God
declares to the three friends that they have been wrong,
and that Job’s view of the matter is correct :—
Job xlii. 7.—“For ye have not spoken of me the thing
that is right, as my servant Job bath.''''
This is manifestly the chief signification and purport
of the book ■, and it is to this that the attention of our
children ought chiefly to be directed, if we would have
them to understand what they read; instead of insisting
precisely upon the one circumstance which weakens the
lesson, by shewing them that, in the end, God restores
to Job all his possessions, and by thus teaching them,
here also, to regard material prosperity as a criterium of
the divine favour.
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
33
Plato, wishing to make us understand how entirely
the moral life is independent of external conditions,
shows to us the just man overwhelmed with sufferings,
with contempt, with calumnies, and with afflictions of
every kind; in the midst of which, and even upon the
cross where he dies, we are taught to recognize in him
the just man, the teacher of truth, the friend of God,
the pattern for our imitation, and, at the same time,
the most truly happy of men ! Would not this sublime
lesson be worth more than hundreds of Biblical miracles
for teaching our children to realize that they are more
or less near to God, not in proportion to the success of
their enterprises, not according to external indications
of prosperity or adversity, popularity or contempt, but
according to the internal testimony of their own con
science, according to their degree of obedience to duty ?
It would be absurd to look for this profound intelli
gence of the spiritual sense of religion, in a nation or
tribe at the commencement of its social development.
But it is none the less absurd that, three or four thou
sand years afterwards, it should still be imagined that
we have only to reproduce, without any change, the
first lispings of human thought, and to regard this
reproduction as an infallible revelation.
Where the notion of the Bather Almighty, revealing
himself to the reason and to the conscience, has not yet
acquired all its fulness, we need not wonder to find
that the relations between God and man are often pre
sented in a very imperfect fashion.
Take, for example, prayer or blessing, as it appears
in the first books of the Old Testament, and try to
discover in these a spiritual and moral character. You
will not find it any more than you will find there the
God who is purely spirit and purely love.
Prayer* is there, as among all the peoples of that
period, a mystic spell, a sort of magic power, a cabal* And Imprecation. See the history of Balaam, Num. xxiii.
25, 26.
�^4
Sacred History:
istic formula. Let us look at a single specimen. It is
at the crisis of a battle : Moses has not taken part in
the fight, but has withdrawn to an adjoining hill, armed
with his rod, and there he intercedes for his people.
Exod. xvii. 11-14.—“And it came to pass, when Moses
held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let
down his hand Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands were
heavy ; and they took a stone and put it under him, and he
sat thereon : and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the
one on the one side, and the other on the other side : and
his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.
And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the
edge of the sword. And the Lord said unto Moses, Write
this for a memorial in a book.”
Here again I would be the first to recognise a beauti
ful poetic image, if the story is to be understood in
the same manner as the analogous stories, which we
may read in the Vedas, or elsewhere. But those who
desire to make us and our children believe that the
thing has actually taken place, ought to see that, if
such virtue must be literally attributed to this
mechanical prayer of Moses, they have no longer any
right to ridicule the prayer-mills of the Budhists, or
the rosaries of the Roman Catholics.
But, it is said by some, this is a type, an emblem, an
allegory, which we must “interpret spiritually.”
Be it so, but who hinders you from interpreting
spiritually all the similar imagery, which abounds in
the other religious and mythological books of antiquity?
If you have so much indulgence for the rudest allegories
of Hebrew legend, whence comes your severity or con
tempt for the most beautiful and symbolical stories of
Greek, Hindoo, or Scandinavian legend ? God speaks,
God appears in person, God dictates a book ! and that
book contains pages which, in order to be accepted by
reason, require to be “ spiritualized,” neither more nor
less than those of Hesiod, of the Vedas, or of the
Eddas!
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
35
The truth, is that, among all primitive peoples,
prayer, blessing, and cursing have a peculiar virtue, a
mysterious influence, a magic power. Of this the
history of Isaac is one of the clearest examples.
The old man, wishing and intending to bless Esau,
is the dupe of a coarse imposition; and the words
which, in his thought, he addresses to Esau, fall,
unknown to him, upon the ears of Jacob. When
Esau returns from his hunting, to which he had been
sent by his father himself, Isaac, astonished and
trembling, says to him :—
Gen. xxvii. 33-37.—“ Thy brother came with subtilty,
and hath taken away thy blessing........... I have blessed
him, yea, and he shall be blessed............ I have made him
thy lord, and all his brethren have I given to him for
servants; and with corn and wine have I sustained him:
and what shall I do now unto thee, my son ? ”
Can it be denied in presence of words so clear, that,
for the Isaac of Genesis, the blessing was a kind of
talisman or spell, an enchanted formula, consisting in
the words, not in the thought, and having a virtue
equally independent of the intention of him who gave
it, and of the merit of him who received it 1 A stolen
blessing was not on that account the less valid I
How can all this be explained to children 1
But an explanation is not withheld, we have often
heard and read it, as follows :—Isaac knew very well
that, before the birth of the twin brothers, God had
said to Rebecca, “ the elder shall serve the younger.”
Moreover, when the blessing had been given to Jacob,
Isaac felt that it was, notwithstanding the imposture
of his son, an accomplished fact, which he did not feel
himself at liberty to undo, and which had acquired, by
its very accomplishment, a providential character.
The whole was the result of a divine decree, and this
was perceived by the conscience of Isaac at the very
moment when the act of blessing was consummated.
�36
Sacred History:
We frankly confess that, in morality no less than in
good sense, this incredible theory, of an accomplished
fact which acquires by its very accomplishment a provi
dential character, appears to us even more deficient, if
that be possible, than the explanation of the biblical
Isaac. “ Thy brother hath come with subtilty, and hath
taken away thy blessing, I have blessed him, yea, and he
shall be blessed.”
Samson is again another example, among a thousand,
of these false and rude ideas, regarding the relations
between God and man. Here it is neither a prayer
nor a blessing, but a vow, in virtue of which the hair
of Samson’s head (orthodox theologians believe it
still), was the thing, the charm, or the talisman,
wherein his supernatural strength lay !
Samson keeps company with a woman of loose
character, (Judges xvi.); but that does not in the
smallest degree deprive him of the divine favour
attached to his hair. His head being cropped, he
loses the distinctive blessing of God; but his hair
grows again, and with it comes back the divine bless
ing. It is impossible to see anything else in the text,
unless it be put there by force; for, immediately
before narrating the last exploit of Samson, the Bible
explains to us how he has regained his strength by
telling us :—
Judges xvi. 22.—“ Howbeit the hair of his head began
to grow again after he was shaven.”
What is the profound religious idea which we may
hope, without sophistry, to derive from this lesson, for
the improvement of the minds or the hearts of our
children ? Explain it as you may, Samson will always
be for them only the Jewish Hercules ; and, I confess
it, I greatly prefer for their instruction the Hercules of
the Greeks. The latter, at least, will not now teach
them to think that God—the true God, the God whom
they themselves ought to worship—has actually figured
�Its Influence on the Intellect.
y]
in scenes and anecdotes, which, like those about Samson,
are trifling, superstitious, and absurd.
In conclusion :—To excite, to over-excite, in children
the taste for the extraordinary, to make them seek God,
not where He is ever to he found, not in the laws of
the physical or moral world, not in the eternal har
mony of the stars, not in the marvellous organisation
of the flower or of the insect, not in the sublime spec
tacle of unity and design presented by the Universe,
but in all sorts of disorders and capricious interferences
which, if they had taken place, would have proved
nothing but the divine instability, improvidence, and
weakness ; thus greatly to exaggerate and to confirm,
instead of counteracting, in their young minds, their
naturally fantastic and chimerical notions of things,
their ignorance of causes, their disregard of rule, fear
instead of thought, credulity instead of knowledge ;
and then to seal the whole with this disastrous idea,
that, if they have the misfortune to contest the absolute
truth of even the most absurd narratives, doctrines, or
miracles attested by a pretended Word of God, they are
guilty of blasphemous sacrilege, and doomed therefore
to eternal damnation, unless they repent and learn at
least to say, that the whole book is a divine revelation
of truth:—behold and consider the kind of influence
which the teaching of sacred history always inevitably
exerts, only in greater or less degree according to the
absence or presence of various antidotes, upon the cul
ture of our children’s intelligence, and upon the forma
tion of their ideas of humanity, of nature, and of God.
Ere long we will publish the second and the more
important division of the subject; and therein we will
strive to show how this kind of teaching acts upon the
conscience, and upon the moral direction of life.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Sacred history as a branch elementary education. Part I. Its influence on the intellect
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Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 37 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Date of publication from British Library catalogue.
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Thomas Scott
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[1870]
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CT208
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Education
Bible
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Bible-Criticism
Conway Tracts
Education
Religious Education
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Text
ibMe Class (^bnatmi.
WHAT TO AIM AT, AS WELL AS HOW TO AIM.
BY
WILLIAM ELLIS.
�MIDDLE CLASS EDUCATION.
WHAT TO AIM AT, AS WELL AS HOW TO AIM.
N hearing that a Commission was
about to issue to inquire into the
state of “Middle-Class Education,”
one’s thoughts could not but revert
to the previous Commissions for in
quiring into the state of “Popular Education,”
and of our “ Public Schools,” and to the reports
consequent upon them.
Searching and laborious as these inquiries were,
and able as were the reports, it has always ap
peared to us, that they would have been much
more effective and useful, had there been an in
troductory exposition of the purposes for which
education is desirable. We will not say that these
purposes were not perceived and admitted by the
Commissioners; but, if they were, the avowal of
them was repressed, and the reports might have
been just what they were, had the Commissioners
never bestowed a thought upon what we conceive
to be the reason of our being at any pains about
education at all.
Whether our attempts to improve the education
of the children of the poorer classes have of late
been too ambitious—whether we have not been
doing actual mischief by “ over-education” (what
ever that term may mean)—whether we shall
have accomplished all that is desirable, when we
shall have secured for these children instruction
in reading, writing, and arithmetic—whether in
our public schools the time of the boy is not too
exclusively devoted to the classics and mathe
matics—whether more importance should not be
attached to the knowledge of some modern lan
guages—whether a little attention should not be
bestowed upon physical science—and whether
the subjects taught, whatever they may be, are
taught in the way best adapted to secure profi
ciency in the learners, are all matters which have
been handled by the Commissioners, but, as we
think, less effectively than they might have been,
if examined and discussed throughout, with the
aid of the light and guidance to be obtained by
keeping constantly in view the purposes for which
the work of education of any kind ought to be
engaged in.
As regards the relative claims of the ancient
and modern languages, it would be premature to
discuss them till it has been settled whether the
study of objects and phenomena should precede
and accompany the study of language, or follow
after it. If objects and phenomena are to have
precedence, modern languages might command a
preference, in as much as they alone supply the
names and explanations of the larger part of the
objects and phenomena, which in these days
principally engage our attention; and these lan
guages are more immediately needful in the in
tercourse among nations. But if instruction in
objects and phenomena is to be put aside, whetner
temporarily or for ever, for the study of language,
we suspect that our preference would be bestowed
upon the ancient languages, in as much as they
are more difficult to learn, and are seldom learned
so as to be conversed in, and hence scholars are
less liable to suffer from a flow of words in advance
of ideas. This is not to be despised as one of the
collateral advantages of teaching ancient rather
than modern languages. For the opportunity of
accumulating stores of words irrespective of any
ideas to be represented by them, is one of the
greatest dangers to which the juvenile intellect
can be exposed; as a facility in pouring them
forth is one of the greatest impediments in the
way of curing those who are afflicted with confu
sion or bewilderment of understanding.
In considering the question, how far the study
of language should be allowed to precede the
study of objects and phenomena, it will not be
lost sight of that the objects and phenomena
which are treated of in the books out of which
the young are expected to acquire practice in
reading, to learn construction of sentences, and
to study models of style, are men, and their con
duct, and manners. Narratives, histories, biogra
phies, and poetry are made up of words denotative
of the dispositions, attainments, and actions of
men—which words are made more or less to im
ply approbation and disapprobation, whether upon
grounds which will stand examination, is often a
mattei' of contention among men of great experi
ence. Boys may read and write, and construe
and parse the phrases in which these words occur.
Can they judge whether the words are appropri
ately used ? Take such words as virtue, honour,
prudence, liberty, despotism, perseverance, obsti
nacy, earnestness, bigotry, consistency, orthodoxy,
�MIDDLE CLASS EDUCATION.
heresy, conversion, perversion, generosity, fidelity,
parsimony, justice, and mercy; is it desirable that
learners should be encouraged to deal freely in
their youthful compositions with terms intended
to express approbation and disapprobation, the
grounds of which they may not only be incapable
of understanding, but careless to inquire into ?
There are teachers, men excellent in many
respects, and accomplished scholars too, who seem
to act upon the notion that inquirers, such as
ourselves, who have never taken a part in school
work, are not qualified to form or express a judg
ment upon what professional educators are doing.
We cannot proclaim too loudly our dissent from
this doctrine. Even if we are not competent to
judge of the means by which the ends of educa
tion may best be attained, we are competent to
judge what those ends are. Stated broadly, few
people (teachers included) would hesitate to admit
that they ought gladly to welcome anynewarrangements, or modifications of existing arrangements,
calculated to bring about an increase of well-being.
Teachers who resist attempts to inquire into their
proceedings, insist, by implication, that education
in their hands is doing all that can be expected
from it in behalf of the advancement of well-being.
They tell us, that the distinguished promoters of
education in the olden times were no less desirous
than ourselves of improving society, and were
well qualified for directing the work which they
originated, and that it would ill become us to call
in question that which has earned the approval,
and even the veneration of all subsequent teachers,
and of the scholars educated under them.
These objections, founded as they are upon the
tacit assumption that the arrangements for educa
tion of olden times are so near perfection, as not
to be susceptible of improvement—as not to war
rant inquiry, lest inquiry should lead to change
which should not be improvement,—suggest some
rather startling comparisons and reflections. Can
it be true, that the profession of educator, acknow
ledged to be one requiring attainments of the
highest order, should have reached perfection at
a time when all other professions were so far
removed from it as later improvements have
shown them to have been? People engaged in
all professions and branches of business, educators
included, are, we will say, contributing their ser
vices to the best of their ability towards the im
provement of society. Their predecessors were
aidingin the same work. In every department of
industry, unless we except education, although
the end sought for is, as heretofore, human well
being, the means by which it is sought are now
very different.
3
We are not more anxious for artificial light
than our ancestors were; but we are better pro
vided with it, because we have substituted coalgas for oil and tallow candles. In like manner,
with no greater anxiety than before, for rapid
and safe travelling, we have abandoned posting
and fast coaches for the locomotive and the rail
way. With the same purposes as before, the
semaphore has been made to give way to the
electric telegraph, and we obtain the motive power
to propel our ships across the ocean, not from
the fickle and intractable wind, but from steam
extracted from the very water which floats them.
The scholars, divines, and other educators of
the people, do not rank themselves, as far as we
have become acquainted with their sentiments,
nor are they ranked by others, below the classes
who have succeeded in providing us so much
better than formerly with light, and locomotion,
and intercommunication. According to them,
and quite in conformity with our own views, the
highest order of intelligence, and the highest
order of moral excellence, ought to be found
among those who are entrusted with the duty
of forming the minds and characters of others.
But surely it may reasonably be doubted whether
the higher attainments of educators can have
sprung into perfection at a time when the inferior
attainments were still so incompletely developed.
Why, then, should there be any backwardness
among educators, we will not say, in admitting
that the system and methods adopted and adhered
to by them ought to be changed, but in allowing
us to inquire whether they have attained perfec
tion in their own most arduous vocation—that of
bringing to bear with the greatest skill the highest
knowledge, for the purpose of fitting the young
to work out and enjoy well-being?
An inquiry into prevailing education, with a
view to ascertain how far it is accomplishing all
that can be expected from it, can be scarcely
approached with much prospect of striking out
anything of practical utility, unless it be preceded
by a correct appreciation of the state of society, in
which the education is actually at work. It may
then be possible to form some estimate of the
influence for good which education has hitherto
exerted over the well-being thus far enjoyed, and
of how much more it might be made to exercise
in future, and to point out some of the changes
by which this greater good is to be effected.
We will set out by proposing two questions,
about the answers to which there can be no
difference of opinion : —
1. Are the present inhabitants of this country,
as compared with their predecessors, on the whole
�4
MIDDLE CLASS EDUCATION.
better informed, and more capable of applying their
knowledge so as to promote well-being, and hence
in the enjoyment of a happier state of existence ?
2. Is the present state of existence, chequered
as we see it, with pleasure and pain, joy and
sorrow, hope and fear, susceptible of improvement,
that is, open to improvement through anyexertions
of which men themselves are capable ?
W e assume that there is a perfect unanimity
upon the answers to these questions, and that the
answers are in the affirmative ; and in so doing,
we are not forgetful that less than a century ago,
the superiority of the savage to the civilized state
was maintained with great vehemenc.e by advo
cates of considerable ability, who had many
adherents. But the remarkable increase of know
ledge, and the still more remarkable increase of
aptitude in applying knowledge to purposes of
well-being in these latter days, have swept before
them all predilections in favour of barbarism, and
the ingenious sophisms on which they rested.
Unanimity begins to disappear when means
are proposed for bringing about that improved
state of existence which is admitted to be possible ;
and it is to the consideration of these means that
we wish to invite attention. As, however, it is ac
cepted as an established fact, that our present state
of existence is an improvement upon the past, the
knowledge, if obtainable, of the means by which
that improvement was effected, may help us in our
endeavours to learn how those who are disposed
to engage in the work, may hope to bring about
the further improvement agreed to be possible.
There can be little doubt, if proposals were
widely circulated, inviting expositions of the
means by which the inhabitants of Great Britain
have acquired a so much more comfortable state
of existence than that which was enjoyed by the
inhabitants of this island previous to the invasion
of the Romans, that the expositions tendered
would vary greatly in many respects. And yet,
we fancy, accordance or similarity in some respects
would be traceable in them all. Not one would
deny that the earth is made to produce greater
crops, and to sustain greater numbers of sheep
and cattle; that, with the assistance of wind,
water, and steam, the raw products of the soil are
worked up into a greater quantity and variety of
fabrics adapted to give comfort, health, and plea
sure ; that our means of transport, locomotion,
and communication are superior; our supplies
of fuel, water, and light are more abundant; and
that we are better provided with the means of
preserving health, and of keeping off or mitigating
the painful consequences of accidents and disease.
As little would it be denied that modern supe
riority in the matters named, and in many others
is partly a consequence of the greater extent of
our knowledge, of the continued accumulation
of knowledge upon knowledge, and of the substi
tution of real knowledge for that which had been
mistaken for it.
When from the possession of knowledge, we
pass on to that of readiness or aptitude in applying
it, doubts may be felt whether there has been any
or much advance in that. It might be contended
that the greatly increased produce of industry
which we enjoy, is sufficiently accounted for by
the increase of our knowledge, and that there is
no justification for claiming more than the same
readiness and aptitude in applying our increased
knowledge, than were to be seen in the application
of our lesser knowledge. We will defer awhile
any attempt to decide between the supporters of
these opposite views. Other investigations which
we have to make, may help us to a right decision
upon this question. We shall be satisfied for the
present with the admission, which cannot be
withheld, that knowledge, combined with the capa
city of applying it in the production of the
necessaries and comforts of life, is more advanced,
and also more generally diffused, than it ever was
at any former period ; and to confirm the truth of
this statement, we need but point to the greater
abundance of wealth.
Wealth, however, is not well-being. It is only
a means of well-being. But we must bear in
mind that although it is only one among many
means of well-being, it is an indispensable one,
since well-being without wealth is impossible.
Nevertheless, how far wealth will contribute to
well-being must depend upon the manner in which
it is used or consumed.
The terms in common use to denote many kinds
of ill-conduct, such as profligacy, dissipation,
debauchery, uncharitableness, and gambling, all
point to the ill-conduct, not of individuals, de
void, but of individuals possessed of wealth.
They indicate a belief that wealth, an indispen
sable element of well-being, may be converted
into an instrument for the production of misery.
Not only may a large income, which the heir to
it could not have earned, and has not the capa
city to use, help him to no well-being; it may
hurry him into misery. Experience has shown
us that increased wages in particular channels of
industry, resulting from other causes than the
increased attainments of workmen, have not
assisted them to become better parents, or better
conducted men in other respects. While, then,
we accept wealth as an indispensable element in
well-being, we ought not to forget that wealth
�MIDDLE CLASS EDUCATION.
must be accompanied by the capacity to use it, if
a state of well-being is to be enjoyed.
\ An inquiry into the causes of increased well
being really becomes, if we would avoid wild and
unmeaning dissertation, an inquiry into the causes
of increased'-wealth, and of increased capacity in
using it so Zs to produce increased well-being.
The number of the inhabitants of Great Britain is
more than ten-fold what it was in the earlier
periph. of its history, and its wealth is more than a
hymdrcd-fold. How has this change been brought
yabout? What causes preceded it? We maybe
r baffled in our attempts to trace the remoter
causes, but we can only hope to get back to them
through the proximate causes. Accordingly, we
had better search for the proximate causes in
the first instance. Among the antecedents and
concomitants of this change, we see many that
are acting as heretofore. The causes of change
• are not to be found in them. As far as we
can learn, the island is not larger, the soil
not more fertile, the powers of water, wind, steam,
and electricity, are not greater, minerals not more
abundant, nor are the various substances scattered
over the land more susceptible of disintegration
and recombination, so as, in the form of a gas, to
suspend sensation, or, in the form of a microscope
or telescope, to bring us acquainted with objects
invisible to the naked eye. If, then, the elements
and forces of nature which prevail around us are
the same as heretofore, except as modified and
directed by human agency, the cause of the differ
ence observable in man’s state of existence must
be sought for in man himself.
And there it will not be sought in vain. For
it cannot be doubted that the men of this genera
tion have more knowledge, with the capacity of
applying it in the production of wealth, than the
men of any previous generation. The more we
reflect upon the increased knowledge of modern
times, with the capacity of using it for the pur
poses of production, the more satisfied shall we
be that we have hit upon the principal, if not the
only, cause of the marked difference between the
present and past states of existence. Powerful
as this cause is, we recognise it in its character
of a proximate cause only, and one which invites
us to continue our search into its cause or causes
among the antecedents which our records of the
past have preserved for us.
At this point attention ought to be steadily fixed
upon what, at first sight, might be considered an in
superable impediment, if not to the progressive, at
least to the rapid uprising of the human race in
the scale of existence. It is needful not only that
man should know more and more, but that the
5
old knowledge should be imparted to the ignorant
new comers, who are destined, in an uninterrupted
stream, to take the place of those already instructed.
The children born among us, with our present
advanced knowledge, are quite as ignorant as
those born two thousand years ago. The causes
which produce such very different men and women
out of the children born among us now from those
of former days, must be sought for in the external
influences brought to bear upon the children. It
would scarcely be contended by anybody, if our
children were to be transplanted at birth to some
distant land to be reared by savages, that they
would grow up to be men and women capable of
participating in the orderly and systematic work
as now conducted under the direction of those who
are most distinguished for knowledge and aptitude.
Our present improved state of well-being implies
not only increase of knowledge and aptitude, but
also opportunities for the ignorant and incapable
continually pouring in upon us to become as
intelligent and capable as those whom they are
destined to replace. How far these opportunities
are the result of contrivances specially intended
to impart knowledge and aptitude, how far they
present themselves undesignedly as inevitable con
sequences of past knowledge and aptitude, and how
far the contrivances specially intended to impart
knowledge and aptitude are adapted for their pur
poses, remain to be inquired into. The growth of
knowledge, or the continual addition of new to
old knowledge, is a subject which there will be
more hope of our approaching successfully if we
reserve it till we have inquired somewhat carefully
into the opportunities which have been hitherto
afforded to each generation to acquire the know
ledge and aptitude of the preceding.
Go where we will, in every 'department of
industry, we see proofs of the increased know
ledge and aptitude of which we have spoken, and
also proofs of the ignorance and ill-conduct more
or less disturbing the operations, and diminishing
and damaging the products, of industry. The
young continually received into existing establish
ments, such as they are, while open to profit by
the knowledge and aptitude, are exposed to suffer
by the ignorance and ill-conduct with which they
are brought into contact. Thus we have simul
taneously before our eyes the increased knowledge
and aptitude which have helped to make us what
we are, and the ignorance and inaptitude lingering
among us to prevent our becoming what we might
be. These may be accepted as indications of the
direction in which efforts ought to be made, still
further to improve the improved state of existence
which has been prepared for us by our predecessors.
�6
MIDDLE CLASS EDUCATION.
The action of government must not be left un
noticed. It stands conspicuous among the proxi
mate causes of well-being. The perfection with
which it accomplishes its purposes may safely be
attributed to the knowledge and aptitude pre
vailing among a people, but is a sufficiently
peculiar manifestation of those qualities to deserve
to be separately investigated.
Our government and institutions, improved as
they have been, and more particularly of late
years, are generally acknowledged to be intended
to make us happier and better—to defend the
well-being which we enjoy, and to encourage us
in our efforts to increase it. They are not sup
posed to be perfect or unimprovable ; but the
parts susceptible of improvement by any process
within the reach of our present capabilities, bear a
small proportion to those which are well adapted
for their purposes. As regards our internal rela
tions, our intercourse with one another, they are
contrived and directed with a view to restrain all
individuals who will not, or can not, regulate their
conduct in conformity with what society in general
considers indispensable for its well-being. As
regards our external relations, our intercourse
with other nations, they are intended to promote
freedom of communication and interchange of
benefits.
A very slight acquaintance with modern history
suffices to make known that a great change has
come over us in our views of what ought to be
the action of government in its bearing upon
both our internal and our external relations.
Restrictions upon freedom and compulsory service
used to be the connection between the government
and the governed. Now the prevailing feeling
is, that the governed should be left unrestricted,
except where interference is clearly called for by
regard for the general well-being, and that the
services of individuals are to be voluntary, not
compulsory. A spirit of rapacity and extortion
used to be the characteristic of our dealings with
other nations ; and ignorance directed this spirit,
so as to lead it away from the very wealth which
it sought to grasp. For we then thought to enrich
ourselves by ruling the inhabitants of other lands,
and monopolising their trade, unable to perceive
that if they were allowed to rule themselves, and
to conduct their industrial and commercial opera
tions as was best for themselves, we should escape
the expense and responsibility of governing them,
and profit more in our trade with them.
Amplification upon these topics is unnecessary
here. It does not admit of a doubt that if the
changes which have taken place of late years in
the spirit and character of our government and
institutions have not been caused, they have been
rendered possible, by the increased knowledge of
the people. And we can scarcely fail to be led to
inquire whether every improvement of which our
government and institutions are susceptible, may
not be obtained through a wider diffusion of know
ledge.
During the growth of our nation there have
been noteworthy events which may have given
the direction to our progress, such as it has been.
The invasion and conquest of this island by the
Romans, the triumph, of William the Conqueror
at Hastings, the expulsion of the Stuarts, the
union of England and Scotland, and the subse
quent union of them with Ireland, are such
events. It is difficult to surmise what the state
of society might be at this moment had events
occurred of an opposite character to these. Again,
stress is sometimes laid upon the influence of our
insular position, of our climate, and of the varied
mineral stores with which we are favoured. We
notice these antecedents and concomitants of our
present state of well-being rather than leave them
unmentioned, lest it should be thought that we
had overlooked them as agents which have acted
and are acting in our favour. It is almost super
fluous, however, to point out that these latter
agents could only have been made to work in our
favour through our own knowledge and our capa
city in applying them. The sea affords facilities
for invasion as well as for defence, and obstructs
as well as promotes comHiercial intercourse.
Extend our inquiries as widely as we will, and
resolve as we may to exclude from our thoughts
nothing that can be supposed to bear upon our
present and future states of well-being, two causes
or agents stand out prominently from among all
the rest: the state of our knowledge, and our apti
tude in applying the knowledge which we have.
And indissolubly united with these chief agents
of well-being is the uninterrupted departure from
among us of the instructed and the capable, and
the arrival in their place of the ignorant and in
capable, to be or not to be made, according as they
are dealt with, instructed and capable.
If we could feel that our present state of well
being was all that we desire and expect, it would
be unreasonable to attempt more than to conserve
and perpetuate the machinery at work among us
for the conversion of ignorant and incapable in
fants into instructed and capable adults. But our
feelings are very different. We are everywhere
in immediate contact with an amount of destitu
tion and misery, which is most distressing to all,
with the exception of that frivolous and unthink
ing crew who would be able, like Nero, to fiddle
�MIDDLE CLASS EDUCATION.
1
while contemplating Rome in flames. Neither be made, not merely for the future, but to com
have we far to seek for causes of much of this pensate for the omissions of the past. The con
destitution. Examples of dishonesty, drunken- sideration of infant, day, evening, Sunday, and
nese, extravagance, dissipation, incapacity, sus adult schools for all classes is embraced in this
pension of work occasioned by disagreements general description, and it is implied that the
between employers and employed, and misuse of later the age at which the work is begun, the
credit, both in giving and taking it, meet our more difficult will it be found. There is no rivalry
eyes in the columns of the daily papers devoted between infant, juvenile, and adult schools, ex
to reports of our police, bankruptcy, and other tended even to universities, the latter being con
courts of law. The culprits and their victims tinuations of, not substitutes, for the education in
thus exposed to view bear but a small proportion the former. The best of university educations is
to those who are partially excused and screened possible only after the best of infant and juvenile
by their friends, but who, nevertheless, surely, teaching and training.
We cannot afford, on this occasion, to enter
though silently, slip out of the ranks of industry,
and sink into dens of filth and corruption, or into the details of school arrangements, whether
directed to the teaching or to the training of the
seek shelter from them in the poorhouse.
The more thoughtful members of society may young. We simply implore the Commissioners
not be all of one mind as to the best means of to direct the inquiry upon which they are about
removing these causes of misery, but they are to enter, with a view to ascertain and to point out
beginning to suspect that, whatever room there the means by which schools may assist in forming
may be for difference of opinion in some respects, boys and girls into capable and well-conducted
the means adopted must comprise contrivances men and women, persuaded that those means are
for removing the ignorance more or less observable to be found if searched for in earnest.
Two opportunities have been lost; there is now
in those who bring suffering upon themselves.
Here we are brought back to the consideration a third. It will be sad, indeed, if, with the signs
of the means by which ignorance and prejudice, of progress in everything else, education is to
or ignorance disguised as knowledge, may be stand apart untouched and unimproved by the
diminished in the future. To contend that many increased powers which observation and experi
of the causes of misery above indicated do not ence have helped us to. There is little to encou
originate in ignorance, but in evil passions and rage us in this tripartite division of education into
depraved dispositions, is to start an objection upper, middle, and lower. But the middle plank
more plausible than valid. Eor all must admit is alone left to us, and we cling to it with the
that, to have right conduct and the disposition to tenacity and hopefulness of a shipwrecked sailor.
act upon the right and avoid the wrong, the dis An inquiry into middle-class schools by men who
tinctions between right and wrong must be under know what to aim at, may do a service which
stood. But to understand these distinctions, and their predecessors who inquired into the upper
to be able to follow them in all their ramifications, and lower left undone. All depends upon the
and in their various directions and minutest forms, end which the inquirers propose to themselves.
and to desire to seek for them, is what we mean We are anxious to learn, not merely whether
by knowledge and fondness for learning. A com middle-class education is efficient, or in what par
munity endowed with these qualifications will be ticulars it is deficient, but how far, whether effec
preserved from destitution in its more aggravated tive or ineffective, it is directed to the improvement
form, and also from the temptations to misconduct of society. If not so directed, its very inefficiency
which are inseparable from destitution; and the might be a merit.
children growing up in it, will be trained as well
Some years ago I happened to be among a
as taught in circumstances most favourable, both numerous party dining together, previous to a
for their dispositions and for their intelligence.
visit of inspection to an evening school attached
It seems idle to ask, looking at education from to a large industrial establishment in this metro
this point of view, when it should begin, or at what polis. The conversation naturally turned upon
age it may be expected to prove most effective. subjects connected with education, and, as will
As soon as external influences begin to operate in happen, fortunately in these days, doubts were
forming the disposition and in awakening the in expressed whether the character of the education
telligence, so soon should efforts be made to direct generally provided was as good as it might be.
those influences aright. At whatever age it may One of the guests grew warm and excited at some
be found that those efforts have not been made, at of the criticisms made upon what he evidently
that age, without a moment’s delay, should efforts held to be above criticism. He was a thriving
�8
MIDDLE CLASS EDUCATION.
merchant. He had three sons—one in his own
business, one at a university, and the third in the
army. He was the sublime of soaring middleclassism. The climax of his justification of edu
cation as it is, and for leaving it undisturbed, was
that the classics were the best basis for the edu
cation of the upper classes, and the Bible for that
of the lower. Another of the company, who had
been a silent listener to the conversation, here
asked diagonally across the table whether it was
meant, in thus reserving the classics for the rich,
and surrendering the Bible to the poor, to convey
an impression of the respective merits of profane
and sacred literature. This question, as may be
supposed, caused no little confusion to a man who
evidently spoke as if in authority. Of course, he
meant nothing of the kind. In fact, he made us
believe that he meant nothing at all.
Towards the close of the inspection which fol
lowed, our silent companion was requested to say
a few words to the lads assembled; and in less
than a quarter of an hour his. simple unpretend
ing talk, interspersed with questions, drew out
from them an expression of their ways of think
ing and feeling upon the duties which they had
to perform ; how they might injure or benefit
their employers, and what effect would be pro
duced upon themselves, according ps they did the
one or the other ; what wa^es they received, and
why they received neither more nor less, and how
they hoped, to receive more in future ; what the
use to them was of the school work in which they
had been engaged, and why their employers had
assisted them to it; whether it was easy for them
to save out of their small wages, and if not, why
they should make the attempt; how the large
capital, by means of which they were employed,
had been accumulated; and when people ought to
begin to form a habit of making provision out of
present earnings for future wants; whether the
trust reposed in them ever offered temptations to
do wrong; what effect the yielding to or resisting
such temptations would have upon the comfort
and prosperity of their employers, and what upon
their own and upon the building up of the dispo
sitions and character upon which their future
happiness depended.
It was gratifying to hear the warm expression
of thanks which, on the impulse of the moment,
our admirer of classical and biblical education
proffered to his troublesome interrogator. He
seemed to feel for the time that something more
might be done towards forming the intelligence
and dispositions of the young than to cram them
with words and phrases, whether extracted from
the classics or from the Bible. It was sad to think
how transient the favourable impression made
upon him was likely to be.
It might be said that an inquiry into schools
would not be complete if, after an examination
into the public schools and schools for the poor,
those for the middle classes had been passed over.
Let us hope that the future report upon middle
class schools will not leave the inquiry as incom
plete as before. Our impression is that, if the
inquiries already made had been conducted with
a view to test the efficiency of schools as auxili
aries in qualifying the young to distinguish right
from wrong, and in inspiring them with the feel
ing that their conduct, as well as their words,
ought to be an expression of their convictions,
the middle-class inquiry would be unnecessary.
Up to a certain age, the teaching and training
best for the children of the poor, is also best for
the children of the rich. Beyond that age, the
wealth of the parents determines the length of
time for which the children can be detained from
work to carry on further schooling. If, however,
our own judgment in this matter were overruled,
and we were driven to decide upon the merits of
schools for the children of the poor and the chil
dren of the rich, by different standards, we should
be disposed to judge somewhat in this way :—
Those schools for the children of the poorer
classes are the best which are most successful in
fitting them, and in preparing them to become fit
to preserve themselves from destitution.
Those schools for the children of the richer
classes are the best which are most successful in
fitting them, and in preparing them to become fit
to preserve themselves, in the expenditure of the
wealth which they will have no occasion to earn,
from frivolity, profligacy, and indifference to the
sufferings and helplessness of others.
We will not express the opinion which we have
formed of the merits of these two classes of schools,
estimated by these two tests which, it must be
admitted, are the very opposite of severe. The
Commissioners who have inquired into them,
have not favoured us with theirs. W e trust that
the Commissioners now about to inquire into
middle-class schools, will not be equally reticent.
These schools contain some children who will not
be called upon to earn the means of subsistence
among the many who will have partly, if not
wholly, to do so. We hope the Commissioners
will, at least, tell us how these schools stand the
two very humble tests which we suggest should be
applied to them, and if they come somewhat
ignominiously out of the trial, what changes will
enable them to stand similar tests more creditably
in future.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Middle class education: what to aim at, as well as how to aim
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Ellis, William [1832-1907.]
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Collation: 6 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: Tentative date of publication from KVK. Printed in double columns. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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[[s.n.]
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[187-?]
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G5183
G5686
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Education
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Middle class education: what to aim at, as well as how to aim), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Conway Tracts
Education
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COLLEGE OF LECTURERS.
Vice - Presidents.
Sir Henry M. Vavasour, Manor House, Beaminster.
Sir John Stuart Forbes, Lawrence Kirk, Kincardineshire.
Sir John Page Wood, Bart, Bivenhall Place, Essex.
Edwabd Baines, Esq., M.P., Leeds.
(With power to add to their number.)
Chairman.
The Rev. Henby Christmas, M.A., F.B.S., &c., &c., Danes Inn, Strand.
Council.
Bebbidge, F. Esq., F.R.S.L., St. John’s Wood.
Blake, Babnett, Esq., Agent to the Yorkshire Union of Mechanics’
Institutes.
Cobbet, D., Esq., M.D., Orsett Institute.
Cowen, J. Jun.. Esq., Chairman of the Northern Union of Institutes,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
De Meschin, Dr., F.S.A, Chancery Lane.
Hast, Rev. Henby Mabtyn, M.A., Blackheath.
Hitchens, Rev. J. Hiles, F.R.S.L., Peckham Rye.
Jones, J., Esq., Secretary of the South Staffordshire Union of Institutes,
Dudley.
Monk, F. W., Esq., Secretary of the Kent Association of Institutes,
FavershamPlumptre, C. J., Esq., Russell Place, Fitzroy Square.
Rooke, Rev. Thomas, M.A., Secretary of the Berks and Bucks Union
of Institutes, Windsor.
Smith, W. Seymour, Esq. Mill Street, Hanover Square.
Wright, Anderson, Esq., F.B.G.S., F.Z.S., Queen’s Road, Dalston.
(With power to add to their number.)
Honorary Secretary.
Rev, W. Hickman Smith, Penge.
Secretary.
Mr. Joseph Simpson, Edgware, London, N.W.,
(To whom all Communications are to he addressed.)
�^onsfitution af ihq
———♦-----
of
Objects.—-The objects of the College of Lecturers
shall be to establish an Union of Lecturers for professional
purposes.
To publish yearly (in June) a List of Lecturers, with
their Subj’ects, Terms, and other particulars, and to forward such
List to the Institutes; to inform Secretaries the dates when
Lecturers will visit certain localities; and to make arrangements
for the Season (if desired), on both sides.
Plan.—For effecting the foregoing obj’ects, the College
proposes to complete the division of the country into districts,
and to correspond with the Secretaries of such districts.
To obtain information for Lecturers as to the character
of audiences, hotel accommodation, modes of conveyance, and on
all subj'ects likely to be of interest to a Lecturer.
To communicate with Colleges and Schools, to furnish
them with informationas to Lecturers, and Lecturers with Lists of
Schools, and to give general information on both sides.
To negociate, when desired, as to Terms.
To secure the influence of the Press, and, as far as
possible, to correspond with Editors, and to secure Reporters.
To raise the character and social position of Lecturers,
as a body, by such means as may seem most advisable to the
Members of the College.
Officers.—The entire management and superintendence
of all the affairs of the College shall be entrusted to a Patron
and Vice-Patrons, a President and Vice-Presidents, a Council,
a Chairman of Council, an Honorary Secretary and an Acting
Secretary, a Treasurer and Bankers.
Laws.—General Meetings.—-An Annual Meeting of the
Fellows and Members of the College shall be held in the Spring,
when the report of the Council shall be read ; the Council and
Officers for the ensuing year elected; and any other business
discussed and decided upon.
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Tn the Election of Council and Officers, the personswh o
shall have the greatest number of votes shall be declared duly
elected; and if any doubt or difficulty shall happen in relation
thereto, or to the particular manner of voting, the same shall be
determined by the President and majority of the Council for the
preceeding year then present.
All vacancies among the Officers of the College, occur
ring between the Annual Meetings, shall be provisionally supplied
by the Council.
The President and Council shall have power to summon
at any time an Extraordinary General Meeting, the same notice
being given as for a General Annual Meeting.
Council,—The Council shall meet once a quarter, if
necessary, for the election of Fellows and Members of the College,
and for the dispatch of general business.
Upon a requisition, in
writing, of any three Members of the Council, directed to either
of the Secretaries, a Special Meeting of the Council shall be
summoned.
Four Members of the Council shall constitute a quorum.
All the Members of the Council shall be summoned by
by notice, signed by one of the Secretaries, to attend each and
every Meeting thereof.
All questions before the Council shall be determined by
a majority of votes, and the Chairman for the time being shall, in
addition to his own vote, have, in case of an equality of numbers,
a second or casting vote.
Admission of Fellows and Tl/mSers.-—Candidates for
union with the College shall be divided into two classes—-Fellows
and Members. Fellows shall be such as hold a degree in any
faculty of any University, Members of the Chartered Societies,
Scientific or Literary, or of any one of the learned professions.
All candidates not so distinguished shall be Members.
Every candidate, in order to be elected Fellow or Mem
ber, shall be proposed and recommended by three Fellows or Mem
bers of the College, who shall deliver to one of the Secretaries a
paper signed by themselves recommending the candidate; the paper
thus attested shall be read at the next Meeting of the Council,
and the election shall at once take place by ballot; and such
Candidates as shall have full two thirds of the votes of the
Members of the Council present in their favour, shall be duly
elected.
�The Annual Subscription of every Fellow and Member
shall not be less than £1 Is. Od., to be paid in advance, and
shall become due on January 1st in every year ; each Subscriber
to be entitled to The Institute and Lecturers’ Gazette,
monthly, free.
It shall be lawful for any five Fellows or Members of the
College to move the Council to call a General Meeting for the
expulsion of any Fellow or Member on showing sufficient cause,
but no Fellow or Member shall be expelled unless due notice of
such motion shall have been given to every Fellow and Member
of the College two months at least before the General Meeting to
be specially summoned for that purpose, and unless full two-thirds
of such Meeting shall concur in voting for his expulsion.
�%* For Terms, see page 15.
Artis, Gt. L., 92, Eastern Road, Kemp Town, Brighton.
1.—Lectures on Elocution, with Illustrations, Serious and
Comic. 2.—A Night with the Poets. 3.—Popular Lecture on
Singing. 4.—Personification of Fifteen Shakspearian Characters
in Fifteen Minutes. 5.—Recital of Hamlet. 6.—Recital of The
Merchant of Venice. 7.—Lecture on The Power of Conscience,
with Selections from Macbeth. 8.—-A Night with Shakspeare.
9.—Recital of Shakspeare’s Play, King John. 10.—-Lecture on
Tragedy, with Selections from Dramatic Poets. 11.—Lecture on
Comedy, with Selections from Dramatic Poets. 12.—Recital of
Shakspeare’s Play, The Tempest. 13.—-Recital of Marston’s
Tragedy, The Patrician’s Daughter. 14.—Recital of The Gamester
(Moore).
15.—Entertainment; Passion, Poetry, Life, and.
Character, with Popular Illustrations. 16.—Fortune’s Buffets
(Artis). 17.—Recital of The World, and How it was Made
(Drew). 18. Lecture on Lady Macbeth. 19.—Recital of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream. 20.—-Recital of Othello. 21.—Re
cital of Romeo and Juliet. 22.—Recital of As You Like It.
23.—Lecture on Milton’s Paradise Lost, with Recitals. 24.—Lec
ture on the Life, Times, Genius, &c., of Milton. 25.—Recital of
J. S. Knowles’ Hunchback. 26.—Recital of Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton’s Lady of Lyons. 27.—Lecture on Addison, with Selec
tions from his Works. 28. Recital of Lillo’s Fatal Curiosity.
29.—Comic Entertainment, Mr. Snipe’s Evening Party; or.
Speech Making, introducing 16 amusing Characters (Artis).
Berridge, Fred., F.R.S.L., F.C.L., M.C.P., Winchester House,
Winchester Road, Adelaide Road, St. John’s Wood, N.W.
Readings.—1.—The Plays of Shakespeare. 2.—The Poets ;
Selections, Grave and Gay. 3.—The English Wits and Humour
ists. 4.—Prose Readings from Dickens, Thackeray, Goldsmith,
Addison, &c.
5.—The Poets and Poetry of America, with
selections. 6.—The Art of Reading Poetry, with selections. 7.
—The Lady of Lyons. 8.—Mary Barton, in four chapters.
Lectures.—9.—Two sides of a Picture. 10.—Some Friends of
Mine (a new Entertainment). 11.—Literary Imposters. 12.—
�(
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Frederick the Great at Home. 13.—Men who have Risen. 14.
—Popular Hallucinations.
15.—The Pilgrim Fathers. 16.—
Travelling; Past, Present, and Future. 17.—China and China
men. (The three preceding Illustrated). 18.—Life Portraits,
drawn by Charles Dickens. 19.—Sheridan ; Dramatist, Orator,
Statesman, and Wit. 20.—The Life of Chatterton.
Illustrated with Dissolving Views.—21.—The Orbs of Heaven.
22.—The Crust of the Earth. 23.—Historical Sites. 24.—Some
more Friends of mine, part 2. 25.—Loose Pictures from the
Book of Nature. 26.—A Few Words about Many Places. 27.—
The Land of Promise.
Christmas, Rev. Henry, M.A., F.R.S., Late Professor of
British History and Archaeology in the Royal Society of
Literature, Member of the Royal Academy of Archoeology of
Madrid, Member of the Imperial Society of Antiquaries of
the Morini, §c., §c., §c., 3, Danes Inn, Strand, W.C.
1.—The Moorish Cities of Spain (2 lectures). 2.—Turkey
and the Turks f2 lectures). 3.—Venice, Florence, and North
Italy. 4.—Greece and her Islands. 5.—Portugal and the
Portuguese. 6.—The Balearic Islands. 7.—Piedmont and the
Piedmontese. 8.—The Dutch and their Doings. 9.—A Visit to
the Seven Churches in Asia. (The above-named Lectures contain
the results of personal observation, and narratives of personal
adventure.^ 10.—Popular Superstitions (2 lectures). 11.—Phren
ology (3 lectures).
12.—The Philosophy of Wit and Humour.
13. — Wellington.
14. — Napoleon I.
15. — Napoleon III.
16.—Nicholas I. of Russia. 17.—The Inquisition. 18.—A
Lecture on “ Half-a-Crown.” 19.—Popular Superstitions, illus
trated by the Poets (2 lectures).
20.—The Literature of Greece,
Rome, Italy, and Spain (4 lectures). 21.—The Ocean and its
Phenomena. 22.—Life among the Patriarchs. 23.—Life among
the Assyrians. 24.—Life among the Egyptians. 25.—Progress
of the Fine Arts. The following 53 Lectures have been delivered
before the Royal Society of Literature:—26.—Historic and
Philosophic Romance (8 lectures). 27.—Archaeology (15 lec
tures). 28.—Historical Lectures on the period from 1640-1660
(8 lectures). 29.—Pioneers, of the English Mind (8 lectures).
30.—The Dramatic Histories of Shakespeare (14 lectures).
These last-named Lectures are illustrated by copious Readings from
the above Plays, their object being to exhibit the Great Bard as also
the Great Historian ; to note the mode in which he developes the
character and policy of those Sovereigns whose lives he has made
the subjects of his wondrous dramas, and to observe how, while
occasionally varying from the letter, he keeps ever true to the
spirit of the reign.
�(
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Lectures on the Elements of Science, illustrated by Diagrams.
-—31.—Mechanics (2 lectures). 32.—Optics (2 lectures). 33.—
Astronomy (4 lectures). 34.—Geology (5 lectures). 35.—Physio
logy (3 lectures). 36.—Hydrostatics (2 lectures). 37.—Pneumatics
and Acoustics (2 lectures). 38.—Electricity and Magnetism (4
lectures). 39.—Chemistry (4 lectures).
Crawford, Robert, 46, Sloane Square, Chelsea, S.W.
Lectures upon Historical and Biographical subjects. Readings
of 1.—Lord Byron’s Drama of Manfred. 2.—The History of
Little Nell (from Dickens’ Curiosity Shop). 3.—Macbeth.
4.—Othello. 5.—Selections from the best Poets and Prose
writers, including Shakspeare, Milton, Byron, Scott, Macaulay,
Hood, Poe, Ingoldsby, Tennyson, Jerrold, Dickens, Thackeray,&c.
Denman, T. J., formerly Lecturer in Chemistry and Physical
Science in the National Society's College of School-Masters,
Battersea, St. Mark's College, Chelsea, §c., §c., Hortulan
House, Upper Church Street, Chelsea, S.W.
Chemistry.-— Courses of 3, 5, or 10 Lectures on 1.—The NonMetallic Elements. 2.—The Chemistry of the Metals. 3.—
Organic Chemistry, chiefly in relation to Common Life. 4.—
Agricultural Chemistry and Theory of Manures.
Single Lectures on the following subjects5.—The Study of
Chemistry. 6.—Chemistry, Botany, and the Microscope. 7.—
The Chemical History of the Gaseous food of Animals and Plants.
8.—Explosive Compounds. 9.—Combustion. 10.—Respiration.
Electricity and Magnetism.—3 or 5 Lectures on 11.—Electri
city. 12.—Galvanic Electricity. 13.—Magnetism. 14.—Elec
tricity.
. Botany.—15.—Economic Botany ; its importance in Common
life ; Means of acquiring a practical Knowledge of Plants.
Geology.—16.—Elements of Geology and Mineralogy, and
applications in the Arts, Sciences, and Manufactures.
Physiology.—17.—Physiology and Physiological Chemistry.
(The whole of the Lectures will be fully illustrated; those
on Chemistry and Electricity by numerous brilliant experiments
on a large scale, and by diagrams. The Physiological and Bota
nical Lectures by life-size drawings, Specimens, and microscopic
demonstrations of the circulation of blood, sap, &c., &c. Those
on Geology and Mineralogy by specimens, diagrams, and experi
ments on the properties of minerals).
�(
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Dexter, Thomas E., Member of the Society of Arts, Royal
Military Asylum, Chelsea, S.W.
Illustrated Lectures.—1.—The Crusades and the Crusaders;
showing the Rise, Progress, and Results of these Remarkable
Events. 2.—The Castles and Abbeys of the United Kingdom;
with various Cathedrals, Halls, Manor Houses, and other places of
interest, with appropriate Illustrations of the most Remarkable
Scenes and Events connected with them in English History.
3.—Scenes in Many Lands; or, All Round the World: a Series
of Photographic and other Views of Various Places rich in
historic interest. 4.—Japan and the Japanese; illustrating, by
means of a Series of first-class Pictures, the Physical Features,
Natural Productions, Manufactures, Form of Government, Reli
gion, Public and Domestic Life, Mode of Dress, Amusements,
and many of the most important Cities of this remarkablyinteresting nation. 5.—The Progress of Arctic Discovery, part I.;
an Account of the Efforts made to discover the North-west
Passage, during the Voyages of Davis, Hudson, Bylot, Baffin,
Parry and Ross, Dease and Simpson, with interesting Dioramic
Effects illustrative of the peculiar Phenomena of those Regions.
6.—Footprints of Franklin, part II.; or, the History and Fate of
the Franklin Expedition, with interesting Episodes connected with
the Discoveries of Austin, Collinson, Pim, M‘Clure, M‘Clintock,
and others. (The two preceding Lectures can be given with Maps
and Diagrams, or with Dissolving Views.) 7.—The British
Soldier; a Descriptive Account of Scenes and Incidents of
distinguished and conspicuous gallantry, of dashing intrepidity,
and heroic self-devotion, performed by the British Soldier in the
presence of the Enemy in various parts of the World. 8.—Geo
graphical Discoveries in Africa, from the earliest period to the
present time, including those of Dr. Livingstone, and Captains
Burton, Speke, and Grant. 9.—Natural Phenomena; or, a
Description of various Wonders in Nature. 10.—Astronomy;
illustrated by a series of Movable and other Diagrams, descriptive
of Celestial Phenomena. (These Lectures will be illustrated by
magnificent Dissolving Views, executed in the highest style of art,
and combining beauty of design and accuracy of detail, brilliantly
illuminated by the Oxy-hydrogen Light, and each Scene beauti
fully displayed with Stereoscopic reality on a large surface of
Canvas.)
Natural History.—11.—Economic Botany; or, Plants and
their Uses, showing some of the ways in which Plants are useful
to Man for Food, Medicine, Manufactures, and Articles of Luxury.
Copiously illustrated by a series of Diagrams, explanatory of
Vegetable Physiology, and also by a collection of Natural Sub
�stances (without the Lantern). 12.—On the Application of
Animal Substances to Industrial Life. Part I.—The Invertebrate
Animals. 13.—Part II.—The Vertebrate Animals. Each Lec
ture, complete in itself, will be illustrated by a series of beautiful
Diagrams, showing at one view a general Classification of the
Animal Kingdom, and also by a large collection of actual
Specimens derived from its various divisions and classes.
Syllabus of each Lecture forwarded on application.
Fairbairn, Angus, and The Misses Bennett, 29, Guildford
Road, Greenwich, S.E.
Scottish Musical Entertainments, given in Highland costume.
Pianist, Miss E. Bennett. 1.—A Nicht wi’ Burns, introducing
the best known and most admired of his Songs, with a Biographical
Sketch. 2.—A Second Nicht wi’ Burns. 3.—Bonnie Prince
Charlie; or, The Hero of ’45, with Selections from the heart
stirring Jacobite Melodies. 4.—The Songs o’ A.uld Lang Syne,
Humourous, Domestic, and Heroic. 5.-—Musical Comparisons,
comprising Selections from the works of the popular Song Poets
of Great Britain and Ireland. 6.—Whistle Binkie; or, The
Piper of the Party. 7.—In preparation, a New Character Enter
tainment, entitled, The Amateurs.
Fearn, Joseph, Lecturer to the Crystal Palace, $c., Phoenix
Fire Office, Lombard Street, E.C., and 3, Albion Square,
Dalston, N.E.
1.—The History of British Poetry from the earliest Times to
the present (a Course). 2.—The Romance of History (2 lectures).
3.—An Evening with Washington Irving. 4.—Sir Walter Scott.
5,—Coleridge. 6.—Oliver Goldsmith. 7.—Longfellow, the Poet.
8.—Longfellow, the Novelist. 9.—Two Evenings with Charles
Mackay, the Poet of Progress. 10.—An Evening with Eliza
Cook, the People’s Poet. 11.—Two Evenings with Cowper.
12.—Uncle Tom’s Cabin (2 lectures). 13.—The Courtship of
Miles Standish and the Pilgrim Fathers (2 lectures). 14.—The
Poets of America. 15.—The Novelists of America. 16.—Popular
Blunders. 18.—Readings from Enoch Arden, &c., &c.
Harrison, Rev. Charles, 9, St. Ann’s Gardens, Haver
stock Hill, N.W.
1.—Ancient Wardour and its Siege; a Wiltshire Tale of the
Olden Time. 2.—Beckford of Fonthill; a Biographical Sketch,
with Notices of Fonthill Abbey and its Fate. 3.—Longleat and
its Associations. 4.—The Hungerford Family; or, Greatness in
Desolation. (A.11 the preceding specially adapted to Wiltshire.)
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5.—The Druidical System of Ancient Britain, in its Secular and
Religious aspects. 6.—Relic Worship. 7.^-Prince Albert; his
Personal Character, his Home Relationships, and his Public
Influence. 8.—■•■The Oracles of God; their Inspiration, Authen
ticity, &c. 9.—The Power of Knowledge. 10.—The Moral and
Spiritual. Improvement of Young Men, the Claim of the Times.
IL—India, in its Peoples, Religion, and Morals.
12.—St.
Columba, and the Culdees of Iona.
Hitchens, Rev. J. Hiles, F.R.S.L., F.C.L., and Member of the
Council; Author of “ Words from the Watchtower,” $c., $c.;
Minister of Peckham Rye Church; 1, Albion Villas, Linden
Grove, Peckham Rye, S.E.
1.—The Tower of London. 2.—A Stroll in the Strand.
3. —A . Sail, on the Thames.
4.—The Human Face. (The
preceding with pictorial illustrations.) 5.—Our Merry Men (with
amusing quotations). 6.—The Merry Monarch; his Life and
Times.
7.—Oratory and Orators. 8.—Hymns and Hymn
writers. 9.—Readings from Eminent Poets.
Inglis, Mrs. Bessie, 395, City Road, E.C.
1.—The Influence of Woman. 2.—The Life of Mrs. Elizabeth
Fry. 3.—Isabella of Castile. 4,—Mothers of Famous Men.
5.—Wives of Famous Men. 6.—Self-Cultivation. 7.—The Law
of Kindness. 8.—An Evening with the Women Poets. 9.—
Readings from the Modern English Poets. 10.—An Evening
with Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 11.—An Evening with
American Poets. 12.—-Readings from the Older English Poets.
Jones, Charles Theodore, of the Chamber of London, Guildhall, formerly Secretary of the Working Mens Educational
Union, 23, Brunswick Crescent. Cold Harbour Lane, Camber
well, S.
Illustrated Lectures.—1.—-Homes and Firesides. 2. Travel
ling in the “ Good Old Times.” 3.—Life in Australia (2 lectures).
4. —London in the Days of Old (2 lectures). 5.—Nineveh, the
Buried City.
6.—The Wonderful Book.
7.—Harmony of
Science with Revelation. 8.—The Air we Breathe. 9.—The
Clothes we Wear. 10.—Sleep and Dreams. 11.—Thoughts not
Thought of. 12.—Sights and Sounds. 13.—Light and Colours.
14.—Marvels of the Microscope. 15.—Wonders of the Telescope.
16.—Language of the Skies (4 lectures). 17.—The War in
America. 18.—The Pilgrim’s Progress. 19.—The Reformation
in England. 20.—The Pilgrim Fathers, 21,--The Sources of
England’s Greatness,
�(
n
)
Mr. Jones can undertake distant tours (i.e. beyond 70 miles
from London) only in Christmas week, Easter week, Whitsun
week, and the month of September. Lectures at any places
within 70 miles from London at all periods of the year.
Kinkel, Gottfried, Ph. D., F.R.G.S., Examiner of German to
the University of London,23, Blomfield Road, Maida Hill, W.
Literature.—1.—On the method of studying German Language
and Literature. 2.—German Literature of the past century
(3 lectures, separable). 3.—German Literature during the last
fifty years (4 lectures, separable).
2.—History and Geography.—-4.—On the method of teaching
Geography in Ladies’ Schools. 5.—On the History of Germany
since the year 1848 (3 lectures). 6.—Physical and Political
Geography of Italy. 7.—The United States (3 or 4 lectures).
8.—Australia (2 or 3 lectures).
History of the Fine Arts.—9.—How much of Art School Chil
dren should be taught. 10.—On the Origin of Art. 11.—On
the Difference and Relation of the seven Sister Arts. 12.—On
Sculpture, with reference to the Collections in the British Museum
and the Crystal Palace (3 lectures). 13.—Ancient Art (8 lectures,
separable). 14.—Mediaeval and Modern Art (8 lectures, separa
ble).
All the Lectures on Art are illustrated by numerous
Diagrams, Drawings, and Engravings.
Lisle, the Misses, Taunton.
Readings from Shakespeare and other Plays, and Miscellaneous
Pieces.
Long, Alfred, from the Royal Polytechnic Institution, 3, Ayles
bury Terrace, Walworth, S.
1.—His New Invention, the Patent Metabolical Machine and
its Uses, with regard to the New System for the acquisition of
Languages without the use of books; for the Composition of
Music; for the attainment of the art of Shorthand Writing,
Arithmetic, Evening Amusements, &c. &c. Music composed by
the Machine during the Lecture will be performed by Dr.
Bennett Gilbert.
Plumptre, Charees J., Barrister-at-Law, Professor of Rhetoric
and English Literature at the Crystal Palace School of Art,
and Lecturer on Elocution, Oxford and London, §c., 19, Rus
sell Place, Fitzroy Square,W., and Essex Court, Temple, E.C.
Poetical Lectures.—1.—Life andWritings of Chaucer. 2.—Spen
ser, 3,—-Shakespeare, 3.—-Milton, 5,-—Dryden, 6.—Pope,
�(
12
)
Literary and Biographical Lectures.—7.—The Theory and
Practice of Elocution in reference to Professional and Public
Life (6 lectures). 8.—The Life and Character of Edmund Burke.
9-—The Oratory of Edmund Burke. 10.—The Life and Writings
of Talfourd.
11.—The Life and Times of Washington.
12.—Cardinal Richelieu.
13.—Cardinal Wolsey. 14.—The
Poetry of the Hebrews and other Eastern nations. 15.—The
Doubtful Plays of Shakespeare (2 lectures). 16.—The Oratory
of the Pulpit, the Senate, and the Bar (3 lectures). 17.—Daniel
Webster and his Speeches at the American Bar. 18.—Nature
and her Marvels; the Heavens, the Earth, the Sea, the Air (4
lectures). 19.—Readings from the Great Dramatists, Poets and
Humourists of England and America.
Musical Lectures.—The Great Composers.—20.—The Life
and Compositions of Matthew Locke. 21.—Handel. 22.—Beet
hoven. 23.—Haydn. 24.—Mozart. 25.—Weber. 26.—Mey
erbeer. 27.—Mendelsohn.
(In the foregoing Lectures Mr.
Plumptre is assisted in the Musical Illustrations by Frederic
Kingsbury, Esq., P. E. Van Noorden, Esq., Madlle. Van Noorden,
and other eminent artists).
Simpson, Joseph, Secretary of the College of Lecture^ and
Editor of “ The Institute and Lecturers’ Gazette,”
ec Institute” Office, Edgware, N.W.
1.—Mechanics* Institutes and similar Associations; their
Origin,. History, and Objects.
2.—Lectures, as Means of
Acquiring Knowledge. (Especially adapted for the commence
ment of a Course of Lectures in connection with a Mechanics’ or
Working Men’s Institution). 3.—Science and Religion, their
Connection and Mutual Influence.
(Especially adapted for
Young Men’s Christian Associations). 4.—Popular Superstitions ;
their Nature, Causes, and Remedies.
5.—Ghosts and Appari
tions ; are they Real or Imaginary ? 6.—Instinct and Reason.
7.—Christmas; its Customs, Legends, Pastimes, and Superstitions.
(A Holiday Lecture for Scholastic Establishments). 8.—Alfred
the Great; his Life, Character, and Times. 9.—Henry the
Eighth and his Six Wives. (Photographs of each, from original
Paintings by Holbein, in Windsor Castle, will be exhibited.)
Cardinal Wolsey; his Life, Character, and Times. 10.—The
Reformation. (Especially adapted for Young Men’s Christian or
Protestant Associations.)
11.—John Howard; his Life and
Labours. 12.—Old English Sports and Pastimes; or, The
Amusements of our Forefathers. 13.—“ The Good Old Times;”
or, Glimpses of our Ancestors. 14.—“ The Times we Live in;”
or, a Glance at Ourselves. 15.—Money; its Antecedents, History,
Uses, and Abuses.
�(
13
Illustrated Lectures.—16.—London and London Life in Olden
Times. 17.—The Habitations of Mankind. 18.—-Travelling in
our Forefathers’ Style and Our Own. 19.—The Bible under
many Phases. (Especially adapted for Young Men’s Christian
Associations.) 20.—The History of Printing. 21.—The News
paper Press.
Syllabus of each Lecture, with Testimonials and Opinions of
the Press, upon application.
Smith, Rev. W. Hickman, 3, Grove Villas, Penge, S.E.
Lectures, Orations, Readings, and Recitals.
I. —Literary Subjects.—1.—The Creations of Charles Dickens.
2.—A Saunter in the By-ways of Literature. 3.—Verbal Curi
osities ; or, Pictures of Men and Things laid up in Words.
4.—An Hour with eminent American Writers. 5.—Characteristics
of English Oratory.
II. —Biographical Subjects.—6.—Daniel Defoe. 7.—Thomas
Carlyle. 8.—Shakspere; Poet, Humorist, Philosopher, Teacher.
9.—The Apostle Paul. 10.—Living British Statesmen. 11.—
Napoleon the Third. 12.—Charles Lamb ; Poet and Essayist.
13,—Douglas Jerrold.
III.—Historical Subjects.—14.—Hogarth’s Pictures, as illus
trating his Times, 15.—Some Chapters of Domestic Romance
from the Records of Great Pamilies. 16.—English Social Life at
three Epochs, 1565, 1665, and 1765; or, How and Where our
Fathers lived.
IV. —Social Subjects.—17.—People I have Met; or, Verbal
Sketches of Modern Society. 18.—Popular Errors and Supersti
tions. 19.—Life Portraits, drawn by Popular Writers. 20.—
Sketches of Life and Character, by Modern Authors. 21.—Traits
of American Life and Humour.
V. —Poetical Subjects.'—22.—Living British Poets, with Critical
Notices and Specimens. 23.—The Poets of America. 24.—Poets
of the Day; English, Colonial, American. 25.—Modern British
Ballads and Lyrics. 26.—Poets of the People.
VI. —Humorous.—27.—An Evening with Charles Dickens.
28.—English Wits, Humorists, and Satirists. 29.—Representative
Men and Women, sketched by Modern Humorists. 30.—Types
of Character, drawn by Modern Humorists. 31.—Modern
Portraitures by Eminent Humorists. 32.—Manners and
Customs of ye Englyshe, described by the Humorists. 33.—An
Evening with some less-known Wits and Humorists.
VII. —Readings.-—34.—Poetical, Descriptive, and Humorous
Readings, 35.—Readings for Christmas-tide,
�Smith, W. Seymour, 4, Mill Street, Conduit Street, Hanover
Square, W.
J.—New Monologue, Thoughts of the Past, Grave and Gay,
Lively and Severe, with Vocal and Instrumental Illustrations, by
Mr. Seymour Smith. 2.—Popular Entertainment, Music, Past
and Present, ditto, by Mr. and Mrs. Seymour Smith. 3.—Inter
esting Lecture, The Influence of Music on the Human Mind,
ditto, ditto.
Tyler, Moses Coit, M.A., F.C.L., M.C.P., care of W.
Tweedie, Publisher, 337, Sfrand, W.C.
1.—The Orators and Oratory of America. 2.—American Wit
and Humour. 3.—The Pilgrim Fathers of New England. 4.—
Richard Brinsley Sheridan. 5. — Gymnastics, Ancient and
Modern. 6.—Muscular Ethics. 7.—The Empire of Popular
Song. 8,—Abraham Lincoln, the Martyr President.
White, W. H., M.B.S., F.C.L., &c., care of Mr. Joseph Simpson,
Secretary to the College of Lecturers, Edgware, N.W.
1.—Astronomy. 2.—Physical Geography. 3.—The Atmos
phere, and other popular branches of Physical Science. Illustrated
by a unique series of brilliantly-illuminated pictorial and other
diagrams, experiments, &c. (courses of 4 elementary lectures each).
4.—Volcanoes and Earthquakes (2 or 3 lectures), illustrated by a
Model Volcano in action. 5.—The Beauties of the Heavens.
6.—The Wonders of the Earth. 7.—Atmospheric Electricity.
8.—A tour among the Stars. 9.—An hour with the Astronomers,
and other popular Scientific subjects.
�)
15
WI4 of
Name.
London provinces provinces provinces Scotland Scotland
& Ireland & Ireland
and
page within 3 nights, 5 nights, 10 nights 4 nights, 8 nights,
each
each
each
each
each
20 miles
Artis, G. L...........
5
£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s, d. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
5 5 0 6 6 0 5 5 0 5 5 0 6 6 0 6 6 0
Berridge, Fred...
5
3
Christmas, Rev. H.
6
Crawford, R.........
7
3
0 0 3
Denman, T. J. ..
7
5
5
Dexter, T. E........
8
Forward ed upon applicati on
Fairbairn, Angus
9
Accord ing to cir cumstan ces
Fearn, Joseph ..
9 2
Harrison, Rev. C.
9
3
0 5
5
0 3
3
0
Accord ing to ag reement
2
0
0
0 2 12
Special
0 3
6 2
6
0 3
3
0 2 12
6
3
0 5
5
0 4
4
0
5
0 4
4
0
arrange ments
3 0
Subject to mutu al arrang ement
Hitchens, RevJ.H. 10 3 3
0 4
4 0 3 13
Inglis, Mrs. Bessie 10 3
0 4
4
0 3 3 0 3 3
0 5
Jones, 0. T........... 10 2' 2 0 3
3
0 2 2
0
3
Kinkel, Dr...........
11
11
0 2
2
Subject to arran gement
Lisle, the Misses
6 3
Open to arrange ment
Long, Alfred .... 11
7 7
0
Plumptre, 0. J... 11
5
5
0 5
5
0 4
12 3
3
0 4
4
Smith, Rev. W.H. 13 3
3
0 4
Smith, Seymour.. 14 4 4 0 3
(with Mrs. Smith)
Tyler, Moses Coit 14 3 3 0 4
Simpson, Joseph
White, W. H.........
14 2 2
0 3
0 3 3
0 5
5
0 4
4
0
0 3 13
6 3
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0 5
5
0 4
4
0
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0 3 13
6 3
3 0 5
5
0 4
4
0
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0 3
0 7
7
0 6
6 0
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0 3 13
6 3
0 5
5
0 4
4
3
0 2 10
0 2 2
4
3 0 3 3
3
0
0
*** This Scale refers, not necessarily to a Series of Lectures in the same place, but to one in the
same district; it being understood that the charges to each Institute for a single Lecture are as stated. Each
Lecturer reserves the option of declining, or of naming a higher Fee, if there be not a sufficient number of
applications from the same locality.
��
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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College of Lecturers
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College of Lecturers
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[n.d.]
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G5685
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Place of publication: [London}
Collation: 15 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Education
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (College of Lecturers), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Conway Tracts
Education
-
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PDF Text
Text
REPORT
. \
OF THE
FIRST GENERAL MEETING OF MEMBERS
OF THE
I
NATIONAL EDUCATION LEAGUE,
HELD AT BIRMINGHAM,
4*.
TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY, OCT. 12 & 13, 1869.
PRICE, TO NON-MEMBERS, ONE SHILLING.
BIRMINGHAM:
“THE JOURNAL” PRINTING OFFICES, NEW STREET.
1869.
��NATIONAL
EDUCATION LEAGUE.
Offices: 47, ANN STREET, BIRMINGHAM.
PROVISIONAL
COMMITTEE.
GEORGE DIXON, Esq., M.P., Chairman, Birmingham.
J. CHAMBERLAIN, Esq., Vice-Chairman.
JOHN JAFFRAY, Esq., Treasurer.
COUNCILLOR JESSE COLLINGS, Hon. Sec.
FRANCIS ADAMS, Secretary.
Holland Henry, Mayor of Birmingham.
Baker, George, Councillor, Tennant Street, Birmingham.
Beale, W. J., Westbourne Road, Edgbaston.
Bunce, J. Thackray, F.S.S., Wordsworth Place, Small Heath, Birm.
Chamberlain, J. H., Christ Church Buildings, New Street, Birmingham.
Chance, R. L., Chad Hill House, Harborne Road. Edgbaston.
Clarke, Rev. C., F.L.S., Edgbaston.
Crosskey, Rev. Henry W., F.G.S., George Street, Edgbaston.
Dawson, George, M.A., Hawksley, West Heath, Worcestershire.
Field, A., Parade, Birmingham.
Harris, W., Councillor, Stratford Road, Camp Hill, Birmingham.
Hawkes, H., Aiderman, Grampian House, Bristol Road, Edgbaston.
Heslop, T. P., M.D., Temple Row West, Birmingham.
Holliday, W., J.P., Chad Valley, Edgbaston.
Johnson, G. J., Waterloo Street, Birmingham.
Kenrick, Timothy, J.P., Maple Bank, Edgbaston.
Kenrick, John Arthur, J.P., Fallowiield, Edgbaston.
Kenrick, Wm., Mountlands, Edgbaston.
Lloyd, G. B., Wellington Road, Edgbaston.
Mathews, C. E., Augustus Road, Edgbaston.
Middlemore, Wm., J.P., Elvetham Road, Edgbaston.
Osborne, E. C., Aiderman, Carpenter Road, Edgbaston.
Osler, Follett, F.R.S., South Bank, Edgbaston.
Ryland, Arthur, Aiderman, Cannon Street, Birmingham.
Ryland, Wm., Noel Road, Edgbaston.
Timmins,-Samuel, F.R.S.L., Elvetham Lodge, Edgbaston.
Vince, Rev. C., Hockley Hill, Birmingham.
Wiggin, H., J.P., Aiderman, Metchley Grange, Harhorne.
Wright, J. S., Church Hill, Handsworth.
�The following is a copy of the first circular which was issued by
the Provisional Committee.
NATIONAL EDUCATION LEAGUE.
Birmingham, February, 1869.
Sir,
I am requested by the Provisional Committee, formed for the
promotion of a National Education League, to forward to you the annexed
draft of a scheme which they have drawn up for the furtherance of a system
of education which shall reach all those children who are now growing up in
a degree of ignorance injurious alike to their own interests and to that of
the community at large.
The Provisional Committee are of opinion, that in those parts of the
country where a sufficient school organization does not exist, the deficiency
can be speedily and adequately supplied only by the combined action of the
central and local authorities.
The new machinery to be provided by this
joint action need not injuriously interfere with those existing schools which
are satisfactorily educating the people ; but the Provisional Committee are of
opinion that it is all-important that no time should be lost in bringing a good
education within the reach of even the poorest and the most neglected
children in the country ; and they are also of opinion, that when the means
of education shall everywhere exist, the poverty or apathy of parents ought
not to be allowed to prevent those means being availed of by their children.
If you are willing to assist in carrying out the objects of the proposed
League, I shall feel obliged by you signing and returning to me the enclosed
form.
I am
Your obedient servant,
GEORGE DIXON-
�NATIONAL EDUCATION LEAGUE.
'
OBJECT.
The establishment of a system which shall secure the education of every
child in England and Wales.
1.
MEANS.
Local Authorities shall be compelled by law to see that sufficient school
accommodation is provided for every child in their district.
2.
The cost of founding and maintaining such schools as may be required
shall be provided out of the Local Rates, supplemented by Government
Grants.
3.
All Schools aided by Local Rates shall be under the management of Local
Authorities and subject to Government Inspection.
4.
AU Schools aided by Local Rates shaU be Unsectarian.
5.
To aU Schools aided by Local Rates admission shall be free.
6.
School Accommodation being provided, the State or the Local Authorities
shall have power to compel the attendance of children of suitable age
not otherwise receiving education.
The payment of an annual subscription shaU constitute membership.
The Executive Body shaU be a Council elected at a general meeting of
the members, convened for that purpose.
The Council shall appoint a Chairman, an Honorary Secretary, a Treasurer,
and such paid officers as may be required.
The general business of the League shall be conducted by the Council, and
they shall make aU arrangements for the formation of branch societies, collect
and disseminate information, and prepare the way for such legislation as wiU
carry out the objects of the League.
�The following is a copy of the invitation to the General
Meeting.
NATIONAL EDUCATION LEAGUE.
Offices—47, Ann Street, Birmingham.
September 16tli, 1869.
Sir,
We beg to inform you that a General Meeting of the
Members of the National Education League will be held at the
Exchange Assembly Rooms, Birmingham, on Tuesday and Wednesday,
the 12th and 13th of October, and to hand you a Programme of theproceedings.
The Provisional Committee desire to express their earnest hope that
you will be able to attend dming the whole, or at least a part of this very
important Meeting, at which a large number of the leading Members of
the League are expected to be present.
It will much facilitate the completion of the arrangements for the
Meeting if you will inform us at your earliest convenience whether you
will be able to attend.
We are, Sir,
Yours respectfully,
GEORGE DIXON, Chairman.
JESSE COLLINGS, Hon. Sec.
FRANCIS ADAMS, Secretary.
�PROGRAMME
FOR THE FIRST
GENERAL MEETING TO BE HELD AT BIRMINGHAM,
On Tuesday and, Wednesday, October 12th and, 13th, 18G9.
TUESDA Y,
OCTOBER 12tli.
Morning Sitting, from Ten o’clock a.m. till One p.m.
Election of Chairman.
The Report of the Provisional Committee to be read.
Election of the Council, Chairman, Treasurer, and Executive Committee.
The following Resolution will be submitted to the Meeting :—
“Resolved, that a Bill, embodying the principles of the League,
be prepared for introduction into Parliament early next
Session.”
Afternoon Sitting, Three p.m. to Five
p.m.
Papers and Discussion on the best system for National Schools, based
upon Local Rates and Government Grants.
Evening, Eight p.m.
Soiree at the Town Hall, given by the Mayor of Birmingham.
WEDNESDAY,
OCTOBER 13th.
Morning Sitting, Ten
a.m.
to
One p.m.
Papers and Discussion on Compulsory Attendance, and on the best
means of enforcing it.
Afternoon Sitting, Three p.m.
to
Five p.m.
Papers and Discussion on Unsectarian and Free Schools.
Evening, Half-past Seven p.m.
Public Meeting in the Town Hall; the Mayor in the Chair.
Members wishing to contribute Papers are requested to communicat
with the Secretary.
��NATIONAL
EDUCATION
LEAGUE.
FIRST MEETING OF MEMBERS.
APPOINTMENT OF CHAIRMAN.
Henry Holland, Esq., Mayor of Birmingham, moved that Mr.
George Dixon, M.P., be elected Chairman. He said that Mr.
Dixon, as the originator of the League, and by the zeal, ability,
and devotion which he had shown, not only of late but in past
years, in the cause of education, was deserving of the position
which it was proposed that he should occupy. The appointment
of Mr. Dixon would give satisfaction, not only to the ladies and
gentlemen present, but to those friends of education throughout
the kingdom who were with the League in spirit, though there
were many of them who could not attend the meeting.
Mr. Edmund Potter, M.P., delegate from Carlisle, seconded
the motion, which was carried.
THE CHAIRMAN’S ADDRESS.
The Chairman said: The movement which we have met to in
augurate to-day is one of momentous national importance, involving
in its issues not merely the future material prosperity of the
nation, but its intellectual moral, and I will venture to add, its
religious progress. The originators of this movement have met
with a response far exceeding their expectations. On their behalf, I
very heartily welcome here the many eminent men who have come
from various parts of the country to assist in the deliberations of
the League, to return to their homes, I trust, with a deepened
sense of the importance of the scheme, and with a stronger
�10
determination to exercise all their influence in its favour. We
have as yet made no appeal for subscriptions; but our expenses
have been heavy, and will rapidly increase as the area of our
operations widens. To collect information upon all the various
branches of the great subject we have taken up, to put this
information into a popular form, and to circulate it everywhere,
especially among the working classes, will require very large funds
indeed. But, in addition, we desire to send able lecturers all
through the country, who shall explain our views, and excite
discussion upon them everywhere. To create an irresistible
public opinion is a work of the greatest magnitude, and one which
will task our powers to the utmost. Our success will largely
depend upon the means placed at our disposal. You will see, by
the paper which has been placed in your hands, that a few friends
have commenced a subscription list, upon a scale which, if
imitated in other parts of the country, will give us all we want;
and I invite you to fill up the forms with as large amounts as
you are able. And to stimulate you further in this good work, I
will read you a few letters which have been received by me. The
first is from the Secretary to the Society for the Encouragement of
Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce in London, Mr. P. Le Neve
Foster. He says :—
“The Council of this Society have much pleasure in sending
(enclosed) a cheque for twenty guineas as a donation to the funds of the
National Education League, and have directed me to attend with a depu
tation, and represent the Society at the meetings of the League at
Birmingham next week. The Rev. Wm. Rogers, and Messrs. E. Chadwick,
C.B., and E. Carleton Tufnell, have been requested to form the deputation.
The Council think it right to say that they cordially concur in the programme
of the League in so far as its object is to ensure the groundwork of
instruction to all the children of the United Kingdom, and that they shall
not be less well educated than children in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden,
and Norway ; but as a question of general policy, and as representing many
different opinions among the numerous members of the Society, they hesitate
at the present time to pledge the Society to all the details of the League
programme. The Council think it desirable that all the various modes of
ensuring universal instruction to the children of the United Kingdom should
be amply discussed from many points of view, and they intend to invite
members of the Society and others to a discussion of them after the meetings
�11
have been held in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, &c. For the con
sideration of the Birmingham meeting the Council transmit a paper, which
has been prepared by some members of the Council, and which appears to be
worthy of serious attention.”
On the paper you have in your hand you will find some subscrip
tions of unusually large amount for Birmingham; hut I will
venture to say that no subscription has given greater encouragement
to the Provisional Committee than that from a working man,
whose letter I am now going to read :
“Dear Sir,—Would you kindly forward me a prospectus or programme of
the National Education League, of which I am informed you are president,
and say if it is open to mechanics to become members, as I understand
from the report of your Sheffield address. I am myself an engineer, and am
at times utterly astonished at the fearful amount of ignorance among my
fellow workmen. In the works in which I am foreman, out of 200 hands not
20 either read the daily papers or care for the welfare of their fellows. Sir, I
assure you this is a deplorable fact, and if it was not for our glorious Free
Library it would be much worse. If I can do anything towards improving
this state of things I will willingly subscribe 7s. 6d. (a day’s wages) every
month. I know the want of education, as I could not write until I was
fifteen. If you could send me a few papers, so that I could interest my
fellow-workmen in this good work, I should be pleased.”
Now, the programme of the meeting, which yon have all read,
tells you exactly what the course of business is to be. The
arrangements are not, in some respects, so perfect as we could have
wished, but they are the result of full and anxious consideration;
and I hope, therefore, that if anyone should find that they are not
quite what he thinks best, he will accept them as a whole, and try
to be satisfied with them. One of the greatest difficulties which we
have to encounter is that the time at our disposal is extremely
short. We dare not ask our friends at a distance to come here for
more than two days; but we have a great deal more work to do in
those two days than we shall be able to get through to our satis
faction. We have had more papers sent to us than there will be
time to read; and after the papers are read there will be, I am
sorry to say, but very little time left for discussion. I have,
therefore, to beg not only that papers may be read as quickly as
possible, but that the speeches afterwards be as short and con
tain as much as possible. Next year, when we again have a
�12
general meeting of members, we shall be better acquainted with
each other, we shall know who are really the leading spirits in this
movement throughout the country • and then our arrangements will
no doubt be more perfect. There is one thing to which I wish
most particularly to call your attention. It is that we are not
met here for the purpose of discussing our principles.
Our
platform is already laid. We have accepted the bases of our
constitution, and we must not stray from them. But we have
met to discuss the best manner in which we can carry out our
principles. Upon that part of the question we may differ, and we
want all the light thrown upon it that it is possible for us to get.
This meeting has been called, by mistake, a conference. It is not
a conference. It is a meeting of the members of the League and
their friends, pledged to a certain course of action. We are not
answerable, as a League, for the individual opinions that will be
expressed in the papers and in the discussions. We are only
answerable for that programme, for that scheme, which has been
circulated throughout the country; but it is right that I should
explain one word in that scheme. We have had a great number of
letters upon the subject, and I believe that there are differences of
opinion upon it. There are some who do not understand what is
meant when we say that “ all schools aided by local rates ” are to be
“unsectarian.” Now, what we mean by this word “unsectarian” is
that in all national rate-schools it shall be prohibited to teach cate
chisms, creeds, or theological tenets peculiar to particular sects. These
are not to be taught during school hours. But beyond this prohi
bition we are not going; we leave everything else to be decided by
the school managers, who as the representatives of the ratepayers
will follow the best guides in these matters, viz., the wishes of the
inhabitants of their districts. School managers, for instance, will
have power to permit or prohibit the use of the Bible; but if
sanctioned it must be read without note or comment. Then they
will also have power to grant or to refuse the use of class-rooms,
out of school hours, for the purpose of religious instruction; but
of course an unjust preference must not be given to particular sects.
I trust we are all agreed that the best way of dealing with what is
called the religious difficulty is to put it on one side. Having
�13
decided to adopt the principle of excluding from the curriculum of
our primary schools all those religious subjects about which there
are differences of opinion, let us leave the carrying out of that
principle to the school authorities in a spirit of generous confidence.
A self-governing people ought to have faith in the discretion of
representatives whom it chooses and can remove. I will now call
upon the Secretary, Mr. Adams, to read letters from gentlemen who
are unable to attend here to-day.
LETTERS.
Mr. Francis Adams (Secretary) then read the following letters:—
From Edward Miall, Esq., M.P.
Welland House, Forest Hill, S.E., October 9th, 1869.
Dear Mr. Dixon,
I find it quite impracticable so to arrange my engagements
as to leave me at liberty to be present at the Education Conference, on
Tuesday and Wednesday next. I much regret this, because I had hoped to
derive from the papers to be read, and the discussions which may be had
upon them, clearer views of one or two of the principles of the League than
I can pretend to hold at present. I trust, however, that due care 'will be
taken to give publicity to the proceedings, and that I and others who happen
to be precluded from availing ourselves of your courteous invitation, will have
an opportunity of making ourselves fully acquainted -with what has been
said and done at the Conference.
As I have already made you aware, I heartily concur in the “object”
which the Conference has been assembled to promote, and generally in the
“means” to be adopted -with a view to it. I am anxious, however, to
reserve my freedom of action, as well as of speech, [to thejextent which I will,
with your leave, endeavour to describe.
With regard to the 6th article in the programme, that “the State or the
local authorities shall have power to compel the attendance of children of
suitable age, not otherwise receiving education,” I give in my adhesion to
the principle involved. I confess I have tried hard to escape the necessity
of acceding to a resort to compulsion in furtherance of the end we have in
view, and have been driven only by the force of facts to surrender my
objections to it. Consequently, I am a little more sensitive on this point
than on others, and I can easily imagine modes of compulsion resorted to
which I could not bring my mind to approve. I wish, therefore, while
agreeing to the principle, to refrain from committing myself beforehand to
any particular scheme for carrying it into effect.
�u
As to free. admission to all schools aided by local rates, I suggest that the
provision should be coupled with this condition : That in every case in which
a school is rate-supported, it should be by a separate rate, to be called a
“ SCHOOL RATE.” In order to prevent that non-appreciation of education
which would inevitably come of the idea that it can be got for nothing, every
ratepayer should be made to understand distinctly that, in availing himself
of a free school for his children, he is but receiving back in value that which
in proportion to his means he has paid for. He will readily understand and
feel this, if he is periodically called upon to pay a specific rate for the purpose,
and I think he will be the less disposed to trifle with the right he has thus
acquired.
My chief anxiety, however, is to guard myself from being committed,
under the fourth article of the programme, to conclusions which in my
honest judgment I reject. In that article, as now worded, I thoroughly
concur. It is of the utmost importance that schools aided by local rates shaU
be unsectarian. Denominational education I take to be the greatest obstacle
to National education. It causes an enormous waste of teaching power. It
misleads a large proportion of the public as to the true end of public schools,
and it serves to stereotype instead of softening down religious disctinctions. I
do not believe it to be in any sense necessary. The public, generally, do not
care to perpetuate it. The demand for it is almost exclusively a clerical
demand, and I think the time is come for attempting to get rid of it—
cautiously and gradually, of course, but, in due time, effectually. But whilst
I attach high importance to unsectarian education, I am bound to say that I do
not feel obliged to exclude the religious element from rate-supported schools.
1 would not insist upon it as a condition of receiving public aid, but neither
would I insist upon its being eliminated from primary education. Thus
much, I think, might be safely left to the decision of the local authorities—
to be authorised to open and close their schools, if they please, with some
catholic form of devotion, and to adopt the Bible as one of the books to be
read; of course, protecting every parent from being compelled to subject his
children to either. My reason is this : I feel convinced that if by “unsectarian” schools, the interpretation is to be the rigid exclusion of all
religion from the schools, the nation will lose the very best teachers, for,
ceeteris paribus, they are the best teachers who bring a religious spirit and
motive to their work. I am sure the working classes, as a body, would not
care to shut out Christianity altogether from the schools to which they send
their children. I think it would be a mistake so tightly to tie up the hands
of teachers as to make all reference to the great facts aud precepts of
Christianity a forbidden thing to them. At any rate, it might well be left to
the local authorities to exercise their free choice in the matter. Such being
my opinion, I beg to hold myself uncommitted to the article in question, if
by the epithet “unsectarian” be meant “ necessarily and exclusively secular. ”
�15
I have no objection to give public aid to schools confined to secular educa
tion ; but I do not think it would be wise to impose upon local authorities the
obligation to shut out the religious element to this extent.
Pardon the liberty I have taken, and believe me to be,
,
Dear Mr. Dixon,
Yours, very faithfully,
EDWARD MIALL.
George Dixox, Esq., M.P.
From J. C. Buchnaster, Esq.
St. John’s Hill, Wandsworth, S.W., October lltli, 1869.
Dear Sir,
I regret very much that I am quite unable to accept your
invitation for the 13th. I cheerfully give my adhesion to the general principles
of the Education League, because I believe it offers the only equitable solution
of the educational difficulty. I wish the working classes (who are mostly
interested in this matter) would give some expression of opinion on the
subject, so as to help you and others in Parliament to obtain a national system
of education. Hitherto all our arrangements for the education of the children
of the working classes have been settled by the political influence of religious
parties, and, to avoid as much as possible all difficulty, every denomination has
been tempted to receive,' State assistance. The result is a great waste of
educational effort. I frequently find two and three schools in places with a
population scarcely sufficient to maintain one with efficiency. We have the same
number of inspectors without any concert with each other, going every year
to the same place to do precisely the same work. Ever since the Committee
of Council came into existence I have been in various ways connected with
the present system, and I believe it was the only scheme at that time capable
of meeting the enormous difficulties and resistance of religious bodies. This
opposition, controlled, as it appeared to me, by no reason, was a great national
calamity, and a source of much sorrow. I have carefully watched and taken
part in the working of the present system, and I am reluctantly compelled to
admit that the denominational system fails to accomplish its object. T have
been for several years Churchwarden of the parish in which I reside. I have
taught in elementary schools aided by the State, and Sunday schools, and
when at home I go regularly to church on Sunday, and at the corner of almost
every street I see a number of men with short pipes and unlaced boots, whose
faces twenty years ago were familiar to me as pupils in the parish school and
Sunday school. Why don’t they go to some place of religious worship ? When
at the parish school theyheard prayers and scripture lessons every morning from
students in the Training College—twice or three times a week lessons in the
Catechism and Liturgy from the curate or vicar—twice on Sunday religious
instruction in the Sunday school and two sermons; and where is the result of
�16
all this in the after life and character of the pupils ? If a purely secular
system had been inaugurated by the minutes of 1846 and 1847 this indiffer
ence to religious worship and conduct would have been charged on that
system. Some time ago I made enquiries, as far as I was able, as to the
practical result of the religious instruction given in our parish schools. 120
pupils were grown up and still living in the parish ; some of them married,
with children passing through the same course of religious instruction. Only
nine were in the habit of attending any place of worship regularly, and two
of these were paid singers. Ninety, so far as I could learn, had never been
either to church or chapel since they earned their own living, except to a
wedding or a baptism. The complaint that the working classes as a rule never
go to any place of worship is, I fear, a sad reality; but where is the result of all
our denominational teaching, and religious instruction? Theology and
Scripture proofs of various doctrines are no doubt taught in most of our
schools, but religion is not taught, and cannot be taught. The one is a
science, the other a sentiment; and we have been mistaking the one for the
other. You must not infer from this that I am insensible to the great
blessings of a religious life; but the teaching of dogmatic theology never
secures it. The tone and atmosphere of a school-room should stand in contrast
with the wretched dirty homes from which many of the children come. They
should be surrounded, as far as possible, with everything which tends to
soften and refine their hearts and feelings ; for it is through the senses that
the better impulses of our nature are called into activity and life. We want
clean and cheerful school-rooms, with good pictures on the walls, and specimens
of good art, and these may now be obtained at a small cost. The obstacle in
the way of progress is the ever active spirit which seeks to obtain supporters
to particular views and disciples for particular sects. The love of power un
consciously takes the semblance of religious anxiety, and every man acts as
if he alone had the true faith which ought to be taught to the young. The
only practical way is for the State to restrict itself to teaching those truths
upon which we all agree. All knowledge which is cognisable by our senses
may be safely taught at the public expense. It is only when we leave the
things of this world, and enter upon the consideration of those of the next,
that we lose the means of deciding who is right and who is wrong.
But I
think we must all agree that the more perfectly men are educated in a
knowledge of undisputed truths the better they will be prepared for the. study
of Divine truth. This is most assuredly the basis upon which we ought to
start. Society and human nature must be taken as it is, and not as some
think it should be. For these and other reasons I shall have much pleasure
in rendering what assistance I can in promoting the objects you have in view.
Yours truly,
J. C. BUCKMASTER.
George Dixon, Esq., M.P.
�17
From the Marquis of Lome, M.P. for Argyleshire.
The Queen’s Hotel, Glasgow, Sept. 17th, 1869.
Dear Mr. Dixon,
Your very kind letter has only just reached me, and I
therefore hope you will excuse my apparent neglect in not having answered
before this.
1 shall not be able, I am very sorry to say, to attend the meeting, as I
mean to spend the time between this and November in Ireland.
With many thanks,
Believe me,
Yours very truly,
LORNE.
To George Dixon, Esq., M.P.
From the Rev. Charles Kingsley.
Eversley Rectory, Winchfield, Sep. 17th, 1869.
My dear Sir,
I am still more sorry that I cannot attend your meeting on
reading through your Education Society’s Report. It seems to me a con
vincing proof that the voluntary denominational system is in great towns a
failure, and unless you forbid me, I shall use its statistics to that effect at
Bristol. That it is a failure in country parishes I know from 27 years’
experience as a parson.
I remain,
Your much obliged,
C. KINGSLEY.
I am much gratified by finding in your second Education League list so
many names personally dear to me, and so many of my own cloth.
From Sir Henry A. Hoare, M.P. for Chelsea.
*
Stourhead, Bath, 17th Sep. 1869.
Dear Mr. Dixon,
I received yours of the loth this morning. I cannot, as I
told you in town, undertake to be present in Birmingham on the 12th and
following day, but I shall be truly glad to hear that the General Meeting has
done something.
I do hope that with respect to the principle of compulsion there will be no
faint-heartedness, and no dilution whatsoever of the power to enforce
attendance.
I remain,
Yours very truly,
HENRY A. HOARE.
»
B
�18
From Professor Huxley.
Swanage, Dorset, September 21, 1869.
My dear Sir,
I received your letter of the 17th yesterday, after I had.
written a reply to that of earlier date.
I wish again to say how very sorry I am I cannot do what you and the
Committee desire of me ; but not being a bird, as Mr. Boyle Poach said, I
cannot be in two places at once, and I am bound to be lecturing in London on
both the twelfth and the thirteenth of October.
I am, very faithfully, yours,
T. W. HUXLEY.
To George Dixon, Esq., M.P.
From Dr. Schmitz.
The London International College,
Spring Grove, Middlesex, W., Sep. 16th, 1869.
Dear Sir,
It would give me the greatest pleasure at the approaching
Meeting of the National Education League, at Birmingham, to read a paper
on the great necessity there is in this country for compulsory education, a
subject upon which I feel very strongly, but unfortunately the time of the
meeting coincides with the reassembling of our College, so that it is even
more than doubtful whether I shall be able to attend the meeting.
I am extremely sorry, therefore, that I am unable to have the honour
which your Committee has assigned to me, by inviting me to prepare a paper
for the occasion.
I am, dear Sir, yours truly,
L. SCHMITZ.
From E. H. Brodie, Esq., Inspector of Schools.
Education Department, Council Office, Downing Street, London,
September 29th, 1869.
Dear Sir,
It is with the greatest regret that I write to say that I am
unable to attend the meeting of the National Education League, at
Birmingham.
My official engagements for October are heavy and numerous, and I cannot
spare even half-a-day.
I shall read the newspaper accounts of the meeting with the deepest
interest.
�19
After 10| years’ experience of the present system of education, I have
quite come to the conclusion that the poor both are not and never will be
reached by it, except very partially, especially in our large towns, so fruitful
of the criminal class. Assuring you of my sincerest sympathy for the cause,
and regretting my unavoidable absence,
I remain, dear Sir,
Faithful yours,
E. H. BRODIE.
To Jesse Collings, Esq.
From P. A. Taylor, Esq., M.P. for Leicester.
Aubrey House, Notting Hill, W., October 9th, 1869.
My dear Mr. Dixon,
I am sony that it will not be in my power to attend the
Conference next week.
Do not attribute my absence to any lukewarmness in the cause.
Of all the great reforms we have before us, this is perhaps the greatest.
I ain entirely at one with your programme.
You may rely on my humble support on all occasions.
&
1
Yours truly,
P. A. TAYLOR.
George Dixon, Esq., M.P.
From an oversight the following important letter was not read
at the meeting.
From the Rev. J. J. Brawn.
Birmingham, 8th Oct., 1869.
My dear Sir,
I beg to inform you that at the Autumnal Session of the
Baptist Union, held at Leicester on the 7th Oct. instant, the following
Resolution was adopted:
“That this Union, without pledging itself to the support of the programme
of the National Education League, hereby requests the Chairman (Dr. Brock)
and Secretary (Rev. J. H. Millard, B.A., Huntingdon), with the Revs. Drs.
Underwood and Haycroft, J. Bigwood, and J. J. Brown, to act as its repre
sentatives at the General Meeting to be held under the auspices of the League
next week at Birmingham.”
I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully,
J. J. BROWN.
To Francis Adams, Esq.
�20
From Blanchard Jerrold, Esq.
SCHOOLS OF SKILL.
Reform Club, S.W., Oct. 13, 1869.
Sir,
Being unavoidably detained away from the meetings of the
League by professional duties, the Executive will, I trust, permit me to state
in a letter the heads of the subject I was anxious to submit viva voce to the
friends of popular education who are at this moment assembled at Birmingham.
It seems to be pretty generally agreed that the distress under wdiich so
many thousands of our fellow countrymen are suffering is caused, not by over
population, but by a superabundance of that labour which the continual
extension of machinery has depreciated. The demand for unskilled labour
is eVer on the decline—a fact on which we should have every reason to
congratulate ourselves if the instruction of labour were keeping pace with
the spread of machinery. But, unfortunately, while the inventive genius of
our race and the energy of our capitalists have given no truce to time, the
friends of popular education have been squabbling all the while because they
go different ways on Sundays—unmindful of Farquhar’s warning. Hence the
growth of blind Labour in the face of the Machine, its mighty and uncon
querable rival ; and hence the increase of pauperism, and of that saddest
condition of life—work w'ithout hope, which “ draws nectar in a sieve.”
The point on wdiich I am anxious to insist, and which will, I am sure, find a
wide acceptance in the Midlands, is this. The superabundance of blind labour
being the cause of the wide-spread distress and heavy poor rates that afflict and
fetter us, our first care must be to teach skill. It is because skill and taste are
■wide-spread among the working population of France that our neighbours
have not the parallel of those townships of even misery wdiich are black spots
upon the map of every considerable city in this kingdom. In the front of the
education movement Trade Schools must be placed. The State is bound to
see that every child is duly provided for the battle of life with those doughty
weapons, the three R’s. Granted. But surely the first duty society owes to
the child is to fortify it so as to assure it, at maturity, the self-dependent
strength of perfect citizenship. The children of the poor should first be taught
some form of skill by the exercise of wdiich they may raise themselves out of
the slough of poverty to which the untutored labour of their parents has sunk
them.
Had the Ragged Schools been sound trade schools, less given to the Old
Hundredth and more to the profitable methods of bread-earning, they would
have effected more good in city lanes and alleys than they can fairly claim to
have done with the teaching of the three R’s.
If the schoolmaster of the poor were himself re-educated, and taught to
implant in his pale scholars the art of living by w’ork—if the primary school
�were a school of skill, as well as one of catechism—the daily practice of industry
with intelligence would strengthen the heart while it informed the hand, and
we should be attending prosperously to
“ The kindred points of Heaven and Home.”
I have honour to remain, Sir,
Your faithful servant,
BLANCHARD JERROLD.
To Francis Adams, Esq.,
Secretary of the National Education League.
Letters expressing regret at not being able to attend were also
received from the following members of the League :—
Jacob Bright, M.P.
Colonel Sykes, M.P.
Josh. Grieve, M.P.
George Melly, M.P.
Peter Rylands, M.P.
James Howard, M.P.
Thomas Hughes, M.P.
P. H. Muntz, M.P.
Sir Sydney Waterlow, M.P.
Captain Sherard Osborne.
Sir John Lubbock.
Dr. Michael Foster.
Russell Martineau.
Rev. George Style.
Professor Roscoe.
Professor Jevons.
John E. Gray.
Dr. Schmitz.
Professor Leone Levi.
Mr. Edwin A. Abbott.
Sir John Bowring.
Mr. Samuel Smiles.
Rev. Charles Voysey.
Hon. George Howard.
Dr. John Shortt.
Mr. M. D. Conway.
Dr. Gotch.
�22
REPORT OF THE PROVISIONAL COMMITTEE.
•
Mr. Jesse Collings (Honorary Secretary) read the following
Report of the Provisional Committee :—
The Provisional Committee think it desirable to lay before the
first meeting of members a brief statement of the reasons
which led to the formation of the National Education League,
the object of the Association, and the steps which have been taken
towards its organization.
On all hands it has long since been admitted that the present
system of education fails to meet the requirements of the country,
that voluntary efforts reach only the richer districts, and these
imperfectly, and that the poorer districts are left practically
uncared for, Government aid being wholly dependent upon
previous local expenditure.
Recent enquiries prove that even in districts best provided
with educational means, the real value of these means is greatly
below what is was supposed to be. The reports of the Manchester
Education Aid Society, and of the Birmingham Education Society,
for instance, reveal a state of things calculated to arrest attention
and excite alarm.
An enquiry instituted by the Manchester Society showed that
in Manchester and Salford the number of children of all classes,
between three years and twelve years, was 100,000. Of these
only 55,000 were on the books of public elementary schools, and
of this latter number the average attendance was but 38,000.
In Birmingham, out of 35,018 children between the ages of
three and twelve visited by the agents of the Education Society,
only 15,490 were at school. Of 45,056 children between three
and fifteen years, 17,023 were at school, 6,337 at work, and 21,696
were neither at school nor at work. Of the 17,023 who were at
school, 10,890 were under nine years of age.
The results of such education as had been given were shown to
be equally unsatisfactory.
In Manchester, in 1,916 families visited, there were, 1,660
persons between the ages of twelve and twenty. Of these, 759
were unable to read. Out of 1,672 fathers, 465 could not
p
�23
read, and out of 1,857 mothers the number unable to read
was 815.
In Birmingham, Mr. Long, one of the masters of the
Worcester, Lichfield, and Hereford Diocesan Training College,
visited a number of the manufactories (fairly chosen to represent
the whole), and examined 988 young persons between the ages of
thirteen and twenty-one. His report was that, “ in reading and
writing nearly one-half of the whole number examined do nothing,
or next to nothing, and only one-third do at all well. In
arithmetic and general knowledge more than three-fourths fail, or
nearly so; and only one in twenty shows anything like a
satisfactory degree of attainment.”
The facts thus ascertained are corroborated by the statements
of the Bight Hon. H. A. Bruce, in a recent address, in which,
quoting from a report of the London Diocesan Board of Education,
he said there were in London from 150 thousand to 200 thousand
children without the means of education, and that during the
preceding five or six years all that had been done served only to
prevent retrogression.
The report of the Committee of Council (1867-8, p. xxiii.)
demonstrates the inefficiency of instruction even in the best
primary schools—those under Government inspection. Of the
children attending a large proportion are declared to be unfit for
examination; and of those examined above ten years of age,
“ only 3.13 per cent, passed in the three higher standards without
failure” : these standards being of an extremely elementary
character.
These and other facts exhibiting the want of educational means
and the defective quality of instruction actually given, naturally
attracted special attention at the moment when, by an extension of
the franchise, a great change had been made in the distribution of
political power. Persons who took an interest in education were
led to the enquiry whether the present voluntary system, based
upon denominational effort, could by any possibility cover in the
future, with increasing population and more urgent demands, the
ground which it had failed to cover in the past. Conceding to the
voluntary principle the utmost conceivable measure of success, the
�24
advocates of education were further driven to enquire whether,
considering the new conditions of political arrangements, and the
rate at which education has hitherto progressed, it would be
prudent to wait until the present system has received a longer
trial. Educational reformers felt themselves compelled to ask yet
another question, whether, considering the right of every child to
education, it would be just to persevere in a system which,
however benevolent its motive and however strenuous its
exertions, experience has proved to reach only part of the children
having the right to instruction, and to deal imperfectly with those
whom it succeeded in reaching.
To all these questions only negative replies could be given.
The advocates of extended education found themselves obliged to
conclude that the voluntary system had failed to meet the wants
of the country, that considering the new political conditions re
sulting from an extended franchise, it would be imprudent to
persevere with a system admitted to be inadequate, and that con
sidering the right of all children to instruction, a national system
was demanded not less by justice than by expediency.
The result of these convictions was the introduction of a bill,
promoted by an influential Committee emanating from the Man
chester Education Aid Society, permitting the imposition of local
rates for the maintenance of schools. A permissive measure being,
however, felt to be inadequate, a subsequent bill was introduced,
allowing Government to compel the imposition of local educational
rates whcrs these might be found necessary. These bills were intro
duced by Mr. Bruce and Mr. Forster, and at the same time it was
intended that Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Bazley should move clauses
enforcing attendance at school.
The measures above mentioned mark the advance of public
opinion. The formation of the National Education League in
dicates a still greater and more important progress. It was felt
by several gentlemen in Birmingham that the time had come for
the establishment of an organisation uniting all those, throughout
the country, who desired to promote a really national system of
education, reaching all places unprovided for, based as to means
upon local taxation supplemented by imperial grants, becoming,
�25
therefore, unsectarian and free, and having the power to compel
attendance as the only way of overcoming parental neglect.
Accordingly, at the beginning of this year, the National
* Education League was formed upon the following basis, and upon
this basis only, which the founders regard as fundamental, were
educational reformers throughout the country invited to join the
League.
Object :
The establishment of a system which shall secure the Education of
every Child in England and Wales.*
Means :
1. —Local Authorities shall be compelled by law to see that sufficient
School Accommodation is provided for every Child in their
district.
2. —The cost of founding and maintaining such Schools as may be
recpiired shall be provided out of Local Rates, supplemented
by Government Grants.
8.—All Schools aided by Local Rates shall be under the manage
ment of Locul Authorities and subject to Government
Inspection.
Jf..—All Schools aided by Local Rates shall be Unsectarian.
5. —To all Schools aided by Local Rates admission shall be free.
6. —School Accommodation being provided, the State or the Local
Authorities shall have power to compel the attendance of
children of suitable age not otherwise receiving education.
That this movement was happily timed, at the moment when
opinion was ripe for it, is proved by the fact that although no
public meeting has been held by the League, no means adopted but
the circulation of the scheme recorded above, near two thousand
five hundred- persons of influence, including forty members of the
* A slight verbal alteration was agreed, to at a meeting of the Provisional
Committee, held 22nd Sept., viz., that in all future circulars, addresses, &c.,
the words “ in the country" should be substituted for the words “ in England
and Wales.”
�House of Commons, and. between three and four hundred ministers
of religion, have already joined the League, by formally assenting
to its principles; and this number is daily increasing.
It is now proposed to complete the working organisation of the
League by electing a Council and an Executive Committee, charged
with the transaction of general business, the appointment of officers,
and the formation of branch committees. The last-mentioned work
has already been commenced. It was intended that it should have
been deferred until after this meeting ; but the response to the
invitation of the Provisional Committee was so great that it was
found necessary to form branch committees without delay, and
branches have accordingly been constituted in London, Manchester,
Bradford, Bristol, Leicester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Leeds, Hudders
field, Exeter, Bath, Warrington, Devonport, Carlisle, Merthyr
Tydvil, Wednesbury, South Hants, and the Isle of Wight.
With reference to the funds necessary for carrying on the
operations of the League, it was thought desirable to abstain from
issuing an appeal until after the general meeting of members ; but
a number of gentlemen, having the work strongly at heart, have
offered the sums undermentioned, payable by annual instalments
extending over ten years :—
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
G. Dixon, M.P., Birmingham....................... .£1,000
A. Brogden, M.P., Ulverstone ................... 1,000
E. L. Chance, Birmingham........................... 1,000
J. Chamberlain, Birmingham ....................... 1,000
Joseph Chamberlain, Birmingham ............... 1,000
G. B. Lloyd, Birmingham ........................... 1,000
A. Field, Birmingham.................................... 1,000
Follett Osler, F.E.S., Birmingham............... 1,000
W. Middlemore, Birmingham....................... 1,000
Archibald Kenrick, Birmingham ............... 1,000
F. S. Bolton, Birmingham ............................ 1,000
Edmund Potter, M.P., Carlisle...................
500
T. Kenrick, Birmingham................................
500
William Kenrick, Birmingham ...................
500
J. Arthur Kenrick, Birmingham...................
500
�27
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
John Jaffray, Birmingham...........................
Harold Lees, Manchester................................
William Dudley, Birmingham ...................
John Webster, Birmingham .......................
H. Swinglehurst, Milnthorpe .......................
500
400
200
200
110
As regards the general meeting of members, it is thought
desirable that it shall be held annually in different parts of the
kingdom. It is proposed that the Council, to be chosen at each
annual meeting, shall be a consultative body, assembling at such
intervals and in such places as may be required, and shall include
all Members of Parliament who may join the League, large donors
to the funds of the association, and at least one representative of
each branch committee. A body so numerous, and consisting of
persons so widely scattered, being obviously too large for the
transaction of current business, it is proposed to appoint an Execu
tive Committee, to whom, subject to resolutions of the annual
meeting, and the general revision of the Council, shall be entrusted
the conduct of the business of the League. This Committee will
meet at the central offices of the League in Birmingham.
The work of the League will be to collect and disseminate
through its various branches, by means of meetings, publications,
lectures, and otherwise, all available information on the subject of
education; to stimulate discussion upon educational reforms; to
create and guide public opinion; to influence Members of Parlia
ment through their constituents ; to hasten and strengthen the
action of Government; and to promote the adoption by the Legis
lature of measures which shall ensure the education of every child
in the country, and which shall provide instruction so accessible
and so graduated that the child of the poorest artisan shall have it
within his power to fit himself for any position capable of being
attained by a citizen of the United Kingdom. To this work the
members of the League have set themselves with a serious convic
tion of its vital importance, and under a sense of personal
responsibility and public duty ; and to this work they intend to
remain constant until it is accomplished, and the reproach and curse
Qf ignorance is wiped away from the land.
�28
TREASURER’S REPORT.
Birmingham, October 8th, 1869.
I have to report that the donations and subscriptions already
received amount to £1,212 10s. 6d. The orders made upon me for
payments are £418 19s., leaving a balance in hand of £793 11s. 6d.
There are liabilities incurred amounting to nearly £600, including
the expenses incidental to the general meeting, and the publication
•of the report of its proceedings.
JOHN JAFFRAY, Treasurer.
The Venerable Archdeacon Sandford said : Mr. Chairman and
gentlemen,—I have been requested to move the adoption of the
concise and lucid and complete report which has just been read to
you; and when I tell you that I am labouring under a serious
attack of indisposition, I am sure you will feel that my presence on
this platform to-day is a proof of my deep and continued interest
in the all-important question which we are met to discuss. I
deeply feel the honour which on this occasion is conferred on me,
and the responsibility which I incur in coming forward to move
the adoption of the report, and I wish to keep distinctly before
my own mind and before yours the object proposed by this Educa
tion League, which justifies, I believe, the course that you and I are
about to adopt. It is to provide the means of education for every
child in England and Wales—that is, to supply education, the best
gift that can be bestowed on any human being, to the multitudes
of the children of our native land who are at this moment ignorant
of those essential truths which are to qualify them for the duties
of this life and for the hopes of a better. I remember hearing it
observed by the late Lord Brougham, some years ago, in the House
of Lords, that he had never met a Frenchman of any condition or
occupation whatever, who did not consider that, after the Emperor,
he was himself the fittest and the sole man to solve the constitu
tional difficulties, and to work out the political destiny of his country.
Now, I am not so aspiring or so self-reliant, but you can understand
that no man can have been connected as a pastor of the people, as
I have been, for more than thirty years, with the education of the
�29
children of the poor, without having rny own views upon this allmomentous subject, and even believing that I could suggest to you
a scheme preferable to that which has been elaborated by my friend
Mr. Dixon and his provisional committee. But in our excellent
chairman we have a commander-in-chief who is not only sagacious
and vigilant, but whom I have found to be inexorable, and what
ever discussions have taken place in the Council, he will allow no
divergence of opinion whatever on the eve of battle and in the
face of the foe. To this very judicious decision I most meekly
submit. My consolation is the belief that in the discussions
which will ensue there will be found gentlemen less compliant,
who will be sure to bring forward and to press those very
objections and those very preferences which have occurred to
myself. Gentlemen, we stand in the presence of an overwhelming
necessity, and of a great national danger, and that necessity
and that danger are involved in the fact, as you have heard
in this luminous report, that there are thousands and tens of
thousands of the children of our people, for whom we are responsible
in the sight of God and man, who are the outcasts, the pariahs of
society, who are growing up without any moral influences whatever
being brought to bear on them, and who in the course of a few
years must constitute a very large and important portion of the
community, invested with legal rights, which they may use for the
injury of themselves and the destruction of society. Now, that is
my reason for keeping back any preferences and objects of my own,
and coming forward, as I believe I ought to do on this occasion,
to endorse the report which has been read to you. What
we want to do is to give the means of education to all those
wretched children ; and it is quite clear from what has been uttered
here, and what has appeared in many and voluminous publications,
that the voluntary system, however admirable it may be, has utterly
failed in providing what is required ; yes, and the character of the
education imparted is very deficient indeed. Well, now, to secure
universal education for our people, I have long believed that we
must have compulsory education. And this is no new light that
has broken upon me since this Education League was proposed,
because I advocated compulsory education months ago, at Man
�30
Chester. Well, then, to have compulsory education you must have
a rate, and to have a rate you must have—I will not call it
secular education, for I abhor the term, and I do not like the
phrase adopted in this report, “ unsectarian education;” I very
much prefer the term “ undenominational education.” It is quite
dear that in a country like ours, with our various denominational
churches, and with our many differences in point of religion, it
will be quite impossible to have an education supported by rate
unless you have the teaching undenominational. Now, with regard
to the rate itself, I believe—and I know that it is the conviction
of many of the inspectors of schools in the country-—that it is
required to compel employers, and to compel parents who do not
discharge their duties in this respect, to bear their portion of the
burden. I am quite satisfied that very many severe things will be
said of your platform. We shall be told, no doubt, that it is a
godless scheme; that it is a revolutionary scheme; that it is a
scheme utterly unsuited to the taste and the feeling of the British
people; that it cannot succeed, that if it is carried out it will flood
the land with a number of atheists and infidels, who will be the
curse of society; that we are departing from the course of duty;
yes, and that we deserve very severe vituperation ourselves because
we have the effrontery to propose this scheme to the public. All I
can say is this, that after a man at my time of life has been pronounced
sacrilegious and an atheist because he has presumed to utter an
opinion not upon a religious but upon a political question, he
becomes rather callous, and is prepared to do his duty, and, if needs
must be, to stand alone, whatever may be said of him by ignorant and
interested parties. I am now about to allude, not towhat is propounded
in this place, and of which for the first time I received a statement
to-day, but to another scheme, which was brought forward a little
time ago with a great flourish of trumpets; and that is, that all
religious sections of the kingdom should be paid to bring up the
children of their denominations in the strictest tenets of their own
faith. Now I confess that I utterly object to that proposition. I
have a very great and affectionate respect for my friend Mr. Vince;
I have an equally great and affectionate respect for my friend
Mr. George Dawson; but I am not prepared to endorse their
�31
theological opinions or to pay for them, for my theological
platform is different from theirs. This scheme, as it appears to me,
proposes that the children of Mr. Vince’s denomination should be
taught, and that the State should provide the means—I suppose
by rate—for their being taught, that Christian baptism is a
delusion ■ and that the children of the school of Mr. Dawson
should be taught that the Christian priesthood is a sham ; yes, and
that the children in Jewish schools should be taught, at the
expense of the State, that the author of Christianity himself is an
impostor. I believe that the proposal of the League, which, at what
ever risk, I am prepared to endorse, shows me to be a much more
sound and conscientious Churchman than he is who professes the
other scheme, which, in my belief, could only tend to per
petuate and to intensify those divisions among Christians which
are, and which have been so long, the bane and the scandal of
Christendom. There are other speakers of far more note and of
far more weight than myself who are to address this meeting, and
therefore I will not trouble you with any further observations of
my own. I am to be followed by one that cometh out of Samaria,
which has supplied redoubtable champions in former times ; and I
am proud and happy to be associated with Mr. Dawson in this work
of education. It is, of course, a most unnatural and a most
monstrous conjunction, and one which twenty years ago, perhaps
ten years ago, would have been quite impossible ; when I, perhaps,
■considered Mr. Dawson somewhat of a firebrand, and he used to
remark on me as an ornamental, but not very useful, appendage to
the Church. Ah ! but, God be praised! things move rapidly in
the present day: to that consummation which as citizens and as
Christians we all ought to desire, when good men of all parties
and of all religious creeds can unite together in the cause of a com
mon country and a common humanity. I have had brought strongly
before me the teachings and example of one who, though himself
born and bred a Jew, though he maintained that salvation was of
the Jews, though he protested against every conceivable form of
error, and at last died a martyr to the truth, yet was on friendly
terms with Samaritans, and has set forth in the Book of Books a
Samaritan as the grand type of practical benevolence for the imita
�tion and admiration of the Church and the world throughout all
time. Before that sublime and magnificent example I bow in loving
adoration. I wish to be imbued with that spirit. I wish to tread
in those footprints, and therefore I rejoice to-day to come forward
to co-operate with my Nonconformist brethren in an endeavour to
redeem and to raise the outcasts of society who are left at this
moment lying in wretchedness and in the dark, and who, but for
this intervention, I believe in God, would be left to perish without
instruction, without moral instincts, without any moral or religious
knowledge at all.
Mr. George Dawson : It is not for me to enter into the reasons
why I have been asked to second this resolution, though I guess it
is because on this question there is no man that holds more extreme
■views than I do. It is certain that if I state my views, I shall
state all yours, and, with regard to many of you, a great deal more
besides. Courtesy demands that I should reciprocate the kindness
of the Archdeacon. He has told you he has ceased to regard me as
a firebrand. Well, I have long since ceased to regard him as
a fogey. We have made mutual concessions ; and it gives me,
as I am sure it gives you, pleasure to see a man so eminent in
the Church discharge the duty of a true leader of the people,
opening his eyes widely and clearly to know the signs of the
times; for his Master and mine pronounced a severe condemna
tion upon those leaders of the people who are unable to know the
signs of the times. One word of congratulation, and that is that
we have advanced. We have not to argue that the poor have a right
to be educated, or ought to be educated. That is gone by. So far,
we have got through the meeting without any gentleman telling
us the difference between instruction and education. That used to
be a stumbling block. We have got to this proposition—th at every
child in this nation ought to be taught. We hold the doctrine of the
family life of the nation. I believe the majority of you do feel as
I do, that every ragged, filthy, untaught, cursing, blaspheming child
should be looked upon as a child of our household, and should bring
shame and disgrace upon us. I would that at heart you and I could
say with him of old, “ Mine eyes run down with tears for the
iniquities of my people.” But at all events we have come to see
�33
that there is no human remedy hut education, and that education
is always good, he it little or much. We dismiss Mr. Alexander
Pope’s couplet about drinking deep or not touching at all as a piece
of antiquated nonsense. We bow, with great respect, those clergy
out of our road, represented by one in this town, who once said
that unless he could have religious education he would shut up the
schoolhouse, put the key in his pocket, and walk away. We have
most of us got rid of that foolish distinction between sacred
and secular. We believe all knowledge to be of God, and
therefore towards good. I believe that he who teaches two
letters of the alphabet to a child who yesterday knew but one, has
furthered that child’s chances of future instruction, and of all
well-being. These things we have not to discuss. A word of
warning : I shall go ' further than you will follow; but, in a
discussion like this, ill-temper would he out of place, and large
allowance for individualism is what we require. We all mean the
same thing, only we travel different paces. We all wish to lay the
foundation of a national educational system. It must be laid with
lucid simplicity and with great breadth, to bear the strain of the
future. We are not here to patch existing systems—-to patch the
garment of semi-charity and semi-ecclesiasticism, which forms a
large part of the present education, but to lay a broad system, by
declaring at once that the world—by which I mean all people that
do not call themselves the Church—has its rights, and that the
world is not to be governed by the good people in anything which
belongs entirely to the world. All men whose opinion is of valuehave come to know that what for present purposes we call secular
education is an affair of the world—an affair of the nation—acting
through its Government. We have got rid of some bugbears—we
are no longer afraid of the Government. This used to be, perhaps, a
necessity; but it is a disgrace if it remains so now. What is the
Government of this country 1 It is the nation itself. There is no
antagonism between the people and the Government now. We
are not here to bury the voluntary principle—its great supporters
buried it long ago. We have lived to hear the recantations of a
Miall and a Baines—to hear them declare that their mistakes about
voluntaryism were what we all knew them to be—well
c
�34
intentioned ; and that voluntaryism is quite an inadequate basis for
a national system. A national system must be laid in simplicity,
and it must be paid for by rates. I am a lover of rates myself. I
was never guilty of that “ ignorant impatience” of taxation which
a great statesman once spoke of. I like to see the tax-gatherer
come, provided the ends to which the taxes are devoted are holy
and noble, and it will be one of the pleasantest sights when the
tax-gatherer comes to lay upon me the noble hand of national com
pulsion, to pay a rate in order that every child in the nation
shall be educated. But, remember, rates mean compulsion. I
hope most of you have done with compulsion as a bugbear. All
life is compulsion. Society is based upon compulsion. What is
government but law made compulsory ? Happy the man who
by-and-by shall escape from the necessities of compulsion, and do
that from the law of liberty which at first he must be made to do
with reluctance. I like rates because they touch everybody,
because I get hold of the fat and selfish manufacturer and
touch him up, because I lay hold of the man that visits no
church and visits no chapel, and make him pay; and I advocate
not only local rates but national taxation for educational purposes.
It is time that a good deal of work that the religious bodies have
burdened themselves with should be given over to the world.
Let society do its own business. What is going on just now is
an operation like what goes on when sheep get mixed. There is
a meeting of shepherds to look over the flocks, and each selects
his own sheep. We have just restored to the Church a sheep
that had got into the State fold. We have handed to the volun
tary principle—to the good people—the Irish Church. Marked
with the sign of the cross, that sheep belonged to the Church, and
it has been restored. Now our turn comes—I mean the world ;
for I never profess anything more than that. Looking over the
Church flock we find a sheep there that belongs to us, and that
is education—theprimary education of the nation. It does not
belong to the Church in any sense—it belongs to the whole
nation. It belongs to the Government, and ought to be done
by the Government. I have no more notion of sectarian
education, or denominational education, in the sense of mere
j
�35
primary instruction, than I have of a denominational wate rcart
or a sectarian vaccinator. What has our history been for years
but the putting of sheep into the right fold ? I am old enough
to remember when nobody could be married except they went
to Church. I sat once at supper with a High Churchman who
asked me whether I was married or not ? I said I was. “ Who
married you ?” I named the person. “ A priest in' the true sue.
cession ?” “ Oh dear, no.” Said he, “You are not married at all.”
I said, “ What am I ?” “ You are only joined together.” “ Well,”
I said, “ as a practical man, for me that will do.” By degrees
society found out that marriage did not belong to priests, and we
established civil marriage. For those who wish to be married in
Church, liberty ; for those who do not, liberty also. Why must
a man be married in the name of a God he does not believe in ?
Why should a Jew be compelled to invoke a Trinity he despises
and abhors ? As to compulsory matters, there is the vaccination
question. Is education, in the sense in which we use the word—the
education about which we are all agreed, the education that relates
to this life—is that a matter that the State should now kindly take
out of the Church’s hand, and do for itself ? I say it is. And
with that education the clergy have no more to do as a matter of
right than the parish doctor or the parish lawyer. I for one am
profoundly thankful to clergy of all sorts for what they have done.
If the squirearchy and the nobility and gentry of England had done
their duty half as well as the clergy, old England would be further
advanced than to be only now laying the foundation stone of a
national system of education. The poor Dissenting minister has
done his duty. He has not had the chances of the Church, but it
was often the poor Nonconformist man who held up the flag of true
liberty, and maintained the fundamental principle of all just poli
tics—“ Do unto others as ye would that they should do
unto you.” Now, however, it is time that the matter should be
taken out of the hands of clergy and ministers. Why should the
Church educate the world in matters about which the world is
entirely capable of looking after itself ? Religious people have quite
enough to do without this. What an advantage it will be to you
Churchmen, if we take all this business, and leave your purse and
�36
your time free ! And, instead of our system being contrary to the
interests of religion, it is the best system for forwarding it. I have
been connected with Sunday schools all my life. We get a child
for an hour and a half every Sunday morning professedly to teach
it religion. The child does not know the alphabet. The hour and
half is spent in the painful attempt to teach it what the world ought
to have done. What an opportunity for those of you who set store
by these things, to pour in the precious dogmas of your theology
into minds which we have made open and receptive ! I have heard
that when the Pope washes the feet of beggars somebody first takes
off the worst of the dirt. We will take these dirty, ignorant children
and take the worst of the dirt off before we hand them over to you
to touch them up with the diaper! To argue that between knowledge
of any kind and true religion there can be any real hostility, would
be to assume that we are speaking to fossils, and not to men who
discern the signs of the times. We want compulsion • we want
rates. If we have rates, we must have free schools ; and if this
system be once adopted, the existing system must go, by a slow,
sure, and I hope, painless form of extinction• and who will regret
it if a wiser thing be put in its place ? For I trust none of you
are idolators, worshippers of mere means. I should be sorry to
think that the interests of your little denominational school weighed
more with you than the interests of the nation. Our people are
ill-taught. Our children die at a rate which is shameful and dis
graceful. Our people live in filth and disease. Large parts of
our great cities are a shame and disgrace, and the odours of cor
poreal nastiness interfere even with the propagation of the Gospel.
We believe we have a remedy for all this ; and, being an extreme
man, I prophesy that, in the end—and that end not distant—
our schools will be supported by rates • and that means com
pulsion, and it means that the schools must be purely secular. Dis
guise it as you may, to that complexion you must come at last. If
we attempt to make school rates to support denominational schools,
we shall have, in fact, our old friend the church-rates back again,
and some John Giles, of Bungay, will go to prison rather than pay
and members of the Society of Friends will allow their umbrellas
to be seized. It is not pleasant to hear how quietly and coolly
�37
the religions world assumes that it has a right to have its dogmas
and doctrines taught. I and many others begin to doubt whether
we ought to pay for your doctrines. I am a Latitudinarian avowedly.
Why should I pay to have done on the week days what I spend
all my Sundays endeavouring to undo ? Is it not time that the
little children should not be plagued with the reverse of what the
scholarship of England and the right learning of the Church have
shown to be the only things that a scholar can hold ? If gentle
men present can show you that Moses did not write the whole of the
Pentateuch, am I to be compelled to pay for telling children that
he did ? Is it not time that children should not build up what it
will be their first duty when they are older to pull down ? Have
not some of us gone through that bitter and painful process of
taking our fathers’ creed slowly down ? And do we not know what
it costs ? Is it pleasant for a man to have to forsake the creed
of his youth? Is the process so agreeable that it is right to
subject the children of this country to it ? Why am I to pay for
teaching a child—as it is stated in a catechism which I shall not name
—that for His good pleasure and greater glory, God elected certain
people to reprobation ? I am willing to pay for teaching the things
about which we are agreed. When they go out of school you
shepherds can catch them, and take them to the fold. Teach them
what you think proper, but do not ask me to pay for that part.
Short of what I have stated I shall not be satisfied, but I shall
travel with you on the same road as far as you will go with me ;
and I hope you will make allowance for me if I go farther
than you do. Compulsory, national, secular education—that is my
faith.
The resolution adopting the report was then put and carried
unanimously.
APPOINTMENT OF OFFICERS, COUNCIL, AND
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.
Mr. Edmund Potter, M.P., rose to move the appointment of
the officers, Council, and Executive Committee. He said : I must at
once frankly admit that though I have joined the League, I do not,
like some of our friends who have spoken before me, agree with every
�proposition that it has laid down. Yet, as I say, I have joined the
League, and having joined it faithfully and loyally, I mean to do
what I can to assist it upon its hroad and general principles, hut
still holding myself free to go even farther than the League itself.
I, like my friend Mr. Dawson, am an extreme man; hut perhaps
I view the question from a different point from that of any other
speaker. I am hound to view it more as a representative of
the people than as a philanthropist, and I look upon the
question as one of great political and social moment. It is a
political question of great urgency and great danger; and my
feeling in joining the League was that by meetings and con
ferences like the present public opinion may be fully and clearly
expressed, and that by it we may be able to force the Govern
ment to give a sound and comprehensive measure of education.
And I say frankly, that to my mind no measure would be
sound or comprehensive or satisfactory which did not at least
go as far as the principles of your League. Upon the political
point of the question, let me say that I look upon the present
state of the country with very great dread. I am not going to
trouble you with statistics, but just to say this : that it is well
known—and it is admitted by men competent to form an
accurate opinion—that of the twenty millions of population in
England and Wales no less than four millions are in a state
of crime, ignorance, misery, vice, and pauperism. Now, what
is the cause of this ? In my opinion it is simply this—that
hitherto education has never touched, or has scarcely touched, the
classes comprised in those four millions. True, there are some few
charitable institutions which have gone below a certain line; but
still there is a hard and fast line below which denominationalism
has never gone—cannot go. And for what reason? Simply
because it is denominational. Denominational institutions are
all supported by the subscriptions of the different sects and by
Government grants, but below that dark black line to which I have
referred there are no subscriptions at all. Denominationalism
cannot permeate to that depth where there is scarcely any religion,
if any at all. Yet I won’t say that there is no religion at all;
for I am convinced that every man has a religion of some sort, if
�39
it is only a strong faith, in another world where, perhaps, there
might he a better chance for him, and where he might change places
with us who are better off. Now, in regard to the line below
which denominationalism does not go, let me say that religious
bodies have never, or at least in very few instances, been able
to get deeper than that line. In Bethnal Green, where there is
a population of 180,000 people, there are only 2,000 people who
are known ever to go to a place of worship. That 2,000 is
just the class which denominationalism can touch, and it
can touch no more. What is the remedy for this ? I believe
it is a purely secular system of education. With a secular
system you may, I believe, carry out education amongst the
classes below the line, and having educated these three or four
millions, surely religious teachers might easily follow. Indeed,
there would be opened up to them an opportunity which they never
had before. But we must have a wide-spread education amongst
these classes to which I refer. Is it not remarkable as a
social question, that in a commercial community like this, with
perfect free trade, strong competition, and the greater part of our
wealth springing from trade—that in such a community four
millions of people should have been so long allowed to remain
in a state of ignorance ? All the results of our labour in that
respect have been lost—completely lost ! Now, how can we cure
this evil? You can only cure it by education. The greater
part of the vice and misery amongst the lower classes arises
simply from ignorance; and it is only by teaching those classes
to help themselves that you will get a cure for the evil. Now, I
am perfectly well aware that a Bill will be brought into the House
of Commons next session, but I am afraid that that Bill—judging
by those who are to frame it—will fall very far short of our expec
tations. I hope, therefore, that those Members of Parliament who
have joined this League will be prepared—for this is not a party
question, and ought not to be made one—to bring in a Bill of their
own, and to force the question to the greatest possible extent. If
we do not accomplish the whole of our object, which is to obtain
a complete system of compulsory, secular, and free education,
we shall at least have made a step towards its attainment.
�40
Concede compulsion, and a free and secular education must
inevitably follow. We have seen how little progress has
been made up till now. In point of fact, as I said before, the
present system has stopped at a certain line. Its results have
increased only five per cent, during the last five years. Look
ing to the increase in population and wealth during that period,
it is a really astounding result. And I am perfectly satisfied
that there the results of the system must rest. When the
different points of the question of compulsory secular education
come to be discussed, I shall be glad to offer opinions; but I may
just say that I myself have worked under compulsion for the last
thirty or forty years. The working of the Factory Acts in
some respects has been very good, but in the matter of education
they have failed most lamentably. And why is that ? Because
we have no free schools to which to send our children. It is a per
fect farce to say to parents “ Educate your children,” when the only
possible way of getting education is by a charge of 2d. per week
upon them. The Factory Acts have completely failed in sending
large numbers of children to school, except in those cases in which
masters have taken a Christian interest in their workpeople and
have provided education for the children. I am perfectly satisfied
that if we determine to bring in a Bill we shall not find the plan of
organization or the settlement of the details to be at all difficult
To my mind, this question comes only second in importance to the
Irish question; and it behoves us therefore to set earnestly and at
once to work. I don’t myself see why we should wait a single
session for the Bill; and if members of Parhament will only work
for it as hard and as zealously as they did over the Bankruptcy Bill
and one or two other measures of last session, the whole thing may
be carried next session. I now beg to move the following formal
resolution :
That the following gentlemen be the officers of the League for
the ensuing year :—
George Dixon, Esq., M.P., Chairman.
Jesse Collings, Esq, Hon. Secretary.
John Jaffray, Esq., Treasurer.
�41
That the Council of the League consist of—
(1)—All Members of the League who are Members of Parliament,
comprising at present: —
The Right Hon. the Earl of Portsmouth
Anstruther, Sir Robert, Bart., M. P. for Fifeshire
Armitstead, G., M.P. for Dundee
Bass, M. Arthur, M.P. for Stafford
Beaumont, Somerset, M.P. for Wakefield
Bright, Jacob, M.P. for Manchester
Brocklehurst, W. C., M.P. for Macclesfield
Brogden, Alexander, M.P. for Wednesbury
Campbell, H., M.P. for Stirling
Carter, R. M., M.P. for Leeds
Clement, W. J., M.P. for Shrewsbury
Dalrymple. Donald, M.P. for Bath
Dilke, Sir Charles Wentworth, Bart., M.P. for Chelsea
Dixon, George, M.P. for Birmingham
Fawcett, H., M.P. for Brighton
Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmund, M.P. for Caine
Gower, Lord Rowland Leveson, M. P. for Sutherland
Grieve, J. 0., M.P. for Greenock
Grosvenor, Captain The Hon. R. W., M.P. for Westminster
Hoare, Sir Henry A., Bart., M.P. for Chelsea
Howard, James, M.P. for Bedford
Hughes, T., M.P. for Frome
Lome, The Marquis of, M. P. for Argyleshire
Melly, G., M.P. for Stoke-on-Trent
Miall, Edward, M.P. for Bradford
Mitchell, S. A., M.P. for Bridport
Morgan, George Osborn, Q.C., M.P. for Denbeighshire
Morrison, W., M. P. for Plymouth
Mundella, A. J., M.P. for Sheffield
Muntz, P. H., M.P. for Birmingham
Parry, T. L. D. J., M.P. for Carnarvonshire
Platt, J., M.P. for Oldham
Playfair, Dr. Lyon, C. B., M.P. for Edinburgh, &c. Universities.
Potter, Edmund, F.R.S., M.P. for Carlisle.
Price, W. E., M.P. for Tewkesbury.
Price, W. P., M.P. for Gloucester.
Rylands, Peter, M.P. for Warrington.
Samuelson, Bernhard, M.P. for Banbury.
Seely, Charles, M.P. for Nottingham.
Simon, John, Serjeant-at-Law, M.P. for Dewsbury.
�42
Sykes, Col.W.H., F.R.S., F.G.S., F.R.G.S., M.P. for Aberdeen.
Taylor, P.A., M.P. for Leicester.
Wedderburn, Sir David, Bart., M.P. for South Ayrshire.
Williams, Watkin, M.P. for Denbigh.
Winterbotham, H. S. P., M.P. for Stroud.
(2) —AR Donors to the funds of the League of £590. and upwards,
comprising at present: —
Bolton, F. S., Birmingham.
Brogden, A., M.P., Ulverstone.
Chamberlain, J., Moor Green Hall.
Chamberlain, Jos., Birmingham.
Chance, R. L., Birmingham.
Dixon, Geo., M.P., Birmingham.
Field, A., Birmingham.
Jaffray, John, J.P., Birmingham.
Kenrick, A., Birmingham.
Kenrick, J. A., J.P., Birmingham.
Kenrick, T., Birmingham.
Kenrick, Wm., Birmingham.
Lloyd, G. B., Birmingham.
Middlemore, W., Birmingham.
Osler, Clarkson, Birmingham.
Osler, Follett, F.R.S., Birmingham.
Phillips, Aiderman, Birmingham.
Potter, Edmund, M.P., Carlisle.
(3) —One Representative from each Branch of the League ;
And the following ladies and gentlemen, namely:—
Abbott, E. A., M.A., St. John’s Wood, London.
Ackworth, Rev. James, L.L.D., Scarborough.
Albright, Arthur, Edgbaston.
Allman, Professor George J., F.R.S., University of Edinburgh.
Ambler, Councillor John, Walmer Villas, Bradford.
Angus, Rev. Joseph, D.D., Regent’s Park College, London.
Anstey, T. Chisholm, Temple, London.
Applegarth, Robert, Stamford Street, London.
Aveling, Thomas, Mayor of Rochester.
Baines, John, Mayor of Leicester.
Bain, Alexander, Professor of Logic, University of Aberdeen.
Barlow, James Mayor of Bolton.
Barmby, Rev. Goodwyn, Wakefield.
Bazley, Charles H., J.P., Manchester.
�43
Beal, Councillor Michael, Sheffield.
Beales, Edmond, M.A., Lincoln’s Inn, London.
Beard, Bev. Charles, B.A., Liverpool.
Becker, Miss Lydia E., Manchester.
Belsey, F. H., Rochester.
Bennett, J. N., Plymouth.
Bessemer, Henry, Denmark Hill, London.
Best, Hon. and Rev. Samuel, M.A., Andover, Hampshire.
Binns, Rev. William, Devonport.
Birks, Rev. John, Kingswood Parsonage, near Alvechurch.
Bond, Francis T., M.D., Southampton.
Booth, Charles, Liverpool.
Bowring, Sir John, LL.D., Exeter.
Brodie, Dr., Edinburgh.
Brown, John, J.P., Merionethshire.
Brodie, E. H., Inspector of Schools, London.
Brodie, Rev. P. B., Rowington, near Warwick.
Brodrick, the Hon. George, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
Brock, G. B., J.P., Swansea.
Brown, Aiderman E. R., Plymouth.
Brown, Potto, Houghton.
Bunce, J. Thackray, F.S.S., Birmingham.
Burch, A. E., J.P., Bedford.
Butcher, William, Bristol.
Butler, Mrs., Liverpool.
Caldicott, Rev. J. W., M.A., Grammar School, Bristol.
Campbell, Rev. Dr., Bradford.
Carpenter, Rev. J. Estlin, M.A., Leeds.
Carson, W. H., Warminster.
Chadwick, Edwin, C.B., Mortlake, Surrey.
Chamberlain, J. H., F.R.I.B.A., Birmingham.
Churchill, Lord A. S., 16, Rutland Gate, London.
Clark, John F., Tarland, Aberdeenshire.
Clarke, Rev. Charles, F.L.S., Birmingham.
Clarke, E. G., Bristol.
Clarke, Joseph, J.P., Southampton.
Collier, W. F., Plymouth.
Cockburn, Mr. Councillor John T., Carlisle.
Cowen, Councillor Joseph, jun., Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Collins, Councillor Henry, M.D., Wolverhampton.
Conway, M. D., Notting Hill Square, London.
Courtauld, Samuel, Essex.
Courtauld, George, near Halstead, Essex.
«
�Coxe, Sir James, M.D., F.R.S., Murrayfield, Edinburgh.
Cremer, W. R., George Street, Euston Road.
Creighton, Mandell, Fellow and Tutor of Merton College, Oxford.
Crosskey, Rev. H. W., F.G.S., Birmingham.
Darnton, Rev. P. W., B.A., Newport, Monmouthshire.
Darwin, C. E., Southampton.
Davies, Jesse Conway, M.D., F.A.S., Holywell, Flintshire.
Davis, Rev. John, Tonmawr, Neath, Glamorganshire.
Dawson, G., M.A., F.G.S., Birmingham.
Deykin, W. H., Edgbaston.
Dick, A. H., M.A., L.L.B., Normal College, Glasgow.
Dixon, Joshua, Winslade, Exeter.
Dowson, Rev. H. E., B.A., Gee Cross, Manchester.
Drake, W., M.A., Hon. Canon of Worcester.
Dyster, Frederic D., M.D., F.L.S., J.P., Tenby.
Eadie, Robert, C.E., LL.D., F.R.G.S., London.
Emanuel, Rev. G. J., B.A., Edgbaston.
Emerson, George R., Editor of Weekly Dispatch.
Esson, Wm., F.R.S., Fellow and Tutor of Merton College,Oxford.
Evans, William H., M.A., J.P., Forde Abbey, Dorsetshire.
Everett, J. D., M.A., D.C.L., Queen’s College, Belfast.
Falconer, Thomas, F.G.S., County Court Judge, Usk.
Fallows, W., J.P., Middlesbro’.
Faunthorpe, J. P., M.A., St. John’s College, Battersea.
Fawcett, Mrs., The Close, Salisbury.
Ferguson, Robert M., Carlisle.
Fleming, A., M.D., Birmingham.
Foster, Michael, F.R.C.S., Huntingdon.
Foster, Dr. Michael, London University.
Foster, G. C., B.A,, F.R.S., University College.
Fowle, Rev. T. W., M.A., Cambridge Place, London.
Fry, Herbert, Editor of “ Our Schools,” &c., London.
Fuller, W. M., Wolverhampton.
Fuller, Rev. A. G., Wolverhampton.
Gairdner, W. 8., M.D., Glasgow.
George, Rev. H. B., Fellow of New College, Oxford.
Goodeve, H. H., M.D., Bristol.
Gotch, F. W., L.L.D., Baptist College, Bristol.
Grant, David, Ecclesall College, Sheffield.
Grayson, Charles, Liverpool.
Greenbank, Professor, L.L.D., Manchester.
Grenfell, J. G., B.A., Birmingham.
Grinrod, R. B., M.D., L.L.D., Malvern.
�45
Groome, William, B.A., F.G.S., Bedford.
Guise, Sir William Vernon, Bart., F.G.S., F.L.S., Gloucester.
Hall, Rev. Edward, M.A., Eton College.
Hammond, James L., M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Camb.
Hanham, Captain, J., R.N., near Blandford, Dorsetshire.
Hankin, C. W., M.A., Grammar School, Southampton.
Hansard, Rev. S., M.A., Bethnal Green, London.
Harris, William, Birmingham.
Hatton, Thomas S., Wednesbury.
Haycroft, Rev. Nathaniel, M.A., D.D., Leicester.
Heathcote, Rev. H. J., Erdington.
Herbert, the Hon. A., London.
Hicks, Wm., Salisbury.
Hildick, John, Mayor of Walsall.
Hill, Rev. Micaiah, Braithwaite Road, Edgbaston.
Hill, Sir Rowland, London.
Hinks, John, Edgbaston.
Hodges, J. T., M.D., F.C.S., Queen’s College, Belfast.
Hodgson, W. B., L.L.D., Grove End Road, London.
Holden, Angus, Bradford.
Holland, Henry, Mayor of Birmingham.
Holland, Samuel, J.P., Glanwilliam, Tan-y-Bwlch.
Holyoake, G. J., Waterloo Chambers, London.
Hoppus, Rev. John, L.L.D., F.R.S., Camden Street, London.
Horton, Rev. H. H., M.A., Gerrard Street, Birmingham.
Howard, Hon. George, Haworth Castle, Brampton, Cumberland.
Howard, Rev. W. W., H.M. Inspector of Schools, Exeter.
Huth, Edward, Huddersfield.
Hutton, Charles W. C., ex-Slieriff of London.
Howell, George, Buckingham Street, Strand, London.
Huxley, Professor, St. John’s Wood, London.
Jackson, Rev. Edward, M.A., St. James’s, Leeds.
James, Rev. A., Bewdley.
James, Rev. William, Clifton.
Jeaffreson, C. H., Giggleswick Grammar School.
Jevons, Professor W. S., Withington, Manchester.
Jones, Rev. Griffith, Bridgend, Glamorganshire.
Jones, Rev. Hugh, Llangollen.
Jones, Rev. James, Barmouth.
Jones, Rev. T. S., Trewen, Cardiganshire.
Jackson, T. W., Fellow Worcester College, Oxford.
Kane, Sir Robert, L.L.D., F.R.S., Queen’s College, Cork.
Kedwards, Rev. J., Lye Waste, Cradley.
�46
King, William, Queen’s College, Galway.
Kingsley, Rev. Canon, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S., Eversley Rectory,
Winchfield.
Kirk, John S., Ph. D., M.A., Carnarvon.
Lambert, Rev. Brooke, Whitechapel.
Lampard, Joseph, St. Mark Street, Birmingham.
Langley, J. B., M.R.C.S., F.L.S., Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Larkin, Rev. E. R., M.A., Burton, near Lincoln.
Leckenby, John, J.P., F.G.S., Scarborough.
Lee, Rev. F. F., D.D., Lancaster.
Lees, Harold, Woodheys, Sale, Manchester.
Leppoc, H. J., Manchester.
Lestrange, Thomas, Belfast.
Levi, Professor Leone, F.S.A., F.S.S., King’s College, London.
Liveing, G. D., M.A., St. John’s College, Cambridge.
Lloyd, Sampson, Wednesbury.
Lloyd, Thomas, J.P., Priory, Warwick.
Locket, Joseph, J.P., Dunoon, Argyleshire.
Lowe, T. C., B.A., Handsworth.
Lubbock, Sir John, Bart., London.
Lupton, Darnton, J.P., Leeds.
Lushington, G. Westminster.
Lushington, Vernon, Q.C., Temple.
Lyell, Sir Charles, Bart., L.L.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., London.
M‘Cance, Finlay, J.P., Suffolk, Antrim, Ireland.
MacCarthy, Rev. F. E. M., M.A., Second Master of King
Edward’s School, Birmingham.
Mander, C. B., J.P., Wolverhampton.
Martineau, Robert, J.P., Edgbaston.
Martineau, Russell, M.A., British Museum, London.
Maginnis, Rev. D., Stourbridge.
Manton, Aiderman, Birmingham.
Mason, Hugh, Ashton-under-Lyne
Mason, Josiah, Birmingham.
Maxfield, M., Leicester.
Maxse, Captain R.N., Southampton.
McLaren, Rev. Alexander, Manchester.
McMichael, Rev. N., D.D., Edinburgh.
Miles, Rev. C. P., M.A., F.L.S., Monkwearmouth, Durham.
Millard, J. H., B.A., Huntingdon.
Mills, John, Manchester.
Milner, Edward, Warrington.
Molyneux, William, F.G.S., Burton-on-Trent.
�47
Mottram, Rev. W., Warminster.
Moses, Rev. R. G., B.A., Falmouth.
Muller, Professor Max, University, Oxford.
Murcli, 0. J., Recorder of Barnstaple and Bideford.
Murch, Jerom, Bath.
New, Herbert, Evesham.
Nicholls, John, Mayor of Launceston, Cornwall.
Norrington, Councillor Henry, Exeter.
Odger, George, Bloomsbury, London.
Oram, Richard, Stonehouse, Devonshire.
Osborne, Aiderman E. C., Birmingham.
Osborne, Captain Sherard, Hyde Park.
Page, David, L.L.D., F.R.S.E., 38, Gilmore Place, Edinburgh.
Paget, Charles, J.P., Nottingham.
Parker, Rev. J. W., Banbury.
Paul, Rev. C. Regan, Sturminster Marshall, Dorsetshire.
Pease, Thomas, F.G.S., Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol.
Prange, F. G., Liverpool.
Pemberton, Oliver, Birmingham.
Pentecost, J., Stourbridge.
Pinnock, Henry, Newport, Isle of Wight.
Pulsford, Rev. William, D.D., Glasgow.
Purdy, Frederick, F.S.S., Poor Law Board, London.
Prichard, Thomas, M.D., Abington Abbey, Northamptonshire.
■Quain, Dr. Richard, F.R.S., University College, London.
Radford, Wm., Birmingham.
Raffles, J., Birmingham.
Ransome, Robert C., Ipswich.
Rathbone, P. H., Liverpool.
Rawlinson, Robert, C'.B., West Brompton.
Rawlinson, Sir Christopher, C.B., Upton-on-Severn.
Reed, E. J., Chief Constructor of the Navy, Whitehall.
Richards, R. C., J.P., Clifton Lodge, near Preston.
Rigby, Samuel, J.P., Warrington.
Ritchie, Rev. W., Liskeard, Cornwall.
Roberts, Rev. J. B., Alnwick, Northumberland.
Rothera, G. B., Nottingham.
Rogers, Professor J. E. Thorold, Oxford.
Roper, Richard, F.G.S., F.C.S., Cwmbraen, near Newport, Mon.
Roscoe, Professor, Owen’s College, Manchester. •
Rowlands, Rev. David, B.A., Welchpool.
Ryland, Aiderman Arthur, Birmingham.
Rumney, Aiderman, Manchester.
�48
Sales, Henry H., Leeds.
Salt, Councillor Titus, jun., Bradford.
Sandford, Archdeacon, Alvechurch.
Sandwith, Humphrey, C.B., Denbigh.
Schmitz, L., L. L.D., Ph. D., International College, London.
Scott, Thomas, Ramsgate.
Seeley, Harry G., F.G.S., St. John’s College, Cambridge.
Shaen, W., M.A., Bedford Row, London.
Short, Rev. J. L., Kenwood Road, Sheffield.
Sieveking, Edward IL, M.D., Manchester Square, London.
Simons, W., Merthyr Tydvil.
Smith, Joseph, M.D., J.P., 'Warrington.
Stansfeld, James, Halifax.
Stanley, the Hon. E. L., Aderley Park, Congleton.
Steinthal, Rev. S. A., Manchester.
Stock, Rev. John, LL.D., Devonport.
Strut, Rev, J. C., Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Style, Rev. George, Giggleswick Grammar School.
Sully, G. B., Mayor of Bridgwater.
Symonds, Rev. W. S., Tewkesbury.
Symonds, Dr., Clifton, Bristol.
Tait, Lawson, F.R.C.S., Wakefield.
Teschemaker, Major T. R., Sydenham, Kent.
Thomas, Rev. John, B.A., Huddersfield.
Thomas, Christopher J., J.P., Bristol.
Thomas, Rev. IT. R., Bristol.
Thomas, Rev. W., Llandyssul, Cardiganshire.
Thursfield, James R., Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford.
Tichbourne, C. R. C., F.C.S., Dublin.
Tonks, Edmund, B.C.L., Knowle.
Trevelyan, Arthur, J.P., Teynholm, East Lothian.
Trimble, Robert, Liverpool.
Turner, J. P., Handsworth.
Vince, Rev. Charles, Birmingham.
Voysey, Rev. Charles, B.A., Healaugh Vicarage.
Webb, C. Locock, Lincoln’s Inn.
Wilson, Rev. H. B., St. Neots.
Williams, Rev. Rowland, LL.D., Broadclialke Vicarage.
Williams, Evan, M.A., Merthyr Tydvil.
Wolstenholme, Miss E. C., Moody Hall, Congleton.
Wright, J. S., Birmingham.
Zincke, Rev. F. Barham, M.A., Ipswich.
�49
And that the Executive Committee consist of the Officers and
forty members of the League, namely, the following thirty gentle
men, and ten others to be chosen by them and the officers :—
Booth, Charles, Liverpool.
Bunce, J. Thaekray, F.S.S., Birmingham.
Caldicott, Rev. J. W., M.A., Bristol.
Chamberlain, J. H., F.R.I.B.A., Birmingham.
Chamberlain, Joseph, Birmingham.
Clarke, Rev. Charles, F.L.S., Birmingham.
Crosskey, Rev. H. W., F.G.S., Birmingham.
Dawson, George, M.A., F.G.S., Birmingham.
Ferguson, Major, Carlisle.
Field, Alfred, Birmingham.
Fry, Herbert, London.
Harris, William, Birmingham.
Herbert, the Hon. Auberon, London.
Hodgson, W.B., LL.D., London.
Holden, Angus, Bradford.
Holland, Henry, Mayor of Birmingham.
Howell, George, London.
Huth, Edward, Huddersfield.
Kenrick, William, Birmingham.
Kingsley, Rev. Canon, Eversley.
Maxfield, M., Leicester.
Maxse, Captain, R.N., Southampton.
Middlemore, William, Birmingham.
Osborne, E. C., Birmingham.
Osler, Follett, F.R.S., Birmingham.
Ryland, Arthur, Birmingham.
Simons, William, Merthyr Tydvil.
Steinthal, Rev. S. A., Manchester.
Vince, Rev. Charles, Birmingham.
Wright, J. S., Birmingham.
Zincke, Rev. F. B., M.A., Ipswich.
The Chairman : Dr. Hodgson, of London—one of the five or
six gentlemen who started the Manchester National Association for
Secular Eate-paid Education in 1847—will second the resolution.
Dr. Hodgson : My friend Mr. Potter, who preceded me, has
described the motion as one of form • but still I am sure that it will
be received with that feeling of interest and enthusiasm which .it
properly deserves, both on account of the character of the persons
D
�50
to be appointed and the greatness of the object which they will have
in hand to promote. The list of the Executive Committee contains
a large number of members of Parliament who have distinguished
themselves in various ways ; but this may be said of the body col
lectively, that it is composed almost wholly of gentlemen who have
brought this union to its present position, and what they have
already done is a guarantee of what they may be expected to do.
The best way to prove our gratitude to them for services already
rendered is to call upon them to continue those services, and to come
before us next year with a large account of work done. The
President’s reference to the Manchester Association leads me to say
that although death has thinned the ranks of those who composed
that association for obtaining secular rate-paid education, there still
remains a large number who, instead of looking upon the labours of
this League with jealousy, will hail its co-operation with the greatest
earnestness and enthusiasm, not even desiring to meet it in friendly
rivalry. I beg to second the resolution.
In reply to a gentleman who spoke from the body of the hall,
The President said : In the selection of the names mentioned
in the resolution, the principle of having all parts of the country
represented has been carried out.
Mr. Albright : I should like to know if the name of Mr. G. B.
Lloyd is on the Council.
The President : His name is on it.
Dr. Bligh : The suggestion I would make is that in the place of
the words “ ten gentlemen,” &c., the words “ with power to add to
their number” should be inserted. And I do so for this reason, that
whilst I do not in any way doubt the discretion of the Executive
in nominating these gentlemen to the Council, I consider that as the
movement extends all over the country there is room for the taking
in of a large number of representative men not now on the Council.
I beg to move that suggestion.
The President : The objection to that suggestion is that the
executive body ought to be small. It might under your suggestion
become unwieldy ; but still if it is the wish of the meeting that the
alteration should be made, the Committee, of course, will be very
glad to adopt it.
•
�51
A Gentleman : Perhaps the matter might be got over by making
vice-presidents.
The President : We have no vice-presidents. Vice-presidents
are only ornamental people, and we require no ornamental people
here.
The Rev. H. Solly, of London: I do not see the name of any
Congregational minister on the list. I do not belong to that body
myself; but I know that they are very zealous in the cause of
education, and I think it is only fair that they should be repre
sented.
The President : When we have some Congregational minister
willing to join and work upon the Executive Committee, we shall
be very willing to receive his name and to appoint him. We were
very willing to appoint the Rev. R. W. Dale; but some scruple
upon a minor point has prevented him from joining hitherto. If
Mr. Solly will undertake the duty of inducing that gentleman to
join we shall be very glad. These minor points wiU soon settle
themselves.
The resolution, as altered in accordance with the suggestion of
Dr. Bligh, was put to the meeting and agreed to.
NATIONAL EDUCATION BILL.
Professor Eawcett, M.P. for Brighton, rose to move that a
Bill embodying the principles of the League be introduced into
Parliament. He said: The resolution I have the honour and
pleasure to move will give a pledge to the whole nation that this
League, representing a great and an increasing force of public
opinion, is resolved to adopt practical and decisive action. The
subject of national education has now happily advanced a stage
beyond that of doubt and inquiry; it has reached the stage when it
is ripe for action. The reproach is too often with truth made
against Leagues and Congresses that they begin with talk, they go
on with talk, they end in talk, and that is their only result. But
if from this meeting a Btll shall emanate, the whole country will
then see placed in a practical form, in a definite shape—so definite
that they will be able to express their opinions upon it—what are
the views we hold upon this great question, and how we think
�52
these views may be practically carried out. It may be said, of
course, that Government intends to introduce an Education Bill
next session, and that we who repose confidence in the Govern
ment should wait until we see what its measure is. In reply to
that possible objection to this resolution, it is only necessary to
remark that if the Government measure—I am afraid it is too
bright an anticipation—comes up to what we require, if it
embodies the principles of this League, then all that we shall have
to do will be at once to withdraw the Bill which we introduce into
Parliament, and use the whole strength of this organisation in
support of the Government and its measure. But if, on the
other hand, the Government measure should have in it any
shortcomings which we conceive are antagonistic to the great
principles of this League—we cannot, of course, expect that any
measure will meet our programme in all its detail—but if, for
instance, the Government measure should infringe any of our
great fundamental principles—if it should be too denominational
in its character—if it should commit what, to my mind, is the fatal
mistake of having compulsory rating without compulsory
attendance—then our bill will be before the country, and the
nation will be able to decide—and I think I can anticipate their
decision with confidence—to which measure they will give their
support. Now, it would be idle to deny that it is impossible for
the great body of men who compose this League to be entirely
agreed upon details ; but so long as we can get our great aim and
ends secured, we should, I venture to say, sacrifice our individual
preferences upon minor points; and I for one am prepared on all
questions of detail to give up my own opinions and bow cheerfully
to the sentiments of the majority. Thus I may have my own
opinions as to which would be the best title to adopt—undenomi
national, secular, or unsectarian; but I am perfectly prepared to
accept any one of these three words which the majority of the
League think should be the word in our programme. Then again,
I have a preference for parents paying for the education of their
children, instead of sending them to free schools ; but here again
I am perfectly willing to give up my own individual opinions, and
if the majority of the Conference is in favour of free schools, I,
�53
for one, will not shrink for a moment. What I conceive to he the
fundamental principle of this organisation, what I look upon as
the essential point upon which every one of us must be agreed,
which is the bond of our union, the basis of our existence, is this :
that we are absolutely determined that elementary education shall
be guaranteed to every boy and girl in this country, and that if
there is a deficiency of educational appliances, then schools shall
be built and maintained out of the rates. Upon this fundamental
principle I conceive that there can be no difference whatever
amongst us. Now comes the question, if we are to have a Bill,
what are to be the main principles of this Bill, in order to carry
out compulsory attendance and compulsory rating? As far as I
understand the programme of the League, they contemplate that
the schools—at any rate, in the first instance, the rate-supported
schools—shall be unsectarian, and not secular. For a long time, I
must confess, I found it somewhat difficult to discover the differ
ence between these phrases. I think the best explanation that can
be given of the difference is this: that in the rate-supported
schools no catechism shall be used, no dogmas of religion shall be
taught, but it shall be perfectly optional with the managers of a
school whether, in that school, the Bible shall be read, without
any such comment as persons would object to from sectarian
feeling. Therefore, if we adopt this plan of having unsectarian
schools, I think we at once meet the argument of those who say
that the education we propose will be irreligious. No one, I
think, can pretend to say that the British and Foreign schools in
this country are irreligious schools ; and, to put our meaning about
unsectarian schools in a definite and intelligible form, it seems to
me that what we contemplate is this : there will be nothing
whatever in our programme to prevent the managers of ratesupported schools from making their schools exactly analogous in
their religious character to the schools which at present belong to
the British and Foreign School organisation. These schools are
not irreligious ; they are supported by Nonconformists, who have
shown the greatest enthusiasm, for religion. The second point is
this: Do we propose to deal with existing schools ? We
contemplate, I conceive, leaving existing schools untouched. If
�54
a district or a locality prefer voluntaryism to compulsion—if they
choose by their own efforts to provide themselves with schools
according to the present system, they should have the power to do
so. We only contemplate that the educational rate should be
imposed in those districts in which the Government inspector
reports that the educational appliances are not adequate for the
education of all the children in the locality. Now, the next point
is this : is it better that these schools should he supported by
rates, or from the national exchequer ? I believe some gentlemen
who are entirely in favour of the great principle of compulsory
education have not joined our League because they think that
schools should be supported from the Consolidated Fund, and not
from the rates. In reply to these gentlemen I would only say
thus much—that I believe that if you take money from the
Consolidated Fund there is a chance of its being extravagantly
administered, and that if we made a proposal to take
it from the Consolidated Fund we should at once declare
open war against existing schools, for it would be idle to
pretend that any existing schools could continue if the public
could draw for the support of schools from the Consolidated Fund.
In reply to those gentlemen who are in favour of existing schools,
and wish to see them maintained, we can truly say that there is
nothing whatever in our programme that is in the least degree
antagonistic to those schools. If events should show that ratesupported schools are better, then of course the existing schools
would gradually cease. But it is quite possible to conceive that the
power to levy an educational rate may give a great stimulus to the
existing schools, for it is quite possible that many clergymen and
ministers of religion, who now find it difficult or almost impossible
to support their schools, in consequence of the shabbiness and
stinginess of the landed proprietors, may be able to induce them to
come forward if they can use this practical argument, that, unless
they subscribe, rates will be levied upon them and their tenants.
Therefore it is quite possible in some cases that compulsory rating,
instead of touching the present system, may give it a greater
stimulus and render it far more efficient. The last point, upon
which I should like to say a few words—and I speak upon it chiefly
�55
to show you that I am anxious, as far as possible, to be conciliatory
—is upon the question of free schools. I know there is a very
strong feeling in this League in favour of making education free,
but what I object to in this may be briefly stated in one sentence :
I fear the principle of free education may weaken that sentiment of
responsibility which parents should feel towards their children. I
think we should lay down the doctrine that it is as much the duty
■of the parent to provide his child with education as it is to provide
him with food and clothing. I know it may be said, in reply to my
objections, that in certain extreme cases you support the child upon
the rates—that you will not let children starve, but as a last
resource you maintain them upon the rates. Yes ; but if the parent
refuses to support his child when he has the means to do so, you
say that he shall be punished—he commits a criminal act. Simi
larly I should hold that rather than let a child’s mind be starved, as
a last resource he should be provided with a free education ; but I
should like to see the principle never sacrificed, that if a parent who
has the means to give his child education refuses to do so, he too
should be regarded as being guilty of a criminal act. I know it
may be said every parent will contribute indirectly through the
■rates. There is no doubt some force in that argument; but it
would be equally, just to say it was the duty of the State to feed
and clothe children, and not the duty of parents, because the money
devoted to the purpose would be taken from the taxes, and there
fore parents would in the aggregate contribute. But this after all
is only a detail of the great measure we have in view; and I am per
fectly willing to sacrifice my own individual views. If we introduce
a Bill next session, let me give you one word of advice—let it be
introduced almost the very first day of the session. Anyone who
knows the House of Commons will know the importance of that.
And let it be forced on through all its stages. My short experience
in the House of Commons has taught me that persistence is a most
valuable quality. "When we have prepared this Bill, let us never
abandon it until the Government is prepared to carry a measure
similar to it, or until that day will arrive—and I believe it will
never arrive—when the nation shall unmistakeably express its
'desire that the great problem of national education should be settled
�56
upon principles different from those which form the basis of our
organization. I beg to move, “ That the Executive Council be
instructed to prepare a Bill embodying the principles of this League,
and that that Bill be introduced in the early part of next session.”
Professor Thorold Rogers, seconded the resolution, He said :
When I entered again into your town of Birmingham, the first little
phenomenon that came before my attention was the conclusion of
an article in a local paper, that article being, I make no doubt,
exceedingly intelligent and instructive. It was to the effect that,
if we who compose together the body of this Education League
should succeed in proving our point, should show that we had not
hitherto been the decided enemies of education, but that we
intend—I am only paraphrasing the language of the article—a
vast public good, then the editor of this paper, and I suppose
those who read it, will quite abandon for ever the opposition which
they feel towards us, and come over to our side. Now, I am not in
a position to determine the exact numerical value of this possible
conversion. I dare say it will be very considerable. But even if
it be small, ladies and gentlemen, I think we may have reason to
congratulate ourselves ; because our main object—or at least, one
of our main objects—is the reformation of the dangerous classes.
Now, gentlemen, the central point of our Bill, of the movement which
We propose, is the object with which the whole statement of the pur
poses of this National League commences : the establishment of a
system which shall secure the education of every child in the
country. That, I repeat, is the central point, the great object,
the true meaning that we have in all that we say and undertake.
For my part, I think that if we can only achieve the general accep
tance of this principle, all the other points—points of detail—
which have been adverted to in the report readjust now, and which
may hereafter come up for consideration, will follow as a matter of
logical necessity. I entirely agree with my friend Mr. Potter, and
the previous speaker, that if we establish a compulsory system of
education, it is a matter of necessity that that compulsory
education should be supplied, in some form or other, from
public funds. I also agree entirely with Mr. Potter, that if you do
establish a system of compulsory education, the machinery of which
�57
is supplied from the public funds, it must inevitably be what people
call secular, unsectarian, undenominational. I feel, ladies and
gentlemen, that to dispute or doubt about the position laid down by
those gentlemen, is to be ignorant of the facts of the society in
which we live; and that whether we like it or not, for the very welldefined reasons glanced at, I was glad to see, by Mr. Dawson, we
must thoroughly accept their necessary and proper conclusion. I
shall not indeed, for I think it is out of question now, enter into
the reasons why I hold these views, differing as I do upon theological
topics at least—as I understand—from Mr. Dawson. Well, that is
the only allusion I shall make to the subject. But anything like a
Permissive Bill would be wholly and hopelessly out of place.
I will here allude to a distinguished individual in the Church to
which I belong—Archdeacon Denison; with whom, by the way,
I do not agree in almost any point whatever. He avowed one
of the finest sentiments I ever heard in my life the other
day, to the effect that all permissive legislation was a hoax,
a sham, and a delusion. All education, I think, must be
universal and compulsory ■ and it must, I also think, be sup
plied from some public fund. What that fund shall be I do not
intend to discuss now, because I have prepared a paper to read on
that subject this afternoon. How then, having cleared the way
in this fashion, let us, endeavouring to reply to the objections
urged against us, say why we should carry out the platform which
is before us to-day. I was at some trouble to investigate, with
Dr. Barr, of the Registrar General’s office, what might be the
number of children in this country above five and under thirteen
years of age—a period of life during which, I imagine, this
education would be generally bestowed—and we concluded that
there were very nearly four millions and a half of such children in
England and Wales. Now, we know from the little book pub
lished annually by the Board of Trade that the number of children
educated in schools under inspection is about twelve hundred
thousand. I confess that I think it will be a very liberal estimate
to say that a million and a half more are being educated by their
parents, in schools that will not accept Government grants, and
by those various other methods of voluntary teaching which, to
�58
a large degree, supplement public education in this country. Thus
I am left with the horrid conclusion that nearly two millions of
children between the ages of five and thirteen are not getting any
education at all! I sincerely agree with my friend Archdeacon
Sandford, in confessing that I think that that Christianity is a very
queer sort of fabric that will suffer men to be willing that some
thing like two millions of children should grow, up in ignorance
and sin a scandal to the whole civilised world—because they
cannot make up their minds whether or not these children should
be taught something which is no necessary part of school education
at all. I should like the gentleman who edits that local newspaper
to ask himself the question—if he is content, under existing
circumstances, to grapple with the problem, and supposing he will
not accept general and compulsory education—how he proposes to
provide against the growing and terrible fact that you have so
many thousands and tens of thousands of children in this country
who are getting no proper education and culture at all. It is all
very well to talk about our institutions, and to laud the state of
things that exists, but underneath what we see there is a great deal
that is not seen, or that, being seen, is not seen with sufficiently
careful and scrutinising eyes; and amongst those facts nothing is
to me more terrible than that whole hosts of children should
be living and growing up without the smallest prospect of having
their minds or morals trained—and I quite believe that no man
can have his mind trained without his morals being trained
likewise, and that the training of the mind should be antece
dent to the training of the morals. I confess that the difficulty
raised by Professor Fawcett appears to me to be superfluous,
and I will tell you why. If I argue on abstract grounds, he may
object to my commenting on what he said, and may say he has a
right to his belief. But my proofs are derived from existing facts.
What is the country, among the people of our own race, where
there is the most education given by the Government'? It is the
United States. I will not say that there they have compulsory
education, but they have so extended a system that compulsion is
not needed. The education is provided by the State; but does
anyone tell us that American fathers and mothers do not care for it ?
�59
There are no people under the canopy of heaven who are more
willing to make sacrifices, and none amongst whom the results of
education are more satisfactory. We are told—and it is true, at
any rate, of the Northern States—that there is hardly a child to he
found, born of American parents, who does not derive benefits from
the law of education. What reason is there to suppose that if we
get a system like it—or, considering the ignorance of our people, a
more stringent system—our people will not also be desirous of
giving the benefits of education to their children ? I should like to
put this before the editor of your local paper. He says there does
not seem to be any profound anxiety for the progress we intend. I
can only say that I made many speeches about the country to
working men last year, and I constantly alluded to the absolute
necessity of having this system of compulsory education, and I have
no hesitation in saying that whenever I mentioned it there was,
without any exception, a unanimous shout of applause. They
always tell you in their conversation that, surrounded as they are by
people who will not educate their children, and on account of the
freedom they have necessarily to give their children, and of the
circumstances under which they have to be so much away from
them, they are driven to demand that there should be that compul
sion put on the whole mass of their numbers which may or may
not be necessary for the education of those who are in a better
condition of life—to whom the advantages of a good education are
not more obvious, but to whom the machinery of a good education
is at present more accessible. Now we shall be told, I dare say,
that we are a number of unimportant persons ; we shall be informed
by some of the organs of the gentlemanly press that very few
members of Parliament were present, that the parties collected
together were local obscurities, and that the movement, as it has
been started, is one which any respectable people may very well
pooh-pooh. I should like to ask those who are familiar with
political agitation whether it was ever begun by influential persons 1
You may depend on it that if you wait for a national education
till you get, I will not say the whole Liberal party in the House of
Commons, but the influential people in this country, to support it,
■ you will wait till Doomsday before you get it. I challenge denial
�60
of the fact that almost all social, political, and economical reforms
have commenced with the labours of persons whom the gentlemanly
press calls obscurities. Professor Fawcett, as a member of Par] is ment, gives you advice. Let me, as sincerely wishing the success
of this movement, give you this advice : Be content with nothing
but your Bill. You lay down a principle which is theoretically
unassailable, and that principle involves means logically necessary;
let no attempt divert you from these ends. If your principle is
admitted, if the Bill introduced by Government during the next
session involves your principle, you may safely leave the details to
be worked out afterwards; but if the principle is not taken up you
had better go without the Bill than have your principle broken up.
Gentlemen here can remember the progress of the agitation for the
repeal of the Corn Laws, which I need not say was one of the
greatest triumphs the country ever, achieved. That was almost
wrecked at the commencement by the proposal for an 8s. duty.
The advocates of the Anti Com Law League—a League greater in
its historic importance, but not greater in its object than our own—
resolved that no such compromise should be accepted, and held to
the doctrine of total and unconditional repeal. And so I venture
to say it will be your wisdom, and I am certain it will be your
success, if you hold to the total and unconditional concession of the
principle which stands at the head of these statements that are
made in italics. Stick to that, and you will win; abandon it for
anything that falls short of it, and you are pretty certain to lose.
The enemies of national education, and they are many, count on
disunion in your ranks, or timidity on the part of some who sup
port you. They expect you will put up with something less than
you demand, and they know that if you do, you will not get what
you ought to have. I second the resolution.
Mr. Lloyd Jones, in the absence of Mr. George Odger, supported
the resolution : He came to the meeting, he said, certainly of his
ewn desire, but also as the representative of a body of men sitting
in London, composed for the most part of secretaries of the largest
trades’ unions in the kingdom. Those men had organized them
selves for the purpose of securing, if possible, the return of working
men to the British House of Parliament. That was their special
�61
object; but when they heard that the League had been organized,
that its agitation was about to commence, they at once took up the
question as one the most deeply interesting that could be brought
before them, affecting as it did the particular business of their lives.
There was a large number of members present at the meeting which
was called to consider the matter, and not one word of objection was
uttered to the platform of the League. On the contrary, they passed
a resolution declaring that the principles of the League were worthy
of hearty support, and promising to assist the object in view by
every means in their power. That resolution was signed by a large
number of secretaries, one of whom represented between 30,000 and
40,000 engineers. Now, in entering that resolution, he could not
pledge himself that the League would have the moral and practical
support of the men of all trades in London; but he thought he
might pledge himself that it would at least have the support of all
those men represented in the names subscribed to the resolution,
and in saying that he really gave in the adhesion of the working
classes of the country. He was an old working man himself, and
his sympathies, therefore, were with the working men. "Whenever
he could labour with them for the furtherance of any great object, he
invariably did so. His own professional pursuits now compelled him
to go through a deal of reading which was by no means so dry as many
people were disposed to think : he referred to the blue books issued
by the Government. Now, if they referred to the reports of those
gentlemen who were sent by Government to report upon the pro
ducts of industry in the various countries of the world, they would
find that whilst they in England were disputing and debating
about creeds and differences in theology—subjects, no doubt, very
interesting and important in, their way—other nations were
giving a practical education to their people, who were rising
up, not to discuss and fight about theology, but to carry
off the industry of this country in cotton and wool and
iron. If they did not give to the artizans of this country
the same educational advantages as those enjoyed by the
artizans of other nations, they shut them out from competition •
for the markets were open to foreigners as well as to English
men. Why, then, permit other countries to beat their own in
�62
the educational and technical stimulus required for the perfection of
industry ? They might depend upon it, that if this question of
education was not speedily and satisfactorily settled, England would
go back as a nation, not theologically, but in the skill and power
of her industry—she would lose her manufacturing supremacy,
and when she had lost that he was afraid their theological disputes
would be of very little use or interest. Mr. Murray, one of the
Commissioners who reported upon the cotton fabrics at the
Exposition at Paris in 1867, describing the Swiss goods, said that
if in all countries there existed such a good system of education
as in Switzerland, the commercial position of England would be
menaced in various ways. Again, Mr. Massey, who reported upon
the woollen goods, said that there was no doubt the French were
greatly indebted for their progress in manufactures to the very
superior technical education which was obtained by the artizans
through schools instituted for special instruction. Mr. Massey
argued that if in England they wanted to have skilled working
men, special regard must be given to general education. Now, they
stood there to-day in the presence of as great an educational
failure as had ever taken place on the face of the earth. The
denominational system had promised to do everything, yet they
were told from the platform that day, that there were above two
•million children in the country receiving no education at all ! That
was a state of things utterly discreditable to them as a nation, and
did they not adjust their differences and throw overboard their
prejudices, England would sink as a nation in position and influence,
theology not being able to save them from the fall.
The Rev. H. E. Dowson, addressing the Chairman, said : I
understood that we came here to support secular education, but I
find that we are now asked to support the British School system,
and against that I utterly protest. I say it is a compromise, and
every compromise deserves to fail.
The Chairman : Mr. Dowson has entirely misunderstood what
has taken place. We do not use the word “ secular”; but we
exclude all theological parts of religion, and I am sure that what
is left is what even Mr. Dowson himself would call “ secular.”
But at any rate, however that may be, Mr. Dowson must remember
�63
that we have placed, or we wish to place, the decision of the
question in the hands of the people themselves in each district, in
the hands of the fathers of children who are to be educated, or,
what is the same thing, their representatives on the school
committees. Before I put the resolution, I wish to make one
remark in reference to an observation which fell from Professor
Bogers. He said that, in the estimation of some people, some
members of the League were “ obscurities.” Now, I do not wish
to point to the gentlemen who have addressed you to-day from this
platform, nor to the 40 members of Parliament heading our list,
nor yet to the 300 or 400 ministers of all denominations who
have joined, nor to the most eminent men of science whose names
appear upon the list ; but I would just say that we have been told
upon the highest authority that we have upon our list of members
certain persons of very great influence—indeed, of much greater
weight and influence than we in Birmingham are at all conscious
of. Therefore, although Professor Rogers is perfectly right in
saying that we depend mainly upon the righteousness and goodness
of our cause; that we intend to go not to celebrities, not to leaders,
but to the people themselves (to whom we look for that strength
and for that power which will ultimately most certainly carry
the measure) ; yet still it will be seen that we are not altogether
“ political obscurities. ”
The resolution was then put and carried, and the meeting
• adjourned.
THE CHAIRMAN’S PAPER ON NATIONAL
SCHOOLS.
On the reassembling of the meeting in the afternoon, the
Chairman read the following paper :—
The paper I am about to read on “ The Best System for National
Schools, based upon Local Rates and Government Grants,” must
not be supposed to emanate from the Provisional Committee, nor to
have any more authority as an exposition of the views of the
National Education League than a paper by any other member
present would have. The central idea in the scheme of the National
�Education League is that the education of the people should no
longer continue to be based exclusively upon the isolated, and often
fitful, efforts of individuals, however noble and valuable those
efforts might be ; but that the State should become responsible for
the education of the whole of its children. This responsibility
need not involve taking immediate charge of all existing schools.
Where education is being satisfactorily carried on there, it may be
that no further action by the State will be required. It will suffice
if provision be made for the transfer to the School Boards of those
schools whose managers may desire it. It appears to me that no
measure for a national system would be complete unless it contained
the following enactments :—The entire cost of erecting or main
taining national-rate schools, to be defrayed out of the rates and
taxes of the country, in the proportion of one-third from the former
and two-thirds from the latter. The principle of payment on results
to be continued. Power to be given for the compulsory purchase
of school sites. In every county and in every large municipality a
School Board to be elected of the ratepayers or their representatives.
These Boards shall ascertain where schools are wanted, and see that
they are provided; shall negociate the transfer of existing schools
to the local authorities, whenever such transfer is desired by the
managers, and will be advantageous to the district; shall appoint
committees to manage schools or groups of schools ; shall levy the
necessary rates, claim the Government grants, and pay all the
expenses of the schools; shall keep registers of all the children of
school age within their districts, placing opposite to each child’s
name that of the school which may be fixed upon by the parents,
guardians, or school officers, and shall send a list of the names and
addresses of the children assigned to each school to the respective
school committees; shall appoint school officers to make out and
periodically revise the above registers, and undertake the duty of
enforcing attendance, under the direction of the school committees.
(The duties of these school officers might be performed by the school
master in thinly-populated districts, and where the schools are
small.) Shall fix the number of, and the period for, the attendances
to be required of children in the course of the year, within the
limits prescribed by the Committee of Privy Council on Education ;
�65
and shall take care that all other provisions of the Act of Parliament
under which they are appointed be carried out. The School Com
mittees shall appoint the masters and mistresses, subject to the
approval of the School Boards ; shall see that the school buildings
are kept in repair, and supervise and sanction the expenditure of the
school; shall report to the School Boards all irregularities and
infractions of rules ; shall cause registers to be kept of the attend
ances of all the children belonging to their schools, see that the
school officers call on the parents or guardians of those children who
attend irregularly, or do not attend at all, and acquaint them with
their duties, with the meaning and object of the school laws, and
the penalties following a disregard of them, and shall summon
before them absentee children, or their parents or guardians, and
admonish them; and in the event of their injunctions being dis
obeyed, shall cause them to be summoned before a magistrate, with
whom shall rest the infliction of a fine. All national-rate schools
shall be free, and no catechisms, creeds, or tenets peculiar to any
particular sect shall be taught in them during the recognised
school hours. But the school committee shall have power to
permit the use of the Bible without note or comment, and to grant
the use of the class rooms for religious instruction out of school
hours, on condition that one sect is not favoured more than
another. Whenever a parent or guardian can substantiate a plea
of poverty as a reason for not sending a child to school, and
there is no free school within reach, the committee shall have
power to pay the school fees of such child ; and it shall be
obligatory on the managers of the school selected by the parent, if
such school be receiving Government aid, to admit the child, and
to refrain from teaching it any catechism, creed, or tenet peculiar
to any particular sect. The managers of any non-national rate
school may negotiate with the School Board for its transfer to the
local authorities, and the Board shall, if the transfer be otherwise
desirable, and the managers wish it, agree to appoint the said
managers to be the School Committee, until their resignation or
death, on the condition that all the provisions of the School Act
are observed by them. Her Majesty’s Inspectors shall cease to
examine on religious subjects, and in each district there shall
E
�66
consequently be only one inspector. The number of inspectors
shall be augmented, and the following additional duties shall be
imposed upon them :—They shall report to the Committee of
Privy Council on Education, and to the School Boards—whether,
in their opinion, a sufficient number of efficient schools exists for
the wants of the district; in what schools the education is
defective, and the manner in which the defects can best be
remedied; whether the attendance of the children has been
satisfactory, and if not, whether the proper steps have been taken
to enforce it. In the event of the School Boards failing to obtain
such results as may be deemed satisfactory by the Committee of
Privy Council on Education, it shall be the duty of the Committee
of Privy Council to direct what additional measures are to be
taken, and Her Majesty’s Inspectors shall see that those measures
are adopted. If the scheme above described were carried out, I
am of opinion that we should achieve the following results. We
should avoid the evils of centralisation on the one hand, and of
local inefficiency on the other. Whilst retaining all the advan
tages of local self-government, and of the immediate and direct
action of public opinion based on local knowledge, we should
be guarded by an enlightened inspection and strong Government
control against the danger of our standard of efficiency
being lowered in some districts by the ignorance and niggardliness
of the ratepayers. The new schools provided by the local
authorities would be of a class equal, if not superior, to the best
denominational schools. The heavy responsibilities and large
expenditure involved would prevent the ratepayers from providing
more schools than were absolutely necessary. The new schools
would be mainly, if not entirely, erected in those districts which
are now destitute of them—that is, in those districts where, by
reason of the poverty of the inhabitants, free schools are most
needed. Existing well-managed schools would be able to maintain
their ground, if it be true, as is alleged, that the religious
teaching given in them is valued by the subscribers and by
the parents of the pupils. I would recommend that the
Government grants to all existing denominational schools which
accept a conscience clause should be the same as those to the
�67
national-rate schools—that is, that they should be increased from
the present amount of one-third of the total cost to two-thirds,
thus relieving the managers of one-half of their present responsi
bilities. The remaining half would not be too much to pay for
the assured advantages of religious instruction and the supposed
superiority of voluntary management. It is also probable that
some of these denominational schools would be preferred by
parents as being more select; and as this would in part be owing
to the fees required, those fees would on that account be more
willingly paid. The result of the rivalry that would take place
between the denominational and the national-rate schools might be
that the upper portion of the working classes would prefer the
former for the reasons mentioned above ; but, in my opinion, the
instruction given in the national-rate schools would be found to be
generally so superior as to cause them, in the course of time, to
supersede the others. But the process would be gradual, and no
inconvenience would be felt by the transfer of schools that would
he continually taking place. , Should my anticipations be realised,
I am further of opinion that the knowledge and influence of
religion would become far more widely spread than is now the
case; because the groundwork for it would be universally laid, and
the clergy would be able to devote themselves more exclusively
to the giving of religious instruction. I do not believe that the
spirit of voluntaryism would languish under the new system.
Those persons who now take an interest in primary schools would
he placed on the school committees, and as there would be more
schools, their services would be in greater request. The necessity
for voluntary contributions of money would also be quite as
paramount as ever; but instead of these contributions being
devoted to the building and maintenance of schools for the
higher classes of working men, some, if not all, of whom are well
able to pay the entire cost of the education of their children, they
would be devoted to the providing of clothing and perhaps even of
food, for those destitute children who are now unable to attend
schools of any sort, because they are starving and in rags. The
greatest difficulty in the way of compulsory school attendance is
the sacrifice of the child’s earnings; but this difficulty may be.
�68
considered to have been already grappled with by the Factory
Acts, the extension of which to all parts of the country is called
for by public opinion. In some cases, however, a modification of
the half-time system will be necessary, especially in the agri
cultural districts, where a cessation of school attendance might be
advantageously allowed during the period of harvest. As some
time will elapse before compulsory attendance powers will be
granted to the local authorities, and as they will even then be
inoperative until sufficient schools have been provided, the public
mind will have become prepared for the law before its operation
commences. And inasmuch as its enforcement will be in the
hands of local committees—that is, of gentlemen well known and
esteemed in their respective districts, whose sympathies with the
poor have been already called into active exercise—it is not likely
that the law will be harshly enforced. For a long time the
operations of the committee will be necessarily restricted to the
instruction of the parents in their duties to the children, and it is
probable that one or two cases only of refractory parents being
summoned before a magistrate will suffice to bring into school
nine-tenths of those children who are now idling about the streets.
One important result of the adoption of this system of national
education would be that parents would feel an interest in the
schools unknown, and indeed impossible, before. Hitherto they
have had no voice whatever in the management of that which was
of more importance to them than anything else in the State, and
it is not surprising that the apathy has followed which usually
results from absence of responsibility. It is a common remark of
earnest clergymen that when they are labouring to induce the
attendance of children at school, the attitude of parents is that of
persons who think they are asked to confer a favour, and who
believe that the managers of a school, like the owners of a shop,
have some personal end to serve. But when these parents find
that the schools belong to themselves, that they are paid for
and managed by the people, and that they would save nothing, but
lose much, by not using them, then their attitude towards them
will be entirely changed, and one great obstacle to school
attendance will be removed. Some may shrink from the cost of
�69
so complete a system, but this is one of those cases where a wellregulated expenditure is economy, where the niggardliness of
inefficiency is extravagance. If every child in the United
Kingdom were brought into school the total increased charge
upon the taxpayers of the country would probably not reach onethird of the money expended upon our paupers and our criminals.
The cost per scholar would not be greater if the charge of educa
ting the people were thrown upon the State. The total amount
spent upon education would be augmented only in proportion to
the increase of scholars. The choice before us is expenditure on
education, or expenditure on paupers and criminals.
PROFESSOR THOROLD ROGERS OK SECULAR
EDUCATION.
The Rev. J. E. Thorold Rogers read the following paper :—
I assume that this Congress accepts the position that primary
education should be universal, should be compulsory, should be
as a necessary consequence gratuitous, and that, since the State does
not enforce or constrain any particular form of religious belief, should
be secular. In order to obviate any unfriendly interpretation of
this word, I may state that I do not use it in any sense which
implies resistance to religion, indifference to religion, or substitution
for religion. I take for granted that the functions of a religious
teacher and a schoolmaster in purely intellectual culture can be
separated, and that the State is bound to find the latter, but that
it cannot and ought not to provide the former, still less
to import such an element into a compulsory system. The
question as to the source from which the funds necessary to
provide for the machinery of secular learning should come ought to
be settled, and can be settled, on purely economical considerations.
Should the class immediately benefited by a system of primary
education contribute the requisite funds ? Is society at large so
considerably benefited by the change which the Congress seeks to
effect that the necessary charge should be raised from the general
resources of society ? Is it in accordance with the principles of
political justice, as now interpreted, that the fund supplied for
the purpose should be levied by the whole community on the
�70
resources of a part of the community 2 If it be determined that it
should be levied on the whole community, what is the most
equitable way in which the fund should be raised, and what is the
way in which it should be distributed so as to secure that
maximum of efficiency which is supposed to be obtained by the
instituted supervision of those who are intrusted with its manage
ment ? I will attempt as simply as possible to answer these
questions. No one, I imagine, will contest the position that the
immediate benefit of a system of primary education falls to the
labourer. Every one agrees that such an education renders his
work more intelligible, and therefore easier.
If, therefore,
an educated body of labourers do not derive an increased rate
of remuneration from the education which they obtain, they earn
the rate which they do get on lighter terms and with less toil.
Besides, the effect of education in sharpening the intelligence of the
labourer is or may be extended to supplying him with the
knowledge of the best market for his labour. If he becomes handy
because he is intelligent, the same mental power will direct him
to the best means for bettering his condition, and so afford him a
positive as well as a relative increase in his resources. Nor must
it be forgotten that the remuneration of labour is, on the whole,
determined by the cost of supplying it, and that if the
age at which productive labour is employed is delayed or
postponed, the wages earned are, cceteris paribus, invariably
higher. This rule might be illustrated abundantly from every-day
experience, and holds good even if the labourer does not contribute a
single penny towards the cost of his own education. He must
be kept while he learns, and this charge will produce the effect
referred to. If it could be shown, then, that all the benefits of a
system of primary education accrue to the material advantage of theclass for which we seek to provide such an education, and produce
no effect, near or remote, on the general well-being of society, the
cost of supplying this education ought to be entirely defrayed by the
parties who desire the benefit, in just the same way as the outlay
on a field, or the stocking of a shop, should be supplied at the
charges of the persons who gain a profit on either. Nor would it
be impossible to obtain such funds from the direct contribution of
�71
the class for whose purposes such a tax would he expended.
The State might levy a poll or income tax on all parties who
might need this instruction, rateably to the claims which they make
on the machinery. Such a poll tax is levied in many of the states
composing the American Union. If a half-time system were
adopted, the requisite quota might he even collected from the
child’s earnings, and a very small sum per week would be sufficient
to meet the cost of supplying this necessary of life in the case
of children too young to work at all. Ill paid as the agricultural
labourer is, he is seldom so straitened as to be incapable of finding a
few pence per week for the cost of instructing his children, just as
he is generally able to find much more for their clothing. It is
said that the Wesleyans are able to maintain their organization
by a penny a week from each member of their body. Everybody
knows, too, that the voluntary expenditure of the poor on taxable
commodities is enormously in excess of any possible amount which
might be demanded for public education. In the case, of course, of
those who are utterly destitute, a machinery like that of the Poor
Law would supply instruction, as it now does, with food, clothing,
and lodging. My hearers are aware, that with many persons the
contribution of children’s pence is, apart from its amount, con
ceived to be necessary as an acknowledgment of the benefit
which education is, and of the moral obligation which rests on
parents to supply that which is only immediately less important
than wbat are called the necessaries of life. But the fact is, the
benefit of education to the mass of labourers is only more obvious
than the benefit of the process to society at large. The employer
of labour gets his advantage from education. Many of us know
the fact, for instance, that an educated recruit learns his drill in
half the time, and at less than half the expense, incurred in
training another who is wholly unlettered. Over and over again
employers find that labour may be more highly paid, and be cheaper
after all, because more effective. And here I may observe, that the
faults of a low system of education are not to be charged on education
itself. One of the worst kinds of education which is given in
England—and it is very costly into the bargain—is, as I know
from my experience as a Poor Law Guardian, that which is given
�72
in industrial schools for pauper children. But I must not enter
on this topic. I only refer to it in order to obviate an objection.
But if a sound system of education is of advantage to the person
who receives it, and also to the person who lines the services of
those who have enjoyed it, it is of no less advantage to the public at
large. A good education is the best preventive of crime. Men are
quite as much degraded by ignorance as by vice. Harrow men’s
faculties, and you strengthen the temptation to the grosser forms
of indulgence. Enlarge them wisely, give men an insight into the
moral and material interests—never really separable—of the
society in which they live, and which claims their allegiance,
because it bestows on them the highest services, and gives them
the fairest field for their labour, and you will ultimately need no
police except for those who are utterly and hopelessly depraved.
It is, I am persuaded, possible to cultivate a public opinion
which shall do more to correct vicious tendencies than all the
repressive forces of the most rigorous police. And what is
a sound public opinion but the outcome of public education?
But if the advantages of a really national education, the course and
details of which are wisely determined, are so generally diffused
over society, it is the duty of society at large to bear the charge of
this, which is, after all, the cheapest as well as the most effective
police. I have tried to answer two of the questions which I put
at the outset of this paper. But supposing the tax is to be levied,
not on one class but on all, how should the rate be laid ? We have
got in this country a rough-and-ready way of levying taxes for local
purposes, by putting a rate on the occupier of property. Such a
form of taxation is very often grossly unfair. For example, a poor
rate is practically an indirect means of paying wages, or at least ofsupplying the means by which certain liabilities affecting the con
dition of the labourer are met from other than his own resources.
Now, if the occupier who does not employ labour with a view to
profit, is called upon to contribute to the fund by which the man
who does employ labour with a view to profit, ekes out wages, I see
that the former is wronged. I might, if time permitted, illustrate
my position by a variety of examples, indicating the incidence of
local taxation, and confirming my statement that the present process
�of assessment is radically unequal. But a wrong which I protest
against I should strive not to commit; and hence, assuming that
the benefits of a national education are national, I think it
would be a crying injustice to provide the funds by taxing the
occupiers of one kind of property only, and a still greater injustice
if the tax were levied directly on the owners of real estate; though
perhaps I need hardly say, that the theory which assumes that the
landowner pays the tenant’s rates in a diminished rent, is sheer
pedantry, which everybody’s experience refutes. If you could get
a just income-tax-—and as yet I see no prospect of so desirable a
consummation, though it is perfectly easy to show the basis of a
just income-tax—such a tax would be theoretically the fund from
which an education rate should be levied. I am of opinion that it
is wise policy to appropriate not only the proceeds of taxation
strictly, which no one disputes, but to import into a system of
finance a rule that special taxes should have special objects ; and I
am sure that economies of taxation could be far more easily achieved
if people understood the object to which an impost was directed.
Not a little of the extravagance of administration arises from the
practice (originally adopted by desperate financiers) of consolidating
taxes into a fund, and then charging all kinds of expenditure on
that common fund. If I were in the position of a financial reformer,
the first basis of my reform would be, special taxes to special objects.
As it is, I am driven to recommend that the tax for education should
be derived from that financial abomination, the Consolidated Fund.
I know that there is a strong indifference to economy in dealing
with funds granted from the State; and my hearers, if they agree
with me in my dislike of taxation being agglomerated into one or
a few units, will see why people are ready to play fast and loose
with great quantities, the vastness of which renders them unintelli
gible. There is a famous question on record, answered, I believe, very
facetiously in this town : What is a pound ? In the administration
of public funds, and in due economy in their administration, the
question “ What is a million pounds ?” is, I fancy, a matter which
tasks the understanding more stringently. I have alluded to my
experience as a Poor Law guardian. I have constantly found that
while my colleagues will waste a whole afternoon in debating
�74
whether they should spend £5, they look with a sort of puzzled
curiosity, as though they do not know whether I am a fool or an
astute impostor with ulterior views, when I have pointed out that
such and such a change in their arrangements will save the Govern
ment £500. If, then, we get the necessary funds from Government,
and appropriate them, under the equitable administration of a
Minister of Education, by local boards—an argument on the consti
tution of which does not fall within the scope of this paper—we
shall perhaps be able to do the best that can be done during the
interval between our use of the existing financial system and its
probable improvement in the future. I may perhaps be personally
excused for referring, in conclusion, to the incidental topic with
which I commenced. Objections are raised against our purpose in
this agitation, on the ground that we are unfriendly to religion, by
which I hope is meant Christianity. No sensible man, I presume,
would condescend to answer the calumnies of polemical or political
partisans. But how strong would Christianity be if it repudiated
its professional advocates, and trusted for its victories to those
who believe and live for the patient practice which it invariably
enjoins1
REV. A. STEINTHAL ON LOCAL EDUCATIONAL
RATING.
The Rev. S. A. Steinthal, of Manchester, read the follow
ing paper :—In the few remarks which I propose to address to the
Congress, I shall take for granted, that we are all of us agreed upon
the importance of the leading features of the scheme, put forward
by the National Education League, and have no doubt as to the
need which exists of largely extending the means of giving education
to the people. I shall not stay to discuss whether there is any
serious error in the statistics published by the Manchester and
Birmingham Education Aid Societies. Even if the numbers with
which they have appalled the country should, on further examina
tion, be shown to have overdrawn the sad picture of the condition
of the towns in which their useful labours have been exerted, there
is so undeniable an amount of unreached ignorance around us, that
it would be sinful to waste time in discussing the accuracy or in
�75
accuracy of mere figures while human souls are perishing for lack
of knowledge. I shall nor enter upon the topic reserved for other
papers as to the undenominational character which all schools sup
ported by public money ought in justice to bear ; or try to prove—
what I believe would not he difficult to prove—-that it is wiser, under
all circumstances, to confine the ordinary instruction of the dayschool to so-called secular subjects, instead of pretending to intro
duce theological matters, to which justice cannot be done in common
schools, while teaching the elements of ordinary knowledge. It is
not my intention to discuss the important subject, of whether
attendance at school is to be made compulsory, or the production of
satisfactory evidence of education being received elsewhere, insisted
upon. I would simply state in passing, that unless school attend
ance, or its equivalent, is made compulsory, I should not advocate,
as I intend doing in this paper, the need of levying a local rate to
be applied, in addition to the Government grant for school purposes.
It is the fact that the common weal demands the universal education
of all citizens, which justifies the community in insisting upon the
attendance of all children at school; and it is the right of. every
individual member of the community to find the means within his
reach of fully developing not only his physical, but mental and
moral capacities. The community has the right to insist upon every
child being educated, and the child has the right to demand that
school accommodation and proper means of teaching should be pro
vided for it. It seems to me that what is thus needful for all, and
for all alike, should not be left to the unreliable and spasmodic
exertions of voluntary benevolence. Experience has proved to us
that voluntary benevolence will not effect the object required. It
is useless to go over the old, well-trodden ground to show how, in
the first place, parents have neglected their duties, how Christian
charity has been unable to supply the void of parental negligence,
or how even State aid to voluntaryism has failed to overcome the
amount of ignorance we have permitted to exist among us. There
are many districts in which there are no persons sufficiently inter
ested in promoting education, to devote any portion of their means
to the establishment and maintenance of schools • and, under our
present system, to those places no share of Government aid is allowed
�76
to go; and while the children in such localities are left either in
entire ignorance, or are exposed to the inefficient training of the
dame school, there are other places where benevolence, stimulated
by sectarian zeal, multiplies unnecessary accommodation, and wastes
large sums in erecting buildings and in supporting a staff of teachers
far in excess of the real wants of the neighbourhood. This is no
new complaint, but it is not less true now because it is old. More
than eighteen years ago Dr. Hodgson gave a typical illustration of
the wasteful character of leaving the support of schools to volun
tary effort. “ At New Mills, near Manchester, an active clergyman
of the Church of England came into competition with the Wesleyan
school, but did not succeed till he established a day school. The
Wesleyan school was capable of accommodating -150 scholars, but
the clergyman succeeded so well that only 17 scholars were left in
it. The Wesleyans determined not to be annihilated. They got
up a day school, and obtained a teacher whom nothing could dis
hearten. The result, according to the Methodist minister, had not
been well for both schools. He expressed his sorrow that they had
nearly put an extinguisher upon the Church schools : two pews could
contain all its scholars, while their Sunday schools numbered from
5 to 600 scholars.” Is it not sad that while the evil waste of such
rivalry was recognised twenty years ago, we should be suffering
under similar evils this day, and still obliged to discuss the need of
obviating such sectarian jealousies ? Nor does it seem to me to be
just to throw the burden of education upon voluntary givers, even
were it prudent to do so. Are not all of us who are in any way
connected with the multiform methods of charitable exertion well
aware how small is the number of those who are the supporters of
all benevolent efforts ? The same names, not always the wealthiest
in a district, are time after time compelled to contribute, and though
the most generous givers are generally the last to complain of having
to do so much, are they not prevented from devoting their means to
objects in which they take special interest, because they cannot
conscientiously allow the absolutely essential work of education to
be left undone, on account of the niggardliness of those who will not
give until forced by law ? But even the benevolent cannot ensure
their children being alike generous with themselves, nor has any
�11
district the certainty of the wealthy remaining amongst them. A
manufacturing town is not always the most agreeable residence, and
many who have made their money in overcrowded places, retire to
enjoy their well-earned prosperity far from the scene of their earlier
life; and new claims prevent their still contributing to schools,which
languish in consequence. Every now and then, it is true, the sad
neglect of the education of the poor strikes the attention of some
philanthropist like the late Mr. Edward Brotherton, of Manchester,
and a new attempt is made to stimulate the activity of benevolence
—only to prove, as experience had done before, and is doing again,
how vain it is to rely upon benevolent voluntary effort alone. This
unreliability and spasmodic character, is all the more fatal to educa
tional progress, as the conditions under which Government aid is
granted claim a certain amount from local effort or endowment
before any money can he given under the Minutes of Council. So
important a matter as the education of the people can no longer be
left to efforts nearly twenty years ago justly characterised as “ im
pulsive, irregular, uncertain, unequal, and capricious in their opera
tion.” (West. Rev., July, 1851.) Our choice, then, in seeking for
the means of establishing and supporting schools must lie between
grants from the central government, local rating, or a combination
of these two methods. The advocates of a school system supported
altogether from funds derived from the national government, have no
weak argument in their behalf when they point out, how very heavy
the burden of local taxation is at present, and how limit 3(1 the area
is upon which rates are levied : how the wealthy fundholder will
escape almost untaxed for schools under a rating system, while the
burden would be less felt by the poor and struggling if the cost cf
education be defrayed from national taxation. The income from
which national taxation is paid is estimated atleast at.£500,000,000,
while the assessment of the whole country is only £150,000,000.
Twopence in the pound on the former sum would raise more than
the £4,000,000 which it is estimated would suffice to provide
primary education for all our children, while a rate of nearly seven
pence in the pound would be required for the same purpose. It is
further true that under any rating scheme some part of the popu
lation would escape from payment, even as in the case of our present
�78
rates, under which we know that the most destitute classes are
uniformly excused from paying the rate imposed ; while everyone
does contribute something to the general taxation, and will do so as
long as tea and coffee and sugar, to say nothing of intoxicating
drinks and tobacco, are made to add so much to the national
revenue. But, on the other hand, there can be no doubt that,
if the whole amount of the educational expenses of the
country is paid from national funds, its expenditure must be
entirely entrusted to the central authority; and I am quite
prepared to declare my own strong objection to giving more
influence to the Government than I am obliged to do, even though
I do not altogether hold the opinion that, nothing beyond
securing life and property should fall within the purview of the
State. I believe that local management is absolutely necessary for
the efficient management of the schools, and therefore I believe
that the greater portion of the funds should be raised as well as
expended in the localities to be themselves benefited. It is very
customary at the present day to sneer at everything connected
with local self-government. No joke is more readily welcomed
than one pointed at the narrowness and stupidity of a Board of
Guardians, or a Town Council. But does not this arise from the fact
that the objects which such boards have before them are often
regarded as too low to claim the attention of educated men ? When a
Board of Guardians undertakes to make its hospital a model hos
pital, and its treatment of pauperism, a means of lessening the
evils of pauperism, do we not find educated men devoting
themselves assiduously, as I have known them do in Chorlton,
Manchester, and Liverpool, and as no doubt they frequently do
elsewhere ? Do we not see in corporations where there are free
libraries, that men are willing to enter the Council that they may
sit upon the Library Committee ? I have even lately had proof
that the Public-house Closing Act, which enables Town Councils
to close those prolific sources of misery, immorality, and crime for a
few hours, has induced men to enter them, that they might support
such measures of improving the social condition of the people.
May we not, therefore, anticipate that if a municipal Board of
Education be constituted the best men amongst us would be
�willing to serve upon it? And as it is proposed that all
rate-supported schools should be free, the increased burden
imposed by the rate would be lightened, on the other hand, by the
exemption of all who desired it from the payment of school-pence,
and voluntary subscriptions towards the maintenance of
schools. The fact that a special educational rate was levied
would tend to interest every ratepayer in the school. He would
be anxious to see it prosper, would take a pride in its efficiency.
That this is no theoretical advantage is seen by the experience of
■our Australian colonies, where each district strives to rival its
neighbours in the excellence of its educational institutions. If, as
I trust, there should be a system adopted whereby the best
children in the schools could obtain scholarships to enable
them to pursue their studies in higher schools; and to assist them,
if need be, to the highest scholarships; this healthful emulation
would be increased still more, as a successful student would throw
back some reflected fame upon his school, and upon the district
which had enabled him to attain success. I am well aware that
ratepaying is not the most pleasing of duties ; but as soon as men
perceived, as they soon would do, that an educational rate would
lessen the poor rate, the police rate, the expenses of the criminal
courts, and the like, the economy of giving a good education would
be recognised, and the payments would he made cheerfully and
without complaint. It should, however, be always insisted upon,
in my opinion, that the school rate should be kept separate from all
other rates, and should not be merged with that long list which is
.attached to the present poor-rate paper. I urge this, as I wish that
every parent should be distinctly impressed with the fact that he
does not receive an altogether gratuitous education for his children.
I am not afraid that the children attending a free school would feel
themselves pauperised, for education always raises the nobler
feelings of the taught, and never degrades them. Nor am I
anxious lest parents should feel themselves robbed of their inde
pendence by their children being able to attend school without pay
ment of the weekly pence. They would know that they are paying
their quota, and as has often been said, we none of us feel ourselves
■degraded by the fact that our streets are lighted by gas, that ouj
�80
security is preserved by policemen, and that the many comforts we
enjoy owing to municipal government arc not paid for directly, but
are supported by rates to which we all contribute according to our
means. There are very few, comparatively speaking, in this
country who do pay directly the cost of their children’s education.
The working classes make use of schools sustained by voluntary
subscriptions, endowments, and Government grants. The middle
and higher classes find in grammar schools and colleges that their
ancestors’ benevolence has freed them from this burden. We none
of us are pauperised under these influences. Why the change from
school pence and voluntary subscriptions should suddenly make
such a change I cannot understand. Schools under such a system
would indeed be even less charity schools than they are now.
I have, however, not proposed in the above argument to pay the
whole expenses of the school from local sources ; nor do I intend
to do so. The cost of a child’s training in a school is, I believe,
estimated in the Revised Code at 30s. a year, of which sum I think
the Committee of Council generally pay about a third. I would not
alter this, but would simply raise the sum needed to make up the
total by rates instead of by the present means. I am quite ready
to acknowledge that local authorities are not unfrequently actuated
by an economical spirit which approaches to niggardliness; and as a
corrective to this tendency being applied to schools, I would insist
upon Government inspectors visiting the school, upon whose
favourable report alone should any Government help be given. It
does not fall within the scope of my paper to discuss the nature
of the examination which should be insisted upon; but I would
incidentally remark that I hope the meagre standard of the
Revised Code will not be long maintained. Nor have I to consider
the character of the authority which should appoint the inspectors,
although I hope a responsible Minister of Education may soon take
the place of the Committee of Council, in whose constitution I
have very little confidence. But I believe that by no means can
the wants of the community be better met than by such a method
as I have sketched. I hardly know whether I am expected while
speaking of rate-supported schools which offer free instruction to
all comers, to speak of the conditions under which existing schools
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should be admitted to the benefits such a plan offers. I should
avoid as much as possible building new school buildings ; but I
would do so by freely offering to all existing schools the privilege of
becoming rate-supported schools on complying with the two require
ments, that the education given in them should be unsectarian, and
should be free. Unsectarian, because to allow denominational
schools to be aided by the rate would be to revive with increased
difficulty the old Church-rate contest; free, because, supported by
public money, the public should justly be entitled to receive the
benefits they offered. A truly national system could thus be
established with no infringement of any existing rights, with a
perfect preservation of local self-government, and yet, through the
system of Government inspection, always maintaining a high
standard of efficient training for all who are to be the future
citizens of our native land.
MR. PENTECOST ON COMPULSION.
Mr. Pentecost, of Stourbridge, read the following paper on
Compulsory Attendance. He said : If any one part of the scheme
of national education is of greater importance than another, it
is, I think, that relating to “ compulsory attendance.” Educa
tion may be free and schools may be multiplied, but without
compulsory attendance there would be still a large proportion of
children preferring the street to the school. The work would be
only partially done, since the very class it is most desirable to
reach would be left untouched.’ The opponents of a compulsory
measure perceive that it involves the establishment of free non
sectarian schools; hence their opposition. The public is assured by
them that the English nation, especially the working classes, will not
submit to compulsion. The working classes are farther advanced
upon this question than seems to be supposed. Moral, social, and
political progress will not be rejected for mere sentiment.
Moreover, the working and other classes do submit to compulsion,
for we have it in our sanitary laws, and Workshops Acts; only
here it is restricted in its operation to the industrious portion
of the community, and only indolence is allowed the privilege
of free ignorance. But compulsory attendance would necessitate
F
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tlie establishment of free non-sectarian schools, at least in large
towns, and ultimately, perhaps, throughout the kingdom ; and the
cry is raised that an education in such schools would be a “godless
education.” A knowledge of the constitution of the human
body, to elucidate the laws of health, especially with reference to
cleanliness, ventilation, recreation, and diet, is godless—the
ordinary subjects of primary education are godless—unless issued
from the mint bearing the imprint of some denomination or sect.
With the bane the antidote should be supplied. An elementary
knowledge of natural history or physical science, should carry its
corrective in a catechism, and a knowledge of Scripture names and
dates should serve as a counterpoise to the dangers attendant on
reading, writing, and arithmetic. In a leading article on the
debate on education in the House of Commons last March, the
Times took much trouble to enforce the statement, that the good
expected from any new system of education would be nullified
by the dangerous lessons of home example, and that parents
must be educated. That is what the advocates of a new national
system desire—they wish to educate the parents of future
generations. Then again, it has been said that the League
proposes to educate children out of their religion. The advocates
of a free non-sectarian education are not actuated by hostility
to religion, but by hostility to ignorance and its results.
Religious instruction can still be given'—no one can hinder it;
but as there appears no prospect of an agreement as to what
should be considered religious teaching, the advocates of a
new free system of education wish to enable children to
become acquainted with the laws of God, regulating the material
world, and thus be guided to live in temperance, soberness, and
chastity; to learn and labour truly to get their own living in any
state of life to which they may be called. Deficient, however, as
the present voluntary system is acknowledged to be, even by its
own advocates, we would gladly admit that the clergy and
ministers of various denominations have performed a great work
in building up and supporting the present system of educa
tion. That it is now inefficient is to be ascribed not to
any neglect or shortcoming on their part, but to the inevitable
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march of events. Recognising the value of the present
system, the question arises : is there any possibility of co
operation ? Is it not possible to combine a new national free and
non-sectarian system with the existing denominational voluntary
system, and thus preserve the present system, or at least a large
part of it ? The new system would then gradually win its way in
public favour. With a desire to preserve the present system, I
jotted down the following rough notes, which I will submit to
your consideration :—1. That parents or guardians of children, of a
certain specified age, shall be required to send them to school
regularly and constantly, for a certain number of weeks in each year
■—Sunday-school attendance not to be counted; and those who
neglect the performance of this duty, shall be liable to a recurring
penalty, to be recovered by the inspector or sub-inspector of
schools for the district. The production of a school certificate of
attendance to be the only complete answer to the charge; the
exemptions from this rule of attendance being those children, who
are mentally or corporeally incapacitated from attendance, or from
receiving instruction, and also children who are receiving instruc
tion at home or elsewhere, from tutors, governesses, or parents.
Proper evidence of such instruction to be rendered to the inspector
of schools for the district, whenever required by him. 2. That
parents or guardians, who are unable to pay the ordinary school
fees shall be furnished with a pass, entitling their children to free
admission to any assisted, inspected school in the parish or district
in which they reside, and to assistance in procuring books, &c.
When there is room for choice, the parents to be allowed to select
a school. The fees for such pupils (by whatever name they may ‘
be known, or by whatever means they may be raised) to be paid to
the schools according to a certain fixed scale. That public and
private schools, and grammar schools, shall be registered upon pay
ment of a small registration fee, and shall then he allowed to grant
certificates of attendance ; due provision, of course, being made for
preventing any kind of traffic in certificates, and allowing the
Government Department superintending education the power of
refusing to register notoriously inefficient schools. 3. That all
national schools, British schools, and denominational schools, shall
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be entitled to be registered, and to receive free scholars, to be paid
for by rates or Government grants; provided the managers of such
schools submit to Government inspection, and accept a conscience
clause, specifying that they shall not allow religious instruc
tion of any kind to interfere with the ordinary secular instruc
tion, but that it shall be imparted at such times and in such
a manner as not to break or interrupt the routine of secular
studies. 4. In parishes or districts where there is no school
accommodation of this kind, for the reception of non-sectarian free
scholars, or where there is only insufficient accommodation of the
kind, the Government Department superintending education shall,
upon satisfactory representations of such deficiency, cause notice to
be given to the guardians of the poor, or other authorities, that
school buildings and teachers must be provided by the parish or
district, the cost to be defrayed by a rate levied on the district;
and where the proper authorities neglect to provide the necessary
school accommodation, then the Government shall intervene, and
provide a school or schools, educational appliances, and teachers,
and recover from the district the amount expended. Existing
schools, the managers of which refuse to adopt the conscience
clause, shall not be registered; and a district containing such
schools only, shall be considered as destitute of educational
facilities, and shall be required to provide free non-sectarian schools,
under local management and Government inspection.
RESOLUTION OE LONDON TRADES’
COUNCIL.
The President announced that Mr. George Odger was unable
to speak, as he had promised to do; but that he had sent the follow
ing resolution of the London Trades’ Council:—“This Council is of
opinion that the National Education League, whose object is the
education of the people, upon national and unsectarian principles,
is in every sense worthy of our support; therefore we appoint
our secretary, Mr. George Odger, to attend the congress to be held
in Birmingham ; and we pledge ourselves to use our best endeavours
in aid of so laudable a movement.”
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DISCUSSION.
Mr. Simons, of Merthyr Tydvil, opened the discussion by reading
the prospectus of an education society with which he was connected
in his own town; and he then said: Although an ardent sup
porter of the League, I venture to say that the march onward will
never cease, until every one of the principles of that programme is
adopted. I am willing to go with the League as far as we agree,
and whilst we are together I should like to endeavour to induce
you to march on with me, to the beacon which this programme offers
to you. Now, I want to make one observation upon what I call
a delusion and a snare—the conscience clause. Test the conscience
clause by this : is there any ardent thorough Protestant in this room
who, if he lived in the centre of a Roman Catholic community, with
the means of education entirely in the hands of the Roman Catholic
priest, would send his child to school there, with the protection
only of the conscience clause ? I have asked the question often
before, and have never had an answer in the affirmative. The
conscience clause, I repeat, is a delusion and a snare. It affords
no protection whatever, and it makes more necessary for the
youth of the country the prayer—“ Lead us not into temptation.”
I ask you all to consider the question of the conscience clause. The
grant of State aid to Remap Catholic schools, would virtually be
a grant for the purpose of teaching the Roman Catholic religion.
Believe me that I do not intend, that one word which escapes my
lips shall give pain; for the day has passed, happily, when differ
ences of opinion lead to hostility, or discord among fellow Christians.
My references to Catholics are made entirely upon principle ; I have
no objection to them as a body. Well, we know that if a grant
were given them for school purposes, it would substantially
be a grant for teaching the Roman Catholic religion in this
country. Bear in mind that they are about a quarter of the
entire population, and if four millions were given in grants
they would be entitled to one-fourth—one million given for
teaching the Roman Catholic religion. The logic of Roman
Catholics is irresistible, that so long as you maintain sectarian
�86
schools in this country, so long will they be entitled to teach in
them their religion, and to receive their proportion of Government
aid. That is a question which I have not heard put on any plat
form except when I have given utterance to it. Next, I would ask
how long in this country are the middle classes going to contribute
towards schools for the working classes ? I am here as a middle
class man, to say that no system of education will satisfy me, unless
the two classes are put upon exactly the same footing. We speak
of compulsion as a thing applicable only to one order of the
people. I am an advocate for the application of compulsion to
every class. I don’t know why the middle-class man should have
the opportunity of bringing up his child in ignorance, any more than
the working-class man. I am also an advocate for the institution
of imperial universities, and for this reason : after we get com
pulsory education, how long will it be before the people ask for a
further opportunity of advancing and brightening the intellects of
their children, and of fitting them to occupy any position in the
world, even up to that of the Lord Chancellor ?
Mr. Applegarth, secretary to the Amalgamated Society of
Carpenters and Joiners, followed : So much has been said in the
name of working men, that it is almost presumption on the part of
a working man to speak for his class; but as I conceive that much
has been said in their name, which is not exactly true, perhaps it
will not be out of place for me to say a few words. My claim to
speak is simply that I have lived and associated with working men
all the days of my life; and I am here, as the delegate of one of
the largest trade societies in the kingdom, to demand that education
shall be placed within the reach of every child, however poor,
however degraded. The first meeting of my fellow working men
that I addressed was about twelve years ago, the last one last
night. On every occasion I have tested the men in regard to
education, and I never yet found an exception to my own
opinion—that what we want is a national compulsory, unsectarian
system: Now, I have a little score to settle both with Mr. Edmund
Potter, M.P., and with the Archbishop of York, and I give notice
that I shall hit them very hard. The other day, the Archbishop of’
York ventured to say that, if an attempt were made to introduce
�87
a compulsory system of education, such a system would meet
with a hard reception from a large proportion of the working
classes. Well, then, Mr. Potter, in his place in the House of
Commons, said, too, that the working classes were opposed to
compulsion in connection with education.
Mr. Potter : No, no.
Mr. Applegarth : The Times is responsible for my statement;
and I am glad to hear Mr. Potter say “ No, no.” It is not the first
mistake the Times has made. To go back, then, to the Archbishop
of York. Wherever he gets his information from I can’t tell. For
a number of years I worked in different parts of the country, and
in every place I tested the working man upon this question of
education. For instance, at one meeting, at which Mr. Geo. Dawson
was in the chair, he distinctly asked, “ Do you agree with me that
we want a national compulsory, unsectarian system of education ?”
and not a dissenting voice did I hear. The working classes would
never feel compulsion, and they would be only too glad of the
opportunity to send their children to schools, where they would get
a good education. But no one knows better than the men them
selves, that there are amongst the working people two classes.
There is the sot, the careless and indifferent man, who has been so
long neglected, and degraded that he does not understand the value
of education; and him the other class, the better class of working
men, have to carry upon their backs. But those men who do not
understand the value of education, must be made to understand it.
The Archbishop of York said the voluntary system had done a
noble work, and that it was competent to meet all the requirements
of the future. I am not one to disparage the efforts of the clergy
in the voluntary system; but I will say this—that that portion of
the clergy which has done the real work in the education of the
people consists of underpaid curates, who would only be too glad to
get rid of this extra work, and get a little extra pay for the reli
gious services which they have to conduct. What has voluntaryism
done ? Why, it has provided school accommodation for two million
children; but for the want of that great principle, compulsion, there
are 700,000 vacant seats. We are told that this voluntary system
has provided 16,000 schools ; but so unequally are they distributed
�88
that in the diocese of Norfolk there are 120 parishes without one
day school. From the report of the Select Committee issued in
1866 we find that out of 14,895 parishes, there are 11,000 of them,
embracing a population of over six millions, that receive no direct
assistance from the State ; out of 755,000 children of the working
classes, from 10 to 12 years of age, only 250,000 are at school. Again
I ask what has the voluntary system done? According to 18th and
19th Victoria, chap. 34, the guardians of the poor have the power
to educate out-door pauper children from 4 to 16 years of age.
Now, we find that in nine counties of England, where there were
no less than 38,451 of these out-door pauper children, the guardians
educated the enormous number of 11, at an annual cost of £2. 4s. 8d.
That is what we have done under the voluntary system. Now,
next, if we have a compulsory system we must have, too, a free
system. The object of the League, I take it, is to work in contra
distinction to the present system, which helps those who are best
able to help themselves, leaving to starve and rot in ignorance those
who have not the power to help themselves, even if they had the
disposition. The object of the League is to help those who are least
able to help themselves. Some people have said that they fear that
if we have a free system of education the working classes would
not know how to appreciate it. Well, if they do not know how to
appreciate it we must make them know. I have seen the school
systems both of America and Switzerland, and I never came across
a man in either of those countries, who felt that he was not doing
his duty because he allowed his children to go to a free school. And
what can be said of the people of America, and Switzerland, would
no doubt be said of the people of England, if our educational system
were made compulsory. It is no use trying to mix up a national
education with any portion of religion, however small the dose.
We are not prepared to have gospel and geography mixed together.
The working classes want education. They know that the classes
above them have been tinkering with this question, whilst vice and
misery and prostitution, have piled up a colossal mountain of iniquity.
If the League knows its duty, it will go in for a compulsory, un
sectarian, and free system—for a measure which will put high and
low upon the same level in an educational sense. And now, sir, I
�89
am here to give my adhesion to the National Education League, not
that I think that its principles reach exactly and altogether the
wants of the working classes, hut because it goes a step in the right
direction; and I shall be only too glad if the Legislature see their
course to a thoroughly radical measure.
Mr. Edmund Potter, M.P., speaking in explanation, said : I am
sorry Mr. Applegarth has not watched my course more closely,
because I believe that if one Member of Parliament more than
another has expressed himself definitely, forcibly, and frequently
upon this subject, it is myself. Speaking in the House, in reply to
Mr. Forster on the question of Trades’ Unions, I said that no Bill
would be of any use unless it was accompanied by compulsory
education. Before then, I spoke upon the educational question
itself, and no such opinion ever escaped my lips as that which
is attributed to me. I should not, too, have been charged with
opposition to compulsion, for I was one of the strongest advocates
of the Factory Acts, the great benefit of which was, as I said
in the House, that they gave compulsory, unsectarian education.
Mr. Applegarth : I.am delighted to hear from Mr. Potter that
he did not say that which he was reported in the Times to have
said. I have placed the report in his hands.
Mr. Green, Chairman of the Birmingham Trades’ Council,
continued the discussion. He said : I take it that what the League
especially wants to know from me, is whether the working men of
this town are in favour of its scheme, and whether they think that
the system of education to be adopted should be compulsory,
unsectarian, and free. Now, Mr. Applegarth, speaking for the
working men he represents, said they- were; and I, too, have to
report that in this locality, as throughout the length and breadth of
the land, a very large section of the working men are in favour of
the scheme. The society which sends me here is composed of men
of all politics, and of all religions—from the Bed Republican to the
milk-and-water Liberal-Conservative, from the Roman Catholic to
the latest discovered sect, the Hallelujah Band; yet when we dis
cussed this question of to-day, and of sending a delegate here, there
was not a dissentient voice. A few weeks ago a paper upon the
subject of compulsory and unsectarian education was read by Mr.
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Hibbs, a working man, before a national conference of Trades’
Unions in this town. Everyone voted for the principle, and one of
the strongest supporters was Mr. Wood, of Manchester, a strong
Tory. This matter, therefore, cannot be considered, and ought
not to be considered, a party question; but it seems to me that
clergymen seem determined to go against the working man on this,
as on some past occasions. A little while ago we heard the question,
why does not the working man go to Church? I don’t know
whether the interrogators drew a list of reasons; but if they did,
and they have not inserted this, they may add, opposition to the
scheme of unsectarian education as one of them. A local paper
says that we wish lo eliminate religious teaching from education.
Well, if that religious teaching is founded upon dogmas or creeds,
we do wish to do so. To teach a child truth is to teach it religion,
and by teaching it that, you advance it in the path in which you
wish it to tread. The clergy object to this system of the League
because under it they will not teach their creed; but I can tell
them this—that if they want to get the good-will of the people, if
they want to diminish pauperism and crime, and to raise the people
to an appreciation of what is noble and good, they should support,
not oppose, the scheme. Under it I believe the nation would pro
gress in all that is good, and those who now ask the question, why
do not working men attend a place of worship 1 would then have
to set about building more places of worship for them to attend. It
is the duty of everyone who wishes to see the children of the
country grow up, in the way they should go, and kept out of vice
and poverty, to support this scheme of the League. The working
men do not make a great deal of noise about it, but I can assure
you that they feel upon the subject very acutely indeed; for they
do not like to see the class immediately above them taking advan
tage of all the endowed educational means of the country, whilst
they are left without anything at all. They desire a better state
of things. There is no need of discussion as to compulsion—that
is settled ; and the working men of Birmingham, I am authorised
to say, will do all they can to help on a system of national com
pulsory, unsectarian education, although they would prefer that that
education should be secular.
�91
Sir C. Rawlinson gave his support to the programme of the
League. He conceived that the new educational system must be sup
ported by local rates, supplemented by Government aid. He held that
opinion upon two clear grounds. He protested against the education
of the country being handed over entirely to Government, because in
the 'first place the administration would in that case turn to rank
jobbery and gross expenditure; and, secondly, he did nor want to see
education ’ conducted without reference to the principle of local selfgovernment, the vigour and success of which was the best guarantee
for the liberties of England. It was all very well to laugh at
corporations, but they had been the safeguards of liberty. In
how many evil days had the Corporation of the City of London
stood forth in defence of the people ? For these reasons he was
extremely sorry to hear anybody say that the education grant
ought to come exclusively from Government. On the other hand,
he objected to the schools being supported wholly from local rates,
because, for a variety of reasons, it was desirable and even necessary
to have Government inspection. He need not pursue this matter. It
was obvious that for the sake of some degree of uniformity, and for
the purpose of ensuring efficiency in places where the local authori
ties might possibly not be disposed to do their duty, and for other
reasons, it was desirable that the whole system should be under the
control of a central power. Then with regard to the religious
difficulty, surely the country had had sufficient experience to
have found out by this time that it was impossible to base
education upon religion. He appealed to the whole people, then,
to aid the active spirits of the League to base religion upon
education. That was the natural course. It was a miscon
ception, which in practice led to disastrous failure, to suppose
that religion could be made the basis of education. Religion
was the flower of life, and no greater fallacy had ever beguiled
the people of this or any other country than to suppose
that it was possible to begin with religion. How could it ever
have entered anybody’s mind, that a child of seven or eight years
of age was made better, or was benefited in any conceivable way,
by repeating unchangeably the words of a catechism which it did
not understand 1 He saw, the other day, a child who had returned
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from a high-class school with a prize for divinity. How did he
win it? “I went,” he said, “through the whole of the kings of
Israel, and I said two Psalms by heart.” It was a farce. He
would not have joined the League if he supposed that the educa
tion it proposed was to be godless. If he were in power, he
would propose that the American Common Schools should be
the foundation of our schools. The instructions given to the
teachers and others connected with those schools, as to the
manner in which they were to endeavour to discharge their
functions, were well worth considering. They were read in
Birmingham a short time ago by Lord Lyttelton, but, unfortunately,
very little attention was paid to them. The directions were:—
“ All instructors of youth are to exert their best endeavours to
impress upon the minds of the children and youth committed to
their care, principles of piety and justice, a strict regard to truth,
love of their country, humanity, and universal benevolence,
sobriety, industry, and frugality, chastity, and moderation, and
those other virtues which are the ornaments of human society.”
That was the foundation of the Common School in America. It was
unsectarian ; and in an excellent pamphlet, which everybody ought
to read, in reply to those who said this was a godless education
(how anybody could, after full consideration, say so was inconceiv
able), Mr. Frazer answered : “ If the cultivation of some of the
choicest intellectual gifts bestowed by God—the perception,
memory, taste, judgment, and reason; if the creation of habits
of punctuality, attention, and industry, the reading of a daily
portion of God’s Word, and the daily saying of Christ’s universal
prayer—if all this is said to be the cultivation of clever devils,
it would be vain, I think, to argue with such prejudice.” He
believed that the cultivation of any one of God’s good gifts, or the
attempt to develop any one right principle or worthy habit, so far
as they went, were steps, not only in the direction of morality,
but of piety and real religion. Was it possible that a clergyman
would rather have in his Sunday school, or in his church, to
hear the truths of religion, or the dogmas of theology, a number
of densely ignorant children or other persons, than a corresponding
number of bright, intelligent, well-taught persons, such as the
�93
national schools would produce? Which could be most rapidly
and thoroughly influenced by the teaching of the Sunday school
or the pulpit ? He was sorry to hear that in Birmingham a party
was got up, to oppose and denounce those who felt themselves hound,
by the necessities of the case, to endeavour to educate the masses
of the nation. He did not believe that if any of those men could
get into their minds the real state of things—if they would
endeavour to form a conception of the appalling magnitude of the
facts—they would take the course they seemed determined upon ;
but he trusted that the League would disseminate facts upon facts,
as to the number of utterly destitute children in this country, in
order to rouse the attention of persons who at present seemed to be
satisfied to sit with folded hands, doing nothing to avert the evil
which, it was scarcely any exaggeration to say, threatened to over
whelm the country. What with ignorance, poverty, and crime, in
which so large a portion of the population was steeped, it was
impossible to look to the future without gloomy apprehensions.
If England was to maintain her present position among the nations
—if she was to maintain her high character for order and civiliza
tion—if she was to maintain her pre-eminence for commerce, it
would not be owing to her army, and certainly not to her poor
houses or her gaols, but to her having a great, intelligent, and
well-educated labouring class—that class upon whose intelligence,
honesty, and sobriety the whole strength and existence of the
kingdom depended.
Sir W. Guise : After those who have gone before me, I feel
that my position is doubtful, for I have no pretensions to represent
anybody but myself. We have been favoured of late with long
reports of Social Science meetings, Church Congresses, Episcopal
Conferences, and so on, and at all of them the question of education
has been a prominent item of discussion ; but after reading these
reports with considerable care I have come to the conclusion
that there was no result arrived at whatever. The fact is that in
those assemblies the matter is taken up in so perfunctory
a manner that it is not likely that anything of value could come of
it. Everything charitable, kind, and good is talked of but nothing
of the smallest value in a practical fashion is the result. I come
�94
now among practical men, and I embrace most heartily and
enthusiastically the programme of this platform-—compulsory,
unsectarian, national education. The denominational system has
been tried and it has failed. It has failed to reach a very large,
a very important, and, I may add, a growing and a dangerous class
of the community; and it is evident that that class never will
be reached by the means provided by the denominational system,
the fact being that the teachers under that system cannot shake
themselves free from creeds and catechismsj and I have long
felt myself that these creeds and catechisms, as taught by differ
ent sects, are becoming more and more an impediment to free
Christian intercourse amongst us. I am afraid we shall never
get rid of them—certainly not without a national unsectarian
system of education. I quite agree with the gentleman who has
gone before me, that you cannot have religion until you have
•education. Nobody who has ever been engaged in education can
help feeling that in teaching great moral truths—our duty to
God and man-—we are teaching religion. Education, as has
just been shown, must precede religion. Catechisms are utterly
unintelligible to children in general, and even to a great many
grown-up people. With regard to making money grants to
denominational schools, it should be remembered that if you make
grants to such schools in this country, you cannot refuse them to
the Catholics in Ireland. We have seen their object. The
hierarchy in that country have put forward a programme, desiring to
grasp the whole of the education of the youth of that country. It
is perfectly natural. Every faith that has faith in itself proselytises,
but England and Scotland will not consent to hand over Ireland
to the exclusive control of the priesthood. But you cannot
consistently insist upon that for yourselves, which you are not
prepared to concede to others. I used the same argument the
other day to our bishop, when I declined to attend an episcopal
conference on the subject. I feel that the system of denominational
education, subsidised by the State, has failed and must be given up.
We have then in front of us this fact—that education has become
an absolute necessity, not merely because of the danger of having
an uneducated class amongst us, but because it is impossible to
�95
look abroad upon this dark mass of uneducated humanity without
feeling that they were made for better things—that their powers
were given them for other purposes, than to allow them to waste
in ignorance, vice, and crime ; and it is our business, as a brother
hood, to stretch out our hands to those who cannot help themselves,
and help them to raise themselves in the scale of humanity. I am
not one for pulling down those who are above, to the level of
those who are below. I appreciate far too highly the value of
intellect, civilization, and refinement, to wish to see any portion
taken away ; but I wish to see the day come when those who are
below me may be be able to partake of some of the benefits of the
civilization which I enjoy. For these reasons, I have very great
pleasure in joining the association with all my heart.
The Hon. Auberon Herbert said it was clear that the voluntary
system could not cover the whole work. The word itself, without
any other facts, showed that. In a district which wished to do its
duty, and with parents who would send their children to school, the
voluntary system was all that was necessary ; but what was to be
done in a district which had no wish to do its duty and where
parents would not send their children to school'? Therefore it was
quite clear that by the side of the voluntary system another must
be placed. They were also, he thought, agreed that the system
they were going to introduce must be complete in itself. To use
Mr. Dawson’s excellent words, it must be a system of “ lucid sim
plicity,” and therefore he ventured to hope that before the Congress
broke up they would define the word “unsectarian” somewhat more
precisely than had yet been done. He took that opportunity of
expressing his entire subordination to those with whom he was
acting, in the same manner as Mr. Fawcett had done ; but it would
save them much difficulty hereafter if they construed that word
“ unsectarian” severely and precisely. He believed that if there
was religious teaching at all in the schools, it would be a constant
difficulty, for this reason—that if it was real in its nature, there
would be constant intrigue as to the appointment of a teacher ; and
other difficulties of the same nature would arise. If, on the con
trary, the religious teaching was not to be real—if they were using
a word in order to satisfy a few persons—it was unworthy of them
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to put out a sham. It would be to the advantage of all of them
that the State should be manly enough to take upon itself openly
its own duty, leaving the Church to take upon itself its duties. He
scarcely.need add a word as to the fact that unsectarian or secular
education was not godless education. The feeling of the meeting
had been expressed very strongly in favour of the old truth, that the
gates of heaven were upon earth, and that to make good citizens for
the heavenly kingdom, good citizens must be made for the earthly
kingdom. What had to be done was to see how the two systems
-—the new and the old—could be interwoven. That which they
had to ask seemed to him to be this : to be allowed to introduce
their unsectarian system in two instances. One should be whore the
district failed in its duty and did not provide sufficient school
ac’cbmmodation.
In that case the Government or the District
Board should have power to say to the district: You must provide
schools, you must rate yourselves for them, and they must be unsec
tarian. The second case in which there should be power to intro
duce the unsectarian system should be where the district itself
desired it. They had all realized that where there was a rate there
must be an unsectarian system, and where there was an unsectarian
system there must be a fate. As regards the old schools, he did not
see why they should not for a long time maintain their place by the
side of the new system, if only (and this was absolutely necessary)
they made certain concessions. A system of compulsion could not
be carried out unless the schools accepted a thoroughly satisfactory
conscience clause, unless they put themselves under Government
inspection, and unless they kept a register of attendance. The
present system need not be deranged further than by the acceptance
of these three things. They had heard and would hear a greatmany appeals against the proposed system, in the name of religion.
He would warn those who made such appeals that it was very pos
sible, if this controversy lasted a very long time—-should the over
whelming necessity for the education of two millions of children be
not speedily satisfied (he did not state the numbers on his own
authority, but took them as they had been given)—should those
two millions of children be left to perish in ignorance, whilst the
“ religious difficulty” was debated, it was very possible that the
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words “religion” and “ irreligion” might change places, and it would
be thought that there could he no act more irreligious than that of
those, who would be responsible for the delay. When he saw a
large part of the working classes, as a pledge of their earnestness,
willing to submit themselves to a law of compulsion, not for their
advantage, but for that of their children, he felt that that act on
their part, was far more religious than the words of the Archbishop
of York,when he appealed to the working men, to allow their selfish
fears and jealousies, to stand between them and this act of self
sacrifice.
The meeting then adjourned.
SOIREE IK THE TOWN HALL.
The members of the League were entertained by the Mayor in
the Town Hall, in the evening, at a Soiree. There were upwards of
800 ladies and gentlemen present.
G
�SECOND DAY.
On the reassembling of the meeting on Wednesday morning,
the Chairman (Mr. Dixon, M.P.), announced that Aiderman
Thomas Phillips had given £1,000 to the funds of the League.
COMPULSION.
The Rev. Dr. Rowland Williams, Vicar of Broadchalke, Wilts,
read a paper on “ The Legislative Enforcement of Attendance, par
ticularly in Rural Districts.” He said :—I find myself in this paper
arguing some things which do not, it seems, need arguing in Bir
mingham at all, and therefore I shall not read all that I have
written. For instance, I find myself saying a good word for the
Conscience Clause, which a gentleman from Merthyr Tydvil
yesterday said was a delusion and a snare. That arises from the
fact that in Wiltshire, in a meeting of the clergy, I have been the
only clergyman in the room who did not sign a petition against the
Conscience Clause, as being too liberal and sacrificing too much.
And just before I left South Wales to go into Wiltshire, the same
thing happened. There, also, I was the only one who would not
sign a petition against the Conscience Clause, because it gave up too
much of the rights of the Church. Hence you see how it arises
that a person of average sanity otherwise, comes here to say a good
word for that, which you once offered, but will not offer again. I
shall pass over some matters in my paper which are of an antedeluvian character, and touch on some others lightly which are
subjects for reasonable argument. I shall leave out some remarks
on the agricultural labourer, intended to show that he is not so
ignorant as is sometimes said, and that he is not tyrannised
over by the farmers. Then I go on as follows :—The range
of human thought is so complex and diversified by ramifica
�99
tions, that hardly any question is so simple (e. g. the idiom of
a particle) as not to entail upon persons treating it, the risk of
being occasionally pushed forward into the discussion of difficult
problems. A similar remark would hold good almost equally, of tha
field of human action. Only, as the mass of mankind are compelled
to act in some way, common sense has taught them the necessity
of habitually setting aside, with a view to joint action, questions
however important, not relevant to the matter in hand. The most
ardent politicians on different sides, are not necessarily prevented
from transacting commercial business together. Institutions, such
as hospitals or asylums, in which human suffering appeals to bene
volence, present a still more obvious field in which the propriety
of setting aside the jealousies incidental to divided opinion meets
with general acknowledgment. It may be true, that the strongest
moral inducements to the benevolent action in which men agree,
are derived from the religious sentiment in which they differ. But
such a circumstance is not found fatal to co-operation ; nor would
it, I apprehend, be a just conclusion, that joint action for a definite
purpose implies an absence of proper zeal in respect of other duties
or aspirations, upon which unanimity has not yet been attained.
On this principle, although my personal feeling, no less than any
clerical prepossession, might induce me to prefer the lively presence
of the religious element in any system of teaching ; yet, if either
the intellectual differences which we have been taught to associate
with the religious sentiment, or the social organisations which have
arisen as their embodiments, impede the introduction into our
schools of theological standards, I still desire the school to be
preserved, and those objects of school teaching on which we can
agree promoted, even at the price of setting aside whatever becomes
an entanglement. I refrain from pursuing this topic, because in
those districts with which I am best acquainted, the conscience
clause, when enforced as a reality, sufficiently meets the difficulty,
and the treatment of the more complex cases of large towns will
fall into abler hands. Turning to the special subject of this paper,
the desirableness of enforcing attendance in schools, especially in
rural districts, I find myself still met by that complexity of con
siderations which belongs to action of a public kind. It would be
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foolish, to recommend a legislative policy on this subject, without
considering the objections to such a policy which arise from the
social circumstances of the country. Hence I must ask so much of
your attention, as may show that this aspect of things has not been
forgotten, to the condition of the labourer in the south-west of
England. We do not, in Wiltshire, admit the accuracy of the highlycoloured pictures, which benevolent writers have sometimes drawn
of a dead level of ignorance among our labourers. We find many
varieties in the race ; some very good, and, in proportion to their
rank in life, intelligent; others of various degrees of badness. We
see no great wit in classing together men so unlike each other,
under the generic name Hodge, anymore than in classifying
literary artists as Dodge. Again, we do not admit that farmers
are, as a general rule, tyrannical, or forgetful of the claim of the
labouring class to humane consideration. The price of labour is
what it will fetch ; and farmers can, as little as any other class in the
community, permit themselves to be dragged down into pauperism,
by undertaking payments on a large scale, beyond the value of
that which they receive. One of the primary requisites for their
business, amidst the vicissitudes of the seasons and the growing
magnitude of their transactions, is nerve ; and one object upon which
nerve has to employ itself is the maintenance of discipline. Even
on the strong supposition, that the maintenance of a due supply of
labourers in adequate comfort should be naturally regarded as a
preliminary charge on the land, the class upon which the benevo
lent portion of such a requirement would justly fall, are not the
immediate employers, whose rents have been fixed according to the
common rules of demand and supply. Again, observing, how much
is deducted by unfavourable weather, and by short days, from the
value of the services of labourers (about three-fourths of whom the
farmer maintains through the year), I must demur to the
criticisms often lavished upon the heads of agricultural employers,
as part of the wrong habitually done to silent men. But after
all qualifications, the life of our rural labourer is hard. Suppos
ing his weekly nine shillings, virtually stretched by piece-work,
harvest-time, and allowances, to thirteen (which is an extremely,
favourable estimate), it barely covers the first necessaries of
�101
life • and, if the family are numerous, hardly gives them bread.
Fire, clothing, rent, the distant approach to luxury involved in tea,
sugar, bacon, are still to he met. When one first observes these
people one exclaims, “ How do they ever live?” We gradually dis
cover that they live in part, by the aid of their children’s labour.
From six or seven years old to sixteen or seventeen, the young
rustic goes through a rising scale of crow-scaring, and horse keeping,
for which he receives wages rising from eighteen-pence, to six or
seven shillings. Hence the boys in a family are a treasure. The
girls are, in our account, not so useful. Now the question to
which I must ask the attention of the members of our League,
and for the sake of which these details have been introduced,
is this :—Are we justified in asking the Legislature to interpose,
not only between parent and child, but between the children
and their bread; or in desiring to remove, in our scholastic
zeal, into a sphere of book-work, these poor children of the
poor, who are at present more usefully employed? Would
there not be some cruelty in such removal? Nay, even some
danger of so narrowing the possibilities of subsistence, as to
bring the parental and self-preserving instincts into collision ?
Again, this question comes clogged with an allegation. It is
alleged, that unless children go young into the fields they will not
be worth their salt; that they are not improved by schooling in
books, for the work which will be the business of their life.
Hence we are invited to let well alone, or to fall back upon the
voluntary system, which suits the genius of Englishmen, and has
made them what they are; and if there be any point at which
the influence of agricultural employers is injuriously exercised, it
is in the form of pressure, to secure the services of children at an
age tender in the judgment of the parents, who profit by it; more
so, in that of physiological observers. Agriculture is not the
only employment on which discussions of this kind have been
known. Our answer to the question raised will be found most
easily by a reference to the existence of the Factory Acts, but
more convincingly by a consideration of the principle on which
these Acts are founded, while it may be fortified by moral reflections.
We may ascribe in part to Christianity, in part to the growing
�102
humanity of the age, and, not least, to the democratic element in
our constitution, the wide acceptance of this principle—that the
human being is not to be altogether sacrificed to mechanical excel
lence in his particular calling. Man is to be made man before he
is labourer or artisan. Suppose we could develope some useful
animal instincts more strongly by surrendering what is human, we
ought not to do so. Thus, if it were true (which is a large con
cession for argument’s sake) that a little early book-work dis
inclined men for plodding field-work, we are still bound to awaken
in them a nature more than merely animal. Indeed, the possi
bility of such a collateral issue being raised, tends to throw light
on our main question ; for it indicates the existence on the part of
the parents, of so low a degree of interest on the subject as may
almost be called indifference, and it fastens our attention on the
prevalence among employers of views such as our League may
fairly counteract. Against the element of passive indifference, and
against such a low estimate of education as amounts to dis
couragement, the Legislature of the country may be called upon to
set its higher intelligence in operation. The province of an
enlightened Legislature comprehends care for the physical develop
ment of the young, and (as I have contended) for the possibilities
of their moral or mental training. Say, that in its action towards
these ends the Legislature, should indirectly suggest to our peasantry
something of that foresight which their social superiors are com
pelled to exercise in marrying, or something of that effort, on
behalf of their children’s minds which they acknowledge a duty
on behalf of their bodies—and say even that it opens to charitable
persons a new object, or fresh direction, for the aid which they often
lavish upon the poor—none of these collateral results would be so
injurious as to destroy the argument for the enforcement of primary
education. My proposal to the League is this : Let the Legislature
be asked, in pursuance of its own inquiries, to fix an age (my own
tentative suggestion would be ten) within which field-labour and
stable-labour should be restricted in kind, or forbidden altogether.
Let there be a second limit of age (I would tentatively suggest
twelve), within which employment of boys should only be per
mitted upon the production of satisfactory proof, that schooling for
�103
three or four years has secured fair results. There would be no
difficulty in either creating an officer for each union, hundred, or
larger district, or in selecting from our overseers, surveyors,
inspectors, tax-gatherers, some one who should be charged with
the duty of verifying a certificate from the Government Inspector
of Schools. Only I would deprecate the selection for this purpose
of the clergyman, whose province, lying properly in persuasion,
ought not to be encumbered with compulsory requirements.
Suppose such a system were enforced, it would reach in the first
place all the outlying squatters on the borders of parochial civilisa
tion, whose children are too often a reproach to us. Secondly, it
would stimulate opinion among the average peasantry; and,
thirdly, it would throw the shield of its powerful protection over
the mother, who too often sees her child taken from school sooner
than she likes to think of, and sooner than necessity requires.
Fourthly, it would enable us to bring to bear upon a riper age those
instructive agencies which, in the absence of preliminary training,
are almost thrown away. The night-school, of which I speak from
experience, cannot possibly be a substitute for a proper amount of
early day schooling; as anyone who observes how many of the
higher classes, after a day of hard business or hard pleasure, sit
down in the evening to the study of a Greek author, will easily
conceive. Rain and darkness, with a mile or two to walk, wet
clothes and weary eyes, hardly suit the first initiation in the
mysteries of book-work. But where the taste for reading, writing,
and calculating has been early awakened, the night-school affords a
chance of such a recurrence to such things as may be a refresh
ment. A like remark would hold good of penny readings,
lectures, newspapers. (Local journals, with local news, and an
element of religious gossip, are welcome ; but we are a long way in
Wiltshire from the bewildering topics of London journalism). I
do not speak without having tried these things. My experience
convinces me that all such agencies, and I will venture to add that
(supposing the Christianity of England to be something different
from that of Abyssinia), the instructions of the pulpit, would have a
more wholesome or energetic operation, if preceded in early life by
some three years of compulsory education for the labourer’s
�104
child. The suggestion which others have made of half-time, or of
requiring school attendance for a portion of the day, or of the year,
is one which I could only admit as valuable, upon the same con
dition as the agencies already glanced at—namely, upon the con
dition that some three years of continuous education had been its
preliminary. Nor ought mere infancy to count, if included in these
three years ? The ultimate result aimed at would be the production
of a more intelligent—therefore, we must trust, a happier—order of
men, in our rural parishes. The fear that such men would be found
less devoted to their work, or less skilful in it, less virtuous, or
harder to govern, seems to me the most chimerical fear that ever
was entertained. Men are far more easily governed than brutes;
only they require to have the fitness of things shown to them. A
public school, recruited from our higher classes, is far more amenable
to discipline than would be the same number of young rustics,
with their alternations of blind credulity and obstinate incredulity,
both guided, not by knowledge, but by invincible self-will.
Schools do wisely not to pretend to anticipate the experience of
life. But intelligence counts for something, even in handling a
spade, certainly in managing a steam-engine. That intelligence
should apply itself to the improvement of its own condition, does
not involve unfaithfulness to the interests of its employer. One
of the most direct, and in my judgment one of the happiest,
results of education, would be to increase the facilities for com
paring the value of labour in different parts of the world. It
is not important that our labourers should attend the meet
ings of the British Association; but it is very desirable that
they should be able to inform themselves how to place their con
dition on a level with their fellows at home or abroad. Nor does
it appear to me that there would be any injustice to employers, if
such a peaceful and voluntary redistribution of labour as I con
template, were to leave the natural laws of demand and supply free
to operate in the assessment of wages, instead of permitting these
to be governed by a calculation (perhaps humane) of the pos
sibilities of subsistence. At present, a certain percentage of the
labourers in each parish is unattached, or employed only out of
charity during the slack season of the year. If such men tend to
�105
keep down the price of labour, they are also a perpetual threat to
the rates. Hence a voluntary sifting of our rural population
would be a gain to the remaining peasantry; but also to the
ratepayer. Probably, in time, rates might be much diminished,
though hardly swept away. Suppose, as another result, that our
political economists and our legislators should find themselves
called upon to exercise their joint sciences in rendering the con
dition of the labourer, by means of house and pasture-land,
so attractive as to prevent the depopulation of districts already
sparsely populated, I should consider the result not unworthy
of means so peaceful and so innocent as simple education.
It would not grieve me if, by a natural process, meat and milk
were earned, and enjoyed more largely as earnings, by the poor
and by their children. This plan of enabling our poor to place
themselves by intelligence, on a level with their fellows else
where, has nothing in common with schemes for the artificial
depression of the higher, in order to bring them down to
the lower. Again, we should not grudge the labourer whatever
acquired habit of intelligent locomotion may be requisite, to
prevent a plentiful harvest, which gladdens so many classes in the
community, from bringing to him only a lowering of his wages. I
am not blaming a process due to natural causes; but I desire the
equally natural means of adjustment. Again, if the waste of life
in our large towns requires constantly to be repaired by an influx
from the rural population, such a process would become more
salutary as the raw material was improved. "We are apt m rural
districts ‘ to conceive of society in general, as a Providential
scheme, in which protection is the duty of one part, and submis
sion of the other. While I readily acknowledge the just mutual
interdependence of all ranks, and no word ever escapes me
in my ministrations calculated to set class against class, I see
reason sometimes to regret a taint of surviving feudalism, and to
dread the spread of ingrained mendicancy. It is not wholesome
that any class of men should be unable to help themselves. The
truest, the most permanent, of all forms of charity, would be that
which should restore this almost forgotten power. Because educa
tion is the most effective instrument to that holy end, it deserves
�106
promotion ; and because it cannot be adequately promoted without
aid from the strong arm of the law, I applaud this National Educa
tion League for inscribing on its banners the unpopular word com
pulsion. I hat word ought not in our age to have the same alarm
ing sound, as it had under the dynasty of the Stuarts or the Tudors.
For in proportion as our Constitution receives its full popular de
velopment, it ought to be discerned that the State is only a name
for the People, giving itself on a large scale the benefit of self-conscious
organisation. Here the jealousies, too natural in times of repression,
with which the smaller social bodies once regarded the central
authority, ought to be softened until they ultimately pass away,
and the great commonwealth of our country, expressing its mind
deliberately in the Senate, should be regarded (in the Apostle’s
words) as the nurse and mother of us all. If I have not
wearied the meeting, I will venture to add a few illustrative
remarks on some collateral points. It may be assumed that
this League will not have for its object the establishment of
new schools, to the detriment of those which exist in satisfactory
working order. Again, it is by no means a necessity that the sup
port of a school by rates, or other form of public money, should
interfere with the exaction of such payments on the part of the
children as may be easily obtained, or of such as may be found
useful in giving the education a value in the eyes of the parents.
Again, it does not follow, because we deliberately set aside such
sectarian forms of religion as include proselytism as an essential
element, that we are therefore bound to surrender the contribu
tions to man’s intellectual growth which may be derived from
literature of a sacred kind. What is called the denominational
difficulty, may seem in some cases to be only merging itself in the
form of the Scriptural difficulty; and this may happen the more in
cases where religious bodies are not agreed as to the relations of the
co-ordinate authority of the Bible, the Church, and the personal
Conscience, or Reason. But I am persuaded no such difficulty need
be found insuperable in practice. Most religious persons are
agreed that, on the ground of reverence, the Bible should not be
degraded into a mechanical lesson-book for reading, as a primer or
a horn-book. Most men of the world (like Mr. Roebuck, at Salis
�107
bury) are eager in proclaiming that many useful lessons are to be
learnt from modern history and from secular literature. Again, all
persons who have accepted frankly the principle of the Con
science Clause (though I fear its operation still needs extension and
enforcement) will concede, and even contend, that denominational
inferences from Scripture lessons are not to be pressed upon children
against the wish of their parents. It is a matter of experience, that
very energetic Dissenters will let their children attend the schools of
a clergyman, whose doctrines they disapprove, provided they are sure
of his good faith in the matter of abstinence from proselytism.
So when once it is understood that in schools supported by public
money, rates or taxes, the Bible is to have but an indirectly
religious influence, and is not to be employed for any denominational
purpose whatsoever, the difficulty will vanish. There will still
remain a treasury of sacred poetry, history, precepts, religious
instances and examples, which may subserve the noblest ends of the
teacher’s office, without prejudice to the conscience of the parent.
But if influential persons, or important bodies of men, remain
amongst us, who are not contented with such a practical application
of the principle of the conscience clause, but contend for the
enforcement upon children of points in which large classes of the
community are not agreed, the survival of such persons, or bodies,
amongs' us, is one of the strongest reasons which could be devised
for calling into existence this national League for securing the
education of every child in England and Wales. Let me end
with a story, and a reflection. A man in my parish could not
read, and his wife could not read; but they possessed a book
the library of their household. He said, with touching gen
erosity, “ Best give him (i.e., the book), to some one else; he is
no use to any of we.” Now, it is often imagined that such sayings
belong to the generation whose childhood was in days long by
gone ; when “ there was not the talk of schools there is now.”
My own observation convinces me that the tares grow as fast as
the wheat grows ; that the cultivation of human life is a constant
struggle against enemies, whose activity equals, if not exceeds any
which is exercised against them. Hence I conclude that we
require stronger remedies than anything short of legislative action
�108
can supply. If we continue in our present course, sending infancy
to school, childhood into the stable and the field, manhood to the
beerhouse, old age to the workhouse, the second generation
hence will, in fifty years more, still find men whose library
is a solitary book, and who may be ignorant enough, if not
generous enough, to exclaim, “ Best give him to some one else; he
is no use to any of we.”
ALDERMAN RUMNEY ON COMPULSION.
Aiderman Rumney, of Manchester, read a paper on “ Compul
sory Education.” He said :—The present educational system has
been in operation a sufficient time to test its value. The controversy
with the voluntaries, commencing with the introduction of the
Minutes of Council, ceased long ago, and there has been no hin
drance to the efficient working of the system. The Government
has rather been in advance of the people, in its willingness to con
tribute funds for educational purposes. The voluntaries, although
withdrawing from the controversy, have not withdrawn from their
share of their work, and the results are—the educational condition
of England at the present moment. What might have been the
state of things if the voluntary principle, pure and simple, had
been adopted, cannot now be determined. Its advocates may say
with some truth, “ It has never had a fair trial;” but it is certain
that the schools aided by public funds, and the schools supported
by voluntary contributions, have not together succeeded in educat
ing more than a small _portion of the children of the working
classes, and that both in country districts and in populous places
there is a mass of ignorance truly appalling. The Duke of Marl
borough may express his satisfaction with things as they are, but
most men who have given attention to the subject are generally
dissatisfied, while scarcely a meeting is held in town or country
at which the ignorance of the people is not deplored, and methods
of instruction urged upon them. Without troubling the Conference
with voluminous statistics, I would only refer to two or three state
ments as illustrative and typical. In a return called the “ Parishes
Return,” made to the House of Lords, it appears there are 14,877
parishes in England and Wales. Of these only 7,40G are reported
�109
by the Committee of Council as having schools fulfilling the required
conditions of approved schools ; 2,779 as inspection schools, but
not entitled to capitation fees ; and 4,692 parishes respecting which
there is no evidence of any good schools at all, although of course
in many such, doubtless, good schools not inspected may exist. The
character of these 7,406 approved schools may be learned from the
fact, that of all the children registered in 1868, only 60 per cent,
were sufficiently advanced to be presented for examination to Her
Majesty’s Inspectors; while of these only 67 per cent, passed in
reading, writing, and arithmetic ; and only a fourth were prepared
for an examination in the higher standards. Canon Morris, at one
time Inspector of Schools in Staffordshire, wrote thus :—“ Con
sidering how many schools are still inefficient, and how in the best
schools the majority of the children leave before reaching the
first class, I fear I should be rather over than under the mark
if I said that one-fifth or one-sixth part of the children of the
country are being reached by our improved system of educa
tion.” Inspector the Rev. W. W. Howard, speaking of his district
jn Devonshire, says :—“ Looking to the small number of schools
in the district in which efficient teaching is given, and
the small result of such teachings from irregularity of attendance
and other causes, I am convinced that some legislative measure is
needed, which shall secure better means of education, and shall
compel the attendance of children, that they may benefit by the
education offered.” Of Birmingham, Mr. Jesse Collings says :—
“Out of 45,000 children there were 21,696 wandering about the
streets, neither at school nor at work; and 26,000 that could
neither read nor write.” About the same may be said of Man
chester—the lowest estimate given of children who ought to be at
school and are not, is from 10,000 to 20,000, the highest from
40,000 to 50,000. The Rev. H. W. Bellairs, another inspector,
writes thus : “ The present condition of education in Great Britain
may be thus stated:—one half of the children of the working
classes between three and thirteen years of age, are under no schoolastic education at all • and of the other half it cannot be truly
said that, under our present system, they will ever be half
educated.” One country place may be taken as illustrating the
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educational condition of the agricultural districts; the national
schoolmaster of Evesham writes :—“ I have been in charge of this
school for five years, and from my observation and experience
during that time, I am of opinion that there is a deplorable amount
of ignorance amongst the children of the labouring class in this
neighbourhood ; I have become very strongly impressed with the
conviction, that our present educational appliances are quite in
adequate to cope with the appalling ignorance, and moral destitu
tion so prevalent in this locality.” Such, then, is the condition of
England after a lengthened trial of the system now in operation.
Doubtless there are exceptions. The northern counties are in this
respect superior to the southern, while in many towns a larger pro
portion of children will be found attending school, than in Bir
mingham and Manchester, but in no place, whether in town or
country, is the educational condition of the people satisfactory, nor
is there any hope of improvement with the present system. It is
not progressive, has no tendency to propagate itself; it helps those
who help themselves which is well enough, but the children of
those who have neither the means nor the will, it leaves to mental
and moral starvation; the rich schools are supplied adundantly,
the poor are sent empty away. “ To him that hath shall be given ;
from him that hath not, shall be taken away ”—not that which he
hath, but that which he might have, if he had only the means where
with to obtain it. The system has failed in enlisting the support
and sympathy of any but those actually interested in its manage
ment. In country districts, the clergyman is almost the only person
outside the school who takes any interest in the work within ;
there is no active and equal co-operation. He may ask, and some
times obtain the help of his neighbours, but they soon leave him to
his duties and responsibilities—they say, it is a part of the parson’s
work,* and does not concern them. In towns there are committees
and more equality between clergymen and laymen ; and there is
oversight and vigour for a time, but in the absence of anything
stimulating and requiring thought and effort, a committee soon
becomes a soulless form, only roused to periodic action for the
purpose of securing as much money from the State as possible, at
the least cost of time and labour. There is no competition among
�Ill
schools, nothing to stimulate teachers and managers; and that
which ought to interest a whole neighbourhood—the education of
the children—fails to secure more sympathy and support, than a
few annual subscriptions paid grudgingly towards the school funds.
Then, they are avowedly religious schools, established on tho
assumption that the State is bound to see to the religious instruc
tion of the young; and so all religious creeds and opinions are,
by authority of the State, taught in the day schools. Roman
Catholic doctrine and history, Protestant doctrine and history,
each declaring the other erroneous; Jewish creeds, declaring both
wrong; and, if the Mormons are numerous enough to establish
schools of their own, (for the Mormon religion is permitted by law),
then the State would pay for teaching that the Mormon Bible is
the only revealed word, and all else obsolete and erroneous. What
is truth ? is replied to by “ Whatever you please. It is of no
consequence; only let something be taught which you call religion,
and that will be sufficient.” So the Government, while compelling,
declines to interfere with the religious teaching; it merely asks
whether the managers are satisfied, with the religious condition of
the school, and if an affirmative answer be given, the capitation
grant is allowed without further question. Thus, under the shelter
of a piece of ill-concealed hypocrisy, if the managers of a
purely secular school will enforce the reading of a single verse in
the Bible daily—no matter what it may be—and declare themselves
satisfied, State aid would be afforded; while, if they are honest
enough to declare it is not a religious school, and there is no
religious teaching, it will be withheld. A singular illustration of
this anomaly was recently brought before the President of the
Council, in order, if possible, to obtain a remedy. In connection
with a large number of Mechanics’ Institutions, which are for
purely secular teaching, there are day schools as well as night
classes taught by certified teachers. These being secular are
denied the capitation grant, but if the same evening class pupils
taught by the same masters are removed to a building—a National
School for instance—where the day school is an inspected religious
school, then the night pupils are included in the returns, and the
capitation fee is paid for them. The religious influence of another
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class of pupils, taught in the same building in the day
extending to them as evening pupils, is as curious an illustration
of religion by proxy, or imputed righteousness, as will be found
in Church or State, in this or any civilized or uncivilized country.
Surely it is time these absurdities were committed to the Paradise
of Fools, and we adopted a course manly and intelligent in our
dealing with this question. We exhort men to cease their religious
strife, to live in harmony, to form Christian unions and alliances,
and at the same time commence with the propagation of all these
differences with the children in the day school—tell them on the one
hand how very naughty it is for men to differ so much about religion,
and on the other that it is necessary all these differences should be
perpetuated at the expense of the State, and as a part of their
education. The remedy generally proposed for meeting our educa
tional difficulties is an extension of the Factory Half-time Act.
This Act provides that no children shall be employed in factories
under a certain age, without at the same time attending school a
certain number of hours per week. Regarded as a whole, and
compared with what it might have accomplished, it has been a con
spicuous failure. Doubtless, in cases where the employer takes a
personal interest in the education of his workpeople, the Act has
worked advantageously; but such cases are the exception, not the
rule, and there is not a large town in the Factory districts, where
hundreds of young persons who have attended school at half-times
may not be found unable to read or write, and in fact almost as
ignorant, as if they had never attended school at all. Mr. Redgrave,
Inspector of -Factories, in his Report just presented, declares that
“ the present half-time system cannot be allowed to remain as it is.
It is a state of things which the Legislature did not intend, and
which cannot continue unredressed
and he then offers some sug
gestions for its improvement. The provisions of the Factory Act
have been extended to other trades and occupations where young
children are employed, but there has not been time yet to
determine with what results. Mr. Redgrave writes that he has no
doubt, “ when the Act of 1867 has become more familiar to the
manufacturers, we shall find fewer objections to the employ
ment of half-time children. But,” he adds, “ it is well to
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consider what the Act of 1867 has done in this respect,
as a guide to us in connection with that great subject which
in effect it has left untouched—the education o£ the people."
Charges of indifference have been brought against employers, but
the reply is obvious—it is not their business to attend to the
education of their workpeople ; if tjiey find them employment it
may bo required that it shall be in healthy rooms, and employ
ment which shall not in itself be unhealthy, and that they pay
them adequate wages : they are responsible for employing children
without a certificate and suffer the consequences ; they ought not
to be made responsible for determining the value of the certificate
presented. The cardinal defect of the Half-time Act is that it assumes
the child learns at school, but does not require it to be proved. The
certificate is given simply for school attendance, not school attain
ments ; and so, with indifferent parents and children, and too often
not efficient teachers, the children pass out of the period of bondage
to that of freedom without reaping the advantages intended by the
Act. The mind is set upon the termination of the school period, not
on learning; earning wages is a luxury, attending school a sacrifice.
This defect suggests the remedy. If there are nearly one or two
millions of children who ought to be at school but are not—if all
attempts have failed in converting ignorant parents to the conviction
that it is their duty and interest to secure the education of their
children, somehow or other, then nothing short of compulsory school
attendance, or rather compulsory school attainments, will effect the
object; an Act simple in its main features, and modified in its details,
as might be found expedient, would be needed. Regarding attend
ance at school as secondary, it would make it a criminal offence,
punishable by fine or imprisonment, for a parent or guardian to
allow a child to grow up without instruction; and a like offence for
an employer to engage and pay wages to a child without the pro
duction of a certificate of attainments. In this way the strongest
possible inducement would be held out both to parent and child—
not simply to attend school, but to obtain the instruction by which
alone he could earn wages. Self interest would quicken the
apathetic ; no knowledge no wages, would soon fill the schools, and
a generation would not pass away before the laws of compulsory
H
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school attendance would be unnecessary. There would be no
great difficulty in fixing the standard of attainments, or securing a
proper examination ; these things are done at present by the
Oxford and Cambridge Universities, by the Society of Arts, the
Government in the Science Class examination, and other bodies.
It is assumed the examinations would be confined to what are
called secular subjects. A complete education is not contemplated;
but rather that elementary training of the faculties of hand, eye, and
mind, by which the educational process may be carried forward—
the culture and use of the implements rather than the work they
are destined to perform. Primarily, reading, writing, and arithmetic
—possibly geography, history, grammar, drawing, &c.—would form
the subjects upon which examinations would be held, the particular
standard being adjusted to meet the requirements of the case, as in
the examinations already referred to ; it would be determined by
competent and independent authority, and modified from time to
time as might be found necessary. It is satisfactory on this point
to be fortified by the opinion of Mr. Redgrave, Inspector of Factories,
already referred to, who recommends, in suggesting improvements
in the Factory and Employment of Children Acts, “ that no young
person under the age of 16 should be employed for full time unless
a certificate be produced, given in a prescribed form by a certified
schoolmaster, minister, inspector of schools, or justice of the peace,
certifying that the young person can read and write well, and work
sums in the four first rules of arithmetic.” It may be further
remarked, that no country has in modern times secured an educated
people in the absence of compulsory school attendance. In Prus
sia, Switzerland, partly in Holland—the best educated European
States—school attendance is compulsory. In Canada it is the
same, and in the United States it is now, or has been; in some
States the law has ceased to be operative, superseded by the stronger
law of public opinion ; in others, where school attendance is not
satisfactory, a renewal of the compulsory law is suggested as the
only remedy. The principal objections to compulsory school attend
ance are that it is un-English, an interference with the liberty of
the subject, and would not be submitted to by the people. With
a large number of people everything new is un-English. “ That
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which has been shall be” is with them a maxim incapable of refu
tation ; they look back on the past, not for lessons to guide, but for
precedents to follow. Through predilections and prejudices every
question is viewed, seldom directly and abstractedly, and hence
almost all accepted truths have had to fight their way through
contempt, obloquy, misrepresentation, and argument, to victoiy.
There is this encouragement—many things formerly regarded as
un-English are now established. All legislation on social questions,
Sanitary Acts, Health and Nuisances Removal Acts, are of this
description. A man cannot build his house as he pleases, so far
has law invaded the domain of social and private life; and yet the
people are not in rebellion-—nay, rather, the demand is for more,
not less of legislation in this direction. Doubtless, it would be
better if people could be induced to do without so much legal
enactment. Whatever people can do for themselves they ought to
do it better than the State, in its organized capacity, can do it for
them ; but, unfortunately, they do not attend to their own well-being,
even when the duty is obvious ; and although experience is valuable
as a teacher, her school fees are so heavy, that of late years there
has grown up a disposition to devolve many duties upon the State,
which were formerly regarded as beyond its legitimate province.
That compulsory school attendance interferes with the liberty of
the parent is unquestionable, but only so far as the parent violates
the primitive and inherent rights of the child. The child has the
same right to have the mind fed as the body, and if the neglect to
afford proper nourishment for the body exposes the parent to
punishment, there is no reason why the same or even greater
punishment should not be inflicted when he neglects to supply the
necessary food required by the mind. In one sense all law inter
feres with personal liberty, but only when the exercise of liberty
interferes with the rights of others. To punish the burglar is to
interfere with his liberty to plunder; to punish the parents for
withholding from their children the right to be instructed is to do
the same thing. The State takes upon itself the guardianship of
the rights of the weak and helpless, as against the strong, but the
law in each case is founded upon man’s moral nature, is not afbitary, and would be respected. Compulsory school attendance • need
�116
not necessarily interfere with, the liberty of instruction. The child
may be taught at home or at school; the only obligation is that he
shall. not grow up in ignorance. In bringing children into the
world, parents have contracted certain obligations towards them—
they are bound to bring them up and fit them for citizenship ; but
these children are helpless, and unable to secure the fulfilment of
the-obligation, and hence the State interferes as their guardian, to
obtain from the parent, if he is able—and by some other means if
he is not—the completion of the contract into which he had
entered. That there would be cases of hardship where children
are employed and earning wages is likely enough—all social
laws press heavily on some—but regard for the child’s permanent
welfare should over-ride all considerations of temporary advantage
to the parent; and surely it is a less evil to restrain a parent from
Eving upon the earnings of a child, than that the child should be
deprived of the instruction by which he can earn his own bread in
after life, and discharge properly the duties of a citizen. The evil
would not be serious—it would be a displacement of labour to some
extent. There is a certain quantity of juvenile work to be done in
the country, and if children of six to eight years are prevented
doing it, older children and more efficient will be employed for the
purpose. On this subject Monsieur Cousan says : £k A law which
compels parents and guardians under penalties to secure the in
struction of children, is based on the principle that the degree of
education necessary to the knowledge and practice of our duties is
of itself the first of all duties; and,” he adds, “ I do not know a
single country where this law is absent, where popular education
flourishes.” Would a law so inoperative be observed? It is said
such an. amount of hostility would be created as to render the law
inoperative. It may be so, but is it not more likely the influence
would be altogether in the other direction ? The Act would be the
corporate seal of the nation set to the declaration that the children
shall be educated ; it would have the support of the majority, of all
who are really favourable to the nation’s advancement. On parents
disposed to have their children instructed it would exert no
pressure, would not be felt oppressive; they are doing exactly
what the Legislature declares they ought to do. On the vicious only
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would it press heavily. In the middle class, and a large section of
the working men, the feeling in favour of education is strong and
general; and this feeling, supported hy public law, would create an
opinion and influence upon the class below tending to secure
respect and observance, and calculated to render criminal proceed
ings infrequent, and in time unnecessary. Again, it may be
questioned whether there is much force in the opinion so
frequently urged, that abolishing school fees, and supporting the
schools out of the taxation of the country, would tend to lower the
value of instruction in the estimation of the people. It can hardly
be conceived that parents, having a due regard for the welfare of
their children, will neglect to send them to school because they
have no occasion to send at the same time 4d. or 6d. per week as pay
ment for the instruction; and it is still less conceivable that those who
have no such regard for their offspring will make this an excuse for
their negligence, and urge that if the sacrifice involved in the per
formance of their duty were greater, they would be more disposed to
undertake it. Be it as it may, there is the fact that a large number
of the children of the working class are without instruction—a
sufficient number to suggest the question, “What will they do with
us ? ” if we cannot do something more with them, than has been
done. Parents do not send them to school, and will not', and no
other remedy is suggested but compulsion. But if compulsion
is applied to one it must be to all ; the law must be equal in its
dealings. Ignorance and criminality, as a matter of fact, are insepar
ably connected. One of the functions of Government is- the
repression of crime, and, in the interests of society and the welfare
of the helpless child, it surely may interfere to prevent the abuse of
parental authority. At present a parent may do whatever he pleases
with his child, short of actual bodily cruelty ; he may educate it or he
may not, and the law does not interfere. Substitute the imperative
for the conditional—you shall for you may—and there will be a
prospect that in a few years our educational condition will no longer
be a bye-word and reproach to all intelligent foreigners. In carrying
out this law of compulsory school attendance, it is clear schools must
be provided; it does not necessarily follow they should be free,
except to the children of parents who cannot afford to pay. Whether
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they should be free to all is fairly open to discussion, bnt all certi
fied schools, whether without school fees or with them, on the part
of those able to pay, should be open without restriction or limita
tion in so far as they are aided and inspected by public authorityThey should neither be denominational nor sectarian schools, nor, in
the ordinary sense in which the term is used, should they be religious
schools. It is not now regarded as the paramount duty of the State
to attend to the religious interests of the people. The world is
ultimately ruled by thought, and it cannot be questioned that the
thought of England and Europe is strongly in favour of leaving
religion to individual conscience, withdrawing it from the sphere
of law, and, in spite of popes and prelates, leaving every man to
settle for himself what form of religion he shall adopt, and what
mode of worship he shall observe. But it does not follow that all
existing schools cannot be utilized and used, and only if and when
found inadequate need new schools be erected : the simple provision
would be that during ordinary school hours the instruction should
be confined to the subjects in which examinations are conducted,
and dogmatic religious teaching be excluded. Instead of a con
science clause, which is but a clumsy contrivance for protecting the
Dissenter from outward violations of conscience, while it exposes
the child to social degradation, the religious instruction, as such,
should be limited to certain hours, open to all who choose to accept
it, but not forced -on any. There is one objection to the use of
existing schools pointed out by Mathew Arnold. It is this : “ That
the moment the working class of this country have this question of
instruction really brought home to them, their self-respect will make
them demand, like the working classes on the Continent, public
schools, and not schools which the clergyman, or the squire, or the
millowner calls 1 my school.’ ” There is another objection still more
formidable, viz., that the interest of the nation will never be fully
enlisted in the work of popular education so long as instruction is
confined to denominational schools. The continuance of these
schools is urged solely on religious grounds; they are supposed to
secure, by their connection with a place of worship, the religious
culture of the children, and this is regarded as all-important. It is
singular the unanimity there is among a certain class of speakers
�119
and writers in favour of combining religion with elementary instruc
tion in schools for the poor. They look with horror on what they
term the divorce of religion from the learning of the alphabet in the
national schools ; yet respecting the schools for their own children,
the middle and upper class schools, there is no anxiety. The last
thing people send their children to be taught in the grammar or
private schools is religion, and as a matter of fact it is not taught;
and yet when it is proposed to omit this teaching from schools for
working men, an outcry is raised, the scheme denounced as godless,
and the supporters of it no better than infidels. Lurking under this
loose talk is the idea that religion is a good thing for the poor man,
and it must be supplied to him whether he likes it or not; but for
other people—why, they can please themselves. Ask, however, the
working men themselves respecting the education of their own
children, and they would pronounce unhesitatingly in favour of
non-denominational and secular schools. In this respect also the
present system must be regarded as a failure : it is based on the
idea of making men Christians that they may be good citizens. If
it had succeeded, its continuance might be justified; but has it ?
Notoriously, a vast majority of the working classes are outside the
pale of direct religious influences, and yet these have been trained
to a large extent in our existing schools. Not a Congress of Bishops
and Clergy can be held—not a Conference of Dissenting ministers
of any denomination—where the question respecting the alienation
of the working classes from religion is not earnestly discussed, and
sundry plans devised for their recovery. The “ heathenism of our
large towns ” is always a favourite subject, and how to adapt church
services to suit their tastes, and so bring them into the religious
edifices, occupies a conspicuous place in all their deliberations. Let
anyone examine the Reports of the Inspectors of the National
Schools on Gospel History, or any subject embraced in religious
teaching, and, with some exceptions, it is about the saddest exhi
bition of ignorance to be found in connection with school teaching.
Committing to memory religious dogmas they cannot understand,
or which, if they do, they find daily the subject of controversy, is
not the way to make children religious, or to form the basis of a
true Christian character. In fact, religion cannot be taught, it must
�120
grow by all the holy influences with which a child can be sur
rounded ; but these influences may be entirely absent where there
is most of professedly religious teaching. Between “teaching
religion ” and “ religious teaching ” we have failed to recognize any
distinction, and this confounding of two things essentially different
is a mistake which pervades our entire system of education. An
improved national System must have for its object the making
of good citizens. The real learning of a man is of more public
importance than any particular religious opinions he may entertain,
and we must learn to separate the teaching of religious doctrine
from the ordinary instruction of primary schools, before we can
expect to train up good citizens or intelligent Christians. It may
be admitted that there can be no complete education if religion is
altogether excluded; but elementary and technical instruction can
be given alone, and religious instruction may be safely left to
private individuals or the public bodies which may choose to under
take it. Aworthy prelate at a recent Church Congress again hoisted
the American flag, to frighten us from the adoption of this godless
scheme of secular education. Whether rhe distinguished prelate is
acquainted with the American system or not does not appear, but
the results will challenge comparison with anything he can produce
in this country. The system is based upon the idea of citizenship.
The teaching of religion is prohibited; religious teaching is not.
The Bible is not degraded by being made a school book, and ex
plained by an incompetent teacher; but the school is opened by a
portion read without note or comment, the Lord’s Prayer is recited
or chanted, a hymn or piece of sacred music is sung; and, when
conducted by an intelligent and religious teacher, it is difficult to
imagine a service more beautiful or impressive than may be wit
nessed daily at the opening of an American primary school. And
what are the results ? The American youths are more intelligent
than the English. The American people are as loyal to their
Government, and, as a whole, as law-abiding as any under the old
monarchies of Europe, and, judged by any of the ordinary tests, they
are more religious than the people of this country Sunday is better
observed than here, a larger number of people attend church; the
religious, educational, and philanthropic institutions supported by
�121
voluntary contributions are equal in extent to those in this country.
A religious tone enters into and affects the whole of society, which
has no counterpart in this country, while in the more purely
American States, where the foreign element has less influence, there
is a higher general and religious culture than could be found either
in this country or in any of the old countries of Europe. And yet
reverend men at Church Congresses talk about this secular education
as leading to irreligion and infidelity. The leading features of a
measure may be briefly summarised. A Minister of Education, and
a Council, and Examining Board would be essential; provision for
training and certifying competent teachers ; in every district a com
mittee to superintend all school arrangements, and disburse the funds
levied for school purposes. The funds should be partly national,
partly local—national as contributed by the whole people, and
local in order to secure personal local interest, and a provident dis
bursement. The area of local taxation should be so wide as to
avoid severe and unequal pressure, and not so large as to destroy
individual supervision. In corporate towns, and towns with Local
Boards, these bodies would be intrusted with the work and manage
ment ; in country districts, the Poor Law Unions would afford
the basis of organization. In all cases the duty of superintending
school instruction should be regarded as the proper business of
the governing body, and not of the clergy. Their work is the
religious teaching; but only as citizens have they need to meddle
with general instruction. The scramble hitherto to induce children
to attend school, that they might be got to church and figure in
ecclesiastical statistics, has hindered rather than helped the progress
of education. If the responsibility of looking after the instruction
of children be taken from the clergy, and placed upon the rate
payers in each locality, self-interest and preservation would act as
powerful incentives to vigorous action against a too parsimonious
provision. A minimum salary could be fixed where a given mrmber of scholars are taught, so that a school would in no case be
starved by an economical committee. Another important feature
would be thorough inspection and frequent examinations, and the
results of the examinations circulated as soon as possible. At
present the reports of the Inspectors are almost useless. They are
�122
sent in by a department of the Government, printed among the
blue books, and ready for use if anybody cares to apply for them ;
but, supposing the reports of a district were printed and circulated
quickly, the peculiarities—excellences or deficiencies—of each
school pointed out, what an interest would be excited! Com
mittees and managers would read and consider them. Conferences
of teachers would be held, they would be discussed, a healthy
stimulus would be applied, and then would happen, what it is
utterly in vain to expect under the present system : the people,
regarding the work as their own, would do it with all the judgment
and energy of which they are capable, and which characterises
their proceedings in other matters of local and personal interest.
DISCUSSION.
Mr. E. Potter, M.P. : Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen—
In the first place, let me express my strong feelings of admiration for
the address which we have just heard from Mr. Alderman Eumney,
than whom no man is more competent to give an opinion on the
working of the educational system in the district from which he
comes. I heard him a year or two ago, before a Parliamentary com
mittee, say that he considered the factory education little less than a
sham. I agree with him, and the causes are, to my mind, very patent.
In the first place, the factory system only embraced a single section
of the trade of the country. It was forced on the cotton trade, and
the country felt that it was unjust to compel one trade only to
submit to it. Among millowners there was a strong and a natural
feeling, and even the best masters, who had had educational estab
lishments of their own previous to the time, said, “ If it comes to a
question of force, the people may educate themselves.” They
would not be forced, as a single class, to do it, and their feeling
upon the matter was strong. Now, factory education has been
very good under certain circumstances, and bad under other circum
stances. Where a master has taken an interest in education, it has
been successful, but it has been a very difficult thing to carry out.
It is a difficult thing to exercise a moral compulsion. Those of us
who are large employers may be able to persuade many, but un
fortunately others would take a different course. They would pre
�123
fer sending their children to where they could work full time. The
inefficiency of the factory system is that it does not embrace the
whole country. The great benefit of the compulsory principle is
that it would reach all classes. Now, it must be carried out mainly
by the extension of the factory and half-time system. That is the
great object of the bill I advocate. It would compel the education
of every child, labouring or not. I see no difficulty in doing this ;
the organisation would be very easy—-no more difficult for a district
than it is now for a single factory. There are large factories,
employing five or six thousand hands, and I do not see that it
would be more difficult to educate the children in a small
town, say, of 8,000 inhabitants, than it is to educate the
children in a large mill. There is one point I am anxious about
in connection with the League, and that is, that this education
should be kept perfectly distinct from the present denominational
system. If it is given on something like the factory system, I
believe it will not interfere with, but tend to support, the present
system. I say this advisedly. There is a large class of workmen
who, when forced to educate their children, will, as a matter of
pride, send them to the denominational rather than to the free
schools, and pay for them rather than accept State aid. In a few
years it would have that effect. At all events, the two systems
must be kept perfectly distinct. There is nothing worse in a
denominational school than the education of half-timers. School
masters do not like to have them, because they interfere with the
working of the school. I had some knowledge of a school ten
years before the Factory Act came into existence. It was pretty
successful, and well supported, and the proprietor had some
influence over a certain number of hands. I believe it was a
higher class school then than it was when transformed into a
school of half-time. The master could not give attendance to the
half-timers, and the school rather fell off, and the ultimate con
clusion of the proprietor was, to make it altogether into a half
time school. The privilege was extended to the master of taking
any number of children from the neighbouring district to educate,
and of having the fees himself j but he has never succeeded in
this respect, and he said to me in conversation, that there was a
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feeling among the better class workmen against sending their
children into the half-time school. I think that feeling exists, hut
if the free and compulsory system is worked on the half-time
principle only, the Factory Act will be carried out very efficiently.
I am an advocate for the half-time system, but it must be kept
distinct from the other. We have been working half a century
under the Factory Act, and it has been compulsory, as far as it
went, and secular. There has been no compulsion to teach religion
the employer not teaching his own creed-"—or to have the school
purely secular. I think many of the best schools have been
purely secular. I think, then, that the new schools which will be
established, if I may say so, below the line, should be classed as
distinct working-class schools entirely. I am very anxious that
every encouragement should be given to keeping them separate.
I should not like any injury to be inflicted on the higher class
denominational schools. My great interest in joining this society
is to keep the schools distinct. I think we shall do a fatal damage
if we injure the denominational schools at all, because there is
il ample room and verge enough” for us below them. I am per
fectly satisfied we can supply education in the schools below them
to another million children. Why should they not be perfectly
distinct ? The one class of schools will be compulsory, and that
very compulsion should make them free and secular. We might
as well meet the thing at once, openly and honestly. In
denominational schools you can enforce denominational teaching;
but with us, under a compulsory system, it must be secular. I
wish the two questions to be worked harmoniously, side by side,
but to be separate from each other.
The Rev. C. Clarke : I am to speak a few words on the subject
of compulsion, and on the supposition that in the course of a few
years we shall have our bill passed through the Houses of Parlia
ment, and that local authorities will have the power to found and
establish free secular schools, is it likely in such case that the
poor, the ignorant, the thoughtless, those of our fellow countrymen
who are unacquainted with the blessings and advantages of educa
tion, will be able to oppose the national will and the intentions of
the Legislature by refusing to send their children to school ? Are
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they likely to succeed in any attempt of that sort ? Now, with
regard to the schools which we desire to establish, I wish to notice
a remark which proceeded yesterday from the lips of Professor
Fawcett. I understood him to say—and in fact he is reported this
morning in the papers as having said—that it was the intention, or
it would be the work, of the League, to establish such schools as
the British schools.
Professor Fawcett : Should I be in order if I rise to explain ?
There is some misunderstanding. I made the remark in conse
quence of a letter last week in the Spectator, signed “ Jesse
Collings.” I stated distinctly yesterday that it was my duty simply
to explain the programme of the League—I did not express my own
individual opinion. What Mr. Collings stated, writing in the name
of the League, was this : that it was not the intention, or desire’ or
object of the League that free British schools should be established.
What he did state distinctly was this : that it was their intention
to give the local managers of these rate-supported schools the
authority, if they desired it, to establish schools analogous to the
British schools. If he misinterpreted the intentions of the League,
it is his fault, and not mine.
Mr. Jesse Collings : I think this renders a further explana
tion necessary. It will be seen from my letter to the Spectator
that it is not the intention of this League to found schools like the
British schools. My letter was written in answer to a rather
unfair article in the Spectator, and to numerous inquiries whether
the Bible should be read or not. The answer is : The League has
nothing to say about the Bible ; the reading of the Bible, like any
other book, or any other question affecting the discipline or instruction
of the school, will be left in the hands of the local authorities. There
fore in our bill, to be founded on this principle, we shall have nothing
at all to say about the Bible. The words about British schools
were brought in incidentally, and they were these—“In this respect
(in being unsectarian) the League goes no further than the British
and Foreign School Society.” I was not speaking of the practice Of
that society ; but their theory, which is that there shall be no theo
logical instruction given in the schools. That is what we mean—that
there shall be no religious creed or catechism of any kind taught in
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the schools we are about to found. If the British and Foreign
Society do allow these things to be taught, then I was in error.
We do not intend that they shall be taught in our schools.
The Rev. C. Clarke : Some of us in Birmingham have to do
with schools in which daily the Scriptures are read, but in which
no express theological or religious instruction of any kind is given.
Now, originally, the British schools had this foundation, and no
other, but I thought it was notorious that during the last twenty
years the authorities of those schools, the head-quarters of which
are in the Borough Road, have (in the judgment of many persons)
utterly perverted their trust. They have taught a sectarianism, and
when called to account, or when an explanation was demanded,
they still persisted in doing it; and persons who had for many
years supported their institutions on the ground of their supposed
unsectarian character, were obliged to leave the British schools
altogether. Now I wish to say that some of us, in promoting the
objects of the League, wish to take every precaution against an
abuse such as that. The Scriptures will not be read, except in
such schools as are governed by authorities who desire that
they shall be read, and insist on their being read. We would
like to see this matter carefully considered. For having to
do with schools, knowing how they are conducted, and what
goes on in them ; and having after long use some reasonable
and proper regard for the Scriptures, we are a little dubious, and
inclined to hesitate on the question whether a true regard for them
can be shown by the unthinking, an4 unreasonable, and improper
use made of them sometimes in schools. But however this may
be, it would be improper and unbecoming for us of the League to
say that the Bible shall not be used. Let the Bible be used if the
authorities in any district insist on its being used, but let us have,
at any rate, in our constitution the clearest and most positive
statement to the effect that no theological teaching, no note or com
ment of any sort whatever, shall be allowed in the national schools
of our country. Now, on the supposition that the local authorities
have the power to establish schools of this kind—secular free
schools—ought the people, by reason of their ignorance, and
the manner in which hitherto they have been neglected, to
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be allowed to oppose their inclinations to the decision of
the Legislature and the just wishes of the nation? We know,
all of us, that we have to submit to regulations and laws in con
nection with the maintenance of the poor, the punishment and
confinement of criminals, and the public health; and all of us
who think at all on the matter know that if the nation chooses to
express its will through the public laws in connection with the
matter of our sending our children to school, we shall have to
submit in that respect as well as in the others. With regard to
modes of compulsion, none of us think of compulsion as an end.
We are sometimes spoken of as though we were endeavouring to
introduce some principle of compulsion as an end. It is not an
end—it is a means; and those who observe the laws in this case,
who do what they ought to do in connection with their children,
will be under no form of compulsion whatever other than their
own sense of duty. As to the manner in which the principle of
compulsion may be applied, it would, of course, be possible to
introduce here in England what I understand to be the law in
Prussia, in which there is a complete system of registration, so
that the members of every family are registered, and in a sense
known • and the children of every family have in a certain manner
to be accounted for if not in their places at school. We might
have a system of registration of that sort. But without proceeding
so far as that, we might have a system by which no children
should be employed whatever when they ought to be at school.
This would be a kind of compulsion which possibly might be
exceedingly offensive. But in addition to having a labour clause
utterly excluding children in those years when they ought to be at
school from factories and workshops, we might have a vagrant or
truant clause similar to that which is enforced in Massachusetts.
Mr. Field, who is well acquainted with the American system, and
who, in his visits to Massachusetts, has taken pains thoroughly
to inform himself, has told me that the people have clauses
in operation of this nature. If children, for instance, are seen
in the streets of Boston during the school hours, they are at
once captured by the officers, inquiries are made of their parents
as to why they are in the streets, and not at school, and their parents
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are seriously warned and admonished that they will incur penalties
if this is continued. Of course, if the children go to school all is
well; if they do not go to school, the parents, as sometimes happens,
are fined in any sum not exceeding 20 dollars ; or the children, if
they show themselves to be incorrigible, are taken before a magis
trate, and by him committed to a truant institution. These penalties
are enforced in Massachusetts, and inflicted from year to year. If
we were wise enough to have a clause excluding children from
factories and workshops, and another keeping them from the streets,
these forms of compulsion might be sufficient; but if they did not
prove sufficient, it would be open to the Government to introduce
clauses of a more stringent nature. I talk to my friends and
acquaintances on the subject, and find a few of them shrinking in
regard to compulsion, but I tell them, as I will tell you, that most
happily we have now the power by which knots of various intricate
kinds and characters may be either untied or cut. We have this
in the political power which the people possess, and if only we will
take our stand on grounds that are logical and right, and appeal to
the country at large, but especially to those artisans who are really
intelligent and upright, and anxious for their own welfare and the
country’s good, we shall get the help whereby these intricate knots,
so puzzling and painful to timid and cautious people, may be alto
gether untied or cut, the difficulties will not trouble or embarrass
us at all. Let us, I say, take our stand on grounds that are legiti
mate and right, and appeal to the common sense and conscience of
the nation, and then we shall find we have just the force we need
to carry out educational measures, and everything else relating to
the well-being, honour, and happiness of our country.
Mr. Mundella, M.P. : Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen—
After the remarks of the last speaker, and, indeed, of some of the
preceding speakers, I think I cannot do better than submit to this
audience something of my experience of what compulsory education
has done abroad, what is the machinery by which it has effected those
results, and the necessity for it at home; and I trust the audience
will forgive me for saying that the few remarks I submit to you
will not be the remarks of a mere theorist or doctrinaire. I am
the son of a working man. I left school at nine and a half years
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of age, and my first master, to whom I served my apprenticeship,
is now in the body of the hall. I have been an employer of
4,000 workpeople, and have been an employer abroad, where com
pulsory education is carried out. I have addressed large audiences
of from 10,000 to 20,000 workpeople at once, in this country, on
compulsory education, and I never met with but one response—a
hearty assent to it. I just state these facts, not in order to give
you anything of my personal affairs, but that my remarks may not
be regarded as those of a theorist or doctrinaire, who wishes to
force his crotchets on the people. My attention was first drawn
to the necessity for compulsory education by observing its work
abroad. I first saw it in Switzerland, then in Saxony, and then in
Prussia. Ten years ago I saw it first in Switzerland, but my visits
to Saxony, as an employer of 600 or 700 workmen, have been
annual for some years, and the results of education there are so
remarkable, so incredible, that I should be afraid to describe them
to you. Nobody could realise or believe it. We are not only
incomparably inferior in the quantity of our education, but also
inferior in the quality ; indeed, we are more inferior in the quality
than in the quantity. We cannot realise in England what can be
attained by children under a compulsory system of primary educa
tion. Now, I have visited the schools in Saxony again, and again,
and again; and I have seen the children of peasants and
of framework-knitters, children of the humblest classes, of spinners,
and of weavers, and of ironworkers, at twelve years of age, convert
moneys from English into German, from thalers and groschen into
dollars and cents, then into francs and centimes, and transpose them
back again into German. I have gone the length and breadth of
the land, and have examined children by the wayside, children in
factories and cottages, and have never found one at twelve years of
age who could not read and write well—not as we understand
reading and writing, but such reading and such writing as I or any
other in this room have attained. They read and write intelli
gently. I have tried to find some comer or some spot in Saxony,
or the Canton of Zurich, or some Swiss Canton, where there are
uneducated children. I have always failed, and school directors
have said to me, “ It is in vain you search for them; there is no
I
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child in Saxony who cannot read and write.” My manager, who
has now been nine years in that country, and has had a daily
correspondence with numbers of workpeople scattered in the
mountains, with handlooms in their own cottages, has never yet
found a workman who could not correspond with him perfectly
and intelligibly about his own work. You need not wonder that
the North German Confederation is making such marvellous pro
gress. Well, I shall next say something of the machinery by
which it has been accomplished, because English people have
an idea, and interested parties are disseminating that idea,
that com pulsion means espionage and the policeman. A greater
fiction never entered into the mind of man. There is no
espionage, no policeman, in the case. I confess to you I under
took this part of the subject in fear and trembling. After being
shown a school of 3,000 boys, fifty in a class—the school, by the
way, being The handsomest building in the place—I said to the
head director in his counting-house, with his clerks around him,
“ Now, sir, tell me how often you have to call in the aid of the
policeman;” and he stood aghast. “I have been years head
director of this school,” he said; “ I never yet had to call in the
policeman.” He said, “ You do not understand the machinery by
which our schools are worked.” I have since mastered it; and I
tell you I do not believe in any truant law or vagrant law, or
Factory Act, or Workshops Act. They are all nonsense, and
will not answer the purpose. The machinery is simply this :
Every child in every cottage, hamlet, or town in Ger
many, Prussia, Saxony, Mecklenburg, Wirtemburg, or Switzer
land, is registered. You can keep a register of voters for household
suffrage; why not keep a register of children ? They have a house
hold register, and there are schools everywhere. They are not free
schools either; although the population is poor, they pay. The
children at six years of age must go to school. There are infant
schools, and they may go there before that age; but the compulsion
commences at 6 years, and does not end till 14. Well, the names
are inscribed in the register, and at the end of the sixth year the
parent receives a notice from the local board—the school board.
You could have a central board, and your political divisions would
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be your school divisions. It is so in Switzerland and in Prussia.
The wards of the town have their own local boards, represented at
the central board, and the local board would give notice to the
parent, “ Your child is six years of age, and must now come to
school.” The child comes to school or he does not; but suppose he
does not, there is no magistrate, no policeman, in the case. The
criminal law is never called into operation at all; the board has all
power, and they send for the parent. The head director said to me,
“ When it occurs that the parent does not send his children to
school, or neglects to send them regularly, after a certain number of
omissions I send for him and read the Act to him, or tell him to
read it himself, and say to him, ‘ If you are in duty bound, accord
ing to law, to send your child to school, why have you not done
so
This generally answers the purpose. But suppose the man
is contumacious, his case is laid before the school board, and he is
fined a franc. That is the first proceeding. Well, the matter
rarely, if ever, goes beyond it, for in a district of 50 odd thousand
persons, the school director told me he had only 42 cases of con
tumacy in 8 years ; and he is a strict man. But it is said by our
opponents, “ Oh, compulsion is not necessary there ; public opinion
does the work, and it will do just as well without compulsion.”
Now, I have put this question again and again. I am in corre
spondence with some of the principal school authorities in Saxony,
Prussia, and Switzerland, and I have asked them, “ Have you any
difficulty?” The answer has been, “We had a good deal of
difficulty at first, but after the first year or two it was wonderful
how smoothly things went.” “ Then,” I said, “ dare you now
relax the law ? ” In every instance I have had but one answer,
“We dare not relax the law.” And the reason is obvious. In all
communities there are some persons who shrink into habits of vice
and intemperance, and these persons would drag their chileren
down with them, and they would increase and multiply the vice
and ignorance of the country; but that the law prevents them. And
in answer to our opponents, who say that where there is a healthy
public opinion there is no need of law, let me make some allusions
to America. The Americans have been spoken of very honourably
by the last speaker, and I wish to speak of them with great admir
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ation; but there is one defect in the American system, and the
Americans are becoming conscious of it. They know they want
the compulsory power. The result is that public opinion, which
was a power when America was more sparsely populated, is now
ceasing to act. America is fast sinking into ignorance; and in
order that I may not misrepresent that great country, which has
made more munificent provision for education than any other, I
will give these facts. The superintendent of the Cincinnati schools
states that this is the percentage of daily attendance : In Cincinnati,
70-1 ; in Chicago, 58’9 ; in New York, 42’6. Is that the state of
things you wish to copy ? Listen to what he says about Prussia—
“ I refer to the Prussian system of education to call attention to
that feature of it which makes education compulsory, and I do this
because I believe that if we shall ever hope to derive the best
possible fruits from our own munificent system of education, this
feature must be incorporated into it.” This is American opinion.
America has recently appointed a Bureau of Education, and that
bureau is finding that with all this munificent provision, there are
thousands and tens of thousands who are not availing themselves
of it, and America is fast waking up to the consciousness —her best
men are already aware of it—that they must introduce compulsion
if they would wish to succeed. Now, our Workshops and our
Factory Acts are failures. Never was anything a more complete
failure than the Workshops Act. To neglect a child till he is 8, 9,
or 10 years of age, and then, when he first commences to work, to
insist on his going to school, is about the most objectionable and
unreasonable form of compulsion, I think, that it was possible for
the human mind.to devise. And, you know, in workshops and
factories we have espionage and the policeman, for nothing is done
unless either a policeman or a detective officer goes in. The Factory
Inspector is not a policeman, it is true, but he summons men before
the^criminal courts. Surely we can devise some means by which,
when children are neither at work nor at school, they shall be got
at. Low I ‘will notice the objection, that if we have compulsory
education labour will suffer. What a farce it is to say that parents
cannot afford to send their children to school because they will
sacrifice their children’s earnings. Children can begin to learn at a
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very early age, and where the education is persistent, as in Saxony,
what they learn is something marvellous. Now, I have the new
Labour Act of North Germany, which I received yesterday morning.
It applies to the whole labouring population of Germany, and it
prescribes that no child shall begin to work until the age of 12, and
he has been 6 years at school. That is the first clause. Every
child from 12 to 14 shall not work more than 6 hours daily, and
shall, attend school three hours daily. Every child from 14
to. 16 shall attend school 6 hours per week. Now mark this—
here technical education comes in, scientific instruction, know
ledge of languages; and then consider the moral, and not
only the moral, but the material prosperity of the country that
must follow. I say this: unless we wake up to this question
there are other interests at stake than moral interests ; there is the
interest of the stomachs of the people, their employment, which
will suffer as well as their moral necessities. Now, I do hope
nobody will believe I advocate this because I desire there should
be less religious instruction. What I have had I am most grate
ful for, and my reason for advocating education is that there
may be more. That word “ secular” is scandalously abused. All
truth is holy. The order, and system, and cleanliness of a school
are the most religious influences, I think, that can be brought to
bear. Go through the population of Prussia, and never, even in
its poorest districts, will you meet with the wretchedness, squalor,
and filth that stare us in the face in our large towns, and make
us so ashamed and humiliated. Now, following just after the new
law of the North German Confederation, I have received the new
Austrian school law. Austria has discovered that knowledge is
power, and that ignorance is weakness, and that to be weak is to
be miserable. What is the result ? Baron von Beust, the
Minister of Saxony, is now the Minister of Austria, and he has
taken the Saxon school system into Austria, and the Austrian
school system is now the most liberal in Europe. I ask you,
Englishmen and Englishwomen, are Austrian children to be
educated before English children ? My inquiries abroad have
stimulated me to plumb the depth of ignorance at home, and
I find it impossible to do it. I have, with the assistance of your
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Chairman, and at other times, in different parts of the country,
examined more than 12,000 young persons at work, who had
nearly all of them been at school; and what a farce our education
is 1 I mean religious education. How many have been at school,
and where much religious education is given, and yet some of them
do not know even that God is their Creator? It seems incredible,
but it is so. When they say a prayer, it is the merest confusion
imaginable. Ask them to say the Lord’s Prayer to you word for
word, and the first sentence is, “ Our Father, ’ch art in heaven.”
Again and again, hundreds of times, I have heard them say it.
What is the meaning? They have only a vague idea what is
meant. This comes from our system of teaching. I say to our friends
here that I am not a convert to the League. I was a convert to
national compulsory education for years, when many of my friends
thought I was an enthusiast and was going mad. Some of our con
verts, with all the zeal of neophytes, go further than myself; but I
say, with reference to this system, that I believe it can be applied to
agricultural as well as to manufacturing districts. There is in this
room a friend in the body of the hall who has for twenty years past
had his ploughboys in a good state of education ; he has done it with
out any sacrifice, and his people are the best tenantry in England,
and his farm is the best cultivated. He has his ploughboys so
well educated that a member of Parliament said, on examining one
of them, “ That fellow a ploughman ! he is a gentleman.” I thank
the meeting very cordially for having heard me patiently, and I
would say to those friends who stand aloof from us, “ Stand aloof
no longer. We have had some difficulty to arrive where we are,
but public opinion is growing so fast that the terms we offered
yesterday we cannot make to-day, and the terms we would gladly
make to-day cannot be offered to-morrow. We wish to deal with
you tenderly and gratefully for what you have done in the past;
but I would say, the sibyl is at the door with her last offer.”
Lord Campbell and Stratheden said : It seems to me that one
of the wants required to be supplied is some argument against the
compulsory principle. Such an argument it is utterly beyond my
capacity to furnish. Arguments in favour of the principle may
rather overstock the market to-day. • It would be useless to touch
�135
upon its necessity; for the whole audience seem to be agreed that
until the principle is introduced we cannot bring into schools the
whole of the masses we mean to have there. It is useless to touch
upon its justice, for the whole audience seem to feel that neglected
children really have no parents, that they become the wards of
the State, thrown upon the fatherhood of the law and the protection
of society. It would be superfluous, though easy, to dwell upon
the facilities for giving practical effect to this principle. There are
only two points that I, therefore, will venture upon, both of which,
if I am not deceived, have something practical about them. Of
course, on this question, as on many others, there is a great differ
ence of opinion. All are not equally advanced in their conviction
as to the necessity of the compulsory principle, and there is some
prejudice yet to be encountered. That prejudice, where it exists,
bases itself upon the idea that the State, or the central power,
ought not to be armed with domiciliary or autocratic functions such
as are proposed. I wish, therefore, to suggest to this audience a
distinction between a grant of such powers to the State, and the
accordance of them to local bodies, such as Town Councils or muni
cipal authorities, which are the immediate emanation of the very
individuals to be supervised. Don’t let it be imagined that I am
hostile to a grant of such powers to the State. All I suggest is,
that in conferring such powers upon municipal authorities, you meet
and indulge the prejudices of those who would view with jealousy
such powers if the central body happened to receive them. The other
observation I have to make is this—that it seems to me that the whole
question may be brought into a very narrow focus, and reduced to one
of downright justice to the taxpayer and ratepayer. It is obvious to
all men that to extend popular instruction in any shape or form there
must be a new expenditure. That expenditure must come from
general taxation imposed by Parliament, or it must come from the
local rates agreed to by municipal assemblies. In the one case, the
burden would fall upon the taxpayer ; in the other, upon the rate
payer. Both taxpayer and ratepayer are entitled to resist the
burden you are going to throw upon them, unless those burdens
involve some security for the attainment of the object aimed at.
The taxpayer might fairly say, “Now you are going to spend, say a
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million and a half, derived from general taxation. I will submit
to the payment of my share if your system involves some
guarantee that the schools shall be filled with children j but I will
not submit to the imposition of another Is. 6d. in the pound when
I know that there is a possibility of these schools being empty.”
Although we know from experience that our schools may be filled
without compulsion, yet until the principle is introduced you have
no guarantee for the attendance of even one child in all the school'
accommodation provided. So, too, might the ratepayer declare,
“ I am willing to submit to 2d., 3d., 4d., or even Is. in the pound
additional rates for a great public object which I am able to appre
ciate—for the conquest of ignorance, the repression of crime, and
the prevention of misery in many shapes ; but I will not submit
to any further rate for the erection of schools, or the employment
of schoolmasters when I have no security that another 100 will
come within the reach of these advantages.” I do trust that this
latter view may sink deeply into the minds of the taxpayer and the
ratepayer, without whose concurrence the great objects of your
association are impossible of attainment; and that so sinking into
their minds, it will create a general and irresistible concurrence of
opinion that, however the question of religion may be decided—
that whatever form of education is promoted—some powers for
ensuring the attendance of children at school shall exist.
Mr. George Howell, of London: I am decidedly in favour
of compulsory, free, secular education. This word “ secular ”
appears to me as though it were used to imply teaching the
peculiar dogmas of a small party in the country called
“ secularists.” Now, if it were so intended, this would at once be
sectarian teaching. We use the word “ secular ” as simply opposed
to ecclesiastical. The office of the clergyman or minister is eccle
siastical, but that of the schoolmaster is secular. By secular,
then, we mean that education which teaches those things which fit
children for the duties of this life as men and citizens. We want
our children educated in the practical knowledge and business of
life. Denominational, or religious, teaching must be left to the
home, the Sunday school, and the church. If we once admit the
teaching of theology into our public schools, where can it end but
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in compulsion ? Catholics, Protestants, and Secularistswill each
have their claim. Even the use of the Bible, as a text book in
our National Schools, will involve some difficulty, inasmuch as in
Ireland, and in all Catholic districts, the Catholics would claim
something different from our Protestant Bible. Besides which, I am
afraid that it would revive all the religious animosities which we
sought to remove by the dis-establishment of the State Church in
Ireland. With regard to compulsory education, the very term law
involves compulsion. We have compulsory laws to punish crime,
let us now try compulsion to prevent it. We demand compulsory
education for the benefit of the entire community, just as we demand
quarantine for the safety of our ports; and the removal of nuisances
for the protection of the health of our cities and towns; nay, even the
regulation of our traffic for the convenience of our streets. Ignor
ance is at once the most noxious of all nuisances, and the most
contaminating. It is also enormously expensive. The objections
to compulsion do not come from working men, although some wellmeaning men speak in their name as though we did object. Mr.
Walter, M.P., at a recent agricultural meeting at Maidenhead, spoke
somewhat against the platform of the League. During the last few
weeks I have been in personal communication with several of the
reformers of Worcester Cheltenham, Gloucester, Stroud, and Tewkes
bury, and in those towns I found no hesitation whatever in endors
ing the principle of compulsory, free, and secular education. And
here I may say that I am informed that so near home as the Scilly
Islands an almost complete system of compulsory education is in
operation. At the last general election I was a candidate for Ayles
bury, and one of the most prominent points in my address was
this one of national, compulsory, free, and secular education. I
visited every hamlet and village in the large borough, and not one
voice did I hear raised up against the principle. The only oppo
sition I found came from the clergymen and farmers. The farmers
were under the impression that education would unfit men for
work in the field; but both manufacturers and artisans know full
well that education is an immense benefit to both parties in the
daily work of life. In short, the working classes of this country
are anxious for, and demand, a complete national system of educa-
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,
tion, which shall reach all classes, and which shalj. be be compul
sory, unsectarian, and free.
Dr. Hodgson said the text of the few remarks he had to make
would be drawn from the admirable speech of Mr. Mundella. Mr.
Mundella said, most truly, that we were behind other countries, not
. so much in the quantity as in the quality of our education, and the
question of compulsion was very much mixed up with the quality
of education we intended to supply. The question they had to
discuss was compulsory attendance in schools, not the compulsory
provision of schools, for the schools must be provided before they
could be attended. He asked why it was that this necessity ex
isted ? There were many reasons ; but one special reason was the
indolence of parents who did not take any interest in the educa
tion of their children, and another reason was the indolence of the
• children themselves. He should regret exceedingly if it were to go
abroad as a general impression that the object of the League was to
establish a compulsory education which should be simply, or even
mainly, for the teaching of reading and writing, with even arith
metic superadded. They were not likely to disagree as to the
importance of reading and writing as instruments of education, but
one thing was certain—if we did not aim at something a great deal
beyond these things, we should neither obtain nor deserve that
support which would be requisite to carry the measure through the
House of Commons. The staple of our existing schools was reading
and writing, and what was the result? Everyone’s experience
answered this question, but he would mention one or two cases.
He had elsewhere published an account of a visit paid to a school
in the South of England, where the children read very passably
indeed. The passage read was a description of a crab. The
district was an inland one, and he asked the children if any of
them had ever seen a crab? There was a great sensation, and
after a little delay one girl said she had, but it appeared it was
not a marine crab, but a crab apple. That was the amount of
intelligence that had been developed. That child, and all the
others, would have passed muster in reading and writing. Another
story was told him by a benevolent lady, residing in the neighbour
hood of a country school, who took an opportunity of giving the
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children a lesson on their senses. It was a revelation to them that
they had senses. The lady asked, 11 What is the use of your nose?”
There was great silence for a time, broken by a boy who said, “ To
be wiped.” Another story was told him by Mr. Leonard Horner,
Factory Inspector, and it related to Birmingham. When the pre
sent Bishop of Manchester was head master of King Edward’s
School, Mr. Horner accompanied him on a tour for the purpose of
ascertaining the efficiency of instruction in the district, and espe
cially in the matter of religion. In one case the Scripture passage
read contained the word “ sacrifice,” and none of the children could
give the slightest explanation of the word except one girl, who had
been about four years in the school, and her answer was, “The
place where Jesus Christ offered up his son Isaac.” Now, this was
a state of things that must be put an end to. The instruction must
be made of such a nature as to develop the intelligence and to cul
tivate the understanding. There must be that kind of useful
knowledge imparted which would be suited to the comprehension
of the youngest child, and which was indispensable to children
when they grew up for their guidance in their after lives. He
wished to impress upon the audience that compulsion was not
tyranny, but the result of a law which we ourselves had imposed
for the general good. The way to make compulsion not only tole
rable, but successful, was so to dispose people that they should do
of their own accord those things which, if they did not do, the law
would compel them. In the schools for the poor the time allotted
for instruction was lamentably short, and therefore attention must
be concentrated upon those things which were most useful, most
indispensable, and most capable of application in after life.
Mr. Paget, formerly M.P. for Nottingham: I have now for, I'
think, sixteen years, as an agricultural employer, insisted that the
boys should spend some of their days at school, and some at work.
I felt that some such movement as this was evidently in the future,
and that it was better to be prepared with a knowledge of facts for
a time like this. And within my experience the results have been
so uniformly good that I have no hesitation whatever in saying that
the practice I have mentioned is a proved success. I have thirtyfour children upon the farm, employed on the condition that they
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spend the alternate days at school. It has been without any sacri
fice on my part. I felt that it must be a business success to justify
me in calling on my neighbours to adopt it, and it has been a
business success; for not only have I not lost anything, but I am
convinced that I have been better served, and my bailiff is of the
same opinion. I receive the boys at nine years of age, on condi
tion that they are able to write decently ; and I am quite certain
that no system of mixed school and labour will succeed, without that
preliminary condition. Coming on my farm at that age, and being
able to write decently then, they go to school and work on the
farm alternate days. I attend at the examinations in school, and
I have full proof that my boys fully maintain their ground against
those who are, or pretend to be, constantly at school. I have at
the age of 13 all the children who choose it, in the village, ex
amimed, and to those who can write correctly from dictation, read
intelligently, and work the first four rules of arithmetic, simple and
compound, I give a prize. There have been only two instances out
of 34 in which my boys have not had the prize. A very independ
ent witness—Mr. Sternhold, the Commissioner to examine into the
state of the children employed in agriculture—took very great
pains in the matter. He wrote to the employers of these children,
who are now some of them 25 years of age, and more than that; and
he received a uniform reply from the masters that they were
satisfied with their servants, and almost every one of the young
men wrote him letters, of which he spoke in high terms, and
which showed that they had not discontinued their education.
This, I conceive, is one of the very great advantages of the
system I have adopted; school-work becomes a relaxation and
a pleasure instead of being drudgery, because the boy compares
his day at school, not with a holiday or a day of bird’s nesting,
but with a day on the farm.
All his associations with books
are therefore pleasant, and in every instance I believe my lads con
tinue their education after they leave school. I asked one what he
was doing, and he said he was working logarithms; and another is
under-secretary to the Reform Club in London. They are qualified
for superior situations. There is no difficulty whatever in obtain
ing situations as farm servants for them after they leave me, because
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they are better than the ordinary run of boys. My bailiff says
when he was at their age he went to school till he was thirteen, and
then he had to go to the farm, and suffered extremely during the
first few months, because the labour was new to him. But my boys
are never tired ; they work one day on the farm, and rest the next
at school. They walk straight not slovenly, in the way those do who
are tired to death. Their minds and bodies are both improved.
The great subject, Lfancy, this morning, is how far education should
be compulsory. I have always held, and stated it publicly many
times, when I had the honour of representing Nottingham, that in
my opinion, society, being bound to provide for the poor and
criminal, have a right to see that the poor are brought up in such
a way that there shall be the least possible probability of their
becoming paupers or criminals. Therefore I have never had any
hesitation in saying I was in favour of compulsory education, and
I fully endorse what has been said by several gentlemen, that it
will not be ill received by the labouring classes. The schoolmaster
in my village tells me that men who are not educated themselves,
and who never cared about education before, send their children to
him to fit them to come upon my farm, because they find that is
the road to it. With respect to the religious question, I think it
will be an advantage to set the Sunday school free for religious
teaching. I think religion will not in any way suffer, but will
gain greatly by the education of the people being properly attended
to.
Professor Pawcett, M.P. : After the general remarks that have
been made this morning, and especially after the admirable speech
of my friend Mr. Mundella, it would be superfluous for me to say a
word in favour of the principle of compulsion. It may, however,
be assumed that every one who has joined this League has clearly
and distinctly made up his mind to this fact—that no settlement of
the educational question ought ever to be listened to, much less
earned as a permanent settlement, unless it involve the principle
of compelling the attendance of children at the school. I shall
endeavour to make the few remarks I have to address to you as
practical as possible. Will you, therefore, allow me to point out to
you what in my mind is the great danger which threatens the future
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of this education question ? I fear there is some chance that it
may be wrecked in the same way as so many good measures have
been wrecked, by accepting a compromise in part. It is all very
well for us to make bold speeches and talk outspoken language on
platforms like this, but you are little aware of the blandishments
which are brought to bear upon Liberal members when their party
introduces a bill. You say you think the bill unsatisfactory. You
then hear it whispered in your ear—“ Not going to support the bill
of your party? why, you are faithless to those whom you ought to
support 1” To show that my suspicions are not altogether illfounded, let me in one or two sentences describe to you the great
peril which the education question only narrowly escaped last
session. A National Education Bill for Scotland was introduced
into the House of Lords—a strange proceeding, to begin with. The
Dill—had when it was sent there—was infinitely worse when it left.
When it came down to the House of Commons, seeing that the Scotch
members are jealous of the interference of English members, I knew
it was no use moving myself. I went to a Scotch member, a friend,
and asked him to put down an amendment for the second reading
—an amendment similar to that which it is quite possible we may
have to move next session—that no measure of national education
could be satisfactory if it involved compulsory rating without com
pulsory attendance. You can have no conception of the pressure
which was immediately brought to bear upon that hon. member. He
was young, and he did not stand firm ; but I trust, at any rate, if
next session compulsory rating is introduced without compulsory
attendance, one at least of the fifty members of Parliament who
have joined this League—Mr. Mundella or Mr. Dixon—will be
stern enough to say this is a question on which there can he no
compromise. We are willing to wait one year, two years, or three
years, but when we have a national education measure passed, it
shall be such a measure as shall absolutely, with perfect certainty,
guarantee elementary education to every child in this kingdom.
What became of the Scotch Education Bill ? Liberal members
were told they ought to vote for it, and they did. I do not say it
to my own credit, but I believe I am almost the only English
member who, whenever there was a division on the subject, steadily
�143
walked out of the house. And what were the arguments to make
English members vote for it ? That bill, it is true, introduced into
Scotland what was never introduced into Scotland before—•
undenominational education ; but it was said, this undenomina
tional education was introduced in such a slight, slender, and
delicate form, that it ought to be passed with hurry and precipitation,
because there would be something worse in the English measure
next session. What I want is, that we shall be representing
you—the thousands who have joined this League—representing
you faithfully and accurately, if we say it is your earnest
desire that no measure of national education shall be passed
until we have the power to get a compulsory and unsectarian
system. I think we ought to have absolute security that no child
shall be permitted to work—whether we fix the age of nine, ten,
eleven, or, as Mr. Mundella suggested, twelve—no child shall be
allowed to work until it can show that it has been to school a
certain number of years. With regard to the only remaining
branch of the subject on which I shall speak—that is, the question
of applying some kind of compulsory education to the agricultural
districts—I was rejoiced more than I can describe to hear the
remarks of Mr. Paget—to hear from his own lips the admirable
success of his movement. He must be regarded as a benefactor—
the nation must feel grateful to him for having been a pioneer. When
I mention the word agricultural, I am reminded of another danger.
Here is a case you must watch carefully. Persons will rise
in the House of Commons as they have done already, and they
will say it is very well to apply the half-time system or the alter
nate day system to the industry of such a town as Birmingham,
but there is something exceptional about agriculture; we must
have a different system there. Are we not expressing your opinions
if we say that it is your desire that agriculture should not be thus
exceptionally treated ? The system that is proposed is that in
agriculture a child should not attend school either half time or
alternate days, but should attend school so many hours in the year.
If this scheme is proposed, we can at once meet it with most
valuable experience—that is the scheme that was introduced with
regard to the Print Works Act; and I say that experience con
�144
clusively demonstrates that the scheme of so many school hours’
attendance in the year has proved a lamentable and disastrous
failure. The great principle, I consider, of the half-time system
is this—that if it is properly worked, if there is a good school,
judiciously managed, the children learn better after a certain age,
and work better, if they attend school so many hours a day and
work so many hours a day. This, I believe, is one great principle
connected with the half-time system. I must, in conclusion,
apologise for having apparently introduced, yesterday, a certain
amount of discord into your deliberations. I fear some of my
remarks were misunderstood. There are some men who have not
joined this League because they differ upon minor points of detail,
upon which I also differ; especially, one of the most eminent of
your townsmen, the Bev. B. W. Dale,—no good movement in
Birmingham ought to be without his name attached to it—has
objections which I know are exactly analagous to mine. I thought,
therefore, I should state as strongly as I could what were my
objections, and that I was perfectly willing to forgive and forget
them in order to get a united movement on behalf of the movement
in order to get some good men to join this League. I am willing
to sacrifice any matter of individual opinion in order to throw my
whole heart and strength into the great, the unequalled, object of
securing unsectarian, or, if you like it better, secular compulsory
education in this country.
Mr. Webster, Q.C.: I should have hesitated to address you on
the present occasion, after the most powerful speech you have heard,,
if I had not the greatest anxiety to contribute, in whatever small
measure I can, to the success of this great movement. I am not
wholly inexperienced. I have watched for many years, as far as
time would permit me, the educational questions which have been
brought before the public' from time to time, and I have had the
satisfaction of establishing a Church of England schoool in spite of
the clergyman, in spite of the bishop, in an agricultural district
where there was none when I went into it. Nobody knows the
difficulty of such a labour who has not gone through it. I rejoice
that this League is placed upon a foundation from which it cannot
be displaced. I am satisfied, from considerable experience of Con
�145
gresses, that a more successful meeting of inauguration never took
place. I think we have to some extent lost sight, in our discus
sions, of the great practical fact with which we have to deal. The
Archdeacon, says there is an overwhelming necessity for education—
that it is a great public danger that there should be two millions of
uneducated children, growing up as Arabs in our public streets, who
will be the paupers and criminals of the next generation. That is
the fact we have to deal with, and when we are told that the
denominational or voluntary system has failed—I don’t quite like
the use of that word, failed—but it has been found incompetent to
deal with this great calamity; and therefore I trust this League will
he the means of founding a different system, which shall be more
calculated to deal with the difficulty. Let us not forget that great
fact—that we have two millions of uneducated children growing
up amongst us. That fact becomes a civil question as well as a moral
question. It is a question of pounds, shillings, and pence, and it
is patent that compulsion is the rock upon which our new system
must be founded. On this subject I adopt the admirable views of
Mr. Mundella ; and it is worthy of observation that in dealing with
this evil of ignorance we shall, in my opinion, do something to
remedy another evil also. By employing female teachers, you will
provide employment for women, and it has been proved in America
that they are admirable teachers. My own opinion about it is, that
it is an exceptional thing to find a woman who is not a good teacher,
and it is exceptional to find a man who is not a bad one. I look,
therefore, to this movement as contributing to the removal of two
great social calamities—the ignorance of the people, and the
want of employment for women. I believe we may appeal to our
friends on the other side of the Atlantic to show what might be
done by the system of Common Schools ; and, although it is
possible, for the reason stated—the want of compulsory powers—
that it may not have had all the succces that was hoped for, still
we may look to America for an example, which we shall do well to
follow. Let me remind you, that with compulsory attendance
schools must be free, and founded upon rates—local rates, because
you want local management, by men who are acquainted with the
wants and requirements of the district; and the schools must be
K
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subsidized by national funds, because you w,ant Government super
vision. The first step to be taken is to have a proper register kept
of all parents and children. Why should not towns be divided
into districts, as in Boston, and other cities of the States?
We have an approximation to it with reference to the elective
franchise, but we want a more perfect system to carry out that
■which, as Mr. Mundella pointed out with great force, is done so well
in Saxony. These are the practical matters we have to deal with.
If we want to get these schools free, I believe means will be found
whereby existing schools may be to a certain extent utilized; but
whether or not, let us not forget that we have to deal with two
millions of children who are growing up to be criminals or paupers,
and who will overwhelm us unless we deal with them fearlesslv.
Let me mention Joseph Lancaster : the motto he inscribed over his
own door was—“ All that will may send their children and have
them educated freely, and those who don’t wish education for
nothing may pay if they please.” He was the pioneer, in Bristol, of
what has been called the voluntary system, which lias produced
great effects, though it is inadequate to deal with the present difficulty. About the religious question : I would be very unwilling,
except from the necessity of conceding something in order that we
may all go hand in hand—I would be very unwilling that a portion
of the Scriptures should not be read day by day. But having
expressed that opinion, I would exclude all sectarian and denomi
national teaching whatever. I would follow the example of our
brethren across the Atlantic, and make it a rule that no book
teaching the tenets of any particular sect of Christians should be
purchased or used, but that they should use a portion of the Bible, in
the common English version, daily. But this is a secondary ques
tion, and I am delighted to hear Dr. Rowland Williams use the
expression “ men must be men,” because with these children left
as they are, they cannot become men—they cannot become citizens;
and let us remember people are citizens before they are Christ.ia.nR,
Our object is first to make them good citizens, and then bring them
under the influence of a proper system of religious teaching—not
teaching them religion, for I acknowledge the distinction between
religious teaching and teaching religion; but I assume religious
�147
teaching is that everything should be done with a proper regard to
■hose great truths of revelation, in which we all believe and trust.
T would not quarrel with the decision if the locality wished any
portion of the Scriptures read ; but Sunday should be kept for
religious purposes, and it should not be distracted by that kind of
teaching which is more fitted for the week days.
Dr. J. A. Langford : I am anxious to make two remarks—one
upon a point which, I think, has not been alluded to at the
Conference before, namely, that we have the highest cause to
congratulate ourselves, upon the progress which this question of
national secular education has made in this country during the last
few years. In the year 1849—only twenty years ago—an attempt
was made, in this and other towns, to organise a similar society to
this, for a similar object. It alfiiost enterely failed ; and here we
are to-day holding meetings like this, and listening to papers such
as we have heard. We have great cause to congratulate ourselves,
and to be hopeful for the future. I wanted to say also, that this League
must stick absolutely firm to the four principles which it sets out with :
that education should be compulsory, national, secular, free. There
may be a temptation to give up one of these points, because there
may be fear of a long agitation ; but it will be far better for us,
far better for the education of this country, and the question will
be far more speedily settled finally, if we persist in agitating for
this programme, than if we give up any one of the items ; for I
believe if we give up any one, the whole structure will fall about
our ears, and our children will have to do the work over again,
which we are doing now. I wished to say these two things to the
meeting, because I have laboured in this question more than .twenty
years, of my comparatively short life. Don’t let us squabble about
the meaning of the words “ sacred ” and “ secular.” Shakespeare
settled that point 300 years ago, when he said :
“ Ignorance is the curse of God.”
“ Knowledge, the wing wherewith we fly to Heaven.”
All knowledge is divine, and we have only to give children a
good secular education, and their children’s children will have for
themselves a religious education built upon it. Many people
who profess to speak for the working classes have said they
�148
were opposed to this compulsory measure. You have heard
from Mr. Applegarth, and others who mix with the working
classes, that they will not object to it, and I—as the representative
of one of the most active educational societies in this town, the
Society of Artisans, every member of which is a representative
man—can assure you that the working classes will not object to it..
Whenever this question has been brought before that society, they
have one and all declared, in support of a national system of educa
tion, secular, voluntary, free, rate-supported, supplemented by money
from the Consolidated Fund. There is no charity in going to a
school supported by rates. Look at our free libraries. Every man
who uses a book has contributed towards the purchase of it, and it
is part of his own proporty, because it is the property of the town.
So it will be with rate-supported schools ; there is no charity. They
must be secular and free.
FREE SCHOOLS.
The proceedings were resumed at half-past two, when
Mr. Alfred Field read the following paper on “Free Schools:”
—England, in the higher education, may not be behind the rest of
the world, but in the diffusion of a good general education Eng
land is very much behind other countries ; certainly much behind
Prussia, Northern Germany, Switzerland, and the United States.
It is not far from the truth if we say that while in those countries
every child receives a good useful education, less than half the
children of England carry into life with them an education that is
of any uge to them. And from this statement let us not conclude
that the education, of the masses of this country is half as good as
that of the Germans, Swiss, or Americans. Our comparative
deficiency is far greater than that; for the education of the children
I am obliged to let pass as educated, in order to make up the
half of the children of England, is very inferior in value, to the
good average education of all the children of those nations. We .
deal out a meagre pittance to half our children ; they give a liberal
measure to all. To understand more fully why the difference is so
great in the intelligence of the working classes of England, and of
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those countries I have referred to, we must remember that school
■education is only putting tools into the hands of the young for
after use in the real education of life ; and in those countries the
men and women, who in early life have had the doors of their minds
unlocked by instruction in excellent schools, meet together in their
homes and workshops, in the streets and in public places, and by
intelligent, social, and political intercourse, continue, or rather really
■enter into, their true education. In this country our working
people have no such educated families and neighbours to associate
with. In America the diffusion of popular knowledge and quick
intelligence, down to the very bottom of society is most astonishing
to all observant travellers. And the contrast of the slow, benighted
. minds of our lowest class, should be a warning and strong impulse,
in the cause of education, to Englishmen. You cannot discover in
the United States any line of separation, or marks of distinction
between the working classes and those we should suppose above
them. You hear people talking in groups, on the steamboats or in
the railroad carriages, with ready language and quick intelligence,
with easy manners and natural politeness ; and if you could learn,
you would find that nearly all had been educated in the public free
schools of the country, and that a good proportion of them were
working men. It cannot possibly be doubted, that the foundation
of this wonderful spread of popular knowledge and universally
quickened intellect, is the public free school. The only way in
which we can get the mass of the people of England educated, as
quickly and efficiently as will meet the awakened demand of the
country, is by a complete national system similar in principle to
that in America. If we are to make this national system complete
and sufficient, I do not think wo can dispense with any one of the
six points of our League. Our plan is clastic in its power of de
velopment. The beginning, of course, would be the establishment
everywhere of the sadly-needed efficient primary school. We must
start with primary schools. But then let each school district, as fast
as it pleases, build on them a system of secondary and high schools.
Ultimately, I hope, the new national school system will grow and
be a complete and connected system of graded schools—-primary,
secondary, and high schools—all free. Tliis system might readily be
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connected with the large endowed schools of the country, and
perhaps, by a system of scholarships, with the Universities. I will
ask everyone to compare a complete connected system of this sort
with the present schools. The voluntary and denominational sys
tem sets up separate, competitive, even hostile schools ; and if you
were ever to get this system developed enough to make a really good
education possible to all, you would have rival schools everywhere
too many in some parts, not enough in others—and each school
obliged to go to great expense to have a staff of different teachers,
from the infant class, to the really educated boys and girls of 14 to
16 years old. I on may have the contemptible pittance now offered
to the country continued and extended, but you cannot have the
good education demanded by England, out of the isolated denomi
national system, without enormous expense ; and this heavy cost
must in some way fall on the resources of the country. [ appeal to
everyone, acquainted with schools and education, whether, to give a
good education to all the children of England, and one higher and
more extended to the capable and diligent, it is not necessary that
we should have a connected system of graded schools, through
which the pupils shall rise by examination. As a matter of money,
the difference of cost of good education for England, between one
system and the other, is a difference between pounds and shillings.
As a practical fact, England cannot (jet good education by the deno
minational system, and she can easily by a truly national system. The
public school system of the United States, is a model for the general
education of a people. Such a system as their graded schools—pri
mary, secondary, and high schools—is demanded by economy,
and is absolutely necessary to efficient success. And the plan
of the League, not copied from them, is in truth the same in principle,
but improved, I believe, in details. The Americans are the same
people as ourselves, on the western side of the Atlantic instead of the
eastern. What they can do we can do. It is a firm and a safe position
for our League that we advocate no untried scheme, that we can
point to the complete, and grand success of it in America. The
public school system of the United States is the foundation of
their political edifice, and is the true cause of their extraordinary
industrial, and commercial prosperity. The rapid growth of wealth
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in the country, the happiness and morality of its people, and the
political safety of the nation, depend on the public school system.
Now, I have a few words to say on the desirability of having our
schools free to the scholars, and paid for out of rates supplemented
by Government grants—not by voluntary contributions, and school
pence. It is a necessary part of the completeness of the system
that the schools should he paid for by rates. If the control of the
national schools, of each school district should rest, as we think it
should, with the Corporation or other local authorities, who would
doubtless appoint a school committee to manage them, then the
right of the Corporations to this control, would be derived from
their being elected by the ratepayers, who would pay for the schools.
I have tried to show that a complete, connected, organized system of
graded schools is necessary to efficiency and economy; in fact, that
we cannot get a good education for all the people without. It
might be possible to have such an organized connected system of
national schools in France, without their being under the local
authorities : I do not think this is possible in England any more
than in America. I think that the position that schools should be
paid for by rates, is naturally connected with the other one, that
they should be under the control of local authorities ; and that
they should be free to all, would be made easy by their being
paid for by rates and Government grants. I think, first, that they
should be free to all children; and, secondly, that all children should
be required by law to go to the national schools, or some other school,
are two conditions, independent and complementary one of the
other. I cannot practically and successfully say to a man, 11 I will
compel you to send your child to school,” unless I say at the same
time, “ Here is a good school without charge, which belongs to you
tor the use of your children.” On the other hand, I cannot justly
say to a man, “You must pay your quota to the school-rate,”
unless I am able, in answer to his enquiry, also to say “ that all
children will now go to school; the law requires it and gives us
power to compel attendance, and we will see the law carried out
gently, considerately, with patient persuasion, but ultimately and as a
last resourse, by force, if in some few cases it should turn out to be
necessary.” I can tell this ratepayer that he himself will be bene
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fited by the money lie pays, that he never made so good an invest
ment in his life, or one that will bring so good a monetary return.
A commercial man myself, with almost as much personal knowledge
of America as I have of England, I have often pointed out to my
fellow merchants that the United States are now manufacturing
and exporting to the English Colonies and the common markets of
the world many articles, to a large amount, that formerly were
made in this district. In doing this, the American manufacturers
work under the enormous weight of nearly double the cost of the
iron and steel out of which the articles are made, and nearly double
the English rate of wages, to the American workmen that make
them ; and yet they send these articles to our English Colonies, and
thus supersede those that used to be imported from Birmingham.
What is the explanation ? There is none other than that of the greater
intelligence of the American workmen. And the foundation of this
high intelligence and ductility of mind is the American public free
school. Every £1,000 rightly expended for the education of the
future English workmen will produce, in a very few years, a return
of £10,000 to the country. Every ratepayer will receive an ample
return, at an early day, in the increased material wealth of the
country, of which all deserving merchants, manufacturers, trades
men, and capitalists will get each his own share. England, to
maintain her place among the nations, must educate her people.
Even as a manufacturing country, to keep her place—or, rather, to
check the yearly diminution of her proportion of the supply
of the world, with articles above the coarsest product of low
labour—England must educate her people. German merchants
have been for years, and rapidly too, supplanting English
goods the world over, with the products of the educated work
men of Rhenish Prussia, Saxony, and North Germany. The
manufactories of the United States, have been for years sending
hardware, and other manufactures to all new countries of the world
in place of English goods. And whenever they get rid of the
burden of an absurd protection system, the American manufacturers
are destined to cover the world, with their skilfully made articles,
each so intelligently suited to the purpose it is. intended for.
Without education, England must fall behind other nations ; we
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have already lost much, and we cannot begin too soon to knock oft'
the shackles of ignorance from our workmen. On the other hand,
with education, the sturdy inhabitants of the land, will make Great
Britain more and more the wonderful island of the world. In this
way, indirect though it may be called, I believe will the chief
return come to the ratepayers, for their investment in the new
national schools. But look at a more direct saving :—The rate
payers of England and Wales paid last year nearly eleven and a
half millions for poor rates ; the cost of the police for the year was
more than two millions • the cost of the prisons for the year was
more than one million ;—reformatories I have left out. Put the
poor rates, prisons, and police together, and the sum is more than
fourteen and a half millions. Educate the people, and does not
every one see, that the annual sum he will pay for the school rate
will soon reduce a man’s expense in poor rates, police and prison
expenses ? This dreadful sum—fourteen and a half millions—paid
for catching and punishing our rogues and maintaining our paupers,
is the shame of England. Educate your people, and in a very few
years the saving out of this fourteen and a half millions, will more
than pay your school rates. One proof that education will diminish
crime, and therefore the expense of punishing it, is found in the
ignorance oi our convicted criminals. The returns of the state of
education of the inmates of our gaols, for each of the two last
years show, that ninety-six out of every hundred could not read or
write, or only so imperfectly as to be of no use to them. In
America a native-born mendicant or pauper is very rare indeed.
Why is this ? Mainly because all have been educated, in the
public free schools of the country. Our present voluntary system
is unfair: the few contributors to the expenses of the denomi
national schools, pay for the large number who will not give. The
payment by rates will cause every man who pays rates to contribute
his proportion : and by so doing he will obtain a just right to use
the schools for which he pays his share. Those who are too poor
to pay rates, will send their children without pay, but without the
degradation of thinking they are paid for by charity. The child
ren of the country will stream into the new national schools—all
equal in the right to enter there, none oppressed with the degrading
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badge of charity. The very poor, and no others, will send their
children without contributing to the cost of the schools. Let me
ask many excellent men, who object to our schools being free,
whether this would not be a result much the same as they advocate.
Every ratepayer will be interested in the schools being well con
ducted. A real public opinion, exactly to the purpose, will be
created, and upon public opinion the character and success of the
schools will essentially depend. The ratepayer will justly want to
see the schools good enough to receive his own children. This will
help the schools to improve; and in school districts, with many
primary schools, secondary schools will soon spring up, to be fol
lowed later, probably, by a high school, belonging to several
districts. Thus, many ratepayers will get their money’s worth in
such schools as suit their own children. But some gentlemen
object, in the outset, to schools being free, saying, “ Englishmen are
apt to attach little value to what costs them nothing.” To this
objection I would reply, that at present, under the denominational
system, of those who send their children to National or British
Schools, none pay, in school pence, more than about one-third the
cost of teaching, and the very poor are, from charity, generally paid
for by others. In the system of payment by rates, all but the very
poor will pay in their rates ; and the very poor are now paid for in
a way tending more to injure their self-respect, than the way we
propose. But is it true that people do not value what they do not
pay for ? Englishmen value free parks, free common rights, and,
what is closer to the present case, free libraries paid for out of rates,
and free grammar schools. The truth is, I think, that people
value anything that is good, even if they do not pay for it. The
people of the United States,'who are of the same stock as ourselves,
value their free public schools, as their dearest birthright ; yes,
almost as much as they value the Union inself. I think gentlemen
uttering this objection will, on a little thought, give it up. Looking
at the call for education, from no higher point of view than the
mere economical one, I would say that not the coal of England,
not her iron, not the fields of her cultivated farms, can compare
in importance even to her material wealth, with the minds of her
people. In the brains of the children of this country Englishmen
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will find the true mine of wealth to work in. You may work here
without fear of exhausting the ore, and the wealth here contained
includes all the rest.
UNSECTARIANISM.
The Rev. F. Bariiam Zincke, Vicar of Wherstead, Suffolk, and
Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the Queen, read the following paper :—
I have been requested by our Committee to lay before the members
of the National Education League, at this our first general meeting,
a brief summary of the reasons which have brought us to the con
clusion, that the teaching of the schools we wish to see established
ought to be unsectarian. By unsectarian, we mean teaching, that
omits the inculcation of those particulars of religious instruction
which differentiate, the conflicting sections of the religious world in
this country. The reasons which have brought us to this conclusion
may be readily stated. Of course, wn are not satisfied with our
existing schools. First, because they fail to reach large classes of
our population. In this very town in which we are assembled there
is a sufficient number of children of the school age, growing up
uneducated, to form the population of no mean city. It is so, more
or less, in every city of the kingdom, and with a very large propor
tion of the rural population. To go into particulars—it is so
with the children of our criminal classes ; it is so with that class
which supplies our 1,000,000 paupers, and that still larger host
which is pauperised in spirit, and on the brink of the abyss of
pauperism. Take the first 100 agricultural labourers you can col
lect from the fields, take 100 operatives from the nearest factory,
take 150,000 soldiers, or 50,000 sailors, and what, we may ask,
will be the proportion, in these different sections of the community,
that our present school system has effectually reached 1 The state
of things this reveals we regard as an enormous evil, the continuance
of which can be no longer tolerated. Our present denominational,
and, as it is called, voluntary system—but it would be nearer the
truth to call it eleemosynary,—has, after a long and fair trial, left
us in this position. We believe that it has failed because it is
denominational and eleemosynary. Such a system does not aim at
educating the nation, and could not succeed were it to aim at doing
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it. But as it has been tried, and found wanting, and as we are
fully persuaded that it can never accomplish what is needed, we are
driven to the conclusion that nothing can do the work except a
public system; and we hold that nothing else will befit the dignity
of a free, and, very properly, a proud people. A public system, of
■course, can only be supported by public funds, and therefore must
be unsectarian ; for everyone who contributes either towards the
local rates, or the general taxation of the country, will have grounds
for insisting, that his contributions shall not be used for the purpose
of teaching what he conscientiously objects to. The compromise
-of our present denominational system, is a demonstration that the
great majority of, at all events, the upper and middle classes of the
people of this country feel in this way. Another reason for om’
dissatisfaction with the present system, is the insufficiency of the
instruction it gives, to those whom it does, in some sort, reach. Our
present theory and practice appear to come to this, that nothing is
possible or desirable, for the great bulk of the people—the
lower strata of the middle classes, and the working millions
{setting the -question of religion aside for the moment)—but
a smattering of grammar. This is a natural deduction from
the idea, that all that is possible or desirable in our highest education
—that is, for the education of that part of the people of this country
who are giving up nearly a third of tlieir lives to school and college—
is, that they should become the subjects, or the victims, of an attempt
to make them classical scholars. So that when the work of education
has been completed (it is so for all classes among us alike), no one
thing has been taught, which has the slightest bearing on the know
ledge or the thoughts of the age; which in any way fits us for the life
we have to live, and the world we have to live in or which makes
us at all acquainted with the materials we shall have to work with,
■or which gives us any guidance for the work we shall have to do.
Nothing has been taught which does at all contribute, as Bacon
puts it, towards the relief of man’s estate, or towards making us
more manly or more godly. I use this last word, because it calls
attention to the accusation, our opponents are so loud in alleging
against the scientific training we wish to see imparted in our
.schools. Bor our part, we do not believe that the effect of the ac
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quaintance with. Latin and Greek, and of the little grammatical
instruction that is given in our existing schools, is especially
religious. But we are of opinion that science, being only a know
ledge of the ideas that were in the intelligence of God, before they
were embodied in the objects, the operations, the forces, and thelaws of nature, can never take _us further from, but must always
bring us nearer to, God. In short, our present aims appear to us
very much like a pretence to teach something—a something, we
believe, which will rarely awaken thought, and will be of incon
ceivably little use to any of us, just and precisely for the very pur
pose of hindering the teaching of something else, which would
awaken thought, and which would be of very great use. We do
not, then, go in for a reform of these ideas and practices, but—I
hope I shall not compromise our League by the word—for a
revolution. We wish to give every one an opportunity for being
taught just what he will want to know. We wish to see our
primary schools, teaching the whole population the instrumental
parts of education—reading, writing, and ciphering—as well and as
universally as these things are taught in Northern Germany, and in
the New England States. And we wish to see the schools, cominw
next above our primary schools, aming chiefly at industrial, tech
nical, and scientific training, and at the correct use of our mother
tongue. I need not now say anything about schools of a higher
grade. It is possible for us—for it is done elsewhere—to impart
even to working men a very serviceable amount of this kind of
knowledge, which will not only make them better workmen, and
so enable us to maintain our position in the open market of the
world, but will also make the recipients of this knowledge them
selves, better and wiser men. Our beau ideal of a national system
of education is, that it should be so organised as to place within the
reach of every child in the country, free of all cost, the most
complete and thorough training our present knowledge admits of,
whatever his employment or profession is to be—whether that of
an agricultural labourer, a mechanic, or a miner; whether a
physician, a minister of religion, or a literary man;—and that no
bounties should be given to, and special preferences shown for,
any particular callings or professions, but that the circumstances of
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the parents, and the disposition and aptitude of the child, should
alone decide in each, case what the calling or profession is to be.
The realisation of such an ideal might a few years back, have
appeared quite beyond our reach; but it does not appear to be so
now, at all events to the members of this League; for we fancy
that we are able to catch a glimpse of it; and some approximation
to it is the goal of our thoughts and efforts. Now, we see no hope
of the general establishment, under the present system, of schools
of the kind I have been speaking of. It is inconceivable that
they will ever be established by the clergy, or by the ministers
of Nonconformist congregations, who are the chief promoters
and managers of our present schools. Because, then, we see no
shadow of a prospect of these things being taught in our present
denominational schools, which have been established for quite a
different object, we advocate the establishment of another set of
schools without any sectarian objects, which, as they will be partly
supported by local funds, will be managed by persons who will be
interested in having these things taught. This is the conclusion
we come to, when we regard the schools from the point of view
that will be taken, by those who will pay for them. We come to
the same conclusion, if we look at them from the point of view
that will be taken by those who are to use them. They must be
•equally free to all. No hindrance must be interposed, which would
be an obstacle to their being used by any member of the
•community. Now, the inculcation in the schools, of denomina.tional differences would be a hindrance of this kind. From our
wish, therefore, to make the schools equally open to all, we would
not have anything taught in them, to which any Christian people
do conscientiously object. We are all of opinion that as things
now are (we believe that it will not always be so), in some cases
some form or degree of compulsion, to secure attendance will be
necessary. Things have now come to such a pass, that the security
and well-being of society demand this. As we have already noticed,
with a yearly aggregate of 125,000 committals, with more than
1,000,000 paupers, and with a still vaster host on the brink of pauper
ism ; and with multitudes among us who do not know the name of
the reigning Sovereign, or of the Saviour of the World, and who
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derive their only ideas of right and wrong from the policeman; and
with our agricultural labourers, in a condition intellectually so
degraded, that the most sanguine politicians among us forbear to
demand for them the franchise, we think this necessary. But we
trust that, like the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland,
the necessity for compulsion will be temporary. The late extension
of the franchise, which places political power largely in the hands
of the uneducated, confirms us in our view of this necessity. But,
of course, the question of compulsion cannot be for a moment
entertained, so long as we have no other than our present denomina
tional schools. We cannot compel the children of Nonconformists
to attend the rector’s or vicar’s school; and the children of
Episcopalians anti-prelatical schools. The attempt could not be
made. These converging reasons, then, oblige us to advocate
unsectarian education in the schools we aim at establishing. But
we have not arrived at this conclusion, without having carefully
weighed the consequences of what we propose. We have looked
into the facts which bear on the consideration of the question,
and have estimated the pros and cons of the arguments that deal
with its probabilities; and, having done this, we have found no
.grounds for apprehension. The great and conspicuous facts con
tributed by past and contemporary history are easily stated, and
will be easily understood. In Italy and Spain—the countries in
which, whatever education there may have been, has been most
■completely of the kind, advocated by the supporters of our denominational system—the result has not been good as regards literature,
science, and, above all, as regards religion itself. The example of
Erance, as far as the education of the people of that country has
been in the hands of the clergy, points to the same conclusion.
There, too, the reaction against religion appears to be in the ratio
of the force religion has brought to bear, in the manner we are
now speaking of, upon the minds of the young. I should not
think it worth while to recall the fact, that the most celebrated
pupil of the Jesuits was Voltaire, were it not that the spirit of
Voltaire is so common among Frenchmen. Every one will under
stand that there is no question about bringing up children without
religion; the only question is as to the best way of making a
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people religious. The lesson Ave are taught by the experience of
Prussia is on the same side. There the Government has made
religious instruction, according to a certain formula, a part of the
school course. Again we ask what has been the result ? Upon
this very question, we have lately had a discussion in the columns
of the Times, which has left pretty distinctly impressed upon us
one fact, at all e\ ents that in Prussia the attempt to teach religion
in the school, according to a definite formulary has been a signal
and complete failure. The reason is not far to seek. It is impossible to teach religion in this way. Neither you, nor I, nor anybody
else, would be disposed in favour of doctrines forced upon us in this
Avay. Religion is not the child of drill and compulsion. I pass
from Northern Germany to another great country, Avhere, fortu
nately for the purposes of this inquiry, the two systems are brought
into the closest and most distinct contrast. The fruits of the one
are seen, side by side with the fruits of the other. In the United
States of America a large proportion of the population are German
immigrants, Avho were brought up under the school system just
mentioned. Throughout the North and the great West, they are
everywhere living intermingled with the native population, Avho
have all been brought up in Avhat we should call unsectarian schools.
It thus becomes easy to judge, upon which of these two people
religion has the greater hold. In the winter of 1867-68,1 travelled
through the Union, with the exception of the Pacific States. Among
other matters, my attention was naturally very much directed to
Avhatever had any bearings on the religious question. I frequently
heard native Americans speaking of the absence, as it appeared to
them, of the religious element in the character of their German felloAV
citizens; while at the same time, I everywhere saw clear evidence
of the streng religious feeling of the native population, brought up,,
almost to a man, as I just noticed, not merely in unsectarian, but
in secular schools. Wherever I Avent I saw and inspected schools
of this kind, and no others—on the Prairies of the West, and the
Rocky Mountains, as well as in Massachusetts. But the first
buildings that met my eyes, almost in every place, were the
churches—at Denver, beyond the Prairies and the Plains, and
further on, in the little mining toAvns in the Rocky Mountains, as
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much as in Boston itself. And we must remember, that these
churches have been built, and that their Ministers are supported
by those, who were all the while very busy in clearing away the
forest, and reclaiming the wilderness, and raising the first shelter for
man. As a general ride in the country I am speaking of, where all the
schools are secular, the foundations of the homestead and of the
House of God, are laid simultaneously. I believe—though of course
no one can be in a position to prove it—that a larger amount of
money is raised every year, by voluntary contributions for religious
purposes in the United States, than, over the whole continent of
Europe. Those who question our conclusion will have to convince
us that, notwithstanding these facts, the Continental school system
is more conducive to the interests of religion than the American.
What we want them to do is to disprove, or if they are unable
to do this, to bring into harmony with their theory, the asser
tion, that in those countries in which their plan has been most
thoroughly carried out, there exists the greatest amount of
hostility to religion; while in that great country in which
education is most throughly secular, more so than in any
other country in the world, more money is voluntarily given for
religious purposes, and the ministers of religion are held in higher
estimation, than in any other part of Christendom. But we are
not without experience ourselves on this question. Generally
speaking, our schools are denominational; and, again speaking
generally, the class which in the towns is most largely indebted to
them for its education, is that of the artisans. Now, if the theory
of our opponents is the true one, we ought to see the good results
of it here. But what is the fact ? We have been told again and
again, that there is no other class in the community which has
strayed so largely, and so far from the fold in which they were
brought up. Take a large London national school, under the
shadow of an imposing London Church. I take it for granted that
the greater part of the scholars, are either children of artisans or,
if not, still will be brought up to some handicraft. We may ask
how many of those, who have been brought up in that school are
ever seen in that Church? and what is the expectation in this
matter, respecting those who are now in the school ? It can, then,
L
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hardly be the results of our present system, which make any of us
desirous of maintaining it. We have another domestic instance
in the case of the Irish Roman Catholics, who for many generations
have maintained their religion, as no other people in Europe have
done, in consequence, not of the aid, but of the neglect, and even
the hostility of the State. Facts of this kind lead us to the
conclusion, that in advocating unsectarian schools, we are most
assuredly not acting in hostility to religion. I will only make one
more remark. All these schools will be day schools. The
children will, therefore, be still living at home. The parents will
thus have, in the morning and evening of each day, and during
the whole of Saturday and Sunday, as much opportunity as
probably they have at present, for bringing up their children
religiously. The Sunday school will supply similar opportunities
to the clergy, and other religiously-disposed persons. We know
that there will always be parents, who will be living immoral and
irreligious lives; but in the case of the children even of such
parents as these, we do not think that any advantage would result
from the teaching of the schools, being of a sectarian character.
Of course, no one supposes for a moment that there will be any
irreligious, or anti-Christian instruction, given in any school in the
kingdom supported by public money, and under the joint super
vision of a Government inspector, and of a local board of manage
ment. I will sum up in half a dozen words the different
arguments I have been laying before you—we cannot get what
we want without unsectarian teaching; and we see no reason for
supposing that evil consequences of any kind will result from it.
SECULAR EDUCATION.
The Hon. Auberon Herbert read the following paper on
“ Secular Education”:—In asking that national education should be
unsectarian—that is, unconnected with the teaching of any creed—
we shall all recognize the obligation of considering gravely if, under
such a system, the moral and spiritual life of the people will suffer
injury. With such a feeling in my mind, I shall try to show that
it is not merely the readiest way of dealing with our religious diffi
culties, but that it is to be desired in itself, as the system under
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which the office that the State, and the office that ministers of
religion hold in trust for the people, will he better understood and
better discharged. There still exists amongst us some confusion of
thought on this subject. We have formed the habit of looking
upon morality as the property, the special province of the clergy.
If this were a just view—as morality is of all things the most
important—then the present denominational system would be very
incomplete, the system of the middle ages, and Dr. Manning’s
teaching of to-day would be right, and all education ought to be
placed in the hands of the Churches. But morality is not to be
enclosed within such narrow bounds. Morality is of the home, and
the street, and the public building, as much as of the Church and the
class-room. Its limits, its tendencies, its developments are not
determined by a class amongst us, but by the action of all those
mixed intelligences which form society. The professional teachers
have always conformed, and must conform, to the climate of opinion
that grows round them. Even the seat of infallibility itself cannot
rise above this influence, and thanks to “modern Liberalism,” which
it excommunicates, the syllabus of to-day is milder than the syllabus
of earlier ages. If, then, morality is in no fashion a class-property,
who are to be responsible for the teaching of it 1 I answer, the
State, for that which concerns the State; our Churches, for that,
which concerns the Churches. Both have duties of teaching morality,. ■
though their appeal lies to different sanctions. The State has.
simply to deal with the relations of man to man ; the minister of
religion deals not only with these, but with the relations of man to
God. It may, however, be urged that the relations of man to man
are too vague, to be a matter of teaching. I reply, that the State
has never yet found them too vague to be a matter of punishment;
and he who is an awarder of punishment, is bound to know why he
punishes, is bound to act on principles which he can clearly explain,
and which, when explained, will command the moral consent of
those who obey. How shall the State do this ? I answer, by giving
to every child a clear conception, of the fact of his existence as a
member of society, and of the birth with him of obligations whicH
limit his actions towards others • by leading him to understand
what law is—to understand the necessity that where men and women.
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live together they should live under law, and the spirit and inten
tions of the laws, which a civilized community imposes on itself. It
must show him that the happiness of society, its power of progres
sion, its power of enjoying higher pleasures, impose on its members,
many obligations—obligations of truthful speech, of upright dealing,
of respect for feelings as well as rights—obligations which cannot
be neglected, without somewhere inflicting injury upon that society
which he is learning to place higher than his own individual ex
istence. Under such teachings the social bond will pass from the
region of phrases, and become to our children as they grow up a
distinct and living reality. The State will no longer be to them a
powei existing outside of themselves, a machine of resistless force
for imposing burdens, and inflicting penalties; but duties owed to
the State will be duties owed to themselves, and slowly, after’
many centuries, but safely in the end, for them if not for us, the
neglected facts of a common humanity will emerge out of the dif
ferences of class and sect. Such is the office of the State as regards
moral teaching, an office which it cannot rightly place out of itsown hands. The minister of religion appeals above, and beyond
these earthly sanctions. It is his, to lead us to form the largest and
noblest conceptions of God, and of God’s dealings ; to teach us to.
know the depth of that spiritual nature which is within us, and
the never-ceasing consolation we may draw from it. The last
minutes of my time, shall be given to consider the influence which
an unsectarian system of education, would exert upon the teachings
of the churches. These teachings would not be diminished ; for
those who labour for the spread of any religious belief would be
freed from all anxiety and responsibility, as regards the other parts
of education, and would be able to devote all their energy to their
special work. By the side of the State education there would grow
up, as in America, a great religious organization, voluntary in man
agement, voluntary in attendance, and taking great hold of the
mind of the people. Still greater would be the influence of the
system, upon the spirit of the teaching. As the State assumes an
attitude of perfect toleration and impartiality, refusing to disavow
the unity of national life, refusing to believe that those things
which divide are stronger than those which unite, I cannot doubt
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that the religious teachings of this country, will be affected by the
-example of the State, and gain in breadth and charity. Do not let
us hide from ourselves the fact, that the religious teachings of to-day
must pass through the fire, and all that is narrow and intolerant —
■all that is superstitious, all that fears the light, must be burnt
from them, if in the future they are to command the strongest
minds, and to act with a living, force upon the consciences of the
people. That this may come to pass, that the spiritual life amongst
us may be freer and purer, the State must faithfully discharge its
-own duties, and leave the churches to discharge theirs. A
■country whose churches are built upon the belief, (I quote the
words) “ that every individual must find his separate way to God
by the use of his own intellect and conscience,” cannot make a
State-lesson of the teaching of any church. But one thing it owes to
-every church, and that is to act in the belief, that great national
measures, across the face of which a people’s unity, and a people’s
toleration for every belief and opinion are written in plain
■characters, are religious lessons, which, however silently, reach all
hearts and influence all lives. I ought to add to this paper an ex
planation of a practical character. I have tried to show that un
sectarian education is not irreligious in its influence, I have tried
to show that it is the best form of national education ; but let it be
■understood that I do not wish to displace the present system. All
that I ask is, that the State should frankly recognize the unsectarian
system, allowing it to be introduced, first, where the inhabitants of
-a district desire the system, and decide to rate themselves • secondly,
where a district fails to supply itself with proper school accomo
dation, and is required to rate itself, by the central office or the
■district board. Where schools on the new and old system come
together in the same district, I confess my belief that the old
•schools must give up children’s pence, as a condition of existence ;
but if the State grant be raised, as Mr. Dixon proposes, to twothirds of the total expenses, school managers will have only to
raise about the same sum as at present, which is not an unfair tax
for continuing the luxury of denominational teaching. If all
■existing denominational schools, are wise enough to accept a
satisfactory conscience clause, Government inspection, and a
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registry of school attendance, they have probably a long life
before them ; as long, indeed, as their own vitality lasts. Englishwise, we wish, if it be possible, to work out the new pattern, with
out destroying the threads of the old warp.
MISCONCEPTIONS AS TO SECULAR INSTRUCTION.
Mr. G. J. Holyoake read a paper entitled “ Misconceptions as
to Secular Instruction.” He said : In public life it sometimes
: happens that particular persons excite terror and apprehension, yet
when the nation comes to know them, they are found to be wise
and pacific counsellors. The same thing often occurs with
debatable terms. A particular phrase is regarded with hasty
distrust, which, should it be looked at dispassionately, would be
found to indicate exactly what the nation is in want of. Such a
phrase is secular instruction. Eor all the purposes of national
education, it is sufficient to define secular instruction, as that kind
of instruction which pertains to the efficiency of the workman
and the duties of the citizen ; instruction which must be given,
and given with very great distinctness, or the working class will be
cheated of that knowledge which can alone make them creditable
and intelligent members of the State, able to acquit themselves in
the international competition, destined to grow fiercer in coming
years. Now, the term secular in no way denies or questions
that spiritual education which, in proper time and place, can,
in the opinion of most persons, inculcate yet higher motives to
nobleness, and peradventure conduct to the knowledge of God.
That knowledge which is secular is not, as many imagine,
necessarily opposed to that which is religious. It is merely distinct
from it. It merely ignores that which stands outside its province.
Just as mathematics ignores chemistry and does not assail it; just
as jurisprudence ignores geology, but does not deny it; so that
which is secular, stands apart from theology, but neither denies nor
assails it. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I, who have
elsewhere given special currency to the term, have always defined
and explained it. It is true that some persons, not understanding
the integrity of the term, have used it in a confusing way ; but I
take it, that the educated instinct of gentlemen is to employ a term
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in its intrinsic signification, and not to insist upon an interpretation
of it, founded upon its obvious abuse. All that the advocates of
secular instruction ask is, that the education given at the cost of
the State shall relate to the duties exacted by the State; and
these duties are, that the workman shall be able to maintain his
family, to pay whatever taxes are levied upon him, give no trouble
to the police, make no demands upon the parish, and fight generally
whomsoever the Government may see fit to involve us in war with.
Whatever knowledge is necessary, to enable the future workman to
do these things is his right, and should be given him in the
speediest manner ; and any other inculcation which shall delay this
knowledge on its way, or confuse the learner in acquiring it, is a
loss to the State and a peril to the child. It is in the interest of
public economy, that secular instruction should be given by order,
and religious instruction by option. Anyone who has had
experience of the working class, knows that what they suffer most
from is confusion of mind. They cannot see one thing at a
time. They mix up other considerations with the case in
hand. They judge the question before them, in the light of
something else. This is the source of that weakness and
prejudice, which often make them so impracticable. This habit
of the untrained mind, instead of being corrected, has been
confirmed by that mixed education, that confusion of things sacred
and secular, which charity and misconception, have made the
rule in this country. In Parliament, that member alone is regarded
as competent, and as not wasting the time of the House, who can
discern what the point before it is, and who can keep to it when he
does. We want this power in the workshop. The national scheme
which is not going to impart it, is going to waste the money of the
ratepayer. Mixed education makes muddle-minded scholars. To
acquire only what you need to know, to think out one thing at a
time, to keep separate things distinct in the mind, is economy in
learning, and is the shortest path to efficiency. The nation is busy,
and the people have no money or time to spare, and the State is
bound to adopt the speediest and cheapest transit to public know
ledge. No one has a right to stand in the way of this, in the
presence of a nation ignorant and struggling ; and struggling because
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it is ignorant. Many demur to secular knowledge because they do
not know why it is wanted, nor perceive what it will do. They
forget, that in England every inch of ground has a proprietor. Not
a fish in the river, not a bird in the air, hardly a flower on the
bank, but has an owner. A mechanic, as a rule, finds that employ
ment comes by chance, and wages by caprice. He must not steal,
or conspire, or fight. Secular sense and secular skill, are the only
usable weapons which can keep him from the poorhouse. Piety,
ever so conspicuous, scarcely fetches any price in the market. The
most devout employer, adjusts the wages he gives according to the
swiftness and expertness of his workmen. There is no creed, the
profession of which will induce the Chancellor of the Exchequer to
remit the assessed taxes, or the magistrate to excuse the non
payment of local rates. The State, therefore, is bound to expend
the public money in productive knowledge, and the only knowledge
which is productive is secular; and this knowledge the State is
bound in prudence and justice to give to the people. But this
knowledge, which will mercifully aid the children of the workman,
will make them clear-minded and grateful : and gratitude and intel
ligence, are the fairest of all the handmaids of reverence. With
secular instruction, religion will acquire freshness and new force.
The clergyman and the minister, will exercise a new influence,
because their ministrations will have dignity and definiteness. They
will no longer delegate things declared by them to be sacred, to be
taught second-hand by the harassed, over-worked, and oft reluctant
schoolmaster and schoolmistress, who must contradict the gentleness
of religion by the peremptoriness of the pedagogue, and efface the
precept that “ God is love,” by an incontinent application of the
birch. An enemy of religion would prescribe exactly this course,
if he sought to make it distasteful, and terrorful to the child. It is
not secular instruction which breeds irreverence, but this ill-timed
familiarity with the reputed things of God, which robs divinity of
its divineness. There is one advantage of the secular rule of instruc
tion which might commend it to all earnest men. So long as
religion is taught apart from school instruction, and with optional
attendance, it will matter little whether it is “ sectarian” or not.
Sectarianism is not a sin, when it ceases to be intolerant. It is then
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but that honest form of faith, which best supplies the wants of the
soul professing it. To reduce religion to an impossible generalization
of the Bible, and the mere belief in God—creating a sort of Par
liamentary piety (which is what is meant by “unsectarianism”)—is
to efface the individuality of devotion, which makes religion pic
turesque and passionate, and is harder for the earnest believer to
accept than secular instruction, which meddles intentionally neither
with his faith, nor his conscience. The last misconception relates to
the extent of this question. A magnitude is imputed to it which
does not exist. We are not dealing with education in its full sense
at all. That means the sum of all those influences of home, and
church, and society, which form the individual character. The State
never proposes to deal with these. The scheme before us does not
contemplate it, and would have no power to effect it if it did. All
we ask is, that in every district in England, the children of the
working class shall surely get as good an intellectual training, as the
children of the working class can get in any country in the world.
Tliis can be given in a few hours a day—in a few years of every
child’s life. This is the extent of the scheme proposed by this
League. Secular instruction, if adopted, will deal, during that brief
term, merely with the mechanical routine of elementary knowledge,
and the passionless facts of science; while it leaves in all the other
years, and during all other times, the young learner to the teachers
of religion, whose province is that side of human nature which
comes in contact with the infinite; where emotions arise which
colour life for evermore, and passions are stirred which pertain to
eternity, by the side of which, most men deem all that pertains to
this life minor and transitory. Should we succeed to the utmost of
our wishes, the State-student will still be under the far-reaching
influences of the nurse, the mother, and the minister ; churches and
chapels will still exist, and Sunday schools will still remain open,
and able to confine themselves to Sunday knowledge, which will
have distinctive value then. Household piety will still prevail,with
an interest which it now lacks ; theologians will still write, and
their literature still cover the land ; the institutions and character
of the country will still be Christian, and in a more self-respecting
and genial sense than now. Splendid philanthropy will still illus
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trate the human tenderness of Christ. Nothing will have been
changed, except that the nation will have added intelligence to its
greatness. The brain of the common people will be cleared and
trained, and every working father and mother, will thank with
gratefid heart that State which has given their clrildren the priceless
blessing of self-defensive knowledge.
DENOMINATIONAL SCHOOLS.
Mr. Jesse Collings, Honorary Secretary, read a paper which had
been prepared by Mr. H. J. Slack, and in which the “principle” of
Denominational Schools was examined. Mr. Slack, in his paper
said :—As powerful parties in this country, holding various and
opposite opinions upon theological subjects, have pronounced in
favour of what is called the “ Denominational System of National
Education,” an accurate investigation of the principles of such a
scheme, and of the consequences which flow therefrom, is urgently
needed. An objection of some force might be taken, at starting, to
the illogical linking together of the two distinct things designated
by the words, “ Denominational ” and “ National.” In a country
in which a multiplicity of denominations flourish, and divide
society into numerous parties, that which is denominational stands
in obvious contrast to that which is national. Considered from
the point of theological classification, to be denominational is to be
sectarian, and if regarded from a purely social or political point of
view, it is to be sectional, and though the nation comprehends all
its subordinate divisions, it cannot be confounded with them ; and
it should be remembered that large masses of people do not range
themselves in definite ranks, and that consequently the whole of
the denominations is a much smaller quantity than the whole of
the people. It is not customary to consider any church as a
national church, unless it is the special object of a State patronage
not accorded to other churches. If it merely stands as one
amongst many religious bodies, all of which receive State aid in
proportion to their numbers, it would be regarded as the church of
a larger or smaller section of the community, as the case might be,
and any such institution having the support of the majority to-day,
might, from change of opinion, represent only a minority to-morrow.
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In countries where various religious communities receive State pay,
the term “ concurrent endowment ” designates the kind of relation
that is thus established. In like manner, an educational system in
which various bodies, holding distinctive opinions, all received
pecuniary support from the general taxation of the country, would
be one of “ concurrent endowmentand if differences of theo
logical creed separated these bodies from each other, the Govern
ment which supported, or helped to support all, would act quite as
much upon the plan of “ concurrent endowment of religions,” as if,
instead of providing funds towards mingling reading and writing
with particular creeds, it gave the same amount of money towards
the church services of each sect. The denominational school
master, who is engaged to teach particular theological propositions as
well as to conduct the ordinary secular studies of a school, is, if not
the priest, at least the minister, of the sect employing him j and as
his two functions would be intimately blended, it would be a mere
subterfuge to say that State aid was given to him for his arith
metic without his catechism ; not for his doctrines of salvation, but
his rule-of-three. If the State aid took the form of local rates,
levied throughout the country, by order of an Imperial Act
of Parliament, and upon general principles of assessment, the
Government by which the scheme was carried out, would com
pel each ratepayer to contribute to the support of other folks’
religions, whether he liked them or not. The Evangelical Dis
senter would be compelled to contribute towards teaching, in the
schools of the Roman Catholics, what he conscientiously believed
to be soul-destroying errors; the Trinitarian would give his sub
scription towards inculcating the doctrines of the Unitarian, and
each party, in turn, would find • its conscience and its pocket
oppressed with the burden of sustaining doctrines it denied and
opinions it deemed to be mischievous and absurd. To be con
sistent in legislation, State aid for teaching various kinds of
theology in denominational schools ought to be supplemented by
similar aid, if required, to support the same sorts of theology in
churches or chapels. When, under the name of “ concurrent
endowment, it was recently proposed to do this in Ireland, an over
whelming mass of public opinion decided against it, and, indeed,
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if the nation had been in favour of the principle it involved, we
should not in this country have arrived at the abolition of com
pulsory church rates ; but our Legislature would have arranged
that if Dissenters paid for the theology of Churchmen, Churchmen
should make all square by paying for dissenting theology a pro
portionate sum.
The reason why compulsory church rates have
been abolished, and why the Irish Protestant Church has been dis
established, is that a strong conviction has arisen amongst the
majority of thinkers, that it is morally wrong for the State to
arrogate to itself the power of choosing a religion for the people,
inasmuch as this is a matter in which each man’s own con
science and intellect should be his guides.
But if religion is
so left to the conscience and intellect of individuals, no one can,
without violation of the principle of such an arrangement, be
compelled to pay in any shape towards the support of a multiplicity
of theologies differing from his own.
That everybody should be
called upon to support everybody else’s creed, is not a doctrine of
liberty, but a proposal of despotism, and it is none the better
because the compulsory aid is to take effect in one building called
a school, instead of in another called a church.
No one who
admits the principle which led to the disestablishment of the
Irish Church, can dispute the position taken by the Boman
Catholics, that the State ought to do for them, in proportion to
their numbers, what it does in the way of benefit for other religious
bodies ; and if all the theological sects were equally endowed for
educational purposes, the State would still have to meet the claims
of secularists, and of those who decline to register themselves
under any denominational formula.
When we consider the fact
admitted by all sects, that great masses of the working class,
especially in large towns, are in this position, the magnitude of this
question becomes apparent; and if we pass from masses of men to
distinguished individuals, the names will at once occur to our
minds of philosophers standing high in various departments of
scientific enquiry, who do not belong to any existing church.
Hitherto the denominational system, has not been associated with
any direct legislative compulsion to attend the schools; but the
country is obviously tending to the belief that the State must pro
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tect and safeguard the right of the child to education, even when
the parent desires to keep it away from instruction. Compulsory
education cannot be justly resorted to, unless religious liberty, that
is, perfect freedom upon speculative questions—is well protected
from aggression. Religious liberty is based upon the right of
private judgment, while the denominational teaching of the young
is intended to produce a strong bias, in favour of what those who
employ it believe to be true. In chemistry or astronomy, a pro
fessor does not hesitate to tell his pupils frankly, that upon certain
questions the opinions of men of learning differ, nor does he
shrink from explaining the grounds upon which diverging or con
tradictory theories are held ; but would any denominational school
master be allowed to show why historical critics, philological
scholars, or geologists, doubted or denied the particular propositions
he was paid to teach? Those who, upon grounds of critical
inquiry, reject the propositions of orthodoxy, ought not to be parties
towards compelling the orthodox to support their heresy in the
schoolroom; and if Dean Close, for example, cannot be justly
deprived of his shillings or pounds for an institute in which
Huxley or Tyndall might lecture, ought they or their followers to
be mulcted for a kind of education in which their labours are
spoken of in the following terms :—“ There was no question that
there is in the present day an evil spirit of the ‘ bottomless pit ’
rising up among us, poisoning God’s truth, poisoning the faith of
thousands, and turning them away from godliness ; and he was
bound to say he laid a large portion of it at the door of science.
Did not philosophers at the present day, dig out of the bowels
of the earth evidences against God ? Did they not seek in the
heavens, in nations, and in languages, every means to shake our faith
in the Bible? How fearful and how humbling a thing it was, that
there were those who would venture to overturn the whole Bible
narrative of the creation of man, which involved man’s salvation
by Christ, and would prefer any dream, however foolish or vain, to
the faithful testimony of God respecting the origin of our species f
He was bold to say that in all the dreams of Hindoos, and all the
false religions corrupted, degraded, and ridiculous—that were ever
amusing among the Pagans, there were none so frivolous and childish
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as those, unto which the science of the present day had reduced our
scientific men.” This passage is not quoted for the pleasure of
raising a laugh at its absurdity, but because the learned ecclesiastic
who uttered it is, to speak in natural history phraseology, a
remarkably fine specimen of a species, considerable in numbers and
tolerably wide in the area of its distribution. All the members of
this religious species would have a right, under the denominational
system, to State aid in frightening their pupils with bug-a-boo
pictures of the horrors of science, and the wickedness of scientific
men. It may be said, that a “ conscience clause” would be a suf
ficient protection against theological aggression, but this is emphati
cally contradicted by facts. At a recent Conference of the Wesleyans,
a body which carefully avoids separating itself from the Estab
lished Church, much complaint was made of the persecution to
which Wesleyan children were subjected at National Schools, on
account of their attending the Sunday schools of the Chapel
instead of those of the Church ; and where a school was founded upon
a theological basis, children who were not subjected to its theological
teachings, would occupy a position inferior to those who were. The
denominational system directly tends to brand, with the stigma of
inferiority children and their parents who do not belong to the most
influential sect of the locality. In Ireland the Protestant child
would be subjected to this injury in the Romish school, if he attended
one, on account of there being no other in the neighbourhood; and in
other places the children of Romanists, Jews, and Dissenters in
general, would come under the ban. In rural districts of England
the social distinction between pupils of the British, and pupils of
the National Schools, is painfully apparent. The park of the lord
or squire receives the little Nationals at their annual holiday, and
“ county families” assist at their cricket or kiss-in-the-ring. The
small “ Britishers” may look through the palings, but as they did
not learn the right catechism, they must not enjoy the fun. The
■Government, as the guardian of political and social interests, is
bound, upon the principles of civil and religious liberty, to permit
nothing, that can encourage odious distinctions in any school that it
-supports. So long as education was left’to voluntaryism, there was
some excuse for aiding sectarian schools; but to have made that
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system approximately fair, secular schools should have had equal
rights with denominational establishments. Voluntaryism has been
found insufficient in supplying school accommodation, and it is
generally believed that attendance at some school should be made
compulsory; and would it not inflict a great wrong upon the people,
if they were obliged to send their children to schools in which, in
any shape or way, a theological test was applied to discriminate and
separate the beloved sheep of any orthodoxy, from the suspected
goats of any heresy ? In large towns, schools of all kinds, from
Romanist to secular, would be established, and there would be con
siderable choice ; but in smaller places much hardship could not
fail to occur. Large-minded reformers, anxious for human brother
hood, and wishing that the progress we are making towards de
mocracy, should be accompanied by circumstances of safety to society,
and good-will amongst men, desire that the schoolroom should be
free from envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness. The honours of
that place should go exclusively to merit of conduct, and proficiency
of study ; no child should be made ashamed or uncomfortable on
account of his father’s opinions, or lack of opinions, on subjects of
theological speculation; no child should imbibe lessons of sectarian
hatred, or be encouraged to think himself better than another child,
because he had been taught something different about creed or
•catechism. Let voluntaryism provide all the theological divisions
it believes to be usefid, and keep them in their right place ; let the
State deal with a larger question of human culture, adapted to the
people as a whole.
FREE AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION.
Captain Maxse, R.N., read a paper, of which the following
is an abstract, on “Free and Compulsory Elementary Education.”
He commenced by saying that he was the representative of a
branch which was in course of formation in South Hants, to
■co-operate with the League; and he had long been an advocate
•of compulsory gratuitous elementary education. He proceeded:
First, I should like to say a word or two about the term
secular, as applied to the movement. In its best sense, I myself,
am prepared to accept this designation of—what I hope, gentle
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men of Birmingham, you will allow me now to call—our scheme :
in its ignoble sense, as implying irreverence, or gross worldliness, I
utterly repudiate it. If by “ secular” is meant of this world, as in
contrast to another one, I reply, that what is of this world is of
God, and I denounce as mischievous and unwarrantable the arbi
trary distinction, that an attempt is made to establish between the
spiritual and the earthly. I believe that it is intended, provided
we are worthy of the intention, that human nature shall be elevated
in this world ; and that it depends entirely upon ourselves whether
we, the English, are to assist in this elevation, or are to be pushed
aside by a stronger race, better fitted for progress than we, more
resolute to fulfil the nobler aspirations of human nature. I wish to
see children, taught, first to live, as the most religious duty that they
can discharge, taught to live in this world for the ennobling of
themselves and others, taught that the greater portion of human
misery is the result of human error, taught that we can be better if
we try to be better with courage, with faith, and with inflexible
honesty. I believe there is little hope for us in life until we place
morality upon a solid basis; until we learn that it is best to be good for
its own sake; until we learn that evil, as evil, is the cause of misery
to ourselves and others, and realize (I fortify myself by a quotation
from Locke) that “ To love truth for truth’s sake is the principal
part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all
virtues.” The object of this League is simply to teach the “ com
prehensible” to all neglected children ; to save them from despair,
degradation, and death, by placing about every child some moral
influence, giving them the opportunity of distinguishing between
right and wrong, and by securing to all persons in the realm the
additional means of livelihood which, in a civilized community, is
represented by familiarity -with letters and numbers. A movement
having such an object as this, I can only regard as a profoundly
religious one. In the interest of religion, not less than in the interest
of the national cause we advocate, there is but one course to adopt,
(and this course is a sorrowful course for some, but they must
remember we are pressed to it by a still more sorrowful condition;)
it is, to stand respectfully aside from Bible reading, not less than
from the use of the Catechism. Nevertheless, I desire myself to
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see some reverential attitude on the part of State schools, in rela
tion to the Unknown Power, and I believe this might be fulfilled
by drawing up a daily prayer, which would satisfy every shade of
religious opinion. If, however, this cannot be done, I am ready to
acknowledge the necessity of confining ourselves strictly to secular
education. And how much this means ! It means giving sight to
the blind, and limbs to the maimed. I hold, myself, that whoever
is permitted to grow up, without having had the opportunity of
learning to read and write, has a direct grievance, not only against
his parents, but also against the State. “ In a civilized community
reading and writing may be regarded as supplementary senses.
Not a few of us would hesitate, if the alternative wore suddenly
presented of losing a sense, such as the sense of hearing, or of
losing the faculty of reading. Who is there among us, who would
assume the responsibility of destroying a sense? Is there much
less in neglecting to provide for the liberation of a faculty, mani
festly equal to it in value ? It should never be forgotten that the
higher our civilization, the greater becomes our responsibility to
wards the poor. Civilization means luxury, comfort, and security
for all of us ; but, I fear, only rigour for those who have to provide
the necessaries of life. The advantage of quitting a natural state
is great, for those who are able to command food-—hardly so for those
who have to obtain it. Therefore, the Government of a civilized
State assumes, or should assume, a responsibility towards the indi
gent, in direct proportion to the degree of its civilization. It is for
those responsible—for those who, in a free country, frame public
opinion—to see that the disadvantage the poor are placed under by
civilization, is reduced to a minimum • and the least acknowledgment
of this duty is to provide for, and secure the liberation of what I
have called the supplementary senses. This does not in the least im
ply that the poor man or labourer is to be given learning, the latter
is for himself to achieve; he is to receive only the instrument to it, to
be given his hearing, not to be provided with music. I hardly
think myself that we have the right to protect property, if we do
not make known to everyone the reason why property should be
sacred, and this can only be done through education. It seems to
me that, as we advance in civilization, the one anxious problem we
M
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have to deal with is, how to preserve the food-getting condition of
the poor. A speaker at the Social Science Congress, the other day,
said that the misery with which we are surrounded is not the result
of ignorance, but is the result of poverty. And is not ignorance
one of the causes of poverty—one of the main causes ? It is owing
to ignorance that the labour-market is overstocked. The men who
are unable to read and write, are prohibited from entering any
calling but that of mere manual labour. How often do we hear it
said of some good agricultural labourer “ The worst of it is, he is
no scholarthe scholarly attainment in request being, perhaps,
to decipher an invoice of drain pipes, or sum up the productions of
a dairy. I am quite aware of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s views on the
subject of education, and I have listened respectfully to Mr. Faw
cett’s objection to free education as relieving the parents of proper
responsibility. Nevertheless, I remain an advocate of gratuitous
education. I do not believe that the majority of the parents we
require to reach are in a position to exercise responsibility. I
know that Mr. Fawcett would leave power to school managers to
supply education gratis, when the parents are destitute and unable
to pay, on much the same principle as food is supplied under the
poor-law; hut I cannot help thinking that there would be some
invidious distinction arising from this system ; the establishment of
a class that would be termed a pauper class, of which all callous
and improvident parents, would avail themselves at the expense of
the provident. I have never advocated myself the State’s providing,
free, more than elementary education. I believe that directly
parents are in a position to afford the indulgence of feeling respon
sibility, on the educational head, they will remove their children
from the public to the private and higher school. My experience
tells me that the responsibility of education is now evaded by
parents who can afford to educate their children. I constantly find
parents availing themselves of “ National School” education at the
(to them) nominal expense of Id. or 2d. per week, which school is
mainly supported by others, not for them, but for the very poor.
I would do nothing to weaken the responsibility that should exist
on the part of parents to their children. I recognise the force of
the argument, that parents should not. summon beings into the
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world without being able to provide for them, and I by no means
desire to see the individual gradually perish in the State; but we
must not demand too much, we must not insist on an ideal con
ception of parental duty for those who have not the means, or the
prospect of the means, of fulfilling it. To do so, would, in my opinion,
afford but too ready an excuse for society to return to its fatal
slumber. I would add, that the right to be instructed in the lan
guage of civilization offers the opportunity, which must be seized,
of supplying higher teaching. We can hardly teach how to read
and write, without imparting some rudimentary knowledge, without
teaching, I am happy to think, some of the facts of the universe,
and expounding reverentially some of the miracles of nature that
are ever at hand, whether exemplified in the anatomy of a tree
leaf, or expressed in the infinite immensity of the heavens. Finally,
we have the opportunity of awakening the conscience to a sense of
right and wrong. This briefly represents my idea of education for
the people. Call the process secular if you like, call it undenomi
national if you please—call it what you will—it must remain
neither more nor less, than noble and exalting. Perhaps you will
let me here offer a word or two upon my own experience, of the
effect of a compulsory education proposal among working men; it
will serve to supplement the larger experience of Mr. Applegarth.
I was one of the candidates at the general election for the represen
tation of Southampton, a town, as you are aware, far south. My
own pet subject, at every meeting, and upon every possible
occasion during a long house-to-house canvass was, not the “ glo
rious principles of our noble constitution,” but compulsory educa
tion. I do not believe the idea had ever been broached before,
certainly it had never been prominently broached before. It
was not long after I had commenced, that one or two leaders of
the party, who were conversant with the working class feeling,
were saying to me, “ Go on speaking about education, it takes
wonderfully; I should stick to that ideaand so on. I always
felt myself, that I struck a truly popular chord; the response
upon this subject was more fevent than upon any other. The
simple explanation is, that the working classes have common
sense, and that we have only to appeal to this on subjects which
concern them, to secure ultimately their hearty allegiance.
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DISCUSSION.
Mr. Edmond Beales, of London, most heartily congratulated
the President and all the Council of the League—if that congratu
lation was of any value—upon their admirable commencement of
the great work which they had set themselves to accomplish. The
fundamental principle of the League appeared to bo this, that every
one of those two millions of children, now without instruction,
should be educated, and that the frightful state of things which
they now saw, in the punishment of persons for the violation of
laws which they had never been taught to know or respect, should
cease to exist. The fruitful evils now resulting from the fact of so
many children being uneducated, was a shame and a disgrace to any
Christian country. The principle of the League was, that their
system, supported as it would be, partly by Government grants, and
partly by local rates, should be free and wholly unsectarian, as
it necessarily must be. He held that Christian morality was
the highest of all morality ; that no philosophy which ever
existed, could find an adequate substitute for it, and that the
Gospel of Christ was the best possible means of making a man
wise, just, honest, and virtuous. Still, he could never for the
life of him understand, how to teach a child to read and write, to
calculate, to instruct him in the elements of science, and in all
that was necessary for the faithful discharge of his after profes
sion or occupation, could make that child the less a good Christian.
He entirely agreed with Mr. Mundella, that all truth was holy; and
also with the principles laid down in the paper of the Hon. Auberon
Herbert; for whilst he conceived it to be the duty of the State to
assist in the education of the country, he also considered it the
duty of the State, not to interfere with the consciences or religious
principles of the parents. Still, no parent, whether Churchman,
Nonconformist, or Roman Catholic, should be allowed to exclude
his children from education simply because in unsectarian schools,
if they were established, there was not taught the special doc
trines of his faith. As he understood it, the League did not intend
to exclude the consideration of religion, or of the Bible from the
schools, nor to interfere at all with the existing d on om in ati on al
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systemj but what it was prepared to enforce at all times, and under
all circumstances, was, that the State must do its duty, and not
interfere with the freedom of religious conviction; that the parent
must do his duty, and not allow religious conviction to interfere
with the education which the State declared was necessary, to make
his child a good, upright, and honest citizen. Such a system
woidd bring about greater concord, and greater harmony between all
classes of society. No longer would there be antagonism and dis
union amongst them ; there would be one bond of mutual respect,
good-will, kindness, and social attachment pervading, interlacing,
and knitting together the whole national body, whilst the
individual welfare of each part of the body, would be promoted
and developed.
The Hon. G-. Brodrick : Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,—
In following Mr. Beales, as I have been invited to do, and heartily
supporting his views, I do not feel competent to speak from any
personal experience of the practical details of school management,
but I am desirous to add my testimony to the broad principle of
national unsectarian education, inasmuch as there is no one of our
principles in which I more cordially concur. This principle, as we
have been reminded, gives offence to some. I observed the other
day, that Sir Stafford Northcote, who is a good friend to education^
said at Exeter that he heartily wished the words “ sectarian ” and
“ unsectarian ” had never been imported into this subject. I partly
agree with him, and yet I differ from him; for he dislikes the word,,
and I dislike the thing. Now, there is one objection to which
reference, I think, has not been made to-day, but which I believe
to be very widely prevalent. I mean the objection that some five
and twenty years ago a kind of compact, as it has been called, was
made between the State and the religious bodies of this country,
and that we are, as it were, morally bound to carry out the spirit of
that compact. I might, and do, reply, that we arc not proposing
to disendow denominational education, that we are not proposing
to disestablish it, that we are not even proposing to supersede it,
but only to supplement it. But I go further, and I must say, I
should like to know when the compact was made, by whom it was
made, and what were its terms. And even supposing any such
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compact to have been made, I want to know who were the parties
to it. Were yon and I—those bf us, at least, who are less than
fifty years old, and perhaps at that very time were under education
—were you and I parties to it ? Were those who are children, who
are now growing up in ignorance and vice, to be the inmates of
our woikliouses and our gaols, were these children, then unborn,
parties to the compact ? Were the working classes, then excluded
from the franchise, but now admitted to it, and who must
ultimately guide and govern the policy of the country, were they
parties to it ? And if not, what force is there in alleging the
existence of an imaginary compact, made a generation ago ? There
is one other objection, to which reference has frequently been made,
to unsectarian education, and that is, the religious objection. On
that I can only say, I entirely adopt what has fallen from so many
speakers. We leave untouched the influence of the church and
the chapel, we leave untouched the influence of home, we leave
untouched the influence of Sunday schools; we leave it in the dis
cretion of the managers or school committee, as the Chairman has
explained, to admit the teaching, the dogmatic teaching, of religion
out of school hours, and, if they think proper, to allow the reading
of the Scriptures, without note or comment, even during school hours.
Then, I ask—and this is the root of the matter—what is the religion
which we are said to sacrifice ? Not the practical religion of every
day life ; not the sublime and simple religion of the Gospel; not the
pure and undefiled religion of St. James, who teaches us to visit
the fatherless and the widows in their affliction; not the religion
of St. Paul, which embraces all things true and all things pure, and
all things lovely and honest and of good report; but the religion of
creeds and articles and formularies, the religion of dogmatic
theology,—the parent of the persecution which has been the re
proach of Christianity ; the religion which boasts, not of its power
of including, but of its power to exclude; the religion which at
this moment contributes to uphold caste and to prevent the growth
of national unity in this country, and which is the main obstacle to
the moral union of Christendom.
Mr. Follett Osler : Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,—I
feel considerable hesitation, in undertaking to say a few words on
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the present occasion, but having been asked to address you, I have
jotted down a few remarks which have occurred to me, connected with
the recent journey I have made to America. Though I, in common
with a large portion of our countrymen, have long felt it most de
sirable that education should be extended throughout this realm,
so as to render it truly national, I never was so strongly impressed
with the importance of this, as after a tour I made last autumn in
the United States. In taking this journey I had no particular
object in view, beyond the desire to see and learn all I could of the
country, its people and institutions ; to accomplish which, I visited
most of the Northern States, from the Atlantic to the Rocky
Mountains. But it is not possible for anyone to travel in that
country at all observantly, without being struck by the great intel
ligence of the mass of the people. Even in the country districts
this is as noticeable as in the towns. So striking was this appa
rently universal education, that I was involuntarily led to inquire
into the system, and to visit the schools that produced such good
results. Accordingly, I devoted some time to that object, feeling
more strongly than I had ever done before, the pressing importance
of real national education, and that it was one of the first subjects
to which our Legislature should direct them attention. The question
that is of most interest and importance to us at the present moment
is, whether the main features of the system which has been so suc
cessfully carried out in the United States, may not be applicable to
this country. Some persons take alarm at the word “ America,”
and seem afraid lest we should denationalize our people ; but surely,
the adoption of a broad and extended scheme of national education,
be it based on the system adopted in the United States, or Prussia,
or of any other nation, or on the systems of all combined, does
not make us adopt, or desire to adopt, the mode cf government or
the political institutions of any of those countries ; though the
recent changes in our political institutions may render national
education not only desirable, but absolutely necessary. But, in
addition to any political considerations, it is necessary that our ar
tisans should be placed in a position, to enable us to compete with
those nations that, I regret to say, have left us far behind with re
gard to the education of the people. I contend that education, to
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be national, that is, universal, must be free. A large portion of
the population cannot pay; and if some are to do so, it will be ne
cessary to decide who are not. No arbitrary amount of wages can
settle it. A man with one child, and earning 20s. a-week, may be
richer than another earning 30s. or 40s. a-week, who has a number
of children. Then, as to those who can pay—is the sum to be uni
form, or is it to be graduated according to the means of the pupil’s
parents ? The subject becomes more complicated and difficult, the
deeper we go into it. Again, if some schools are free, and others
demand a fee, a class feeling will be provoked; for among artisans
there is an honourable pride, as great as among the wealthier members
of the community, and a distinction will cause the schools, where no
payment is made, to be regarded as pauper or charity schools. The
difficulties attending payment are so great, and the advantages of
having education free are so manifest to my mind, that I am sur
prised there should be any hesitation as to the course this country
should adopt. When in Philadelphia, I had some interesting con
versation on the subject with Mr. Shippen, the excellent President
of the Board of Controllers of the Public Schools of Philadelphia,
who strongly advises our schools being altogether free. Mr. Osler
here read the following letter from Mr. Shippen :—
“ Philadelphia, June 18th, 1869.
“ S.E. Cor. 6th and Walnut Streets.
“ Mr. Follett Osler,
Dear Sir, —Your favour of June 5tli is received. I am pleased to
accede to your wishes, and mail with this, six copies of my address, which
please use to your best advantage.
“The experience of all educators and legislators in this country, con
firms me in my judgment of the utter uselessness of legislation for classes in
the public schools. We built our system upon poor laws—pauper laws. We
practically divided our people into classes, and just so long as these founda
tions lasted, was the system a positive failure. This is not only the experience
in Pennsylvania, but of every other State which adopted the same discrimi
nating principles. I have studied this subject well, have given it the fifteen
years of my official connection with our public schools. I have remarked to
Lord Amberley, and other inquiring English gentlemen who have visited our
schools, that if England, in establishing her national school system, fell into
the grave error into which we fell, the system would in the end be a failure,
and the money laid out upon it would be expended with but trifling advantage.
�185
“Establish your schools ‘ for every child that draws the breath of life
within your borders.’ The system need not be compulsory, but open. You
will be met at the threshold with the objection that the lower class will de
moralize the higher ; that the morals of the lower class will contaminate the
higher. This is a dangerous and most fearful error. My experience does not
prove it. If there be any rule on the subject, it is the very reverse. The
poor girl or boy is not less virtuous than the rich. The rich have the means
to indulge in vice, while the poor have none. I candidly tell you that in
placing my children at school, I would infinitely prefer placing them in public
schools than private schools, and, in doing so, I would thus consult the better
their moral, spiritual, and scholastic welfare. So far as social relations are
concerned, I can always regulate this myself. The school association is only
an association of school hours. It need not be otherwise. England must
come to our open national system sooner or later, and, I trust, will avail itself
of our experience at the outset, and not wait to be taught her error. I take
a deep interest in the cause everywhere, and shall ever be happy to lend a
helping hand.
“ Very respectfully yours,
“Edward Shippen.”
I would only wish further to say, that I think we have been looking
too much on the dense dark spots of ignorance, among the poorer
children, and have not sufficiently borne in mind that we are now
contemplating a great national system of education to embrace all
classes. As these dark spots get lighter, we shall see more clearly
that there are very dark shades in higher grades, and shall become
more sensible that the whole system must be efficiently worked out
on one broad plan. I should like it to be possible for a child to
enter into the lowest class, and gradually progress to the highest
education that can be obtained in this country. I mention this
because a desire has been expressed by some persons to have schools
for the working classes only, to give them an elementary education,
and when they have reached a certain grade say, “ You are going to
be artisans, what need for anything further ?” I think all should
be on one system of general education, embracing even the higher
departments of knowledge ; so that while all go cn together, each
pupil may be able, as he advances, to study such special subjects as
his abilities or the circumstances of his case may render advisable.
A Gentleman here asked that the sense of the meeting might
be taken, as to the proposing of a resolution. He said the London
�18G
and other branches should be informed,what were the actual inten
tions of the League, and what was the meaning of “ unsectarian.”
The Chairman : We shall, at half-past seven, have a meeting in
the Town Hall, and it was intended that we should finish our pro
ceedings to-day. We have only eight minutes left, and the question
is, shall we enter into a discussion upon a resolution about which
we have heard nothing, or hear the three gentlemen who yet have
to speak? But let me tell you what the resolution is. When,
yesterday morning, I opened the proceedings of the Conference, I
said there had been a difficulty in some people’s minds as to the
meaning of the word “ unsectarian,” and I then proceeded to give
an explanation or definition of the meaning. Now, it would appear
that to some gentlemen’s minds that definition was not sufficiently
clear. Therefore, what they desire to do is this, to move a reso
lution, which resolution shall make clear what I failed to make clear
yesterday morning. Now, I have to observe that I have had two
distinct resolutions on that very same subject, and now another
gentleman wishes to draw up a resolution. In my opinion, not
one of those resolutions is any more clear than my definition—
in fact, not so clear. And further, if those three resolutions are put
to the meeting, we have no sort of confidence that there will not be
half-a-dozen more ; and my opinion is, that of necessity there will
be some more, though I do not know how many. What are we to
do under these circumstances ? The Provisional Committee specially
decided that there should be no resolutions whatever taken, and the
order of proceeding having been fixed, the question that arises in
my mind is, whether, as Chairman, I am to observe the order of
proceeding pre-arranged, or whether I am to open up, at the request
of one or two gentlemen—-whose object is certainly admirable—a
discussion, the length of which we really cannot foresee. What I
might do is this : I might put it to the meeting whether or not such
a discussion should be entered into. But I am inclined to think,
on consideration, that the meeting would rather that the Chairman
should perform his own duty, and decide the question for them.
However, I have been asked this question, which will take only
one minute to answer, and probably the answer to this question will
meet all that is desired in these resolutions. The Hon. Auberon
�187
Herbert asks me, 11 What is unsectarian education 1 Is it education
excluding all dogmatic and theological teaching, or creeds, or cate
chisms?” I feel authorized, on behalf of the Provisional Com
mittee, to say yes. He further asks, “ Whether the scheme
of the League necessarily excludes from the national rate schools,
the Bible, without note or comment 2” And I say, what I said
yesterday morning, that it does not; that that, is to be left to the
decision of the school committee, who will be the representatives
of the parents of the children.
The Eev. Septimus Hansard : Mr. Chairman, ladies, and
gentlemen,—I have to congratulate you on the perfect unanimity
on the general object of this League, which has pervaded these
meetings ; and it is a matter of considerable congratulation to
myself, as a clergyman of the Church of England, to find on this
platform, engaged in the same work, clergymen of different
denominations, and men who differ from me as widely as my friend
Mr. Holyoake does. It is a matter of congratulation to me to find
that in the speech which Mr. Holyoake made on this subject, on
which we all feel so strongly in common, he spoke in the language
of what I may strictly call the deepest piety. I have, as some of
you know, been now occupied over twenty years, in labouring
among the working populations of London ; and I do assure you,
that much as is the satisfaction, that all who, like myself, are
interested in education, must have in seeing the success of the
different educational works around them, nothing is more painful
than to see that there is still a residuum of savagery, and brutality
among the humbler classes of our neighbours. That is a blot
on our common Christianity, and a shame to us all. Let us take
it to heart, and see if we cannot combine to remedy it, putting
aside the special doctrines which distinguish us one from another,
and in a common cause, working for the welfare of those miserable
and neglected ones all around us. What a disgrace it is to us, who
boast of the Christian civilization of England, who are so proud,
and bragging about our Protestant truth, and about the light of
the Gospel shining on us, as we hear from every platform and
pidpit, to know that in these last few years we have been obliged
to invent a new name in the English language—“the rouyfe”—to
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■express the miserable condition of those who live in the back
streets of our large towns. Whenever you use that term, as
applied to the inhabitants of our back streets, you are using a
term which, however true it may he in its application, should
bring home a lesson to you, and a sense of disgrace to us all, that,
as Englishmen, such beings should live among us. Therefore, I
should like to say a few words to disarm the prejudices of those
who, I think, are at one with us, but who as yet hesitate about
joining us. It is a matter of regret, to find absent from the list of
those who have joined the League, a very large number of laymen,
Members of Parliament, and clergymen, who, from their liberal
principles, well known and established, might be expected to be with
us. I believe they are a little frightened—naturally enough—
because our movement is a new one, and because, as you know,
there is at the bottom of every Englishman a stratum of Toryism
which it takes a good deal to knock out of him; and because I
think there has been a great deal of misapprehension about these
very untoward expressions, “ secular,” and “ unsectarian.” I will
not detain you with an exposition of my opinions, but I would say
to all those who are able to join the League, “Deal as tenderly as
you can with religious people who have an objection to your
League; no scruples have more demand on your respect than
religious scruples, and I am quite sure the supporters and
■originators of the League, woifld not desire to say one word
which would express contempt to those who differ from us
in religious opinions.” But on the other hand, I would call
on clergymen of all denominations, to bear in mind that if schools
for primary education become an established fact, more religious
influence will be thrown into the hands of those, who wish to give
religious teaching, than they possess now. I am perfectly con
vinced that if you have a good school, managed without any special
religious teaching whatever, and if, as I presume, you must and
ought to allow the clergymen and dissenting minister, at the
recorded wish of the parents of the children, at some stated time,
to give religious education or instruction to those children, the
religious teachers will have infinitely more power, more real vital
power, of bringing home to the hearts of the children the words and
�189
example of their master, Christ, than they ever had by the system
that now prevails, of deputing to the schoolmaster the perfunctory
lesson which we know is given in most of our schools. To give
you an instance of what I mean, I know a clergyman of a certain
district in London, who collects together at certain times, once a
month, for two hours, any children of any school in his large
parish, who may choose to come into the church to be educated in
the Bible and Catechism; and the church is crowded with
volunteer children, who come and sit there with their minds as
attentive as grown-up persons, answering the questions that are
put, and evidently having those lessons brought home to the
practice of their daily life, in such a manner as is not done in
schools. A very High Churchman and Ritualist told me that he
believed it was the right way of giving education ; and I believe
instruction must be so given under the system we are advocating
I think the objection that will be made by the religious world
against that system, is an unnecessary bugbear, which I hope we
shall all do our best, when we talk to religious people, to remove,
by showing that we do not in the least wish to do away with
religious teaching, but simply to separate from it dogmatic teaching.
The Rev. H. W. Crosskey : Mr. Chairman, ladies, and
gentlemen, I rise for the purpose of mentioning one or two facts
which have not been alluded to at this Conference. Although re
ferences have been made to Saxony and America, there have been no
allusions to the educational system of Scotland, one or two facts
connected with which, I think, will interest the Conference as bearing
on the practical working of the subject. In the first place, I hold
that this so-called religious, or, rather, most irreligious, difficulty is
a thing that vanishes before the logic of practical facts. It disappears
entirely in the education of our own children. In ’Scotland, a
country that has not a reputation foi liberality, out of 12,572
children of Catholic laity, 7,343 have attended for many years
without compulsion the Protestant schools, in which freedom of
conscience is permitted. The Catholic laity have had no objection
to send their children to the schools, but now a cry is being raised
against them by the priests, and in both Ireland and Scotland an
attempt will be made to secure the denominational system. But
�*
190
here is the fact, directly and distinctly proving that if the laity are
left free to act, if the priest is told that he must not interfere with
the liberty of the subject, and the Government is firm, there can
be no practical difficidty in the matter. Now for another point,
touching the character of the schools. I would strongly protest
against the idea of striving to make the schools merely working
class schools. There is a free road open in Scotland from the public
schools to the Universities. Last year, I saw in the Highlands a
gipsy encampment pitched close to the school house, and a gipsy
bad sent his large family of children to school, with the children of
the farmers. Last year, also, a friend, shooting in the Highlands,
had for a gillie a youth, who in this way earned the money to pay
for his education at the University in the winter. In another case,
a shepherd was found reading a Greek author on his sick bed for
his amusement. I think it is perfectly possible to have national
schools, to which we can send all the children of the community. I
am ashamed to visit the school where my own children are,
and see that they there can get a knowledge of languages
and sciences; and then go to schools in this town, and see,
large branches of knowledge being kept back, that the children’s
minds are limited and confined, that they are taught only
rudimentary things, and that there is no chance of their obtaining
the liberal culture which we require for our own children. I would
express to this meeting a most thorough satisfaction with the
explanation made by Mr. Dixon, of the views and intentions of the
League. I think it should go forth, that while we do not in any
way wish to offend the feelings or injure the interests of the great
religious bodies of this country; while we are prepared to give the
freest scope to every sect and party to carry out its own ends and
aims in charity and peace, we do propose that the instruction of the
common school shall be confined to matters of common culture, and
that we do this for the sake of religion. We believe that religion
is injured by being made a task within the school. We are of
opinion that in the quiet atmosphere of home, in the sanctity of
those places where children are brought together apart from the
noise and tumult of their daily school-life, the great seeds of religion
ought to be sown • that religion is not a technical thing, to be
�191
taught by rule, but a loving influence, a power to thrill the spirit
within them. The education which we propose to give would be
favourable to religion, because if we excite the religious feelings,
without Culture, we have superstition. Who is there would not
rather plead for his Gospel to an educated than to an ignorant
man ? I will appeal to the clergy of the country whether, if they
had intelligent men and women to address, the divineness of the
Gospel ought not to be shown in the warmer enthusiasm of its
reception 1 It is a poor and weak timidity that distrusts the power
of an educated people. I hail this meeting with satisfaction. Its
object is the greatest cause we can engage in, and it has to me the
sanctity of an apostolic work. The future of our country depends
on it. A large and liberal culture will the better enable a man to
perform the humblest tasks of life, while the more cultivated the
mind, the larger the knowledge of the constitution and history of
the world, the greater will be the progress of morality and religion;
and our countrymen, instead of growing up mere devotees of sec
tarian interests, narrow in mind and distrustful of each other, will
become free men in the noblest sense, able to give an intelligent
reason for their faith, and to exercise a wide charity to their
brethren. The only boundary we can place to this movement, is
to furnish every child born within this kingdom with fair oppor
tunities for cultivating all the faculties God has given it.
Rev. Mr. Caldecott : Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen, I
will not detain the meeting by offering any arguments on the ques
tion of unsectarian education. That some such system is accepted
by you I suppose, or else why are we here to-day ? And some such
system I believe to be in a very fair way to be accepted by the
country. What I wish to do is to congratulate the members of
this League on the great advance that has been made in public
feeling of late as regards this matter. On all hands, whatever lan
guage may be held, the principle of a denominational system of
education is virtually abandoned. It is true that gentlemen seek
to cover their concessions, and to conceal their retreat under a mist
of words about compromises and conscience clauses. But, sir, the
day for conscience clauses has gone by. It is too late in England,
in the year 1869, to attempt, in a system of national education, to
�192
brand with a ticket the children of any creed as inferior to their
fellows of another creed. There is at this moment but a shadow of
a shade, that separates the adherents of the denominational principle
of education from ourselves. They insist upon it that some reli
gious teaching shall be given to all children, provided that the
parents of those children do not object to it. We, on the other
hand, would be glad that they, or any of them, should teach their
system of religion to any child, provided that his parents desire it.
At the last Social Science Meeting, in Bristol, this question was
very fully discussed; papers were read and speeches were made
upon it, and various suggestions were offered both in public and in
private. Speaker after speaker insisted upon the necessity of main
taining religious—that is to say, denominational—education ; but
as not one of those gentlemen condescended to leave his theories
behind and to come to the plain practical question, what was the
religious teaching that he was prepared to give, the whole fabric of
their schemes melted away. There was one gentleman who did
maintain that there can be no religion, there can be no morality,
there can be no goodness, that is not based on some creed or some
catechism; but I heard no one else in the meeting rise to support
that view. There was another gentleman who insisted that in all
State Schools, all children should be regularly instructed and pe
riodically examined in the main principles of Christianity; but
that gentleman did not explain to us what he himself conceived
those main principles to be, nor did he give the slightest indication
what is to be the authority that is to determine them. With the
great mass of practical speakers on this point, both in public and
in private, there seemed to be one thing agreed, that they would be
perfectly satisfied with the advocacy of the undenominational prin
ciple, if you would only allow, during some time, in the day a portion
of Scripture to be read to the pupils without interpretation, without
question, and without comment of any kind, merely as a recognition
of religion. Well, sir, I cannot help thinking it is something like
an abuse of words to dignify such a scanty scrap as this, with
the name of religious education. Yes, and when the advo
cates of denominational principle have come to this, we may fairly
congratulate ourselves on having found the vanishing point of the
�193
denominational system. The fact is, the time is ripe for the intro
duction of this League among the friends of denominationalism. I
believe there is really but one demand on which they seriously
insist; that demand is, that there shall be some recognition in
education of some religious principle or other. It is not that these
gentlemen love denominationalism for itself—far from it. They
fear that if you exclude denominationalism from the schools, you
will exclude religion from education. But surely the remarks you
have heard from Mr. Hansard, will show you their fears are vain.
The fact is, that at the basis of all our systems, the common foun
dation on which they, every one of them, rest, there are two reli
gious principles upon which we are all agreed, because God has
written those principles in the heart of every one of us ; they are
the principles upon which we recognize God’s love to us, and our
duty to our fellow men. Those are exactly the two principles
about which our neglected childhood knows nothing, and has never*
even heard. Those are exactly the principles which in the schools
to be founded, I hope, under the auspices of this League, every
child will be taught, without variance or without distinction.
Every child must be taught them, for there can be no teaching
given with respect to God’s works in God’s world, which does not
assume and develop them. These principles are the only principles
which the State, as a State, can teach in religion, because they are
the only principles in religion that all men, whatever may he their
creeds, will alike accept. I know it will be said that this is not
enough—that something more is required. Something more is re
quired, and in God’s name Jet something more be given. But the
State cannot give it. There are special voluntary associations whose
duty, whose right, whose delight it will be to give to their children
this something more ; for the question is, not whether denomina
tional schools shall cease to exist ■ the question is, upon what
material shall those denominational schools work ? Shall they
work upon young savages, or shall they work upon children who
liave already been taught to know something of civilization and
the truth ? Denominational schools can never cease to exist; they
will be everywhere, where men are .to be found who are fired with
zeal for God’s service, and are inspired with belief in God’s word.
N
�194
Surely it is the interest of every one of us, that the managers of
these schools should receive their pupils from the hands of the State,
already prepared for their instruction—decent, so to speak, and
clothed, and in their right minds; and should not have to hunt them
out, for themselves, through all the moral caverns, and the moral
tombs of our great cities, where at this moment they are hiding in
thousands, unclean and unclothed, and possessed by the legions of
evil spirits of wickedness and of crime.
On the motion of Professor Rogers, a vote of thanks was passed
to the Chairman.
The Chairman, after acknowledging the vote said : I have had
another question put to me—“If the school committee should
•decide that the Bible is to be read, must it be read without note or
•comment ?” My answer is, yes. Now, I wish to mention that a
gentlemen of the name of--------- , from London, writes and says
he is obliged to leave the meeting early, and he concludes by giving
fifty guineas to the funds of the League, and saying he has no doubt
whatever we shall have great support in London. And I am also
happy to say that we have an announcement of a donation of £50
from one, who calls himself a convert to our views by what he has
heard to-day. Now, in concluding our two days’ meeting, let me
say, on behalf of the Provisional Committee, that we have to give
•our warmest thanks to those gentlemen, who have come from a
distance to read papers, and to make those valuable speeches upon
this subject, which we have so much at heart. But let me repeat
what I said at first, that the League, as a League, is not responsible
for .what has been said ; each individual writer and speaker is alone
responsible, for the individual opinions that have been uttered. I
also thank, on behalf of the Committee, all those who have attended
at these meetings to support us ; and I fervently hope that the day
is not far distant when they will look back with honest pride upon
this meeting; and congratulate themselves that they took their part
in the inauguration of one of the most beneficial measures of this
-century.
The meeting then terminated.
�PUBLIC MEETING IN
THE
TOWN
HALL.
WEDNESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 13th, 1869.
A public meeting, convened by the Executive Committee of the
League, was held in the Town Hall on Wednesday evening. The
Mayor (Mr. Henry Holland) presided. The orchestra was filled
■chiefly by gentlemen, who had been present at the meetings in the
Assembly Room. The side galleries were given up to members of
the League and to ladies, and the floor and great gallery were
•occupied principally by working men.
The Mayor, in opening the proceedings, said the League wa8
founded for the purpose of obtaining the establishment of a national
system of education, which would ensure elementary instruction
to every child in the kingdom; and he trusted that it would not
•dissolve, until it should have accomplished its object, whatever
•difficulties might have to be encountered.
Mr. Dixon, M.P. (Chairman of the League) was received with
•cheers. He said: Mr. Mayor, ladies, and gentlemen—The resolution
which I have the honour to move is, “ That, in the opinion of thia
meeting, the scheme of the National Education League is the one
best adapted, to secure the education of every child in the country.”
The Manchester Education Aid Society, after a most minute inves
tigation, came to the conclusion that one half the children of the
working classes of that great town were uneducated, and that the
remaining half were educated very imperfectly. The Birmingham
Education Society, after equally, if not more, minute investiga-
�196
tions, came to precisely the same conclusion with regard to
the children in this town ; and the London Diocesan Board of
Education reported that from 150,000 to 200,000 children, in one
portion only of the Metropolis, were without means of education..
There is reason to believe that the number of children educated in
large towns has not, during the last ten or twenty years, increased
much, if any, more than in proportion to the increase of the
population. Such is the state of things in our large towns. How
is it in the agricultural districts ? Canon Kingsley has written to
us, saying that he lias read the report of the Birmingham Education
Aid Society with great interest ; he did not know how' badly
educated we were, but he did know from twenty-seven years’
experience as a parson, that the voluntary denominational system
was a failure in the agricultural districts. Mr. Villiers, who was
called by Sir John Pakington one of our most able school
inspectors, corroborates the statement by saying that half the
children of the working classes in the rural districts, between the
age of ten and thirteen, receive no scholastic education at all,
and the other half, so long as the present system remains, will
nevei be more than half educated. Other school inspectors, and
not only school inspectors, but also a Cabinet Minister, a member
of the late administration, believe and endorse these statements.
These are the circumstances under which the National Education
League has sprung into existence, and my only surprise is that
it was not formed long ago. We begin by putting our hands
upon what we conceive to be the cause of all this ignorance.
think that it cannot be expected to be otherwise, when
we remember, that the whole educational system of this country'
is based, upon the benevolent activities of so small a number
of mon. The basis of our system is too narrow'. In this
condition of things what does the State do ? Where there happens
to be a clergyman who understands his duties; vdiere there
happen to be rich manufacturers or benevolent individuals,
who undertake to erect and partially maintain schools—where
it finds there is some education, defective though it be—
there it is ready to help ; but in other districts, where benevolent
individuals do not exist, and there is no education at all, what docs
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the State do ? Like the priest ’and the Levite of old, it passes by
on the other side. Its assistance is given where assistance is least
needed. Where the wealthy are doing something it heaps its
riches. The practice of the State with regard to education
reminds us of what the poet says of sleep :—
“ He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes ;
Swift on his downy pinion flies from woe,
And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.”
What the League professes is this : not to interfere with the exist
ing system where it is effective. We don’t wish to revolutionise
the present schools, we don’t wish to sweep them away. What
we do wish is this : that where voluntaryism and denominationalism have failed, the State should step in; and that, the State
should be called upon to recognize the highest of all its duties, the
duty of saying, that every citizen shall be brought up to be able to
understand the laws he is bound to obey, and to understand
what are the duties of a citizen. Now, we propose that this should
be effected in the following manner :—That in every large town, and
in every county, school boards should be elected by the ratepayers
or their representatives ; that these school boards should ascertain
where there is a deficiency of education, and, wherever they are
wanted, erect and maintain free and unsectarian schools. Having
done that, they should appoint committees to manage those schools.
The State inspectors should have power to see that the various
localities perform, and perform efficiently, the duties imposed
upon them. If the school boards fail to perform these duties, the
State inspectors should then step in, and see that they are performed.
We propose—or rather I propose, for I am speaking now as much
in my own name as in that of the League—I propose that the
schools should be maintained not only by the State, but by the
local rates, in the proportion of two-thirds from the central govern
ment, and one-third from the local authorities. Now, the objection
to this system, in the first instance is, according to our opponents,
that it will kill voluntaryism. To that I reply, it need do no
such thing. We shall leave voluntaryism alone. Nay, we shall do
more—we shall create half as many more schools as are now in ex
�istence, and we shall require for these schools an army of volun
teers. Every member of our school boards, every member of our
echool committees, will be as much a voluntaryist as any school
manager under the existing system, and he will be a better, a more
efficient, voluntaryist j foi' he will have to do with an organised
system, and he will not only have the promptings of his own
benevolence to lead him to his duty, but he will have the ex
perience and the authority of the State system to guide him.
Besides, there is another most important thing to be remembered :
what is it that keeps enormous numbers of our children now out of
school, but poverty ■ poverty to that degree that they cannot
appear in our streets, because they are too ragged, and
have not food to maintain themselves. These children never
appear in our schools. If there be any excess of volunteers
wanting employment in this country, let it seek out thesechildren, and feed and clothe them, so that when they do appear in
our schools they may appear in that condition which will enablethem to take advantage of the teaching they are to receive. Let
me illustrate this. Time was, when in this town the rich peoplewere called upon to contribute from their own libraries, to thelending libraries attached to our Church institutions; that was
voluntaryism. There was much of that voluntary effort. But the
State stepped in and provided for the people those magnificent freelibraries which are now our boast. Voluntaryism may be said to havebeen killed there, but it only made place for something infinitely
superior; and the spirit of voluntaryism still lives, and has a betterand a wider field of action. Depend upon it, that so far from
voluntaryism being killed by the institution of State schools, it
will be utilized, it will be organized and developed. Another
objection is, that the education given in these schools will
be a godless education. But we have heard during the last few
days that in many of our schools—I will not say in most of them
—the education which is there given, and is called religious educa
tion, has but a very small tincture of real religion in it; and we
have been told by the most eminent men, who understand what
they are talking about, that in the new schools—schools wherethere will be no sectarian theology taught—there may be, and we-
�199
believe there will be, as much religion as in nine-tenths of the
schools that exist now. And even supposing that there were no
theology; supposing the children left those schools without any
knowledge of the difference between one sect and another, and did
not know what you meant when you asked what sect they belonged
to—what then ? The foundation would have been laid upon which
any or all of the sects could operate to advantage, and, no doubt,
upon the foundation thus laid, a superstructure of religion could be
raised that would be worth having. Having supplied these schools
—schools based upon the taxation of the country, and managed by
the representatives of the ratepayers, and belonging to the people
absolutely, because they would have paid for them, as much as if
they had taken the money out of their own pockets, in the shape
of subscriptions—three things would of necessity follow. We say
that most schools must of necessity be schools, where there shall
be no theological teaching of any sort whatever. We say that
we have no choice in the matter, if schools are to be national
schools they must be unsectarian. We say besides that, having
provided these schools, it would be not merely illogical, but it
would be a most unjust thing, if we allowed the children still to
run idle about the streets. Do you think it likely for a moment
that a ratepayer would consent to pay an additional rate in order
that children might be educated, and yet to see these poor children
for whom he paid the rate, neglected by their apathetic parents,
and not receiving the benefit which had been provided for
them ? It would be impossible to collect a school-rate under such
circumstances. Some people say that there would be great harsh
ness—that it would be un-English—that the people would resist
anything in the shape of compulsion. Now, I will not dwell upon
it to-night, because there is one who is going to follow me who is
able to do it much better than I can myself; but I will simply say
this, that the manner in which this compulsion may be exercised in
this country is extremely simple, and, in my opinion, will be com
pletely in harmony with the wishes of the people. It is most easy
to obtain a complete registration of all the children in the country ;
S3 easy as it is to obtain a registration of voters. When you have
obtained this registration, you must put against each child’s name
�200
the name of the school that it is intended to go to. Then send to
each one of the school committees a list of the children that ought
to attend its school, and throw upon the school committee the
duty of seeing that these children attend. Give the school
committee, officers, whose duty it shall he to go to the houses of all
parents whose children are not attending regularly at school. Let
these school officers explain to the parents what their duties are,
and the penalties that may attach to the non-performance of them.
And remember that these schools will be free schools—remember
that the Factory Acts will prevent parents from sending their
children to work, and then consider what motive can there be in
the minds of any parents to prevent their children going to school,
when they are entitled to send them, under such circumstances ? I
will engage to say that, after a year or two of the operation of such
a system as that, there will be very few, indeed, who will not regu
larly and willingly send their children to school. Of these few it
may be necessary to make one or two examples. Let them, if they
persist in neglect, be summoned before the magistrates; and what
will usually result is this—the magistrates will warn, and, on promise
of amendment, no other result will follow; but when the parent
is brought up a second time, the infliction of a fine will be very
well merited, and I am sure will not shock the sense of justice and
propriety of the working classes. Now, we say in the third place,
that these schools, if attendance he compulsory, must be free. I
have received, this morning, a letter from Edward Polson, and he
says—“ As one of the working classes, I wish to ask you if, in your
opinion, it is fair for an honest, hard-working, steady man, to be
forced to pay rates for the education of a drunken, lazy man’s
children ? In my opinion, it is not at all a fair thing; but perhaps
you can show me that it is fair. For my part, I cannot see it.”
Now, I am not at all surprised at this state of feeling ; but I would
reply, that he is already subject to this very injustice, because he is
called upon to pay a very much larger sum than he will ever
be called upon to pay for an education rate, in order that that
drunken and lazy man’s child-—nay, that man himself—shall
be kept in the workhouse, or shall be punished in the gaol. Meeting
the writer of this letter upon his own ground, namely, his desire to
�201
save himself from taxation, I say it is for his own interest that he
should ask for this education rate. But even supposing that it were
not so—supposing that for a few years he should have to pay
increased rates—surely there are considerations of a higher nature.
'Can he—not merely the rich, but the poor man, the working man
—can he pass by these poor children in our gutters, these neglected
Arabs of the streets—can he pass them by, knowing their miserable
state, and their wretched prospects, and steel his heart against their
highest interest, having the power to place them in a better position,
merely because their unnatural parents—(The close of the sentence
was lost in an enthusiastic outburst of cheering, which was prolonged
for a considerable time.) When these parents neglect their duty,
what the League says is this : that it is the duty of the State to
come in and be a parent to these innocent victims. And what we
wish to do is, to call upon the Legislature of this country to take'
upon itself that duty. We don’t wish to say anything in disparage
ment of the services of those men who have hitherto taken charge
of the education of the country; but we say that they have proved
that they cannot undertake to educate all, and we say that all
must be educated, and all shall be educated; and that it is the
State alone that has the power to act up to this. The State can do
it, and the State will do it. We have now a Minister of Education,
in Mr. Forster, who, in my opinion, has the will to do it; but I am
not so certain that he has the power. But what we are going to do
is this : by means of this League and its branches, we are going to
rouse the people—in whom now, happily, is placed political power—
in order that we may say to Mr. Forster, “ Be our leader, and give
us what we want; we’ll support you.” But if Mr. Forster should
hesitate, if he will not transfer the education of this country from
the voluntary and denominational basis, upon which it now rests, to
the basis of the taxation and self-governing energy of this country,
then, much as we respect Mr. Forster, much as we esteem his
strength of character, his excellent will and his great skill, it will
be our duty to say, even to Mr. Forster, our hitherto leader, that we
can follow him no longer. We shall say, “ We have taken upon
ourselves the performance of a duty than which, none can be higher
- the duty of seeing to the education of every child in this country •
�202
and that duty we shall perforin—with you as our leader, if you will,
hut if not, in spite of you.
The Mayor then called upon Professor Fawcett.
Professor Fawcett was received with cheers. He said, Mr.
Mayor, ladies, and gentlemen,—It is my privilege to speak to you
this evening on the greatest and most important of all social and
political questions. During the last two days the National
Education League has been inaugurated under the happiest auspices,
and the people of this town may indeed be congratulated, that the
name of Birmingham is destined to be associated with an organ
ization which will. prove as fruitful in its blessings, as were the
labours of the Anti-Corn Law League. This organization has been
inaugurated under happy auspices. A great body of gentlemen,
living different lives, looking upon questions from different points
of view, have come together with one common object. They have
resolved to sacrifice all minor differences of opinion upon points of
detail, because they are determined that they will be a united body
in the effort they intend to make, an effort which they promise you
shall never cease, until elementary education has been guaranteed
to every boy and girl in this country. Perhaps the greatest
danger that threatens this movement is, the possibility that some of
us may be tempted to accept a compromise. This is the rock
which has imperilled so many great movements. Free trade was
endangered by the offer of an 8s. fixed duty. Household suffrage
was imperilled by the offer of a .^6 rating and a <£7 rental
franchise; the future of national education in Scotland ran a
narrow risk of being wrecked last session, by as bad a bill as was
ever spoiled by the House of Lords. But will you authorize us to
say in the House of Commons, in your name—you, representing
a great body of the industrious classes of this country—that you
agree with us, that nothing will, nothing ought to satisfy you,
short of a measure which will impose rates 'where educational
appliances are insufficient, and which will compel the attendance
of those children at school, upon whom, by their parents, the
irreparable wrrong is being inflicted of allowing them to grow up in
a state of ignorance ? This, no doubt, is a great movement, and it
will require hard labour to bring it to a successful issue. It is a
�203
great movement indeed, because what is our end, and what is our
aim? To raise millions of our fellow-countrymen who are sunk
deep in the depths of ignorance. This is a movement which will
require all the popular support which such vast audiences as thia
can render it. No one can tell the effect which may be produced
upon the minds of our statesmen and our rulers by such meetings
as this. It is our privilege at the present time to be governed by a
Prime Minister who is ever ready to be instructed by the intel
ligently expressed public opinion of this country, and if Mr Glad
stone has not made up his mind on the educational question yet,
nothing is so likely to give clearness and distinctiveness of view
and firmness of resolution, as the expression of opinion of such an
audience as this, in favour of unsectarian, compulsory national
education. It is sometimes said that our proposals are revolutionary.
We cheerfully accept the title. We intend to effect a great
revolution, because we intend, if possible, to root out ignorance,
with its attendant misery and vice, and substitute in their place all
the self-dependence, all the material welfare, which result from
intellectual culture. If the revolution should be successful, the
displacement of the worst tyrant that ever afflicted a country will
not confer greater blessings, than will our efforts upon this country.
It is almost unnecessary for me to speak to you of the usual
aspect of this question. It is almost a truism to say that no
social reform, no scheme of philanthropy, can produce any per
manent effect, unless it makes the labourer self-dependent. If a
child is permitted to grow up to manhood in ignorance, he has to
pass through life, as it were, crippled and maimed, deprived of
half the power with which he has been endowed by nature to
secure his own mental and material advancement. Sometimes it
is said that these proposals of ours are anti-English. There is
something which is not only anti-English, but which is anti-human,
and that is the spectacle of millions sunk in such ignorance as if
they were living in a heathen land. Anti-English! will the
Conservatives venture to raise the cry? They-have not passed
many legislative measures during the last thirty years. But
what is the measure from 'which they take some credit ? Why,
they are never tired of talking about the honour which is due
�204
to their party by the passing of the Factory Acts. What is
one of the most valuable provisions in the Factory Acts ? The
compulsory educational provision, which declares that it shall be
illegal to employ any child unless he attends school so many hours
a week. By recent legislation the compulsory educational pro
visions of the Factory Acts have been extended—not in a good
form, indeed, but still the principle has been extended to every
branch of industry in England, except agriculture; and we shall
not be generous, we shall not be fair, to the class of labourers who
most require State intervention, if we much longer permit agricul
ture to be thus excepted. Assuming, then, as we may, that the
principle of the Factory Acts has now been approved of by all
political parties, it is indisputable that the principle of compulsory
education has been accepted.
How, then, can the monstrous
anomaly be permitted to intervene, that we should say, as we are say
ing at the present moment, that if a parent sends his child to work,
education shall be enforced upon that child, but that no similar
compulsion shall be used against the parent who is so base, so
degraded, that he will neither send his child to school nor to work ?
Many of you, most of you, whom I am addressing, are engaged,
either as employers or employed, in the industry of this town. You
know that facts, painful facts, are every day brought under your
notice which show, that unless we have national education, it will
be absolutely impossible for England to maintain her commercial
position. In various trades we have each year to carry on a keener
and more closely-contested competition with foreign countries.
Industry requires, now, the use of delicate machinery; it requires
the skilful application of that machinery; it requires those moral
qualities which make the labourer most valuable, and which enable
him to understand the true principles of trade. Bearing this in
mind, it is as impossible to expect that an uneducated country will
be able successfully to compete against an educated country, as it
would be to suppose that a hand-loom weaver, could profitably
struggle against the appliances of modern mechanical invention.
We are too much prone to deceive ourselves by the signs of material
wealth. We are accustomed to sing poeans of exultation over
increasing exports and imports, but behind all this glitter and show,
�205
behind all this evidence of material wealth, there are the ugly, there
are the portentous facts, that one out of twenty of our population is
a pauper, and there are countless thousands who are in such a
state of misery that they are verging upon pauperism. Tor twenty
years, various material appliances have been brought into operation,
all of which have tended to stimulate the production of wealth.
We have had free trade, we have had mechanical inventions, we
have had the extension of the railway system. When these facts
are borne in mind, does it not convince us of this great truth—a
truth which should never be lost sight of—that there is something
more required to make a nation great, and happy, and prosperous,
than mere material agencies. You must act upon the mind, and, in
that way, upon the morality and social character of the people. The
Education League has, to my mind most wisely, in the first instance,
confined itself to elementary education. Of course, this is the
first, this is the essential thing to be done. But this ought to be
regarded as only a part of our work. The opinion I am about
to express is, I know not whether it will be thought extreme, or
Quixotic, but I have long entertained the idea, and I do not mean
to relinquish it, that we never ought to be satisfied until the
poorest child in this country, if he has the requisite ability, should
have an opportunity of enjoying the very best education the nation
can afford. You ask me, perhaps, how is this end to be attained ?
I believe it can be attained by a just, by a wise administration of
our vast educational endowments. Those educational endowments
ought, to my mind, to bo devoted to reward the meritorious, to what
ever class and whatever religion they belong. I would not give, as a
matter of right, a free education, but no child should suffer from
want of education in consequence of the poverty of its parents.
But I hold that the greatest of all human responsibilities is incurred
by bringing a human being into the world, and I think every
parent should feel, that it is as much his duty to give his children
education as it is to provide them with food and clothing. Now,
with regard to the administration of the educational resources of
the country, much has already been done by the Endowed Schools
Bill, which was passed last session; for the main principle of the
Bill was this—that those endowments should be devoted to reward
�206
meritorious students. Therefore, when we have these elementaryschools which Mr. Dixon, who represents the League, proposes
should be established, we may look forward to see poor boys ad
vanced from the elementary schools to the first grade school, and to
the second grade school, and thence to the University. When
they get there, I can only say that we shall cordially welcome them;
for it is the great glory of those Universities, that they welcome
mental cultivation and intellectual power, from whatever class they
are drawn. As a Cambridge man—and I know I am expressing the
opinion of many Oxford friends also—I can say that we should
rejoice to see in Oxford or Cambridge two or three hundred stu
dents, sons alike of the poorest men and the wealthiest merchants
of this town, all being brought under the influence of the educa
tion which we can give them. There, we know no social favouritism,
we never ask who a man’s father is, we have no governing families.
What a happy thing it would be if the same remark could be
made with regard to English politics. But you may perhaps say
that something will require to be done, before the Universities can
do what you wish them to do. You know that there are still there
religious liabilities, and religious tests; but I venture to think that
the overwhelming majority of the country has already declared
that those disabilities and those tests shall be completely swept
away. A University Tests Bill—I say a University Tests Bill, for
it was only a half measure—passed the House of Commons last
session. Here again is an illustration of the danger of great ques
tions being wrecked upon the rocks of compromise. That bill
would have only done its work after a long course of years. It
would not have swept away those tests and disabilities, it would
only have given the colleges the power to sweep them away if they
liked, and the bill might possibly for years to come have produced
very little effect whatever. The bill passed the House of Commons;
but sometimes we derive signal advantage from the unreasoning
resistance of the House of Lords, and I feel more profoundly
.grateful to them than I can describe. It seems to me that the
one useful function which they perform, is to reject a bill when
it is a compromise, and thus give the House of Commons an op
portunity of waking up to its senses, and seeing its true position.
�207
Political predictions are dangerous, but I venture to predict that the
House of Lords will never see that bill again. The next session
they will have to express their opinion upon a very different measure.
They will have to say “aye” or “no” to a proposal which will
abolish, at once and for ever, every remaining vestige of religious
test and disability, and thus make the Universities truly national
institutions. It is for such audiences as this to say that this is your
will, and that nothing short of it will satisfy your just demands.
But great as is the vista which is opened by the education question
in all its aspects in England, we may, perhaps, not improbably have
to render as great service to the sister country as we have rendered
to her by the disestablishment of the Church, and as we shall
render to her by passing a land bill. Undenominational education
is a great principle in England. But it is a principle still more
dearly, still more carefully to be cherished in Ireland. There is
danger that the national school system of that country, which is
undenominational, may be imperilled. There is danger that the
University question in that country may be settled on a denomina
tional basis. I believe that if we permit this to be done, we shall do
more harm to Ireland by permitting the ascendancy of an ultramon
tane hierarchy, than we have done good by the destruction of the
ascendancy of the State Church. In conclusion, if I have not
already detained you too long, perhaps you will permit me to say
that the science which it is my privilege to teach, instructs us in the
lesson, that nothing more tends to promote efficiency and industry
than division of labour. With division of labour, each individual
can devote himself to the particular process for which he has the
greatest capacity, and without it we should find skilled mechani
cians doing what might be equally well done by unskilled labourers.
Unrestricted commerce, again, enables the capital and labour of
each country, to be applied to those branches of industry for which
it has the greatest natural advantages. This is the secret of free,
trade. Similarly, we believe that a complete system of national
education would enable the individual capacity of each person to
be utilized in the best possible way for the benefit of his country.
Many a person there may be, now toiling monotonously in the
fields, labouring in some deep-sunk mine, or carrying out, year after
�208
year, some work of mere routine, who, if his abilities had been
properly developed, might have executed some work of art, invented
some new machine, organized some political or social movement, or
produced some literary work which might have permanently en
riched and benefited mankind. There is in life no more melan
choly spectacle, than that generation after generation should pass
away, without sufficient knowledge to understand the beauties and
wonders with which Nature has surrounded them. Can it be
right, can it be just, that Nature, which has been so boun
tiful, should not be appreciated as she might he? And
is it not strangely sad, that some people who seem to arrogate to
themselves the title of religious, seem to care more about the
paltry triumph of a creed, than they do about education, which
would elevate the people from the ignorance which is alike degrad
ing to human nature, and antagonistic to moral and material
advancement ? Some of those who are willing that the education
question should stand still whilst they wrangle about bringing
children under the influence of some barren formality, such as
Apostolic succession, should remember the significant words of the
Prophet when he said, “ My people are destroyed for lack of
knowledge.”
The Mayor then called upon Mr. Mundella, member forSheffield.
Mr. Mundella, M.P.: Mr. Mayor, ladies, and gentlemen,—Thefew words that I shall say to you shall be in support of theresolution which has been so ably and exhaustively moved and
seconded by my two honourable friends who preceded me. I shall
address myself mainly to the working men, by the request of mv
friend your worthy member ■ and as it is the first time I have had
the honour of addressing an audience of working men in Birming
ham, I confess that I feel proud of the opportunitv of doing so,
•because you are represented in the House of Commons by one
of the noblest men and most honest politicians of any age orcountry. The considerations which I venture to submit to you
shall be of a purely practical character. First, I ask, what are theobjects of the association ? The establishment of a system which
shall secure the education of every child in England and Wales.
�209
How do we propose to effect it ? School accommodation being
provided, the State or the local authorities shall have the power to
compel the attendance of children of suitable age, not otherwise
receiving education. The means therefore are, first, by making
provision, and then compelling attendance. Now, I desire to point
out to you what has already been effected elsewhere, by compulsory
education, because although this is a new doctrine in England, it
has been in operation thirty years in Switzerland, forty years in
Saxony, and thirty-five years in Prussia, and on the first of
January next it will come into operation in Austria. Eighty
millions of the people of Europe will, on the first of January next,,
be subject to the operation of this law. What has been its effect
in the free republic of Switzerland ? They are the most intelligent
and best educated people in the world. You may go from canton
to canton, you may go from one end of the country to the other,
and you cannot find a child of twelve years of age that will not read
and write ivell, that does not know something, intelligently too,
of the history of its country, and has not also a knowledge of other
useful acquirements. It has been my fortune for some years past
to have an opportunity, of studying the effect of compulsory
education on the Continent, and I wish you, working men of
Birmingham, to comprehend what the effect of the system is.
I am an employer in the little kingdom of Saxony, now
part of the North German Confederation. I have a manager
there who has been fixed there for nine years. I have gone
there year after year, and have remained there a month
at a time, and I have visited its schools, which are marvels of
arrangement and pedagogic science (for these are the words with
them), and I have never yet found, nor has the manager yet found,
a man in the country who could not correspond intelligently with
his employer, nor a child of ten or twelve years of age who could
not read and write as well as myself; and although that country,
and Prussia, and Switzerland have many disadvantages, as
compared with ourselves, although their commercial position is
infinitely inferior to ours, although there is a lack of capital, and
geographically they are much worse in their position than Great
Britain, yet I am ashamed to say that I have never met there with
o
/
�210
that squalor, that brutal ignorance, that terrible destitution, which
I meet m my own country. Now, what is the state of things as
we see it m England? You working men, you know well what it
is. What has been the effect of the present system? It has
reversed the teaching of Scripture—it has filled the rich with good
things, and the poor it has sent empty away. It has bettered those
•who can and ought to help themselves, but those who can do
nothing for themselves it has utterly neglected. Look at our ragged
schools; they have had no assistance from the State, and look at
the thousands of poor children who cannot obtain admission even
into the ragged schools. You know—no men know so well as the
working classes—what is the educational condition of the poor that
surround you in the streets, and lanes, and alleys of our large
towns. By the assistance of your worthy member, an education
society was formed in this town, and 1,000 children in employ
ment were tested. I have had an opportunity of testing thousands
of children, in this and other towns, children, the great majority of
whom have passed through our schools ; and what is the result of
our education ? What with irregular attendance, few attendances,
and attendances for a short time only, when the child grows up to
fourteen or fifteen years of age, it has almost forgotten anything it
■ever learned at school, and the very little it retains is utterly use
less for any practical purpose. And what is it that we propose to
■accomplish ? We propose that the child shall commence at a cer
tain age and attend, for a certain number of years consecutively,
regularly at school • that when the child enters upon its labours, it
shall have the benefit of the half-time system for some years longer •
and that the poor man’s child shall, as the hon. member for Brighton
has said, have the same opportunities which the rich man’s child
has, to develop those faculties with which it has been endowed.
One thing you may be well assured of, the rich man in the middle
classes will take care that his children are educated, because he
knows that without education their career in the world is utterly
ruined and destroyed. Why shouldn’t the poor man’s children
be educated, then, in the same manner ? Why should they not
have open to them the same career and the same advantages ?
It simply depends upon audiences like this to demand it. Now
►
�211
I want to point out to you the machinery by which this is
to be accomplished; because many objections are raised to it,
and you are cautioned, above all things, that your liberties are
about to be destroyed, and your parental rights taken away. You
are told that, if you submit to the system of compulsory education,
the policeman will drag you before the magistrates, and you will be
shut up in prison, because your children may not be in attendance
at school. I wish to show exactly how this is done elsewhere, for
the 80,000,000 of people I have before referred to. Every child
in the North German Confederation, and in Switzerland is registered,
and next year every child in Austria will be registered, on a system
precisely the same as that of the political register in England. The
school boundaries are conterminous with the political boundaries ;
they are divided in Switzerland into cantons, districts, towns ; in
Prussia, into towns, counties, divisions of towns ; and in Birming
ham there would be the central district, and the wards. They are
managed by local bodies. These local bodies have the power to
demand that the children be sent to school, and it is their duty to
see that they are sent. If the parent neglects to send his child to
school, what is the result ? Is a policeman sent to him with a
summons in his pocket? No. There are persons called school
messengers. These school messengers are generally pupil teachers,
or have just finished their education in the school. They go to the
house and inquire why the child is not at school. If, as in nine
cases out of ten, or, I might say, in ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred, the child’s absence can be accounted for, it is perfectly
satisfactory. But if it is through neglect, and continued neglect,
the parent is brought before the school committee, and the law is
pointed out to him, and he is told that it will be enforced against
him if he rebels. If he continues contumacious, he is filled. I
have known it 6d., 10d., and up to 2s. 6d. for a second or third
time. But I tell you what has been the result of the compulsory
system : there is the same wholesome state of public opinion
with respect to the father who starves the intellect of his
child, as there is with you when a father starves his child
by denying it bread. It is a constant thing with me,
whenever I have an opportunity—it has become almost a
�212
habit with me—to seize upon poor children wherever I find them,
whether in the factory, the workshop, or the street, arid ascertain
exactly what our glorious system of education has done forthem.
A fortnight ago I found on the step of my counting-house door a
number of lads, and I coaxed them up-stairs into my counting
house. There were nine of them, and some were very ragged
specimens indeed. They thought I had some sinister motive,°and
it was with some difficulty I induced them to go with me. I
examined them separately on their educational acquirements. Not
one of those poor boys could read the simplest word. I had the
Times newspaper before me. Two of them could manage the The,
but not one of them could spell Times. Not one of thZm had the
slightest idea of the existence of God, except to use his name in
blaspheming. Yes, but some of them said, they had once been at
school, at five or six years of age, and they had been since, some
at the brickyard, some at one employment, some at another.
Their ages ranged from eleven to sixteen. There was only
one of those children, for whom there was any reasonable
excuse why he had not been regularly at school. The
absence of the others was mainly owing to drunkenness on the
part of the parents. Now I ask you, is this to be continued any
longer ? Are these children to be thrown as paupers or criminals
upon society, and that in the name of the most sacred rights_
British freedom, parental authority, and so on—to breed up a race
of criminals, paupers, and wretches to prey upon society ? We are
told that the working classes cannot afford to lose the earnings of
their children. It is this I wish to meet, and I think I can do so,
because it is really the gravest argument that can be brought to
bear upon the whole question. Now, I find in the countries I
have referred to in North Germany particularly—a new Labour
Act comes into operation next year, and this new Act runs thus :__
No child shall be employed in any regular employment, except
domestic employment, by the parent after school hours, until it is
twelve years of age. It has been repeatedly said to me that the
English workman cannot do without his child’s earnings until the
child is twelve years of age. “ What is to become of a man with
six or eight children ? ” they say, “ You are depriving him of the
�213
earnings of his children.” But those who make this objection take
children as if they were like rabbits—all of an age. They forget
that if a man has six children, the chances are that they run
something like 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12; that he has not to struggle to
keep them all at school at once, and that in a year or two, when
the eldest gets employment, it earns a great deal more money if it
has been educated. Nay, and what is more—and this is a question
I wonder that trades unionists have not seen, and I don’t care how
soon they do—if there were not so many children employed who
ought not to be employed, many parents would be better paid than
they are. Now, assuredly what can be done by 80,000,000 of peo
ple in other parts of Europe can be done by Englishmen, must be
done by them, if they are to keep their place as a nation. Are we
content to be the last in the race—we, who have been supposed to
be in the van of civilization and humanity ? Well, there is another
consideration, and that is the religious difficulty. Now, I never
find that this religious difficulty exists with the working classes;
it exists with those generally who make the objection, on behalf,
they say, of the working classes. T should be exceedingly grieved
- I should be more than grieved—if anything we did tended to
make working men irreligious or irreverent; but I know it is im
possible to effect anything of the kind by the means we propose. I
know that the more knowledge we give, even that secular know
ledge which is so much despised, the better they will be prepared
for the reception of religious truth. What is the drudgery of our
Sunday school teachers, what is the drudgery of our ministers,
dealing with unintelligent children and unintelligent congregations?
Why, I believe we should raise our people entirely, from that brutal
ignorance, and that state of besotted intemperance, that pauperism
and that misery which characterise the lower three or four millions
of the people of England, if we were to give them a good educa
tion. I regret to hear that some association has been formed in
this town, with a view of opposing this benevolent movement.
But I would venture to remind those who engage in that opposition
of some remarkable lines that were written by Charles Dickens,’
describing the constant contests between the sects, and this great
�214
religious difficulty which we now stand in the face of.
said,—
He
“So have I seen a country on the earth,
Where darkness sat upon the living waters,
And brutal ignorance, and toil, and dearth,
Were the hard portion of its sons and daughters ;
And yet where those who should have ope’d the door
Of truth and charity to all men’s finding,
Squabbled for words upon the altar floor,
And rent the book in struggles for the binding.”
The Mayor rose to put the resolution.
Mr. J. Rutherford interposed, asking permission to move an
amendment.
The Mayor said that that was a meeting of the members of the
National Education League, for the transaction of certain business,
and he could not receive any proposition that had not been allowed,
and accepted by the general committee.
The resolution was then carried, Mr. Rutherford' and another
being the only persons who voted against it.
Mr. Joseph Chamberlain : I have been asked to move the fol
lowing resolution:—“ That the Executive Committee of the
National Education League be requested to prepare a bill, based
upon the principles of the League, for introduction into the House
of Commons during the next session of Parliament.” Inasmuch as
this resolution is in fact a formal one, and follows almost necessa
rily from that which has just been, all but unanimously adopted, it
is not necessary for me to say much in its favour. It is clearly
desirable, that our views should be presented as early as possible to
the Legislature in a practical shape; and inasmuch as we believe
that we now have a Government, who are determined faithfully to
carry out the wishes of the people, it will be an assistance, and not
a hindrance, to them that our views should be presented in a proper
form. But I have been requested, as an officer of the local com
mittee, to say a few words in support of the objects and principles
of the League ; and, in the first place, I think I may congratulate
this meeting, and all the friends of education, upon the enor
mous advance, to which this meeting testifies, on the great
question of education. I see in this advance the result
�•215
and the justification of the great political reform, which has
made those most interested in education, the depositories of
a great share of political power. There can be no doubt that
the present officers and members of the League have not, and
cannot have, any personal or selfish motive in the agitation of
this question. One common motive we have, and that is the love
of our common country, which induces us to seek its prosperity and
progress, and which, in the present case, incites us to obtain that
prosperity by cultivating the intelligence, and securing the enlighten
ment of the people. But you have a much nearer and more
personal interest in this matter. Bor it is not merely a question
whether this country shall continue to maintain its position among
the nations, or whether it shall lag behind in civilization, and leave
the victory in industrial and intellectual progress to other nations ;
but for you, it is also a question of the future of your own class,
and perhaps of your families; and you have to say whether they
shall enjoy the advantages which education confers, or whether they
shall remain in the position to which ignorance will condemn them,
even if they do not enter into the ranks of pauperism and crime.
As one guide to your decision upon this question, I ask you to con
sider the character, both of the support and of the opposition which
our proposition excites. As to the friends of this movement, I will
only refer to the adhesions we have received, during the present
Congress from the delegates and representatives of the great Trades
Councils throughout the kingdom; so that, I believe we may say
that directly or indirectly, from 800,000 to 1,000,000 working men
have, at these meetings in Birmingham, given their support to the
platform of the League. But it is chiefly from the opposition
which our propositions excite, that I anticipate a favourable
result—not that the opposition is not formidable, both in ex
tent and in numbers.; but when I see, taking sides against us
upon this question, the selfish hosts whom we have seen ranged
against us, again and again, upon previous questions, and whom we
have again and again defeated, I see an augury of a good result. I
have read that Napoleon I., on the morning of one of his great
battles, told his soldiers that they saw before them those self-same
Prussians whom they had beaten at Jena, whom they routed at
�216
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Leipsic, and whom they would crush that day; and when I see
taking sides against us now, a great portion of the Conservative
landowners, and a certain section of the clergy, I think of the Com
Laws, of Reform, and of the Irish Church. But the signs of our
success are even more apparent in the trepidation and doubt which
are beginning to operate in the opposite camp. President Lincoln
had a homely proverb, that it was “ bad to swop horses when
crossing a stream but we see our opponents, in the middle of this
discussion, abandon their old hobbies, in the hope that they may
yet save something out of the wreck of the system which is fast
passing away. Only a few years ago, at a meeting wrhich was held
in this town, to consider the state of its education, the local clergy
who were present voted, to a man, against compulsory education,
and most of them were opposed to local rating; but now you find,
in the programme of the society which has been started within the
last few months, in opposition to our League, these two points made
the principal points of their platform. But we, in the meantime,
have advanced a little further, and so these gentlemen are, as usual,
left behind. So it will always be, until they learn to give
up their prejudices a little more graciously, and a little more
quickly. Until they do that, they will never overtake the full
confidence of the people whom they profess to wish to serve. The
present issue between us is simply this : we say that the old
system, which has failed, after a trial of twenty years, should at
least be supplemented by something new; but they say, No, let
us extend and contiuue the old. We say that the nation has
been growing fast, and has outgrown its old clothes, and that it
ought to have a new suit; but they want to let out a tuck here,
and put in a patch there, to make the old rags last a little longer.
Underlying all this resistance, is the fear that, if we do have a new
outfit, we may refuse to employ those who made such a miserable
misfit of the last. His Grace the Archbishop of York, at a meeting
which was held in Liverpool the other day, and which was called a
working man’s meeting, because a large portion of the room was
filled by the clergy, at that meeting his Grace told his audience
that three-fourths of the education of the country was owing to
the clergy, and that the men and the system that had done such
�217
great things ought not to be superseded. I should be the last to
deny or depreciate the enormous sacrifices which have been made
by many of the clergy to establish and maintain schools; but I say
that, on their own confession, their motive has been, not the educa
tion of the people as a thing which is good in itself, but the main
tenance of the doctrines of the Church of England ; and the conse
quence has been, that secular education has been subordinate to this
object, and we remain at this time one of the worst educated nations
in Europe. I say that, even if they had been a great deal more
snccessful than they really have been, it is the worst kind of Con
servatism to say that, because a thing is good of its kind, it shall
not be supplanted by something which is better and more complete.
I cannot understand the propriety of keeping a grown-up man in
swaddling clothes, because he looked very well in them when he
was a baby. To plead for the retention of the denominational
system, under which more than half the children of this country
are growing up without any education worthy the name, because
three-fourths of the remainder are brought up in the Church of
England schools, is as ridiculous as for an old Protectionist to have
pleaded for the Corn Laws, at a time when thousands were perishing
for want of food, because three-fourths of the rest, drew their daily
supplies from the granaries of the farmers. But the real reason
why our opponents support the denominational system is, not be
cause they believe it to be the best means of securing the education
of the people, but because they believe it to be the only means by
which they can maintain a monopoly of instruction. Our choice is
between the education of the people, and the interests of the Church.
Education, to be national, must be unsectarian ; and I cannot sup
pose that there will be a moment’s hesitation as to the choice which
the majority of the nation would make, if it were not that theolo
gical professors, who ought to recognize in education the best foun
dation upon which religion can rear her temple, have perverted the
meaning of religion until, indirectly, it has become a hindrance and
a stumbling-block. The day is not far distant when all will look
back with wonder at this time, and be astonished that intelligent,
earnest, and conscientious men could have thought a profession of
faith in any creed, worth anything as long as it was unintelligent, and
�218
could have been bjind to the fact, that the best handmaid which
any truth can have is a mind trained for its apprehension. It is a
curious and instructive fact, that while almost all other sects are
welcoming the prospect of increased education, as the best pre
paration for their own religious work, there are two which strain
every nerve to preserve and extend the present system, in spite of
its clear deficiencies. These two parties are the Roman Catholic
Church, and the Evangelical section of the Church of England. I
think the latter should have some doubt about the propriety of
the course they are taking, when they see into what company
it has brought them. You know what the pious organ of the
party, the Record, said, when it discovered that Mr. Gladstone
had an acquaintance with Archbishop Manning; you know that
all the resources of Biblical bad language were exhausted, and
men searched the Scriptures diligently to find parallels for the
supposed baseness of the great Statesman. Now the same gentle
men who shuddered at the iniquity of conversing with a Roman
Catholic prelate, are actually rowing in the same boat with the
ecclesiastics of Rome. The interest of the Roman Catholics in
this matter is very clear. If denominational education is to be
extended in England, how can you in justice refuse denominational
education in Ireland? And then you will have this glorious
anomaly in our splendid constitutional system: you will have
the State spending money on mutually destructive objects, and
the patient people will be called upon in one breath, to swallow the
poison and the antidote, and to pay the bill for both. The only
way by which this baneful, dangerous, and senseless application of
the public money can be avoided, is to insist firmly upon the
principle that the secular education of the people should
be the province of the Government, apart from all theological
instruction, which should be left to the respective ministers.
This, at all events, is what the League sets before you. I
read, the other day, that Lord Sandon, in a speech which
he made in the House, said that, speaking from an intimate
acquaintance with the working classes, he was confident that they
would never accept any education which had not impressed upon it
a religious character. If his lordship’s acquaintance with the
�219
working class be correct, our work will be vain; but I prefer to
believe, with John Stuart Mill, that the time is shortly coming when,
the working class will no longer be content to accept a religion of
other people’s prescribing. And if this matter of education is taken up
by the working class, as we hope and believe it will be, and if it is
made part of their political programme, then our success is certain,
and we may yet live to see the glorious time when, prizing know
ledge as her noblest wealth and best production, this imperial realm,
while she exacts allegiance, will admit the obligation, on her part,
to teach those who are born to serve her • and thus only shall we
maintain our position as a great nation, and guard and protect the
highest interests of every class of the community,
Mr. Cremer : I apprehend that the reasons which induced the
committee to ask me to second this resolution were, because I am
known to entertain strong convictions in reference to the question
of national, secular, and compulsory education; and, secondly,
because, being a working man, I may fairly claim to speak of the
wants and wishes of the working class. Those of us who, year after
year, contended for the extension of the suffrage to the working
class, asserted that one of the first objects which the working men,
when they obtained the suffrage, would seek to realize, would be a
system of secular and compulsory education. That prophesy has
received a partial fulfilment in the establishment of the National
Education League, in the successful meetings it has held during the
last two days, and the enthusiastic manner in which you have
endorsed the platform of the League at this meeting ; and I am sure
that when the matter is fairly before the country, our prophecies
will have a complete triumph. Some three years ago, the working
men in the borough in which I reside in London, formed a political
association, and one of the planks in their platform—three years
ago, remember—was national, secular, and compulsory education,
and they declared that any man who came to them in the future to
ask for their suffrages, must be distinctly in favour of secular and
comprdsory education. The result was, that at the last general
election nearly 6,000 workmen recorded their suffrages for the man
who made that the most prominent feature of his political pro
gramme. The tendency of modern legislation was, I think, rightly
�220
described by Sir Stafford Northcote at the Social Science Congress,
when he said it was in the direction of more and stronger govern
ment. The old do-nothing policy has passed away for ever, and has
been succeeded by an earnest determination on the part of the
people to do something useful, and to do ’it well. I fear Mr.
Forster is likely to bring in next session a Bill based upon
the denominational system. I hope, therefore, that the Executive
Committee will as speedily as possible frame a bill embodying the
principles of the League, and get some staunch friend of education,
such as Professor Fawcett, Mr. Mundella, or Mr. Dixon, to intro
duce it into the House of Commons ; because its being in their
hands will be the best guarantee that there will be no unholy
compromise upon this question. Professor Fawcett’s conduct last
session proves that there is no greater enemy of compromise than
he. I wish we had a House composed of such men. With regard
to education, I know there are a great many who are exceedingly
timid at the mention of compulsion. They are quite willing to
provide schools, but the idea of forcing children to attend is
repugnant to them. But the right of the State to compel, where
the well-being of society is concerned, was acknowledged long
ago. In fact, this principle is at the root of all government. To come
to what has been done within our own day : was not the right of the
State to use compulsion acknowledged when the Factory Acts were
passed ? when the Bleaching and Dyeing Act was passed? when
the Inspection of Coal Mines Act was passed ? when the Health of
Towns Act was passed? when the Vaccination Act was passed?
When we talk of freedom, we mean freedom to do what is right;
when we say we don’t want Government to interfere, we mean
that we object to its mischievous interference; but the very pur
pose of its existence is forgotten unless it interferes beneficently.
The only question, then, is whether it is well for us to be educated,
and if so, whether we can have the work done more effectually by
Government than by any other agency ? If so, then the Govern
ment must interfere and do it. We provide inspectors to see that
people whitewash their houses and drain them, and we punish
people who injure society by neglect in these particulars. I have
read, within the last three or four weeks, of thirty or forty cases
�221
where, in the Metropolitan Police Courts, heads of families have
been fined for not having their children vaccinated. There may
be difference of opinion as to whether vaccination is beneficial or
not, and those who think it is not beneficial of course object to
people being fined for not practising it; but among men who are
convinced that vaccination is useful, there is no objection to Go
vernment enforcing it; in fact all people who believe it is good,
want it enforced for the benefit of society at large. It is only
when they become convinced that it is bad that they object toGovernmental compulsion. I hold that the case of education is
precisely similar. If it is good, let us have it—let compulsion be
used if necessary; let it be punished as a crime to starve a child’s
mind, as we punish it as a crime to starve its body ; but if it is
bad, or merely indifferent—if it is of little or no consequence whe
ther people are educated or not—let us have no compulsion. But
we who hold that it is good, and that it is a remedy against moral
pestilence, want the same principle applied to it as to the preven
tion of contagious diseases. Some people object to the programme
of the League, because they say the policeman must be called in to
enforce it. Mr. Mundella has just now disposed of that cry ; but
for my part, even if it were a well-founded objection, I should be
very glad to see a policeman drag a child io school, if I thought
there was a reasonable prospect that by that means he would be
saved the trouble of dragging him to gaol in after years. I would
rather employ the police to save our children from the moral snares
which beset them, than in preventing the snaring of hares, the
beneficent work which our aristocracy have found for a large num
ber of them. As to the state of education hr this country com
pared with some nations abroad, it was my good fortune to visit
Switzerland some years ago. I went through the cities, towns, and
villages, and into the mountains. I had full opportunities of
judging of the education of the people, and I can confinn the
statement of Mr. Mundella that there is not a man or woman,
or a child of ten or twelve years of age—not one, so far as I
could make out—who has not received a thoroughly sound and
practical education. They have not the miserable charity schools
that we have in this country for the people, but they have magni-
�222
cent colleges, built at the expense of the State, where the children
of the shopkeeper, the artisan, and the labourer sit on one commrm
form, and receive a common education; and nothing seemed
to me more likely to root out caste, prejudice, and privilege, and
to knit all classes together, than this intermixture of the children
of all classes in school. When I saw this hi Switzerland, I could
not help hoping that the time was not far distant when we should
see a similar state of things in the United Kingdom. A word to
my fellow-workmen : We are apt to lament the gulf which separates
class from class, and to bemoan our fate, and regret that there should
be such a thing as caste and privilege in society; but you may
depend upon it that you will never get rid of these things of which
you are the victims, until you place yourself upon an intellectual
equality with the other classes of society. That is the necessary
condition of all equality. Do what you will, a rude and ignorant
class can never be upon an equality with a polished and educated
class. What you have to do, therefore, is to educate and polish
yourselves; and if you do that, other classes will lose alike the
wish, and the power to elbow you aside and treat you with contempt.
I insist, therefore, upon education. Take no denial, be turned
aside by no pretext, but insist upon that as the one thing needful,
without which all the victories you have ever achieved or can
achieve, will possess but half then* value, and without which, there
aremany victories which will be impossible. I believe the programme
of the League will help to this intellectual equality which we now
require, and that is the reason why I give it my cordial support.
Let us, as working men, speak out boldly and manfully on this
question. It is of vital importance to us. Let there be no tempo
rising or compromising with us. Let us enter into no unholy
alliances, but do this thing now with all our might, for there never
was a work more worthy of all our energy. I believe we are all
Teady. Four years ago, when I was in the eastern counties, I
found the labourers in the villages, and in the country quite ripe
upon this question even then, and my conviction is that we shall
find an overwhelming force to help us onward. I hope you will
give us all the assistance in your power, and justify the predictions
made in your behalf when the franchise was demanded for you.
�223
One of these predictions was, that as soon as you canre into posses
sion of political power, you would insist upon the education of
every child in the kingdom.
Mr. Carter, M.P. : I don’t intend to inflict a speech upon you
at this late hour of the evening; hut one or two gentlemen have
referred to a speech of the Archbishop of York, and as I know
something of the views of the working men of Yorkshire, I
rise to assure you that when the Archbishop of York tells the
people of Liverpool that the working men of Yorkshire will be
opposed to secular and compulsory education, he says what he is
not authorized to say, and what he will find himself very much
mistaken about, if he will consult the working men of Yorkshire.
The gentleman who has preceded me has told you that a candidate
who inscribed compulsory and unsectarian education on his banner
got 6,000 votes. I did that, and I got 15,000 votes. You re
member that the Bishop of Ripon told the House of Lords, during
the discussion on the Irish Church Bill, that a great change had
come over the working men of Yorkshire, especially in the large
towns, where he said, they were going strongly against Mr. Gladstone.
Now, Archbishops and Bishops, I think, are not generally the best
informed of men on the subject of the feelings of the working
classes. At all events, Mr. Baines and I, a few days after that state
ment was made by the Bishop of Ripon, addressed a meeting of
15,000 working, men in the Leeds Cloth Hall, and we asked them,
was the Bishop of Ripon right ? And about twenty said he was.
Now I take it that the Archbishop of York, knows about as much
as the Bishop of Ripon does, of the views of the working men of
Yorkshire. I know as much of the working men of North York
shire as any man in Yorkshire, and I tell you that they will stand
•shoulder to shoulder with you in this fight. Mr. Mundella can tell
you what they think in South Yorkshire ; he himself represents
their views. One of the previous speakers has observed that if Mr.
Gladstone or Mr. 'Forster should shrink upon this question, you
know how, by your meetings and demonstrations, to give them
firmness and courage, and make them go faster ; you will find that
the men of Yorkshire will assist you.
Mr. Lloyd Jones : It is necessary that we should under
�224
stand precisely the ground we occupy. We are told that wo
shall have to meet a very vigorous opposition, and I have not
the least doubt of it; but I claim to know something of the
working people of this country, and I deny most positively
that any part of that opposition will come from them. It is
said that they have a very strong dislike to compulsion, but I
say that that depends altogether upon what it is, that they are tobe compelled to do. People are very ingenious in finding ex
cuses for inactivity, when they dislike doing anything. We know
Mr. Disraeli declared that the discontent of Ireland was due to the
proximity of the Atlantic Ocean, and that as England could not
remove
it was quite useless to attempt to do anything. Now,,
his party urge as a great obstacle to this movement, that the work
ing classes dislike compulsion, and we know that the party
have reason for considering compulsion a most painful thing;for what have we been doing with them within living memory, but
compelling them? We have kept them under a continued system
of compulsion, and they find it very irksome. We have com
pelled them to pass from one reform to another, and havecompelled them—if not to do—at least to accept, with the best
grace they could, the doing of things which every man fifty years
ago would have declared to be impossible. Only a few days agowe compelled them to disestablish the Irish Church, and, if neces
sary, we shall compel them, in a few days or months more, to
acquiesce in a system which shall educate the whole of the people
of this country. We were told by Mr. Lowe, when the late
Reform Bill was before the House of Commons, that the country
would have to teach its masters their letters ; and that is just what
in real earnest we mean now to do. We know he said it in no
friendly tone to the working classes, but we mean to do it in a
different spirit. The working people are now in possession of'
political power, and it is necessary to educate them to use it
for their own and the country’s good. We want them to be
educated, not that they may become the master-class—because we
believe the mastership of classes in this country has been destroyed
for ever—but we wish to educate them in order that they may be
able to take their part wisely with their fellow-citizens of other ■
�225
classes. With regard to compulsory education, it is said that it
may do very well for the artisan, but will be impracticable in the
agricultural districts, because a family deprived of the labour of its
children will not be able to sustain itself. If that is true, the
sooner such a state of tilings is put an end to by some means the
better. If the children of the agricultural labourers must either
remain in absolute ignorance, or else starve, that is a state of things
which every Englishman with a heart in his body, ought at once to
set about rectifying, if possible. But is it true ? I am sure the
working men will not be turned from the path of duty by
difficulties, especially by difficulties which are not yet actually
in the way, but are only expected ahead, and which may
be found to have no existence, or not to be of so formidable
a nature as is anticipated. We expect difficulties, but we
are determined to conquer difficulties, and do our duty in
spite of them; and the performance of every duty in turn,
as our hand finds it to do, will strengthen us for the performance
of the next. We intend to go on steadily, step by step,
vanquishing difficulties as they appear. A very wise man has
•told us that there is no culminating point in the ascension
of nations, that nations have fallen, not because they had gone
as high as nations could go, but because they have placed their feet
upon a rotten round of the ladder, and it has given way with
them. If we go stupidly and blindly into the future, with an
uneducated people, depend upon it we shall sooner or later step
upon that rotten round of the ladder, and come to grief. With
regard to the assertions which are made that the working people
are opposed to this movement, let those who say so produce the
working people who are opposed to it, let us see them. We can
produce tens of thousands of working men in its favour; let them
show us those who are against it. I know that the working men
of England will go heart and soul with this movement, and I have
no doubt whatever that before long we shall see a thorough system
of national education, unsectarian, free, and compulsory, established
in this country • and when we see that, we shall feel assured of
the perpetual growth of the nation.
The resolution was then put, and carried unanimously,
p
�226
Mr. Jesse Collings (Hon. Sec.): I have great pleasure in pro
posing , “ That the best thanks of the meeting be presented to the
Mayor for his conduct in the chair.” I have also to announce that
“ an early member of the League ”—I am not permitted to give any
name—who has been waiting for his faith to be confirmed by this
Conference, will give £200 in yearly instalments. That is the
second sum of the kind we have had to-day. There is something
very appropriate in having our Mayor in the chair, seeing that
before many of us knew anything about this question, and before
some of us were born, the principles for which we now contend
were matters of settled conviction with him. He is one of those
who hailed this movement in Birmingham, with recognition of the
greatness that belonged to it. He threw himself heartily into the
work of the formation of this League at the beginning, and he has
never ceased, up to the present moment, to give it his hearty aid
and sympathy. I congratulate the town that it has so appropriate
a chairman on this occasion, and I congratulate the Mayor, that it
has fallen to his lot, to inaugurate the most important movement of
modern times in this country. Our scheme is fairly launched to
night • or rather I should call it yours, for you have received it’
with a fervour which makes it yours, and which gives us confidence
in its success. It is a system that all may understand, whilst as to
the scheme or system opposed to it, if it have any principles at
all, no two of them fit into each other. We men of business
wish to deal as soon as possible with this great question; and
remember that if Members of Parliament make the law, the
people make the Members of Parliament. You have, therefore,
the making of the law in your own hands. Do not accept as a
Member of Parliament, any man who will not accept the prin
ciples which you desire to see carried out with regard to educa
tion. The leaders of our opponents could only tell us the other
■day, at the Social Science Congress, that the poor must do what
Canon Girdlestone described, as shutting their eyes and opening their
mouths, and waiting for what Heaven might send them. They
have done that long enough; and now we want them to shut their
mouths and open their eyes, and see what Heaven has sent them.
Let them see the rights sent them by Heaven, out of which they
�227
have been unjustly kept. One right—the dearest of all—is to
have their children educated as human beings. There has been
talk about compromise. We mean no compromise; it is well that
that should be understood. The road has been laid down for you
to-night; you have only to walk in it. It may be a little difficult,
but it goes straight to the point, and if you follow it earnestly and
with determination, you will find what you want.
Mr. Dixon, M.P.: I rise with the greatest pleasure to second
this resolution. We are extremely fortunate in having such a
Mayor to help us as we have this year. I cannot forget that
when I introduced, some time ago, into the Town Council a resolu
tion on the subject of education, our present Mayor moved an
amendment, because he said my resolution did not go far enough,
and he carried his resolution, and the Town Council did that which
was an honour to the town, and an example to the country; and we
are now doing that which satisfies, I am happy to say, our Mayor.
He is satisfied with us, and we are satisfied with him.
The resolution was carried with acclamation.
The Mayor : Ladies and gentlemen,—When my term of office be
longs to the things of the past, there is no event connected with it
that will give me so much pleasure, as that the formation of the Na
tional Education League, and the great movement which has been
inaugurated by it, took place during that term. Ladies and gen
tlemen, I thank you.
This terminated the proceedings.
�1
�FIRST
GENERAL
MEETING,
OCTOBER 12th and 13th, 1869.
LIST
OF
VISITORS.
Adair, Thomas, Derby.
Adams, Francis, Birmingham, Secretary.
Aitken, W. C., Birmingham.
Albright, Arthur, Birmingham.
Applebee, Rev. J. Kay, London.
Applegarth, Robert, London.
Ashford, W. W., Edgbaston.
Aveling, Thomas, Mayor of Rochester.
Bacchus, J. 0., Birmingham.
Baker, George, Birmingham.
Barber, Stephen, Birmingham.
Barnett, William, Birmingham.
Baron, Joshua, J.P., Over Darwen.
Bartleet, Thomas S., Edgbaston.
Basnett, George, Birmingham.
Basnett, S., Birmingham.
Bastard, Thomas Horlock, Blandford.
Batchelor, John, Cardiff.
Bayly, J., Plymouth.
Beal, Michael, Sheffield.
Beale, W. J., Birmingham.
Beale, J. HE., Banbury.
Beales, Edmond, London.
Best, J., Andover.
Bigwood, Rev. John, London.
�230
Binns, Rev. William, Devonport.
Black, Rev. Janies, M.A., Stockport.
Blackham, G., Selly Oak.
Bourne, Alfred, London.
Bottomley, J. Firth, London.
Bovill, W. J., London.
Bray, Rev. Charles, Coventry.
Bremner, John A., Manchester.
Broadhurst, Samuel, Warrington.
Brock, Rev. Dr.
Brodie, Rev. P. B., Rowington.
Brown, Rev. John Jenkyn, Birmingham.
Brodrick, the Hon. George, London.
Bunce, J. Thackray, F.S.S., Birmingham.
Burman, R. H., Birmingham.
Busk, Wm., M.R.C.P., F.S.A., &c., London.
Butcher, W., Bristol.
Caldicott, Rev. J. W., M. A., Bristol.
Campbell, Lord, London.
Carrington, R. C., Farnham.
Carter, R. M., M.P., Leeds.
Carter, John, Birmingham.
Chamberlain, J. H., Birmingham.
Chamberlain, Joseph, Birmingham, Chairman of Executive Com..
Chadwick, Edwin, C. B., London.
Chapman, Samuel, Rochdale.
Charles, David, Aberystwith.
Clarke, Rev. Charles, F.L.S., Edgbaston.
Clarke, Edward G., Hon. Sec. Bristol Branch, Bristol.
Clarke, Thomas Chatfield, London.
Clarkson, Rev. W. F., B.A., Lincoln.
Clayden, Rev. P. W., London.
Coe, Rev. Charles C., Leicester.
Colley, William, Leamington.
Collings, Jesse, Birmingham, Hon. Sec.
Congreve, Rev. John, Rector of Tooting, Graveney.
Connor, Rev. W. A., B.A., Manchester.
�231
Cole, Alfred A., Walsall.
Cornish, Charles Leslie, Birmingham.
Cox, Robert, Edinburgh.
Cox, J. Charles, Hazlewood, Belper.
Cremer, W. R., London.
Creighton, Mandell, Fellow and Tutor of Merton Col., Oxford.
Crosskey, Rev. H., F.G.S., Birmingham.
Curme, Rev. Thomas, Vicar of Sandford.
Dale, Rev. R. W., M.A,, Birmingham.
Davies, Rev. F., D.D., Haverfordwest.
Dawson, George, M.A., Birmingham.
Dixon, George, M.P., Birmingham, Chairman of the Council of
the League.
Dowson, Rev. H. E., Hyde.
Draper, E. Herbert, Kenilworth.
Earl, William, Birmingham.
Edwards, Richard Passmore, Bath.
Edwards, Charles H., Birmingham.
Ellenberger, Dr., Worksop.
Ellis, J. H., Leicester.
Emanuel, Rev. G. J., Edgbaston.
Esson, Wm., F.R.S., Fellow and Tutor of Merton Coll., Oxford.
Evans, Rev. C., Birmingham.
Fawcett, Professor.
Fawcett, Mrs.
Felkin, Robert, Wolverhampton.
Field, Alfred, Birmingham.
Fillingham, John Charles, Sanitary Inspector, Sheffield.
Fish, John, J.P., Blackburn.
Fooks, William, L.L.B., London.
Foster, Dr. Balthazer.
Franklin, Geo. B., Birmingham.
Fry, Herbert, Hon. Sec. of the London Branch, London.
�232
Galpin, Thomas D., London.
Gasquoine, Rev. T., B.A., Oswestry.
Gaunt, Edwin, Leeds.
Geikie, Rev. J. Cunningham, London.
George, Rev. H. B., Fellow of New College, Oxford.
Gillions, Charles Edward B., Bedford.
Glydon, William, Birmingham.
Gore, George, F.R.S., Edgbaston.
Gosling, Alfred, Birmingham.
Grattan, John James, Sheffield.
Grayson, Charles, Liverpool.
Green, T. H., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
Green, Thomas, Birmingham.
Greg, Louis, Liverpool.
Grenfell, E. F., M.A., Rugby.
Grew, Frederick, Birmingham.
Griffith, Geo., Wolverhampton.
Guedalla, Joseph, London.
Guest, William, F.G.S., Gravesend.
Guile, Daniel, London.
Guise, Sir Wm. Vernon, Bart., F.G.S., F.L.S., Gloucester.
Guttery, Rev. Thomas, Wolverhampton.
Haarbleicher, M. J., Manchester.
Hall, James, Sheffield.
Hammer, Geo. M., London.
Hansard, Rev. Septimus, M.A., Rector of Bethnal Green.
Harris, William, Birmingham.
Harrison, John, Birmingham.
Hatton, Joseph.
Hawkes, Aiderman H., Birmingham.
Haycroft, Rev. Dr.
Haye, E., Stoney Stratford.
Heinrick, Hugh, Birmingham.
Heath, Rev. E., Blackburn.
Heathcote, Rev. H. J., Erdington.
Herbert, the Hon. Auberon, London.
Heslop, T. P., M.D., Birmingham.
�233
Hibbs, Charles, Birmingham.
Hill, Alsager Hay, London.
Hills, Harris, Essex.
Hime, Dr., A.B., M.B., Sheffield.
Hinds, Miss, St. Neots, Hunts.
Hodgson, W. B., LL.D., London.
Holland, Henry, Mayor of Birmingham.
Holliday, William, J.P., Birmingham.
Holyoake. George J., London.
Houghton, Rev. C. E., Rugby.
Hosken, R. F., Leamington.
Howell, George, London.
Hudson, J. Davidson, Birmingham.
Huhne, Thomas, Stoke-on-Trent.
Jacob, Alfred, Birmingham.
Jaffray, John, Birmingham, Treasurer.
James, William, Edgbaston.
James, E. H., Birmingham.
James, Rev. Wm., Bristol.
Johnson, G. J., Birmingham.
Jones, Lewis, Birmingham.
Jones, Lloyd, London.
Jordan, Henry, Birmingham Exchange.
Jubb, Rev. W. Walker, West Smethwick.
Judge, Thomas, Brackley.
Klein, Dr. Julius, London.
Kempson, W., Leicester.
Kenrick, William, Birmingham.
Kenrick, J. A., J.P., Edgbaston.
Kenrick, T., Edgbaston.
Langford, John Alfred, Birmingham.
Ladd, W., London.
Lake, Rev. J. W., Warwick.
Le Neve Foster, P., London.
Lester, Wm., Wrexham.
�234
Lloyd, G. B., Birmingham.
Long, William, jun., Warrington.
Longmore, J., Worcester.
Luckett, Rev. Henry, West Bromwich.
Maclean, L. M., Worcester.
Macfie, Rev. M., Birmingham.
Mackenzie, Rev. J. R., D.D., Edgbaston.
McRae, Robert, Birmingham.
Mantle, George H., Birmingham.
Manton, Aiderman Henry, Birmingham.
Manton, John S., Birmingham.
Martin, Robert, M.D., Warrington.
Martineau, R., Edgbaston.
Martineau, R. F., Edgbaston.
Mason, W., Leeds.
Matthews, Evans, Birmingham.
Mathews, C. E., Birmingham.
Maxse, Capt., R.N., Southampton.
McDougal, Rev. J. M., Darwen.
Miall, Rev. William, Dalston.
Middlemore, William, J.P., Birmingham.
Millard, James H., B.A., Sec. of the Baptist]Union of Great
Britain and Ireland.
Milner, Edward, J.P., Warrington.
Milward, R. H., Birmingham.
Moore, Septimus P., LL.B., F.G.S., London.
Morison, Colonel.
Morgan, William, Birmingham.
Mundella, A. J., M.P., Nottingham.
Murch, Jerom, Bath.
Muspratt, Edmund R., Liverpool
Naden, Joseph, Sheffield.
Nash, Thomas, Manchester.
Noel, Ernest, Godstone, Surrey.
�235
Odger, George, London.
Olding, B.
Olsen, Samuel, Birmingham.
Osborne, Aiderman E. C., Birmingham.
Osborne, William, York.
Osler, Follett, F.R.S., Birmingham.
Owen, Edward, Lee Port.
Paget, Charles, Buddington Grange, Notts.
Palmer, W., M.R.C.P., Warwick.
Park, John, Walsall.
Parkhurst, R. M., L.L.D., Manchester.
Partridge, J. Arthur, Birmingham.
Paton, W., Atherstone.
Payton, Henry, Birmingham.
Pears, Edwin, London.
Pease, Thomas, F.G.S., Bristol.
Peiser, J., Manchester.
Pentecost, John, Stourbridge.
Peyton, H., Birmingham.
Phillips, Thomas, J.P., Birmingham.
Pliillpotts, J. S., B.C.L., Rugby.
Pinnock, R., Mayor, Newport, Isle of Wight.
Popplewell, W. J., Manchester.
Postgate, John, Birmingham.
Potter, Edmund, M.P., Carlisle.
Prange, F. G., Liverpool.
Priddy, G. M., M.D., Wolverhampton.
Pryse, Joseph, London.
Quin, F. B. Wyndham, LL.D., F.R.G.S., Market Drayton..
Rabone, John, Birmingham.
Rafferty, Michael, Birmingham.
Ransom, Edwin, Bedford.
Ransome, R. C., Ipswich.
Rawling, S. B., Devonport.
Rawlins, James H., Wrexham.
�236
Rawlinson, Sir Christopher, Upton-on-Severn.
Richards, S. Wall, Birmingham.
Richards, Rev. James, Stourbridge.
Robertson, Dover, Liverpool.
Rogers, W., Edgbaston.
Rogers, Rev. Wm., London.
Rogers, James E. Thorold, Oxford.
Rothera, G. B., Nottingham.
Rumney, Aiderman Robert, Manchester.
Rusden, R. W., Manchester.
Ryland, Aiderman Arthur, Birmingham.
Ryland, T. H., Birmingham.
Sandford, the Ven. Archdeacon, Redditch.
Sandwith, H., Llandovery.
Salwey, Col. Henry, Runnymede.
Sayle, Philip, Liver-pool.
Schnadhorst, Frank, Birmingham.
Sharp, James, Southampton.
Shelley, Rev. Richard, Great Yarmouth.
Simon, Serjeant, M.P.
Simon, Louis, Nottingham.
Simons, W., Merthyr Tydvil.
Smith, Joseph, M.D., Warrington.
Solly, Rev. H., London.
Soul, Joseph, London.
Spark, H. H., Darlington.
Sykes, James Albert, Liverpool.
St. Clair, George, Banbury.
Steinthal, Rev. S. A., Manchester.
Stepney, W. F. Cowell, London.
Stevenson, George, Leicester.
Swinglehurst, Henry, Milnethorpe.
Tait, Lawson, F.R.C.S., Wakefield.
Taylor, J., Sheffield.
Taylor, Rev. Sedley, Cambridge.
Thomas, Joshua, Birmingham.
�237
Thomas, John, South Shields.
Thomas, J. H., Cardiff.
Thompson, H. B. S., Birmingham.
Thompson, James, Leicester.
Tilley, Alfred, Cardiff.
Timmins, Samuel, Birmingham.
Tobley, James S., London.
Tufnell, E., Carlton, London.
Tunstall, E., Smethwick.
Turner, George, Birmingham.
Underwood, Rev. Wm., D.D., Chilwell College, Notts..
Vickers, Wm., J.P., Nottingham.
Vince, Rev. Charles, Birmingham.
Webb, Edward, Worcester.
Webster, John, Birmingham.
Webster, Thomas, Q.C., London.
Wells, James, Northampton.
Williams, H. M., London.
Williams, R., West Bromwich.
Williams, Rev. Rowland, D.D., Broadchalk.
Williamson, W.B., Worcester.
Whitehead, James, Catford Bridge, London.
Wood, William Robert, Brighton.
Woodhill, J. C., Edgbaston.
Wright, J. S., Birmingham.
Wynne, T., Stone.
Yates, Aiderman Edwin, Birmingham.
Zincke, Rev. F. B., Ipswich.
With many others, whose names have not been ascertained.
THE JOURNAL” PRINTING OFFICES, NEW STREET, BIRMINGHAM.
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Report of the first general meeting of members of the National Education League, held at Birmingham, on Tuesday and Wednesday, Oct. 12 & 13, 1869
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National Education League
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Place of publication: Birmingham
Collation: 237 p. : 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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'The Journal'
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Education
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Conway Tracts
Education
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CLASSICAL INSTRUCTION:
WHY ?—WHEN ?—FOR WHOM?
PAPER
BEAD AT
THE MEETING, IN SEPT. 1865, OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION AT
SHEFFIELD 5 AND AT THE MONTHLY MEETING, IN MAY, 1866,
OF THE COLLEGE OF PRECEPTORS.
BY
W. B. HODGSON, LL.D., F.C.P.,
ONE OF THE EXAMINEES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.
• Scholarship has hitherto been a term reserved for the adept in ancient literature, whatever may be
the mediocrity of his intellect; but the honourable distinction must be extended to all great writers
on modern literature, if we would not confound the sense and propriety of things.”—Isaac D’Israbli.
“ Un savant est un homme qui sait de la chose dont il s’occupe tout ce qu’on peut en savoir au
moment present, qui est celui oh les connaissances humaines sont le plus avancees. Un erudit sait ce
qu’on en savait quand elles etaient au berceau.”—J. B. Say, "Petit Volume." 3me Ed. 1839. p. 149.
" Die hochste Aufgabe der Bildung ist aber die Erziehung zur Pflicht, zur^Erfiillung des Gesetzes
das wir in der Erkenntniss finden.”—B. Auerbach. Schwarzwalder Dorfgeschichten.—“Ivo, der
Hairle,” g7, p. 235. Mannheim; 1845. Th. I.
11 It is easy to say that in scholarship there is nothing that is not important. It may be so, but one
thing is most important, and that is, never to lose sight of the true object of all scholarship, the diffusion
of useful knowledge.”—Saturday Review, 284A July, 1866.
“ * Stemus swper antiquas vias:' which may be rendered—1 Better stand still on turnpikes than move
on rails.’ ’’—Charles Reade, “Hard Cash]' vol. i. p. 225,1.8. 1863.
Reprinted from the Educational Times for June, 1866.
LONDON:
Printed by
0. F. HODGSON & SON, GOUGH SQUARE,
FLEET STREET.
�“ The learned languages are still considered by many, them to be marked by a separating name, and called
emphatically, Education. To teach them, and to teach Naturalists. Why are we ashamed of a failure in what
little else, was a portion of the wisdom of our ancestors; comes to us through booksand the costly instrumentality
but though wisdom in them, it does not follow it is such of masters and teachers—why do we blush at any flagrant
in us. with them it was knowledge, not for ornament, slip in history, or science, or language,—and keep cool
but use. It was the instrument of action, as well as and easy under any extravagance of error in what nature,
thought. Law, Diplomacy, Medicine, and Religion, all through our own observation, might teach us?”—“Satur
was Latin: a man who was no ‘Latiner was a mere day Review,” ISth July, 1863, p. 80.
*
‘villain’in education; he was deemed unfit in civil life
“
were the smallest attempt made to
for any situation destined for the ‘ ingenuous’ and free. oui’ If there from establishments in which we areconvert
schools
But to insist on it at present, but above all, as the only to know with exactness what other people thoughttaught
a long
thing necessary, and to the sacrifice of many other time ago, to establishments to enable us to think with
things really so, is a folly of which our ancestors could exactness about that which we are to do at present,
not have been guilty.”—“ Educational Reform,” by which persons of modern and bigoted notions think
Th. Wyse, Esq., M.P., 1836, p. 163.
desirable, there would be a chance of obtaining some
“ The Greeks had no models before them; why then thing like scientific education.”—Professor Huxley;
have they been enabled to create models for us ? Because at Meeting of British Association at Nottingham, 2Ath
they listened at the threshold of Nature, and creatively August, 1866.
showed forth her inspiration. They strove to represent
“ As
the idea within them, and in their continual endeavour gether Lord Houghton has pointed out, science is alto
unrepresented
to express the conception in the substance, the master the Public Schools]. [on the Commission for reforming
The most zealous believers
piece was at length achieved.”—Ludwig vox Muhlen- classical training will allow that this is a mistake. It in
is
FELS, LL.D., introduction to a Course of German conceded by all that classical education must go on for
Literature., 1830, p. 85.
the present, whether right or wrong, since the Report
“The present neglect of Natural Philosophy and of the year before last strongly approved of it; and
Natural History will furnish a curious story for after whatever change is ever made must come down to the
times. It will be on record, that among the first com Schools from the Universities. But while, on the other
mercial people in the world, who depended for their hand, it is not contended that science should at once
political existence on trade and manufactures, there was be made the basis of Public School teaching, on the
not, generally speaking, in the education of their youth, other hand no one urges that classics will last for ever.
one atom of information on the products of the earth, The chief object of introducing science now is, that a
whether animal, vegetable, or mineral; nor any account footing may be laid for a future extension, if ever it
of the principles, whether of mechanics or of chemistry, should be thought desirable to give more weight and
which, when applied to these products, constituted the prominence to it. The system must be made a little
distinction of their country. And this, when the studies, more elastic, or whenever the nation has outgrown the
so abandoned, were allowed by all to be worthy of pur classics—supposing it ever does outgrow them—it will
suit, simply as an exercise of the reason, and without break, instead of yielding. The addition of some scien
any reference to their application. This story will one tific name to the Board would not do much in itself to
day excite some wonder, which will be removed when it modify the instruction at the Public Schools, but it
is added, that the tone of school-education was given by would at least indicate the direction in which the
certain endowed establishments, which, resting their national opinion requires that the Schools themselves
existence upon the fame acquired when Latin and Greek should take some slight step of progress.”—“ Saturday
were reputed the only useful branches of instruction, Review,” June 2,1866, p. 651.
used their influence to exclude all others, long after the
“ I entirely agree
you that the present system of
rational part of mankind had pronounced that more was classical education, with general method of training all
a
necessary. Thus much we can assert, without laying English gentlemen, as (in your words) ‘ a superstition, a
is
claim to the title of prophets; but it may be—and we blunder, and a failure.’ If we would imitate the Ro
would put it to those who direct the public schools,
in the
whether it is not worth taking into consideration—that mans, who taught their boys Latin and Greek, all our
we ought
teach
their historian shall have to finish by saying, that while spirit and not in the letter, for French to to us, and was
youth English and French;
is
previously-acquired reputation was supporting them in still more to Prussia, what Greek was to the Romans.
their quiescent obstruction of all improvement, a gradual I The Romans learned two living languages; we pretend
change took place in the public mind, on the subject of to learn two dead ones. I would demand with you a
education, which they, occupied as they were in con general basis of true British and Modern and Human
structing elegant Greek and Latin verses, were among education till the age of
then Classics
the last to perceive; that when, at a late period, they taken up by the select few 14;whom they nowshould be
to
naturally
became willing to alter their system for the better, the belong. The omission of natural science, drawing, and
time had passed, and the recollections of former obsti music, from the school education of England, is the plain
nacy rendered their demonstrations of improvement of sign that they are out of nature. It is like feeding
no effect; that they sank in estimation from that time, children with beefsteaks, and throwing the good milk
and finally became an object of interest to the antiquary the mother to the dogs. But do not growl too fiercely of
at
only, for the remains of Gothic architecture which they
world.
left behind.”—Professor De Morgan, On the Study the stupidity of dunces, Dons, and D.D.s in this —J. S.
A certain number of stupid people must exist.”
of Natural Philosophy.
Blackie, Professor of Greek in University of Edinburgh,
“ Why are the people who notice what comes before “Letter to the Author.”
�CLASSICAL INSTRUCTION
WHY?—WHEN?—
FOR WHOM?
"Linguis quoque discendis operam dent, iis praecipue quarum apud finitimos aut domesticos usus.”—Caspaei
Baelaci, “Methodus Studiorwm” Ludg. Bat. 1792. p. 170.
“ Quis facile se contineat, si omnium artium et disciplinarum salutem linguae Latinae castitate contineri, hac
spreta illas jacere, hac ftorente illas stare, toties inculcantem magistrum intelligat ?”—Mosheim, “ Dissert, de
Ling. Lot. Culturd. et Necessitate," p. 273. 1751. {et seg.)
Our shores are visited from time to time
by intelligent foreigners, eager to study our
political institutions, our social customs, our
processes of agriculture or of manufactures.
Let us suppose that such a one, understand
ing our language, but only slightly acquainted
with our history and social condition, had
arrived in this country, anxious to extend his
knowledge, and to turn his observations to
practical account. I may well be excused
from attempting to sketch, in even the vaguest
outline, the elaborate and complex civilisa
tion, with its bright lights and dark shadows,
which would attract and bewilder and almost
overwhelm his attention. Let us suppose
that, after a time, he gained some general
insight into our mode of government, our
manners, our religion, our laws, our mecha
nical industry, our commerce, our manifold
and ever-multiplying relations with all other
nations of the globe, our rich and various lite
rature, our national character. Such a man
might reflect thus ; Children are in this coun
try, as in every other, born weak, helpless,
ignorant, yielding easily, with a few marked
individual exceptions, to the plastic hands of
those who would mould them in this or that
form, to this or that belief; capable of healthy
growth and development from within, under
the application of outward stimulus; but,
also, of being crushed, or stunted, or per
verted—of becoming, in short, either lovely
flowers and useful fruit, or useless, it may be
even noxious, weeds. Such a reflection as this
would naturally suggest the question, What
is done, in the way of teaching and training,
to qualify and dispose the embryo citizens of
this great nation to take a useful and honour
able place in the social system in which they
are destined to live, to promote their own
good and that of their fellows, and, not least,
to ensure that the next generation shall be
wiser, better, happier, than that which is
swiftly moving off the stage of life ? To such
a man as I have supposed it might perhaps
occur,—In this country there are rich people
and poor people ; all have not equal means or
opportunities; from all equal results are not
to be expected ; but surely, in the case of even
the moderately rich, all will be done that the
most enlightened intelligence can suggest to
form and store and guide the youthful mind;
and in the case of those less favoured by for
tune, this same object will also be aimed at,
and proportionately realized. Probably, then,
the children of parents of the higher class are
carefully instructed in the nature of their own
constitution, bodily and mental; the conditions
on which its soundness and happy working
inevitably depend ; its relations towards the
diversified existences, animate and inanimate,
which surround it; the terms on which future
well-being must be, if at all, attained ; in the
structure and use of their own language, so
rich and flexible and strong; in the art of
tracing the relation of cause and effect, so as
to avoid not only mental error and confusion,
but unwise and injurious conduct also; in
the elements of the arts and sciences, on the
knowledge and application of which hangs the
prosperity of the world, and especially of this
nation; in their own country’s literaturef,
abounding as it does in noble monuments of
every kind of mental activity, and with equal
power to instruct, to rouse, to purify, to direct,
to charm, to polish, to strengthen, to refine,
to make strongthe delicate, to make delicate the
strong; lastly, in the language and literature of
other nations, whose social characteristics are
more or less different, but with all of whom
the advantage, and even the necessity, of free
intercourse are daily on the increase, and from
all of whom much is to be learned, without
the sacrifice, nay to the enhancing, of national
and individual originality and independence.
Our supposed foreign visitor might not, and
probably would not, work out in any great
detail the programme of a system of instruc
tion (i.e., building up), such as ha might expect
to find ; but it is not at all improbable that,
looking at the facts of the case, and estimating
future obligations and necessities, he would
reckon most confidently on finding a fore
most place assigned to such studies as I have
roughly indicated. Well, what would be his
astonishment if he were told that in the school
training, not of the poor only, but of the rich
also, the very rich, every one of these subjects
is more or less neglected; that what seemed
to him the most important and indispensable
things of all are left to future chance, or, at
the most, to a later provision; that, in the
�case of all above the poor, during the whole
course of the school-life, extending over ten,
twelve, or more years, the mind is applied
almost exclusively, in the best cases mainly,
to the languages and literatures of two ancient
nations who ceased to exist centuries ago, who
lived before even the infancy of our modern arts
and sciences ; whose religion and morals were
widely at variance, if not wholly inconsistent,
with the religion and morals which here pre
vail, and which are held as a revelation from
heaven itself; nations whose people, whose
great men even, were stained with gross vices,
whose military glories (in the case of one of
these at least) have so dazzled the eye and cor
rupted the moral sense of subsequent genera
tions as greatly to retard the peaceful progress
of commerce and civilization I Even if he
found, as doubtless he would find, on further
inquiry, that these literatures contain much,
very much, that is beautiful and good, and
that examples of heroism and virtue worthy of
all praise are scattered over the blood-stained
records of their history, I do not think that
his astonishment would be greatly diminished ;
while it would be vastly increased, and would
approach amazement, and even incredulity,
were he to learn that, on the authority of able
men, themselves the subjects of this system
and favourable to its continuance—this system,
as pursued in its most richly-endowed, and in
all ways most favoured, institutions, is declared
a failure as regards its own ends; “a failure”
— and here I quote the Times’ summary of
the Report of the recent Commissioners —
“ a failure, even if tested by those better spe
cimens, not exceeding one-third of the whole,
who go up to the Universities. Though
a very large number of these have literally
nothing to show for the results of their schoolhours from childhood to manhood, but a know
ledge of Latin and Greek, with a little English
and arithmetic, we have here the strongest
testimony that their knowledge of the former
is most inaccurate, and their knowledge of the
latter contemptible. A great deal is taught
under these two heads, but very little is learned
under either. A small proportion become bril
liant composers and finished scholars, if they
do not manage to pick up a good deal of infor
mation for themselves; but the great multi
tude cannot construe an easy author at sight,
or write Latin prose without glaring mistakes,
or answer simple questions in grammar, or get
through a pronlem in the first two books of
Euclid, or apply the higher rules of arith
metic. A great many, amounting to about a
third at Christ Church, and a fifth at Exeter
College, fail to pass the common Matriculation
Examination. Not less than a fourth are
plucked for their Little-go, a most elementary
examination in the very subjects which we
have just mentioned ; and of the rest many
are only enabled to pass by the desperate exer
tions of College tutors and ‘coaches.’ We
need not follow this class of public school men
through the remainder of their University
career, since the duty of teaching has then
devolved upon others ; but for their short
comings at entrance the schools are mainly
responsible. Most of them, says an Oxford
tutor of great experience and judgment, ‘ are
persons who were allowed as boys to carry
their idleness with them from form to form,
to work below their powers, and merely to
move with the crowd ; they are men of whom
something might have been made, but now it
is too late ; they are grossly ignorant, and
have contracted slovenly habits of mind.’”*
On recovering from his very natural amaze
ment, our foreign friend might possibly be
curious to know how a state of things so ano
malous and perplexing had come about. Gra
dually he would learn that it had its remote
origin in a period of European history between
the decay of the old and the growth of the new
civilisation, when it may be briefly and com
prehensively asserted that, Latin and its litera
ture apart (for Greek was of later date as a
branch of general school teaching), there were,
(1) No subjects to be learned; (2) No pupils to
be taught; (3) No language in which teaching
could be carried on. A few minutes may well be
spent in considering this very curious position.
There were, (1) No subjects to be learned. The
natural sciences,as we now understand and pur
sue them, scarcely existed; they wereconfounded
with the ancient literature, in which scientific
observations and theories were recorded; there
were no modern languages or literatures to
claim and repay study. Latin, or its practical
synonym grammar, was accordingly co-extensive, identical with instruction. (2.) There were
no pupils to be taught. The mere idea of
educating a whole people, of opening their
mental eyes, forming their judgment, training
their character, by means of knowledge, had
not been even conceived. Not even the higher
or highest classes of the laity were believed to
need instruction. Ecclesiastics only needed
and received instruction, and in their case it
was naturally directed to the language in
which the church offices were performed, in
which the church history and traditions were
enshrined. (3.) There was no language but
Latin in which teaching could be conducted.
Neither English, nor French, nor Italian, nor
Germau, nor Spanish, nor any other modern
language, in anything like its present state,
existed. You know as well as 1 how and
when they came into being. Petrarch more
than half regretted his having ever written in
Italian the sonnets which are the title-deeds
of his fame, and fancied that posterity would
delight to read his Latin poem on Africa,
which is quite forgotten. Through what me
dium, then, except Latin, could any one be
taught ?—Latin, in which the learned of all
countries wrote and corresponded with each
other to much later times—Petrarch, and Eras
* See Appendix, p. 8.
�5
mus, and Milton, and even Locke. The influence
of this threefold state of things was prolonged
in spite of gradual progress. New subjects
arose, but Latin held its place ; a portion of
the laity claimed a share of the instruction of
the times, and ecclesiastics taught them the
Latin which only they knew, and that not
well. New languages were gradually formed,
and crept into general, unliterary, unscientific,
currency. But in European countries Latin
still maintained its place, more or less exclu
sively, as the medium of teaching science and
literature. Not many years ago, I travelled
with a Piedmontese physician, who spoke
Italian badly, French not at all, whose local
patois was a burden to himself, and who bitterly
complained to me of his having been taught
even medicine, as well as logic and rhetoric,
through Latin, while in Italian he had never
received a single lesson. In our own land,
the change has gone somewhat further in each
of the three respects just stated. Other sub
jects of instruction have, more or less recently,
more or less grudgingly, been allowed to break
in upon the sacred monopoly of Latin. First,
Greek (now so glibly coupled with Latin, like
Day with Martin, or Swan with Edgar)
fought its way to admission, through opposi
tion the story of which would now excite some
amusement and surprise;
*
Then mathema
tics, more lately ; and it is now commonly
declared that in this branch of study is found
the needful and sufficient counterpoise to the
old linguistic training, inasmuch as it exer
cises the reasoning faculties ; the subject, how
ever, being purely abstract, and one in which
never occur the names of man or woman, or
right or wrong, or duty or interest, of good
or bad, praise or blame, or any other of those
many things about which human reasoning
is habitually employed in late and early life ;
so that, though, like chess, it is valuable for
fixing the attention, it is a very inefficient
training for ordinary thinking on moral ques
tions. As Sir William Hamilton has said,
“ The railroad of demonstration is a poor pre
parative for the hunting-ground of proba
bility.” No other subject is taught otherwise
than too exceptionally and incompletely, to
claim notice in this brief paper.
Yet, how marvellously changed is the whole
aspect of the world since this system first took
shape. I need not do more than hint at our
progress in science, art, literature, mecha
nics, in production and exchange at home and
abroad; at the startling growth of foreign
literatures ; at the multiplication of sources of
thought and subjects of interest general and
deep ; at the discovery of new and vast con
tinents, over which is being rapidly spread a
population speaking our language, in part
living under this country’s government, in part
living under a government of its own ; in either
case bound to us by many ties of interest and
affection, and adding everywhere to the com
mon fund of the world’s thought and know
ledge :
“Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ?”
What region of the wide earth is there that
is not filled with both the record and the
results of our national achievements ?
Is every thing to move on except education,
which is to prepare for every thing ? Is pro
gress to be universal except in that one thing
which ought to herald and facilitate and
guide all progress ? How long, one is driven
to ask, is the ancient system to be maintained ?
In spite of coming changes, the extent of
which we can but faintly guess, though we
may clearly foresee their direction, is it abso
lutely ordained that centuries hence, even to
the very end of time, our remotest posterity
shall learn precisely what their ancestors
learned, in default of aught else, and be taught
precisely as their ancestors, in the infancy of
the teaching art, were taught? Had we to
begin now, to construct anew the educa
tional edifice, few perhaps would say that it
ought to be precisely on the existing plan.
Can the present system, then, be not merely the
result of historic causes^ necessary and even
useful in its season, but the fulfilment of pro
vidential decree, which must be binding now,
henceforward, and for evermore? If not, then
it is wise to inquire whether the time has not
arrived for introducing changes, which may
facilitate and promote further gradual change
hereafter. I venture to think that this time
has arrived, and that, in the interest of what
ever is good in the old system itself, it is well
to modify what it is impossible long to pre
serve unchanged. The present system is clearly
untenable, and its doom is, I think, a question
of time only. It is because I attach a high
value to the educational influence of Greek
and Latin, in proper place and time and mode,
that I presume to invite the attention of this
meeting to the questions stated in the pro
gramme— “Why? When? For whom?’’
These three questions are intimately blended.
None of them can, apart from the other, be
fully answered. On the first—the reasons
why—1 need not enlarge. They have been
lately stated, for the ten thousandth time,
but with unusual freshness and force, by Mr.
Bonamy Price, who, being himself a bright
*
example of the good effects of such culture, is
modest enough to assume that most others to
whom it is applied are quite as good as he.
But on all those reasons it suffices to remark,
that not one of them applies to any but to au
advanced school age, when only can the youth
really appreciate the high work in which he is
engaged. The wretched reality which expe
* So lately as in the year 1772, Dr. Adam’s pro rience reveals is in contrast, at once ludicrous
posal to introduce Greek into the High School of
Edinburgh was violently opposed by no less a man
* See “The Shilling Magazine” for September,
than Principal Robertson, the historian.
1865.
�6
and painful, with the glowing picture painted
by Mr. Price.
As regards the second and third questions,
taken always in conjunction with the first, I
can only briefly say, as the result of my own
experience and reflection, that by deferring
these studies to a later period of life, by
thus reducing the number of those to whom
this instruction is administered, and the
amount of time devoted to it, as well as the
area over which it is spread, a greater amount
of good would, on the whole, be achieved.
Fewer persons would learn Latin and Greek, but
those few would learn them more thoroughly
and with greater profit. The fact that now,
after all the expenditure of time and labour,
so small a proportion of those taught exhibit
even fair attainments, is conclusive against
the present system, which sacrifices the many
needlessly and wrongly for the sake of a select
few. Nor can it be justly said, though it is
often said, that, even if no great knowledge of
the tongues, and no knowledge, of the litera
tures, have been acquired, still a useful train
ing has been gone through, and the mental
powers have been strengthened and suppled
by exercise. I much fear that the influence is
quite the other way, and tends to discourage
ment, apathy, distaste for learning, mental
confusion, and mental torpor. “ The labour
we delight in physics pain.” Intellectual occu
pation, in which the intellect is a willing agent,
not a drudging slave, and intellectual pro
gress, are needful for our moral health. Men
tal vacuity is at the root of much moral
mischief; and congenial mental work is one
of the best preventives of the vices which idle
ness ever fosters.
In discussing this subject, we are too apt to
fix our attention on the favourable exceptions,
the small minority, who seem to have really
derived advantage from the process through
which they have passed ; and we are tempted
to forget that it is to “ the mass” that educa
tion ought to be adapted, and by its success
with the mass that every system must be
tested. What should we say if a Sheffield
cutler were to boast that five, or even ten, per
cent, of his knives were sharp and strong and
bright? We should be disposed to inquire
about the remaining ninety, and to draw no
favourable inference as to their cutting power.
Again, we are often confronted by a dis
tinction which, though sound enough in itself,
has little real application here. Instruction,
we are told, is one thing; education is another.
Even of instruction, the imparting of know
ledge is not the chief part; while of edu
cation it is but a small and a very subor
dinate part. Very true; but it by no means
follows that those subjects which are capable
of what is called useful application in actual
life, are devoid of educational influence in the
process of their acquisition. The question is
really much less one of subject than of method.
Any subject may be taught intellectually,
suggestively, improvingly, or in a dull, me
chanical, stupifying way. Because much pre
sent teaching of Latin and Greek is of this
latter kind, I do not argue against all teaching
of Latin and Greek. But, on the other hand,
I contend that it is most unjust to speak, for
example, of physical science as a mere con
geries of detached facts, the learning of which
can give no beneficial training to the mind,
no real exercise to any of its powers, except to
memory. Were our scholars and our teachers
themselves better instructed in such subjects,
they would find, I think, that the processes
of observation, generalisation, and induction,
through which a pupil may be carefully led,
afford a mental discipline of the highest value,
and do much to train to habits of mental
accuracy, cautious inquiry, conscientious
balancing of probabilities, steady and honest
work.
Again, it is not unusual to speak and
write as if, outside of the charmed circle of
Greek and Roman letters, all were barren, arid,
prosaic, commonplace, mechanical, and cold.
The very exclusiveness with which the terra
“ classics” is popularly restricted to Latin
and Greek, is a standing monument of this
fallacy. Are such writers as Shakespeare,
and Milton, and Wordsworth, and Tennyson,
in our own tongue, or in others, as Gothe,
and Schiller, and Dante, and Ariosto, and
Rousseau, and De Stael, incapable of inspiring
literary enthusiasm, or exercising critical taste?
The case would not be altered were any amount
of indebtedness to the ancients proved against
the moderns.
Even if the superiority of Greek and Latin
over all living tongues be admitted, (and I
may say, in passing, that, without large
qualifications, I cannot admit it,) it is not a
necessary sequence that those other languages
are not important means of mental discipline,
if rightly taught, as well as of high utility in
the affairs of life. The whole question is com
parative. It- is not what subjects are, in
one or other way, useful; but what subjects
are, on the whole, the most useful in degree,
as in kind; which blend the greatest number
of utilities; Which are the indispensable, and
which the merely advantageous or orna
mental. Now I cannot but hope that in this
matter the progress of opinion is tending
towards this conclusion, that those subjects
most useful to the poor as well as to the rich,
to women as well as to men, those most akin
to the deep unity of our common human na
ture, are the subjects to which attention ought,
in every case, to be directed first and chiefly;
that the essentials of education (not confound
ing essential with necessary, as we often do)
are in all cases the same, and based on those
things in which we all agree, not on those in
which we differ. In urging, as I did some
time ago, that the education of girls ought,
in all essential respects, to be assimilated to
that of boys, I did not mean that it should be
made like to that of boys, as it now exists,—
may heaven forbid!—but rather that each
�1
should borrow from the other whatever it has
of good, and that both should grow towards a
common and still distant ideal. So with the
rich and the poor; the great substratum ought,
it seems to me, to be in both cases alike ; it
being the enviable privilege of the former to
superadd whatever other culture, deeper or
more ornamental, their greater leisure and
ampler means may enable them to obtain.
According to the length of time given by
the pupil to the school, would be the gradation
and development of his studies. No boy leav
ing any school, say at the age of even twelve
years, would be ignorant of his own language
as a means of communication by writing as
well as by speech,—of the elements of natural
science, especially of his own bodily structure,
and of the laws of conduct; without some
dawning, but ever brightening, perception of
the interdependence of all human interests
rightly understood, and without some purpose,
strengthening “ with the suns,” to guide his
own life accordingly, to seek his own blessing
in blessing others, to do good to others by
improving himself; unable to observe, and
think, and reason, but able to repeat snatches
of Latin grammar-rules, to decline certain
nouns and adjectives, to conjugate certain
verbs—a kind of knowledge which I venture to
think extremely unimportant, unless it be
carried forward to higher attainments, metho
dised and utilised by study of the literature.
A boy prolonging his stay at school beyond
the period necessary for acquiring the amount
and sort of knowledge and of training at
which I have but hinted, would, besides
deepening and widening and fixing his know
ledge of these subjects, and confirming his
mental and moral habits, extend his range of
study, and acquire more or less of one or more
modern tongues, say French and German, the
teaching being ever reflected upon that of the
vernacular, and would take up other branches
which it is impossible for me here to specify
in detail.
Lastly, those youths who should prolong
still further their school period, would, in
reduced numbers, with faculties well dis
ciplined, with a love of congenial mental
exercise—such as every human being has in
greater or in less degree, if it be not crushed
by bad teaching or by neglect—with a clear
perception of the use as well as of the pleasure
of learning, with minds maturer and more vigo
rous, enter on the study, say, first of Latin
and then of Greek. The progress now so
slow, painful, unequal, and irregular, would
be vastly more rapid, pleasant, uniform, and
sure. Cramming of the memory, now declared
to be indispensable with the very young, would,
at a later age, be superseded by intelligible
explanation and intelligent perception of prin
ciples ; the authors read would be better com
prehended, better appreciated, more enjoyed ;
the knowledge of words, constructions, idioms,
would grow swiftly, insensibly, day by day ;
the judgment and taste, first exercised on the
writings of their own country’s authors, would
be brought easily to bear on those of Rome
and Greece; the beauties of Homer and Horace,
and Virgil and Sophocles, and Livy and Thu
cydides, would not, as now, be wasted on dull
and unwilling ears, but would be really felt;
and all the good effects, intellectual, sesthetic,
and moral, which, in the hands of a skilful
teacher, with a heart in his bosom, and not
merely a mass of learned lumber in his head,
such studies can undoubtedly be made to
yield, would really be accomplished, and not
merely imagined, and in the great majority
of cases imagined falsely, to be accomplished.
Fewer persons would thus be taught Latin and
Greek ; but more persons would learn them
than now. They would learn them with greater
ease, satisfaction, and advantage in many
ways. This they would do without neglect,
nay to the gain, of other studies now too much
neglected. Those who could not carry on a
training in Latin and Greek to any really use
ful point, would not have wasted their time,
but would have gained that kind and amount
of knowledge and discipline, to which Latin
and Greek may be a most admirable comple
ment, but for which their verbal elements are
a most wretched substitute.
*
Let no one, therefore, denounce me as “ an
enemy of Latin and of Greek,” “ a foe to
liberal culture,” “alow utilitarian,” “an ad
vocate of cramming as opposed to training”—
of “bread and butter sciences” in opposition to
education worthy of the name; or pelt me
with any other verbal missiles, such as, in this
controversy, are too freely used. I am, I con
fess, a strict utilitarian; but it is a high and
broad, not a low and narrow, utility for which
I contend : imagination itself I maintain to be
truly and highly useful. I am at heart a friend
to Latin and Greek ; I would not lightly part
with my own knowledge of either, though it
might have been far less dearly purchased.
I would, it is true, save multitudes from the
mistake, the misery, and the mischief of merely
pretending to learn them ; but I would make
the teaching real and fruitful wherever it is
attempted, and I would put no limit to the
height or depth to which it should be carried
by those so disposed. I may, of course, be in
error as to the proposed means; but I am quite
certain that the end 1 aim at is the improve
ment, and the binding together, of all classes
of the community by a rational and generous
education, common to all in its main prin
ciples and essential features, but capable of
wide diversities in its later developments,
according to the means, the talents, the dis
positions, the destinations, social or profes
sional, of their individual members.
* “ Ipsum quidem illud callere linguam, si per se
solum spectes, neque majorem utilitatem intendas,
magno opere jejunum mihi videtur atque inanitatis
plenum: quid enim proficias ubi voces loquendique
formulas in cerebrum constipatas ingesseris ? ” —
“ Tib. Hemsterhusius, Orat. de Mathem. et Philosoph.
Studio cum Lit. Human, conjungendo,” p. 214.
�APPENDIX. (Seep. 4.)
“ Let us take a review of the acquirements of
a clever youth, not prematurely hurried from
school to the business of active life ; but left
there, we will suppose, to the age of sixteen or
seventeen, to acquire what knowledge he may.
He shall be found at that age tolerably well
skilled in the mysteries of longs and shorts;
to have acquired a facility of stringing together
doggerel verses ; to have construed unconnected
scraps from ancient writers, such as are to be
found in popular selections of extracts, his
attention having never been drawn to any of
those models of classic poetry so numerous in
his own ; familiar with the genealogies and
exploits of the heathen divinities ; well versed
in the history of the Trojan war, and the feuds
of the Grecian heroes, and but little in the
social convulsions of his native soil, and the
political storms which have swept over its face;
slightly acquainted with geography ; initiated
into arithmetic, not as a science built upon
principles, but as a set of rules, the arbitrary
invention (for anything he knows to the con
trary) of the book-maker; and acquiescing
upon trust in a few propositions of Euclid.
“ This, I apprehend, is rather an exaggerated
statement of a youth’s acquirements on leaving
one of our schools.
“ Now, of what is he wholly ignorant ?
“ The answer to this question is far too long
tobequoted here.” (See “Education and Edu
cational Institutions considered,” &c., by Rev.
J. Booth, LL.D., M.R.S.A. London, 1846
pp. 35, 36, et seq.)
“At Eton, the most aristocratic of schools,
though there is a drawing-master, and though,
more fortunate than the unlucky Italian mas
ter, he has a room, and even some casts and
models, the average attendance on his instruc
tion is 35 out of 783. Music is not taught at
all. In the report on Winchester, no mention
is made of either. At Harrow, music and
drawing are extras, studied by 18 and 50,
respectively, of the 464 boys. Even at Rugby,
the numbers are only 49 and 42 in 465. This,
then, is the amount of attention paid in these
great schools to the Fine Arts, and to the culti
vation of eye and ear. Geography, after a
little elementary instruction, is wholly neg
lected. Attention is paid to ancient history
at some schools, in connection with classical
work ; but at Winchester, Dr. Moberley says,
‘ we do not profess to teach modern history at
alland the case seems no better at the other
schools, though no such open confession of
failure is made.
“ What, then, do these great schools teach ?
I need not give the answer. They teach Latin
and Greek ; and, subordinate to these, mathe
matics. To these three studies, or rather to
two, Latin and Greek, almost the whole teach
ing-force of these great institutions is applied.
Of the 35 masters at Eton, 24, or about 70 per
cent., are classical; eight are mathematical;
and three teach all the modern languages, phy
sical science, natural history, English language
and literature, drawing, and music ; and this
is about the proportion in all save Rugby,
where matters are somewhat better.” (Clas
sical and Scientific Studies, and the Great
Schools of England. By W. P. Atkinson.
1865. Cambridge, U. S. pp. 22.)
“ There are no schools in the world which
approach the English public schools in the
immense cost at which tneir advantages, such
as they are, have to be obtained ; and yet Mr.
Matthew Arnold, the son of the most famous
Head-master who ever presided over an Eng
lish public school, and himself profoundly
acquainted with the state of the higher educa
tion both in England and on the Continent,
could say, the other day, with almost as much
truth as point,—‘At Eton, a boy learns a
gentlemanly deportment and cricket, at an
expense of .£250. a year.’ The able men who
reported upon Eton and the otherpublic schools
two years ago, pointed out a legion of abuses
that urgently call for amendment, proved,
indeed, to demonstration that the whole existing
system was rotten to its core; but, although
Bills were introduced by Lord Clarendon in the
Sessions of both 1865 and 1866, with a view
to remedy, to some small extent, the present
disastrous state of affairs, the obstructives
have up this time succeeded in preventing any
thing effectual being done.” (Grant Duff, Esq.,
M. P., Weekly Scotsman, 1st Sept., 1866.)
Printed by C. F. Hodgson & Son, Gough Square, Fleet Street.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Classical instruction: why?-when?-for whom?: a paper read at the meeting in Sept. 1865 of the Social Science Association at Sheffield; and at the monthly meeting, in May 1866, of the College of Perceptors
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: Printed in double columns. Reprinted from the Educational Times for June, 1866. Two copies bound into Conway Tracts 4, no. 15. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Education
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Classical Education
Education
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
kJ 05^
THE
JOINT EDUCATION
OF
YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN
IN THE
AMERICAN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES.
BEING A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
On 27th
of
April, 1873,
BY
MARY E. BEEDY, M.A.,
Graduate of Antioch College, U.S.
LONDON:PUBLISHED
by the
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1873.
Price Threepence.
�SUifoerttsentent.
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improve
ment and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely
(Annually—from November to May).
Twenty-four Lectures (in three series), ending 3rd May,
1874, will be given.
Members’ LI subscription entitles them to an annual ticket
(transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture), or for any
eight consecutive lectures, as below :
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s. being at the rate of Three
pence each lecture.
For tickets apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer,
Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Crescent, Hyde
Park, W.
Payment at the door
One Penny
Sixpence ■—and
(Reserved Seats) One Shilling.
�JOINT EDUCATION
OF
YOUNG MEM AND WOMEN.
HE American colonists carried with them their
practical English tendencies.
They were
impressed with a deep sense of the advantages of
education, but it had to be got at the least expense.
In the towns and cities they could have schools
for boys and schools for girls, but in the sparselypopulated rural districts separate schools were
impossible. It was almost more than the farmp.rs
could do to pay the cost of one. All the boys and
girls within a radius of two or three miles met
together in the same school. They were companions
and rivals in their pastimes, and it probably did not
occur to any one to consider whether there could
be any danger in continuing this rivalry in their
lessons. In the rapid growth of the population
some of these rural centres gradually became vil
lages and towns, but the joint education of the
girls and boys went on.
Iwo leading principles in school economy are, to
secure the smallest number of classes, and the
greatest equality of attainment between the pupils
in each class; and these principles favour large
schools rather than numerous schools. Schools
affording a higher grade of instruction, and known
T
�4
"Joint Education of
as academies, sprang up here and there. These
were private enterprises, and the commercial aim
was to furnish the best educational advantages
for the largest number of pupils at the least ex
pense. The teacher wanted to make as much money
as he could, and the parents had in general but little
to spend for the education of their sons and daughters.
The same economical views made these joint schools :
fewer teachers were required. These academies,
with the district schools I have before mentioned,
met almost the entire educational demands of the
rural and village population. A few of the more
ambitious boys went from these academies to the
universities, and a few of the girls went to young
ladies’ boarding-schools; but these were exceptional
cases.
You probably know that we have no men of
wealth and leisure living in the country. The soil
is owned by the men who work it, and the rich
men live in the cities. And I suppose you also know
that in any generation of American men the large
majority of those who lead in commerce, in politics,
and in the professions are the sons of farmers^
who in their boyhood worked on the farms and'
went to these rural schools in the leisure season;
the wives of these men having had for the most
part the same rural training. You can readily
see from this that the peculiarities of our rural
life, the circumstances that gave these men and
women the energy to bring themselves to the front
Tank of society, were likely to mefit with approval.
However, joint education was simply looked upon
as one of the necessities of our youthful life till
about twenty years ago. Men who rose to positions
of wealth and honour upon the basis of the educa
�Young Men and Women.
5
tion received in these schools did not praise joint
education any more than they praised the other
natural and frugal habits that attended their rural
life. No one had philosophised upon this system,
and there was no occasion to think of it. It had
simply been the most natural means of meeting a
great need. In both the district schools and in the
academies the boys and girls did about the same
work. They liked. to keep together. Now and
then a boy went a little farther in mathematics
than the girls did, in the prospect of a business
career and a life in the city; or he learned more Latin
and Greek in preparation for the university. There
was no question about difference of capacity or
difference of tastes between boys and girls; there
was nothing to suggest it. They liked to do the
same things, and the one did as well as the other.
Forty years ago, in one of the academies near Bos
ton, a number of girls went with a set of their school
boy-friends through the entire preparation for Har
vard University. The girls knew mathematics and
Greek as well as the boys did, and formed a plan for
going to the university with them. I cannot say
whether the plan grew out of a keen zest forknow
ledge, or out of an unwillingness to break off the
very pleasant companionship. Probably from both.
The girls did not think there could be much objection
to admitting them at the university. They thought
the reason there were no girls at the universities
was that none had wanted to go, or had been pre
pared to go. They proposed to live at home; so there
would be no difficulty on the score of college resi
dence. However, as their request was new, it
occurred to them that a little diplomacy might be
required in presenting it; so they deputed the most
�6
J
’ oint Education of
prudent of the party to do the talking, and imposed
strict silenee upon the youngest and most impulsive
one, from whom I have the story. The girls called
upon old President Quincy ; they told him what they
had done in their studies,—that they had passed
the examinations with the boys, and wished to be
admitted to the university. He listened'to their
story, and evinced so much admiration for their
work and aims that they at first felt sure of success.
But President Quincy seemed slow in coming to the
point. He talked of the newness and difficulties of
the scheme, and proposed other opportunities of
study for them, till at length this youngest one,
forgetting in her impatience her promise to keep
silent, said, “Well, President Quincy, you feel sure
the trustees will let us come, don’t you ? ”
0, by
no means,” was the reply :“ this is a place only for
men.”' The girl of sixteen burst into tears, and
exclaimed with vehemence, “ I wish I could anni
hilate the women, and let the men have every
thing to themselves! ”
This, so far as I know, was the first effort made
by women to get into an American university, but
the incident was too trifling to make any impression,
and I narrate it only as marking the beginning of
the demand for university advantages for women.
About the same time Oberlin College was founded
in Northern Ohio. It grew out of a great practical
everyday-life demand. There was a wide-spread
desire on the part of well-to-do people for larger
educational advantages than the ordinary rural
schools provided. They could not afford the expense
of the city schools : besides, they wanted their sons
and daughters to go on together in their school work ;
they were unwilling to subject either to the dangers
�Young Men and Women.
7
of boarding-school life without the companionship
and guardianship of the other. Oberlin College was
founded on the strictest principles of economy. It
was located in a rural village in the West, where the
habits were simple and the living inexpensive. In
the third year of its existence it had 500 students,
and since the first ten years it has averaged nearly
1,200, the proportion of young women varying from
one-third to one-half. There was a university
course of study for the young men, and a shorter
ladies’ course for the young women, which omitted
all the Greek, most of the Latin, and the higher
mathematics. It was not anticipated that the
young women would desire the extended university
course, but so far as the two courses accorded the
instruction was given to the young men and the
young women in common. But the young women
were allowed to attend any of the classes they chose,
and at the end of six years a few of them had pre
pared themselves for the B.A. examination, and
were allowed upon passing it to receive the degree.
The college authorities did not seem to consider
that B.A. and M.A. were especially masculine
designations. They regarded them only as marks of
scholastic attainments, which belonged equally to
men and women when they had reached a certain
standard of scholarship. Not many Women could
stay, or cared to stay, long enough to get these
degrees. The “ ladies’ course ” required nearly two
years’ less-time, and contained a larger proportion of
the subjects that women are expected to know. The
number of women who have received the university
degrees from Oberlin is still less than a hundred,
making an average of only two or three for each
year. Oberlin sent out staunch men and women.
�"8
"Joint Education of
Wherever these men and women went it was ob
served that they worked with a will and with effect.
The eminent success of Oberlin led many parents
in different parts of the country to desire its advan
tages for their sons and daughters. But Oberlin was
a long way off from New England and from many
other parts of the country; besides some thought
it an uncomfortably religious place; negroes were
admitted, and it was altogether very democratic,
much more so than many people liked. So parents
began to say, 11 Why can’t we have other colleges
that shall provide all the advantages of Oberlin and
omit the peculiarities we dislike.” Now began the
discussion upon the real merits of this economical
system of joint education. It had sprung up like
an indigenous plant. It had met a necessity remark
ably . well, and it was only when, its advantages
becoming recognised, it began to press itself into
the cities and among people where it was not a ne
cessity, that it evoked any discussion. This was a
little more than twenty years ago. People who had
observed the working of the joint schools were alto
gether in favour of them. The wealthier people in
the towns and cities, who were accustomed to having
boys and girls educated apart, preferred separate
schools, and thought joint education would be a dan
gerous innovation ; that in the institution adopting
it the girls would lose their modesty and refinement,
and the boys would waste their time. Leading edu
cators were divided upon this question: „ those who
were familiar with the joint schools were the most
uncompromising advocates of that system; those
who had known only the schools where girls and
boys were educated apart for the most part preferred
separate education, where it could be afforded. Not
�Young Men and Women.
9
all, however, for many had developed the theory of
joint education out of an opposite experience. In
girls’ schools they had felt the want of adequate
stimulants for thorough work. They had seen the
strong tendency in girls to fit themselves for society
rather than for the severer duties of life ; they be
lieved that if girls were associated with boys and
young men in their studies, they would not only be
better scholars, but that they would remain longer
in school, that they would have less eagerness to
get out of school into society. And many who
were familiar with boys’ schools felt the dangers
attendant upon the absence of domestic influence,
and saw that it might be very largely supplied by
the presence of sisters and schoolfellows’ sisters.
They saw too that the tendencies to a coarse
physical development, which are found in an ex
clusive- society of men, might be counteracted by
the presence of women. In short, all who were
acquainted with joint education gave it their most
unqualified approval; while those who knew only
the system of separate education were for the most
part disposed to favour that, though many of these
saw the need of something in girls’ schools which the
presence of boys would introduce, and something in
boys’ schools which the presence of girls would sup
ply. The advocacy of joint education was valiantly
led by Horace Mann, the greatest American educator,
the man who stands with us where Dr Arnold
stands in the hearts of English people.
About this time Antioch College was founded in
Southern Ohio, and Mr Mann was invited to take
charge of it. Its object was to provide educational
facilities as nearly equal to those found at the best
New England universities as possible, and it
was
�io
Joint Education of
founded avowedly upon the principle that joint
education per se was a good thing; that it was
natural; that it was a great advantage to have
brothers and sisters in the same school; that girls
were both more scholarly and more womanly when
associated with boys, and boys were more gentle
manly and more moral when associated with girls ;
and that both girls and boys come out of joint
schools with juster views of life, and a larger sense
of moral obligation.
Other new colleges followed the example of
Antioch, and some of the old ones began to open their
doors to women. To-day the national free schools
and public schools in most of the cities of the North
educate boys and girls together. In some of the older
cities, particularly Boston, New York, and Phila
delphia, the schools are for the most part conducted
on the original plan of separate schools. The school
buildings are not arranged for the accommodation of
boys and girls together, and there is still a strong
sentiment against the plan, though it is gradually,
and I may say rapidly, giving way. In tire Western
cities, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St Louis, the boys
and girls study together throughout the entire
course, that is, till they are ready to go to the
universities ; though in St Louis, and perhaps in
the other two cities, there are a few of the grammar
schools where they are still apart, the buildings not
being arranged for the accommodation of both.
The system prevails in the rural schools almost
without exception, and almost as generally in the
public schools' of the towns and cities, with the
exceptions that I have mentioned ; there are now
over thirty colleges and universities that offer univer
sity degrees to women on the same conditions as
�Young Men and Women.
11
to men. On the other hand, there is still a large
number of private schools in the towns and cities
which are generally either boys’ schools or girls’
schools. They are for the most part schools esta
blished for teaching the children of some pai-ticular
religious denomination, for fitting boys for a com
mercial career, or for giving especial drill for the
universities; or, in the case of girls’ schools, for
giving especial training for society: but the public
schools are rapidly drawing into them the children
of the best educated families, for the simple reason
that they are the best schools of the country.
The oldest universities and colleges still keep
their doors shut against women. Harvard, within
the last year, has appointed a committee to consider
the demand made by women, but their report was
adverse. The committee recognised the success of
the system elsewhere, but thought it not wise to
attempt the change in Harvard.
Michigan University, a free state university,
which stands second to none in educational advan
tages, except Harvard and Yale, and has double the
number of students of either of these, admitted
women three years ago. And Cornell University,
which has as good prospects as any in the country,
has just received its first class of women.
I heard it announced with great gravity in the
British Association a year-and-a-half ago in Edin
burgh, that girls had no difficulty in learning arith
metic, and no one smiled. So completely is this
question settled with us, that I think such .an
announcement would have been received by a
public assembly in America with a derisive laugh.
Joint schools and colleges have settled the question
whether girls can learn not only arithmetic, but
�12
'Joint Education of
also the higher mathematics, logic, and metaphysics;
and have established beyond a doubt in the minds
of American educators, that in acute perception,
in the ability to grasp abstruse principles, the
feminine mind is in no wise inferior to the mascu
line. But the question is still open, whether
women have the physical strength to endure the
continuous mental work requisite for the greatest
breadth and completeness of comprehension. This
can be determined only by experiments which shall
extend through a longer series of years devoted to
study. The records at Oberlin indicate that the
young women are no more likely to break down in
health than the young men are. The records of
the city schools do not seem to be quite the same
upon this point, but the same difference would
doubtless appear if the girls were not in school; and
this failure in health cannot be attributed to the
school work, but rather to the more indoor life of the
girls. The Oberlin statistics also indicate that the
women who have taken the university degrees have
not diminished their chance of longevity by this
severe work in their youth. Women have less phy
sical strength than men have, but there seems to be
in them a tendency to a more economical expendi
ture of strength. Their energy is less driving, and
there is, in consequence, less waste from friction.
In regard to the social morality at these schools
the results are equally satisfactory. At the rural
schools boys and girls. have almost unrestricted
companionship; they have just the same freedom
in their home intercourse, but improper or even
objectionable conduct is a'thing unknown at the
schools, and almost equally unknown in the associa
tion outside the schools. Brothers and brothers’
�Young Men and Women.
13
friends guard the sister, and sisters and their friends
o-uard the brother. In cases where it is necessary
for the pupils to reside at the school there is more
love-making, but it is mostly repressed by want of
time; besides, there are few occasions for meeting,
except in the presence of the class, and where there
is an acquaintance with so many on about equal
terms an especial regard for one is less likely to be
formed. The admiration of the boys is suie to
centre upon the girls who are nearest the head
of the class; but these girls have not time to return
it and keep their position, and to lose their position
would be to lose the admiration; and the same is
true with the boys.
I am sure it would be surprising to any one who
is not familiar with these schools to observe to what
very practical and common-sense principles all these
otherwise romantic and illusory relations are sub
jected. In this mutual intellectual rivalship the
conjectural differences between the sexes, and the
fancied charms of the one over the other, are sub
mitted to very practical tests. A disagreeable boy
is not likely to be considered a hero in virtue of his
assumed bearing and physical strength; nor is a
silly girl, by* dint of her coquettish airs likely to
be thought a fairy with magical gifts. Girls know
boys as boys know each other; and boys know girls
as girls know each other. Hence the subtle charms
that evade human logic find little opportunity to
blind and mislead in the constant presence of unmistakeable facts.
In all the time I was at Antioch College no word
of disreputable scandal ever came to my ears, and
in recent years I have repeatedly heard from young
men who were there when I was, that in their whole
�14
Joint Education of
five or six years they never heard the faintest shadow
of imputation against any young woman in the
institution. And so stern was the morality, that
smoking, beer-drinking, and card-playing were
all considered crimes,, and banished from the
premises.
You have now heard my statement respecting the
effectiveness of joint education, and, though it is
made from a very extended and thorough acquaint
ance with the system, I shall not ask you to accept
it without the support of other and authoritative
testimony. Abundant confirmation of my state
ment will be found in all Official Reports and in
treatises that review this system, while no testi
mony of a contrary character is anywhere to be
found. I will first quote from the published
. Report of Mr Harris, Superintendent of the Public
Schools in St Louis. He is well known to the
leading students of German philosophy in all the
countries of Europe, and I think I may say in
his own country is recognised as standing in the
front rank of American educators. No other man
has brought so much philosophical insight to the
study of dur public school system. I quote from
Mr Harris’s Report of 1871 a condensed summary
of the results- of this system of joint education as
they have developed themselves under his observa
tion and direction. He says :—
- “ Within the last fifteen years the schools of St Louis have
been remodelled upon the plan of the joint education of the
sexes, and the results have proved so admirable that a few
remarks may be ventured on the experience which they
furnish.
. “ I-—Economy has been secured, for, unless pupils of widely
different attainments are brought together in the same classes,
�Young Men and Women.
15
the separation of the boys and girls requires a great increase
in the number of teachers.
“II.—Discipline has improved continually by the adoption
of joint schools ; our change in St Louis has been so gradual
that we have been able to weigh with great exactness every
point of comparison between the two systems. The joining
of the male and female departments of a school has always
been followed by an improvement in discipline ; not merely
on the part of the boys, but with the girls as well. The rude
ness and abandon which prevails among boys when separate
at once gives place to self-restraint in the presence of girls,
and the sentimentality engendered in girls when educated
apart from boys disappears in these joint schools, and in its
place there comes a dignified self-possession. The few schools
that have given examples of efforts to secure clandestine asso
ciation are those few where there are as yet only girls.
“ HI.—The quality of instruction is improved. Where the
boys and girls are separate, methods of instruction tend to
extremes, that may be called masculine and feminine. Each
needs the other as a counter-check. We find in these joint
schools a prevalent healthy tone which our schools on the
separate system lack—more rapid progress is the conse
quence.
“ IV.—The development of individual character is, as
already indicated, far more sound and healthy. . It has been
found that schools composed exclusively of girls or boys
require a much more strict surveillance on the part of the
teachers. Confined by themselves and shut off from inter
course with society in its normal form, morbid fancies and
interests are developed which this daily association in the
class-room prevents. Here boys and girls test themselves
with each other on an intellectual plane. Each sees the
strength and weakness of the other, and learns to esteem
those qualities that are of true value. Sudden likes, capri
cious fancies, and romantic ideas give way to sober judgments
not easily deceived by mere externals. This is the basis of
the dignified self-possession before alluded to, and it forms a
striking point of contrast between the girls and boys edu
cated in joint schools and those educated in schools exclu
sively for one sex. Our experience in St Louis has been
entirely in favour of the joint education of the sexes, in all
the respects mentioned and in many minor ones.”
�16
Joint Education of
I give Mr Harris’s statement as representative of
the sentiment of those who are engaged in public
school instruction in America. As I said before, in
some of the older cities, where the public schools
were earliest organised, the joint system has been
accepted as yet only partially, and the teachers, who
are only familiar with the separate system, gene
rally prefer it. But a very large proportion of
the public schools of the country are joint schools,
and a still larger proportion of the instructors and
managers of public schools favour the system of
joint education. Mr Harris’s testimony applies to
city schools, when the pupils reside at home.
I now quote to you from another authority, addi
tionally valuable inasmuch as it represents the
results of this system of education upon young men
and women who reside at the school and away from
the guardianship of parents.
In 1868 a meeting was called of all the College
Presidents of the country, to discuss questions
relating to college discipline and instruction. As
Oberlin was the oldest college that had adopted
the system of joint instruction, a strong desire
was felt to secure a critical and comprehensive
statement of the results of the system there. Dr
Fairchild, the present President of Oberlin, was
deputed to make the Report. He had at that
time been connected with Oberlin seven years
as a student and twenty-five years as professor,
and has long had the reputation of being the most
accomplished scholar and acute thinkei' among the
Oberlin professors. His statements may therefore
be accepted as absolute in point of fact, and as
wholly representative of the opinion of those who
have conducted the instruction and discipline at
�Young Men and Women.
!7
Oberlin. But my chief reason for selecting this out
of the accumulated published testimony is that it
.seems to me the best digest of the subject that I
have seen.
Dr Fairchild says :—
“ 1st.—On the point of economy In the higher depart
ments of instruction, where the chief expense is involved,
the. expense is no greater on account of the presence of the
ladies.
“ 2nd.—Convenience to the patrons of the school:—It is a
matter of interest to notice the number of cases where a
brother is followed by a sister, or a sister by a brother. This
is an interesting and prominent feature in our work. Each is
safer in the presence of the other.
“3rd.—The wholesome incitements to study, which the
system affords :—The social influence arising from the consti
tution of our classes operates continuously and upon all.
Each desires for himself the best standing he is capable of,
and there is no lack of motive to exertion. It will be observed,
too, that the stimulus is of the same kind as will operate in
after life. The young man going out into the world does
not leave behind him the forces that have helped him on.
They are the ordinary forces of society.
“ 4th.-—The tendency to good order that we find in the
system :—The ease with which the discipline of so large a
school is conducted has not ceased to be a matter of wonder
to ourselves. More than one thousand students are gathered
from every State in the Union, from every class in society, of
every grade of culture, the great mass of them bent on im
provement, but numbers are sent by anxious friends with the
hope that they may be saved or reclaimed from every evil
tendency. Yet the disorders incident to such gatherings are
essentially unknown among us. Our streets are as quiet
by day and by night as in any other country town. This
result we attribute greatly to the wholesome influence of the
system of joint education. College tricks lose their attrac
tiveness in a community thus constituted. They scarcely
appear among us. We have had no difficulty in reference to
the conduct and manners in the college dining-hall. There is
an entire absence of the irregularities and roughness so often
complained of in the college commons.
“ 5th.—Another manifest advantage is the relation of the
B
�18
Joint Education of
school to the community. A cordial feeling of goodwill and
the absence of that antagonism between town and college
which in general belongs to the history of universities and
colleges. The constitution of the school is so similar to that
of the community that any conflict is unnatural; the usual
provocation seems to be wanting,
“ 6th.—It can hardly be doubted that people educated
under such conditions are kept in harmony with society at
large, and are prepared to appreciate the responsibilities of
life, and to enter upon its work. If we are not utterly de
ceived in our position, our students naturally and readily find
their position in the world, because they have been trained in
sympathy with the world. These are among the advantages
of the system that have forced themselves upon our attention.
The list might be extended and expanded, but you will wish
especially to know whether'we have not encountered disad
vantages and difficulties which more than counterbalance
these advantages.
“ As to the question whether young ladies have the mental
vigour and physical health to maintain a fair standing in a
class with voung men, I must say, where there has been the
same preparatory training, we find no difference in ability to
maintain themselves in the class-room and at the examina
tions. The strong and the weak scholars are equally distri
buted between the sexes.
“ Whether ladies need a course of study especially adapted
to their nature and prospective work ?—The theory of our
school has never been that men and women are alike in
mental constitution, or that they naturally and properly
occupy the same position in their work of life. The educa
tion furnished is general, not professional, designed to fit men
and women for any position or work to which they may pro
perly be called. The womanly nature will appropriate the
material to its own necessities under its own laws.' Young
men and women sit at the same table and parta.ke of the
same food, and we have no apprehension that the vital forces
will fail to elaborate from the common material the osseous,
fibrous, and nervous tissues adapted to each frame and
constitution.
.
<£ Apprehension is felt that character will deteriorate on
the one side or the other,—that young men will become
frivolous or effeminate, and young women coarse and mas
culine.
�Toung Men and Women.
T9
“ That young men should lose their manly attributes and
character from proper association with, cultivated young
women is antecedently improbable and false in fact. It is
the natural atmosphere for the development of the higher
qualities of manhood—magnanimity, generosity, true chivalry,
and earnestness. The animal man is kept subordinate in the
prevalence of these higher qualities.
“We have found it the surest way to make men of boys
and gentlemen of rowdies.
“ On the other hand, will not the young woman, pursuing
her studies with young men, take on their manners, and
aspirations, and aims, and be turned aside from the true ideal
of womanly life and character ? The thing is scarcely con
ceivable. The natural response of woman to the exhibition
of manly traits is in the correlative qualities of gentleness,
delicacy, and grace.
“ It might better be questioned whether, the finer shadings
of woman’s character can be developed without this natural
stimulus ; but it is my duty not to reason, but to speak from
the limited historical view assigned me.
“You wish to know whether the result with us has been a
large accession to the number of coarse, strong-minded women,
in the disagreeable sense of the word; and I say, without
hesitation, that I do not know a single instance of such a
product as the result of our system of education.
“ Is there not danger that young men and young women
thus brought together in the critical period of fife, when the
distinctive social tendencies act with greatest intensity, will
fail of the necessary regulative force, and fall into undesirable
and unprofitable relations ? Will not such association result
in weak and foolish love affairs ? It is not strange that such
apprehension is felt, nor would it be easy to give an a priori
answer to such difficulties ; but if we may judge from our
experience, the difficulties are without foundation. The
danger in this direction results from excited imagination,
from the glowing exaggerations of youthful fancy, and the
best remedy is to displace these fancies by every-day facts
and realities.
“Theyoung man shut out from the society of ladies, with
the help of the high-wrought representations of life which
poets and novelists afford, with only a distant vision of the
reality, is the one who is in danger. The women whom he
sees are glorified by his fancy, and are wrought into his day
�io
Joint Education of
dreams and night dreams as beings of supernatural loveliness.
It would be different if he met them day by day in the class
room, in a common encounter with a mathematical problem,
or at a table sharing in the common want of bread and butter.
There is still room for the fancy to work, but the materials
for the picture are more reliable and enduring. Such associa
tion does not take all the romance out of life, but it gives as
favourable conditions for sensible views and actions upon
these delicate questions as can be afforded to human nature.
“ But is this method adapted to schools in general, or is the
success attained at Oberlin due to peculiar features of the
place, which can rarely be found or reproduced elsewhere,
and can it be introduced into men’s colleges with their tradi
tional customs and habits of action and thought ? Might not
the changes required occasion difficulty at the outset and
peril the experiment ? On this point I have no experience,
but I have such confidence in the inherent vitality and
adaptability of the system that I should be entirely willing to
see it subjected to this test.”
I am sorry not to give you a more lengthened
account of Dr Fairchild’s Report, but the time warns
me to hasten.
Respecting economy, school discipline, social
order, and the improved character of both young
men and young women, and the high scholar
ship attained by young women, you see that Dr
Fairchild’s statement fully corroborates my own
and that of Mr Harris. He agrees with us that
the grade of scholarship of the young men is in no
wise lowered by this joint work, but, on the con
trary, that the average is higher.
To be definite upon this point, my own opinion
is that those marvellous feats of scholarship that
sometimes occur in boys’ schools are not so likely to
occur in a joint school, where a little more of the
domestic and social element is found. On the other
hand, from a long and close observation, I feel fully
justified in saying the average scholarship is higher.
�Young Men and 'Women.
21
There is a more general stimulus for good scholar
ship. The standard of respectability is somewhat
different from what it is in a school exclusively for
boys. A boy may secure the respect of his boy
associates by being an adept on the playground or
generally a good fellow, but as he is known to the
girls only through his class work, he feels more
especially bound to make this creditable.
I should like to accumulate authority upon these
points, but I must ask you to accept my statement
that the opinions I have' given you are those held
by the very large majority of the educators of the
country.
In this system of joint education you see that
the difficulty of getting funds to establish schools
scarcely appears as an obstacle to the higher edu
cation of women. It requires so little more to edu
cate girls along with boys than it does to educate
boys alone, and lack of the masculine incentive to
study is largely supplied to the girls by class
rivalry. The girls like to remain at school, and
they like to do as much work and as good work as
the boys do; and the boys are equally eager to keep
the companionship of the girls, and to keep up the
competition in all the departments of the work.
There is a mutual rivalry which both enjoy, and
the girls work with zest, without thinking whether
there is to be any reward beyond the simple enjoy
ment of their work, without considering whether it
will ever bring them any farther returns.
The work of the girls in the joint schools has
done much to force up the standard in the exclu
sively girls’ schools. These schools could not afford
the disparaging comparison. So the teachers intro
duce the same studies as are found in the joint
�22
Joint Education of
schools, and do the best they can to get as good
work from their girls. But in most of the girls’
schools I have ever visited, the work will not com
pare with the work of girls in the joint schools.
When Dr Fairchild says he does not know a '
single instance in which a coarse, strong-minded
woman, in the disagreeable sense, has been the pro
duct of the Oberlin system of education, it must not
be understood that there have been no women of that
type at Oberlin, for there have been, and Oberlin
lias done much to soften them and refine them,
but it could not wholly change their natures and
previously-acquired habits. Upon this point there
is a pernicious popular delusion, and I am at a loss
to account for its origin. It is not association with
men that developes this type of character. The
reverse of this is the case, as Dr Fairchild has
indicated. It is true that many highly-intellectual
and highly-educated women have been peculiar,
have developed peculiarities or idiosyncrasies of
character or habit which lessened their companion
able and womanly attractiveness, but these women
have generally worked by themselves, away from
society, apart from the companionship of men.
Joint schools are the most complete corrective of
these tendencies. Whatever elevates women in the
eyes of men they are disposed to cultivate in the
presence of men, and whatever elevates men in the
eyes of women they cultivate in the presence of
women. There is little danger of careless toilet
with young women who are constantly meeting
young men; little danger of angular movement, of
unamiable sharpness, of egotism, and pronounced
self-assertion.
The disagreeable women, the women contemp-
�Toung Men and Women.
23
tuously called strong-minded, are women who have
not known a genial social atmosphere. Crotchety
men and crotchety women are the product of isola
tion from society, and formerly women could not
mount the heights of knowledge except in isolation.
The attractive women, the women who seem to have
a genius for womanliness, are the women who have
been much in the society of men,—women at court,
women in political and diplomatic circles, women
who are familiar with the thought and’ experience
of men, women who talk with men and work with
men.
Social intercourse at these joint schools is not of
course left to chance. Girls and boys need and get
as careful attention at school as in their homes.
Usually they enter and leave the school building
by different doors, and indeed meet only when they
are receiving instruction from the teachers, where
they occupy separate forms on different sides of the
room. Among the older pupils, at all times, except
at the lecture hours, the girls usually have their own
rooms and the boys theirs,'and no communication
between them is possible, except as the teachers
choose to grant permission, which is not asked with
out explaining the occasion. The boys do not
appear to care very much to talk to the girls, at
least they would not be willing to have it seen that
they did. At the boarding-schools the young men
and young women usually have their private apart
ments in different buildings, but meet in a common
dining-hall in the building occupied by the young
■ women. Here they arrange themselves as they
like, the size of the company and the presence of
teachers being quite sufficient to exclude objection
able manners. At the times allowed for recreation
�24
.•
Joint Education of
the arrangements are such as to preclude for the
most part opportunities for young men and young
women to meet, though there are very frequent
receptions at .the homes of the professors or at the
general parlours, when they meet as they would at
any ordinary social party. At a few of the smaller
boarding-schools much more freedom, of intercourse
has been allowed, and with very admirable results ;
but this requires great wisdom and care on the part
of the teachers, more than they are generally able
to give in a large school. Where the pupils live at
home no very especial care is required on the part
of the teachers, further than would under any
circumstances be necessary to secure general good
order.
This system of education developes self-reliance
and a sense of responsibility, to such a degree that,
as I quoted from Dr Fairchild, it is a constant sur
prise to see how little direction they need. A good
many times while I was at Antioch College, young
men who had got into disgrace, or had been dis
missed from young men’s colleges, were sent there
to be reclaimed from their bad habits, and it is
surprising what effect this home-like association
had upon them.
I have already mentioned Michigan University
as the best institution that has as yet opened its
doors to women. This was done three years ago.
For ten years the question had been pending before
the trustees. A letter was addressed to Horace
Mann, asking for minute information concerning
the working of Antioch, and seeking counsel in
reference to the advisability of attempting the
tame plan at the Michigan University. Mr Mann
replied, that though he was an ardent advocate
�Toung Men and Women. '
25
of joint education and was satisfied with the
results achieved at Antioch, he should be afraid
to attempt the plan in a large town, where college
residence was not required. This ‘letter settled
the matter for the time. The trustees said:—
“ We cannot, endanger the morality of our students,
and the reputation of our institution, to accommo
date the few women who wish to come. We give
them our sympathy, but can at present do nothing
more.” But every now and then, with the change
of trustees, the question was revived. The men of
this new rich State felt ashamed to do so much less
for their daughters than for their sons, and they
were particularly sensitive to the argument that the
privileges of the institution could be extended to
the young women with almost no increase in the
expenses. Three years ago the opposition found
itself in the minority, and a resolution was passed
admitting women to all the classes of the university.
The dangers Horace Mann feared have not, and
in all probability will not come. Even the young
men, who in anticipation dreaded an invasion of
women into their realm of free-and-easy habits,
now unite in the most cordial approval of the plan.
They find a genial element added to their college
life in place of a chafing restraint.
The first year only one woman came into the
Arts-classes. This bold venturer was the daughter
of a deceased professor, by whom she had been
trained up to a point a good deal in advance of the
requisites for entrance. This enabled her to step at
once into the front rank of the class of two hundred
young men, who had been in the university a year
before her. No sooner was she there than the
dread and anticipated restraint on the part of the
�26
*
'Joint Education of
young men were forgotten, and the most chivalric
feeling sprang up in its place.
For a whole year Miss Stockwell was alone in
the Arts-classes among seven or eight hundred young
men, yet nothing ever occurred to make her feel in
the slightest degree uncomfortable. She took her
B.A. degree last summer as the first Greek scholar
in the university. There are now a hundred young
women or more in the various departments of
the university. The Professor of Civil Engineer
ing has been in the habit of giving to his class
every year a particular mathematical problem,
a sort of pons asinorum, as a test of their
ability. Not once during fifteen years had any
member of the class solved it, though the professor
states that during that time he has propounded it
to fifteen hundred young men. Last year, as usual,
the old problem was again presented to the class.
A Miss White alone, of all the class, brought in the
solution. The best student in the Law school last
year was a woman.
I could tell you many other stories of the suc
cesses of women in these joint schools, but it would
not be safe to conclude from these accounts that the
young women in America are superior to the young
men ; for, as you would naturally suppose, the few
women who at present avail themselves of university
training, in opposition to the popular notion of what
is wise and becoming, are for the most part above
the average of the women of the country. I think
I may say, however, that girls are a little more
likely to lead the classes in the schools than boys
are. They are, perhaps, a little more conscientious
in doing the work assigned them, and have a little
more school ambition.
�Toung Men and Women.
27
I quote the following from the Annual Report of
the Michigan University for the year ending 1872 :—
■ “ In the Medical Department the women receive instruc
tion by themselves. In the other departments all instruction
is given to both sexes in common.
“ It is manifestly not wise to leap to hasty generalisations
from our short experience in furnishing education to both
sexes in our university. But I think all w’ho have been
familiar with the inner life of the university for the past
three years will admit that, thus far, no reason for doubting
the wisdom of the action of the trustees in opening the uni
versity to women has appeared.
“Hardly one of the many embarrassments which some
have feared have confronted us. The young women have
addressed themselves to their work with great zeal, and have
shown themselves quite capable of meeting the demands of
severe studies as successfully as their classmates of the other
sex. Their work, so far, does not evince less variety of apti
tude or less power of grappling even with the higher mathe
matics than we find in the young men. They receive no
favour, and desire none. They are subjected to precisely the
same tests as the men. Nor does their work seem to put a
dangerous strain upon their physical powers. Their absences
by reason of illness do not proportionably exceed those of the
men. Their presence has not called for the enactment of a
single new law, nor for the slightest change in our methods of
government or grade of work.
“If we are asked still to regard the reception of women
into our classes as an experiment, it must certainly be deemed
a most hopeful experiment. The numerous inquiries that
have been sent to us from various parts of this country, and
even from England, concerning the results of their admission
to the university, show that a profound and wide-spread
interest in the subject has been awakened.”
I can say for myself, that I have never known
any one who has spent a few days at one of these
colleges who has not become a convert to the
scheme.
There is in America a strong and constantly
growing conviction, that the best plan for educating
.
�28
"Joint Education of
both boys and girls is for them to reside at home
and attend day schools; that this avoids the defects
attendant upon the system of governesses and
tutors, and also the dangers that are inherent in
the congregated life of boarding-schools; and as
American families seldom leave home for, at most,
more than a few weeks in midsummer, this plan is
easily carried out. In accordance with this con
viction, the citizens of Boston have recently erected
and endowed a large university in the centre of
their city, although the time-honoured Harvard
stands scarcely two miles beyond their precincts.
The Boston University, which starts with larger
available funds than those of Harvard, will be
opened this autumn, and as a second step in the
direction of the popular educational sentiment, the
trustees have decided to offer its advantages and
honours to young women on the same conditions as
to young men.
There is evidently a disposition in America to
open all lines of study to women, and a few women
have entered each of the three learned professions,
but the time is too short and the number too small
for us to be able as yet to generalise upon the fitness
of women for professions, or their inclination to
choose them.
Most of our women—I think I may almost say
all of our women—expect to marry, and most of
them do marry. We have not that redundancy of
women to trouble and puzzle the advocates of
domesticity that you have here; and as fortunes are
more easily made, men are not timid in incurring
domestic responsibilities. As a consequence of this,
the industrial occupations that women seek, other
than domestic, are expected to be only temporary,
�Young Men and Women.
ig
and are such as may be entered upon without
much especial professional training, and may be
given up without involving much sacrifice of pre
vious study or discipline. I think I may say there
is a very general disposition to seek those that will
especially contribute to their fitness for domestic
life.
This brings me to a peculiar feature of American
education—the prevalence of women teachers. In
the public schools of St Louis there are forty men
teachers and over four hundred women teachers;
only about one-twelfth of the whole number are
men, and this I think would be about the general
average for the cities of the north. The primary
schools are taught exclusively by women—most of
the grammar schools have only a man at the head of
them, and in the high schools there is about an
equal number of men and women.
In two of the most successful grammar schools in
St Louis there are only women teachers. Recent
experiments in placing women at the head of several
of the grammar schools in Cleveland, Ohio, give
still stronger confirmation of the marked governing
power of women as contrasted with men.
Women teachers have been employed in the
schools in preference to men as a matter of economy,
but underneath this cloak of economy an unex
pected virtue has been found. It is now pretty
well settled that with equal experience and scholarly
attainments women teach better than men do, and
that they manage the pupils with more tact; that
is, they succeed in getting from the pupils what
they want, with more ease and less disturbance of
temper.
Where women do precisely the, same work as
�jo
Joint Education of
men in teaching, they get less pay. Wages have
followed the law of supply and demand. The guar
dians of the public school treasures have generally
not felt at liberty to offer more than the regular
market prices for work. But I am glad to say the
more enlightened public feeling is beginning to make
a change in this respect. A few women are paid
men’s wages—are paid what they ought to have,
rather than what they could command in an open
market.
Teaching in America, as I have indicated, is for
the most part a temporary occupation ; it is chiefly
done by young people between the ages of eighteen
and thirty who have no intention of making it a
profession. The women marry and the men enter
other occupations. How much the schools lose by
the immaturity and inexperience of the teachers it
is difficult to estimate accurately; but that they
gain much by the freshness and enthusiasm of these
young minds is unquestionable. Young teachers
get into closer sympathy with pupils, and can more
readily understand the movements of their minds
and apprehend their difficulties.
The plan of teaching for a few years is very
popular among young people, from the general
belief that it furnishes the best possible discipline
for a successful life. This experience in teaching is
considered valuable for young men, but still more
valuable for young women, and many young women
who have no need to earn money teach for a few
years .after leaving school, sometimes from their
own choice, but much oftener from the choice of
their parents, who wish to supplement the daughter’s
education with the more varied discipline that
teaching affords.
�Toung Men and Women.
31
Thus the teaching of women is encouraged from
four considerations :—
First. According to the present arrangement of
wages it is economical.
Second. Women seem to have an especial natural
aptitude for the work as compared with men.
Third. The general welfare of society demands
that wage-giving industries shall be provided for
women.
Fourth. Of all the employments offered to women,
teaching seems the best suited to fit them for
domestic life, the life that lies before the most of
them, and so positive are its claims in this direction
that it is being sought as an employment with that
single end in view.
A few years of teaching forms so prominent a
feature in the education of leading American
women, that I could not omit it in any general
consideration of this subject.
Note.—The Times of' January 3rd, 1874, gives the following
extracts from “Circulars of Information,” just published by the
United States Bureau of Education:—The total number of
degrees conferred in 1873 by the Higher Colleges was 4,493, and
376 honorary. One hundred and ninety-one ladies received
degrees. Illinois has thirteen Colleges, in which women have
the same or equal facilities with men ; Wisconsin has four, Iowa
three, Missouri four, Ohio ten, and Indiana nine; New York has
seven, and Pennsylvania, seven.
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
��
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The joint education of young men and women in the American schools and colleges : being a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on 27th of April, 1873
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Beedy, Mary E.
Sunday Lecture Society
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 31 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Advertisement for Sunday Lecture Society on p.[2], delivered at St George's Hall, Langham Place. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Haymarket, London. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Sunday Lecture Society
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Education
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Coeducation-United States
Education
NSS
Women
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PRICE SIXPENCE
&
EDUCATION:
INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL
BY
,
Herbert Spencer
WATTS & Co.,.
Jr
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
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EDUCATION
f
�BY THE SAME AUTHOR
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�EDUCATION:
INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL
HERBERT SPENCER
If this book is returned to
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1903
��PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE
In the preface to the cheap edition of this work, issued
in 1878, the author says :—•
The growing demand for the original edition of these Chapters
on Education has suggested to me the propriety of issuing an
edition that shall come within easy reach of a larger public.
That the work has had considerable currency in the United
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��J
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
•
9
CHAPTER II.
INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
-
40
-
69
CHAPTER III.
MORAL EDUCATION
....
CHAPTER IV.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
92
i
J
1
1
1
�EDUCATION AT ETON, 1842-5
“ Balston, our tutor, was a good scholar after the fashion of the day,
and famous for Latin verse; but he was essentially a commonplace
don. ‘ Stephen major,’ he once said to my brother, 1 if you do not
take more pains, how can you ever expect to write good longs and
shorts ? If you do not write good longs and shorts, how can you
ever be a man of taste? If you are not a man of taste, how can
you ever hope to be of use in the world ?’ ”
( The Life of Sir Tames Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., by his brother, Leslie Stephen,
pp. 80-1.)
�EDUCATION
CHAPTER I.
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH ?
It has been truly remarked that, in
order of time, decoration precedes dress.
Among people who submit to great physi
cal suffering that they may have themselves
handsomely tattooed, extremes of tempera
ture are borne with but little attempt at
mitigation. Humboldt tells us that an
Orinoco Indian, though quite regardless
of bodily comfort, will yet labour for a
fortnight to purchase pigment wherewith
to make himself admired; and that the
same woman who would not hesitate to
leave her hut without a fragment of
clothing on, would not dare to commit
such a breach of decorum as to go out
unpainted. Voyagers find that coloured
beads and trinkets are much more prized
by wild tribes, than are calicoes or
broadcloths. And the anecdotes we have
of the ways in which, when shirts and
coats are given, savages turn them to
some ludicrous display, show how com
pletely the idea of ornament predominates
over that of use. Nay, there are still
more extreme illustrations : witness the
fact narrated by Capt. Speke of his
African attendants, who strutted about
in their goat-skin mantles when the
weather was fine, but when it was wet,
took them off, folded them up, and went
about naked, shivering in the rain!
Indeed, the facts of aboriginal life seem
to indicate that dress is developed out
of decorations. And when we remember
that even among ourselves most think
more about the fineness of the fabric
than its warmth, and more about the cut
than the convenience—when we see that
the function is still in great measure
subordinated to the appearance — we
have further reason for inferring such an
origin.
It is curious that the like relations
hold with the mind. Among mental
as among bodily acquisitions, the orna
mental comes before the useful. Not
only in times past, but almost as much
in our own era, that knowledge which
conduces to personal well-being has been
postponed to that which brings applause.
In the Greek schools, music, poetry,
rhetoric, and a philosophy which, until
Socrates taught, had but little bearing
upon action, were the dominant subjects ;
while knowledge aiding the arts of life
had a very subordinate place. And in
our own universities and schools at the
present moment, the like antithesis holds.
We are guilty of something like a plati
tude when we say that throughout his
after-career, a boy, in nine cases out of
ten, applies his Latin and Greek to no
practical purposes. The remark is trite
that in his shop, or his office, in managing
- his estate or his family, in playing his
part as director of a bank or a railway,
he is very little aided by this knowledge
he took so many years to acquire—so
�IO
EDUCATION
little, that generally the greater part of it
drops out of his memory; and if he
occasionally vents a Latin quotation, or
alludes to some Greek myth, it is less to
throw light on the topic in hand than
for the sake of effect. If we inquire
what is the real motive for giving boys a
classical education, we find it to be
simply conformity to public opinion.
Men dress their children’s minds as they
do their bodies, in the prevailing fashion.
As the Orinoco Indian puts on paint
before leaving his hut, not with a view
to any direct benefit, but because he
would be ashamed to be seen without
it; so, a boy’s drilling in Latin and
Greek is insisted on, not because of
their intrinsic value, but that he may not
be disgraced by being found ignorant of
them—that he may have “the education
of a gentleman ”—the badge marking a
certain social position, and bringing a
consequent respect.
This parallel is still more clearly
displayed in the case of the other sex.
In the treatment of both mind and body,
the decorative element has continued to
predominate in a greater degree among
women than among men. Originally,
personal adornment occupied the atten
tion of both sexes equally. In these
latter days of civilisation, however, we
see that in the dress of men the regard
for appearance has in a considerable
degree yielded to the regard for comfort;
while in their education the useful has
of late been trenching on the ornamental.
In neither direction has this change
gone so far with women. The wearing
of ear-rings, finger-rings, bracelets; the
elaborate dressings of the hair; the
still occasional use of paint; the
immense labour bestowed in making
habiliments sufficiently attractive; and
the great discomfort that will be sub
mitted to for the sake of conformity;
show how greatly, in the attiring of
women, the desire of approbation over
rides the desire for warmth and con
venience. And similarly in their educa
tion, the immense preponderance of
“ accomplishments ” proves how here,
too, use is subordinated to display.
Dancing, deportment, the piano, singing,
drawing—what a large space do these
occupy 1 If you ask why Italian and
German are learnt, you will find that,
under all the sham reasons given, the
real reason is, that a knowledge of those
tongues is thought ladylike. It is not
that the books written in them may be
utilised, which they scarcely ever are ;
but that Italian and German songs may
be sung, and that the extent of attainment
may bring whispered admiration. The
births, deaths, and marriages of kings,
and other like historic trivialities, are
committed to memory, not because of
any direct benefits that can possibly
result from knowing them ; but because
society considers them parts of a good
education—because the absence of such
knowledge may bring the contempt of
others. When we have named reading,
writing, spelling, grammar, arithmetic,
and sewing, we have named about all
the things a girl is taught with a view
to their actual uses in life; and even
some of these have more reference to
the good opinion of others than to
immediate personal welfare.
Thoroughly to realise the truth that
with the mind as with the body the
ornamental precedes the useful, it is
requisite to glance at its rationale. This
lies in the fact that, from the far past
down even to the present, social needs
have subordinated individual needs,
and that the chief social need has been
the control of individuals. It is not, as
we commonly suppose, that there are no
governments but those of monarchs, and
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
parliaments, and constituted authorities.
These acknowledged governments are
supplemented by other unacknowledged
ones, that grow up in all circles, in which
every man or woman strives to be king
or queen or lesser dignitary. To get
above some and be reverenced by them,
and to propitiate those who are above
us, is the universal struggle in which the
chief energies of life are expended. By
the accumulation of wealth, by style of
living, by beauty of dress, by display of
knowledge of intellect, each tries to
subjugate others; and so aids in weaving
that ramified network of restraints by
which society is kept in order. It is not
the savage chief only, who, in formidable
war-paint, with scalps at his belt, aims
to strike awe into his inferiors; it is not
only the belle who, by elaborate toilet,
polished manners, and numerous accom
plishments, strives to “make conquests ”;
but the scholar, the historian, the philo
sopher, use their acquirements to the
same end. We are none of us content
with quietly unfolding our own indivi
dualities to the full in all directions; but
have a restless craving to impress our
individualities upon others, and in some
way subordinate them. And this it is
which determines the character of our
education. Not what knowledge is of
most real worth, is the consideration;
but what will bring most applause,
honour, respect—what will most conduce
to social position and influence—what
will be most imposing. As, throughout
life, not what we are, but what we shall
be thought, is the question; so in
education, the question is, not the
intrinsic value of knowledge, so much
as its extrinsic effects on others. And
this being our dominant idea, direct
utility is scarcely more regarded than by
the barbarian when filing his teeth and
staining his nails.
ii
If there requires further evidence of
the rude, undeveloped character of
our education, we have it in the fact
that the comparative worths of different
kinds of knowledge have been as yet
scarcely even discussed — much less
discussed in a methodic way with
definite results. Not only is it that no
standard of relative values has yet been
agreed upon; but the existence of any
such standard has not been conceived in
a clear manner. And not only is it
that the existence of such a standard
has not been clearly conceived : but the
need for it seems to have been scarcely
even felt. Men read books on this topic,
and attend lectures on that; decide that
their children shall be instructed in
these branches of knowledge, and shall
not be instructed in those; and all under
the guidance of mere custom, or liking,
or prejudice; without ever considering
the enormous importance of determining
in some rational way what things are
really most worth learning. It is true
that in all circles we hear occasional
remarks on the importance of this or the
other order of information. But whether
the degree of its importance justifies
the expenditure of the time needed to
acquire it; and whether there are not
things of more importance to which
such time might be better devoted; are
queries which, if raised at all, are dis
posed of quite summarily, according to
personal predilections. It is true also,
that now and then, we hear revived the
standing controversy respecting the com
parative merits of classics and mathe
matics. This controversy, however, is
carried on in an empirical manner, with
no reference to an ascertained criterion;
and the question at issue is insignificant
when compared with the general question
of which it is part. To suppose that
�12
EDUCATION
deciding whether a mathematical or a
classical education is the best, is deciding
what is the proper curriculum, is much the
same thing as to suppose that the whole
of dietetics lies in ascertaining whether or
not bread is more nutritive than potatoes!
The question which we contend is of
such transcendent moment, is, not
whether such or such knowledge is of
worth, but what is its relative worth?
When they have named certain advan
tages which a given course of study has
secured them, persons are apt to assume
that they have justified themselves :
quite forgetting that the adequateness
of the advantages is the point to be
judged. There is, perhaps, not a subject
to which men devote attention that has
not some value. A year diligently spent
in getting up heraldry, would very
possibly give a little further insight into
ancient manners and morals. Any one
who should learn the distances between
all the towns in England, might, in the
course of his life, find one or two of the
thousand facts he had acquired of some
slight service when arranging a journey.
Gathering together all the small gossip
of a county, profitless occupation as it
would be, might yet occasionally help to
establish some useful fact—say, a good
example of hereditary transmission. But
in these cases, every one would admit
that there was no proportion between
the required labour and the probable
benefit.
No one would tolerate the
proposal to devote some years of a boy’s
time to getting such information, at the
cost of much more valuable information
which he might else have got. And if
here the test of relative value is appealed
to and held conclusive, then should it be
appealed to and held conclusive through
out. Had we time to master all subjects
we need not be particular. To quote
the old song
Could a man be secure
That his days would endure
As of old, for a thousand long years,
What things might he know !
What deeds might he do !
And all without hurry or care.
“But we that have but span-long lives”
must ever bear in mind our limited time
for acquisition. And remembering how
narrowly this time is limited, not only
by the shortness of life, but also still
more by the business of life, we ought
to be especially solicitous to employ what
time we have to the greatest advantage.
Before devoting years to some subject
which fashion or fancy suggests, it is
surely wise to weigh with great care the
worth of the results, as compared with
the worth of various alternative results
which the same years might bring if
otherwise applied.
In education, then, this is the question
of questions, which it is high time we
discussed in some methodic way. The
first in importance, though the last to be
considered, is the problem—how to
decide among the conflicting claims of
various subjects on our attention. Before
there can be a rational curriculum, we
must settle which things it most concerns
us to know; or, to use a word of Bacon’s,
now unfortunately obsolete—we must
determine the relative values of know
ledges.
To this end, a measure of value is the
first requisite. And happily, respecting
the true measure of value, as expressed
in general terms, there can be no dispute.
Everyone, in contending for the worth of
any particular order of information, does
so by showing its bearing upon some part
of life. In reply to the question—“ Of
what use is it ?” the mathematician,
linguist, naturalist, or philosopher, ex
plains the way in which his learning
beneficially influences action—saves from
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
evil or secures good—conduces to happi
ness. When the teacher of writing has
pointed out how great an aid writing is
to success in business—that is, to the
obtainment of sustenance—that is, to
satisfactory living; he is held to have
proved his case. And when the collector
of dead facts (say a numismatist) fails to
make clear any appreciable effects which
these facts can produce on human
welfare, he is obliged to admit that they
are comparatively valueless. All then,
either directly or by implication, appeal
to this as the ultimate test.
How to live ?—that is the essential
question for us. Not how to live in the
mere material sense only, but in the
widest sense. The general problem
which comprehends every special problem
is—the right ruling of conduct in all
directions under all circumstances. In
what way to treat the body; in what
way to treat the mind; in what way to
manage our affairs ; in what way to bring
up a family; in what way to behave as
a citizen; in what way to utilise those
sources of happiness which nature
supplies—how to use all our faculties
to the greatest advantage of ourselves
and others—how to live completely ?
And this being the great thing needful
for us to learn, is, by consequence, the
great thing which education has to teach.
To prepare us for complete living is the
function which education has to dis
charge ; and the only rational mode of
judging of an educational course is, to
judge in what degree it discharges such
function.
• This test, never used in its entirety,
but rarely even partially used, and used
then in a vague, half conscious way, has
to be applied consciously, methodically,
and throughout all cases. It behoves us
to set before ourselves, and ever to keep
clearly in view, complete living as the
13
end to be achieved; so that in bringing
up our children we may choose subjects
and methods of instruction, with deli
berate reference to this end. Not only
ought we to cease from the mere unthink
ing adoption of the current fashion in
education, which has no better warrant
than any other fashion; but we must
also rise above that rude, empirical style
of judging displayed by those more intel
ligent people who do bestow some care
in overseeing the cultivation of their
children’s minds. It must not suffice
simply to think that such or such infor
mation will be useful in after life, or that
this kind of knowledge is of more prac
tical value than that; but we must seek
out some process of estimating their
respective values, so that as far as possible
we may positively know which are most
deserving of attention.
Doubtless the task is difficult—perhaps
never to be more than approximately
achieved. But, considering the vastness
of the interests at stake, its difficulty is
no reason for pusillanimously passing it
by; but rather for devoting every energy
to its mastery. And if we only proceed
systematically, we may very soon get at
results of no small moment.
Our first step must obviously be to
classify, in the order of their importance,
the leading kinds of activity which con
stitute human life. They may be naturally
arranged into :—1. those activities which
directly minister to self-preservation; 2.
those activities which, by securing the
necessaries of life, indirectly minister to
self-preservation; 3. those activities which
have for their end the rearing and dis
cipline of offspring; 4. those activities
which are involved in the maintenance
of proper social and political relations;
5. those miscellaneous activities which
fill up the leisure part of life, devoted to
the gratification of the tastes and feelings.
�14
EDUCATION
That these stand in something like
their true order of subordination, it needs
no long consideration to show. The
actions and precautions by which, from
moment to moment, we secure personal
safety, must clearly take precedence of all
others. Could there be a man, ignorant
as an infant of surrounding objects and
movements, or how to guide himself
among them, he would pretty certainly
lose his life the first time he went into
the street; notwithstanding any amount
of learning he might have on other
matters. And as entire ignorance in all
other directions would be less promptly
fatal than entire ignorance in this direc
tion, it must be admitted that knowledge
immediately conducive to self-preserva
tion is of primary importance.
That next after direct self-preservation
comes the indirect self-preservation which
consists in acquiring the means of living,
none will question. That a man’s indus
trial functions must be considered before
his parental ones, is manifest from the
fact that, speaking generally, the dis
charge of the parental functions is made
possible only by the previous discharge
of the industrial ones. The power of
self-maintenance necessarily preceding
the power of maintaining offspring, it
follows that knowledge needful for self
maintenance has stronger claims than
knowledge needful for family welfare—
is second in value to none save know
ledge needful for immediate self-preser
vation.
As the family comes before the State
in order of time—as the bringing up of
children is possible before the State
exists, or when it has ceased to be,
whereas the State is rendered possible
only by the bringing up of children; it
follows that the duties of the parent
demanti closer attention than those of
the citizen. Or, to use a further argu
ment—since the goodness of a society
ultimately depends on the nature of its
citizens; and since the nature of its
citizens is more modifiable by early train
ing than by anything else; we must
conclude that the welfare of the family
underlies the welfare of society. And
hence knowledge directly conducing to
the first, must take precedence of know
ledge directly conducing to the last.
Those various forms of pleasurable
occupation which fill up the leisure left
by graver occupations—the enjoyments
of music, poetry, painting, etc.—mani
festly imply a pre-existing society. Not
only is a considerable development of
them impossible without a long-estab
lished social union; but their very sub
ject-matter consists in great part of social
sentiments and sympathies. Not only
does society supply the conditions to
their growth; but also the ideas and
sentiments they express. And, conse
quently, that part of human conduct
which constitutes good citizenship, is of
more moment than that which goes out
in accomplishments or exercise of the
tastes; and, in education, preparation
for the one must rank before preparation
for the other.
Such then, we repeat, is something
like the rational order of subordination:—
That education which prepares for direct
self-preservation; that which prepares for
indirect self-preservation; that which
prepares for parenthood; that which pre
pares for citizenship ; that which prepares
for the miscellaneous refinements of life.
We do not mean to say that these
divisions are definitely separable. We
do not deny that they are intricately
entangled with each other, in such way
that there can be no training for any that
is not in some measure a training for all.
Nor do we question that of each division
there are portions more important than
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
certain portions of the preceding divi
sions : that, for instance, a man of much
skill in business but little other faculty,
may fall further below the standard of
complete living than one of but moderate
ability in money-getting but great judg
ment as a parent; or that exhaustive
information bearing on right social
action, joined with entire want of general
culture in literature and the fine arts, is
less desirable than a more moderate
share of the one joined with some of the
other. But, after making due qualifica
tions, there still remain these broadlymarked divisions; and it still continues
substantially true that these divisions
subordinate one another in the foregoing
order, because the corresponding divi
sions of life make one another possible in
that order.
Of course the ideal of education is—
complete preparation in all these divi
sions. But failing this ideal, as in our
phase of civilisation every one must do
more or less, the aim should be to main
tain a due proportion between the degrees
of preparation in each. Not exhaustive
cultivation in any one, supremely impor
tant though it may be—not even an ex
clusive attention to the two, three, or
four divisions of greatest importance;
but an attention to all;—greatest where
the value is greatest; less where the
value is less; least where the value is
least.
For the average man (not to
forget the cases in which peculiar apti
tude for some one department of know
ledge, rightly makes pursuit of that one
the bread-winning occupation)—for the
average man, we say, the desideratum is,
a training that approaches nearest to
perfection in the things which most sub
serve complete living, and falls more and
more below perfection in the things that
have more and more remote bearings on
complete living.
15
In regulating education by this stan
dard, there are some general considera
tions that should be ever present to us.
The worth of any kind of culture, as
aiding complete living, may be ‘either
necessary or more or less contingent.
There is knowledge of intrinsic value;
knowledge of quasi-intrinsic value ; and
knowledge of conventional value. Such
facts as that sensations of numbness and
tingling commonly precede paralysis,
that the resistance of water to a body
moving through it varies as the square of
the velocity, that chlorine is a disinfec
tant—these, and the truths of Science in
general, are of intrinsic value; they will
bear on human conduct ten thousand
years hence as they do now. The extra
knowledge of our own language, which
is given by an acquaintance with Latin
and Greek, may be considered to have a
value that is quasi-intrinsic: it must exist
for us and for other races whose lan
guages owe much to these sources; but
will last only as long as our languages
last. While that kind of information
which, in our schools, usurps the name
History—the mere tissue ci names and
dates and dead unmeaning events—has
a conventional value only : it has not
the remotest bearing on any of our
actions; and is of use only for the avoid
ance of those unpleasant criticisms
which current opinion passes upon its
absence. Of course, as those facts which
concern all mankind throughout all time
must be held of greater moment than
those which concern only a portion of
them during a limited era, and of far
greater moment than those which con
cern only a portion of them during the
continuance of a fashion; it follows that in
a rational estimate, knowledge of intrinsic
worth must, other things equal, take pre
cedence of knowledge, that is of quasiintrinsic or conventional worth.
�i6
EDUCATION
One further preliminary. Acquirement
of every kind has two values—value as
knowledge and value as discipline. Besides
its use for guiding conduct, the acqui
sition of each order of facts has also its
use as mental exercise; and its effects as
a preparative for complete living have to
be considered under both these heads.
These, then, are the general ideas with
which we must set out in discussing a
curriculum:—Life as divided into several
kinds of activity of successively decreas
ing importance; the worth of each order
of facts as regulating these several kinds
of activity, intrinsically, quasi-intrinsically,
and conventionally ; and their regulative
influences estimated both as knowledge
and discipline.
these, and various other pieces of infor
mation needful for the avoidance of
death or accident, it is ever learning.
And when, a few years later, the energies
go out in running, climbing, and jump
ing, in games of strength and games of
skill, we see in all these actions by which
the muscles are developed, the percep
tions sharpened, and the judgment
quickened, a preparation for the safe
conduct of the body among surrounding
objects and movements; and for meeting
those greater dangers that occasionally
occur in the lives of all. Being thus,
as we say, so well cared for by Nature,
this fundamental education needs com
paratively little care from us. What we are
chiefly called upon to see, is, that there
shall be free scope for gaining this
Happily, that all-important part of experience and receiving this discipline
education "which goes to secure direct —that there shall be no such thwarting
self-preservation, is in great part already of Nature as that by which stupid school
provided for. Too momentous to be left mistresses commonly prevent the girls in
to our blundering, Nature takes it into their charge from the spontaneous physi
her own hands. While yet in its nurse’s cal activities they would indulge in; and
arms, the infant, by hiding its face and so render them comparatively incapable
crying at the sight of a stranger, shows of taking care of themselves in circum
the dawning instinct to attain safety by stances of peril.
flying from that which is unknown and
This, however, is by no means all that
may be dangerous; and when it can is comprehended in the education that
walk, the terror it manifests if an un prepares for direct self-preservation.
familiar dog comes near, or the screams Besides guarding the body against
with which it runs to its mother, after mechanical damage or destruction, it
any startling sight or sound, shows this has to be guarded against injury from
instinct further developed. Moreover,
other causes—against the disease and
knowledge subserving direct self-preser death that follow breaches of physiologic
vation is that which it is chiefly busied law. For complete living it is necessary,
in acquiring from hour to hour. How not only that sudden annihilations of
to balance its body; how to control its life shall be warded off; but also that
movements so as to avoid collisions : there shall be escaped the incapacities
what objects are hard, and will hurt if and the slow annihilation which unwise
struck; what objects are heavy, and in habits entail. As, without health and
jure if they fall on the limbs; which energy, the industrial, the parental, the
things will bear the weight of the body,
social, and all other activities become
and which not; the pains inflicted by more or less impossible ; it is clear
fire, by missiles, by sharp instruments— that this secondary kind of direct self
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
preservation is only less important than
the primary kind; and that knowledge
tending to secure it should rank very
high.
It is true that here, too, guidance is
in some measure ready supplied. By
our various physical sensations and
desires, Nature has insured a tolerable
conformity to the chief requirements.
Fortunately for us, want of food, great
heat, extreme cold, produce promptings
too peremptory to be disregarded. And
would men habitually obey these and all
like promptings when less strong, com
paratively few evils would arise. If
fatigue of body or brain were in every
case followed by desistance; if the
oppression produced by a close atmos
phere always led to ventilation ; if there
were no eating without hunger, or drink
ing without thirst; then would the
system be but seldom out of working
order. But so profound an ignorance is
there of the laws of life, that men do not
even know that their sensations are their
natural guides, and (when not rendered
morbid by long-continued disobedience)
their trustworthy guides. So that though,
to speak teleologically, Nature has pro
vided efficient safeguards to health, lack
of knowledge makes them in a great
measure useless.
If any one doubts the importance of
an acquaintance with the principles of
physiology,as a means to complete living,
let him look around and see how many
men and women he can find in middle
or later life who are thoroughly well.
Only occasionally do we meet with an
example of vigorous health continued
to old age; hourly we meet with
examples of acute disorder, chronic
ailment, general debility, premature
‘decrepitude. Scarcely is there one to
whom you put the question, who has
not, in the course of his life, brought
17
upon himself illnesses which a little in
formation would have saved him from.
Here is a case of heart-disease consequent
on a rheumatic fever that followed reck
less exposure. There is a case of eyes
spoiled for life by over-study. Yesterday
the account was of one whose longenduring lameness was brought on by
continuing, spite of the pain, to use a
knee after it had been slightly injured.
And to-day we are told of another who
has had to lie by for years, because he
did not know that the palpitation he
suffered under resulted from overtaxed
brain. Now we hear of an irremediable
injury which followed some silly feat of
strength; and, again, of a constitution
that has never recovered from the effects
of excessive work needlessly undertaken.
While on every side we see the perpetual
minor ailments which accompany feeble
ness. Not to dwell on the pain, the
weariness, the gloom, the waste of time
and money thus entailed, only consider
how greatly ill-health hinders the dis
charge of all duties—makes business
often impossible, and always more diffi
cult ; produces an irritability fatal to the
right management of children; puts the
functions of citizenship out of the
question; and makes amusement a bore.
Is it not clear that the physical sins—
partly our forefathers’ and partly our own
—which produce this ill-health, deduct
more from complete living than anything
else ? and to a great extent make life a
failure and a burden instead of a bene
faction and a pleasure ?
Nor is this all. Life, besides being
thus immensely deteriorated, is also cut
short. It is not true, as we commonly
suppose, that after a disorder or disease
from which we have recovered, we are
as before. No disturbance of the normal
course of the functions can pass away
and leave things exactly as they were.
�ï8
EDUCATION
A permanent damage is done—not
immediately appreciable, it may be, but
still there; and along with other such
items which Nature in her strict account
keeping never drops, it will tell against
us to the inevitable shortening of our
days.
Through the accumulation of
small injuries it is that constitutions are
commonly undermined, and break down,
long before their time. And if we call
to mind how far the average .duration of
life falls below the possible duration, we
see how immense is the loss. When,
to the numerous partial deductions which
bad health entails, we add this great
final deduction, it results that ordinarily
one-half of life is thrown away.
Hence, knowledge which subserves
direct self-preservation by preventing
this loss of health, is of primary import
ance. We do not contend that possession
of such knowledge would by any means
wholly remedy the evil. It is clear that
in our present phase of civilisation, men’s
necessities often compel them to trans
gress. And it is further clear that, even
in the absence of such compulsion, their
inclinations would frequently lead them,
spite of their convictions, to sacrifice
future good to present gratification. But
we do contend that the right knowledge
impressed in the right way would effect
much ; and we further contend that as
the laws of health must be recognised
before they can be fully conformed to,
the imparting of such knowledge must
precede a more rational living—come
when that may. We infer that as vigorous
health and its accompanying high spirits
are larger elements of happiness than any
other things whatever, the teaching how to
maintain them is a teaching that yields
in moment to no other whatever. And
therefore we assert that such a course of
physiology as is needful for the compre
hension of its general truths, and their
bearings on daily conduct, is an all
essential part of a rational education.
Strange that the assertion should need
making! Stranger still that it should
need defending! Yet are there not a
few by whom such a proposition will be
received with something approaching to
derision.
Men who would blush if
caught saying Iphigenia instead of
Iphigenia, or would resent as an insult
any imputation of ignorance respecting
the fabled labours of a fabled demi-god,
show not the slightest shame in confess
ing that they do not know where the
Eustachian tubes are, what are the
actions of the spinal cord, what is
the normal rate of pulsation, or how the
lungs are inflated. While anxious that
their sons should be well up in the
superstitions of two thousand years ago,
they care not that they should be taught
anything about the structure and func
tions of their own bodies—nay, even wish
them not to be so taught. So overwhelm
ing is the influence of established routine !
So terribly in our education does the
ornamental over-ride the useful 1
We need not insist on the value of
that knowledge which aids indirect self
preservation by facilitating the gaining
of a livelihood. This is admitted by all;
and, indeed, by the mass is perhaps too
exclusively regarded as the end of
education. But while every one is ready
to endorse the abstract proposition that
instruction fitting youths for the bus'ness
of life is of high importance, or even
to consider it of supreme importance;
yet scarcely any inquire what instruction
will so fit them. It is true that reading,
writing, and arithmetic are taught with
an intelligent appreciation of their uses.
But when we have said this we have said
nearly all. While the great bulk of what
else is acquired has no bearing on the
industrial activities, an immensity of
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OE MOST WORTH?
information that has a direct bearing on
the industrial activities is entirely passed
over.
For, leaving out only some very small
classes, what are all men employed in ?
They are employed in the production,
preparation and distribution of com
modities. And on what does efficiency
in the production, preparation, and dis
tribution of commodities depend ? It
depends on the use of methods fitted to
the respective natures of these com
modities ; it depends on an adequate
acquaintance with their physical, chemi
cal, and vital properties, as the case may
be ; that is, it depends on Science. This
order of knowledge which is in great
part ignored in our school-courses, is the
order of knowledge underlying the right
performance of those processes by which
civilised life is made possible. Undeni
able as is this truth, there seems to be
no living consciousness of it: its very
familiarity makes it unregarded. To
give due weight to our argument, we
must, therefore, realise this truth to the
reader by a rapid review of the facts.
Passing over the most abstract science,
Logic, on the due guidance by which,
however, the large producer or distributor
depends, knowingly or unknowingly, for
success in his business-forecasts, we come
first to Mathematics. Of this, the most
general division, dealing with number,
guides all industrial activities : be they
those by which processes are adjusted,
or estimates framed, or commodities
bought and sold, or accounts kept. No
one needs to have the value of this
division of abstract science insisted upon.
For the higher arts of construction,
some acquaintance with the more special
division of Mathematics is indispensable.
The village carpenter, who lays out his
work by empirical rules, equally with the
builder of a Britannia Bridge, makes
I?
hourly reference to the laws of space
relations. The surveyor who measures
the land purchased; the architect in
designing a mansion to be built on it;
the builder when laying out the founda
tions ; the masons in cutting the stones ;
and the various artizans who put up the
fittings ; are all guided by geometrical
truths. Railway-making is regulated from
beginning to end by geometry ; alike in
the preparation of plans and sections ; in
staking out the line ; in the mensuration
of cuttings and embankments ; in the
designing and building of bridges,
culverts, viaducts, tunnels, stations.
Similarly with the harbours, docks,
piers, and various engineering and
architectural works that fringe the coasts
and overspread the country, as -well as
the mines that run underneath it. And
now-a-days, even the farmer, for the
correct laying-out of his drains, has
recourse to the level—that is, to
geometrical principles.
Turn next to the Abstract-Concrete
sciences. On the application of the
simplest of these, Mechanics, depends
the success of modem manufactures.
The properties of the lever, the wheeland-axle, etc., are recognised in every
machine, and to machinery in these
times we owe all production. Trace the
history of the breakfast-roll. The soil
out of which it came was drained with
machine-made tiles; the surface was
turned over by a machine ; the wheat
was reaped, thrashed, and winnowed by
machines ; by machinery it was ground
and bolted ; and had the flour been sent
to Gosport, it might have been made
into biscuits by a machine. Look round
the room in which you sit. If modern,
probably the bricks in its walls were
machine-made ; and by machinery the
flooring was sawn and planed, the
mantel-shelf sawn and polished, the
�2Cf
EDUCATION
paper-hangings made and printed. The
veneer on the table, the turned legs of
the chairs, the carpet, the curtains, are
all products of machinery. Your clothing
—plain, figured, or printed—is it not
wholly woven, nay, perhaps even sewed,
by machinery ? And the volume you
are reading—are not its leaves fabricated
by one machine and covered with these
words by another ? Add to which that
for the means of distribution over both
land and sea, we are similarly indebted.
And then observe that according as
knowledge of mechanics is well or ill
applied to these ends, comes success or
failure. The engineer who miscalculates
the strength of materials, builds a bridge
that breaks down. The manufacturer
who uses a bad machine cannot compete
with another whose machine wastes less
in friction and inertia. The ship-builder
adhering to the old model, is outsailed
by one who builds on the mechanicallyjustified wave-line principle. And as the
ability of a nation to hold its own against
other nations, depends on the skilled
activity of its units, we see that on
mechanical knowledge may turn the
national fate.
On ascending from the divisions of
Abstract-Concrete science dealing with
molar forces, to those divisions of it
which deal with molecular forces, we
come to another vast series of applica
tions. To this group of sciences joined
with the preceding groups we owe the
steam-engine, which does the work
of millions of labourers. That section
of physics which formulates the laws of
heat, has taught us how to economise
fuel in various industries : how to increase
the produce of smelting furnaces by
substituting the hot for the cold blast ;
how to ventilate mines ; how to prevent
explosions by using the safety-lamp ; and,
through the thermometer, how to regulate
innumerable processes. That section
which has the phenomena of light for its
subject, gives eyes to the old and the
myopic; aids through the microscope in
detecting diseases and adulterations;
and, by improved lighthouses, prevents
shipwrecks. Researches in electricity
and magnetism have saved innumerable
lives and incalculable property through
the compass ; have subserved many arts
by the electrotype; and now, in the
telegraph, have supplied us with an
agency by which, for the future, mercan
tile transactions will be regulated and
political intercourse carried on. While
in the details of indoor life, from the
improved kitchen-range up to the stereo
scope on the drawing-room table, the
applications of advanced physics under
lie our comforts and gratifications.
Still more numerous are the applica
tions of Chemistry. The bleacher, the
dyer, the calico-printer, are severally
occupied in processes that are well or ill
done according as they do or do not
conform to chemical laws. Smelting of
copper, tin, zinc, lead, silver, iron, must
be guided by chemistry. Sugar-refining,
gas-making, soap-boiling, gunpowder
manufacture, are operations all partly
chemical, as are likewise those which
produce glass and porcelain. Whether
the distiller’s wort stops at the alcoholic
fermentation or passes into the acetous,
is a chemical question on which hangs
his profit or loss; and the brewer, if his
business is extensive, finds it pay to keep
a chemist on his premises. Indeed, there
is now scarcely any manufacture over
some part of which chemistry does not
preside. Nay, in these times even agri
culture, to be profitably carried on, must
have like guidance. The analysis of
manures and soils; the disclosure of
their respective adaptations; the use of
gypsum or other substances for fixing
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
ammonia; the utilisation of coprolites;
the production of artificial manures—all
these are boons of chemistry which it
behoves the farmer to acquaint himself
with. Be it in the lucifer match, or in
disinfected sewage, or in photographs—
in bread made without fermentation, or
perfumes extracted from refuse, we may
perceive that chemistry affects all our
industries; and that, therefore, knowledge
of it concerns every one who is directly or
indirectly connected with our industries.
Of the Concrete sciences, we come first
to Astronomy. Out of this has grown
that art of navigation which has made
possible the enormous foreign commerce
that supports a large part of our popula
tion, while supplying us with many neces
saries and most of our luxuries.
Geology, again, is a science knowledge
of which greatly aids industrial success.
Now that iron ores are so large a source
of wealth ; now that the duration of our
coal-supply has become a question of
great interest; now that we have a College
of Mines and a Geological Survey , it is
scarcely needful to enlarge on the truth
that the study of the Earth’s crust is
important to our material welfare.
And then the science of life—Biology:
does not this, too, bear fundamentally on
these processes of indirect self-preserva
tion ? With what we ordinarily call
manufactures, it has, indeed, little con
nection ; but with the all-essential manu
facture—that of food—it is inseparably
connected. As agriculture must conform
its methods to the phenomena of vegetal
and animal life, it follows that the science
of these phenomena is the rational basis
of agriculture. Various biological truths
have indeed been empirically established
and acted upon by farmers, while yet
there has been no conception of them as
science; such as that particular manures
are suited to particular plants; that crops
21
of certain kinds unfit the soil for other
crops ; that horses cannot do good work
on poor food ; that such and such diseases
of cattle and sheep are caused by such
and such conditions. These, and the
every-day knowledge which the agri
culturist gains by experience respecting
the management of plants and animals,
constitute his stock of biological facts ;
on the largeness of which greatly depends
his success. And as these biological
facts, scanty, indefinite, rudimentary,
though they are, aid him so essentially ;
judge what must be the value to him of
such facts when they become positive,
definite, and exhaustive. Indeed, even
now we may see the benefits that rational
biology is conferring on him. The truth
that the production of animal heat implies
waste of substance, and that, therefore,
preventing loss of heat prevents the need
for extra food—a purely theoretical con
clusion—now guides the fattening of
cattle : it is found that by keeping cattle
warm, fodder is saved. Similarly with
respect to variety of food. The experi
ments of physiologists have shown that
not only is change of diet beneficial, but
that digestion is facilitated by a mixture
of ingredients in each meal. The dis
covery that a disorder known as “ the
staggers,” of which many thousands of
sheep have died annually, is caused by
an entozoon which presses on the brain,
and that if the creature is extracted
through the softened place in the skull
which marks its position, the sheep
usually recovers, is another debt which
agriculture owes to biology.
Yet one more science have we to note
as bearing directly on industrial success
—the Science of Society. Men who
daily look at the state of the moneymarket ; glance over prices current ; dis
cuss the probable crops of corn, cotton,
sugar, wool, silk ; weigh the chances of
�22
EDUCATION
war; and from these data decide on
their mercantile operations; are students
of social science ; empirical and blunder
ing students it may be; but still, students
who gain the prizes or are plucked of
their profits, according as they do or do
not reach the right conclusion. Not only
the manufacturer and the merchant must
guide their transactions by calculations
of supply and demand, based on numerous
facts, and tacitly recognising sundry
general principles of social action ; but
even the retailer must do the like; his
prosperity very greatly depending upon
the correctness of his judgments respect
ing the future wholesale prices and the
future rates of consumption. Manifestly,
whoever takes part in the entangled
commercial activities of a community, is
vitally interested in understanding the
laws according to which those activities
vary.
Thus, to all such as are occupied in
the production, exchange, or distribution
of commodities, acquaintance with
Science in some of its departments, is of
fundamental importance.
Each man
who is immediately or remotely impli
cated in any form of industry, (and few
are not,) has in some way to deal with
the mathematical, physical, and chemical
properties of things; perhaps, also, has
a direct interest in biology ; and certainly
has in sociology. Whether he does or
does not succeed well in that indirect
self-preservation which we call getting a
good livelihood, depends in a great
degree on his knowledge of one or more
of these sciences: not, it may be, a
rational knowledge; but still a know
ledge, though empirical. For what we
call learning a business, really implies
learning the science involved in it;
though not perhaps under the name of
science. And hence a grounding in
science is of great importance, both
because it prepares for all this, and
because rational knowledge has an im
mense superiority over empirical know
ledge. Moreover, not only is scientific
culture requisite for each, that he may
understand the how and the why of the
things and processes with which he is
concerned as maker or distributor; but
it is often of much moment that he
should understand the how and the why
of various other things and processes.
In this age of joint-stock undertakings,
nearly every man above the labourer is
interested as capitalist in some other
occupation than his own ; and, as thus
interested, his profit or loss depends on
his knowledge of the sciences bearing on
this other occupation. Here is a mine,
in the sinking of which many shareholders
ruined themselves, from not knowing that
a certain fossil belonged to the old red
sand stone, below which no coal is found.
Numerous attempts have been made to
construct perpetual-motion engines in the
hope of superseding steam ; but had
those who supplied the money, under
stood the general law of the conservation
and equivalence of forces, they might
have had better balances at their bankers.
Daily are men induced to aid in carrying
Out inventions which a mere tyro in
science could show to be futile. Scarcely
a locality but has its history of fortunes
thrown away over some impossible pro
ject.
And if already the loss from want of
science is so frequent and so great, still
greater and more frequent will it be to
those who hereafter lack science. Just
as fast as productive processes become
more scientific, which competition will
inevitably make them do; and just as
fast as joint-stock undertakings spread,
which they certainly will; so fast must
scientific knowledge grow necessary to
every one. That which our school-courses
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
leave almost entirely out, we thus find to
be that which most nearly concerns the
business of life. Our industries would
cease, were it not for the information which
men begin to acquire, as they best may,
after their education is said to be
finished. And were it not for the infor
mation, from age to age accumulated
and spread by unofficial means, these
industries would never have existed.
Had there been no teaching but such as
goes on in our public schools, England
would now be what it was in feudal
times.
That increasing acquaintance
with the laws of phenomena, which has
through successive ages enabled us to
subjugate Nature to our needs, and in
these days gives the common labourer
comforts which a few centuries ago kings
could not purchase, is scarcely in any
degree owed to the appointed means of
instructing our youth. The vital know
ledge—that by which we have grown as
a nation to what we are, and which now
underlies our whole existence, is a know
ledge that has got itself taught in nooks
and corners; while the ordained agencies
for teaching have been mumbling little
else but dead formulas.
We come now to the third great divi
sion of human activities—a division for
which no preparation whatever is made.
If by some strange chance not a vestige
of us descended to the remote future
save a pile of our school-books or some
college examination-papers, we may
imagine how puzzled an antiquary of the
period would be on finding in them no
sign that the learners were ever likely
to be parents. “ This must have been
the curriculum for their celibates,” we
may fancy him concluding. “ I perceive
here an elaborate preparation for many
things; especially for reading the books
of extinct nations and of co-existing
23
nations (from which indeed it seems
clear that these people had very little
worth reading in their own tongue); but
I find no reference whatever to the
bringing up of children. They could
not have been so absurd as to omit all
training for this gravest of responsibilities.
Evidently then, this was the school
course of one of their monastic orders.”
Seriously, is it not an astonishing fact,
that though on the treatment of offspring
depend their lives or deaths, and their
moral welfare or ruin ; yet not one word
of instruction on the treatment of off
spring is ever given to those who will by
and by be parents ? Is it not monstrous
that the fate of a new generation should
be left to the chances of unreasoning
custom, impulse, fancy—joined with the
suggestions of ignorant nurses and the
prejudiced counsel of grandmothers ?
If a merchant commenced business with
out any knowledge of arithmetic and
book-keeping, we should exclaim at his
folly, and look for disastrous conse
quences. Or if, before studying anatomy,
a man set up as a surgical operator, we
should wonder at his audacity and pity
his patients. But that parents should
begin the difficult task of rearing children
without ever having given a thought to
the principles—physical, moral, or in
tellectual—which ought to guide them,
excites neither surprise at the actors nor
pity for their victims.
To tens of thousands that are killed,
add hundreds of thousands that survive
with feeble constitutions, and millions
that grow up with constitutions not so
strong as they should be; and you will
have some idea of the curse inflicted on
their offspring by parents ignorant of the
laws of life. Do but consider for a
moment that the regimen to which
children are subject, is hourly telling
upon them to their life-long injury or
�24
EDUCATION
benefit; and that there are twenty ways
of going wrong to one way of going
right; and you will get some idea of the
enormous mischief that is almost every
where inflicted by the thoughtless, hap
hazard system in common use. Is it
decided that a boy shall be clothed in
some flimsy short dress, and be allowed
to go playing about with limbs reddened
by cold ? The decision will tell on his
whole future existence—either in ill
nesses ; or in stunted growth; or in
deficient energy; or in a maturity less
vigorous than it ought to have been,
and in consequent hindrances to success
and happiness. Are children doomed
to a monotonous dietary, or a dietary
that is deficient in nutritiveness ?
Their ultimate physical power and their
efficiency as men and women, will in
evitably be more or less diminished by
it. Are they forbidden vociferous play,
or (being too ill-clothed to bear exposure)
are they kept in-doors in cold weather ?
They are certain to fall below that
measure of health and strength to which
they would else have attained. When
sons and daughters grow up sickly and
feeble, parents commonly regard the
event as a misfortune—as a visitation of
Providence. Thinking after the prevalent
chaotic fashion, they assume that these
evils come without causes; or that the
causes are supernatural. Nothing of the
kind. In some cases the causes are
doubtless inherited; but in most cases
foolish regulations are the causes. Very
generally, parents themselves are respon
sible for all this pain, this debility, this
depression, this misery. They have
undertaken to control the lives of their
offspring from hour to hour; with cruel
carelessness they have neglected to learn
anything about these vital processes
which they are unceasingly affecting by
their commands and prohibitions; in
utter ignorance of the simplest physiologic
laws, they have been year by year under
mining the constitutions of their children;
and have so inflicted disease and pre
mature death, not only on them but on
their descendants.
Equally great are the ignorance and
the consequent injury, when we turn
from physical training to moral training.
Consider the young mother and her
nursery-legislation. But a few years ago
she was at school, where her memory
was crammed with words, and names,
and dates, and her reflective faculties
scarcely in the slightest degree exercised
—where not one idea was given her
respecting the methods of dealing with
the opening mind of childhood; and
where her discipline did not in the least
fit her for thinking out methods of her
own. The intervening years have been
passed in practising music, in fancy-work,
in novel-reading, and in party-going : no
thought having yet been given to the
grave responsibilities of maternity; and
scarcely any of that solid intellectual
culture obtained which would be some
preparation for such responsibilities. And
now see her with an unfolding human
character committed to her charge—see
her profoundly ignorant of the pheno
mena with which she has to deal, under
taking to do that which can be done but
imperfectly even with the aid of the
profoundest knowledge.
She knows
nothing about the nature of the emotions,
their order of evolution, their functions,
or where use ends and abuse begins.
She is under the impression that some
of the feelings are wholly bad, which is
not true of any one of them; and that
others are good however far they may be
carried, which is also not true of any one
of them. And then, ignorant as she is
of the structure she has to deal with, she
is equally ignorant of the effects produced
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
on it by this or that treatment. What
ran be more inevitable than the disas
trous results we see hourly arising ?
lacking knowledge of mental pheno
mena, with their cause and consequences,
her interference is frequently more
mischievous than absolute passivity would
have been. This and that kind of action,
which are quite normal and beneficial,
she perpetually thwarts; and so dimin
ishes the child’s happiness and profit,
injures its temper and her own, and pro
duces estrangement. Deeds which she
thinks it desirable to encourage, she gets
performed by threats and bribes, or by
exciting a desire for applause : consider
ing little what the inward motive may
be, so long as the outward conduct con
forms ; and thus cultivating hypocrisy,
and fear, and selfishness, in place of good
feeling. While insisting on truthfulness,
she constantly sets an example of untruth,
by threatening penalties which she does
not inflict. While inculcating self-con
trol, she hourly visits on her little ones,
angry scoldings for acts undeserving of
them. She has not the remotest idea
that in the nursery, as in the world, that
alone is the truly salutary discipline
which visits on all conduct, good and
bad, the natural consequences—the con
sequences, pleasurable or painful, which
in the nature of things such conduct
tends to bring.
Being thus without
theoretic guidance, and quite incapable
of guiding herself by tracing the mental
processes going on in her children, her
rule is impulsive, inconsistent, mis
chievous ; and would indeed be generally
ruinous, were it not that the overwhelm
ing tendency of the growing mind to
assume the moral type of the race,
usually subordinates all minor influences.
And then the culture of the intellect—
is not this, too, mismanaged in a similar
manner ? Grant that the phenomena of
25
intelligence conform to laws; grant that
the evolution of intelligence in a child
also conforms to laws; and it follows
inevitably that education cannot be
rightly guided without a knowledge of
these laws. To suppose that you can
properly regulate this process of forming
and accumulating ideas, without under
standing the nature of the process, is
absurd. How widely, then, must teach
ing as it is, differ from teaching as it
should be; when hardly any parents,
and but few tutors, know anything about
psychology. As might be expected,
the established system is grievously at
fault, alike in matter and in manner.
While the right class of facts is withheld,
the wrong class is forcibly administered
in the wrong way and in the wrong order.
Under that common limited idea of
education which confines it to knowledge
gained from books, parents thrust primers
into the hands of their little ones years
too soon, to their great injury.. Not
recognising the truth that the function of
books is supplementary—that they form
an indirect means to knowledge when
direct means fail—a means of seeing
through other men what you cannot see for
yourself; teachers are eager to give second
hand facts in place of first-hand facts.
Not perceiving the enormous value of
that spontaneous education which goes
on in early years—not perceiving that a
child’s restless observation, instead of
being ignored or checked, should be
diligently ministered to, and made as
accurate and complete as possible;
they insist on occupying its eyes and
thoughts with things that are, for the
time being, incomprehensible and
repugnant. Possessed by a superstition
which worships the symbols of know
ledge instead of knowledge itself, they
do not see that only when his acquain
tance with the objects and processes of
�26
EDUCATION
the household, the streets, and the fields,
is becoming tolerably exhaustive—only
then should a child be introduced to the
new sources of information which books
supply: and this, not only because
immediate cognition is of far greater
value than mediate cognition; but also,
because the words contained in books
can be rightly interpreted into ideas,
only in proportion to the antecedent
experience of things.
Observe next,
that this formal instruction, far too soon
commenced, is carried on with but little
reference to the laws of mental develop
ment. Intellectual progress is of necessity
from the concrete to the abstract. But
regardless of this, highly abstract studies,
such as grammar, which should come
quite late, are begun quite early. Political
geography, dead and uninteresting to a
child, and which should be an appendage
of sociological studies, is commenced
betimes; while physical geography, com
prehensible and comparatively attractive
to a child, is in great part passed over.
Nearly every subject dealt with is arranged
in abnormal order : definitions and rules
and principles being put first, instead of
being disclosed, as they are in the order
of nature, through the study of cases.
And then, pervading the whole, is .the
vicious system of rote learning—a system
of sacrificing the spirit to the letter. See
the results. What with perceptions
unnaturally dulled by early thwarting,
and a coerced attention to books—what
with the mental confusion produced by
teaching subjects before they can be
understood, and in each of them giving
generalisations before the facts of which
they are the generalisations—what with
making the pupil a mere passive recipient
of others’ ideas, and not in the least
leading him to be an active inquirer or
self-instructor—and what with taxing the
faculties to excess ; there are very few
minds that become as efficient as they
might be.
Examinations being once
passed, books are laid aside ; the greater
part of what has been acquired, being
unorganised, soon drops out of recollec
tion ; what remains is mostly inert—the
art of applying knowledge not having
been cultivated; and there is but little
power either of accurate observation or
independent thinking. To all which
add, that while much of the information
gained is of relatively small value, an
immense mass of information of trans
cendent value is entirely passed over.
Thus we find the facts to be such as
might have been inferred a priori. The
training of children—physical, moral,
and intellectual—is dreadfully defective.
And in great measure it is so, because
parents are devoid of that knowledge
by which this training can alone be
rightly guided. What is to be expected
when one of the most intricate of
problems is undertaken by those who
have given scarcely a thought to the
principles on which its solution depends?
For shoe-making or house-building, for
the management of a ship or a loco
motive engine, a long apprenticeship is
needful. Is it, then, that the unfolding
of a human being in body and mind, is
so comparatively simple a process, that
any one may superintend and regulate
it with no preparation whatever ? If not
—if the process is, with one exception,
more complex than any in Nature, and
the task of ministering to it one of
surpassing difficulty; is it not madness
to make no provision for such a task ?
Better sacrifice accomplishments than
omit this all-essential instruction. When
a father, acting on false dogmas adopted
without examination, has alienated his
sons, driven them into rebellion by his
harsh treatment, ruined them, and made
himself miserable ; he might reflect that
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
the study of Ethology would have been
worth pursuing, even at the cost of
knowing nothing about Asschylus. When
a mother is mourning over a first-born
that has sunk under the sequelae of
scarlet-fever—when perhaps a candid
medical man has confirmed her suspicion
that her child would have recovered had
not its system been enfeebled by over
study—when she is prostrate under the
pangs of combined grief and remorse;
it is but small consolation that she can
read Dante in the original.
Thus we see that for regulating the
third great division of human activities,
a knowledge of the laws of life is the one
thing needful. Some acquaintance with
the first principles of physiology and the
elementary truths of psychology, is indis
pensable for the right bringing up of
children.; We doubt not that many
will read this assertion with a smile.
That parents in general should be ex
pected to acquire a knowledge of subjects
so abstruse, will seem to them an absur
dity. And if we proposed that an
exhaustive knowledge of these subjects
should be obtained by all fathers and
mothers, the absurdity would indeed be
glaring enough. But we do not. General
principles only, accompanied by such
illustrations as may be needed to make
them understood, would suffice. And
these might be readily taught—if not
rationally, then dogmatically. Be this
as it may, however, here are the indispu
table facts:—that the development of
children in mind and body follows
certain laws; that unless these laws are
in some degree conformed to by parents,
death is inevitable; that unless they are
in a great degree conformed to, there
must result serious physical and mental
defects; and that only when they are
completely conformed to, can a perfect
maturity he reached.
Judge, then,
27
whether all who may one day be parents,
should not strive with some anxiety to
learn what these laws are.
From the parental functions let us
pass now to the functions of the citizen.
We have here to inquire what knowledge
fits a man for the discharge of these
functions. It cannot be alleged that the
need of knowledge fitting him for these
functions is wholly overlooked; for our
school-courses contain certain studies
which, nominally at least, bear upon
political and social duties. Of these
the only one that occupies a prominent
place is History.
But, as already hinted, the information
commonly given under this head, is
almost valueless for purposes of gui
dance. Scarcely any of the facts set down
in our school-histories, and very few of
those contained in the more elaborate
works written for adults, illustrate the
right principles of political action.
The biographies of monarchs (and our
children learn little else) throw scarcely
any light upon the science of society.
Familiarity with court intrigues, plots,
usurpations, or the like, and with all the
personalities accompanying them, aids
very little in elucidating the causes of
national progress. We read of some
squabble for power, that it led to a
pitched battle ; that such and such were
the names of the generals and their
leading subordinates; that they had
each so many thousand infantry and
cavalry, and so many cannon : that they
arranged their forces in this and that
order; that they manoeuvred, attacked,
and fell back in certain ways; that at
this part of the day such disasters were
sustained, and at that such advantages
gained ; that in one particular movement
some leading officer fell, while in another
a certain regiment was decimated; that
�28
EDUCATION
after all the changing fortunes of the
fight, the victory was gained by this or
that army ; and that so many were killed
and wounded on each side, and so many
captured by the conquerors. And now,
out of the accumulated details making
up the narrative, say which it is that
helps you in deciding on your conduct
as a citizen. Supposing even that you
diligently read, not only “The Fifteen
Decisive Battles of the World,” but
accounts of all other battles that history
mentions; how much more judicious
would your vote be at the next election ?
“But these are facts—interesting facts,”
you say. Without doubt they are facts
(such, at least, as are not wholly or
partially fictions); and to many they
may be interesting facts. But this by
no means implies that they are valuable.
Factitious or morbid opinion often gives
seeming value to things that have scarcely
any. A tulipomaniac will not part with
a choice bulb for its weight in gold.
To another man an ugly piece of cracked
old china seems his most desirable
possession. And there are those who
give high prices for relics of celebrated
murderers. Will it be contended that
these tastes are any measure of value in
the things that gratify them ? If not,
then it must be admitted that the liking
felt for certain classes of historical facts
is no proof of their worth; and that we
must test their worth, as we test the
worth of other facts, by asking to what
uses they are applicable. Were some
one to tell you that your neighbour’s cat
kittened yesterday, you would say the
information was valueless. Fact though
it may be, you would call it an utterly
useless fact—a fact that could in no way
influence your actions in life—a fact that
would not help you in learning how to
live completely. Well, apply the same
test to the great mass of historical facts,
and you will get the same result. They
are facts from which no conclusions can
be drawn — unorganisable facts; and
therefore facts of no service in establishing
principles of conduct, which is the chief
use of facts. Read them, if you like,
for amusement; but do not flatter
yourself they are instructive.
That which constitutes History,
properly so called, is in great part
omitted from works on the subject.
Only of late years have historians com
menced giving us, in any considerable
quantity, the truly valuable information.
As in past ages the king was everything
and the people nothing; so, in past
histories the doings of the king fill the
entire picture, to which the national life
forms but an obscure background.
While only now, when the welfare of
nations rather than the rulers is becoming
the dominant idea, are historians beginning
to occupy themselves with the phenomena
of social progress. The thing it really
concerns us to know, is the natural
history of society. We want all facts
which help us to understand how a
nation has grown and organised itself.
Among these, let us of course have an
account of its government; with as little
as may be of gossip about the men who
officered it, and as much as possible
about the structure, principles, methods,
prejudices, corruptions, etc., which it
exhibited; and let this account include
not only the nature and actions of the
central government, but also those of
local governments, down to their minutest
ramifications. Let us of course also have
a parallel description of the ecclesiastical
government—its organisation, its con
duct, its power, its relations to the State;
and accompanying this, the ceremonial,
creed, and religious ideas—not only
those nominally believed, but those
really believed and acted upon. Let us
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
at the same time be informed of the
Control exercised by class over class, as
displayed in social observances—in titles,
¡Salutations, and forms of address. Let
us know, too, what were all the other
customs which regulated the popular life
out of doors and in-doors ; including
those concerning the relations of the
sexes, and the relations of parents to
children. The superstitions, also, from
the more important myths down to the
charms in common use, should be
indicated. Next should cornea delinea
tion of the industrial system : showing to
what extent the division of labour was
carried ; how trades were regulated,
whether by caste, guilds, or otherwise;
what was the connection between
employers and employed; what were
the agencies for distributing commo
dities; what were the means of com
munication ; what was the circulating
medium. Accompanying all which should
be given an account of the industrial
arts technically considered : stating the
processes in use, and the quality of the
products. Further, the intellectual con
dition of the nation in its various grades
should be depicted ; not only with
respect to the kind and amount of
education, but with respect to the
progress made in science, and the pre
vailing manner of thinking. The degree
of æsthetic culture, as displayed in
architecture, sculpture, painting, dress,
music, poetry, and fiction, should be
described. Nor should there be omitted
a sketch of the daily lives of the people—
their food, their homes, and their amuse
ments. And lastly, to connect the whole,
should be exhibited the morals, theo
retical and practical, of all classes : as
indicated in their laws, habits, proverbs,
deeds. * hese facts, given with as much
T
brevity as consists with clearness and
accuracy, should be so grouped and
29
arranged that they may be comprehended
in their ensemble, and contemplated as
mutually-dependent parts of one great
whole. The aim should be so to present
them that men may readily trace the
consensus subsisting among them; with
the view of learning what social
phenomena co-exist with what others.
And then the corresponding delineations
of succeeding ages should be so managed
as to show how each belief, institution,
custom, and arrangement was modified;
and how the consensus of preceding
structures and functions was developed
into the consensus of succeeding ones.
Such alone is the kind of information
respecting past times, which can be of
service to the citizen for the regulation
of his conduct. The only history that
is of practical value, is what may be
called Descriptive Sociology. And the
highest office which the historian can
discharge, is that of so narrating the lives
of nations, as to furnish materials for a
Comparative Sociology; and for the
subsequent determination of the ultimate
laws to which social phenomena con
form.
But now mark, that even supposing
an adequate stock of this truly valuable
historical knowledge has been acquired,
it is of comparatively little use without
the key. And the key is to be found
only in Science. In the absence of the
generalisations of biology and psychology,
rational interpretation of social pheno
mena is impossible. Only in proportion
as men draw certain rude, empirical
inferences respecting human nature, are
they enabled to understand even the
simplest facts of social life: as, for
instance, the relation between supply and
demand. And if the most elementary
truths of sociology cannot be reached
until some knowledge is obtained of how
men generally think, feel, and act under
�3©
EDUCATION
given circumstances; then it is manifest
that there can oe nothing like a wide
comprehension of sociology, unless
through a competent acquaintance with
man in all his faculties, bodily and
mental.
Consider the matter in the
. abstract, and this conclusion is selfevident. Thus :—Society is made up of
individuals; ail that is done in society is
done by the combined actions of indi
viduals ; and therefore, in individual
actions only can be found the solutions
of social phenomena. But the actions
of individuals depend on the laws of
their natures; and their actions cannot
be understood until these laws are under
stood.
These laws, however, when
reduced to their simplest expressions,
prove to be corollaries from the laws of
body and mind in general. Hence it
follows, that biology and psychology are
indispensable as interpreters of sociology.
Or, to state the conclusions still more
simply : — all social phenomena are
phenomena of life—are the most com
plex manifestations of life—must con
form to the laws of life—and can be
understood only when the laws of life
are understood. Thus, then, for the
regulation of this fourth division of
human activities, »we are, as before,
dependent on Science. Of the know
ledge commonly imparted in educational
courses, very little is of service for guiding
a man in his conduct as a citizen. Only
a small part of the history he reads is of
practical value; and of this small part he
is not prepared to make proper use. He
lacks not only the materials for, but the
very conception of, descriptive sociology;
and he also lacks those generalisations
of the organic sciences, without which
even descriptive sociology can give him
but small aid.
And now we come to that remaining
division of human life which includes the
relaxations and amusements filling leisure
hours. After considering what training
best fits for self-preservation, for the
obtainment of sustenance, for the dis
charge of parental duties, and for the
regulation of social and political conduct;
we have now to consider what training
best fits for the miscellaneous ends n6t
included in these—for the enjoyments of
Nature, of Literature, and of the Fine
Arts, in all their forms. Postponing
them as we do to things that bear more
vitally upon human welfare; and bringing
everything, as we have, to the test of
actual value ; it will perhaps be inferred
that we are inclined to slight these less
essential things. No greater mistake
could be made, however. We yield to
none in the value we attach to aesthetic
culture and its pleasures.
Without
painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and
the emotions produced by natural beauty
of every kind, life would lose half its
charm. So far from regarding the
training and gratification of the tastes
as unimportant, we believe that in time to
come they will occupy a much larger share
of human life than now. When the forces
of Nature have been fully cojiquered to
man’s use—when the means of produc
tion have been brought to perfection—
when labour has been economised to
the highest degree—when education has
been so systematised that a preparation
for the more essential activities may be
made with comparative rapidity—and
when, consequently, there is a great
increase of spare time; then will the
beautiful, both in Art and Nature, rightly
fill a large space in the minds of all.
But it is one thing to approve of
aesthetic culture as largely conducive to
human happiness; and another thing to
admit that it is a fundamental requisite
to human happiness. However important
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
it may be, it must yield precedence
to those kinds of culture which bear
directly upon daily duties. As before
hinted, literature and the fine arts are
made possible by those activities which
make individual and social life possible ;
and manifestly, that which is made
possible, must be postponed to that
which makes it possible. A florist
cultivates a plant for the sake of its
flower ; and regards the roots and leaves
as of value, chiefly because they are
instrumental in producing the flower.
But while, as an ultimate product, the
flower is the thing to which everything
else is subordinate, the florist has learnt
that the root and leaves ase intrinsically
of greater importance ; because on them
the evolution of the flower depends. He
bestows every care in rearing a healthy
plant; and knows it would be folly if,
in his anxiety to obtain the flower, he
were to neglect the plant. Similarly
in thé case before us.
Architecture,
sculpture, painting, music, and poetry,
may truly be called the efflorescence of
civilised life. But even supposing they
are of such transcendent worth as to
subordinatethe civilised life out of which
they grow^vhich can hardly be asserted),
it will still be admitted that the produc
tion of a healthy civilised life must be
the first condition ; and that culture
subserving this must occupy the highest
place.
And here we see most distinctly the
vice of our educational system.
It
neglects the plant for the sake of the
flower. In anxiety for elegance, it
forgets substance. While it gives no
knowledge conducive to self-preservation
—while of knowledge that facilitates
gaining a livelihood it gives but the
rudiments, and leaves the greater part
to be picked up any how in after life—
while for the discharge'of parental func
31
tions it makes not the slightest provision
—and while for the duties of citizenship
it prepares by imparting a mass of facts,
most of which are irrelevant, and the rest
without a key; it is diligent in teaching
whatever adds to refinement, polish,
éclat. Fully as we may admit that ex
tensive acquaintance with modern lan
guages is a valuable accomplishment,
which, through reading, conversation,
and travel, aids in giving a certain finish;
it by no means follows that this result
is rightly purchased at the cost of the
vitally important knowledge sacrificed to
it. Supposing it true that classical edu
cation conduces to elegance and correct
ness of style; it cannot be said that
elegance and correctness of style are
comparable in importance to a familiarity
with the principles that should guide the
rearing of children. Grant that the
taste may be improved by reading the
poetry written in extinct languages; yet
it is not to be inferred that such im
provement of taste is equivalent in value
to an acquaintance with the laws of
health. Accomplishments, the fine arts,
belles-lettres, and all those things which,
as we say, constitute the efflorescence of
civilisation, should be wholly subordi
nate to that instruction and discipline on
which civilisation rests. As they occupy
the leisure part of life, so should they
occupy the leisure part of education.
Recognising thus the true position of
aesthetics, and holding that while the
cultivation of them should form a part
of education from its commencement,
such cultivation should be subsidiary;
we have now to inquire what knowledge
is of most use to this end—what know
ledge best fits for this remaining sphere
of activity ? To this question the answer
is still the same as heretofore. Unex
pected though the assertion may be, it is
nevertheless true, that the highest Art of
�32
EDUCATION
every kind is based on Science—that
without Science there can be neither
perfect production nor full appreciation.
Science, in that limited acceptation
current in society, may not have been
possessed by various artists of high
repute; but acute observers as such
artists have been, they have always
possessed a stock of those empirical
generalisations which constitute science
in its lowest phase; and they have
habitually fallen far below perfection,
partly because their generalisations were
comparatively few and inaccurate. That
science necessarily underlies the fine arts,
becomes manifest, a priori, when we
remember that art products are all more
or less representative of objective or sub
jective phenomena; that they can be
good only in proportion as they conform
to the laws of these phenomena; and
that before they can thus conform, the
artist must know what these laws are.
That this a priori conclusion tallies with
experience, we shall soon see.
Youths preparing for the practice of
sculpture, have to acquaint themselves
with the bones and muscles of the human
frame in their distribution, attachments,
and movements. This is a portion of
science; and it has been found needful
to impart it for the prevention of those
many errors which sculptors who do not
possess it commit.
A knowledge of
mechanical principles is also requisite;
and such knowledge not being usually
possessed, grave mechanical mistakes
are frequently made. Take an instance.
For the stability of a figure it is needful
that the perpendicular from the centre
of gravity—“ the line of direction,” as it
is called—should fall within the base of
support; and hence it happens, that
when a man assumes the attitude known
as “ standing at ease,” in which one leg
is straightened and the other relaxed, the
line of direction falls within the foot of
the straightened leg. But sculptors un- I
familiar with the theory of equilibrium,
not uncommonly so represent this atti- i
tude, that the line of direction falls mid- 1
way between the feet. Ignorance of the
law of momentum leads to analogous
blunders : as witness the admired Dis- |
cobolus, which, as it is posed, must inevit
ably fall forward the moment the quoit
is delivered.
In painting, the necessity for scientific
information, empirical if not rational, is
still more conspicuous. What gives the
grotesqueness to Chinese pictures, unless
their utter disregard of the laws of
appearances^|heir absurd linear per
spective, and their want of aerial per
spective ? In what are the drawings of
a child so faulty, if not in a similar
absence of truth—an absence arising, in
great part, from ignorance of the way in f
which the aspects of things vary with the
conditions? Do but remember the books 2
and lectures by which students are in
structed; or consider the criticisms of If
Ruskin; or look at the doings of the Pre- £
Raffaelites; and you will see that pro
gress in painting implies ¡increasing
knowledge of how effects in Mture are a:
produced. The most diligent observa
tion, if unaided by science, fails to pre
serve from error. Every painter will I Hi
endorse the assertion that unless it is
known what appearances must exist
under given circumstances, they often 03
will not be perceived; and to know what
appearances must exist is, in so far, to if
understand the science of appearances. : .236
From want of science Mr. J. Lewis,
careful painter as he is, casts the shadow
of a lattice-window in sharply-defined baii
lines upon an opposite wall; which he
would not have done, had he been
familiar with the phenomena of penum -friii
brae. From want of science, Mr. Rosetti,
1
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
catching sight of a peculiar iridescence
displayed by certain hairy surfaces under
particular lights (an iridescence caused
by the diffraction of light in passing the
hairs), commits the error of showing this
iridescence on surfaces and in positions
where it could not occur.
To say that music, too, has need of
scientific aid will cause still more sur
prise. Yet it may be shown that music
is but an idealisation of the natural lan
guage of emotion; and that consequently,
music must be good or bad according as
it conforms to the laws of this natural
language.
The various inflections of
voice which accompany feelings of dif
ferent kinds and intensities, are the
germs out of which music is developed.
It is demonstrable that these inflections
and cadences are not accidental or arbi
trary ; but that they are determined by
certain general principles of vital action;
and that their expressiveness depends on
this. Whence it follows that musical
phrases and the melodies built of them,
can be effective only when they are in
harmony with these general principles. It
is difficult here properly to illustrate this
position. But perhaps it will suffice to
instance the swarms of worthless ballads
that infest arawing-rooms, as composi
tions which science would forbid. They
sin against science by setting to music,
ideas that are not emotional enough to
prompt musical expression; and they
also sin against science by using musical
phrases that have no natural relations to
the ideas expressed : even where these
are emotional. They are bad because
they are untrue. And to say they are
untrue, is to say they are unscientific.
Even in poetry the same thing holds.
Like music, poetry has its root in those
natural modes of expression which
accompany deep feeling. Its rhythm,
its strong and numerous metaphors, its
33
hyperboles, its violent inversions, are
simply exaggerations of the traits of
excited speech. To be good, therefore,
poetry must pay attention to those laws
of nervous action which excited speech
obeys. In intensifying and combining
the traits of excited speech, it must have
due regard to proportion—must not use
its appliances without restriction ; but,
where the ideas are least emotional,
must use the forms of poetical expression
sparingly ; must use them more freely as
the emotion rises ; and must carry them
to their greatest extent, only where the
emotion reaches a climax. The entire
contravention of these principles results
in bombast or doggerel. The insufficient
respect for them is seen in didactic
poetry. And it is because they are
rarely fully obeyed, that so much poetry
is inartistic.
Not only is it that the artist, of what
ever kind, cannot produce a truthful
work without he understands the laws
of the phenomena he represents ; but it
is that he must also understand how the
minds of spectators or listeners will be
affected by the several peculiarities of his
work—a question in psychology. What
impression any art-product generates,
manifestly depends upon the mental
natures of those to whom it is presented;
and as all mental natures have certain
characteristics in common, there must
result certain corresponding general prin
ciples on which alone art-products can
be successfully framed. These general
principles cannot be fully understood
and applied, unless the artist sees how
they follow from the laws of mind. To
ask whether the composition of a picture
is good, is really to ask how the percep
tions and feelkjgs of observers will be:
affected by it. To ask whether a drama,
is well constructed, is to ask whether its
situations are so arranged as duly to»
�34
ÉDUCATION
consult the power of attention of an audi
ence and duly to avoid overtaxing any
one class of feelings. Equally in arrang
ing the leading divisions of a poem or
fiction, and in combining the words of
a single sentence, the goodness of the
effect depends upon the skill with which
the mental energies and susceptibilities
of the reader are economised. Every
artist, in the course of his education and
after-life, accumulates a stock of maxims
by which his practice is regulated. Trace
such maxims to their roots, and they
inevitably lead you down to psychological
principles. And only when the artist
understands these psychological principles
and their various corollaries, can he work
in harmony with them.
We do not for a moment believe that
science will make an artist. While we
contend that the leading laws both of
objective and subjective phenomena
must be understood by him, we by no
means contend that knowledge of such
laws will serve in place of natural per
ception. Not the poet only, but the
artist of every type, is born, not made.
What we assert is, that innate faculty
cannot dispense with the aid of organised
knowledge. Intuition will do much, but
it will not do all. Only when Genius is
married to Science can the highest
results be produced.
As we have above asserted, Science is
necessary not only for the most success
ful production, but also for the full
appreciation, of the fine arts. In what
consists the greater ability of a man than
of a child to perceive the beauties of a
picture; unless it is in his more extended
knowledge of those truths in nature or
life which the picture renders? How
happens the cultivated gentleman to
enjoy a fine poem so much more than a
boor does; if it is not because his wider
acquaintance with objects and actions
enables him to see in the poem much
that the boor cannot see ? And if, as is
here so obvious, there must be some
familiarity with the things represented,
before the representation can be appre
ciated ; then the representation can
be completely appreciated, only when
the things represented are completely
understood.
The fact is, that every
additional truth which a work of art
expresses, gives an additional pleasure
to the percipient mind—a pleasure that
is missed by those ignorant of this truth.
The more realities an artist indicates in
any given amount of work, the more
faculties does he appeal to; the more
numerous ideas does he suggest; the
more gratification does he afford. But
to receive this gratification the spectator,
listener, or reader, must know the realities
which the artist has indicated; and to
know these realities is to have that much
science.
And now let us not overlook the
further great fact, that not only does
science underlie sculpture, painting,
music, poetry, but that science is itself
poetic. The current opinion that science
and poetry are opposed, is it delusion.
It is doubtless true that as states of
consciousness, cognition and emotion
tend to exclude each other. And it is
doubtless also true that an extreme
activity of the reflective powers tends
to deaden the feelings; while an
extreme activity of the feelings tends to
deaden the reflective powers: in which
sense, indeed, all orders of activity are
antagonistic to each other. But it is
not true that the facts of science are
unpoetical; or that the cultivation of
science is necessarily unfriendly to the
exercise of imagination and the love of
the beautiful. On the contrary, science
opens up realms of poetry where to
the unscientific all is a blank. Those
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
engaged in scientific researches constantly
show us that they realise not less vividly,
but more vividly, than others, the poetry
of their subjects. Whoso will dip into
Hugh Miller’s works on geology, or read
Mr. Lewes’s Seaside Studies, will per
ceive that science excites poetry rather
than extinguishes it. And he who con
templates the life of Goethe, must see
that the poet and the man of science
can co-exist in equal activity. Is it not,
indeed, an absurd and almost a sacri
legious belief, that the more a man studies
Nature the less he reveres it? Think
you that a drop of water, which to the
vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses
anything in the eye of the physicist who
knows that its elements are held together
by a force which, if suddenly liberated,
would produce a flash of lightning ?
Think you that what is carelessly looked
upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow
flake, does not suggest higher associations
to one who has seen through a micro
scope the wondrously-varied and elegant
forms of snow-crystals ? Think you that
the rounded rock marked with parallel
scratches, calls up as much poetry in an
ignorant mind as in the mind of a geolo
gist who knows that over this rock a
glacier slid a million years ago ? The
truth is, that those who have never
entered upon scientific pursuits are blind
to most of the poetry by which they are
surrounded. Whoever has not in youth
collected plants and insects, knows not
half the halo of interest which lanes and
hedge-rows can assume. Whoever has
not sought for fossils, has little idea of
the poetical associations that surround the
places where imbedded treasures were
found. Whoever at the seaside has not
had a microscope and aquarium, has yet
to learn what the highest pleasures of
the seaside are. Sad, indeed, is it to
see how men occupy themselves with
35
trivialities, and are indifferent to the
grandest phenomena—care not to under
stand the architecture of the Heavens,
but are deeply interested in some con
temptible controversy about the intrigues
of Mary Queen of Scots !—are learnedly
critical over a Greek ode, and pass by
without a glance that grand epic written
by the finger of God upon the strata of
the Earth !
We find, then, that even for this
remaining division of human activities,
scientific culture is the proper prepara
tion. We find that aesthetics in general
are necessarily based upon scientific
principles; and can be pursued with com
plete success only through an acquain
tance with these principles. We find
that for the criticism and due apprecia
tion of works of art, a knowledge of
the constitution of things, or in other
words, a knowledge of science, is requi
site. And we not only find that science
is the handmaid to all forms of art and
poetry, but that, rightly regarded, science
is itself poetic.
Thus far our question has been, the
worth of knowledge of this or that kind
for purposes of guidance. We have now
to judge the relative values of different
kinds of knowledge for purposes of
discipline. This division of our subject
we are obliged to treat with comparative
brevity; and happily, no very lengthened
treatment of it is needed. Having found
what is best for the one end, we have by
implication found what is best for the
other. We may be quite sure that the
acquirement of those classes of facts
which are most useful for regulating
conduct, involves a mental exercise best
fitted for strengthening the faculties. It
would be utterly contrary to the beautiful
economy of Nature, if one kind of culture
were needed for the gaining of information
�36
EDUCATION
and another kind were needed as a
mental gymnastic. Everywhere through
out creation we find faculties developed
through the performance of those func
tions which it is their office to perform;
not through the performance of artificial
exercises devised to fit them for those
functions.
The Red Indian acquires
the swiftness and agility which make him
a successful hunter, by the actual pursuit
of animals; and through the miscel
laneous activities of his life, he gains a
better balance of physical powers than
gymnastics ever give.
That skill in
tracking enemies and prey which he has
reached after long practice, implies a
subtlety of perception far exceeding any
thing produced by artificial training.
And similarly in all cases. From the
Bushman whose eye, habitually employed
in identifying distant objects that are to
be pursued or fled from, has acquired a
telescopic range, to the accountant whose
daily practice enables him to add up
several columns of figures simultaneously;
we find that the highest power of a faculty
results from the discharge of those duties
which the conditions of life require it to
discharge. And we may be certain,
a priori, that the same law holds through
out education. The education of most
value for guidance, must at the same
time be the education of most value for
discipline. Let us consider the evidence.
One advantage claimed for that devo
tion to language-learning which forms
so prominent a feature in the ordinary
curriculum, is, that the memory is thereby
strengthened. This is assumed to be
an advantage peculiar to the study of
words. But the truth is, that the sciences
afford far wider fields for the exercise of
memory. It is no slight task to remember
everything about our solar system; much
more to remember all that is known
concerning the structure of our galaxy.
The number of compound substances,
to which chemistry daily adds, is so
great that few, save professors, can
enumerate them; and to recollect the
atomic constitutions and affinities of all
these compounds, is scarcely possible
without making chemistry the occupation
of life.
In the enormous mass of
phenomena presented by the Earth’s
crust, and in the still more enormous
mass of phenomena presented by the
fossils it contains, there is matter which
it takes the geological student years of
application to master.
Each leading
division of physics—sound, heat, light,
electricity — includes facts numerous
enough to alarm any one proposing to
learn them all. And when we pass to
the organic sciences, the effort of memory
required becomes still greater. In human
anatomy alone, the quantity of detail is
so great, that the young surgeon has
commonly to get it up half-a-dozen
times before he can permanently retain
it. The number of species of plants
which botanists distinguish, amounts to
some 320,000; while the varied forms
of animal life with which the zoologist
deals, are estimated at some 2,000,000.
So vast is the accumulation of facts
which men of science have before them,
that only by dividing and subdividing
their labours can they deal with it. To
a detailed knowledge of his own division,
each adds but a general knowledge of
the allied ones ; joined perhaps to a rudi
mentary acquaintance with some others.
Surely, then, science, cultivated even to
a very moderate extent, affords adequate
exercise for memory. To say the very
least, it involves quite as good a dis
cipline for this faculty as language does.
But now mark that while, for the
training of mere memory, science is as
good as, if not better than, language,
it has an immense superiority in the kind
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
of memory it trains. In the acquire
ment of a language, the connections of
ideas to be established in the mind
correspond to facts that are in great
measure accidental ; whereas, in the
acquirement of science, the connections
of ideas to be established in the mind
correspond to facts that are mostly
necessary. It is true that the relations
of words to their meanings are in one
sense natural; that the genesis of these
relations may be traced back a certain
distance, though rarely to the beginning;
and that the laws of this genesis form a
branch of mental science—the science
of philology. But since it will not be
contended that in the acquisition of
languages, as ordinarily carried on, these
natural relations between words and
their meanings are habitually traced,
and their laws explained; it must be
admitted that they are commonly learned
as fortuitous relations. On the other
hand, the relations which science pre
sents are causal relations; and, when
properly taught, are understood as such.
While language familiarises with nonrational relations, science familiarises
with rational relations. While the one
exercises memory only, the other exer
cises both memory and understanding.
Observe next, that a great superiority
of science over language as a means of
discipline, is, that it cultivates the judg
ment. As, in a lecture on mental edu
cation delivered at the Royal Institution,
Professor Faraday well remarks, the most
common intellectual fault is deficiency of
judgment. “Society, speaking generally,”
he says, “ is not only ignorant as respects
education of the judgment, but it is also
ignorant of its ignorance.” And the
cause to which he ascribes this state, is
want of scientific culture. The truth of
his conclusion is obvious. Correct judg
ment with regard to surrounding objects,
37
events, and consequences, becomes pos
sible only through knowledge of the way
in which surrounding phenomena depend
on each other. No extent of acquain
tance with the meanings of words, will
guarantee correct inferences respecting
causes and effects. The habit of drawing
conclusions from data, and then of verify
ing those conclusions by observation
and experiment, can alone give the
power of judging correctly. And that it
necessitates this habit is one of the
immense advantages of science.
Not only, however, for intellectual
discipline is science the best; but also
for moral discipline. The learning of
languages tends, if anything, further to
increase the already undue respect for
authority.
Such and such are the
meanings of these words, says the teacher
or the dictionary. So and so is the rule
in this case, says the grammar. By the
pupil these dicta are received as un
questionable. His constant attitude of
mind is that of submission to dogmatic
teaching. And a necessary result is a
tendency to accept without inquiry what
ever is established. Quite opposite is
the mental tone generated by the culti
vation of science. Science makes con
stant appeal to individual reason. Its
truths are not accepted on authority
alone; but all are at liberty to test them
—nay, in many cases, the pupil is
required to think out his own conclu
sions. Every step in a scientific investi
gation is submitted to his judgment.
He is not asked to admit it without
seeing it to be true. And the trust in
his own powers thus produced, is further
increased by the uniformity with which
Nature justifies his inferences when they
are correctly drawn. From all which
there flows that independence which is
a most valuable element in character.
Nor is this the only moral benefit
�38
EDUCATION
bequeathed by scientific culture. When
carried on, as it should always be, as
much as possible under the form of
original research, it exercises perseverance
and sincerity. As says Professor Tyndall
of inductive inquiry, “it requires patient
industry, and an humble and conscien
tious acceptance of what Nature reveals.
The first condition of success is an
honest receptivity and a willingness to
abandon all preconceived notions, how
ever cherished, if they be found to con
tradict the truth. Believe me, a selfrenunciation which has something noble
in it, and of which the world never hears,
is often enacted in the private experience
of the true votary of science.”
Lastly we have to assert—and the
assertion will, we doubt not, cause extreme
surprise—that the discipline of science
is superior to that of our ordinary
education, because of the religious culture
that it gives. Of course we do not here
use the words scientific and religious in
their ordinary limited acceptations ; but
in their widest and highest acceptations.
Doubtless, to the superstitions that pass
under the name of religion, science is
antagonistic; but not to the essential
religion which these superstitions merely
hide. Doubtless, too, in much of the
science that is current, there is a pervad
ing spirit of irreligion; but not in that
true science which has passed beyond
the superficial into the profound.
“ True science and true religion,” says Pro
fessor Huxley at the close of a recent course of
lectures, “ are twin-sisters, and the separation
of either from the other is sure to prove the
death of both. Science prospers exactly in pro
portion as it is religious ; and religion flourishes
in exact proportion to the scientific depth and
firmness of its basis. The great deeds of
philosophers have been less the fruit of their
intellect than of the direction of that intellect by
an eminently religious tone of mind. Truth has
yielded herself rather to their patience, their
love, their single-heartedness and their self
denial, than to their logical acumen.”
So far from science being irreligious,
as many think, it is the neglect of science
that is irreligious—it is the refusal to
study the surrounding creation that is
irreligious.
Take a humble simile.
Suppose, a writer were daily saluted with
praises couched in superlative language.
Suppose the wisdom, the grandeur, the
beauty of his works, were the constant
topics of the eulogies addressed to him.
Suppose those who unceasingly uttered
these eulogies on his works were content
with looking at the outsides of them; and
had never opened them, much less tried
to understand them. What value should
we put upon their praises ? What should
we think of their sincerity ? Yet, com
paring small things to great, such is the
conduct of mankind in general, in
reference to the Universe and its Cause.
Nay, it is worse. Not only do they pass
by without study, these things which
they daily proclaim to be so wonderful;
but very frequently they condemn as
mere triflers those who give time to the
observation of Nature—they actually
scorn those who show any active interest
in these marvels. We repeat, then, that
not science, but the neglect of science,
is irreligious. Devotion to science, is a
tacit worship—a tacit recognition of
worth in the things studied; and by
implication in their Cause. It is not a
mere lip-homage, but a homage expressed
in actions—not a mere professed respect,
but a respect proved by the sacrifice of
time, thought, and labour.
Nor is it thus only that true science is
essentially religious. It is religious, too,
inasmuch as it generates a profound
respect for, and an implicit faith in,
those uniformities of action which all
things disclose. By accumulated experi
ences the man of science acquires a
�WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?
thorough belief in the unchanging rela
tions of phenomena—in the invariable
connection of cause and consequence—
in the necessity of good or evil results.
Instead of the rewards and punishments
of traditional belief, which people vaguely
hope they may gain, or escape, spite of
their disobedience ; he finds that there
are rewards and punishments in the
ordained constitution of things ; and
that the evil results of disobedience are
inevitable. He sees that the laws to
which we must submit are both inexor
able and beneficent. He sees that in
conforming to them, the process of
things is ever towards a greater perfec
tion and a higher happiness. Hence he
is led constantly to insist on them, and
is indignant when they are disregarded.
And thus does he, by asserting the
eternal principles of things and the
necessity of obeying them, prove himself
intrinsically religious.
And lastly the further religious aspect
of science, that it alone, can give us true
conceptions of ourselves and our rela
tion to the mysteries of existence. At
the same time that it shows us all which
can be known, it shows us the limits
beyond which we can know nothing.
Not by dogmatic assertion, does it teach
the impossibility of comprehending the
Ultimate Cause of things ; but it leads
us clearly to recognise this impossibility
by bringing us in. every direction to
boundaries we cannot cross. It realises
to us in a way which nothing else can,
the littleness of human intelligence in
the face of that which transcends human
intelligence. While towards the tradi
tions and authorities of men its attitude
may be proud, before the impenetrable
veil which hides the Absolute its attitude
is humble—a true pride and a true
humility. Only the sincere man of
science (and by this title we do not
39
mean the mere calculator of distances,
or analyser of compounds, or labeller of
species; but him who through lower
truths seeks higher, and eventually the
highest)—only the genuine man of
science, we say, can truly know how
utterly beyond, not only human know
ledge but human conception, is the
Universal Power of which Nature, and
Life, and Thought are manifestations.
We conclude, then, that for discipline,
as well as for guidance, science is of
chiefest value. In all its effects, learning
the meanings of things, is better than
learning the meanings of words. Whether
for intellectual, moral, or religious train
ing, the study of surrounding phenomena
is immensely superior to the study of
grammars and lexicons.
Thus to the question we set out with
—What knowledge is of most worth ?—
the uniform reply is—Science. This is
the verdict on all the counts. For direct
self-preservation, or the maintenance of
life and health, the all-important know
ledge is—Science. For that indirect
self-preservation which we call gaining
a livelihood, the knowledge of greatest
value is—Science. For the due dis
charge of parental functions, the proper
guidance is to be found only in—Science.
For that interpretation of national life,
past and present, without which the
citizen cannot rightly regulate his con
duct, the indispensable key is—Science.
Alike for the most perfect production
and present enjoyment of art in all its
forms, the needful preparation is still—
Science, and for purposes of discipline
—intellectual, moral, religious—the most
efficient study is, once more—Science.
The question which at first seemed so
perplexed, has become, in the course of
our inquiry, comparatively simple. We
have not to estimate the degrees of
�40
EDUCATION
importance of different orders of human conceived, or could have believed, yet is
activity, and different studies as severally this kind of knowledge only now receiving
fitting us for them; since we find that a grudging recognition in our highest
the study of Science, in its most com educational institutions. To the slowly
prehensive meaning, is the best prepara growing acquaintance with the uniform
tion for all these orders of activity. We co-existences and sequences of phe
have not to decide between the claims nomena—to the establishment of invari
of knowledge of great though conven able laws, we owe our emancipation from
tional value, and knowledge of less the grossest superstitions.
But for
though intrinsic value; seeing that the science we should be still worshipping
knowledge which proves to be of most fetishes ; or, with hecatombs of victims,
value in all other respects, is intrinsically propitiating diabolical deities. And yet
most valuable: its worth is not dependent this science, which, in place of the most
upon opinion, but is as fixed as is the degrading conceptions of things, has
relation of man to the surrounding world. given us some insight into the grandeurs
Necessary and eternal as are its truths,
of creation, is written against in our theo
all Science concerns all mankind for all logies and frowned upon from our pulpits.
time. Equally at present and in the
Paraphrasing an Eastern fable, we
remotest future, must it be of incalculable may say that in the family of knowledges,
importance for the regulation of their Science is the household drudge, who, in
conduct, that men should understand obscurity, hides unrecognised perfections.
the science of life, physical, mental, and To her has been committed all the work ;
social; and that they should understand by her skill, intelligence, and devotion,
all other science as a key to the science have all conveniences and gratifications
of life.
been obtained ; and while ceaselessly
And yet this study immensely tran ministering to the rest, she has been
scending all other in importance, is that kept in the background, that her haughty
which, in an age of boasted education, sisters might flaunt their fripperies in the
receives the least attention. While what eyes of the world. The parallel holds
we call civilisation could never have yet further. For we are fast coming to
arisen had it not been for science; the dénouement, when the positions will
science forms scarcely an appreciable be changed ; and while these haughty
element in our so-called civilised training. sisters sink into merited neglect, Science,
Though to the progress of science we proclaimed as highest alike in worth and
owe it, that millions find support where beauty, will reign supreme.
once there was food only for thousands;
yet of these millions but a few thousands
pay any respect to that which has made
their existence possible. Though in
creasing knowledge of the properties
CHAPTER II.
and relations of things has not only
enabled wandering tribes to grow into
INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
populous nations, but has given to the
There cannot fail to be a relationship
countless members of these populous
between the successive systems of edu
nations, comforts and pleasures which
their few naked ancestors never even cation, and the successive social states
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
with which they have co-existed. Having
a common origin in the national mind,
the institutions of each epoch, whatever
be their special functions, must have a
family likeness. When men received
.
their creed and its interpretations from
' an infallible authority deigning no expla
nations, it was natural that the teaching
of children should be purely dogmatic.
While “believe and ask no questions ”
was the maxim of the Church, it was
fitly the maxim of the school. Conversely,
/now that Protestantism has gained for
adults a right of private judgment and
established the practice of appealing to
reason, there is harmony in the change
that has made juvenile instruction a
process of exposition addressed to the
A. understanding.
Along with political
despotism, stern in its commands, ruling
by force of terror, visiting trifling crimes
with death, and implacableinits vengeance
on the disloyal, there necessarily grew up
academic discipline similarly harsh—a
discipline of multiplied injunctions and
blows for every breach of them — a
discipline of unlimited autocracy upheld
by rods, and ferules, and the black-hole.
On the other hand, the increase of
political liberty, the abolition of laws
restricting individual action, and the
amelioration of the criminal code, have
been accompanied by a kindred progress
towards non-coercive education: the pupil
is hampered by fewer restraints, and other
means than punishments are used to
govern him.
In those ascetic days
when men, acting on the greatest-misery
principle, held that the more gratifications
they denied themselves the more virtuous
they were, they, as a matter of course,
considered that the best education which
most thwarted the wishes of their children,
and cut short all spontaneous activity
with—“You mustn’t do so.” While,
on the contrary, now that happiness is
41
coming to be regarded as a legitimate
aim—now that hours of labour are beine;
shortened and popular recreations pro
vided; parents and teachers are beginning
to see that most childish desires may
rightly be gratified, that childish sports
should be encouraged, and that the
tendencies of the growing mind are not
altogether so diabolical as was supposed.
The age in which all believed that trades
must be established by bounties and
prohibitions ; that manufacturers needed
their materials and qualities and prices
to be prescribed ; and that the value of
money could be determined by law;
was an age which unavoidably cherished
the notions that a child’s mind could be
made to order ; that its powers were to
be imparted by the schoolmaster; that
it was a receptacle into which knowledge
was to be put, and there built up after
the teacher’s ideal. In this free-trade
era, however, when we are learning that
there is much more self-regulation ' in
things than was supposed ; that labour,
and commerce, and agriculture, and
navigation, can do better without manage
ment than with it ; that political govern
ments, to be efficient, must grow up from
within and not be imposed from without ;
we are also being taught that there is a
natural process of mental evolution which
is not to be disturbed without injury;
that we may not force on the unfolding
mind our artificial forms ; but that
psychology, also, discloses to us a law
of supply and demand, to which, if we
would not do harm, we must conform.
Thus, alike in its oracular dogmatism, in
its harsh discipline, in its multiplied
restrictions, in its professed asceticism,
and in its faith in the devices of men,
the old educational regime was akin to
the social systems with which it was
contemporaneous ; and similarly in the
reverse of these characteristics, our modern
�42
EDUCATION
Erodes of culture correspond to our more
liberal religious and political institutions.
But there remain further parallelisms
to which we have not yet adverted : that,
namely, between the processes by which
these respective changes have been
wrought out; and that between the
several states of heterogeneous opinion
to which they have led. Some centuries
ago there was uniformity of belief —religious, political, and educational.
All men were Romanists, all were
Monarchists, all were disciples of
Aristotle; and no one thought of calling
in question that grammar-school routine
under which all were brought up. The
same agency has in each case replaced
this uniformity by a constantly-increasing
diversity. That tendency towards asser
tion of the individuality, which, after
contributing to produce the great Pro
testant movement, has since gone on to
produce an ever-increasing number of
sects — that tendency which initiated
political parties, and out of the two
primary ones has, in these modern days,
evolved a multiplicity to which every
year adds—that tendency which led to
the Baconian rebellion against the schools,
and has since originated here and abroad,
sundry new systems of thought—is a
tendency which, in education also, has
caused divisions and the accumulation
of methods. As external consequences
of the same internal change, these
processes have necessarily been more
or less simultaneous. The decline of
authority, whether papal, philosophic,
kingly, or tutoral, is essentially one
phenomenon; in each of its aspects a
leaning towards free action is seen alike
in the working out of the change itself,
and in the new forms of theory and prac
tice to which the change has given birth.
While many will regret this multiplica
tion of schemes of juvenile culture, the
catholic observer will discern in it a
means of ensuring the final establishment
of a rational system. Whatever may be
thought of theological dissent, it is clear
that dissent in education results in
facilitating inquiry by the division in
labour. Were we in possession of the
true method, divergence from it would,
of course, be prejudicial; but the
true method having to be found, the
efforts of numerous independent seekers
carrying out their researches in different
directions, constitute a better agency for
finding it than any that could be devised.
Each of them struck by some new thought
which probably contains more or less of
basis in facts—each of them zealous on
behalf of his plan, fertile in expedients
to test its correctness, and untiring in
his efforts to make known its success—
each of them merciless in his criticism
on the rest; there cannot fail, by compo
sition of forces, to be a gradual approxi
mation of all towards the right course.
Whatever portion of the normal method
any one has discovered, must, by the
constant exhibition of its results, force
itself into adoption; whatever wrong
practices he has joined with it must, by
repeated experiment and failure, be
exploded. And by this aggregation of
truths and elimination of errors, there
must eventually be developed a correct
and complete body of doctrine. Of the
three phases through which human
opinion passes—the unanimity of the
ignorant, the disagreement of the in
quiring, and the unanimity of the wise—
it is manifest that the second is the
parent of the third. They are not se
quences in time only, they are sequences
in causation.
However impatiently,
therefore, we may witness the present
conflict of educational systems, and how
ever much we may regret its accompany
ing evils, we must recognise it as a
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION '
transition stage needful to be passed
through, and beneficent in its ultimate
effects.
Meanwhile, may we not advantageously
take stock of our progress ? After fifty
years of discussion, experiment, and
comparison of results, may we not expect
a few steps towards the goal to be already
made good? Some old methods must
by this time have fallen out of use; some
new ones must have become established;
and many others must be in process
of general abandonment' or adoption.
Probably we may see in these various
changes, when put side by side, similar
characteristics—may find in them a
common tendency; and so, by inference,
may get a clue to the direction in which
experience is leading us, and gather
hints how we may achieve yet further
improvements. Let us then, as a pre
liminary to a deeper consideration of the
matter, glance at the leading contrasts
between the education of the past and
that of the present.
The suppression of every error is
commonly followed by a temporary
ascendency of the contrary one ; and so
it happened, that after the ages when
physical development alone was aimed
at, there came an age when culture of
the mind was the sole solicitude—when
children had lesson-books put before
them at between two and three years
old, and the getting of knowledge was
thought the one thing needful. As,
further, it usually happens that after one
of these reactions the next advance is
achieved by co-ordinating the antagonist
errors, and perceiving that they are
opposite sides of one truth; so, we are
now coming to the conviction that body
and mind must both be cared for, and
the whole being unfolded. The forcing
system has been by many given up; and
43
precocity is discouraged.
People are
beginning to see that the first requisite
to success in life is to be a good animal.
The best brain is found of little service,
if there be not enough vital energy to
work it; and hence to obtain the one
by sacrificing the source of the other, is
now considered a folly—a folly which
the eventual failure of juvenile prodigies
constantly illustrates.
Thus we are
discovering the wisdom of the saying,
that one secret in education is “ to know
how wisely to lose time.”
The once universal practice of learning
by rote is daily falling into discredit.
All modern authorities condemn the
old mechanical way of teaching the
alphabet. The multiplication table is
now frequently taught experimentally.
In the acquirement of languages, the
grammar-school plan is being superseded
by plans based on the spontaneous
process followed by the child in gaining
its mother tongue.
Describing the
methods there used, the Reports on the
Training School at Battersea say :—
“The instruction in the whole pre
paratory course is chiefly oral, and is
illustrated as much as possible by
appeals to nature.” And so throughout.
The rote-system, like all other systems
of its age, made more of the forms and
symbols than of the things symbolised.
To repeat the words correctly was every
thing ; to understand their meaning,
nothing; and thus the spirit was sacrificed
to the letter. It is at length perceived
that, in this case as in others, such a
result is not accidental but necessary—
that in proportion as there is attention
to the signs, there must be inattention
to the things signified; or that, as
Montaigne long ago said—S^avoir par
coeur n’est pas s^avoir.
Along with rote-teaching, is declining
also the nearly-allied teaching by rules.
�44
EDUCATION
The particulars first, and then the
generalisations, is the new method—a
method, as the Battersea School Reports
remark, which, though “the reverse of
the method usually followed, which con
sists in giving the pupil the rule first,” is
yet proved by experience to be the right
one. Rule-teaching is now condemned
as imparting a merely empirical know
ledge—as producing an appearance of
understanding without the reality. To
give the net product of inquiry, without
the inquiry that leads to it, is found to
be both enervating and inefficient.
General truths to be of due and per
manent use, must be earned. “ Easy
come easy go,” is a saying as applicable
to knowledge as to wealth. While rules,
lying isolated in the mind—not joined to
its other contents as out-growths from
them—are continually forgotten; the
principles which those rules express
piecemeal, become, when once reached
by the understanding, enduring posses
sions. While the rule-taught youth is at
sea when beyond his rules, the youth
instructed in principles solves a new
case as readily as an old one. Between
a mind of rules and a mind of principles,
there exists a difference such as that
between a confused heap of materials,
and the same materials organised into a
complete whole, with all its parts bound
together. Of which types this last has
not only the advantage that its con
stituent parts are better retained, but the
much greater advantage that it forms an
efficient agent for inquiry, for indepen
dent thought, for discovery—ends for
which the first is useless. Nor let it be
supposed that this is a simile only : it is
the literal truth. The union of facts
into generalisations is the organisation
of knowledge, whether considered as an
objective phenomenon or a subjective
one; and the mental grasp may be
measured by the extent to which this
organisation is carried.
From the substitution of principles for
rules, and the necessarily co-ordinate
practice of leaving abstractions untaught
till the mind has been familiarised with
the facts from which they are abstracted,
has resulted the postponement of some
once early studies to a late period. This
is exemplified in the abandonment of
that intensely stupid custom, the teach
ing of grammar to children. As M.
Marcel says :—“ It may without hesita
tion be affirmed that grammar is not
the stepping-stone, but the finishing
instrument.” As Mr. Wyse argues:—
“Grammar and Syntax are a collection
of laws and rules. Rules are gathered
from practice; they are the results of
induction to which we come by long
observation and comparison of facts. It
is, in fine, the science, the philosophy of
language. In following the process of
nature, neither individuals nor nations
ever arrive at the science first. A
language is spoken, and poetry written,
many years before either a grammar or
prosody is even thought of. Men did
not wait till Aristotle had constructed
his logic, to reason.” In short, as
grammar was made after language, so
ought it to be taught after language : an
inference which all who recognise the
relationship between the evolution of the
race and that of the individual, will see
to be unavoidable.
Of new practices that have grown up
during the decline of these old ones, the
most important is the systematic culture
of the powers of observation. After long
ages of blindness, men are at last seeing
that the spontaneous activity of the
observing faculties in children, has a
meaning and a use. What was once
thought mere purposeless action, or play,
or mischief, as the case might be, is now
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
recognised as the process of acquiring a
knowledge on which all after-knowledge
is based. Hence the well-conceived but
ill-conducted system of object-lessons.
The saying of Bacon, that physics is the
mother of the sciences, has come to have
a meaning in education. Without an
accurate acquaintance with the visible
and tangible properties of things, our
conceptions must be erroneous, our
inferences fallacious, and our operations
unsuccessful. “ The education of the
senses neglected, all after education
partakes of a drowsiness, a haziness, an
insufficiency which it is impossible to
cure.” Indeed, if we consider it, we
shall find that exhaustive observation is
an element in all great success. It is
not to artists, naturalists, and men of
science only, that it is needful; it is not
only that the physician depends on it for
the correctness of his diagnosis, and that
to the engineer it is so important that
some years in the workshop are pre
scribed to him ; but we may see that the
philosopher, also, is fundamentally one
who observes relationships of things which
others had overlooked, and that the
poet, too, is one who sees the fine facts
in nature which all recognise when
pointed out, but did not before remark.
Nothing requires more to be insisted on
than that vivid and complete impressions
are all-essential. No sound fabric of
wisdom can be woven out of a rotten
raw material.
While the old method of presenting •
truths in the abstract has been falling
out of use, there has been a correspond
ing adoption of the new method of
presenting them in the concrete. The
rudimentary facts of exact science are
now being learnt by direct intuition, as
textures, and tastes, and colours are
learnt. Employing the ball-frame for
first lessons in arithmetic, exemplifies
45
this. It is well illustrated, too, in Pro
fessor De Morgan’s mode of explaining
the decimal notation. M. Marcel, rightly
repudiating the old system of tables,
teaches weights and measures by refer
ring to the actual yard and foot, pound
and ounce, gallon and quart; and lets
the discovery of their relationships be
experimental. The use of geographical
models and models of the regular bodies,
etc., as introductory to geography and
geometry respectively, are facts of the
same class. Manifestly, a common trait
of these methods is, that they carry each
child’s mind through a process like that
which the mind of humanity at large has
gone through. The truths of number, of
form, of relationship in position, were all
originally drawn from objects; and to
present these truths to the child in the
concrete, is to let him learn them as the
race learnt them. By and by, perhaps,
it will be seen that he cannot possibly
learn them in any other way; for that if
he is made to repeat them as abstrac
tions, the abstractions can have no
meaning for him, until he finds that they
are simply statements of what he intui
tively discerns.
But of all the changes taking place,
the most significant is the growing desire
to make the acquirement of knowledge
pleasurable rather than painful—a desire
based on the more or less distinct per
ception, that at each age the intellectual
action which a child likes is a healthy
one for it; and conversely. There is a
spreading opinion that the rise of an
appetite for any kind of information,
implies that the unfolding mind has
become fit to assimilate it, and needs it
for purposes of growth ; and that, on the
other hand, the disgust felt towards such
information is a sign either that it is
prematurely presented, or that it is pre
sented in an indigestible form. Hence
�46
EDUCATION
the efforts to make early education
amusing, and all education interesting.
Hence the lectures on the value of play.
Hence the defence of nursery rhymes
and fairy tales. Daily we more and
more conform our plans to juvenile
opinion. Does the child like this or
that kind kind of teaching?—does he
take to it ? we constantly ask. “ His
natural desire of variety should be in
dulged,” says M. Marcel; “and the grati
fication of his curiosity should be com
bined with his improvement.” “Lessons,”
he again remarks, “should cease before
the child evinces symptoms of weariness.”
And so with later education.
Short
breaks during school-hours, excursions
into the country, amusing lectures, choral
songs—in these and many like traits,
the change may be discerned. Asceti
cism is disappearing out of education as
out of life; and the usual test of political
legislation—its tendency to promote
happiness—is beginning to be, in a great
degree, the test of legislation for the
school and the nursery. What now is
the common characteristic of these
several changes ? Is it not an increas
ing conformity to the methods of
Nature ? The relinquishment of early
forcing, against which Nature rebels, and
the leaving of the first years for exercise
of the limbs and senses, show this.
The superseding of rote-learnt lessons
by lessons orally and experimentally
given, like those of the field and play
ground, shows this. The disuse of rule
teaching, and the adoption of teaching
by principles—that is, the leaving of
generalisations until there are particulars
to base them on—show this. The sys
tem of object-lessons shows this. The
teaching of the rudiments of science in
the concrete instead of the abstract,
shows this. And above all, this ten
dency is shown in the variously-directed
efforts to present knowledge in attractive
forms, and so to make the acquirement
of it pleasurable. For, as it is the order
of Nature in all creatures that the grati
fication accompanying the fulfilment of
needful functions serves as a stimulus to
their fulfilment—as, during the self-edu
cation of the young child, the delight
taken in the biting of corals and the
pulling to pieces of toys, becomes the
prompter to actions which teach it the
properties of matter; it follows that, in
choosing the succession of subjects and
the modes of instruction which most
interest the pupil, we are fulfilling
Nature’s behests, adjusting our proceed
ings to the laws of life.
Thus, then, we are on the highway
towards 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
—that there is a certain sequence in
which the faculties spontaneously develop,
and a certain kind of knowledge which
each requires during its development;
and that it is for us to ascertain this
sequence, and supply this knowledge.
All the improvements above alluded to
are partial applications of this general
principle. A nebulous perception of it
now prevails among teachers; and it is
daily more insisted on in educational
works. “ The method of nature is the
archetype of all methods,” says M.
Marcel. “ The vital principle in the
pursuit is to enable the pupil rightly to
instruct himself,” writes Mr. Wyse. The
more science familiarises us with the
constitution of things, the more do we
see in them an inherent self-sufficingness.
A higher knowledge tends continually to
limit our interference with the processes
of life. As in medicine the old “ heroic
treatment ” has given place to mild treat
ment, and often no treatment save a
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
normal regimen—as we have found that
it is not needful to mould bodies of
babes by bandaging them in papoosefashiun or otherwise—as in gaols it is
being discovered that no cunninglydevised discipline of ours is so efficient
in producing reformation as the natural
discipline of self-maintenance by produc
tive labour ; so in education, we are
finding that success is to be achieved
only by making our measures subservient
to that spontaneous unfolding which all
minds go through in their progress to
maturity.
Of course, this fundamental principle
of tuition, that the arrangement of matter
and method must correspond with the
order of evolution and mode of activity
of the faculties—a principle so obviously
true, that once stated it seems almost
self-evident—has never been wholly dis
regarded. Teachers have unavoidably
made their school-courses coincide with
it in some degree, for the simple reason
that education is possible only on that
condition. Boys were never taught the
rule-of-three until they had learnt addi
tion. They were not set to write
exercises before they had got into their
copy-books. Conic sections have always
been preceded by Euclid. But the error
of the old methods consists in this, that
they do not recognise in detail what they
are obliged to recognise in general.
Yet the principle applies throughout.
If from the time when a child is able
to conceive two things as related in
position, years must elapse before it can
form a true concept of the Earth, as a
sphere made up of land and sea, covered
with mountains, forests, rivers, and cities,
revolving on its axis, and sweeping round
the Sun—if it gets from the one concept
to the other by degrees—if the inter
mediate concepts which it forms are
consecutively larger and more compli
47
cated ; is it not manifest that there is a
general succession through which alone
it can pass; that each larger concept is
made by the combination of smaller
ones, and presupposes them ; and that
to present any of these compound con
cepts before the child is in possession of
its constituent ones, is only less absurd
than to present the final concept of the
series before the initial one. In the
mastering of every subject some course
of increasingly complex ideas has to be
gone through. The evolution of the
corresponding faculties consists in the
assimilation of these; which, in any
true sense, is impossible without they
are put into the mind in the normal
order. And when this order is not
followed, the result is, that they are
received with apathy or disgust; and
that unless the pupil is intelligent enough
eventually to fill up the gaps himself,
they lie in his memory as dead facts,
capable of being turned to little or no
use.
“ But why trouble ourselves about any
curriculum at all ?” it may be asked. “ If
it be true that the mind like the body
has a predetermined course of evolution
—if it unfolds spontaneously—if its
successive desires for this or that kind
of information arise when these are
severally required for its nutrition—if
there thus exists in itself a prompter to
the right species of activity at the right
time; why interfere in any way ? Why
not leave children wholly to the discipline
of nature?—why not remain quite pas
sive and let them get knowledge as they
best can ?—why not be consistent
throughout ?” This is an awkwardlooking question. Plausibly implying
as it does, that a system of complete
laissez-faire is the logical outcome of the
doctrines set forth, it seems to furnish a
disproof of them by reductio ad absurdum.
�48
EDUCATION
In truth, however, they do not, when
rightly understood, commit us to any
such untenable position. A glance at
the physical analogies will clearly show
this. It is a general law of life tha the
t
*
more complex the organism to be pro
duced, the longer the period during
which it is dependent on a parent
organism for food and protection. The
difference between the minute, rapidlyformed, and self-moving spore of a
conferva, and the slowly-developed seed
of a tree, with its multiplied envelopes
and large stock of nutriment laid by to
nourish the germ during its first stages
of growth, illustrates this law in its
application to the vegetal world. Among
anirrials we may trace it in a series of
contrasts from the monad whose spon
taneously-divided halves are as selfsufficing the moment after their separa
tion as was the original whole; up to
man, whose offspring not only passes
through a protracted gestation, and
subsequently long depends on the breast
for sustenance; but after that must have
its food artificially administered; must,
when it has learned to feed itself, con
tinue to have bread, clothing, and shelter
provided; and does not acquire the
power of complete self-support until a
time varying from fifteen to twenty years
after its birth. Now this law applies to
the mind as to the body. For mental
pabulum also, every higher creature, and
especially man, is at first dependent on
adult aid. Lacking the ability to move
about, the babe is almost as powerless
to get materials on which to exercise its
perceptions as it is to get supplies for its
stomach. Unable to prepare its own
food, it is in like manner unable to reduce
many kinds of knowledge to a fit form
for assimilation. The language through
which all higher truths are to be gained,
it wholly derives from those surrounding
it. And we see in such an example as
the Wild Boy of Aveyron, the arrest of
development that results when no help
is received from parents and nurses.
Thus, in providing from day to day the
right kind of facts, prepared in the right
manner, and giving them in due abun
dance at appropriate intervals, there is
as much scope for active ministration to
a child’s mind as to its body. In either
case, it is the chief function of parents
to see that the conditions requisite to
growth are maintained. And as, in
supplying aliment, and clothing, and
shelter, they may fulfil this function
without at all interfering with the spon
taneous development of the limbs and
viscera, either in their order or mode;
so, they may supply sounds for imitation,
objects for examination, books for read
ing, problems for solution, and, if they
use neither direct nor indirect coercion,
may do this without in any way disturbing
the normal process of mental evolution;
or rather, may greatly facilitate that
process. Hence the admission of the
doctrines enunciated does not, as some
might argue, involve the abandonment
of teaching; but leaves ample room
for an active and elabcrate course of
culture.
Passing from generalities to special
considerations, it is to be remarked that
in practice, the Pestalozzian system
seems scarcely to have fulfilled the
promise of its theory. We hear of
children not at all interested in its
lessons,—disgusted with them rather ;
and, so far as we can gather, the Pesta
lozzian schools have not turned out any
unusual proportion of distinguished men:
if even they have reached the average.
We are not surprised at this. The
success of every appliance depends
mainly upon the intelligence with which
�INTELLECTUAL ED UCA TION
it is used, it is a trite remark that,
having the choicest tools, an unskilled
artisan will botch his work; and bad
teachers will fail even with the best
methods. Indeed, the goodness of the
method becomes in such case a cause
of failure; as, to continue the simile,
the perfection of the tool becomes in
undisciplined hands a source of imper
fection in results. A simple, unchanging,
almost mechanical routine of tuition,
may be carried out by the commonest
intellects, with such small beneficial
effect as it is capable of producing; but
a complete system—a system as hetero
geneous in its appliances as the mind in
its faculties—a system proposing a special
means for each special end, demands
for its right employment powers such as
few teachers possess. The mistress of
a dame-school can hear spelling-lessons ;
and any hedge-schoolmaster can drill
boys in the multiplication table. But to
teach spelling rightly, by using the
powers of the letters instead of their
names, or to instruct in numerical com
binations by experimental synthesis, a
modicum of understanding is needful;
and to pursue a like rational course
throughout the entire range of studies,
asks an amount of judgment, of invention,
of intellectual sympathy, of analytical
faculty, which we shall never see applied
to it while the tutorial office is held in
such small esteem. Tjue education is
practicable only by a true philosopher.
J udge then, what prospect a philosophical
method now has of being acted out!
Knowing so little as we yet do of psycho
logy, and ignorant as our teachers are of
that little, what chance has a system
which requires psychology for its basis ?
Further hindrance and discouragement
has arisen from confounding the Pestalozzian principle with the forms in which
it has been embodied. Because particular
49
plans have not answered expectation,
discredit has been cast upon the doctrine
associated with them : no inquiry being
made whether these plans truly conform
to the doctrine. Judging as usual by
the concrete rather than the abstract,
men have blamed the theory for the
bunglings of the practice. It is as though
the first futile attempt to construct a
steam-engine had been held to prove
that steam could not be used as a motive
power. Let it be constantly borne in
mind that while right in his fundamental
ideas, Pestalozzi was not therefore right
in all his applications of them. As
described even by his admirers, Pesta
lozzi was a man of partial intuitions—a
man who had occasional flashes of
insight; rather than a man of systematic
thought.
His first great success at
Stantz was achieved when he had no
books or appliances of ordinary teaching,
and when “ the only object of his atten
tion was to find out at each moment
what instruction his children stood pecu
liarly in need of, and what was the best
manner of connecting it with the know
ledge they already possessed.” Much
of his power was due, not to calmly
reasoned-out plans of culture, but to his
profound sympathy, which gave him a
quick perception of childish needs and
difficulties. He lacked the ability
logically to co-ordinate and develop the
truths which he thus from time to time
laid hold of; and had in great measure
to leave this to his assistants, Kruesi,
Tobler, Buss, Niederer, and Schmid.
The result is, that in their details his
own plans, and those vicariously devised,
contain numerous crudities and incon
sistencies. His nursery-method, described
in The Mother’s Manual, beginning as
it does with a nomenclature of the
different parts of the body, and pro
ceeding next to specify their relative
�50
EDUCATION
positions, and next their connections,
. may be proved not at all in accordance
with the initial stages of mental evolu
tion.
His process of teaching the
mother-tongue by formal exercises in
the meanings of words in the construc
tion of sentences, is quite needless, and
must entail on the pupil loss of time,
labour and happiness. His proposed
lessons in geography are utterly unpesta$ lozzian. And often where his plans are
essentially sound, they are either incom
plete or vitiated by some remnant of
the old regime. While, therefore, we
would defend in its entire extent the
general doctrine which Pestalozzi inaugu
rated, we think great evil likely to result
from an uncritical reception of his
specific methods. That tendency, con
stantly exhibited by mankind, to canonise
the forms and practices along with which
any great truth has been bequeathed to
them—their liability to prostrate their
intellects before the prophet, and swear
by his every word—their proneness to
mistake the clothing of the idea for the
idea itself ; renders it ne'edful to insist
strongly upon the distinction between
the fundamental principle of the Pestalozzian system, and the set of expedients
devised for its practice ; and to suggest
that while the one may be considered as
established, the other is probably nothing
but an adumbration of the normal
course. Indeed, on looking at the state
of our knowledge, we may be quite sure
that this is the case. Before educational
methods can be made to harmonise in
character and arrangement with the
faculties in their mode and order of
unfolding, it is first needful that we
ascertain with some completeness how
the faculties do unfold. At present we
have acquired, on this point, only a few
general notions. These general notions
must be developed in detail—must be
transformed into a multitude of specific
propositions, before we can be said to
possess that science on which the art of
education must be based. And then,
when we have definitely made out in
what succession and in what combina
tions the mental powers become active,
it remains to choose out of the many
possible- ways of exercising each of
them, that which best conforms to its
natural mode of action.
Evidently,
therefore, it is not to be supposed that
even our most advanced modes of
teaching are the right ones, or nearly the
right ones.
Bearing in mind then this distinction
between the principle and the practice
of Pestalozzi, and inferring from the
grounds assigned that the last must
necessarily be very defective, the reader
will rate at its true worth the dissatisfac
tion with the system which some have
expressed; and will see that the realisa
tion of the Pestalozzian idea remains to
be achieved. Should he argue, however,
from what has just been said, that no
such realisation is at present practicable,
and that all effort ought to be devoted
to the preliminary inquiry; we reply,
that though it is not possible for a
scheme of culture to be perfected either
in matter or form until a rational psycho
logy has been established, it is possible,
with the aid of certain guiding prin
ciples, to make empirical approximations
towards a perfect scheme. To prepare
the way for further research we will now
specify these principles. Some of them
have been more or less distinctly implied
in the foregoing pages; but it will be
well here to state them all in logical
order.
i. That in education we should pro
ceed from the simple to the complex, is
a truth which has always been to some
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
extent acted upon : not professedly,
indeed, nor by any means consistently.
The mind develops. Like all things
that develop it progresses from the
homogeneous to the heterogeneous ; and
a normal training system, being an
objective counterpart of this subjective
process, must exhibit a like progression.
Moreover thus interpreting it, we may
see that this formula has much wider
applications than at first appears. For
its rationale involves, not only that we
should proceed from the single to the
combined in the teaching of each branch
of knowledge; but that we should do
the like with knowledge as a whole. As
the mind, consisting at first of but few
active faculties, has its later-completed
faculties successively brought into play,
and ultimately comes to have all its
faculties in simultaneous action; it
follows that our teaching should begin
with but few subjects at once, and suc
cessively adding to these, should finally
carry on all subjects abreast. Not only
in its details should education proceed
from the simple to the complex, but in
its ensemble also.
2.The development of the mind, as
all other development, is an advance
from the indefinite to the definite. In
common with the rest of the organism,
the brain reaches its finished structure
only at maturity; and in proportion as
its structure is unfinished, its actions are
wanting in precision. Hence like the
first movements and the first attempts
at speech, the first perceptions and
thoughts are extremely vague. As from
a rudimentary eye, discerning only the
difference between light and darkness,
the progress is to an eye that distinguishes
kinds and gradations of colour, and
details of form, with the greatest exact
ness ; so, the intellect as a whole and in
each faculty, beginning with the rudest
discriminations among objects and
actions, advances towards discrimina
tions of increasing nicety and distinct
ness. To this general law our educa
tional course and methods must conform.
It is not practicable, nor would it be
desirable if practicable, to put precise
ideas into the undeveloped mind. We
may indeed at an early age communicate
the verbal forms in which such ideas are
wrapped up; and teachers, who habitually
do this, suppose that when the verbal
forms have been correctly learnt, the
ideas which should fill them have been
acquired. But a brief cross-examination
of the pupil proves the contrary. It
turns out either that the words have
been committed to memory with little
or no thought about their meaning, or
else that the perception of their meaning
which has been gained is a very cloudy
one. Only as the multiplication of
experiences gives materials for definite
conceptions—only as observation year
by year discloses the less conspicuous
attributes which distinguish things and
processes previously confounded together
—only as each class of co-enstences
and sequences becomes familiar through
the recurrence of cases coming under it
—only as the various classes of relations
get accurately marked off from each
other by mutual limitation; can the
exact definitions of advanced knowledge
become truly comprehensible. Thus in
education we must be content to set out
with crude notions. These we must aim
to make gradually clearer by facilitating
the acquisition of experiences such as
will correct, first their greatest errors,
and afterwards their successively less
marked errors. And the scientific
formulae must be given only as fast as
the conceptions are perfected.
3. To say that our lessons ought to
start from the concrete and end in the
�52
EDUCATION
abstract, may be considered as in part a
repetition of the first of the foregoing
principles. Nevertheless it is a maxim
that must be stated: if with no other
view, then with the view of showing in
certain cases what are truly the simple
and the complex. For unfortunately
there has been much misunderstanding
on this point. General formulas which
men have devised to express groups of
details, and which have severally simpli
fied their conceptions by uniting many
facts into one fact, they have supposed
must simplify the conceptions of a child
also. They have forgotten that a
generalisation is simple only in com
parison with the whole mass of particular
truths it comprehends—that it is more
complex than any one of these truths
taken singly—that only after many of
these single truths have been acquired,
does the generalisation ease the memory
and help the reason—and that to a mind
not possessing these single truths it is
necessarily a mystery. Thus confounding
two kinds of simplification, teachers
have constantly erred by setting out
with “first principles”: a proceeding
essentially, though not apparently, at
variance with the primary rule; which
implies that the mind should be intro
duced to principles through the medium
of examples, and so should be led from
the particular to the general—from the
concrete to the abstract.
4. The education of the child must
accord both in mode and arrangement
with the education of mankind, con
sidered historically. In other words, the
genesis of knowledge in the individual,
must follow the same course as the
genesis of knowledge in the race. In
strictness, this principle may be con
sidered as already expressed by implica
tion ; since both being processes of
evolution, must conform to those same
general laws of evolution above insisted
on, and must therefore agree with each
other.
Nevertheless this particular
parallelism is of value for the specific
guidance it affords. To M. Comte we
believe society owes the enunciation of
it; and we may accept this item of his
philosophy without at all committing
ourselves to the rest. This doctrine
may be upheld by two reasons, quite
independent of any abstract theory;
and either of them sufficient to establish
it. One is deducible from the law of
hereditary transmission as considered in
its wider consequences. For if it be
true that men exhibit likeness to
ancestry, both in aspect and character—
if it be true that certain mental mani
festations, as insanity, occur in successive
members of the same family at the same
age—if, passing from individual cases in
which the traits of many dead ancestors
mixing with those of a few living ones
greatly obscure the law, we turn to
national types, and remark how the con
trasts between them are persistent from
age to age—if we remember that these
respective types came from a common
stock, and that hence the present marked
differences between them must have
arisen from the action of modifying
circumstances upon successive genera
tions who severally transmitted the
accumulated effects to their descendants
—if we find the differences to be now
organic, so that a French child grows
into a French man even when brought
up among strangers—and if the general
fact thus illustrated is true of the whole
nature, intellect inclusive; then it follows
that if there be an order in which the
human race has mastered its various
kinds of knowledge, there will arise in
every child an aptitude to acquire these
kinds of knowledge in the same order.
So that even were the order intrinsically
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
indifferent, it would facilitate education
to lead the individual mind through the
steps traversed by the general mind. But
the order is not intrinsically indifferent;
and hence the fundamental reason why
education should be a repetition of
civilisation in little. It is provable both
that the historical sequence was, in its
main outlines, a necessary one; and that
the causes which determined it apply to
the child as to. the race. Not to specify
these causes in detail, it will suffice here
to point out that as the mind of humanity
placed in the midst of phenomena and
striving to comprehend them, has, after
endless comparisons, speculations, experi
ments, and theories, reached its present
knowledge of each subject by a specific
route; it may rationally be inferred that
the relationship between mind and phe
nomena is such as to prevent this know
ledge from being reached by any other
route; and that as each child’s mind
stands in this same relationship to phe
nomena, they can be accessible to it
oply through the same route. Hence in
deciding upon the right method of edu
cation, an inquiry into the method of
civilisation will help to guide us.
5. One of the conclusions to which
such an inquiry leads, is, that in each
branch of instruction we should proceed
from the empirical to the rational.
During human progress, every science
is evolved out of its corresponding art.
It results from the necessity we are
under, both individually and as a race,
of reaching the abstract by way of the
concrete, that there must be practice
and an accruing experience with its
empirical generalisations, before there
can be science. Science is organised
knowledge; and before knowledge can
be organised, some of it must be pos
sessed. Every study, therefore, should
have a purely experimental introduction ;
53
and only after an ample fund of observa
tions has been accumulated, should
reasoning begin. As illustrative appli
cations of this rule, we may instance the
modern course of placing grammar, not
before language, but after it; or the
ordinary custom of prefacing perspec
tive by practical drawing. By and by
further applications of it will be indi
cated.
6. A second corollary from the fore
going general principle, and one which
cannot be too strenuously insisted on, is,
that in education the process of self
development should be encouraged to
the uttermost. Children should be led
to make their own investigations, and to
draw their own inferences. They should
be told as little as possible, and induced
to discover as much as possible.
Humanity has progressed solely by self
instruction ; and that to achieve the
best results, each mind must progress
somewhat after the same fashion, is con
tinually proved by the marked success
of self-made men. Those who have
been brought up under the ordinary
school-drill, and have carried away with
them the idea that education is prac
ticable only in that style, will think it
hopeless to make children their own
teachers. If, however, they will consider
that the all-important knowledge of sur
rounding objects which a child gets in
its early years, is got without help—if
they will remember that the child is selftaught in the use of its mother tongue—
if they will estimate the amount of that
experience of life, that out-of-school
wisdom, which every boy gathers for
himself—if they will mark the unusual
intelligence of the uncared-for London
gamin, as shown in whatever directions
his faculties have been tasked—if, further,
they will think how many minds have
struggled up unaided, not only through
�54
■ EDUCATION
the mysteries of our irrationally-planned
curriculum, but through hosts of other
obstacles besides; they will find it a not
unreasonable conclusion, that if the
subjects be put before him in right
order and right form, any pupil of
ordinary capacity will surmount his suc
cessive difficulties with but little assis
tance. Who indeed can watch the cease
less observation, and inquiry, and infer
ence going on in a child’s mind, or listen
to its acute remarks on matters within the
range of its faculties, without perceiving
that these powers it manifests, if brought
to bear systematically upon studies within
the same range, would readily master
them without help ? This need for per
petual telling results from our stupidity,
not from the child’s. We drag it away
from the facts in which it is interested,
and which it is actively assimilating of
itself. We put before it facts far too
complex for it to understand; and there
fore distasteful to it. Finding that it
will not voluntarily acquire these facts,
we thrust them into its mind by force
of threats and punishment. By thus
denying the knowledge it craves, and
cramming it with knowledge it cannot
digest, we produce a morbid state of its
faculties; and a consequent disgust for
knowledge in general. And when, as a
result partly of the stolid indolence we
have brought on, and partly of stillcontinued unfitness in its studies, the
child can understand nothing without
explanation, and becomes a mere passive
recipient of our instruction, we infer
that education must necessarily be
carried on thus. Having by our method
induced helplessness, we make the help
lessness a reason for our method. Clearly
then, the experience of pedagogues
cannot rationally be quoted against the
system we are advocating. And who
ever sees this, will see that we may safely
follow the discipline of Nature through
out may, by a skilful ministration,
make the mind as self-developing in its
latter stages as it is in its earlier ones ;
and that only by doing this can we pro
duce the highest power and activity.
7. As a final test by which to judge
any plan of culture, should come the
question,—Does it create a pleasurable
excitement in the pupils ? When in
doubt whether a particular mode or
arrangement is or is not more in harmony
with the foregoing principles than some
other, we may safely abide by this cri
terion.
Even when, as considered
theoretically, the proposed course seems
the best, yet if it produces no interest,
or less interest than some other course,
we should relinquish it; for a child’s
intellectual instincts are more trustworthy
than our reasonings. In respect to the
knowing-faculties, we may confidently
trust in the general law, that under
normal conditions, healthful action is
pleasurable, while action which gives
pain is not healthful. Though at present
very incompletely conformed to by the
emotional nature, yet by the intellectual
nature, or at least by those parts of it
which the child exhibits, this law is
almost wholly conformed to. The re
pugnances to this and that study which
vex the ordinary teacher, are not innate,
but result from his unwise system.
Fellenberg says, “ Experience has taught
me that indolence in young persons is so
directly opposite to their natural dispo
sition to activity, that unless it is the
consequence of bad education, it is
almost invariably connected with some
constitutional defect.” And the spon
taneous activity to which children are
thus prone, is simply the pursuit of those
pleasures which the healthful exercise of
the faculties gives. It is true that some
of the higher mental powers, as yet but
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
little developed in the race, and congeni
tally possessed in any considerable degree
only by the most advanced, are indis
posed to the amount of exertion required
of them.. But these, in virtue of their
very complexity, will, in a normal course
of culture, come last into exercise ; and
will therefore have no demands made on
them until the pupil has arrived at an
age when ulterior motives can be brought
into play, and an indirect pleasure made
to counterbalance a direct displeasure.
With all faculties lower than these, how
ever, the immediate gratification conse
quent on activity, is the normal stimulus ;
and under good management the only
needful stimulus. When we have to fall
back on some other, we must take the
fact as evidence that we are on the wrong
track. Experience is daily showing with
greater clearness, that there is always a
method to be found productive of interest
—even of delight; and it ever turns out
that this is the method proved by all
other tests to be the right one.
With most, these guiding principles
will weigh but'little if left in this abstract
form. Partly, therefore, to exemplify
their application, and partly with a view
of making sundry specific suggestions,
we propose now to pass from the theory
of education to the practice of it.
55
of unseen planets, the invention of calcu
lating engines, the production of great
paintings, or the composition of sym
phonies and operas. This activity of
the faculties from the very first, being
spontaneous and inevitable, the question
is whether we shall supply in due variety
the materials on which they may exer
cise themselves; and to the question so
put, none but an affirmative answer can
be given. As before said, however,
agreement with Pestalozzi’s theory does
not involve agreement with his practice ;
and here occurs a case in point. Treating
of instruction in spelling he says :
The spelling-book ought, therefore, to con
tain all the sounds of the language, and these
ought to be taught in every family from the
earliest infancy. The child who learns his
spelling-book ought to repeat them to the infant
in the cradle, before it is able to pronounce even
one of them, so that they may be deeply im
pressed upon its mind by frequent repetition.
Joining this with the suggestions for
“ a nursery method,” set down in his
Mother’s Manual, in which he makes the
names, positions, connections, numbers,
properties, and uses of the limbs and
body his first lessons, it becomes clear
that Pestalozzi’s notions on early mental
development were too crude to enable
him to devise judicious plans. Let us
consider the course which Psychology
dictates.
The earliest impressions which the
It was the opinion of Pestalozzi, and
one which has ever since his day been mind can assimilate, are the undecomgaining ground, that education of some posable sensations produced by resis
kind should begin from the cradle. tance, light, sound, etc. Manifestly,
Whoever has watched with any discern decomposable states of consciousness
ment, the wide-eyed gaze of the infant at cannot exist before the states of con
surrounding objects, knows very well that sciousness out of which they are com
education does begin thus early, whether posed. There can be no idea of form
we intend it or not; and that these until some familiarity with light in its
fingerings and suckings of everything it gradations and qualities, or resistance in
can lay hold of, these open-mouthed its different intensities, has been acquired;
listenings to every sound, are first steps for, as has been long known, we recognise
in the series which ends in the discovery visible form by means of varieties of light,
�56
EDUCATION
and tangible form by means of varieties of Nor let us omit the fact, that both
resistance. Similarly, no articulate sound
temper and health will be improved
is cognisable until the inarticulate sounds by the continual gratification resulting
which go to make it up have been learned. from a due supply of these impressions
And thus must it be in every other case. which every child so greedily assimilates.
Following, therefore, the necessary law Space, could it be spared, might here be
of progression from the simple to the well filled by some suggestions towards
complex, we should provide for the a more systematic ministration to those
infant a sufficiency of objects presenting simplest of the perceptions.
But it
different degrees and kinds of resistance,
must suffice to point out that any such
a sufficiency of objects reflecting different ministration, recognising the general law
amounts and qualities of light, and a of evolution from the indefinite to the
sufficiency of sounds contrasted in their definite, should proceed upon the corol
loudness, their pitch and their timbre. lary that in the development of every
How fully this à priori conclusion is faculty, markedly contrasted impressions
confirmed by infantile instincts, all will are the first to be distinguished; that
see on being reminded of the delight hence sounds greatly differing in loud
which every young child has in biting its ness and pitch, colours very remote from
toys, in feeling its brother’s bright jacket each other, and substances widely unlike
buttons, and pulling papa’s whiskers— in hardness or texture, should be the first
how absorbed it becomes in gazing at supplied; and that in each case the
any gaudily-painted object, to which it progression must be by slow degrees to
applies the word “ pretty,” when it can impressions more nearly allied.
pronounce it, wholly because of the bright
Passing on to object-lessons, which
colours and how its face broadens into manifestly form a natural continuation
a laugh at the tattlings of its nurse, the of this primary culture of the senses, it
snapping of a visitor’s fingers, or any is to be remarked, that the system com
- sound which it has not before heard. monly pursued is wholly at variance with
Fortunately, the ordinary practices of the the method of Nature, as exhibited alike
nursery fulfil these early requirements in infancy, in adult life, and in the course
. of education to a considerable degree. of civilisation. “The child,” says M.
Much, however, remains to be done; Marcel, “ must be shown how all the
and it is of more importance that it parts of an object are connected, etc.”;
should be done than at first appears. and the various manuals of these objectEvery faculty during that spontaneous lessons severally contain lists of the facts
activity which accompanies its evolution, which the child is to be told respecting
is capable of receiving more vivid im each of the things put before it. Now it
pressions than at any other period. needs but a glance at the daily life of the
Moreover, as these simplest elements infant to see that all the knowledge of
have to be mastered, and as the mastery things which is gained before the acquire
of them whenever achieved must take ment of speech, is self-gained—that the
time, it becomes an economy of time to qualities of hardness and weight asso
occupy this first stage of childhood,
ciated with certain appearances, the pos
during which no other intellectual action session of particular forms and colours
is possible, in gaining a complete famili by particular persons, the production of
arity with them in all their modifications.
special sounds by animals of special
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
aspects, are phenomena which it observes
for itself. In manhood too, when there
are no longer teachers at hand, the obser
vations and inferences hourly required
for guidance, must be made unhelped ;
and success in life depends upon the
accuracy and completeness with which
they are made. Is it probable then, that
while the process displayed in the evolu
tion of humanity at large, is repeated
alike by the infant and the man, a
reverse process must be followed during
the period between infancy and man
hood ? and that too, even in so simple a
thing as learning the properties of objects?
Is it not obvious, on the contrary, that one
method must be pursued throughout ?
And is not Nature perpetually thrusting
this method upon us, if we had but the
wit to see it, and the humility to adopt
it? What can be more manifest than
the desire of children for intellectual
sympathy ? Mark how the infant sitting
on your knee thrusts into your face the
toy it holds, that you may look at it.
See when it makes a creak with its wet
finger on the table, how it turns and
looks at you ; does it again, and again
looks at you ; thus saying as clearly as it
can'—“ Hear this new sound.” Watch
the elder children coming into the
room exclaiming—“ Mamma, see what a
curious thing,” “ Mamma, look at this,”
“ Mamma, look at that ” : a habit which
they would continue, did not the silly
mamma tell them not to tease her.
Observe that, when out with the nursemaid, each little one runs up to her with
the new flower it has gathered, to show
her how pretty it is, and to get her also,
to say it is pretty. Listen to the eager
volubility with which every urchin
describes any novelty he has been to
see ; if only he can find some one who
will attend with any interest. Does not
the induction lie on the surface ? Is it
57
not clear that we must conform our
course to these intellectual instincts—that we must just systematise the natural
process—that we must listen to all the
child has to tell us about each object ;
must induce it to say everything it can
think of about suchobject; must occasion
ally draw its attention to facts it has not
yet observed, with the view of leading it to
notice them itself whenever they recur;
and must go on by and by to indicate or
supply new series of things for a like
exhaustive examination ? Note the way
in which, on this method, the intelligent
mother conducts her lessons. Step by
step she familiarises her little boy with
the names of the simpler attributes,
hardness, softness, colour, taste, size :
in doing which she finds him eagerly
help by bringing this to show her that it
is red, and the other to make her feel
that it is hard, as fast as she gives him
words for these properties. Each addi
tional property, as she draws his atten
tion to it in some fresh thing which he
brings her, she takes care to mention
in connection with those he already
knows ; so that by the natural tendency
to imitate, he may get into the habit of
repeating them one after another. Grad
ually as there occur cases in which he
omits to name one or more of the pro
perties he has become acquainted with,
she introduces the practice of asking him
whether there is not something more
that he can tell her about the thing he
has got. Probably he does not under
stand.
After letting him puzzle a
while she tells him ; perhaps laughing
at him a little for his failure. A few
recurrences of this and he perceives
what is to be done. When next she says
she knows something more about the
object than he has told her, his pride is
roused ; he looks at it intently ; he
thinks over all that he has heard ; and
�58
EDUCATION
the problem being easy, presently finds it with the intellectual appetites their
out. He is full of glee at his success, natural adjuncts—amour propre and the
and she sympathises with him.
In desire for sympathy; to induce by the
common with every child, he delights in union of all these an intensity of atten
the discovery of his powers. He wishes tion which insures perceptions both vivid
for more victories, and goes in quest of and complete; and to habituate the
more things about which to tell her. As mind from the beginning to that practice
his faculties unfold she adds quality after of self-help which it must ultimately
quality to his list: progressing from follow.
hardness and softness to roughness and
Object-lessons should not only be
smoothness, from colour to polish, from carried on after quite a different fashion
simple bodies to composite ones—thus
from that commonly pursued, but should
constantly complicating the problem as be extended to a range of things far
he gains competence, constantly taxing wider, and continued to a period far
his attention and memory to a greater later, than now. They should not be
extent, constantly maintaining his inte limited to the contents of the house;
rest by supplying him with new impres but should include those of the fields
sions such as his mind can assimilate,
and the hedges, the quarry and the sea
and constantly gratifying him by con shore. They should not cease with early
quests over such small difficulties as he childhood; but should be so kept up
can master. In doing this she is mani during youth, as insensibly to merge into
festly but following out that spontaneous the investigations of the naturalist and
process which was going on during a still the man of science. Here again we
earlier period—simply aiding self-evolu have but to follow Nature’s leadings.
tion; and is aiding it in the mode Where can be seen an intenser delight
suggested by the boy’s instinctive be than that of children picking up new
haviour to her.
Manifestly, too, the flowers and watching new insects; or
course she is adopting is the one best hoarding pebbles and shells ? And who
calculated to establish a habit of exhaus is there but perceives that by sympa
tive observation ; which is the professed thising with them they may be led on to
aim of these lessons. To tell a child any extent of inquiry into the qualities
this and to show it the other, is not and structures of these things? Every
to teach it how to observe, but to make botanist who has had children with him
it a mere recipient of another’s obser in the woods and lanes must have
vations : a proceeding which weakens noticed how eagerly they joined in his
rather than strengthens its powers of pursuits, how keenly they searched out
self-instruction—which deprives it of the plants for him, how intently they watched
pleasures resulting from successful activity while he examined them, how they over
—which presents this all-attractive know whelmed him with questions. The con-.
ledge under the aspect of formal tuition sistent follower of Bacon—the “servant
—and which thus generates that indif and interpreter of nature,” will see that
ference and even disgust not unfrequently we ought modestly to adopt the course
Having
felt towards these object-lessons. On of culture thus indicated.
the other hand, to pursue the course become familiar with the simpler pro
above described is simply tc guide the perties of inorganic objects, the child
should by the same process be led on to
intellect to its appropriate food; to join
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCA TION
an exhaustive examination of the things
it picks up in its daily walks—the less
complex facts they present being alone
noticed at first: in plants, the colours,
numbers, and forms of the petals, and
shapes of the stalks and leaves; in
Insects, the numbers of the wings, legs,
and antennae, and their colours. As
these become fully appreciated and
invariably observed, further facts may be
successively introduced : in the one case,
the numbers of stamens and pistils, the
forms of the flowers, whether radial or
bilateral in symmetry, the arrangement
and character of the leaves, whether
opposite or alternate, stalked or sessile,
smooth or hairy, serrated, toothed, or
crenate; in the other, the divisions of
the body, the segments of the abdomen,
the markings of the wings, the number
of joints in the legs, and the forms of
the smaller organs—the system pursued
throughout, being that of making it the
child’s ambition to say respecting every
thing it finds, all that can be said. Then
when a fit age has been reached, the
means of preserving these plants, which
have become so interesting in virtue of
the knowledge obtained of them, may
as a great favour be supplied; and
eventually, as a still greater favour, may
also be supplied the apparatus needful
for keeping the larvae of our common
butterflies and moths through their trans
formations—a practice which, as we
can personally testify, yields the highest
gratification; is continued with ardour
for years; when joined with the entomo
logical collection, adds immense interest
to Saturday-afternoon rambles; and
forms an admirable introduction to the
study of physiology.
We are quite prepared to hear from
many that all this is throwing away time
and energy ; and that children would be
much better occupied in writing their
59
copies or learning their pence-tables, and
so fitting themselves for the business of
life. We regret that such crude ideas of
what constitutes education, and such a
narrow conception of utility, should still
be prevalent. Saying nothing on the
need for a systematic culture of the per
ceptions and the value of the practices
above inculcated as subserving that need,
we are prepared to defend them even on
the score of the knowledge gained. If
men are to be mere cits, mere porers
over ledgers, with no ideas beyond their
trades—if it is well that they should be
as the cockney whose conception of rural
pleasures extends no further than sitting
in a tea-garden smoking pipes and
drinking porter; or as the squire who
thinks of woods as places for shooting
in, of uncultivated plants as nothing but
weeds, and who classifies animals into
game, vermin, and stock—then indeed
it is needless to learn any thing that does
not directly help to replenish the till and
fill the larder. But if there is a more
worthy aim for us than to be drudges—
if there are other uses in the things
around us than their power to bring
money—if there are higher faculties to
be exercised than acquisitive and sensual
ones—if the pleasures which poetry and
art and science and philosophy can bring
are of any moment; then is it desirable
that the instinctive inclination which
every child shows to observe natural
beauties and investigate natural phe
nomena, should be encouraged. But
this gross utilitarianism which is content
to come into the world and quit it again
without knowing what kind of a world it
is or what it contains, may be met on its
own ground. It will by and by be found
that a knowledge of the laws of life
is more important than any other know
ledge whatever—that the laws of life
underlie not only all bodily and mental
�6o
EDUCATION
processes, but by implication all the
transactions of the house and the street,
all commerce, all politics, all morals—
and that therefore without a comprehen
sion of them, neither personal nor social
conduct can be rightly regulated. It
will eventually be seen to, that the laws
of life are essentially the same through
out the whole organic creation; and
further, that they cannot be properly
understood in their complex manifesta
tions until they have been studied in
their simpler ones. And when this is
seen, it will be also seen that in aiding
the child to acquire the out-of-door
information for which it shows so great
an avidity, and in encouraging the
acquisition of such information through
out youth, we are simply inducing it to
store up the raw material of future
organisation—the facts that will one
day bring home to it with due force,
those great generalisations of science by
which actions may be rightly guided.
The spreading recognition of drawing
as an element of education, is one
among many signs of the more rational
views on mental culture now beginning
to prevail.
Once more it may be
remarked that teachers are at length
adopting the course which Nature has
perpetually been pressing on their
notice.
The spontaneous attempts
made by children to represent the men,
houses, trees, and animals around them
—on a slate if they can get nothing
better, or with lead-pencil on paper if
they can beg them—are familiar to all.
To be shown through a picture-book is
one of their highest gratifications; and
as usual, their strong imitative tendency
presently generates in them the ambition
to make pictures themselves also. This
effort to depict the striking things they
see, is a further instinctive exercise of
the perceptions—a means whereby still
greater accuracy and completeness of
observation are induced. And alike by
trying to interest us in their discoveries
of the sensible properties of things, and
by their endeavours to draw, they solicit
from us just that kind of culture which
they most need.
Had teachers been guided by Nature’s
hints, not only in making drawing a part
of education but in choosing modes of
teaching it, they would have done still
better than they have done. What is
that the child first tries to represent ?
Things that are large, things that are
attractive in colour, things round which
its pleasurable associations most cluster
—human beings from whom it has
received so many emotions; cows and
dogs which interest by the many phe
nomena they present; houses that are
hourly visible and strike by their size
and contrast of parts. And which of
the processes of representation gives it
most delight? Colouring. Paper and
pencil are good in default of something
better; but a box of paints and a brush
—these are the treasures. The drawing
of outlines immediately becomes sec
ondary to colouring—-is gone through
mainly with a view to the colouring;
and if leave can be got to colour a book
of prints, how great is the favour!
Now, ridiculous as such a position will
seem to drawing-masters, who postpone
colouring and who teach form by a dreary
discipline of copying lines, we believe
that the course of culture thus indicated
is the right one. The priority of colour
to form, which, as already pointed out,
has a psychological basis, should be
recognised from the beginning; and
from the beginning also, the things
imitated should be real. That greater
delight m colour which is not only
conspicuous in children but persists in
most persons throughout life, should be
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
continuously employed as the natural
stimulus to the mastery of the com
paratively difficult and unattractive form :
the pleasure of the subsequent tinting,
should be the prospective reward for the
labour of delineation. And these efforts
to represent interesting actualities, should
be encouraged; in the conviction that
as, by a widening experience, simpler
and more practicable objects become
interesting, they too will be attempted;
and that so a gradual approximation
will be made towards imitations having
some resemblance to the realities. The
extreme indeiiniteness which, in con
formity with the law of evolution, these
first attempts exhibit, is anything but
a reason for ignoring them. No matter
how grotesque the shapes produced;
no matter how daubed and glaring the
colours. The question is not whether
the child is producing good drawings.
The question is, whether it is developing
its faculties. It has first to gain some
command over its fingers, some crude
notions of likeness; and this practice is
better than any other for these ends,
since it is the spontaneous and interest
ing one. During early childhood no
formal drawing-lessons are possible.
Shall we therefore repress, or neglect to
aid, these efforts of self-culture ? or shall
we encourage and guide them as normal
exercises of the perceptions and the
powers of manipulation ? If by furnish
ing cheap woodcuts to be painted, and
simple contour-maps to have their boun
dary lines tinted, we can not only plea
surably draw out the faculty of colour,
but can incidentally produce some fami
liarity with the outlines of things and
countries, and some ability to move the
brush steadily; and if by the supply of
tempting objects we can keep up the
instinctive practice of making repre
sentations, however rough; it must hap
6j
pen that when the age for lessons in
drawing is reached, there will exist a
facility that would else have been absent.
Time will have been gained ; and trouble
both to teacher and pupil, saved.
From what has been said, it may be
readily inferred that we condemn the
practice of drawing from copies; and
still more so that formal discipline in
making straight lines and curved lines
and compound lines, with which it is the
fashion of some teachers to begin. We
regret that the Society of Arts has re
cently, in its series of manuals on “ Ru
dimentary Art-Instruction,” given its
countenance to an elementary drawing
book, which is the most vicious in prin
ciple that we have seen. We refer to
the “ Outline from Outline, or from the
Flat,” by John Bell, sculptor. As ex
plained in the prefatory note, this pub
lication proposes “ to place before the
student a simple, yet logical mode of
instruction”; and to this end sets out
with a number of definitions thus :—
“ A simple line in drawing is a thin mark
drawn from one point to another.
“ Lines may be divided, as to their nature in
drawing, into two classes:
“ i. Straight, which are marks that go the
shortest road between two points, as A B.
“ 2. Or Curved, which are marks which do
not go the shortest road between two points, as
C D.”
And so the introduction progresses to
horizontal lines, perpendicular lines,
oblique lines, angles of the several kinds,
and the various figures which lines and
angles make up. The work is, in short,
a grammar of form, with exercises. And
thus the system of commencing with a
dry analysis of elements, which, in the
teaching of language, has been exploded,
is to be re-instituted in the teaching of
drawing. We are to set out with the
definite, instead of with the indefinite.
The abstract is to be preliminary to the
�62
EDUCATION
concrete. Scientific conceptions are to
precede empirical experiences. That
this is an inversion of the normal order,
we need scarcely repeat. It has been
well said concerning the custom of pre
facing the art of speaking any tongue by
a drilling in the parts of speech and their
functions, that it is about as reasonable
as prefacing the art of walking by a
course of lessons on the bones, muscles,
and nerves of the legs; and much the
same thing may be said of the proposal
to preface the art of representing objects,
by a nomenclature and definitions of the
lines which they yield on analysis. These
technicalities are alike repulsive and
needless. They render the study dis
tasteful at the very outset; and all with
the view of teaching that which, in the
course of practice, will be learnt uncon
sciously. Just as the child incidentally
gathers the meanings of ordinary words
from the conversations going on around
it, without the help of dictionaries; so,
from the remarks on objects, pictures,
and its own drawings, will it presently
acquire, not only without effort but even
pleasurably, those same scientific terms
which, when taught at first, are a mystery
and a weariness.
If any dependence is to be placed on
the general principles of education that
have been laid down, the process of
learning to draw should be throughout
continuous with those efforts of early
childhood, described above as so worthy
of encouragement. By the time that the
voluntary practice thus initiated has
given some steadiness of hand, and some
tolerable ideas of proportion, there will
have arisen a vague notion of body as
presenting its three dimensions in per
spective. And when, after sundry abor
tive, Chinese-like attempts to render this
appearance on paper, there has grown up
a pretty clear perception of the thing to
be done, and a desire to do it, a first
lesson in empirical perspective may be
given by means of the apparatus occa
sionally used in explaining perspective as
a science. This sounds alarming; but
the experiment is both comprehensible
and interesting to any boy or girl of
ordinary intelligence. A.plate of glass
so framed as to stand vertically on the
table, being placed before the pupil, and
a book or like simple object laid on the
other side of it, he is requested, while
keeping the eye in one position, to make
ink-dots on the glass, so that they may
coincide with, or hide, the comers of
this object. He is next told to join
these dots by lines; on doing which he
perceives that the lines he makes hide,
or coincide with, the outlines of the
object. And then by putting a sheet
of paper on the other side of the glass,
it is made manifest to him that the lines
he has thus drawn represent the object
as he saw it. They not only look like it,
but he perceives that they must be like
it, because he made them agree with its
outlines; and by removing the paper he
can convince himself that they do agree
with its outlines. The fact is new and
striking; and serves him as an experi
mental demonstration, that lines of
certain lengths, placed in certain direc
tions on a plane, can represent lines of
other lengths, and having other direc
tions, in space. By gradually changing
the position of the object, he may be
led to observe how some lines shorten
and disappear, while others come into
sight and lengthen. The convergence
of parallel lines, and, indeed, all the
leading facts of perspective, may, from
time to time, be similarly illustrated
to him. If he has been duly accustomed
to self-help, he will gladly, when it is
suggested, attempt to draw one of these
outlines on paper, by the eye only; and
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
it may soon be made an exciting aim to
produce unas^sted, a representation as
like as he can to one subsequently
sketched on the glass. Thus without
the unintelligent, mechanical practice of
copying other drawings, but by a method
at once simple and attractive—rational,
yet not abstract,—a familiarity with the
linear appearances of things, and a faculty
of rendering them, may be step by step
acquired. To which advantages add
these :—that even thus early the pupil
learns, almost unconsciously, the true
theory of a picture (namely, that it is a
delineation of objects as they appear
when projected on a plane placed between
them and the eye); and that when he
reaches a fit age for commencing scientific
perspective, he is already thoroughly
acquainted with the facts which form its
logical basis.
As exhibiting a rational mode of con
veying primary conceptions in geometry,
we cannot do better than quote the
following passage from Mr. Wyse :—
A child has been in the habit of using cubes
for arithmetic; let him use them also for the
elements of geometry. I would begin with
solids, the reverse of the usual plan. It saves
all the difficulty of absurd definitions, and bad
explanations on points, lines, and surfaces,
which are nothing but abstractions....... A cube
presents many of the principal elements of
geometry; it at once exhibits points, straight
lines, parallel lines, angels, parallelograms, &c.,
&c. These cubes are divisible into various parts.
The pupil has already been familiarised with
such divisions in numeration, and he now pro
ceeds to a comparison of their several parts,
and of the relation of these parts to each other.
....... From thence he advances to globes, which
furnish him with elementary notions of the circle,
of curves generally, &c., &c.
Being tolerably familiar with solids, he may
now substitute planes. The transition may be
made very easy. Let the cube, for instance, be
cut into thin divisions, and placed on paper ; he
will then see as many plane rectangles as he has
divisions ; so with all the others. Globes may
be treated in the same manner ; he will thus see
6.3
how surfaces really are generated, and be enabled
to abstract them with facility in every solid.
He has thus acquired the alphabet and reading
of geometry. He now proceeds to write it.
The simplest operation, and therefore the firstj
is merely to place these planes on a piece of
paper, and pass the pencil round them. When
this has been frequently done, the plane may be
put at a little distance, and the child required to
copy it, and so on.
*
A stock of geometrical conceptions
having been obtained, in some such
manner as this recommended by Mr.
Wyse, a further step may be taken, by
introducing the practice of testing the
correctness of figures drawn by eye:
thus both exciting an ambition to make
them exact, and continually illustrating
the difficulty of fulfilling that ambition.
There can be little doubt that geometry
had its origin (as, indeed, the word
implies) in the methods discovered by
artizans and others, of making accurate
measurements for the foundations of
buildings, areas of enclosures, and the
like; and that its truths came to be
treacured up, merely with a view to their
immediate utility. They should be im
troduced to the pupil under analogous
relationships. In cutting out pieces for
his card-houses, in drawing ornamental
diagrams for colouring, and in those
various instructive occupations which an
inventive teacher will lead him into, he
may for a length of time be advantage
ously left, like the primitive builder, to
tentative processes; and so will learn
through experience the difficulty of
achieving his aims by the unaided senses.
When, having meanwhile undergone a
valuable discipline of the perceptions,
he has reached a fit age for using a pair
of compasses, he will, while duly appre
ciating these as enabling him to verify
his ocular guesses, be still hindered by
the imperfections of the approximative
method. In this stage he may be left
�64
EDUCATION
for a further period : partly as being yet of these triangles may be drawn with
too young for anything higher; partly perfect correctness and without guessing;
because it is desirable that he should be and after his failure he will value the
made to feel still more strongly the want information. Having thus helped him
of systematic contrivances. If the acqui to the solution of the first problem, with
sition of knowledge is to be made con the view of illustrating the nature of
tinuously interesting; and if, in the early geometrical methods, he is in future to
civilisation of the child, as in the early be left to solve the questions put to him
civilisation of the race, science is valued as best he can. To bisect a line, to
only as ministering to art; it is manifest erect a perpendicular, to describe a
that the proper preliminary to geometry,
square, to bisect an angle, to draw a line
is a long practice in those constructive parallel to a given line, to describe a
processes, which geometry will facilitate.
hexagon, are problems which a little
Observe that here, too, Nature points patience will enable him to find out.
the way. Children show a strong pro And from these he may be led on step
pensity to cut out things in paper, to
by step to more complex questions : all
make, to build—a propensity which, if of which, under judicious management,
encouraged and directed, will not only he will puzzle through unhelped. Doubt
prepare the way for scientific conceptions,
less, many of those brought up under
but will develop those powers of mani the old régime, will look upon this
pulation in which most people are so assertion sceptically. We speak from
deficient.
facts, however; and those neither few
When the observing and inventive nor special. We have seen a class of
faculties have attained the requisite boys become so interested in making
power, the pupil may be introduced to out solutions to such problems, as to
empirical geometry; that is—geometry look forward to their geometry-lesson as
dealing with methodical solutions, but a chief event of the week. Within the
not with the demonstrations of them. last month, we have heard of one girls’
Like all other transitions in education,
school, in which some of the young
this should be made not formally but ladies voluntarily occupy themselves with
incidentally; and the relationship to geometrical questions out of schoolconstructive art should still be main hours ; and of another, where they not
tained. To make, out of cardboard, a only do this, but where one of them is
tetrahedron like one given to him, is a begging for problems to find out during
problem which will interest the pupil,
the holidays : both which facts we state
and serve as a convenient starting-point.
on the authority of the teacher. Strong
In attempting this, he finds it needful to proofs, these, of the practicability and
draw four equilateral triangles arranged the immense advantage of self-develop
in special positions. Being unable in ment ! A branch of knowledge which,the absence of an exact method to do as commonly taught, is dry and even
this accurately, he discovers on putting repulsive, is thus, by following the
the triangles into their respective posi method of Nature, made extremely
tions, that he cannot make their sides interesting and profoundly beneficial.fit; and that their angles do not meet at We say profoundly beneficial, because
the apex. He may now be shown how,
the effects are riot confined to the gain
by describing a couple of circles, each ing of geometrical facts, but often
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
65
revolutionise the whole state of mind. It
has repeatedly occurred that those who
have been stupefied by the ordinary
school-drill—by its abstract formulas, its
wearisome tasks, its cramming—have
suddenly had their intellects roused by
thus ceasing to make them passive
recipients, and inducing them to become
active discoverers. The discouragement
caused by bad teaching having been
diminished by a little sympathy, and
sufficient perseverance excited to achieve
a first success, there arises a revulsion of
feeling affecting the whole nature. They
no longer find themselves incompetent;
they, too, can do something. And
gradually as success follows success, the
incubus of despair disappears, and they
attack the difficulties of their other
studies with a courage insuring conquest.
A few weeks after the foregoing re
marks were originally published, Pro
fessor Tyndall, in a lecture at the Royal
Institution “ On the Importance of the
study of Physics as a Branch of Educa
tion,” gave some conclusive evidence to
the same effect. His testimony, based
on personal observation, is of such great
value that we cannot refrain from
quoting it. Here it is.
stated something to be impossible, never to use
that stupid word again. Thus cheered, he has
returned to his task with a smile, which perhaps
had something of doubt in it, but which, never
theless, evinced a resolution to try again. I
have seen the boy’s eye brighten, and at length,
with a pleasure of which the ecstasy of Archi
medes was but a simple expansion, heard him
exclaim, “ I have it, sir.” The consciousness
of self-power, thus awakened, was of immense
value; and animated by it the progress of the
class was truly astonishing. It was often my
custom to give the boys their choice of pursuing
their propositions in the book, or of trying their
strength at others not to be found there. Never
in a single instance have I known the book to
be chosen. I was ever ready to assist when I
deemed help needful, but my offers of assistance
were habitually declined. The boys had tasted
the sweets of intellectual conquest and demanded
victories of their own. I have seen their
diagrams scratched on the walls, cut into the
beams upon their play-ground, and numberless
other illustrations of the living interest they took
in the subject. For my own part, as far as
experience in teaching goes, I was a mere
fledgling: I knew nothing of the rules of
pedagogics, as the Germans name it; but I
adhered to the spirit indicated at the commence
ment of this discourse, and endeavoured to make
geometry a means and not a branch of education.
The experiment was successful, and some of the
most delightful hours of my existence have been
spent in marking the vigorous and cheerful
expansion of mental power, when appealed to in
the manner I have described.
One of the duties which fell to my share,
during the period to which I have referred, was
the instruction of a class in mathematics, and I
usually found that Euclid and the ancient
geometry generally, when addressed to the
understanding, formed a very attractive study
for youth. But it was my habitual practice to
withdraw the boys from the routine of the book,
and to appeal to their self-power in the treat
ment of questions not comprehended in that
routine. At first, the change from the beaten
track usually excited a little aversion : the youth
felt like a child amid strangers ; but in no single
instance have I found this aversion to continue.
When utterly disheartened, I have encouraged
the boy by that anecdote of Newton, where he
attributes the difference between him and other
men, mainly to his own patience ; or of Mira
beau, when he ordered his servant, who had |
This empirical geometry which pre
sents an endless series of problems,
should be continued along with other
studies for years; and may throughout
be advantageously accompanied by those
concrete applications of its principles
which serve as its preliminary. After
the cube, the octahedron, and the vari
ous forms of pyramid and prism have
been mastered, may come the more
complex regular bodies—the dodecahe
dron and icosahedron—to construct
which out of single pieces of cardboard,
requires considerable ingenuity. From
these, the transition may naturally be
made to such modified forms of the
c
�66
EDUCATION
regular bodies as are met with in
crystals—the truncated cube, the cube
with its dihedral as well as its solid
angles truncated, the octahedron and
the various prisms as similarly modified :
in imitating which numerous forms
assumed by different metals and salts, an
acquaintance with the leading facts of
mineralogy will be incidentally gained.
*
After long continuance in exercises of
this kind, rational geometry, as may be
supposed, presents no obstacles. Habit
uated to contemplate relationships of
form and quantity, and vaguely per
ceiving from time to time the necessity
of certain results as reached by certain
means, the pupil comes to regard the
demonstrations of Euclid as the missing
supplemeuts to his familiar problems.
His well-disciplined faculties enable him
easily to master its successive proposi
tions, and to appreciate their value; and
he has the occasional gratification of
finding some of his own methods proved
to be true. Thus he enjoys what is to
the unprepared a dreary task. It only
remains to add, that his mind will pre
sently arrive at a fit condition for that
most valuable of all exercises for the
reflective faculties—the making of origi
nal demonstrations. Such theorems as
those appended to the successive books
of the Messrs. Chambers’s Euclid, will
soon become practicable to him; and in
proving them, the process of self-develop
ment will be not intellectual only, but
moral.
To continue these suggestions much
further, would be to write a detailed
treatise on education, which we do not
purpose. The foregoing outlines of plans
for exercising the perceptions in early
* Those who seek aid in carrying out the
system of culture above described, will find in it
a little work entitled “Inventional Geometry”;
published by Messrs. Williams & Norgate.
childhood, for conducting object-lessons,
for teaching drawing and geometry, must
be considered simply as illustrations of
the method dictated by the general
principles previously specified. We
believe that on examination they will be
found not only to progress from the
simple to the complex, from the indefinite
to the definite, from the concrete to the
abstract, from the empirical to the
rational; but to satisfy the further
requirements, that education shall be a
repetition of civilisation in little, that it
shall be as much as possible a process
of self-evolution, and that it shall be as
pleasurable. The fulfilment of all these
conditions by one type of method, tends
alike to verify the conditions, and to
prove that type of method the right one.
Mark too, that this method is the logical
outcome of the tendency characterising
all modern improvements in tuition—•
that it is but an adoption in full of the
natural system which they adopt partially
—that it displays this complete adoption
of the natural system, both by conform
ing to the above principles, and by
following the suggestions which the
unfolding mind itself gives : facilitating
its spontaneous activities, and so aiding
the developments which Nature is busy
with. Thus there seems abundant reason
to conclude, that the mode of procedure
above exemplified, closely approximates
to the true one.
A few paragraphs must be added in
further inculcation of the two general
principles, that are alike the most impor
tant and the least attended to : namely,
the principle that throughout youth, as
in early childhood and in maturity, the
process shall be one of self-instruction;
and the obverse principle, that the mental
action induced shall be throughout in
trinsically grateful. If progression from
�INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
simple to complex, from indefinite to
definite, and from concrete to abstract, be
considered the essential requirements as
dictated by abstract psychology ; then do
the requirements that knowledge shall be
self-mastered, and pleasurably mastered,
become tests by which we may judge
whether the dictates of abstract psycho
logy are being obeyed. If the first embody
the leading generalisations of the science
of mental growth, the last are the chief
canons of the art of fostering mental
growth. For manifestly, if the steps in
our curriculum are so arranged that they
can be successively ascended by the
pupil himself with little or no help, they
must correspond with the stages of
evolution in his faculties ; and manifestly,
if the successive achievements of these
steps are intrinsically gratifying to him,
it follows that they require no more than
a normal exercise of his powers.
But making education a process of
self-evolution, has other advantages than
this of keeping our lessons in the right
order. In the first place, it guarantees
a vividness and permanency of impression
which the usual methods can never pro
duce. Any piece of knowledge which
the pupil has himself acquired — any
problem which he has himself solved,
becomes, by virtue of the conquest, much
more thoroughly his than it could else
be. The preliminary activity of mind
which his success implies, the concentra
tion of thought necessary to it, and the
excitement consequent on his triumph,
conspire to register the facts in his
memory in a way that no mere informa
tion heard from a teacher, or read in a
school-book, can be registered. Even if
he fails, the tension to which his faculties
have been wound up, insures his remem
brance of the solution when given to
him, better than half-a-dozen repetitions
would. Observe, again, that this disci
67
pline necessitates a continuous organisa
tion of the knowledge he acquires. It
is in the very nature of facts and inferences
assimilated in this normal manner, that
they successively become the premises
of further conclusions—the means of
solving further questions. The solution
of yesterday’s problem helps the pupil in
mastering to-day’s. Thus the knowledge
is turned into faculty as soon as it is
taken in, and forthwith aids in the
general function of thinking—does not
lie merely written on the pages of an
internal library, as when rote-learnt.
Mark further, the moral culture which
this constant self-help involves. Courage
in attacking difficulties, patient concen
tration of the attention, perseverance
through failures—these are characteristics
which after-life specially requires; and
these are characteristics which this system
of making the mind work for ’ts food
specially produces. That it is thoroughly
practicable to carry out instruction after
this fashion, we can ourselves testify;
having been in youth thus led to solve
the comparatively complex problems of
perspective. And that leading teachers
have been tending in this direction, is
indicated alike in the saying of Fellenberg,
that “the individual, independent activity
of the pupil is of much greater importance
than the ordinary busy officiousness of
many who assume the office of educators”;
in the opinion of Horace Mann, that
“ unfortunately education amongst us at
present consists too much in telling, not
in training”; and in the remark of M.
Marcel, that “ what the learner discovers
by mental exertion is better known than
what is told to him.”
Similarly with the correlative require
ment, that the method of culture pursued
shall be one productive of an intrinsically
happy activity,—an activity not happy
because of intrinsic rewards to be obtained,
�68
EDUCATION
but because of its own healthfulness.
Conformity to this requirement, besides
preventing us from thwarting the normal
process of evolution, incidentally secures
positive benefits of importance. Unless
we are to return to an ascetic morality
(or rather /¡w-morality) the maintenance
of youthful happiness must be considered
as in itself a worthy aim. Not to dwell
upon this, however, we go on to remark
that a pleasurable state of feeling is far
more favourable to intellectual action
than a state of indifference or disgust.
Every one knows that things read, heard,
or seen with interest, are better remem
bered than things read, heard, or seen
with apathy. In the one case the facul
ties appealed to are actively occupied
with the subject presented; in the other
they are inactively occupied with it, and
the attention is continually drawn away
by more attractive thoughts. Hence the
impressions are respectively strong and
weak.
Moreover, to the intellectual
listlessness which a pupil’s lack of interest
in any study involves, must be added the
paralysing fear of consequences. This,
by distracting his attention, increases the
difficulty he finds in bringing his faculties
to bear upon facts that are repugnant to
them. Clearly, therefore, the efficiency
of tuition will, other things equal, be
proportionate to the gratification with
which tasks are performed.
It should be considered also, that grave
moral consequences depend upon the
habitual pleasure or pain which daily
lessons produce. No one.can compare
the faces and manners of two boys—theone made happy by mastering interesting
subjects, and the other made miserable
by disgust with his studies, by consequent
inability, by cold looks, by threats, by
punishment — without seeing that the
disposition of the one is being benefited,
and that of the other injured. Whoever
has marked the effects of success and
failure upon the mind, and the power of
the mind over the body; will see that in
the one case both temper and health are
favourably affected, while in the other
there is danger of permanent moroseness,
of permanent timidity, and even of per
manent constitutional depression. There
remains yet another indirect result of no
small moment. The relationship between
teachers and their pupils is, other things
equal, rendered friendly and influential,
or antagonistic and powerless, according
as the system of culture produces happi
ness or misery. Human beings are at
the mercy of their associated ideas. A
daily minister of pain cannot fail to be
regarded with secret dislike; and if he
causes no emotions but painful ones, will
inevitably be hated. Conversely, he who
constantly aids children to their ends,
hourly provides them with the satisfac
tions of conquest, hourly encourages
them through their difficulties and sympa
thises in their successes, will be liked;
nay, if his behaviour is consistent
throughout, must be loved. And when
we remember how efficient and benign
is the control of a master who is felt to
be a friend, when compared with the
control of one who is looked upon with
aversion, or at best indifference, we may
infer that the indirect advantages of
conducting education on the happiness
principle do not fall far short of the
direct ones. To all who question the
possibility of acting out the system here
advocated, we reply as before, that not
only does theory point to it, but experience
commends it. To the many verdicts of
distinguished teachers who since Pestalozzi’s time have testified this, may be
here added that of Professor Pillans,
who asserts that “ where young, people
are taught as they ought to be, they are
quite as happy in school as at play,
�MORAL EDUCATION
seldom less delighted, nay, often more,
with the well-directed exercise of their
mental energies, than with that of their
muscular powers.”
As suggesting a final reason for making
education a process of self-instruction,
and by consequence a process of pleasur
able instruction, we may advert to the
fact that, in proportion as it is made so,
is there a probability that it will not
cease when school-days end. As long
as the acquisition of knowledge is
rendered habitually repugnant, so long
will there be a prevailing tendency to
discontinue it when free from the coer
cion of parents and masters. And when
the acquisition of knowledge has been
rendered habitually gratifying, then there
will be as prevailing a tendency to con
tinue, without superintendence, that self
culture previously carried on under super
intendence. These results are inevitable.
While the laws of mental association
remain true—while men dislike the
things and places that suggest painful
recollections, and delight in those which
call to mind by-gone pleasures—painful
lessons will make knowledge repulsive,
and pleasurable lessons will make it
attractive. The men to whom in boyhood information came m dreary tasks
along with threats of punishment, and
who were never led into habits of inde
pendent inquiry, are unlikely to be
students in after years ; while those to
whom it came in the natural forms, at
the proper times, and who remember its
facts as not only interesting in them
selves, but as the occasions of a long
series of gratifying successes, are likely
to continue through life that self
instruction commenced in youth.
CHAPTER III.
MORAL EDUCATION
The greatest defect in our programmes
of education is entirely overlooked.
While much is being done in the
detailed improvement of our systems in
respect both of matter and manner, the
most pressing desideratum- has not yet
been even recognised as a desideratum.
To prepare the young for the duties of
life, is tacitly admitted to be the end
which parents and schoolmasters should
have in view; and happily, the value of
the things taught, and the goodness of
the methods followed in teaching them,
are now ostensibly judged by their fitness
to this end. The propriety of substi
tuting for an exclusively classical training,
a training in which the modern languages
shall have a share, is argued on this
ground. The necessity of increasing the
amount of science is urged for like
reasons. But though some care is taken
to fit youth of both sexes for society and
citizenship, no care whatever is taken to
fit them for the position of parents.
While it is seen that for the purpose of
gaining a livelihood, an elaborate pre
paration is needed, it appears to be
thought that for the bringing up of
children, no preparation whatever is
needed. While many years are spent
by a boy in gaining knowledge of which
the chief value is that it constitutes “ the
education of a gentleman”; and while
many years are spent by a girl in those
decorative acquirements which fit her for
evening parties ; not an hour is spent by
either in preparation for that gravest of
all responsibilities—the management of
a family. Is it that this responsibility
is but a remote contingency? On the
contrary, it is sure to devolve on nine
�7o
EDUCATION
out of ten. Is it that the discharge of
it is easy? Certainly not: of all functions
which the adult has to fulfil, this is the
most difficult. Is it that each may be
trusted by self-instruction to fit himself,
or herself, for the office of parent ? No :
not only is the need for such self-instruc
tion unrecognised, but the complexity of
the subject renders it the one of all
others in which self-instruction is least
likely to succeed. No rational plea can
be put forward for leaving the Art of
Education out of our curriculum.
Whether as bearing on the happiness
of parents themselves, or whether as
affecting the characters and lives of their
children and remote descendants, we
must admit that a knowledge of the right
methods of juvenile culture, physical,
intellectual, and moral, is a knowledge
of extreme importance.
This topic
should be the final one in the course
of instruction passed through by each
man and woman. As physical maturity
is marked by the ability to produce
offspring; so, mental maturity is marked
by the ability to train those offspring.
The subject which involves all other
subjects, and therefore the subject in which
education should culminate, is the Theory
and Practice of Education.
In the absence of this preparation, the
management of children, and more espe
cially the moral management, is lament
ably bad. Parents either never think
about the matter at all, or else their con
clusions are crude and inconsistent. In
most cases, and especially on the part of
mothers, the treatment adopted on every
occasion is that which the impulse of the
moment prompts : it springs not from
any reasoned-out conviction as to what
will most benefit the child, but merely
expresses the dominant parental feelings,
whether good or ill; and varies from
hour to hour as these feelings vary. Or
if the dictates of passion are supple
mented by any definite doctrines and
methods, they are those handed down
from the past, or those suggested by the
remembrances of childhood, or those
adopted from nurses and servants—
methods devised not by the enlighten
ment, but by the ignorance, of the time.
Commenting on the chaotic state oí
opinion and practice relative to selfgovernment, Richter writes:—
If the secret variances of a large class of
ordinary fathers were brought to light, and laid
down as a plan of studies and reading, cata
logued for a moral education, they would run
somewhat after this fashion :—In the first hour
“pure morality must be read to the child, either
by myself or the tutor ”; in the second “mixed
morality, or that which may be applied to one’s
own advantage
in the third, “ do you not see
that your father does so and so?”; in the fourth,
“you are little, and this is only fit for grown-up
people ”; in the fifth, “ the chief matter is that
you should succeed in the world, and become
something in the state”; in the sixth, “not the
temporary, but the eternal, determines the worth
of a man”; in the seventh, “therefore rather
suffer injustice, and be kind ”; in the eighth, “ but
defend yourself bravely if any one attack you ”;
in the ninth, “ do not make a noise, dear child ”;
in the tenth, “a boy must not sit so quiet”; in
the eleventh, “you must obey your parents
better”; in the twelfth, “and educate yourself.”
So by the hourly change of his principles, the
father conceals their untenableness and onesided
ness. As for his wife, she is neither like him,
nor yet like that harlequin who came on to the
stage with a bundle of papers under each arm,
and answered to the inquiry, what he had under
his right arm, “orders,” and to what he had
under his left arm, “ counter-orders.” But the
mother might be much better compared to a
giant Briareus, who had a hundred arms, and a
bundle of papers under each.
This state of things is not to be readily
changed. Generations must pass before
a great amelioration of it can be expected.
Like political institutions, educational
systems are not made, but grow; and
within brief periods growth is insensible.
Slow, however, as must be any improve
�MORAL EDUCATION
ment, even that improvement implies the
use of means ; and among the means is
discussion.
We are not among those who believe
in Lord Palmerston’s dogma, that “ all
children are born good.” On the whole,
the opposite dogma, untenable as it is,
seems to us less wide of the truth. Nor do
we agree with those who think that, by
skilful discipline, children may be made
altogether what they should be. Con
trariwise, we are satisfied that, though
imperfections of nature may be dimin
ished by wise management, they cannot
be removed by it. The notion that an
ideal humanity might be forthwith pro
duced by a perfect system of education,,
is near akin to that implied in the poems
of Shelley, that would mankind give up
their old institutions and prejudices, all
the evils in the world would at once
disappear : neither notion being accep
table to such as have dispassionately
studied human affairs.
Nevertheless, we may fitly sympathise
with those who entertain these too
sanguine hopes. Enthusiasm, pushed
even to fanaticism, is a useful motive
power—perhaps an indispensable one.
It is clear that the ardent politician
would never undergo the labours and
make the sacrifices he does, did he not
believe that the reform he fights for is
the one thing needful. But for his con
viction that drunkenness is the root of
■all social evils, the teetotaller would
•agitate far less energetically. In philan
thropy, as in other things, great advan
tage results from division of labour; and
that there may be division of labour,
each class of philanthropists must be
more or less subordinated to its function
—must have an exaggerated faith in its
work. Hence, of those who regard
■education, intellectual or moral, as the
7i
panacea, we may say that their undue
expectations are not without use ; and
that perhaps it is part of the beneficent
order of things that their confidence
cannot be shaken.
Even were it true, however, that by
some possible system of moral control,
children could be moulded into the
desired form, and even could every
parent be indoctrinated with this system;
we should still be far from achieving the
object in view. It is forgotten that the
carrying out of any such system pre
supposes, on the part of adults, a degree
of intelligence, of goodness, of self
control, possessed by no one. The
error made by those who discuss ques
tions of domestic discipline, lies in
ascribing all the faults and difficulties to
the children, and none to the parents.
The current assumption respecting
family government, as respecting na
tional government, is, that the virtues
are with the rulers and the vices with the
ruled. Judging by educational theories,
men and women are entirely transfigured
in their relations to offspring. The
citizens we do business with, the people
we meet in the world, we know to be
very imperfect creatures. In the daily
scandals, in the quarrels of friends, in
bankruptcy disclosures, in lawsuits, in
police reports, we have constantly thrust
before us the pervading selfishness, dis
honesty, brutality. Yet when we criti
cise nursery-management and canvass
the misbehaviour of juveniles, we habitu
ally take for granted that these culpable
persons are free from moral delinquency
in the treatment of their boys and girls !
So far is this from the truth, that we do
not hesitate to blame parental miscon
duct for a great part of the domestic
disorder commonly ascribed to the per
versity of children. We do not assert
this of the more sympathetic and self
�72
EDUCATION
restrained, among whom we hope most
of our readers may be classed; but we
assert it of the mass. What kind of
moral culture is to be expected from a
mother who, time after time, angrily
shakes her infant because it will not
suck ; which we once saw a mother do ?
How much sense of justice is likely to
be instilled by a father who, on having
his attention drawn by a scream to the
fact that his child’s finger is jammed
between the window-sash and the sill,
begins to beat the child instead of re
leasing it ? Yet that there are such
fathers is testified to us by an eye
witness. Or, to take a still stronger
case, also vouched for by direct testi
mony—what are the educational pros
pects of the boy who, on being taken
home with a dislocated thigh, is saluted
with a castigation ? It is true that these
are extreme instances—instances exhibit
ing in human beings that blind instinct
which impels brutes to destroy the
weakly and injured of their own race.
But extreme though they are, they
typify feelings and conduct daily observ
able in many families. Who has not
repeatedly seen a child slapped by nurse
or parent for a fretfulness probably re
sulting from bodily derangement ? Who,
when watching a mother snatch up a
fallen little one, has not often traced,
both in the rough manner and in the
sharply - uttered exclamation — “ You
stupid little thing 1”—an irascibility fore
telling endless future squabbles ? Is
there not in the harsh tones in which a
father bids his children be quiet, evi
dence of a deficient fellow-feeling with
them ? Are not the constant, and often
quite needless, thwartings that the young
experience—the injunctions to sit still,
which an active child cannot obey with
out suffering great nervous irritation, the
commands not to look out of the window
when travelling by railway, which on
a child of any intelligence entails serious
deprivation—are not these thwartings,
we ask, signs of a terrible lack of sym
pathy ? The truth is, that the difficulties
of moral education are necessarily of
dual origin—necessarily result from the
combined faults of parents and children.
If hereditary transmission is a law of
nature, as every naturalist knows it to
be, and as our daily remarks and current
proverbs admit it to be; then, on the
average of cases, the defects of children
mirror the defects of their parents ; —on
the average of cases, we say, because,
complicated as the results are by the
transmitted traits of remoter ancestors,
the correspondence is not special but
only general. And if, on the average of
cases, this inheritance of defects exists,
then the evil passions which parents
have to check in their children, imply
like evil passions in themselves : hidden,
it may be, from the public eye; or per
haps obscured by other feelings; but
still there.
Evidently, therefore, the
general practice of any ideal system of
discipline is hopeless: parents are not
good enough.
Moreover, even were there methods
by which the desired end could be at
once effected ; and even had fathers and
mothers sufficient insight, sympathy, and
self-command to employ these methods
consistently; it might still be contended
that it would be of no use to reform
family-government faster than other
things are reformed. What is it that
we aim to do ? Is it not that education
of whatever kind, has for its proximate
end to prepare a child for the business
of life—to produce a citizen who, while
he is well conducted, is also able to make
his way in the world ? And does not
making his way in the world (by which
we mean, not the acquirement of wealth,
�MORAL EDUCATION
but of the funds requisite for bringing
up a family)—does not this imply a
- certain fitness for the world as it now is ?
And if by any system of culture an ideal
human being could be produced, is it
not doubtful whether he would be fit for
the world as it now is? May we not,
on the contrary, suspect that his too
keen sense of rectitude, and too elevated
standard of conduct, would make life
intolerable or even impossible ? And how
ever admirable the result might be, con
sidered individually, would it not be selfdefeating in so far as society and posterity
are concerned ? There is much reason
for thinking that as in a nation so in a
family, the kind of government is, on
the whole, about as good as the general
state of human nature permits it to be.
We may argue that in the one case, as
in the other, the average character of the
people determines the quality of the
control exercised. In both cases it may
be inferred that amelioration of the
average character leads to an ameliora
tion of system ; and further, that were
it possible to ameliorate the system with
out the average character being first
ameliorated, evil rather than good would
follow. Such degree of harshness as
children now experience from their
parents and teachers, may be regarded
as but a preparation for that greater
harshness which they will meet with on
entering the world. And it may be
urged that were it possible for parents
and teachers to treat them with perfect
equity and entire sympathy, it would
but intensify the sufferings which the
selfishness of men must, in after life,
inflict on them.1
1 Of this nature is the plea put in by some for
the rough treatment experienced by boys at our
public schools; where, as it is said, they are
introduced to a miniature world whose hardships
prepare them for those of the real world. It
73
“But does not this prove too much?”
some one will ask. “ If no system of
moral training can forthwith make
children what they should be; if, even
were there a system that would do this,
existing parents are too imperfect to
carry it out; and if even could such a
system be successfully carried out, its
results would be disastrously incongruous
with the present state of society; does it
not follow that to reform the system now
in use, is neither practicable nor desir
able?” No. It merely follows that
reform in domestic government must go
on, pari passu, with other reforms. It
merely follows that methods of discipline
neither can be nor should be ameliorated,
except by instalments. It merely follows
that the dictates of abstract rectitude
will, in practice, inevitably be subordi
nated by the present state of human
nature—by the imperfections alike of
children, of parents, and of society; and
can only be better fulfilled as the general
character becomes better.
“At any rate, then,” may rejoin our
critic, “it is clearly useless to set up
any ideal standard of family discipline.
There can be no advantage in elabora
ting and recommending methods that
are in advance of the time.” Again we
must be admitted that the plea has some force ;
but it is a very insufficient plea. For whereas
domestic and school discipline, though they
should not be much better than the discipline of
adult life, should be somewhat better ; the disci
pline which boys meet with at Eton, Winchester,
Harrow, etc., is worse than that adult life—more
unjust and cruel. Instead of being an aid to
human progress which all culture should be,
the culture of our public schools, by accustoming
boys to a despotic form of government and an
intercourse regulated by brute force, tends to fit
them for a lower state of society than that which
exists. And chiefly recruited as our legislature
is from among those who are brought up at such
schools, this barbarising influence becomes a
hindrance to national progress.
�74
EDUCATION
contend for the contrary. Just as
in the case of political government,
though pure rectitude may be at
present impracticable, it is requisite
to know where the right lies, in
order that the changes we make may be
iowards the right instead of away from
it; so, in the case of domestic govern
ment, an ideal must be upheld, that
there may be gradual approximations to
it. We need fear no evil consequences
from the maintenance of such an ideal.
On the average the constitutional con
servatism of mankind is strong enough
to prevent too rapid a change. Things
are so organised that until men have
grown up to the level of a higher belief,
they cannot receive it: nominally, they
may hold it, but not virtually. And
even when the truth gets recognised, the
obstacles to conformity with it are so
persistent as to outlive the patience of
philanthropists and even of philosophers.
We may be sure, therefore, that the
difficulties in the way of a normal
government of children, will always put
an adequate check upon the efforts to
realise it.
With these preliminary explanations,
let us go on to consider the true aims
and methods of moral education. After
a few pages devoted to the settlement of
general principles, during the perusal of
which we bespeak the reader’s patience,
we shall aim by illustrations to make
clear the right methods of parental
behaviour in the hourly occurring
difficulties of family government.
When a child falls, or runs its head
against the table, it suffers a pain, the
remembrance of which tends to make it
more careful; and by repetition of such
experiences, it is eventually disciplined
into proper guidance of its movements.
If it lays hold of the fire-bars, thrusts its
hand into a candle-flame, or spills boiling
water on any part of its skin, the result
ing burn or scald is a lesson not easily
forgotten. So deep an impression is
produced by one or two events of this
kind, that no persuasion will afterwards
induce it thus to disregard the laws of
its constitution.
Now in these cases, Nature illustrates
to us in the simplest way, the true theory
and practice of moral discipline—a
theory and practice which, however
much they may seem to the superficial
like those commonly received, we shall
find on examination to differ from them
very widely.
Observe, first, that in bodily injuries
and their penalties we have misconduct
and its consequences reduced to their
simplest forms. Though, according to
their popular acceptations, right and
wrong are words scarcely applicable to
actions that have none but direct bodily
effects j yet whoever considers the matter
will see that such actions must be as
much classifiable under these heads as
any other actions. From whatever
assumption they start, all theories of
morality agree that conduct whose total
results, immediate and remote, are
beneficial, is good conduct; while
conduct whose total results, immediate
and remote, are injurious, is bad
conduct. The ultimate standards by
which all men judge of behaviour,
are the resulting happiness or misery.
We consider drunkenness wrong because
of the physical degeneracy and accom
panying moral evils entailed on the
drunkard and his dependents.
Did
theft give pleasure both to taker and
loser, we should not find it in our cata
logue of sins. Were it conceivable that
kind actions multiplied human sufferings,
we should condemn them—should not
consider them kind. It needs but to
�MokAl education
read the first newspaper-leader, or listen
to any conversation on social affairs, to
see that acts of parliament, political
movements, philanthropic agitations, in
common with the doings of individuals
are judged by their anticipated results in
augmenting the pleasures or pains of
men. And if on analysing all secondary,
superinduced ideas, we find these to be
our final tests of right and wrong, we
cannot refuse to class bodily conduct as
right or wrong according to the bene
ficial or detrimental results produced.
Note, in the second place, the char
acter of the punishments by which these
physical transgressions are prevented.
Punishments, we call them, in the
absence of a better word: for they are
not punishments in the literal sense.
They are not artificial and unnecessary
inflictions of pain; but are simply the
beneficent checks to actions that are
essentially at variance with bodily wel
fare—checks in the absence of which
life would be quickly destroyed by bodily
injuries. It is the peculiarity of these
penalties, if we must so call them, that
they are simply the unavoidable conse
quences of the deeds which they follow :
they are nothing more than the inevitable
reactions entailed by the child’s actions.
Let it be further borne in mind that
these painful reactions are proportionate
to the transgressions. A slight accident
brings a slight pain ; a more serious one,
a severer pain. It is not ordained that
the urchin who tumbles over the door
step, shall suffer in excess of the amount
necessary; with the view of making it
still more cautious than the necessary
suffering will make it. But from its daily
experience it is left to learn the greater
or less errors; and to behave accord
ingly.
And then mark, lastly, that these
natural reactions which follow the child’s
wrong actions, are constant, direct,
unhesitating, and not to be escaped.
No threats; but a silent, rigorous per
formance. If a child runs a pin into
its finger, pain follows. If it does it
again, there is again the same result:
and so on perpetually. In all its dealings
with inorganic Nature it finds this un
swerving persistence, which listens to no
excuse, and from which there is no
appeal; and very soon recognising this
stern though beneficent discipline, it
becomes extremely careful not to trans
gress.
Still more significant will these general
truths appear, when we remember that
they hold throughout adult life as well
as throughout infantine life. It is by an
experimentally-gained knowledge of the
natural consequences, that men and
women are checked when they go wrong.
After home education has ceased, and
when there are no longer parents and
teachers to forbid this or that kind of
conduct, there comes into play a disci
pline like that by which the young child
is trained to self-guidance. If the youth ~
entering on the business of life idles
away his time and fulfils slowly or unskil
fully the duties entrusted to him, there
by-and-by follows the natural penalty :
he is discharged, and left to suffer for
awhile the evils of a relative poverty,
On the unpunctual man, ever missing his
appointments of business and pleasure,
there continually fall the consequent
inconveniences, losses, and deprivations.
The tradesman who charges too high a
rate of profit, loses his customers, and so
is checked in his greediness. Diminish
ing practice teaches the inattentive
doctor to bestow more trouble on his
patients. The too credulous creditor
and the over-sanguine speculator, alike
learn by the difficulties which rashness
entails on them, the necessity of being
�76
EDUCATION
more cautious in their engagements.
And so throughout the life of every
citizen. In the quotation so often made
apropos of such cases—“The burnt child
dreads the fire ”—we see not only that
the analogy between this social discipline
and Nature’s early discipline of infants
is universally recognised; but we also
see an implied conviction that this disci
pline is of the most efficient kind. Nay
indeed, this conviction is more than
implied ; it is distinctly stated. Every
one has heard others confess that only
by “ dearly bought experience ” had they
been induced to give up some bad or
foolish course of conduct formerly
pursued. Every one has heard, in the
criticisms passed on the doings of this
spendthrift or the other schemer, the
remark that advice was useless, and that
nothing but “bitter experience ” would
produce any effect : nothing, that is, but
suffering the unavoidable consequences.
And if further proof be needed that the
natural reaction is not only the most
efficient penalty, but that no humanlydevised penalty can replace it, we have
such further proof in the notorious illsuccess of our various penal systems.
Out of the many methods of criminal
discipline that have been proposed and
legally enforced, none have answered the
expectations of their advocates. Artificial
punishments have failed to produce
reformation ; and have in many cases
increased the criminality. The only suc
cessful reformatories are those privatelyestablished ones which approximate their
régime to the method of Nature—which
do little more than administer the natural
consequences of criminal conduct :
diminishing the criminal’s liberty of
action as much as is needful for the
safety of society, and requiring him to
maintain himself while living under this
restraint. Thus we see, both that the
discipline by which the young child is
taught to regulate its movements is the
discipline by which the great mass of
adults are kept in order, and more or
less improved; and that the discipline
humanly-devised for the worst adults,
fails when it diverges from this divinelyordained discipline, and begins to succeed
on approximating to it.
Have we not here, then, the guiding
principle of moral education ? Must we
not infer that the system so beneficent
in its effects during infancy and maturity,
will be equally beneficent throughout
youth? Can any one believe that the
method which answers so well in the
first and the last divisions of life, will
not answer in the intermediate division ?
Is it not manifest that as “ ministers and
interpreters of Nature ” it is the function
of parents to see that their children
habitually experience the true conse
quences of their conduct—the natural
reactions; neither warding them off, nor
intensifying them, nor putting artificial
consequences in place of them? No
unprejudiced reader will hesitate in his
assent.
Probably, however, not a few will con
tend that already most parents do this—
that the punishments they inflict are, in
the majority of cases, the true conse
quences of ill-conduct—that parental
anger, venting itself in harsh words and
deeds, is the result of a child’s transgres
sion—and that, in the suffering, physical
or moral, which the child is subject to,
it experiences the natural reaction of its
misbehaviour. Along with much error
this assertion contains some truth. It is
unquestionable that the displeasure of
fathers and mothers is a true conse
quence of juvenile delinquency; and that
the manifestation of it is a normal check
upon such delinquency. The scoldings,
�MORAL EDUCATION
and threats, and blows, which a passionate
parent visits on offending little ones, are
doubtless effects actually drawn from
such a parent by their offences ; and so
are, in some sort, to be considered as
among the natural reactions of their
wrong actions. Nor are we prepared to
say that these modes of treatment are
not relatively right—right, that is, in
relation to the uncontrollable children of
ill-controlled adults; and right in relation
to a state of society in which such illcontrolled adults make up the mass of
the, people.
As already suggested,
educational systems, like political and
other institutions, are generally as good
as the state of human nature permits.
The barbarous children of barbarous
parents are probably only to be re
strained by the barbarous methods which
such parents spontaneously employ;
while submission to these barbarous
methods is perhaps the best preparation
such children can have for the barbarous
society in which they are presently to
play a part. Conversely, the civilised
members of a civilised society will spon
taneously manifest their displeasure in
less violent ways—will spontaneously
use milder measures: measures strong
enough for their better-natured children.
Thus it is true that, in so far as the
expression of parental feeling is con
cerned, the principle of the natural
reaction is always more or less followed.
The system of domestic government
gravitates towards its right form.
But now observe two important facts.
The first fact is that, in states of rapid
transition like ours, which witness a
continuous battle between old and new
theories and old and new practices, the
educational methods in use are apt to
be considerably out of harmony with the
times. In deference to dogmas fit only
for the ages that uttered them, many
77
parents inflict punishments that do
violence to their own feelings, and so
visit on their children unnatural reactions;
while other parents, enthusiastic in their
hopes of immediate perfection, rush to
the opposite extreme. The second fact
is, that the discipline of chief value is
not the experience of parental approba
tion or disapprobation; but it is the
experience of those results which would
ultimately flow from the conduct in the
absence of parental opinion or interfer
ence. The truly instructive and salutary
consequences are not those inflicted by
parents when they take upon themselves
to be Nature’s proxies; but they are
those inflicted by Nature herself. We
will endeavour to make this distinction
clear by a few illustrations, which, while
they show what we mean by natural
reactions as contrasted with artificial
ones, will afford some practical sugges
tions.
In every family where there are young
children there daily occur cases of what
mothers and servants call “making a
litter.” A child has had out its box of
toys, and leaves them scattered about the
floor. Or a handful of flowers, brought
in from a morning walk, is presently
seen dispersed over tables and chairs.
Or, a little girl, making doll’s clothes,
disfigures the room with shreds. In
most cases the trouble of rectifying this
disorder falls anywhere but where it
should. Occurring in the nursery, the
nurse herself, with many grumblings
about “ tiresome little things,” under
takes the task; if below-stairs, the task
usually devolves either on one of the
elder children or on the housemaid : the
transgressor being visited with nothing
more than a scolding. In this very
simple case, however, there are many
parents wise enough to follow out, more
or less consistently, the normal course—
�78
EDUCATION
that of making the child itself collect the
toys or shreds. The labour of putting
things in order, is the true consequence
of having put them in disorder. Every
trader in his office, every wife in her
household, has daily experience of this
fact. And if education be a preparation
for the business of life, then every
child should also, from the begin
ning, have daily experience of this
fact. If the natural penalty be met by
refractory behaviour (which it may per
haps be where the system of moral disci
pline previously pursued has been bad),
then the proper course is to let the child
feel the ulterior reaction caused by its
disobedience. Having refused or neg
lected to pick up and put away the
things it has scattered about, and having
thereby entailed the trouble of doing
this on some one else, the child should,
on subsequent occasions, be denied the
means of giving this trouble. When
next it petitions for its toy-box, the
reply of its mamma should be—“ The
last time you had your toys you left
them lying on the floor, and Jane had to
pick them up. Jane is too busy to pick
up every day the things you leave about;
and I cannot do it myself. So that, as
you will not put away your toys when
you have done with them, I cannot let
you have them.” This is obviously a
natural consequence, neither increased
nor lessened ; and must be so recognised
by a child. The penalty comes, too, at
the moment when it is most keenly felt.
A new-born desire is balked at the
moment of anticipated gratification ; and
the strong impression so produced can
scarcely fail to have an effect on the
future conduct: an effect which, by
consistent repetition, will do whatever
can be done in curing the fault. Add
to which, that, by this method, a child
is early taught the lesson which cannot
be learnt too soon, that in this world of
ours pleasures are rightly to be obtained
only by labour.
Take another case. Not long since
we had frequently to hear the repri
mands visited on a little girl who was
scarcely ever ready in time for the daily
walk. Of eager disposition, and apt to
become absorbed in the occupation of
the moment, Constance never thought
of putting on her things till the rest were
ready. The governess and the other
children had almost invariably to wait;
and from the mamma there almost
invariably came the same scolding.
Utterly as this system failed, it never
occurred to the mamma to let Constance
experience the natural penalty. Nor,
indeed, would she try it when it was
suggested to her. In the world, un
readiness entails the loss of some
advantage that would else have been
gained : the train is gone ; or the steam
boat is just leaving its moorings ; or the
best things in the market are sold; or all
the good seats in the concert-room are
filled. And every one, in cases per
petually occurring, may see that it is the
prospective deprivations which prevent
people from being too late. Is not the
inference obvious ? Should not the pro
spective deprivations control a child’s
conduct also ? If Constance is not
ready at the appointed time, the natural
result is that of being left behind, and
losing her walk. And after having once
or twice remained at home while the rest
were enjoying themselves in the fields—
after having felt that this loss of a muchprized gratification was solely due to
want of promptitude; amendment would
in all probability take place. At any
rate, the measure would be more effective
than that perpetual scolding which ends
only in producing callousness.
Again, when children, with more than
�MORAL EDUCATION
usual carelessness, break or lose the
things given to them, the natural penalty
—the penalty which makes grown-up
persons more careful—is the consequent
inconvenience. The lack of the lost or
damaged article, and the cost of re
placing it, are the experiences by which
men and women are disciplined in these
matters; and the experiences of children
should be as much as possible assimilated
to theirs. We do not refer to that early
period at which toys are pulled to pieces
in the process of learning their physical
properties, and at which the results of
carelessness cannot be understood; but
to a later period, when the meaning and
advantages of property are perceived.
When a boy, old enough to possess a
penknife, uses it so roughly as to snap
the blade, or leaves it in the grass by
some hedge-side where he was cutting a
stick, a thoughtless parent, or some in
dulgent relative, will commonly forthwith
buy him another ; not seeing that, by
doing this, a valuable lesson is prevented.
In such a case, a father may properly
explain that penknives cost money, and
that to get money requires labour; that
ne cannot afford to purchase new pen
knives for one who loses or breaks them ;
and that until he sees evidence of greater
carefulness he must decline to make
good the loss. A parallel discipline will
serve to check extravagance.
These few familiar instances, here
chosen because of the simplicity with
which they illustrate our point, will
make clear to every one the distinction
between those natural penalties which
we contend are the truly efficient ones,
and those artificial penalties commonly
substituted for them. Before going on
to exhibit the higher and subtler applica
tions of the principle exemplified, let us
note its many and great superiorities over
the principle, or rather the empirical
79
practice, which prevails in most families.
One superiority is that the pursuance
of it generates right conceptions of cause
and effect; which by frequent and con
sistent experience are eventually rendered
definite and complete. Proper conduct
in life is much better guaranteed when
the good and evil consequences of actions
are understood, than when they are
merely believed on authority. A child
who finds that disordliness entails the
trouble of putting things in order, or
who misses a gratification from dilatori
ness, or whose carelessness is followed
by the want of some much-prized posses
sion, not only suffers a keenly-felt con
sequence, but gains a knowledge of
causation: both the one and the other
being just like those which adult life will
bring. Whereas a child who in such
cases receives a reprimand, or some
factitious penalty, not only experiences
a consequence for which it often cares
very little, but misses that instruction
respecting the essential natures of good
and evil conduct, which it would else
have gathered. It is a vice of the
common system of artificial rewards and
punishments, long since noticed by the
clear-sighted, that by substituting for the
natural results of misbehaviour certain
tasks or castigations, it produces a
radically wrong moral standard. Having
throughout infancy and boyhood always
regarded parental or tutorial displeasure
as the chief result of a forbidden action,
the youth has gained an established
association of ideas between such action
and such displeasure, as cause and effect.
Hence when parents and tutors have
abdicated, and their displeasure is not
to be feared, the restraints on forbidden
actions are in great measure removed:
the true restraints, the natural reactions,
having yet to be learnt by sad experience.
As writes one who has had personal
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EDUCATION
knowledge of this short-sighted system :—
“Young men let loose from school, par
ticularly those whose parents have
neglected to exert their influence, plunge
into every description of extravagance;
they know no rule of action—they are
ignorant of the reasons for moral conduct
—they have no foundation to rest upon
—and until they have been severely
disciplined by the world are extremely
dangerous members of society.”
Another great advantage of this natural
discipline is, that it is a discipline of
pure justice; and will be recognised as
such by every child. Whoso suffers
nothing more than the evil which in
the order of nature results from his
own misbehaviour, is much less likely to
think himself wrongly treated than if he
suffers an artificially inflicted evil; and
this will hold of children as of men.
Take the case of a boy who is habitually
reckless of his clothes—scrambles
through hedges without caution, or is
utterly regardless of mud. If he is
beaten, or sent to bed, he is apt to con
sider himself ill-used; and is more likely
to brood over his injuries than to repent
of his transgressions. But suppose he
is required to rectify as far as possible
the harm he has done—to clean off the
mud with which he has covered himself,
or to mend the tear as well as he can.
Will he not feel that the evil is one of
his own producing ? Will he not while
paying this penalty be continuously
conscious of the connection between
it and its cause ? And will he not,
spite of his irritation, recognise
more or less clearly the justice of the
arrangement ? If several lessons of this
kind fail to produce amendment—if suits
ff clothes are prematurely spoiled—if
the father, pursuing this same system of
discipline, declines to spend money for
new ones until the ordinary time has
elapsed—and if meanwhile, there occur
occasions on which, having no decent
clothes to go in, the boy is debarred
from joining the rest of the family on
holiday excursions and fete days, it is
manifest that while he will keenly feel
the punishment, he can scarcely fail to
trace the chain of causation, and to
perceive that his own carelessness is the
origin of it. And seeing this he will not
have any such sense of injustice as if
there were no obvious connection
between the transgression and its
penalty.
Again, the tempers both of parents
and children are much less liable to be
ruffled under this system than under the
ordinary system. When, instead of
letting children experience the painful
results which naturally follow from wrong
conduct, parents themselves inflict cer
tain other painful results, they produce
double mischief. Making, as they do,
multiplied family laws; and identifying
their own supremacy and dignity with the
maintenance of these laws; every trans
gression is regarded as an offence against
themselves, and a cause of anger on their
part. And then come the further vexa
tions which result from taking upon
themselves, in the shape of extra labour
or cost, those evil consequences which
should have been allowed to fall on the
wrong-doers. Similarly with the children.
Penalties which the necessary reaction
of things brings round upon them—
penalties which are inflicted by imper
sonal agency, produce an irritation that
is comparatively slight and transient;
whereas penalties voluntarily inflicted by
a parent, and afterwards thought of as
caused by him or her, produce an irrita
tion both greater and more continued.
Just consider how disastrous would be
the result if this empirical method wrere
pursued from the beginning. Suppose
�MORAL EDUCATION
it were possible for parents to take upon
themselves the physical sufferings en
tailed on their children by ignorance and
awkwardness; and that while bearing
these evil consequences they visited on
their children certain other evil conse
quences, with the view of teaching them
the impropriety of their conduct. Sup
pose that when a child, who had been
forbidden to meddle with the kettle,
spilt boiling water on its foot, the mother
vicariously assumed the scald and gave
a blow in place of it; and similarly in
all other cases. Would not the daily
mishaps be sources of far more anger
than now ? Would there not be chronic
ill-temper on both sides ? Yet an
exactly parallel policy is pursued in after
years. A father who beats his boy for
carelessly or wilfully breaking a sister’s
toy, and then himself pays for a new
toy, does substantially the same thing—
inflicts an artificial penalty on the trans
gressor, and takes the natural penalty on
himself: his own feelings and those of
the transgressor being alike needlessly
irritated. Did he simply require restitu
tion to be made, he would produce far
less heart-burning. If he told the boy
that a new toy must be bought at his,
the boy’s cost; and that his supply of
pocket-money must be withheld to the
needful extent; there would be much
less disturbance of temper on either side :
while in the deprivation afterwards felt,
the boy would experience the equitable
and salutary consequence. In brief, the
system of discipline by natural reactions
is less injurious to temper, both because
it is perceived to be nothing more than
pure justice, and because it in great
part substitutes the impersonal agency of
Nature for the personal agency of
parents.
Whence also follows the manifest corol
lary, that under this system the parental
81
and filial relation, being a more friendly,
will be a more influential one. Whether
in parent or child, anger, however
caused, and to whomsoever directed, is
detrimental. But anger in a parent
towards a child, and in a child towards
a parent, is especially detrimental;
because it weakens that bond of sym
pathy which is essential to beneficent
control. From the law of association of
ideas, it inevitably results, both in young
and old, that dislike is contracted
towards things which in experience are
habitually connected with disagreeable
feelings. Or where attachment originally
existed, it is diminished, or turned into
repugnance, according to the quantity of
painful impressions received. Parental
wrath, venting itself in reprimands and
castigations, cannot fail, if often repeated,
to produce filial alienation; while the
resentment and sulkiness of children
cannot fail to weaken the affection felt
for them, and may even end in destroy
ing it. Hence the numerous cases in
which parents (and especially fathers,
who are commonly deputed to inflict the
punishment) are regarded with indiffer
ence, if not with aversion; and hence
the equally numerous cases in which
children are looked upon as inflictions.
Seeing then, as all must do, that
estrangement of this kind is fatal to a
salutary moral culture, it follows that
parents cannot be too solicitous in
avoiding occasions of direct antagonism
with their children. And therefore they
cannot too anxiously avail themselves of
this discipline of natural consequences;
which, by relieving them from penal
functions, prevents mutual exasperations
and estrangements.
The method of moral culture by
experience of the normal reactions,
which is the divinely-ordained method
alike for infancy and for adult life, we thus
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EDUCATION
find to be equally applicable during the
intermediate childhood and youth.
Among the advantages of this method
we see:—First; that it gives that
rational knowledge of right and wrong
conduct which results from personal
experience of their good and bad con
sequences.
Second; that the child,
suffering nothing more than the painful
effects of its own wrong actions, must
recognise more or less clearly the justice
of the penalties. Third; that recognising
the justice of the penalties, and receiving
them through the working of things
rather than at the hands of an individual,
its temper is less disturbed; while the
parent, fulfilling the comparatively passive
duty of letting the natural penalties be
felt, preserves a comparative equanimity.
Fourth ; that mutual exasperations being
thus prevented, a much happier, and a
more influential relation, will exist
between parent and child.
“ But what is to be done in cases of
more serious misconduct ?” some will
ask. “ How is this plan to be carried
out when a petty theft has been com
mitted ? or when a lie has been told ?
or when some younger brother or sister
has been ill-used ?”
Before replying to these questions, let
us consider the bearings of a few illus
trative facts.
Living in the family of his brother-inlaw, a friend of ours had undertaken the
education of his little nephew and niece.
This he had conducted, more perhaps
from natural sympathy than from
reasoned-out conclusions, in the spirit
of the method above set forth. The
two children were in-doors his pupils
and out-of-doors his companions. They
daily joined him in walks and botanising
excursions, eagerly sought plants for
him, looked on while he examined and
identified them, and in this and other
ways were ever gaining pleasure and
instruction in his society. In short,
morally considered, he stood to them
much more in the position of parent
than either their father or mother did.
Describing to us the results of this policy,
he gave, among other instances, the
following. One evening, having need
for some article lying in another part of
the house, he asked his nephew to fetch
it. Interested as the boy was in some
amusement of the moment, he, contrary
to his wont, either exhibited great reluc
tance or refused, we forget which. His
uncle, disapproving of a coercive course,
went himself for that which he wanted :
merely exhibiting by his manner the
annoyance this ill-behaviour gave him.
And when, later in the evening, the boy
made overtures for the usual play, they
were gravely repelled—the uncle mani
fested just that coldness naturally pro
duced in him; and so let the boy feel
the necessary consequences of his con
duct. Next morning at the usual time
for rising, our friend heard a new voice
at the door, and in walked his little
nephew with the hot water. Peering
about the room to see what else could
be done, the boy then exclaimed, “ Oh !
you want your boots
and forthwith
rushed down-stairs to fetch them. In
this and other ways he showed a true
penitence for his misconduct. He
endeavoured by unusual services to make
up for the service he had refused. His
better feelings had made a real conquest
over his lower ones; and acquired
strength by the victory. And having
felt what it was to be without it, he
valued more than before the friendship
he thus regained.
This gentleman is now himself a father;
acts on the same system; and finds it
answer completely. He makes himself
�MORAL EDUCATION
thoroughly his children’s friend. The
evening is longed for by them because
he will be at home; and they especially
enjoy Sunday because he is with them
all day. Thus possessing their perfect
confidence and affection, he finds that
the simple display of his approbation or
disapprobation gives him abundant power
of control. If, on his return home, he
hears that one of his boys has been
naughty, he behaves towards him with
that coolness which the consciousness of
the boy’s misconduct naturally produces ;
and he finds this a most efficient punish
ment. The mere withholding of the
usual caresses, is a source of much
distress—produces a more prolonged fit
of crying than a beating would do. And
the dread of this purely moral penalty is,
he says, ever present during his absence :
so much so, that frequently during the
day his children ask their mamma how
they have behaved, and whether the
report will be good. Recently the
eldest, an active urchin of five, in one of
those bursts of animal spirits common
in healthy children, committed sundry
extravagances during his mamma’s
absence—cut off part of his brother’s
hair and wounded himself with a razor
taken from his father’s dressing-case.
Hearing of these occurrences on his
return, the father did not speak to the
boy either that night or next morning.
Besides the immediate tribulation the
effect was, that when, a few days after,
the mamma was about to go out, she
was entreated by the boy not to do so;
and on inquiry, it appeared his fear was
that he might again transgress in her
absence.
We have introduced these facts before
replying to the question—“ What is to
be done with the graver offences ?” for
the purpose of first exhibiting the rela
tion that may and ought to be estab
83
lished between parents and children;
for on the existence of this relation
depends the successful treatment of these
graver offences. And as a further pre
liminary, we must now point out that the
establishment of this relation will result
from adopting the system here advocated.
Already we have shown that by simply
letting a child experience the painful
reactions of its own wrong actions, a
parent avoids antagonism and escapes
being regarded as an enemy; but it
remains to be shown that where this
course has been consistently pursued
from the beginning, a feeling of active
friendship will be generated.
At present, mothers and fathers are
mostly considered by their offspring as
friend-enemies. Determined as the im
pressions of children inevitably are by
the treatment they receive; and oscil
lating as that treatment does between
bribery and thwarting, between petting
and scolding, between gentleness and
castigation ; they necessarily acquire con
flicting beliefs respecting the parental
character. A mother commonly thinks
it sufficient to tell her little boy that she
is his best friend; and assuming that he
ought to believe her, concludes that he
will do so. “ It is all for your good ”;
“ I know what is proper for you better
than you do yourself”; “You are not old
enough to understand it now, but when
you grow up you will thank me for
doing what I do”;—these, and like
assertions, are daily reiterated. Mean
while the boy is daily suffering positive
penalties; and is hourly forbidden to
do this, that, and the other, which he
wishes to do. By words he hears that
his happiness is the end in view; but
from the accompanying deeds he habitu
ally receives more or less pain. Incom
petent as he is to understand that future
which his mother has in view, or how
�84
EDUCATION
this treatment conduces to the happiness
of that future, he judges by the results he
feels; and finding such results anything
but pleasurable, he becomes sceptical
respecting her professions of friendship.
And is it not folly to expect any other
issue ? Must not the child reason from
the evidence he has got ? and does not
this evidence seem to warrant his con
clusion ? The mother would reason in
just the same way if similarly placed.
If, among her acquaintance, she found
some one who was constantly thwarting
her wishes, uttering sharp reprimands,
and occasionally inflicting actual penal
ties on her, she would pay small atten
tion to any professions of anxiety for her
welfare which accompanied these acts.
Why, then, does she suppose that her
boy will do otherwise ?
But now observe how different will be
the results if the system we contend for
be consistently pursued—if the mother
not only avoids becoming the instru
ment of punishment, but plays' the part
of a friend, by warning her boy of the
pun.’shment which Nature will inflict.
Take a case; and that it may illustrate
the mode in which this policy is to be
early initiated, let it be one of the
simplest cases. Suppose that, prompted
by the experimental spirit so conspicuous
in children, whose proceedings instinc
tively conform to the inductive method
of inquiry—suppose that so prompted,
the boy is amusing himself by lighting
pieces of paper in the candle and watch
ing them burn. A mother of the
ordinary unreflective stamp, will either,
on the plea of keeping him “ out of
mischief,” or from fear that he will burn
himself, command him to desist; and in
case of non-compliance will snatch the
paper from him. But should he be fortu
nate enough to have a mother of some
rationality, who knows that this interest
with which he is watching the paper burn,
results from a healthy inquisitiveness, and
who has also the wisdom to consider
the results of interference, she will
reason thus:—“If I put a stop to this
I shall prevent the acquirement of a
certain amount of knowledge.
It is
true that I may save the child from a
burn but what then ? He is sure to
burn himself some time; and it is quite
essential to his safety in life that he
should learn by experience the properties
of flame. If I forbid him from running
this present risk, he will certainly here
after run the same or a greater risk when
no one is present toprevent him; whereas,
should he have an accident now that
I am by, I can save him from any great
injury. Moreover, were I to make him
desist, I should thwart him in the pursuit
of what is in itself a purely harmless, and
indeed, instructive gratification; and he
would regard me with more or less illfeeling. Ignorant as he is of the pain
from which I would save him, and feeling
only the pain of a baulked desire, he
could not fail to look on me as the
cause of that pain. To save him from a
hurt which he cannot conceive, and
which has therefore no existence for
him, I hurt him in a way which he feels
keenly enough; and so become, from
his point of view, a minister of evil. My
best course, then, is simply to warn him
of the danger, and to be ready to prevent
any serious damage.” And following
out this conclusion, she says to the child
—“ I fear you will hurt yourself if you
do that.” Suppose, now, that the boy,
persevering as he will probably do, ends
by burning his hand. What are the
results ? In the first place he has gained
an experience which he must gain
eventually, and which, for his own safety,
he cannot gain too soon. And in the
second place, he has found that his
�MORAL EDUCATION
mother’s disapproval or warning was
meant for his welfare : he has a further
positive experience of her benevolence
a further reason for placing confidence
in her judgment and kindness—a further
reason for loving her.
Of course, in those occasional hazards
where there is a risk of broken limbs or
other serious injury, forcible prevention
is called for. But leaving out extreme
cases, the system pursued should be, not
that of guarding a child from the small
risks which it daily runs, but that of
advising and warning it against them.
And by pursuing this course, a much
stronger filial affection will be generated
than commonly exists. If here, as else
where, the discipline of the natural
reactions is allowed to come into play
if in those out-door scrambling and in
door experiments, by which children are
liable to injure themselves, they are
allowed to persist, subject only to dis
suasion more or less earnest according
to the danger, there cannot fail to arise
an ever-increasing faith in the parental
friendship and guidance. Not only, as
before shown, does the adoption of this
course enable fathers and mothers to
avoid the odium which attaches to the
infliction of positive punishment; but,
as we here see, it enables them to avoid
the odium which attaches to constant
thwartings j and even to turn those
incidents that commonly cause squabbles
into a means of strengthening the mutual
good feeling. Instead of being told in
words, which deeds seem to contradict,
that their parents are their best friends,
children will learn this truth by a con
sistent daily experience; and so learning
it, will acquire a degree of trust and
attachment which nothing else can give.
And now, having indicated the more
sympathetic relation which must result
from the habitual use of this method,
85
let us return to the question above put
—How is this method to be applied to
the graver offences ?
Note, in the first place, that these
graver offences are likely to be both less
frequent and less grave under the régime
we have described than under the ordi
nary régime. The ill-behaviour of many
children is in itself a consequence of
that chronic irritation in which they are
kept by bad management. The state of
isolation and antagonism produced by
frequent punishment, necessarily deadens
the sympathies ; necessarily, therefore,
opens the way to those transgressions
which the sympathies check.
That
harsh treatment which children of the
same family inflict on each other is often,
in great measure, a reflex of the harsh
treatment they receive from adults
partly suggested by direct example, and
partly generated by the ill-temper and
the tendency to vicarious retaliation,
which follow chastisements and scoldings.
It cannot be questioned that the greater
activity of the affections and happier
state of feeling, maintained in children
by the discipline we have described,
must prevent them from sinning against
each other so gravely and so frequently.
The still more reprehensible offences, as
lies and petty thefts, will, by the same
causes, be diminished. Domestic estrange
ment is a fruitful source of such trans
gressions. It is a law of human nature,
visible enough to all who observe, that
those who are debarred the higher grati
fications fall back upon the lower ; those
who have no sympathetic pleasures seek
selfish ones ; and hence, conversely, the
maintenance of happier relations between
parents and children is calculated to
diminish the number of those offences
of which selfishness is the origin.
When, however, such offences are
committed, as they will occasionally be
�86
EDUCATION
even under the best system, the discipline
of consequences may still be resorted to;
and if there exists that bond of con
fidence and affection above described,
this discipline will be efficient. For
what are the natural consequences, say,
of a theft ? They are of two kinds—
direct and indirect. The direct conse
quence, as dictated by pure equity, is
that of making restitution. A just ruler
(and every parent should aim to be one)
will demand that, when possible, a wrong
act shall be undone by a right one; and
in the case of theft this implies either
the restoration of the thing stolen, or, if
it is consumed, the giving of an equiva
lent : which, in the case of a child, may
be effected out of its pocket-money.
The indirect and more serious conse
quence is the grave displeasure of parents
—a consequence which inevitably follows
among all peoples civilised enough to
regard theft as a crime. “ But,” it will'
be said, “ the manifestation of parental
displeasure, either in words or blows, is
the ordinary course in these cases : the
method leads here to nothing new.”
Very true. Already we have admitted
that, in some directions, this method is
spontaneously pursued.
Already we
have shown that there is a tendency for
educational systems to gravitate towards
the true system. And here we may
remark, as before, that the intensity of
this natural reaction will, in the beneficent
order of things, adjust itself to the
requirements—that this parental dis
pleasure will vent itself in violent
measures during comparatively barbarous
times, when children are also compara
tively barbarous; and will express itself
less cruelly in those more advanced
social states in which, by implication,
the children are amenable to milder
treatment. But what it chiefly concerns
us here to observe is, that the manifesta
tion of strong parental displeasure, pro
duced by one of these graver offences,
will be potent for good, just in proportion
to the warmth of the attachment existing
between parent and child. Just in pro
portion as the discipline of natural con
sequences has been consistently pursued
in other cases, will it be efficient in this
case. Proof is within the experience of
all, if they will look for it.
For does not every one know that
when he has offended another, the
amount of regret he feels (of course,
leaving worldly considerations out of the
question) varies with the degree of
sympathy he has for that other ? Is he
not conscious that when the person
offended is an enemy, the having given
him annoyance is apt to be a source
rather of secret satisfaction than of
sorrow ? Does he not remember that
where umbrage has been taken by some
total stranger, he has felt much less con
cern than he would have done had such
umbrage been taken by one with whom
he was intimate ? While, conversely,
has not the anger of an admired and
cherished friend been regarded by him
as a serious misfortune, long and keenly
regretted ? Well, the effects of parental
displeasure on children must similarly
vary with the pre-existing relationship.
Where there is an established alienation,
the feeling of a child who has trans
gressed is a purely selfish fear of the
impending physical penalties or depriva
tions ; and after these have been inflicted,
the injurious antagonism and dislike
which result, add to the alienation. On
the contrary, where there exists a warm
filial affection produced by a consistent
parental friendship, the state of mind
caused by parental displeasure is not
only a salutary check to future miscon
duct of like kind, but is intrinsically
salutary. The moral pain consequent
�MORAL EDUCATION
on having, for the time being, lost so
loved a friend, stands in place of the
physical pain usually inflicted, and
proves equally, if not more, efficient.
While instead of the fear and vindictive
ness excited by the one course, there are
excited by the other a sympathy with
parental sorrow, a genuine regret for
having caused it, and a desire, by some
atonement, to re-establish the friendly
relationship. Instead of bringing into
play those egotistic feelings whose pre
dominance is the cause of criminal acts,
there are brought into play those altruistic
feelings which check criminal acts, fl hus
the discipline of natural consequences
is applicable to grave as well as trivial
faults; and the practice of it conduces
not simply to the repression, but to the
eradication of such faults.
In brief, the truth is that savageness
begets savageness, and gentleness begets
gentleness. Children who are unsympa
thetically treated become unsympathetic;
whereas treating them with due fellowfeeling is a means of cultivating their
fellow-feeling. With family governments
as with political ones, a harsh despotism
itself generates a great part of the crimes
it has to repress; while on the other
hand a mild and liberal rule both avoids
many causes of dissension, and so
ameliorates the tone of feeling as to
diminish the tendency to transgression.
As John Locke long since remarked,
“Great severity of punishment does but
very little good, nay, great harm, in
education; and I believe it will be found
that, cceteris paribus, those children who
have been most chastised seldom make
the best men.” In confirmation of which
opinion we may cite the fact not long
since made public by Mr. Rogers,
Chaplain of the Pentonville Prison, that
those juvenile criminals who have been
whipped are those who most frequently
87
return to prison. Conversely, the bene
ficial effects of a kinder treatment, are
well illustrated in a fact stated to us by
a French lady, in whose house we recently
stayed in Paris. Apologising for the dis
turbance daily caused by a little boy who
was unmanageable both at home and at
school, she expressed her fear that there
was no remedy save that which had
succeeded in the case of an elder brother;
namely, sending him to an English school.
She explained that at various schools in
Paris this elder brother had proved
utterly untractable; that in despair they
had followed the advice to send him to
England; and that on his return home
he was as good as he had before been
bad.
This remarkable change she
ascribed entirely to the comparative
mildness of the English discipline.
After the foregoing exposition of
principles, our remaining space may best
be occupied by a few of the chief maxims
and rules deducible from them; and
with a view to brevity we will put these
in a hortatory form.
Do not expect from a child any great
amount of moral goodness.
During
early years every civilised man passes
through that phase of character exhibited
by the barbarous race from which he is
descended. As the child’s features—
flat nose, forward-opening nostrils, large
lips, wide-apart eyes, absent frontal sinus,
&c.—resemble for a time those of the
savage, so, too, do his instincts. Hence
the tendencies to cruelty, to thieving,
to lying, so general among children—
tendencies which, even without the aid
of discipline, will become more or less
modified just as the features do. The
popular idea that children are “innocent,”
while it is true with respect to evil know
ledge, is totally false with respect to evil
impulses; as half an hour’s observation
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EDUCATION
in the nursery will prove to any one.
Boys when left to themselves, as at
public schools, treat each other more
brutally than men do; and were they
left to themselves at an earlier age
their brutality would be still more con
spicuous.
Not only is it unwise to set up a high
standard of good conduct for children,
but it is even unwise to use very urgent
incitements to good conduct. Already
most people recognise the detrimental
results of intellectual precocity; but there
remains to be recognised the fact that
moral precocity also has detrimental
results. Our higher moral faculties, like
our higher intellectual ones, are com
paratively complex.
By consequence
both are comparatively late in their
evolution. And with the one as with
the other, an early activity produced by
stimulation will be at the expense of the
future character. Hence the not un
common anomaly that those who during
childhood were models of juvenile good
ness, by-and-by undergo a seemingly
inexplicable change for the worse, and
end by being not above but below par;
while relatively exemplary men are often
the issue of a childhood by no means
promising.
Be content, therefore, with moderate
measures and moderate results. Bear
in mind that a higher morality, like a
higher intelligence, must be reached by
slow growth; and you will then have
patience with those imperfections which
your child hourly displays. You will be
less prone to that constant scolding, and
threatening, and forbidding, by which
many parents induce a chronic domestic
irritation, in the foolish hope that they
will thus make their children what they
should be.
This liberal form of domestic govern
ment, which does not seek despotically
to regulate all the details of a child’s
conduct, necessarily results from the
system we advocate. Satisfy yourself
with seeing that your child always
suffers the natural consequences of his
actions, and you will avoid that excess
of control in which so many parents err.
Leave him wherever you can to the
discipline of experience, and you will
save him from that hot-house virtue
which over-regulation produces in
yielding natures, or that demoralising
antagonism which it produces in inde
pendent ones.
By aiming in all cases to insure the
natural reactions to your child’s actions,
you will put an advantageous check on
your own temper. The method of
moral education pursued by many, we
fear by most, parents, is little else than
that of venting their anger in the way
that first suggests itself. The slaps, and
rough shakings, and sharp words, with
which a mother commonly visits her
offspring’s small offences (many of them
not offences considered intrinsically), are
generally but the manifestations of her
ill-controlled feelings—result much more
from the promptings of those feelings
than from a wish to benefit the offenders.
But by pausing in each case of trans
gression to consider what is the normal
consequence, and how it may best be
brought home to the transgressor, some
little time is obtained for the mastery of
yourself; the mere blind anger first
aroused settles down into a less vehement
feeling, and one not so likely to mislead
you.
Do not, however, seek to behave as a
passionless instrument. Remember that
besides the natural reactions to your
child’s actions which the working of
things tends to bring round on him, your
own approbation or disapprobation is
also a natural reaction, and one of the
�MORAL EDUCATION
ordained agencies for guiding him. The
error we have been combating is that of
substituting parental displeasure and its
artificial penalties for the penalties which
Nature has established. But while it
should not be substituted for these
natural penalties, we by no means argue
that it should not accompany them.
Though the secondary kind of punish
ment should not usurp the place of the
primary kind; it may, in moderation,
rightly supplement the primary kind.
Such amount of sorrow or indignation as
you feel, should be expressed in words
or manner : subject, of course, to the
approval of your judgment. The kind
and degree of feeling produced in you,
will necessarily depend on your own
character; and it is therefore useless to
say it should be this or that. Neverthe
less you may endeavour to modify the
feeling into that which you believe
ought to be entertained. Beware, how
ever, of the two extremes ; not only in
respect of the intensity, but in respect of
the duration, of your displeasure. On
the one hand, avoid that weak impul
siveness, so general among mothers,
which scolds and forgives almost in the
same breath. On the other hand, do
not unduly continue to show estrange
ment of feeling, lest you accustom your
child to do without your friendship, and
so lose your influence over him. The
moral reactions called forth from you by
your child’s actions, you should as much
as possible assimilate to those which you
conceive would be called forth from a
parent of perfect nature.
Be sparing of commands. Command
only when other means are inexplicable,
or have failed. “ In frequent orders the
parents’ advantage is more considered
than the child’s,” says Richter. As in
primitive societies a breach of law is
punished, not so much because it is
89
intrinsically wrong as because it is a
disregard of the king’s authority—a
rebellion against him; so in many
families, the penalty visited on a trans
gressor is prompted less by reprobation
of the offence than by anger at the dis
obedience. Listen to the ordinary
speeches—“ How dare you disobey me ?”
“ I tell you I’ll make you do it, sir
“ I’ll soon teach you who is master ”—
and then consider what the words, the
tone, and the manner imply. A deter
mination to subjugate is far more con
spicuous in them than anxiety for the
child’s welfare. For the time being the
attitude of mind differs but little from
that of a despot bent on punishing a
recalcitrant subject. The right-feeling
parent, however, like the philanthropic
legislator, will rejoice not in coercion,
but in dispensing with coercion. He
will do without law wherever other
modes of regulating conduct can be
successfully employed; and he will
regret the having recourse to law when
law is necessary. As Richter remarks—
“ The best rule in politics is said to be
1 pas trop gouverner’: it is also true in
education.” And in spontaneous con
formity with this maxim, parents whose
lust of dominion is restrained by a true
sense of duty, will aim to make their
children control themselves as much as
possible, and will fall back upon abso
lutism only as a last resort.
But whenever you do command, com
mand with decision and consistency. If
the case is one which really cannot be
otherwise dealt with, then issue your fiat,
and having issued it, never afterwards
swerve from it. Consider well what you
are going to do; weigh all the conse
quences ; think whether you have
adequate firmness of purpose; and then,
if you finally make the law, enforce
obedience at whatever cost. Let your
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EDUCATION
penalties be like the penalties inflicted
by inanimate Nature—inevitable. The
hot cinder burns a child the first time he
seizes it; it burns him the second time ;
it burns him the third time; it burns him
every time; and he very soon learns not
to touch the hot cinder. If you are
equally consistent—if the consequences
which you tell your child will follow
specified acts, follow with like uniformity,
he will soon come to respect your laws
as he does those of Nature. And this
respect once established, will prevent
endless domestic evils. Of errors in
education one of the worst is incon
sistency. As in a community, crimes
multiply when there is no certain
administration of justice; so in a family,
an immense increase of transgressions
results from a hesitating or irregular
infliction of punishments. A weak
mother, who perpetually threatens and
rarely performs—who makes rules in
haste and repents of them at leisure—
who treats the same offence now with
severity and now with leniency, as the
passing humour dictates, is laying up
miseries for herself and her children.
She is making herself contemptible in
their eyes; she is setting them an
example of uncontrolled feelipgs; she
is encouraging them to transgress by the
prospect of probable impunity; she is
entailing endless squabbles and accom
panying damage to her own temper and
the tempers of her little ones; she is
reducing their minds to a moral chaos,
which after-years of bitter experience
will with difficulty bring into order.
Better even a barbarous form of domestic
government carried out consistently than
a humane one inconsistently carried out.
Again we say, avoid coercive measures
wherever it is possible to do so; but
when you find despotism really neces
sary, be despotic in good earnest.
Remember that the aim of your
discipline should be to produce a selfgoverning being; not to produce a being
to be governed by others. Were your
children fated to pass their lives as
slaves, you could not too much accustom
them to slavery during their childhood;
but as they are by-and-by to be free men,
with no one to control their daily con
duct, you cannot too much accustom
them to self-control while they are still
under your eye. This it is which makes
the system of discipline by natural con
sequences, so especially appropriate tothe social state which we in England
have now reached. In feudal times,,
when one of the chief evils the citizen
had to fear was the anger of his superiors,
it was well that during childhood, parental
vengeance should be a chief means of
government. But now that the citizen
has little to fear from any one—now that
the good or evil which he experiences is
mainly that which in the order of things
results from his own conduct, he should
from his first years begin to learn, experi
mentally, the good or evil consequences
which naturally follow this or that con
duct. Aim, therefore, to diminish the
parental government, as fast as you can
substitute for it in your child’s mind that
self-government arising from a foresight
of results. During infancy a considerable
amount of absolutism is necessary. A
three-year old urchin playing with an
open razor, cannot be allowed to learn
by this discipline of consequences; for
the consequences may be too serious.
But as intelligence increases, the number
of peremptory interferences may be, and
should be, diminished; with the view
of gradually ending them as maturity
is approached.
All transitions aredangerous ; and the most dangerousis the transition from the restraint of
the family circle to the non-restraint of
�MORAL EDUCATION
the world. Hence the importance of
pursuing the policy we advocate; which,
by cultivating a boy’s faculty of self
restraint, by continually increasing the
degree in which he is left to his self
restraint, and by so bringing him, step
by step, to a state of unaided self-restraint,
obliterates the ordinary sudden and
hazardous change from externallygoverned youth to internally-governed
maturity.
Let the history of your
domestic rule typify, in little, the history
of our political rule: at the outset,
autocratic control, where control is really
needful; by-and-by an incipient consti
tutionalism, in which the liberty of the
subject gains some express recognition;
successive extensions of this liberty of
the subject; gradually ending in parental
abdication.
Do not regret the display of consider
able self-will on the part of your children.
It is the correlative of that diminished
coerciveness so conspicuous in modern
education. The greater tendency to
assert freedom of action on the one side,
corresponds to the smaller tendency to
tyrannise on the other. They both
indicate an approach to the system of
discipline we contend for, under which
children will be more and more led to
rule themselves by the experience of
natural consequences; and they are both
accompaniments of our more advanced
social state. The independent English
boy is the father of the independent
English man; and you cannot have the
last without the first. German teachers
say that they had rather manage a dozen
German boys than one English one.
Shall we, therefore, wish that our boys
had the manageableness of German
ones, and with it the submissiveness and
political serfdom of adult Germans ?
Or shall we not rather tolerate in our
boys those feelings which make them
free men, and modify our methods
accordingly ?
Lastly, always recollect that to edu
cate rightly is not a simple and easy
thing, but a complex and extremely
difficult thing, the hardest task which
devolves on adult life. The rough and
ready style of domestic government is
indeed practicable by the meanest and
most uncultivated intellects. Slaps and
sharp words are penalties that suggest
themselves alike to the least reclaimed
barbarian and the stolidest peasant.
Even brutes can use this method of
discipline; as you may see in the growl
and half-bite with which a bitch will
check a too-exigeant puppy- But if you
would carry out with success a rational'
and civilised system, you must be pre
pared for considerable mental exertion—■
for some study, some ingenuity, some
patience, some self-control. You will
have habitually to consider what are the
results which in adult life follow certain
kinds of acts; and you must then devise
methods by which parallel results shall
be entailed on the parallel acts of your
children. It will daily be needful to
analyse the motives of juvenile conduct
—to distinguish between acts that are
really good and those which, though
simulating them, proceed from inferior
impulses; while you will have to be ever
on your guard against the cruel mistake
not unfrequently made, of translating
neutral acts into transgressions, or
ascribing worse feelings than were enter
tained. You must more or less modify
your method to suit the disposition of
each child; and must be prepared to
make further modifications as each
child’s disposition enters on a new phase.
Your faith will often be taxed to main
tain the requisite perseverance in a
course which seems to produce little or
no effect. Especially if you are dealing
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EDUCATION
with children who have been wrongly
treated, you must be prepared for a
lengthened trial of patience before suc
ceeding with better methods; since that
which is not easy even where a right
state of feeling has been established
from the beginning, becomes doubly
difficult when a wrong state of feeling
has to be set right. Not only will you
have constantly to analyse the motives
of your children, but you will have to
analyse your own motives—to discrimi
nate between those internal suggestions
springing from a true parental solicitude
and those which spring from your own
selfishness, your love of ease, your lust of
dominion. And then, more trying still,
you will have not only to detect, but to
curb these baser impulses. In brief,
you will have to carry on your own
higher education at the same time that
you are educating your children. Intel
lectually you must cultivate to good
purpose that most complex of subjects—
human nature and its laws, as exhibited
in your children, in yourself, and in the
world. Morally, you must keep in con
stant exercise your higher feelings, and
restrain your lower. It is a truth yet
remaining to be recognised, that the last
stage in the mental development of each
man and woman is to be reached only
through a proper discharge of the
parental duties. And when this truth is
recognised, it will be seen how admirable
is the arrangement through which human
beings are led by their strongest affec
tions to subject themselves to a discipline
that they would else elude.
While some will regard this concep
tion of education as it should be, with
doubt and discouragement, others will,
we think, perceive in the exalted ideal
which it involves, evidence of its truth.
That it cannot be realised by the impul
sive, the unsympathetic, and the short
sighted, but demands the higher attri
butes of human nature, they will see to
be evidence of its fitness for the more
advanced state of humanity. Though it
calls for much labour and self-sacrifice,
they will see that it promises an abundant
return of happiness, immediate and
remote. They will see that while in its
injurious effects on both parent and
child a bad system is twice cursed, a
good system is twice blessed—it blesses
him that trains and him that’s trained.
CHAPTER IV.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Equally at the squire’s table after the
withdrawal of the ladies, at the farmers’
market ordinary, and at the village ale
house, the topic which, after the political
question of the day, excites the most
general interest, is the management of
animals. Riding home from hunting,
the conversation usually gravitates towards
horse-breeding, and pedigrees, and com
ments on this or that “good point”;
while a day on the moors is very unlikely
to end without something being said on
the treatment of dogs. When crossing
the fields together from church, the
tenants of adjacent farms are apt to pass
from criticisms on the sermon to criticisms
on the weather, the crops, and the stock;
and thence to slide into discussions on
the various kinds of fodder and their
feeding qualities. Hodge and Giles,
after comparing notes over their respective
pig-styes, show by their remarks that
they have been observant of their masters’
beasts and sheep ; and of the effects
produced on them by this or that kind
of treatment. Nor is it only among the
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
rural population that the regulations of
the kennel, the stable, the cow-shed, and
the sheep-pen, are favourite subjects.
In towns, too, the numerous artizans
who keep dogs, the young men who are
rich enough to now and then indulge
their sporting tendencies, and their more
staid seniors who talk over agricultural
progress or read Mr. Mechi’s annual
reports and Mr. Caird’s letters to the
Times, form, when added together, a
large portion of the inhabitants. Take
the adult males throughout the kingdom,
and a great majority will be found to
show some interest in the breeding,
rearing, or training of animals of one
kind or other.
But, during after-dinner conversations,
or at other times of like intercourse, who
hears anything said about the rearing of
children ? When the country gentleman
has paid his daily visit to the stable,
and personally inspected the condition
and treatment of his horses ; when he
has glanced at his minor live stock,
and given directions about them; how
often does he go up to the nursery and
examine into its dietary, its hours, its
ventilation ? On his library-shelves may
be found White’s Farriery, Stephens’s
Book of the Farm, Nimrod On the
Condition of Hunters-, and with the con
tents of these he is more or less familiar;
but how many books has he read on the
management of infancy and childhood ?
The fattening properties of oil-cake, the
relative values of hay and chopped straw,
the dangers of unlimited clover, are points
bn which every landlord, farmer, and
peasant has some knowledge ; but what
percentage of them inquire whether the
food they give their children is adapted
to the constitutional needs of growing
boys and girls ? Perhaps the business
interests of these classes will be assigned
as accounting for this anomaly. The
93
explanation is inadequate, however;
seeing that the same contrast holds
among other classes. Of a score of
townspeople, few, if any, would prove
ignorant of the fact that it is undesirable
to work a horse soon after it has eaten ;
and yet, of this same score, supposing
them all to be fathers, probably not one
would be found who had considered
whether the time elapsing between his
children’s dinner and their resumption
of lessons was sufficient. Indeed, on
cross-examination, nearly every man
would disclose the latent opinion that
the regimen of the nursery was no concern
of his. “ Oh, I leave all those things to
the women,” would probably be the reply.
And in most cases the tone of this reply
would convey the implication, that such
cares are not consistent with masculine
dignity.
Regarded from any but a conventional
point of view, the fact seems strange that
while the raising of first-rate bullocks is
an occupation on which educated men
willingly bestow much time and thought,
the bringing up of fine human beings is
an occupation tacitly voted unworthy of
their attention. Mammas who have been
taught little but languages, music, and
accomplishments, aided by nurses full of
antiquated prejudices, are held competent
regulators of the food, clothing, and
exercise of children. Meanwhile the
fathers read books and periodicals, attend
agricultural meetings, try experiments,
and engage in discussions, all with the
view of discovering how to fatten prize
pigs ! We see infinite pains taken to
produce a racer that shall win the Derby :
none to produce a modern athlete. Had
Gulliver narrated of the Laputans that
the men vied with each other in learning
how best to rear the offspring of other
creatures, and were careless of learning
how best to rear their own offspring, he
�94
EDUCATION
would have paralleled any of the other
absurdities he ascribes to them.
The matter is a serious one, however.
Ludicrous as is the antithesis, the fact
it expresses is not less disastrous. As
remarks a suggestive writer, the first
requisite to success in life is “to be a
good animal and to be a nation of
good animals is the first condition to
national prosperity. Not only is it that
the event of a war often turns on the
strength and hardiness of soldiers; but
it is that the contests of commerce are
in part determined by the bodily endu
rance of producers. Thus far we have
found no reason to fear trials of strength
with other races in either of these fields.
But there are not wanting signs that our
powers will presently be taxed to the
uttermost. The competition of modern
life is so keen, that few can bear the
required application without injury.
Already thousands break down under
the high pressure they are subject to. If
this pressure continues to increase, as it
seems likely to do, it will try severely
even the soundest constitutions. Hence
it is becoming of especial importance
that the training of children should be
so carried on, as not only to fit
them mentally for the struggle before
them, but also to make them physi
cally fit to bear its excessive wear and
tear.
Happily the matter is beginning to
attract attention. The writings of Mr.
Kingsley indicate a reaction against over
culture ; carried perhaps, as reactions
usually are, somewhat too far. Occasional
letters and leaders in the newspapers
have shown an awakening interest in
physical training. And the formation
of a school, significantly nicknamed
that of “ muscular Christianity,” implies
a growing opinion that our present
methods of bringing up children do
not sufficiently regard the welfare of
the body. The topic is evidently ripe
for discussion.
To conform the regimen of the nursery
and the school to the established truths of
modern science —this is the desideratum.
It is time that the benefits which our
sheep and oxen are deriving from the
investigations of the laboratory, should
be participated in by our children.
Without calling in question the great
importance of horse-training and pig
feeding, we would suggest that, as the
rearing of well-grown men and women
is also of some moment, these conclusions
which theory indicates and practice
indorses, ought to be acted on in the
last case as in the first. Probably not
a few will be startled—perhaps offended
—by this collocation of ideas. But it
is a fact not to be disputed, and to which
we must reconcile ourselves, that man
is subject to the same organic laws as
inferior creatures. No anatomist, no
physiologist, no chemist, will for a
moment hesitate to assert, that the
general principles which are true of
the vital processes in animals are equally
true of the vital processes in man. And
a candid admission of this fact is not
without its reward: namely, that the
generalisations established by observation
and experiment on brutes, become avail
able for human guidance. Rudimentary
as is the Science of Life, it has already
attained to certain fundamental principles
underlying the development of all
organisms, the human included. That
which has now to be done, and that
which we shall endeavour in some measure
to do, is to trace the bearings of these
fundamental principles on the physical
training of childhood and youth.
The rhythmical tendency which is
traceable in all departments of social
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
95
life—which is illustrated in the access of easily corrected, that those of inanition.”1
despotism after revolution, or, among Besides, where there has been no
ourselves, in the alternation of reforming injudicious interference, repletion seldom
epochs and conservative epochs—which, occurs. “ Excess is the vice rather of
after a dissolute age, brings an age of adults than of the young, who are rarely
asceticism, and conversely,—which, in either gourmands or epicures, unless
commerce, produces the recurring infla through the fault of those who rear
tions and panics—which carries the them.”2 This system of restriction
devotees of fashion from one absurd which many parents think so necessary,
extreme to the opposite one :— this is based upon inadequate observation,
rhythmical tendency affects also our and erroneous reasoning. There is an
table-habits, and by implication, the over-legislation in the nursery, as well as
dietary of the young. After a period an over-legislation in the State ; and one
distinguished by hard drinking and hard of the most injurious forms of it is this
eating, has come a period of comparative limitation in the quantity of food.
“ But are children to be allowed to
sobriety, which, in teetotalism and
vegetarianism, exhibits extreme forms surfeit themselves ? Shall they be suffere d
of protest against the riotous living of to take their fill of dainties and make
the past. And along with this change themselves ill, as they certainly will do ?”
in the regimen of adults, has come a As thus put, the question admits of but
parallel change in the regimen for boys one reply. But as thus put, it assumes
and girls. In past generations the the point at issue. We contend that,
belief was, that the more a child could as appetite is a good guide to all the
be induced to eat the better; and even lower creation—as it is a good guide to
now, among farmers and in remote the infant—as it is a good guide to the
districts, where traditional ideas most invalid—as it is a good guide to the
linger, parents may be found who tempt differently-placed races of men—and as
their children into repletion. But among it is a good guide for every adult who
the educated classes, who chiefly display leads a healthful life ; it may safely be
this reaction towards abstemiousness, inferred that it is a good guide for child
there may be seen a decided leaning hood. It would be strange indeed were
to the under-feeding, rather than the it here alone untrustworthy.
Perhaps some will read this reply with
over-feeding of children. Indeed their
disgust for by-gone animalism, is more impatience; being able, as they think,
clearly shown in the treatment of their to cite facts totally at variance with it.
offspring than in the treatment of them It may appear absurd if we deny the
selves; for while their disguised asceticism relevancy of these facts. And yet the
is, in so far as their personal conduct is paradox is quite defensible. The truth
concerned, kept in check by their appe is, that the instances of excess which
tites, it has full play in legislating for such persons have in mind, are usually
the consequences of the restrictive system
juveniles.
That over-feeding and under-feeding they seem to justify. They are the
are both bad, is a truism. Of the two, sensual reactions caused by an ascetic
They illustrate on a small
however, the last is the worst. As writes regimen.
a high authority, “ the effects of casual
1 Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine.
3 lb.
repletion are less prejudicial, and more
�96
EDUCATION
scale that commonly-remarked truth,
that those who during youth have been
subject to the most, rigorous discipline,
are apt afterwards to rush into the wildest
extravagances. They are analogous to
those frightful phenomena, once not
uncommon in convents, where nuns
suddenly lapsed from the extremest
austerities into an almost demoniac
wickedness.
They simply exhibit the
uncontrollable vehemence of long-denied
desires.
Consider the ordinary tastes
and the ordinary treatment of children.
The love of sweets is conspicuous and
almost universal among them. Probably
ninety-nine people in a hundred presume
that there is nothing more in this than
gratification of the palate; and that, in
common with other sensual desires, it
should be discouraged. The physiolo
gist, however, whose discoveries lead
him to an ever-increasing reverence for
the arrangements of things, suspects
something more in this love of sweets
than is currently supposed ; and inquiry
confirms the suspicion. He finds that
sugar plays an important part in the
vital processes. Both saccharine and
fatty matters are eventually oxidised in
the body; and there is an accompanying
evolution of heat. Sugar is the form to
which sundry other compounds have to
be reduced before they are available as
heat-making food; and this formation
of sugar is carried on in the body. Not
only is starch changed into sugar in the
course of digestion, but it has been
proved by M. Claude Bernard that the
liver is a factory in which other con
stituents of food are transformed into
sugar: the need for sugar being so
imperative that it is even thus produced
from nitrogenous substances when no
others are given. Now, when to the
fact that children have a marked desire
for this valuable heat-food, we join the
fact that they have usually a marked
dislike to that food which gives out the
greatest amount of heat during oxidation
(namely, fat), we have reason for think
ing that excess of the one compensates
for defect of the other—that the organism
demands more sugar because it cannot
deal with much fat. Again, children are
fond of vegetable acids. Fruits of all
kinds are their delight; and, in the
absence of anything better, they will
devour unripe gooseberries and the
sourest of crabs. Now not only are
vegetable acids, in common with mineral
ones, very good tonics, and beneficial
as such when taken in moderation, but
they have, when administered in their
natural forms, other advantages. “ Ripe
fruit,” says Dr. Andrew Combe, “ is
more freely given on the Continent than
in this country; and, particularly when
the bowels act imperfectly, it is often
very useful.” See, then, the discord
between the instinctive wants of children
and their habitual treatment.
Here
are two dominant desires, which in
all probability express certain needs
of the child’s constitution ; and not only
are they ignored in the nursery-regimen,
but there is a general tendency to forbid
the gratification of them. Bread-andmilk in the morning, tea and bread-andbutter at night, or some dietary equally
insipid, is rigidly adhered to ; and any
ministration to the palate is thought
needless, or rather, wrong. What is the
consequence ?
When, on fête-days,
there is unlimited access to good things
—when a gift of pocket-money brings
the contents of the confectioner’s window
within reach, or when by some accident
the free run of a fruit-garden is obtained;
then the long-denied, and therefore
intense, desires lead to great excesses.
There is an impromptu carnival, due
partly to release from past restraints, and
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
partly to the consciousness that a long
Lent will begin on the morrow. And
then, when the evils of repletion display
themselves, it is argued that children
must not be left to the guidance of their
appetites ! These disastrous results of
artificial restrictions, are themselves cited
as proving the need for further restric
tions ! We contend therefore, that the
reasoning used to justify this system of
interference is vicious. We contend
that, were children allowed daily to
partake of these more sapid edibles,
for which there is a physiological require
ment, they would rarely exceed, as they
now mostly do when they have the
opportunity: were fruit, as Dr. Combe
recommends, “ to constitute a part of
the regular food ” (given, as he advises,
not between meals, but along with them),
there would be none of that craving
which prompts the devouring of crabs
and sloes. And similarly in other cases.
Not only is it that the a priori reasons
for trusting the appetites of children are
strong; and that the reasons assigned
for distrusting them are invalid; but it
is that no other guidance is worthy of
confidence. What is the value of this
parental judgment, set up as an alterna
tive regulator ? When to “ Oliver asking
for more,” the mamma or governess says
“ No,” on what data does she proceed ?
She thinks he has had enough. But
where are her grounds for so thinking?
Has she some secret understanding with
the boy’s stomach—some clairvoyant
power enabling her to discern the needs
of his body ? If not, how can she safely
decide ? Does she not know that the
demand of the system for food is deter
mined by numerous and involved causes
•—varies with the temperature, with the
hygrometric state of the air, with the
electric state of the air—varies also
according to the exercise taken, accord
97
ing to the kind and quantity of food
eaten at the last meal, and according to
the rapidity with which the last meal was
digested? How can she calculate the
result of such a combination of causes ?
As we heard said by the father of a fiveyears-old boy, who stands a head taller
than most of his age, and is propor
tionately robust, rosy, and active :—“ I
can see no artificial standard by which
to mete out his food. If I say, ‘ this
much is enough,’ it is a mere guess ;
and the guess is as likely to be wrong as
right. Consequently, having no faith in
guesses, I let him eat his fill.” And,
certainly, any one judging of his policy
by its effects, would be constrained to
admit its wisdom. In truth, this con
fidence, with which most persons legislate
for the stomachs of their children, proves
their unacquaintance with physiology:
if they knew more, they would be more
modest.
“The pride of science is
humble when compared with the pride
of ignorance.” If any one would learn
how little faith is to be placed, in human
judgments, and how much in the preestablished arrangement of things, let
him compare the rashness of the inex
perienced physician with the caution of
the most advanced; or let him dip into
Sir John Forbes’s work, On Nature and
Art in the Cure of Disease ; and he will
see that, in proportion as men gain
knowledge of the laws of life, they come
to have less confidence in themselves, and
more in Nature.
Turning from the question of quantity
of food to that of quality, we may discern
the same ascetic tendency. Not simply
a restricted diet, but a comparatively low
diet, is thought proper for children. The
current opinion is, that they should have
but little animal food. Among the less
wealthy classes, economy seems to have
dictated this opinion—the wish has been
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EDUCATION
father to the thought. Parents not
affording to buy much meat, answer the
petitions of juveniles with—“Meat is
not good for little boys and girls ”; and
this, at first probably nothing but a con
venient excuse, has by repetition grown
into an article of faith. While the classes
with whom cost is no consideration, have
been swayed partly by the example of
the majority, partly by the influence of
nurses drawn from thp lower classes, and
in some measure by the reaction against
past animalism.
If, however, we inquire for the basis
of this opinion, we find little or none.
It is a dogma repeated and received
without proof, like that which, for thou
sands of years, insisted on swaddlingclothes. Very probably for the infant’s
stomach, not yet endowed with much
muscular power, meat, which requires
considerable trituration before it can be
made into chyme, is an unfit aliment.
But this objection does not tell against
animal food from which the fibrous part
has been extracted; nor does it apply
when, after the lapse of two or three
years, considerable muscular vigour has
been acquired. And while the evidence
in support of this dogma, partially valid
in the case of very young children, is not
valid in the case of older children, who
are, nevertheless, ordinarily treated in
conformity with it, the adverse evidence
is abundant and conclusive. The verdict
of science is exactly opposite to the
popular opinion.
We have put the
question to two of our leading physicians,
and to several of the most distinguished
physiologists, and they uniformly agree
in the conclusion, that children should
have a diet not less nutritive, but, if
anything, more nutritive than that of
adults.
I
The grounds for this conclusion are j
obvious, and the reasoning simple. It |
needs but to compare the vital processes
of a man with those of a boy, to see
that the demand for sustenance is rela
tively greater in the boy than in the
man. What are the ends for which a
man requires food ? Each day his body
undergoes more or less wear—wear
through muscular exertion, wear of the
nervous system through mental actions,
wear of the viscera in carrying on the
functions of life; and the tissue thuswasted has to be renewed. Each day,
too, by radiation, his body loses a large
amount of heat; and as, for the continu
ance of the vital actions, the temperature
of the body must be maintained, this loss
has to be compensated by a constant
production of heat: to which end certain
constituents of the body are ever under
going oxidation. To make up for the
day’s waste, and to supply fuel for the
day’s expenditure of heat, are, then, the
sole purposes for which the adult requires
food. Consider now, the case of the
boy. He, too, wastes the substance of
his body by action; and it needs but to
note his restless activity to see that, in
proportion to his bulk, he probably
wastes as much as a man. He, too,
loses heat by radiation; and, as his
body exposes a greater surface in pro
portion to its mass than does that of
a man, and therefore loses heat more
rapidly, the quantity of heat-food he
requires is, bulk for bulk, greater than
that required by a man. So that even
had the boy no other vital processes to
carry on than the man has, he would
need, relatively to his size, a somewhat
larger supply of nutriment. But, besides
repairing his body and maintaining its
heat, the boy has to make new tissue—
to grow. After waste and thermal loss
have been provided for, such surplus of
nutriment as remains, goes to the further
building up of the frame; and only in
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
virtue of this surplus is normal growth
possible j the growth that sometimes
takes place in the absence of it, causing
a manifest prostration consequent upon
defective repair. It is true that because
of a certain mechanical law which can
not be here explained, a small organism
has an advantage over a large one in
the ratio between the sustaining and
destroying forces—an advantage, indeed,
to which the very possibility of growth
is owing.
But this admission only
makes it the more obvious that though
much adverse treatment may be borne
without this excess of vitality being quite
out-balanced; yet any adverse treatment,
by diminishing it, must diminish the
size or structural perfection reached.
How peremptory is the demand of the
unfolding organism for materials, is seen
alike in that “ school-boy hunger,” which
after-life rarely parallels in intensity, and
in the comparatively quick return of
appetite. And if there needs further
evidence of this extra necessity for
nutriment, we have it in the fact that,
during the famines following shipwrecks
and other disasters, the children are the
first to die.
This relatively greater need for nutri
ment being admitted, as it must be, the
question that remains is—shall we meet
it by giving an excessive quantity of what
may be called dilute food, or a more
moderate quantity of concentrated food ?
The nutriment obtainable from a given
weight of meat is obtainable only from
a larger weight of bread, or from a still
larger weight of potatoes, and so on.
To fulfil the requirement, the quantity
must be increased as the nutritiveness
is diminished. Shall we, then, respond
to the extra wants of the growing child
by giving an adequate quantity of food
as good as that of adults ? Or, regardless
of the fact that its stomach has to dispose
99
of a relatively larger quantity even of
this good food, shall we further tax it
By giving an inferior food in still greater
quantity?
The answer is tolerably obvious. The
more the labour of digestion is econo
mised, the more energy is left for the
purpose of growth and action. The
functions of the stomach and intestines
cannot be performed without a large
supply of blood and nervous power ; and
in the comparative lassitude that follows
a hearty meal, every adult has proof that
this supply of blood and nervous power
is at the expense of the system at large.
If the requisite nutriment is obtained
from a great quantity of innutritious
food, more work is entailed on the
viscera than when it is obtained from
a moderate quantity of nutritous food.
This extra work is so much loss—a
loss which in children shows itself
either in diminished energy, or in smaller
growth, or in both. The inference is,
then, that they should have a diet which
combines, as much as possible, nutritive
ness and digestibility.
It is doubtless true that boys and girls
may be reared upon an exclusively,
or almost exclusively, vegetable diet.
Among the upper classes are to be
found children to whom comparatively
little meat is given; and who, neverthe
less, grow and appear in good health.
Animal food is scarcely tasted by the
offspring of labouring people, and yet
they reach a healthy maturity.
But
these seemingly adverse facts have by no
means the weight commonly supposed.
In the first place, it does not follow that
those who in early years flourish on
bread and potatoes, will eventually reach
a fine development; and a comparison
between the agricultural labourers and
the gentry, in England, or between the
middle and lower classes in France,
�•TOO
EDUCATION
is by no means in favour of vegetable locomotive energy and considerable
feeders. In the second place, the ques vivacity.
If, again, we contrast the
tion is not simply a question of bulk, but stolid inactivity of the graminivorous
also a question of quality. A soft, flabby sheep with the liveliness of the dog,
flesh makes as good a show as a firm subsisting on flesh or farinaceous matters,
one; but though to the careless eye, a
or a mixture of the two, we see a differ
child of full, flaccid tissue may appear
ence similar in kind, but still greater in
the equal of one whose fibres are well degree. And after walking through the
toned, a trial of strength will prove the Zoological Gardens, and noting the rest
difference. Obesity in adults is often a lessness with which the carnivorous
sign of feebleness. Men lose weight in animals pace up and down their cages, it
training. Hence the appearance of these
needs but to remember that none of the
low-fed children is far from conclusive. herbivorous animals habitually display
In the third place, besides size we have
this superfluous energy, to see how clear
to consider energy. Between children of is the relation between concentration of
the meat-eating classes and those of the
food and degree of activity.
bread-and-potato-eating classes, there is
That these differences are not directly
a marked contrast in this respect. Both
consequent on differences of constitu
in mental and physical vivacity the
tion, as some may argue; but are directly
peasant-boy is greatly inferior to the consequent on differences in the food
son of a gentleman.
which the creatures are constituted to
If we compare different kinds of subsist on; is proved by the fact, that
animals, or different races of men, or
they are observable between different
the same animals or men when differently divisions of the same species.
The
fed, we find still more distinct proof that varieties of the horse furnish an illustra
the degree of energy essentially depends on tion. Compare the big-bellied, inactive,
the nutritiveness of the food.
spiritless cart-horse with a racer or
In a cow, subsisting on so innutritive hunter, small in the flanks and full of
a food as grass, we see that the immense energy; and then call to mind how
quantity required necessitates an enor much less nutritive is the diet of the one
mous digestive system ; that the limbs,
than that of the other. Or take the
small in comparison with the body, are case of mankind. Australians, Bushmen,
burdened by its weight; that in carrying '
and others of the lowest savages who
about this heavy body and digesting this live on roots and berries, varied by
excessive quantity of food, much force is . larvae of insects and the like meagre
expended; and that, having but little i fare, are comparatively puny in stature,
remaining, the creature is sluggish.
have large abdomens, soft and unde
Compare with the cow a horse — an !
veloped muscles, and are quite unable to
animal of nearly allied structure, but i cope with Europeans, either in a struggle
habituated to a more concentrated diet, j. or in prolonged exertion. Count up the
Here the body, and more especially its I wild races who are well grown, strong
abdominal region, bears a smaller ratio i and active, as the Kaffirs, North-Amerito the limbs; the powers are not taxed j can Indians, and Patagonians, and you
by the support of such massive viscera ' find them large consumers of flesh. The
nor the digestion of so bulky a food; ' ill-fed Hindoo goes down before the
and, as a consequence, there is greater ' Englishman fed on more nutritive food,
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
to whom he is as inferior in mental as
in physical energy. And generally, we
think, the history of the world shows
that the well-fed races have been the
energetic and dominant races.
Still stronger, however, becomes the
argument, when we find that the same
individual animal is capable of more or
less exertion according as its food is
more or less nutritious. This has been
demonstrated in the case of the horse.
Though flesh may be gained by a grazing
horse, strength is lost; as putting him to
hard work proves. “The consequence
of turning horses out to grass is relaxa
tion of the muscular system.” “Grass
is a very good preparation for a bullock
for Smithfield market, but a very bad
one for a hunter.” It was well known
of old that, after passing the summer in
the fields, hunters required some months
of stable-feeding before becoming able
to follow the hounds; and that they
did not get into good condition till the
beginning of the next spring. And the
modern practice is that insisted on by
Mr. Apperley—“Never to give a hunter
what is called ‘ a summer’s run at grass,’
and, except under particular and very
favourable circumstances, never to turn
him out at all.” That is to say, never
give him poor food: great energy and
endurance are to be obtained only by
the continued use of nutritive food. So
true is this that, as proved by Mr.
Apperley, prolonged high-feeding enables
a middling horse to equal, in his per
formances, a first-rate horse fed in the
ordinary way. To which various evidences
add the familiar fact that, when a horse
is required to do double duty, it is the
practice to give him beans—a food con
taining a larger proportion of nitrogenous,
or flesh-making material, than his habitual
Oats.
Once more, in the case of individual
IOI
men the truth has been illustrated with
equal, or still greater, clearness. We do
not refer to men in training for feats
of strength, whose regimen, however,
thoroughly conforms to the doctrine.
We refer to the experience of railway
contractors and their labourers. It has
been for years a well-established fact
that an English navvy, eating largely of
flesh, is far more efficient than a Conti
nental navvy living on farinaceous food ;
so much more efficient, that English
contractors for Continental railways found
it pay to take their labourers with them.
That difference of diet and not difference
of race caused this superiority, has been
of late distinctly shown. For it has
turned out, that when the Continental
navvies live in the same style as their
English competitors, they presently rise,
more or less nearly, to a par with them
in efficiency. And to this fact, let us here
add the converse one, to which we can
give personal testimony based upon six
months’ experience of vegetarianism, that
abstinence from meat entails diminished
energy of both body and mind.
Do not these various evidences endorse
our argument respecting the feeding of
children ? Do they not imply that, even
supposing the same stature and bulk to
be attained on an innutritive as on a
nutritive diet, the quantity of tissue is
greatly inferior ? Do they not establish
the position that, where energy as well
as growth has to be maintained, it can
only be done by high feeding ? Do they
not confirm the a priori conclusion that,
though a child of whom little is expected
in the way of bodily or mental activity,
may thrive tolerably well on farinaceous
substances, a child who is daily required,
not only to form the due amount of new
tissue, but to supply the waste consequent
on great muscular action, and the further
waste consequent on hard exercise of
�102
EDUCATION
brain, must live on substances containing
a larger ratio of nutritive matter ? And
is it not an obvious corollary, that denial
of this better food will be at the expense
either of growth, or of bodily activity, or
of mental activity; as constitution and
circumstances determine? We believe
no logical intellect will question it. To
think otherwise is to entertain in a
disguised form the old fallacy of the
perpetual-motion schemers—that it is
possible to get power out of nothing.
Before leaving the question of food,
■a few words must be said on another
requisite—variety. In this respect the
dietary of the young is very faulty. If
not, like our soldiers, condemned to
“ twenty years of boiled beef,” our
children have mostly to bear a monotony
which, though less extreme and less
lasting, is quite as clearly at variance
with the laws of health. At dinner, it is
true, they usually have food that is more
or less mixed, and that is changed day
by day. But week after week, month
after month, year after year, comes the
same breakfast of bread-and-milk, or, it
may be, oatmeal-porridge. And with
like persistence the day is closed, perhaps
with a second edition of the bread-andmilk, perhaps with tea and bread-andbutter.
This practice is opposed to the dictates
of physiology. The satiety produced by
an oft-repeated dish, and the gratification
caused by one long a stranger to the
palate, are not meaningless, as people
carelessly assume; but they are the
incentives to a wholesome diversity of
diet. It is a fact, established by numerous
experiments, that there is scarcely any
one food, however good, which supplies
in due proportions or right forms all the
elements required for carrying on the
vital processes in a normal manner •
whence it follows that frequent change
of food is desirable to balance the
supplies of all the elements. It is a
further fact, known to physiologists, that
the enjoyment given by a much-liked
food is a nervous stimulus, which, by
increasing the action of the heart and
so propelling the blood with increased
vigour, aids in the subsequent digestion.
And these truths are in harmony with
the maxims of modern cattle-feeding,
which dictate a rotation of diet.
Not only, however, is periodic change
of food very desirable; but, for the
same reasons, it is very desirable that a
mixture of food should be taken at each
meal. The better balance of ingredients,
and the greater nervous stimulation, are
advantages which hold here as before.
If facts are asked for, we may name as
one, the comparative ease with which
the stomach disposes of a French dinner,
enormous in quantity but extremely varied
in materials. Few will contend that an
equal weight of one kind of food, how
ever well cooked, could be digested with
as much facility. If any desire further
facts, they may find them in every
modern book on the management of
animals. Animals thrive best when each
meal is made up of several things. The
experiments of Goss and Stark “afford
the most decisive proof of the advantage,
or rather the necessity, of a mixture of
substances, in order to produce the com
pound which is the best adapted for the
action of the stomach.”1
Should any object, as probably many
will, that a rotating dietary for children,
and one which also requires a mixture
of food at each meal, would entail too
much trouble; we reply, that no trouble
is thought too great which conduces to
the mental development of children, and
that for their future welfare, good bodily
1 Cyclopedia of Anatomy and Physiology.
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
103
There is a current theory, vaguely enter
tained if not put into a definite formula,
that the sensations are to be disregarded.
They do not exist for our guidance, but
to mislead us, seems to be the prevalent
belief reduced to its naked form. It is
a grave error: we are much more bene
ficently constituted. It is not obedience
to the sensations, but disobedience to
them, which is the habitual cause of
bodily evils. It is not the eating when
hungry, but the eating in the absence of
hunger, which is bad. It is not drinking
when thirsty, but continuing to drink
when thirst has ceased, that is the vice.
Harm does not result from breathing
that fresh air which every healthy person
enjoys ; but from breathing foul air, spite
of the-protest of the lungs. Harm does
not result from taking that active exercise
which, as every child shows us, Nature
strongly prompts ; but from a persistent
disregard of Nature’s promptings. Not
that mental activity which is spontaneous
and enjoyable does the mischief; but
that which is preserved in after a hot
or aching head commands desistance.
Not that bodily exertion which is pleasant
or indifferent, does injury; but that which
is continued when exhaustion forbids.
It is true that, in those who have long
led unhealthy lives, the sensations are
not trustworthy guides. People who
have for years been almost constantly
in-doors, who have exercised their brains
very much and their bodies scarcely at
all, who in eating have obeyed their
clocks without consulting their stomachs,
may very likely be misled by their vitiated
feelings. But their abnormal state is
itself the result of transgressing their
With clothing as with food, the usual feelings. Had they from childhood
tendency is towards an improper scanti never disobeyed what we may term the
ness. Here, too, asceticism peeps out. physical conscience, it would not have
been seared, but would have remained
a faithful monitor.
1 Morton’s Cyclopedia of Agriculture.
development is of still higher importance.
Moreover, it seems alike sad and strange
that a trouble which is cheerfully taken
in the fattening of pigs, should be thought
too great in the rearing of children.
One more paragraph, with the view of
warning those who may propose to adopt
the regimen indicated. The change
must not be made suddenly ; for con
tinued low-feeding so enfeebles the
system, as to disable it from at once
dealing with a high diet. Deficient
nutrition is itself a cause of dyspepsia.
This is true even of animals. “When
calves are fed with skimmed milk, or
whey, or other poor food, they are liable
to indigestion.”1 Hence, therefore, where
the energies are low, the transition to a
generous diet must be gradual: each
increment of strength gained, justifying
a fresh addition of nutriment. Further,
it should be borne in mind that the con
centration of nutriment may be carried
too far. A bulk sufficient to fill the
stomach is one requisite of a proper
meal; and this requisite negatives a diet
deficient in those matters which give
adequate mass. Though the size of the
digestive organs is less in the well-fed
civilised races than in the ill-fed savage
ones ; and though their size may even
tually diminish still further; yet, for the
time being, the bulk of the ingesta must
be determined by the existing capacity.
But, paying due regard to these two
qualifications, our conclusions are—that
the food of children should be highly
nutritive; that it should be varied at
each meal and at successive meals ; and
that it should be abundant.
�104
EDUCATION
Among the sensations serving for our
guidance are those of heat and cold:
and a clothing for children which does
not carefully consult these sensations, is
to be condemned. The common notion
about “ hardening ” is a grievous delusion.
Not a few children are “hardened” out
of the world ; and those who survive,
permanently suffer either in growth or
constitution. “Their delicate appear
ance furnishes ample indication of the
mischief thus produced, and their
frequent attacks of illness might prove
a warning even to unreflecting parents,”
says Dr. Combe. The reasoning on
which this hardening theory rests is
extremely superficial. Wealthy parents,
seeing little peasant boys and girls
playing about in the open-air only half
clothed, and joining with this fact the
general healthiness of labouring people,
draw the unwarrantable conclusion that
the healthiness is the result of the
exposure, and resolve to keep their
own offspring scantily covered! It is
forgotten that these urchins who gambol
upon village-greens are in many respects
favourably circumstanced — that their
lives are spent in almost perpetual play;
that they are all day breathing fresh air;
and that their systems are not disturbed
by over-taxed brains. For aught that
appears to the contrary, their good health
may be maintained, not in consequence
of, but in spite of, their deficient clothing.
This alternative conclusion we believe to
be the true one; and that an inevitable
detriment results from the loss of animal
heat to which they are subject.
For when, the constitution being
sound enough to bear it, the exposure
does produce hardness, it does so at
the expense of growth. This truth is
displayed alike in animals and in man.
Shetland ponies bear greater inclemencies
than the horses of the south, but are
dwarfed. Highland sheep and cattle,
living in a colder climate, are stunted
in comparison with English breeds. In
both the arctic and antarctic regions
the human race falls much below its
ordinary height: the Laplander and
Esquimaux are very short; and the
Terra del Fuegians, who go naked in a
wintry land, are described by Darwin as
so stunted and hideous, that “ one can
hardly make one’s-self believe they are
fellow-creatures. ”
Science explains this dwarfishness pro
duced by great abstraction of heat;
showing that, food and other things
being equal, it unavoidably results. For
as before pointed out, to make up for
that cooling by radiation which the body
is ever undergoing, there must be a
constant oxidation of certain matters
forming part of the food. And in pro
portion as the thermal loss is great, must
the quantity of these matters required
for oxidation be great. But the power
of the digestive organs is limited. Con
sequently, when they have to prepare a
large quantity of this material needful
for maintaining the temperature, they
can prepare but a small quantity of
the material which goes to build up the
frame. Excessive expenditure for fuel
entails diminished means for other
purposes. Wherefore there necessarily
results a body small in size, or inferior
in texture, or both.
Hence the great importance of clothing.
As Liebig says :—“ Our clothing is, in
reference to the temperature of the body,
merely an equivalent for a certain amount
of food.” By diminishing the loss of
heat, it diminishes the amount of fuel
needful for maintaining the heat; and
when the stomach has less to do in
preparing fuel, it can do more in
preparing other materials. This deduc
tion is confirmed by the experience
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
io5
of those who manage animals. Cold acid given off varies with tolerable
can be borne by animals only at an accuracy as the quantity of heat pro
expense of fat, or muscle, or growth, as duced. And thus we see that in children
the case may be. “If fattening cattle are the system, even when not placed at a
exposed to a low temperature, either disadvantage, is called upon to provide
their progress must be retarded or a nearly double the proportion of material
great additional expenditure of food for generating heat.
See, then, the extreme folly of clothing
incurred.”1 Mr. Apperley insists strongly
that, to bring hunters into good con the young scantily. What father, fulldition, it is necessary that the stable grown though he is, losing heat less
should be kept warm.
And among rapidly as he does, and having no
those who rear racers, it is an established physiological necessity but to supply the
waste of each day—what father, we ask,
doctrine that exposure is to be avoided.
The scientific truth thus illustrated by would think it salutary to go about with
ethnology, and recognised by agricul bare legs, bare arms, and bare neck?
turists and sportsmen, applies with Yet this tax on the system, from which
double force to children. In proportion he would shrink, he inflicts on his little
to their smallness and the rapidity of ones, who are so much less able to bear
their growth is the injury from cold it! or, if he does not inflict it, sees
great. In France, new-born infants often it inflicted without protest. Let him
die in winter from being carried to the remember that every ounce of nutriment
office of the maire for registration. needlessly expended for the maintenance
“M. Quetelet has pointed out, that in of temperature, is so much deducted from
Belgium two infants die in January for the nutriment going to build up the
one that dies in July.” And in Russia frame; and that even when colds, con
the infant mortality is something enor gestions, or other consequent disorders
mous. Even when near maturity, the are escaped, diminished growth or less
undeveloped frame is comparatively perfect structure is inevitable.
“The rule is, therefore, not to dress
unable to bear exposure : as witness the
in an invariable way in all cases, but to
quickness with which young soldiers
succumb in a trying campaign. The put on clothing in kind and quantity
rationale is obvious. We have already sufficient in the individual case to protect
adverted to the fact that, in consequence the body effectually from an abiding
of the varying relation between surface sensation of cold, however slight! This
and bulk, a child loses a relatively larger rule, the importance cf which Dr. Combe
amount of heat than an adult; and here indicates by the italics, is one in which
we must point out that the disadvantage men of science and practitioners agree.
under which the child thus labours is We have met with none competent to
very great. Lehmann says:—“If the form a judgment on the matter, who do
carbonic acid excreted by children or not strongly condemn the exposure of
young animals is calculated for an equal children’s limbs. If there is one point
bodily weight, it results that children above others in which “pestilent custom”
produce nearly twice as much acid as should be ignored, it is this.
Lamentable, indeed, is it to see mothers
adults.” Now the quantity of carbonic
seriously damaging the constitutions of
their children out of compliance with an
1 Morton’s Cyclopedia of Agriculture.
�EDUCATION
irrational fashion. It is bad enough that
they should themselves conform to every
folly which our Gallic neighbours please
to initiate ; but that they should clothe
their children in any mountebank dress
which Le petit Courrier des Dames indi
cates, regardless of its insufficiency and
unfitness, is monstrous.
Discomfort,
more or less great, is inflicted; frequent
disorders are entailed; growth is checked
or stamina undermined; premature death
not uncommonly caused; and all because
it is thought needful to make frocks of a
size and material dictated by French
caprice. Not only is it that for the sake
of conformity, mothers thus punish and
injure their little ones by scantiness of
covering; but it is that from an allied
motive they impose a style of dress which
forbids healthful activity. To please the
eye, colours and fabrics are chosen totally
unfit to bear that rough usage which
unrestrained play involves : and then to
prevent damage the unrestrained play is
interdicted.
“ Get up this moment:
you will soil your clean frock,” is the
mandate issued to some urchin creeping
about on the floor. “ Come back : you
will dirty your stockings,” calls out the
governess to one of her charges, who has
left the footpath to scramble up a bank.
Thus is the evil doubled. That they
may come up to their mamma’s standard
of prettiness, and be admired by her
visitors, children must have habiliments
deficient in quantity and unfit in texture;
and that these easily-damaged habiliments
may be kept clean and uninjured, the
restless activity so natural and needful
for the young, is restrained. The exercise
which becomes doubly requisite when
the clothing is insufficient, is cut short,
lest it should deface the clothing. Would
that the terrible cruelty of this system
could be seen by those who maintain it!
We do not hesitate to say that, through
enfeebled health, defective energies, and
consequent non-success in life, thousands
are annually doomed to unhappiness by
this unscrupulous regard for appearances :
even when they are not, by early death,
literally sacrificed to the Moloch of
maternal vanity. We are reluctant to
counsel strong measures, but really the
evils are so great as to justify, or even to
demand, a peremptory interference on
the part of fathers.
Our conclusions are, then—that, while
the clothing of children should never be
in such excess as to create oppressive
warmth, it should always be sufficient to
prevent any general feeling of cold;
*
that instead of the flimsy cotton, linen,
or mixed fabrics commonly used, it
should be made of some good non
conductor, such as coarse woollen cloth ;
that it should be so strong as to receive
little damage from the hard wear and
tear which childish sports will give it;
and that its colours should be such as
will not soon suffer from use and expo
sure.
To the importance of bodily exercise
most people are in some degree awake.
Perhaps less needs saying on this requisite
of physical education than on most
others : at any rate, in so far as boys are
concerned. Public schools and private
schools alike furnish tolerably adequate
playgrounds; and there is usually a fair
1 It is needful to remark that children whose
legs and arms have been from the beginning
habitually without covering, cease to be conscious
that the exposed surfaces are cold ; just as by use
we have all ceased to be conscious that our faces
are cold, even when out of doors. But though
in such children the sensations no longer protest,
it does not follow that the system escapes injury;
any more than it follows that the Fuegian is
undamaged by exposure, because he bears with
indifference the melting of the falling snow on
his naked body.
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
share of time for out-door games, and a
recognition of them as needful. In this,
if in no other direction, it seems admitted
that the promptings of boyish instinct
may advantageously be followed; and,
indeed, in the modern practice of breaking
the prolonged morning’s and afternoon’s
lessons by a few minutes’ open-air recrea
tion, we see an increasing tendency to
conform school-regulations to the bodily
sensations of the pupils. Here, then,
little need be said in the way of expostu
lation or suggestion.
But we have been obliged to qualify
this admission by inserting the clause
“in so far as boys are concerned.” Un
fortunately, the fact is quite otherwise
with girls. It chances, somewhat
strangely, that we have daily opportunity
of drawing a comparison. We have
both a boys’ school and a girls’ school
within view; and the contrast between
them is remarkable. In the one case,
nearly the whole of a large garden is
turned into an open, gravelled space,
affording ample scope for games, and
supplied with poles and horizontal bars
for gymnastic exercises. Every day
before breakfast, again towards eleven
o’clock, again at mid-day, again in the
afternoon, and once more after school is
over, the neighbourhood is awakened by
a chorus of shouts and laughter as the
boys rush out to play; and for as long
as they remain, both eyes and ears give
proof that they are absorbed in that
enjoyable activity which makes the pulse
bound and ensures the healthful activity
of every organ. How unlike is the
picture offered by the “ Establishment
for Young Ladies”! Until the fact was
pointed out, we actually did not know
that we had a girls’ school as close to us
as the school for boys. The garden,
equally large with the other, affords no
sign whatever of any provision for juvenile
107
recreation; but is entirely laid out with
prim grass-plots, gravel-walks, shrubs, and
flowers, after the usual suburban style.
During five months we ha.ve not once
had our attention drawn to the premises
by a shout or a laugh. Occasionally
girls may be observed sauntering along
the paths with their lesson-books in their
hands, or else walking arm-in-arm. Once,
indeed, we saw one chase another round
the garden; but, with this exception,
nothing like vigorous exertion has been
visible.
Why this astonishing difference? Is
it that the constitution of a girl differs
so entirely from that of a boy as not to
need these active exercises ? Is it that
a girl has none of the promptings to
vociferous play by which boys are
impelled ? Or is it that, while in boys
these promptings are to be regarded as
stimuli to a bodily activity without which
there cannot be adequate development,
to their sisters, Nature has given them
for no purpose whatever—unless it be
for the vexation of school-mistresses ?
Perhaps, however, we mistake the aim
of those who train the gentler sex. We
have a vague suspicion that to produce
a robust physique is thought undesirable ;
that rude health and abundant vigour
are considered somewhat plebeian; that
a certain delicacy, a strength not com
petent to more than a mile or two’s walk,
an appetite fastidious and easily satisfied,
joined with that timidity which commonly
accompanies feebleness, are held more
lady-like. We do not expect that any
would distinctly avow this; but we fancy
the governess-mind is haunted by an
ideal young lady bearing not a little
resemblance to this type. If so, it must
be admitted that the established system
is admirably calculated to realise this
ideal. But to suppose that such is the
ideal of the opposite sex is a profound
�108
EDUCATION
mistake. That men are not commonly
drawn towards masculine women, is
doubtless true.
That such relative
weakness as asks the protection of
superior strength, is an element of
attraction, we quite admit. But the
difference thus responded to by the
feelings of men, is the natural, preestablished difference, which will assert
itself without artificial appliances. And
when, by artificial appliances, the degree
of this difference is increased, it becomes
an element of repulsion rather than of
attraction.
“Then girls should be allowed to run
wild—to become as rude as boys, and
grow up into romps and hoydens !”
exclaims some defender of the pro
prieties. This, we presume, is the ever
present dread of school-mistresses. It
appears, on inquiry, that at “ Establish
ments for Young Ladies ” noisy play like
that daily indulged in by boys, is a
punishable offence; and we infer that it
is forbidden, lest unlady-like habits should
be formed. The fear is quite groundless,
however. For if the sportive activity
allowed to boys does not prevent them
from growing up into gentlemen; why
should a like sportive activity prevent
girls from growing up into ladies ?
Rough as may have been their play
ground frolics, youths who have left
school do not indulge in leap-frog in the
street, or marbles in the drawing-room.
Abandoning their jackets, they abandon
at the same time boyish games; and
display an anxiety—often a ludicrous
anxiety—to avoid whatever is not manly.
If now, on arriving at the due age, this
feeling of masculine dignity puts so
efficient a restraint on the sports of boy
hood, will not the feeling of feminine
modesty, gradually strengthening as
maturity is approached, put an efficient
restraint on the like snorts of girlhood ?
Have not women even a greater regard
for appearances than men ? and will there
not consequently arise in them even a
stronger check to whatever is rough or
boisterous ? How absurd is the supposi
tion that the womanly instincts would
not assert themselves but for the rigorous
discipline of school-mistresses!
In this, as in other cases, to remedy
the evils of one artificiality, another
artificiality has been introduced. The
natural, spontaneous exercise having
been forbidden, and the bad conse
quences of no exercise having become
conspicuous, there has been adopted a
system of factitious exercise—gymnastics.
That this is better than nothing we
admit; but that it is an adequate sub
stitute for play we deny. The defects
are both positive and negative. In the
first place, these formal, muscular
motions, necessarily less varied than
those accompanying juvenile sports, do
not secure so equable a distribution of
action to all parts of the body; whence
it results that the exertion, falling on
special parts, produces fatigue sooner
than it would else have done: to which,
in passing, let us add, that if constantly
repeated, this exertion of special parts
leads to a disproportionate development.
Again, the quantity of exercise thus taken
will be deficient, not only in consequence
of uneven distribution; but there will be
a further deficiency in consequence of
lack of interest. Even when not made
repulsive, as they sometimes are, by
assuming the shape of appointed lessons,
these monotonous movements are sure
to become wearisome from the absence
of amusement. Competition, it is true,
serves as a stimulus; but it is not a
lasting stimulus, like that enjoyment
which accompanies varied play. The
weightiest objection, however, still
remains.
Besides being inferior in
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
respect of the quantity of muscular
exertion which they secure, gymnastics
are still more inferior in respect of the
quality., This comparative want of
enjoyment which we have named as a
cause of early desistance from artificial
exercises, is also a cause of inferiority
in the effects they produce on the system.
The common assumption that, so long
as the amount of bodily action is the
same, it matters not whether it be
pleasurable or otherwise, is a grave
mistake. An agreeable mental excite
ment has a highly invigorating influence.
See the effect produced upon an invalid
by good news, or by the visit of an old
friend. Mark how careful medical men
are to recommend lively society to
debilitated patients. Remember how
beneficial to health is the gratification
produced by change of scene. The
truth is that happiness is the most
powerful of tonics. By accelerating the
circulation of the blood, it facilitates the
performance of every function; and so
tends alike to increase health when it
exists, and to restore it when it has been
lost. Hence the intrinsic superiority of
play to gymnastics. The extreme interest
felt by children in their games, and the
riotous glee with which they carry on
their rougher frolics, are of as much
importance as the accompanying exertion.
And as not supplying these mental
stimuli, gymnastics must be radically
defective.
Granting then, as we do, that formal
exercises of the limbs are better than
nothing—granting, further, that they may
be used with advantage as supplementary
aids; we yet contend that they can never
serve in place of the exercises prompted
by Nature. For girls, as well as boys,
the sportive activities to which the
instincts impel, are essential to bodily
welfare. Whoever forbids them, forbids
109
the divinely-appointed means to physical
development.
A topic still remains—one perhaps
more urgently demanding consideration
than any of the foregoing. It is asserted
by not a few, that among the educated
classes the younger adults and those
who are verging on maturity, are neither
so well grown nor so strong as their
seniors. On first hearing this assertion,
we were inclined to class it as one of
the many manifestations of the old
tendency to exalt the past at the expense
of the present. Calling to mind the
facts that, as measured by ancient
armour, modern men are proved to be
larger than ancient men; and that the
tables of mortality show no diminution,
but rather an increase, in the duration
of life; we paid little attention to what
seemed a groundless belief. Detailed
observation, however, has shaken our
opinion. Omitting from the comparison
the labouring classes, we have noticed a
majority of cases in which the children
do not reach the stature of their parents;
and, in massiveness, making due allow
ance for difference of age, there seems a
like inferiority. Medical men say that
now-a-days people cannot bear nearly so
much depletion as in times gone by.
Premature baldness is far more common
than it used to be. And an early decay
of teeth occurs in the rising generation
with startling frequency.
In general
vigour the contrast appears equally strik
ing. Men of past generations, living
riotously as they did, could bear more
than men of the present generation, who
live soberly, can bear. Though they
drank hard, kept irregular hours, were
regardless of fresh air, and thought little
of cleanliness, our recent ancestors were
capable of prolonged application without
injury, even to a ripe old age: witness
�I IO
EDUCATION
the annals of the bench and the bar.
Yet we who think much about our bodily
welfare; who eat with moderation, and
do not drink to excess; who attend to
ventilation, and use frequent ablutions
who make annual excursions, and have
the benefit of greater medical knowledge;
—we are continually breaking down
under our work. Paying considerable
attention to the laws of health, we seem
to be weaker than our grandfathers, who,
in many respects, defied the laws of
health. And, judging from the appear
ance and frequent ailments of the rising
generation, they are likely to be even
less robust than ourselves.
What is the meaning of this ? Is it
that past over-feeding, alike of adults and
children, was less injurious than the
under-feeding to which we have adverted
as now so general? Is it that the
deficient clothing which this delusive
hardening-theory has encouraged, is to
blame ? Is it that the greater or less
discouragement of juvenile sports, in
deference to a false refinement, is the
cause ? From our reasonings it may be
inferred that each of these has probably
had a share in producing the evil.1 But
there has been yet another detrimental
influence at work, perhaps more potent
1 We are not certain that the propagation of
subdued forms of constitutional disease through
the agency of vaccination is not a part-cause.
Sundry facts in pathology suggest the inference,
that when the system of a vaccinated child is
excreting the vaccine virus by means of pustules,
it will tend also to excrete through such pustules
other morbific matters; especially if these
morbific matters are of a kind ordinarily got rid
of by the skin, as are some of the worst of
them. Hence it is very possible—probable even
-—that a child with a constitutional taint, too
slight to show itself in visible disease, may,
through the medium of vitiated vaccine lymph
taken from it, convey a like constitutional taint
to other children, and these to others.
than any of the others : we mean—excess
of mental application.
On old and young, the pressure of
modern life puts a still-increasing strain.
In all businesses and professions, intenser
competition taxes the energies and
abilities of every adult; and to fit the
young to hold their places under this
intenser competition, they are subject to
severer discipline than heretofore. The
damage is thus doubled. Fathers, who
find themselves run hard by their multi
plying competitors, and, while labouring
under this disadvantage, have to maintain
a more expensive style of living, are all
the year round obliged to work early and
late, taking little exercise and getting but
short holidays. The constitutions shaken
by this continued over-application, they
bequeath to their children. And then
these comparatively feeble children, pre
disposed to break down even under
ordinary strains on their energies, are
required to go through a curriculum
much more extended than that prescribed
for the unenfeebled children of past
generations.
The disastrous consequences that
might be anticipated, are everywhere
visible. Go where you will, and before
long there come under your notice cases
of children or youths, of either sex,
more or less injured by undue study.
Here, to recover from a state of debility
thus produced, a year’s rustication has
been found necessary. There you find
a chronic congestion of the brain, that
has already lasted many months, and
threatens to last much longer. Now you
hear of a fever that resulted from the
over-excitement in some way brought on
at school. And again, the instance is
that of a youth who has already had
once to desist from his studies, and who,
since his return to them, is frequently
taken out of his class in a fainting fit.
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
11 î
We state facts—facts not sought for, but | is unobtrusive and slowly accumulating
which have been thrust on our observa —cases where there is frequent derange
ment of the functions, attributed to this
tion during the last two years ; and that,
too, within a very limited range. Nor or that special cause, or to constitutional
have we by any means exhausted the delicacy; cases where there is retarda
tion and premature arrest of bodily
list. Quite recently we had the oppor
tunity of marking how the evil becomes growth ; cases where a latent tendency
hereditary : the case being that of a lady to consumption is brought out and
of robust parentage, whose system was established; cases where a predisposition
so injured by the régime of a Scotch is given to that now common cerebral
boarding-school, where she was under disorder brought on by the labour oi
adult life. How commonly health is
fed and over-worked, that she invariably
suffers from vertigo on rising in the thus undermined, will be clear to all
morning ; and whose children, inheriting who, after noting the frequent ailments
this enfeebled brain, are several of them of hard-worked professional and mercan
unable to bear even a moderate amount tile men, will reflect on the much worse
of study without headache or giddiness. effects which undue application must
produce on the undeveloped systems of
At the present time we have daily under
children. The young can bear neither
our eyes a young lady whose system
so much hardship, nor so much physical
has been damaged for life by the college
exertion, nor so much mental exertion,
course through which she has passed.
as the full grown. Judge then, if the
Taxed as she was to such an extent that
she had no energy left for exercise, she is, full grown manifestly suffer from the
excessive mental exertion required of
now that she has finished her education,
a constant complainant. Appetite small them, how great must be the damage
which a mental exertion, often equally
and very capricious, mostly refusing meat;
extremities perpetually cold, even when excessive, inflicts on the young 1
Indeed, when we examine the merciless
the weather is warm ; a feebleness which
forbids anything but the slowest walking, school drill frequently enforced, the
and that only for a short time ; palpita wonder is, not that it does extreme
injury, but that it can be borne at all.
tion on going upstairs ; greatly impaired
vision—these, joined with checked Take the instance given by Sir John
Forbes, from personal knowledge; and
growth and lax tissue, are among the
which he asserts, after much inquiry, to
results entailed. And to her case we
may add that of her friend and fellow be an average sample of the middle
class girls’-school system throughout
student ; who is similarly weak ; who is
England. Omitting detailed divisions
liable to faint even under the excitement
of time, we quote the summary of the
of a quiet party of friends ; and who has
at length been obliged by her medical twenty-four hours.
hours
attendant to desist from study entirely.
........................................
•••
9
If injuries so conspicuous are thus In bed
(the younger io hours)
frequent, how very general must be the
In school, at their studies and tasks
...
9
smaller and inconspicuous injuries ! To In school, or in the house, the elder at
one case where positive illness is trace
optional studies or work, the younger
able to over-application, there are probably
at play ...
...
...
•••
•••
3$
(the younger 2^ hours)
at least half-a-dozen cases where the evil
�IT2
At meals........................................
Exercise in the open air, in the shape of
a formal walk, often with lesson-books
in hand, and even this only when the
weather is fine at the appointed time ...
EDUCATION
hours
i
24
And what are the results of this
“astounding regimen,” as Sir John
Forbes terms it? Of course, feebleness,
pallor, want of spirits, general ill-health.
But he describes something more. This
utter disregard of physical welfare, out
of extreme anxiety to cultivate the mind
this prolonged exercise of brain and
deficient exercise of limbs,—he found
to be habitually followed, not only by
disordered functions but by malformation.
He says :—“ We lately visited, in a large
town, a boarding-school containing forty
girls; and we learnt, on close and
accurate inquiry, that there was not one
of the girls who had been at the school
two years (and the majority had been
as long) that was not more or less
crooked 1 ”1
It may be that since 1833, when this
was written, some improvement has taken
place. We hope it has. But that the
system is still common—nay, that it is
in some cases carried to a greater extreme
than ever; we can personally testify. We
recently went over a training-college for
young men: one of those instituted of
late years for the purpose of supplying
schools with well-disciplined teachers.
Here, under official supervision, where
something better than the judgment of
private school-mistresses might have
been looked for, we found the daily
routine to be as follows :—
At 6 o’clock the students are called,
,, 7 to 8 studies,
’ Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine, vol. i.,
pp. 697, 698.
At 8 to 9 scripture-reading, prayers, and break
fast,
,, 9 to 12 studies,
” 12 to
leisure, nominally devoted to walk
ing or other exercise, but often spent ia
study,
” Ii to 2 dinner, the meal commonly occupying
twenty-minutes,
j, 2 to 5 studies,
,, 5 to 6 tea and relaxation,
,, 6 to 8J studies,
,, 8J to 9J private studies in preparing lessons
for the next day,
J, 10 to bed.
Thus, out of the twenty-four hours,
eight are devoted to sleep; four and a
quarter are occupied in dressing, prayers,
meals, and the brief periods of rest
accompanying them; ten and a half are
given to study; and one and a quarter
to exercise, which is optional and often
avoided. Not only, however, are the
ten-and-a-half hours of recognised study
frequently increased to eleven-and-a-half
by devoting to books the time set apart
for exercise; but some of the students
get up at four o’clock in the morning to
prepare their lessons; and are actually
encouraged by their teachers to do this !
The course to be passed through in a
given time is so extensive; and the
teachers, whose credit is at stake in
getting their pupils well through the
examinations, are so urgent; that pupils
are not uncommonly induced to spend
twelve and thirteen hours a day in mental
labour 1
It needs no prophet to see that the
bodily injury inflicted must be great.
As we were told by one of the inmates,
those who arrive with fresh complexions
quickly become blanched. Illness is
frequent: there are always some on the
sick-list. Failure of appetite and indiges
tion are very common. Diarrhoea is a
prevalent disorder: not uncommonly a
third of the whole number of students
suffering under it at the same time.
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Headache is generally complained of;
and by some is borne almost daily for
months. While a certain percentage
break down entirely and go away.
That this should be the regimen of
•what is in some sort a model institution,
established and superintended by the
embodied enlightenment of the age, is a
startling fact. That the severe examina
tions, joined with the short period
assigned for preparation, should compel
recourse to a system which inevitably
undermines the health of all who pass
through it, is proof, if not of cruelty,
then of woful ignorance.
The case is no doubt in a great degree
exceptional—perhaps to be paralleled
only in other institutions of the same
class. But that cases so extreme should
exist at all, goes far to show that the
minds of the rising generation are greatly
over-taxed. Expressing as they do the
ideas of the educated community, the
requirements of these training colleges,
even in the absence of other evidence,
would imply a prevailing tendency to an
unduly urgent system of culture.
It seems strange that there should be
so little consciousness of the dangers of
over-education during youth, when there
is so general a consciousness of the
dangers of over-education during child
hood. Most parents are partially aware
of the evil consequences that follow
infant-precocity. In every society may
t>6 heard reprobation of those who too
early stimulate the minds of their little
ones. And the dread of this early
Stimulation is great in proportion as there
h adequate knowledge of the effects;
witness the implied opinion of one of
our most distinguished professors of
physiology, who told us that he did not
intend his little boy to learn any lessons
until he was eight years old. But while
to all it is a familiar truth that a forced
«3
development of intelligence in childhood}
entails either physical feebleness, or ulti
mate stupidity, or early death; it appears
not to be perceived that throughout
youth the same truth holds. Yet it
unquestionably does so. There is a
given order in which, and a given rate
at which, the faculties unfold. If the
course of education conforms itself to
that order and rate, well. If not—if
the higher faculties are early taxed by
presenting an order of knowledge more
complex and abstract than can be readily
assimilated; or if, by excess of culture,
the intellect in general is developed to a
degree beyond that which is natural to
its age; the abnormal advantage gained
will inevitably be accompanied by some
equivalent, or more than equivalent, evil.
For Nature is a strict accountant;
and if you demand of her in one direc
tion more than she is prepared to lay
out, she balances the account by making
a deduction elsewhere. If you will let
her follow her own course, taking care
to supply, in right quantities and kinds,
the raw materials of bodily and mental
growth required at each age, she will
eventually produce an individual more
or less evenly developed. If, however,
you insist on premature or undue growth
of any one part, she will, with more or
less protest, concede the point; but that
she may do your extra work, she must leave
some of her more important work undone.
Let it never be forgotten that the amount
of vital energy which the body at any
moment possesses, is limited; and that,
being limited, it is impossible to get
from it more than a fixed quantity of
results. In a child or youth the demands
upon this vital energy are various and
urgent. As before pointed out, the waste
consequent on the day’s bodily exercise
has to be met; the wear of brain entailed
by the day’s study has to be made good;
�114
EDUCATION
a certain additional growth of body has in mental labour exceeds that which
to be provided for; and also a certain Nature has provided for; the expendi
additional growth of brain: to which ture for other purposes falls below what
must be added the amount of energy it should have been; and evils of one
absorbed in digesting the large quantity kind or other are inevitably entailed.
of food required for meeting these many Let us briefly consider these evils.
Supposing the over-activity of brain to
demands.
Now, that to divert an
excess of energy into any one of these exceed the normal activity only in a
channels is to abstract it from the others, moderate degree, there will be nothing
is both manifest a priori, and proved a more than some slight reaction on the
posteriori, by the experience of every development of the body: the stature
one. Every one knows, for instance, falling a little below that which it would
that the digestion of a heavy meal else have reached; or the bulk being
makes such a demand on the system less than it would have been; or the
as to produce lassitude of mind and body, quality of tissue not being so good. One
frequently ending in sleep. Every one or more of these effects must necessarily
knows, too, that excess of bodily exercise occur. The extra quantity of blood
diminishes the power of thought—that supplied to the brain during mental
the temporary prostration following any exertion, and during the subsequent
sudden exertion, or the fatigue produced period in which the waste of cerebral
by a thirty miles’ walk, is accompanied substance is being made good, is blood
by a disinclination to mental effort; that, that would else have been circulating
after a month’s pedestrian tour, the through the limbs and viscera ; and the
mental inertia is such that some days are growth or repair for which that blood
required to overcome it; and that in would have supplied materials, is lost.
peasants who spend their lives in This physical reaction being certain, the
muscular labour the activity of mind is question is, whether the gain resulting
very small. Again, it is a familiar truth from the extra culture is equivalent to
that during those fits of rapid growth the loss ? — whether defect of bodily
which sometimes occur in childhood, the growth, or the want of that structural
great abstraction of energy is shown in an perfection which gives vigour and endu
attendant prostration, bodily and mental. rance, is compensated by the additional
Once more, the facts that violent muscular knowledge acquired ?
When the excess of mental exertion is
exertion after eating, will stop digestion;
greater, there follow results far more
and that children who are early put to
hard labour become stunted; similarly serious; telling not only against bodily
exhibit the antagonism—similarly imply perfection, but against the perfection of
that excess of activity in one direction the brain itself. It is a physiological
involves deficiency of it in other direc law, first pointed out by M Isidor St.
tions. Now, the law which is thus Hilaire, and to which attention has been
manifest in extreme cases, holds in all drawn by Mr. Lewes in his essay on
cases. These injurious abstractions of “ Dwarfs and Giants,” that there is an
energy as certainly take place when the antagonism between growth and develop
undue demands are slight and constant, ment. By growth, as used in this anti
as when they are great and sudden. thetical sense, is to be understood
Hence, if during youth the expenditure increase of size; by development, increase
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
of structure. And the law is, that great
activity in either of these processes
involves retardation or arrest of the other.
A familiar example is furnished by the
cases of the caterpillar and the chrysalis.
In the caterpillar there is extremely rapid
augmentation of bulk ; but the structure
is scarcely at all more complex when the
caterpillar is full-grown than when it is
small. In the chrysalis the bulk does
not increase; on the contrary, weight is
lost during this stage of the creature’s
life ; but the elaboration of a more com
plex structure goes on with great activity.
The antagonism, here so clear, is less
traceable in higher creatures, because
the two processes are carried on together.
But we see it pretty well illustrated among
ourselves when we contrast the sexes.
A girl developes in body and mind
rapidly, and ceases to grow compara
tively early. A boy’s bodily and mental
development is slower, and his growth
greater. At the age when the one is
mature, finished, and having all faculties
in full play, the other, whose vital energies
have been more directed towards increase
of size, is relatively incomplete in struc
ture ; and shows it in a comparative
awkwardness, bodily and mental. Now
this law is true of each separate part of
the organism, as well as of the whole.
The abnormally rapid advance of any
organ in respect of structure, involves
premature arrest of its growth; and this
happens with the organ of the mind as
certainly as with any other organ. The
brain, which during early years is rela
tively large in mass but imperfect in
structure, will, if required to perform its
functions with undue activity, undergo
a structural advance greater than is
appropriate to its age; but the ultimate
effect will be a falling short of the size
and power that would else have been
attained. And this is a part-cause—
115
probably the chief cause—why precocious
children, and youths who up to a certain
time were carrying all before them, so
often stop short and disappoint the high
hopes of their parents.
But these results of over-education,
disastrous as they are, are perhaps less
disastrous than the effects produced on
the health—the undermined constitu
tion, the enfeebled energies, the morbid
feelings. Recent discoveries in physiology
have shown how immense is the influence
of the brain over the functions of the
body. Digestion, circulation, and through
these all the organic processes, are
profoundly affected by cerebral excite
ment. Whoever has seen repeated, as
we have, the experiment first performed
by Weber, showing the consequence of
irritating the vagus nerve, which connects
the brain with the viscera—whoever has
seen the action of the heart suddenly
arrested by irritating this nerve; slowly
recommencing when the irritation is
suspended; and again arrested the
moment it is renewed; will have a vivid
conception of the depressing influence
which an overwrought brain exercises
on the body. The effects thus physio
logically explained, are indeed exemplified
in ordinary experience. There is no one
but has felt the palpitation accompanying
hope, fear, anger, joy—no one but has
observed how laboured becomes the
action of the heart when these feelings
are violent. And though there are many
who have never suffered that extreme
emotional excitement which is followed
by arrest of the heart’s action and fainting;
yet every one knows these to be cause
and effect. It is a familiar fact, too,
that disturbance of the stomach results
from mental excitement exceeding a
certain intensity. Loss of appetite is a
common consequence alike of very
pleasurable and very painful states of
�EDUCATION
mind. When the event producing a
pleasurable or painful state of mind
occurs shortly after a meal, it not unfrequently happens either that the stomach
rejects what has been eaten, or digests
it with great difficulty and under protest.
And as every one who taxes his brain
much can testify, even purely intellectual
action will, when excessive, produce
analogous effects. Now the relation
between brain and body which is so
manifest in these extreme cases, holds
equally in ordinary, less-marked cases.
Just as these violent but temporary
cerebral excitements produce violent but
temporary disturbances of the viscera;
so do the less violent but chronic cerebral
excitements produce less violent but
chronic visceral disturbances. This is
not simply an inference:—it is a truth
to which every medical man can bear
witness; .and it is one to which a long
and sad experience enables us to give
personal testimony. Various degrees and
forms of bodily derangement, often taking
years of enforced idleness to set partially
right, result from this prolonged over
exertion of mind. Sometimes the heart
is chiefly affected : habitual palpitations;
a pulse much enfeebled; and very
generally a diminution in the number of
beats from seventy-two to sixty, or
even fewer. Sometimes the conspicuous
disorder is of the stomach: a dyspepsia
which makes life a burden, and is
amenable to no remedy but time. In
many cases both heart and stomach are
implicated. Mostly the sleep is short
and broken. And very generally there
is more or less mental depression.
Consider, then, how great must be the
damage inflicted by undue mental excite
ment on children and youths. More or
less of this constitutional disturbance will
inevitably follow an exertion of brain
beyond the normal amount; and when not
so excessive as to produce absolute illness,
is sure to entail a slowly accumulating
degeneracy of physique. With a small
and fastidious appetite, an imperfect
digestion, and an enfeebled circulation,
how can the developing body flourish?
The due performance of every vital
process depends on an adequate supply
of good blood. Without enough good
blood, no gland can secrete properly, no
viscus can fully discharge its office.
Without enough good blood, no nerve,
muscle, membrane, or other tissue can
be efficiently repaired. Without enough
good blood, growth will be neither sound
nor ■ sufficient. Judge, then, how bad
must be the consequences when to a
growing body the weakened stomach
supplies blood that is deficient in quantity
and poor in quality; while the debilitated
heart propels this poor and scanty blood
with unnatural slowness.
And if, as all who investigate the
matter must admit, physical degeneracy
is a consequence of excessive study, how
grave is the condemnation to be passed
on this cramming-system above exempli
fied. It is a terrible mistake, from
whatever point of view regarded. It is
a mistake in so far as the mere acquire
ment of knowledge is concerned. For
the mind, like the body, cannot assimilate
beyond a certain rate; and if you ply it
with facts faster than it can assimilate
them, they are soon rejected again:
instead of being built into the intellectual
fabric, they fall out of recollection after
the passing of the examination for which
they were got up. It is a mistake, too,
because it tends to make study distasteful.
Either through the painful associations
produced by ceaseless mental toil, or
through the abnormal state of brain it
leaves behind, it often generates an
aversion to books; and, instead of
that subsequent self-culture induced by
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
rational education, there comes continued
retrogression. It is a mistake, also,
inasmuch as it assumes that the acquisi
tion of knowledge is everything; and
forgets that a much more important
thing is the organisation of knowledge,
for which time and spontaneous thinking
are requisite. As Humboldt remarks
respecting the progress of intelligence in
general, that “ the interpretation of
Nature is obscured when the description
languishes under too great an accumula
tion of insulated facts ”; so, it may be
remarked respecting the progress of indi
vidual intelligence, that the mind is over
burdened and hampered by an excess of
ill-digested information. It is not the
knowledge stored up as intellectual fat
which is of value; but that which is
turned into intellectual muscle. The
mistake goes still deeper however. Even
were the system good as producing
intellectual efficiency, which it is not; it
would still be bad, because, as we have
shown, it is fatal to that vigour of physique
needful to make intellectual training
available in the struggle of life. Those
who, in eagerness to cultivate their pupils’
minds, are reckless of their bodies, do
not remember that success in the world
depends more on energy than on infor
mation ; and that a policy which in
cramming with information undermines
energy, is self-defeating. The strong will
and untiring activity due to abundant
animal vigour, go far to compensate even
great defects of education; and when
joined with that quite adequate education
which may be obtained without sacrificing
health, they ensure an easy victory over
competitors enfeebled by excessive study :
prodigies of learning though they may be.
A comparatively small and ill-made
engine, worked at high pressure, will do
more than a large and well-finished one
worked at low pressure. What folly is
117
it, then, while finishing the engine, so to
damage the boiler that it will not generate
steam ! Once more, the system is a
mistake, as involving a false estimate of
welfare in life. Even supposing it were
a means to worldly success, instead of a
means to worldly failure, yet, in the
entailed ill-health, it would inflict a more
than equivalent curse. What boots it to
have attained wealth, if the wealth is
accompanied by ceaseless ailments ?
What is the worth of distinction, if it has
brought hypochondria with it ? Surely
no one needs telling that a good digestion,
a bounding pulse, and high spirits, are
elements of happiness which no external
advantages can out-balance. Chronic
bodily disorder casts a gloom over the
brightest prospects ; while the vivacity of
strong health gilds even misfortune. We
contend, then, that this over-education is
vicious in every way—vicious, as giving
knowledge that will soon be forgotten ;
vicious, as producing a disgust for
knowledge; vicious, as neglecting that
organisation of knowledge which is more
important than its acquisition; vicious,
as weakening or destroying that energy
without which a trained intellect is
useless; vicious, as entailing that illhealth for which even success would not
compensate, and which makes failure
doubly bitter.
On women the effects of this forcing
system are, if possible, even more injurious
than on men. Being in great measure
debarred from those vigorous and en
joyable exercises of body by which boys
mitigate the evils of excessive study,
girls feel these evils in their full intensity.
Hence, the much smaller proportion of
them who grow up well-made and healthy.
In the pale, angular, flat-chested young
ladies, so abundant in London drawing
rooms, we see the effect of merciless
application, unrelieved by youthful sports ;
�EDUCATION
and this physical degeneracy hinders
their welfare far more than their many
accomplishments aid it. Mammas anxious
to make their daughters attractive, could
scarcely choose a course more fatal than
this, which sacrifices the body to the
mind. Either they disregard the tastes
of the opposite sex, or else their concep
tion of those tastes is erroneous. Men
care little for erudition in women; but
very much for physical beauty, good
nature, and sound sense. How many
conquests does the blue-stocking * ake
m
through her extensive knowledge of
history ? What man ever fell in love
with a woman because she understood
Italian ? Where is the Edwin who was
brought to Angelina’s feet by her German?
But rosy cheeks and laughing eyes are
great attractions. A finely-rounded figure
draws admiring glances. The liveliness
and good humour that overflowing health
produces, go a great way towards estab
lishing attachments. Every one knows
cases where bodily perfections, in the
absence of all other recommendations,
have incited a passion that carried all
before it; but scarcely any one can point
to a case where intellectual acquirements,
apart from moral or physical attributes,
have aroused such a feeling. The truth
is, that out of the many elements uniting
in various proportions to produce in a
man’s breast the complex emotion we
call love, the strongest are those produced
by physical attractions; the next in order
of strength are those produced by moral
attractions; the weakest are those pro
duced by intellectual attractions; and
even these are dependent less on acquired
knowledge than on natural faculty —
quickness, wit, insight. If any think the
assertion a derogatory one, and inveigh
against the masculine character for being
thus swayed; we reply that they little
know what they say when they thus call
in question the Divine ordinations. Even
were there no obvious meaning in the
arrangement, we might be sure that some
important end was subserved. But the
meaning is quite obvious to those who
examine. When we remember that one
of Nature’s ends, or rather her supreme
end, is the welfare of posterity; further
that, in so far as posterity are concerned,
a cultivated intelligence based on a bad
physique is of little worth, since its descen
dants will die out in a generation or two ;
and conversely that a good physique,
however poor the accompanying mental
endowments, is worth preserving, because,
throughout future generations, the mental
endowments may be indefinitely de
veloped ; we perceive how important is
the balance of instincts above described.
But, advantage apart, the instincts being
thus balanced, it is folly to persist in a
system which undermines a girl’s constitu
tion that it may overload her memory.
Educate as highly as possible—the higher
the better—provided no bodily injury is
entailed (and we may remark, in passing,
that a sufficiently high standard might be
reached were the parrot-faculty cultivated
less, and the human faculty more, and
were the discipline extended over that
now wasted period between leaving school
and being married). But to educate in
such manner, or to such extent, as to
produce physical degeneracy, is to defeat
the chief end for which the toil and cost
and anxiety are submitted to. By sub
jecting their daughters to this highpressure system, parents frequently ruin
their prospects in life. Besides inflicting
on them enfeebled health, with all its
pains and disabilities and gloom ; they
not unfrequently doom them to celibacy.
The physical education of children is
thus, in various ways, seriously faulty.
It errs in deficient feeding ; in deficient
�PHYSICAL EDUCATION
clothing ; in deficient exercise (among
girls at least); and in excessive mental
application. Considering the régime as
a whole, its tendency is too exacting : it
asks too much and gives too little. In
the extent to which it taxes the vital
energies, it makes the juvenile life far
more like the adult life than it should be.
It overlooks the truth that, as in the
foetus the entire vitality is expended in
growth—as in the infant, the expenditure
of vitality in growth is so great as to leave
extremely little for either physical or
mental action ; so throughout childhood
and youth, growth is the dominant
requirement to which all others must
be subordinated : a requirement which
dictates the giving of much and the taking
away of little — a requirement which,
therefore, restricts the exertion of body
and mind in proportion to the rapidity
of growth—a requirement which permits
the mental and physical activities to
increase only as fast as the rate of growth
diminishes.
The rationale of this high-pressure
education is that it results from our
passing phase of civilisation. In primitive
times, when aggression and defence were
the leading social activities, bodily vigour
with its accompanying courage were the
desiderata ; and then education was
almost wholly physical: mental cultivation
was little cared for, and indeed, as in
feudal ages, was often treated with con
tempt. But now that our state is relatively
peaceful—now that muscular power is of
use for little else than manual labour,
while social success of nearly every kind
119
depends very much on mental power;
our education has become almost exclu
sively mental. Instead of respecting the
body and ignoring the mind, we now
respect the mind and ignore the body.
Both these attitudes are wrong. We do
not yet realise the truth that as, in this
life of ours, the physical underlies the
mental, the mental must not be developed
at the expense of the physical. The
ancient and modem conceptions must
be combined.
Perhaps nothing will so much hasten
the time when body and mind will both
be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of
the belief that the preservation of health
is a duty. Few seem conscious that
there is such a thing as physical morality.
Men’s habitual words and acts imply the
idea that they are at liberty to treat their
bodies as they please. Disorders entailed
by disobedience to Nature’s dictates, they
regard simply as grievances : not as the
effects of a conduct more or less flagitious.
Though the evil consequences inflicted
on their dependents, and on future
generations, are often as great as those
caused by crime; yet they do not think
themselves in any degree criminal. It
is true that, in the case of drunkenness,
the viciousness of a bodily transgression
is recognised : but none appear to infer
that, if this bodily transgression is vicious,
so too is every bodily transgression.
The fact is, that all breaches of the laws
of health are physical sins. When this is
generally seen, then, and perhaps not till
then, will the physical training of the
young receive the attention it deserves.
THE END.
�INDEX
[For this Index the author is indebted to F. H. Collins, Esq., of Edgbaston,
Birmingham, who very kindly volunteered to prepare it for him.]
A.
Abstract-Sciences and their industrial appli
cations, 19 ; those of the abstract-concrete, 19
“ Accomplishments, the,” in a lady’s education,
10
Accountant, the facility acquired by one, 36 ;
Nature, a strict, 113-115
Activities, classification of the, 13
Æsthetic culture, the value of, 30-31
Agriculture, aided by Chemistry, 20, and by
Biology, 21
Amusements and Relaxations, the knowledge
aiding the, 30-35 .
Anatomy and Botany as cultivating the memory,
36
Ancestors, their vigour compared with our own,
no
“ Animal, a good,” the necessity to be, 43, 94
Animals, their rearing studied more than that
of children, 93 ; their vital processes allied to
man’s, 94 ; their energies dependent upon
their kinds of food, 100
Apperley, Mr., on hunters, 101-105
Applause, the general desire for, 11
Arithmetical Truths should be taught in the
concrete, 45
Asceticism and its Relation to Educational
Systems, 41
Astronomy, its industrial application, 21
Aveyron, the Wild Boy of, 48
B.
Bacon—“ The relative values ofknowledges,” 12
Battles, history is largely composed of their
descriptions, 27-28
Beauty, physical, in women is more attractive
than erudition, 18
Beliefs, the growing diversity in, 42
Bernard, M. Claude, on the functions of the
liver, 96
Biology, its application to agriculture, 21
Bodily Exercise, as needful for girls as boys,
106-109 ! in excess, diminishes thought, 114
Body, the cost of mental achievement to the,
114-117.
Books, their educational value over-rated, 25
Botany, its interest to Children, 58
Bread and Butter ; its too great frequency, 96, 103
Brain reacts upon the body, the, 114-117
Breakfast Roll, its history, 19
Burns, the lesson taught by, 84-90
Butterflies, their collection and keeping cultivate
the powers of observation, 59
C.
Candle, the penalty for playing with a lighted,
84
Cardboard, figures cut in, 64
Carelessness ; its natural penalty, 78-80
Caterpillar as an example of growth, 115
Centre of gravity in Sculpture, 32
Chemistry; its industrial value, 20
Children, prevalent ignorance concerning the
rearing of, 23-27 ; is harshness to children a
preparation for their after-life ? 73 ; moral
precocity equally detrimental with intellectual,
88; their love of fruits and sweets justified,
95-97
Chrysalis, as an example of Development, 115
Citizen, the knowledge which aids the functions
of the, 27-30
Civilisation ; its order, and that of education
should be similar, 52, 53
Classics, Public Opinion the motive for teaching
them, 9 ; and Mathematics form an insignifi
cant part of a proper Curriculum, 11-12
Clothing is a development of decoration, 9-11 ;
the natural penalty for its reckless treatment,
80; should suffice to prevent an abiding
sensation of cold, 103-106
Coal-mining, its Failure, from lack of geological
knowledge, 22
Cold, its ill-effects on the development of
children, 24, 103-106
Colours ; children’s delight in painting, 60
Combe, Dr. Andrew, on the advantages of Fruit
in Diet, 96, 97; on the importance of sufficient
Clothing, 105
Commands, Parents should give few, 89 ; but
when given they should be decisive and con
sistent, 89
Comte, M.—The Education of the Child should
accord with th it of mankind, considered
historically, 52
�INDEX
Concrete Sciences, and their industrial applica
tions, the, 19
Conduct, the right ruling of, in all divisions, the
aim of education, 13 ; of Society, Parents, and
Children relatively considered, 71-74 ; the
definitions of good and bad, 74
“Could a Man be Secure,” 12
Cramming Systems, their mischievous results,
HÔ-118
Culture, the desirableness of general, 15 ; the
present value of the Æsthetic, and its probable
future increase, 30-32
D.
HANTS, a knowledge of, a small consolation in
trouble, 27
Decision should be used by Parents in commands, 89
Decoration in Primitive Societies precedes dress,
9-11
Degenerating, are we ? no
Despotism in the State induces Despotism in
Education, 41
Development ; its long duration in Children, 48;
of the mind, 50-55 > an increase of structure
retards increase of size, 115
Discobolus, illustrates ignorance of the law of
momentum, the, 32
Diet. {See Food.)
Digestion, chemical changes in, 96 ; the organs
of, smaller in civilised than in savage races,
103, productive of lassitudes 114
Discipline ; Science superior to language for
cultivating the judgment and for moral dis.dpline, 35-39 ; of nature not wholly sufficient
for education, 47 ; of unavoidable consequences
or the penalties of Nature, 74-87 ; failure of
artificial criminal codes, 76 ; English school
discipline less severe than the French, 87 ;
the aim of, should be to produce a selfgoverning being, 90
Disease, the permanent damage done by, 17
■Drawing, when and how to teach, 60-63 >
apparatus for teaching perspective, 62
Dress. {See Clothing. )
Drinking without Thirst, its evils, 17, 103
Drunkenness, accompanied by physical de
generacy, 74, 119
E.
Eating without hunger, its evils, 17, 103
Education at the present time a matter of custom
and prejudice, 11. The ideal, a training in
each subject proportionate to its value, 15.
The omissions and vices of our present system,
31 ; and its relation to the contemporary social
. state, 40-43, 72-74- The past and present
systems compared, 43-48. It should conform
with the evolution of the faculties, 47-48.
Should be a repetition in little of civilisation,
53, 66 : and should commence in infancy with
object lessons, 55
Electricity and its industrial applications, 20
Emotions, the prevailing ignorance of their
nature» 24
121
Empirical should precede the rational in educa
tion, 53
Employers and employed ; their relations should
be noted in history, 29
Energy in well-fed races is greater than that in
ill-fed, 99-101
English and German Boys ; their relative charac
ters, 91
English and Foreign Labourers compared, 101
Error, suppression of one, followed by the
ascendency of another, 43
Euclid, an attractive study when addressed to
the understanding, 65
Evolution of the faculties should be the basis of
education, the, 47-48. The laws of mental
evolution, 50-55
Examinations cause the acquirement ot un
organised knowledge, which is soon forgotten,
26
Exercise, bodily, as needful for girls as boys,
106-109 > in excess diminishes thought, 114
Eye, an instance of faculty developed through
function, 36
,F.
Faculties are developed by the performance of
their functions, 36
Family, prevalent ignorance concerning the
rearing of a, 23-27 ; and its management, 69
Family _ Government, Richter on the present
chaotic state in, 70
Faraday, Professor, on the deficiency of judg
ment in society, 37
&
Fatigue of body or brain should be followed by
desistance, 17
Features of young children resemble those of a
savage, 87
Feelings react upon the reflective powers, the,
34
Fellenberg—Indolence is not natural to children,
54 J the importance of individual activity in
children, 67
Food, to be beneficial should be varied, 21,
103 ; sufficient in quantity--appetite being a
natural guide, 95-97 ; and for children highly
nutritious, 97-103 ; the easy digestibility of a
French dinner, 102 ; food as well as clothing
is necessary for maintaining the heat of the
body, 104-106.
Forbes, Sir John, on the present division of time
in girls’ schools, III
Fruit, children’s love for, also its digestibility, 96
Friendship, between parents and children, should
be cultivated, 83-87
G.
Games of children develop the system and pre
pare it for after life, 16
Genius as well as science necessary to attain the
highest results, 34
Geography, in teaching, physical, should precede
political, 26
Geology : its industrial applications, 21 ; a
knowledge of increases the poetry of nature,
34
Geometry: its industrial uses, 19 ; its lessons
�INDEX
122
should commence empirically with models,
and afterwards proceed to the rational with
Euclid, 63-66 ; Inventional Geometry, 66;
Professor Tyndall, on rendering it attractive,
65
Grammar coming after language historically,
should be taught after it, 44
Growth is affected by the food consumed, 97100; and by the temperature experienced,
104; an increase of size retards increase of
structure, 115
H.
Happiness, regarded as a legitimate aim, 41 ;
favourable to physical and mental action, 54,
66-68, 109
Hardening Theory, its ill effects on children’s
health, 104
Health, its importance for all activities, 17-18,
109, 117 ; some causes and effects of ill-health,
17, 104, no; affected by over-study, 110-118;
its preservation a duty, 119
Heart, influences affecting its action, 115
Heat, its science and industrial applications, 20
Heredity and the transmission of defects, 52, 72;
likewise of those caused by over-study, 111
History, considered part of a good education,
10 ; its worthlessness as now taught, 15, 27 ;
as it should be taught, 28-30
Huxley, Professor, on true science and religion,
38
I.
Ignorance, the various effects produced by
parental, 23
Impulsiveness should be avoided by parents,
89
Indefinite in education should precede the defi
nite, the, 51
Indolence in children is unnatural—Fellenberg,
54
■
•
, ■
Insects, their collection and keeping cultivate
the powers of observation, 58
Instincts of an infant, self-preservative, 16. They
show that progression should be from the
simple to the complex, 56
Interest, the advantages of doing work with, 67
Inventional Geometry, 66
K.
Kingsley, Mr., his writings against over
culture, 94
Knowledge, the importance of knowing its rela
tive value, 12; and Discipline form the two
values of an acquirement, 16; Rational
superior to Empirical, 22 ; it should be orga
nised, and not merely acquired, 116
L.
Labourers, English and Foreign compared, 101
Language inferior to Science for cultivating the
judgment and the memory, 36
Learning by rote inferior to Self-instruction, 26 ;
and now falling into disuse, 43
Lehman, on the quantity of Carbonic Acid
excreted by Children and Adults, 105
Leisure, the occupations of, 12, 30
Liebig—Clothing is an equivalent for a certain
amount of food, 104
Life, its present, falls below its possible dura
tion, 17 ; the Tables of Mortality show its in
creased length, 109
Light, the science of, and its industrial applica
tions, 20
Livelihood, gaining a (indirect self-preservation),
the knowledge which best aids, 19-23
Locke, John, on the futility of very severe
punishment, 87
M.
Machinery, its all-prevailing use, 19
Mann, Horace—“ Education consists too much
at present in telling, and not training” 67
Marcel, M.—“ Grammar is not a stepping-stone,
but the finishing instrument,” 44 ; Weights and
Measures should be taught by the use of
models, 45 ; the Child should be shown the
relation of the parts of an object, 56 ; for the
Mind, it is better to discover than be told, 67
Mathematics indispensable for the arts of con
struction, 19; and Classics form an insignificant
part of a proper curriculum, 11-12
Maxims, of Art are related to psychologic prin
ciples, 34; and Rules for parental guidance,
87-92
Memory and Judgment cultivated by science,
the, 36-37
Mirabeau and the word “ impossible,” 65
Modern life, its increasing strain necessitates a
sound constitution, 94, no
Moderation to be used and moderate results
expected, 88
Montaigne—Sqavoir par cceurn'estpas st;avoir, 43
Mortality, and the effects of cold on infants
abroad, 105; Tables of, show an increased
length of life, 109
Multiplication Table should be taught experi
mentally, 43
Music based on science, 33
N.
Natural History trains the powers of observa
tion in children, and should be encouraged,
58, 82
. .
r
Navigation an industrial application of astro
nomy, 21
Neatness inculcated by the natural penalties for
untidiness, 77-78
Nerve, the effects on the heart of irritating the
vagus, 115
Newton, an example of patience, 65
Nursery, one of the evils of over legislation in
the, 95
O.
Object Lessons, their importance in commenc
ing education, 45, 56-66
Observation, important tocultivate the powers of,
44
�INDEX
Opinions, the various revolutions affecting, 4043
Ornament in dress predominates over use
among savages, 9-11
Over-study, some instances of, and injuries
brought on by, 110-118
P.
Painting, based on science, 32 ; children’s
delight in should be made an incentive to
drawing, 60
Palmerston’s, Lord, “All Children are born
Good,” 71
Paper, children’s powers of manipulation increase
by cutting objects in, 64
Parents, their duties precede those of the citizen,
14; the knowledge which aids them in rearing
children, 23-27 ; their conduct and children’s
relatively considered, 71-74, 76, 80-82 ; their
conduct, and not children’s perversity, a fre
quent cause of disorder, 71; mostly considered
as “friend-enemies,” 83; maxims and rules
for their guidance, 87-92
Particulars in education should precede the
generalisation, 44, 52
Penalties, the natural, considered for the lighter
offences, 74-82 J and for the more serious,
82-87
Perspective, when and how to teach it, 62 ; its
practicability, 67
Pestalozzi—Education should conform to mental
evolution, 46; his practice did not conform to
the principles of his system, 48-50 ; education
should begin in infancy, 55
Physiology, ignorance of its principles is pro
ductive of ill-health, 17-18 ; a knowledge of
it is necessary for bringing up children, 26
Picture, its true theory is that of objects projected
on a plane, 63
Pillans, Professor — Children when properly
taught as happy as wh- n at play, 68
Poetry, scientific principles necessary to true, 33;
science is itself poetic, 34
Precocity, intellectual should be discouraged, 43 ;
likewise moral precocity, 88; its ultimate
effect is a falling short in size and power, 114
Promptings of nature should be obeyed, 17
Psychology, its guidance needed by parents and
teachers, 25, 26, 49 ; its principles underlie
the maxims of art, 34
Public Schools and their Teaching, 23 ; their
discipline, 73, 87
Punctuality, to be instilled by the use of its
natural penalty, 79
R.
Railway making regulated by Geometry, 19;
children’s restlessness in travelling by, 72
Relaxations and Amusements, the knowledge
which aids the, 30-35
Religion and Science, Professor Huxley on,
.38-9
Richter, his description of the chaotic state of
moral education, 70; Pas trop gouverner, 89
123
S.
Sçavoir par cœur n‘est pas sçavoir—Montaigne,
43
Schools, the Public and their teaching, 23 ; their
discipline, 73, 87 ; English and Foreign com
pared, 91 ; the division of time in various,
111-112
Sculpture based on the principles of science, 32.
Science, its truths are of intrinsic value, 15 ; of
society and its industrial uses, 21 ; underlies
art> 3r—35 î is poetic, 34; cultivates the
memory and the judgment, 36-37 ; and fosters
religion, 38-39 ; the universal need for, 39 ;
the Cinderella of knowledge, 40 ; evolves
from its corresponding art, 53
Self-control, needful to parents, 89
Self-governed, the aim of education is to produce
a being, 90
Self-instruction to be encouraged, 53, 66 ; its
lasting advantages, 67-9
Self-preservation is primarily important, 13 ; the
knowledge which aids Direct, 16-18 ; and
Indirect, or gaining a livelihood, 18-23
Self-renunciation necessary to scientific men,
Professor Tyndall on the, 38
Self-will in Children not to be regretted, 91
Simple in Education should precede the com
plex, the, 50
Social Observances should be noted in History,
28 ; Social Phenomena are the phenomena of
life, 30
Society, its goodness is dependent on the nature
of its citizens, 14, 30; “Is ignorant of its own
ignorance”—Professor Faraday, 37
Species, their number in Botany and in Zoology,
36 . .
Sugar, its importance as Food, 96
Sympathy, children’s desire for, 55-58 ; the
regret for offending varies with the amount of,
86
T.
Theft, why catalogued as a sin, 74 ; its natural
penalty, 86
Time, Systematised Education will increase the
amount of Leisure, 30 ; its division at various
schools, Hi-112
Tyndall, Professor, on Inductive Inquiry, 38 ;
on teaching Geometry attractively, 65
V.
Vaccination, a possible cause of degeneration,
110
Vegetarianism entails diminished energy, 99-102
W.
Whipping Juvenile Criminals not preventive of
crime, 87
Wyse, Mr., On the rational method of teaching
geometry, 63
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Victorian Blogging
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Education : intellectual, moral, and physical
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Spencer, Herbert [1820-1903]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 126, [2] p. ; 22 cm.
Series title: R.P.A. Cheap Reprints
Series number: No. 6
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Index compiled by F.H. Collins of Edgbaston [and it's very good - cataloguer's note]. Bust of Spencer on front cover. Publisher's advertisements on last two numbered pages and unnumbered pages at the end. Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited. First published London: Williams & Norgate, 1861. The cheap edition of the work first published 1878. Stamp on title page "2d given. If this book is returned to W.A. Foyle, 65 Grand Parade, Harringay". Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Education
Moral Education
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
A Hundred Years
of Education
Controversy
JOSEPH
McCABE
AUTHOR OF “THE TRUTH ABOUT SECULAR EDUCATION,*’
ETC., ETC.
London:
WATTS & CO.,
17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1907
�ZTbe Secular Education ^League,
19, BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
Hon. Treasurer: H. S. Leon, Esq., J.P.. Bletchley Park, Bucks.
Secretary: H. Snell.
Bankers: London Joint Stock Bank, Limited.
The Secular Education League has been formed in order to bring
before the country and His Majesty’s Government what is regarded
by a rapidly-increasing number of people as the only permanent,
just, and satisfactory solution of the religious difficulty in national
education—viz., that all State-paid education should be confined to
secular subjects. It aims at binding together in one effective
organisation all who favour the “Secular Solution” of the Educa
tion problem, without reference to any other convictions—political,
social, or religious—that they may entertain.
In view of the Education Bill which is announced for next year,
the Executive Committee and General Council of the League
earnestly invite all who are persuaded of the justice and advisability
of Secular Education to enrol themselves upon its list of members.
The minimum subscription is One Shilling per annum, and it is
important that the League should have the support of all who
adhere to its principles.
The League has already nearly 1,000 members, including, in
addition to many Members of Parliament and well-known public
men, about 250 clergy and ministers of all denominations ; and it
appeals for help to enable it to carry on its work.
PUBLICATIONS DEALING WITH SECULAR EDUCATION.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SECULAR EDUCATION : its History
and Results. By Joseph McCabe. 6d., by post yd.
«
THE BIBLE IN SCHOOL: A Question of Ethics. With special
reference to the coming Education Bill. By J. Allanson Picton,
M.A. 6d., by post 8d.
NATIONAL EDUCATION AND THE SECULAR SOLUTION.
By A. M. Scott, id., by post i|d.
SECULAR SCHOOLS.
post 2^d.
By the Rev. S. D. Headlam.
THE CASE FOR SECULAR EDUCATION.
id., by post i|d.
THE INEVITABLE IN EDUCATION.
by post i|d.
2d., by
By H. Snell.
By R. Roberts,
Any of the above publications will be supplied by
Messrs. Watts & Co.
id.,
�2.
KI
A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION
CONTROVERSY
The lamentable conflict in regard to religious teaching in
our elementary schools is conceived by many to be an acute
crisis that wise and just statesmanship may presently
remove. Painful as it is to all citizens that the important
work of our schools should, even for a decade, be hampered
so grievously, there is a wide hope that some Minister of
Education will yet adjust the balance between the claims of
the religious bodies, or that their leaders will come to a
prudent compromise. Hence, though there is a growing
inclination to favour the secular solution, large numbers of
people still refuse to look on it as inevitable. Their memory
ranges back, at the most, as far as 1870, and they feel that the
time has not yet come to despair of finding a satisfactory
adjustment of religious claims.
History is the memory of nations. Citizens and states
men are as strictly bound to scan its records in the ordering
of great national issues as they are to consult their personal
experience in the conduct of private affairs. And the
moment one turns to the history of this education controversy
one feels that the hope of finding any stable compromise
sinks perilously close to zero. For one hundred years
the same controversy has raged in England. For one
hundred years the representatives of Anglicanism and
Nonconformity have sought in vain for a satisfactory
adjustment of their claims. For one hundred years educa
tionists and statesmen have been harassed and impeded in
their work by this interminable dispute about religious
education in the schools ; and we are to-day not one inch
nearer to a settlement of it than our grandfathers were in 1807.
This, surely, is a circumstance to be taken into serious
account in the actual controversy about the schools.
3
�4
A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY
Just one hundred years ago, in the year 1807, Mr.
Whitbread, member for Bedford, introduced an educational
measure into the House of Commons. Social writers like
Adam Smith (1776) had long urged that it was the
Government’s duty, and would be to the nation’s advantage,
to set up a national school-system. A prominent clergyman
(Malthus, in 1798) described the condition of things in this
country as “a national disgrace.” Another, Sydney Smithy
at the beginning of the century, declared that “ there was no
Protestant country in the world where the education of the
poor was so grossly and so infamously neglected as in
England.” Three centuries after the Reformation and the
invention of printing only one in twenty of the population
could read and write. There were, of course, schools in the
country. Thousands of grammar schools, poor schools,
dames’ schools, and Sunday schools were in existence; but
their work was ridiculously meagre and ineffective. Mr.
Whitbread’s Bill proposed, therefore, that local authorities
should have power to set up and maintain schools wherever
they were needed.
Into the details of the Bill we need not inquire, as it never
became law. It passed the Commons, but was rejected
contemptuously by the Lords. The Lord Chancellor (Eldon)
and the Archbishop of Canterbury denounced it as a peril to
their respective orders. It was, in fact, openly acknowledged
that the Bill was allowed to pass the Commons only on the
understanding that it would be demolished in the Lords.
It is important to realise that, though there were at that
time other formidable impediments to the education of the
people, the chances of the Bill were imperilled by just the
same controversy that we wage to-day. There was an
aristocratic objection to the education of the workers-—Sir S.
Romilly wrote in his diary that most of the Commoners even
“ thought it expedient that the people should be kept in
ignorance ”—but the chief difficulty was religious. It was
regarded as the thin end of the wedge of secular action, and
was mainly opposed on that account. The Archbishop of
Canterbury denounced it roundly as derogatory to the
authority of the Church.
The truth was that—many will learn with astonishment—
�A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY 5
the same three parties held the educational field in 1807 that
we find waging their endless war in it to-day. The most
powerful party, the Churchmen, claimed full denominational
teaching in the schools; the Nonconformists and many
neutral politicians thought—precisely as their grandchildren
think—that simple Bible lessons were the ideal ; and the
followers of Adam Smith (men like Robert Owen, a great
educationist) pleaded for purely secular instruction. It was
a golden age of educational reformers, though England was
in so backward a condition. Rousseau, Froebel, Pestalozzi,
and Herbart had stirred Europe with their ideas. In
Manchester a little group of social students, including
Coleridge and the great chemist Dalton, discussed them.
One of the group was the Quaker Joseph Lancaster, a man of
deep religious and philanthropic feeling. He founded a
system of elementary schools for the poor (known after 1814
as “The British and Foreign School Society”), and when,
says Mr. Holman, the wealthy found that “ children could be
taught next to nothing for next to nothing,” he secured
considerable support. Another of the Manchester group,
Robert Owen, set up in Scotland a large school on purely
secular principles, and it soon became one of the wonders of
Europe. Foreign Governments sent officials to study it.
The father of Queen Victoria was one of its greatest admirers.
Thus undenominationalists and secular educationists were
both in the field by 1804 ; and the third party quickly made
its appearance. A Mrs. Trimmer discovered—as so many
Mrs. Trimmers do in our day—that the Lancastrian schools
were heretical, and she induced an Anglican clergyman,
Dr. Bell, to take the field with a scheme of denominational
schools in 1805. Churchmen gathered at once under the
new banner, while the Nonconformists rallied round
Lancaster ; and the country, just one hundred years ago, was
ringing with what flippant writers called “ the conflict of Bel(l)
and the Dragon,” or what the historian must call the first
act in the drama (or tragedy) of our educational controversy.
Two generations have passed away, but the same battle rages
round our schools, the same war-cries resound, the same
plausible suggestions are thrust on us, and there is the same
utter lack of any means of compromise ; except that now we
�6
A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY
have the plain experience of a hundred years to teach us how
impossible all idea of compromise is.
The succeeding acts in the drama are in substance but a
repetition of the first. The scene changes marvellously as
the last traces of feudalism are swept away : the actors pass
behind the wings, and new ones come on. But the issue
remains the same, and the obstacles remain. The limits of
this essay would not suffice to set out the whole story in
detail, and I must be content to dwell on a few of the chief
stages of it. The struggle between the Denominationalists
and Undenominationalists was carried on vigorously and
unceasingly.
In 1811 Dr. Bell’s supporters founded the
“ National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor
in the Doctrines of the Established Church,” in opposition to
the “ Royal Lancastrian Institution ” (which became the
“British and Foreign Schools Society ” in 1814). In both
cases the instruction given was of the poorest conceivable
type. Dr. Bell recommended a barn as a good structure for a
school, and insisted that the children of the workers should
not be taught “ beyond their station.” In both sets of schools
the monitorial system (the teaching of children by children), a
pernicious system, was adopted. They fell incalculably short
of Owen’s splendid school at New Lanark, where one found
the finest methods then known and a curriculum of equal
breadth to that of the modern Council school. By the year
1818 there was still only one in seventeen of the population
of England in school, and the coarseness and viciousness of
the peasantry and factory-workers were terrible.
At this point Lord Brougham (then Mr. Brougham) and
other politicians took up the cause of national education once
more. There had been a State system of schools in Prussia
since 1794, in Holland since 1814, and in France since the
rule of Napoleon. In the American States education was far
advanced, and we had ourselves set up an excellent system
in Scotland in 1803, and voted £23,000 for the Protestant
schools in Ireland in the very year that Whitbread’s Bill was
rejected. The condition of the country was scandalous, and
men like Brougham pleaded that it was time wealthy
England did something to remove the gross illiteracy of its
people. In 1816 Brougham secured an inquiry into the
�A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY 7
educational state of London. In the comparatively small
London of that time it was found that 120,000 children had no
schooling- whatever. They played in the streets—streets and
courts of a foulness inconceivable to us to-day, for London
and Paris were, until fifty years ago, inferior to ancient Rome
or Babylon in sanitation—until their ninth year, and then
they entered the army of illiterate workers, with stunted
minds. Brougham then, in 1818, had a Select Committee
appointed to deal with educational charities. He had a
shrewd idea that, if these endowments were equitably and
economically managed, we could set up a system of schools
without calling on the national Exchequer.
How that scheme was defeated, and educational endow
ments are to this day diverted from that instruction of the
poor for which they were intended, it is not within the limits
of this essay to consider. But in 1820 Brougham introduced
a general educational measure into Parliament, and this was
wrecked on the rock of the religious difficulty. In view of
the imperfect municipal life of the time the proposals of the
Bill were not without merit. The magistrates and the local
clergy were to act in conjunction in building schools
wherever they were needed, and the funds were to come partly
from local, partly from national resources. It was a fair begin
ning of a national scheme. But Brougham soon found that one
yawning gulf lay across the line of progress, after all scruples
about national economy and the danger of educating the
workers had been removed. This was the now familiar
pitfail of compromise as to religious instruction. Brougham
met the Churchmen by giving the Anglican minister almost
absolute control over the schoolmaster. He could fix his
salary, arrange or modify his secular curriculum, and
examine the poor teacher when he willed. But Brougham
sought then to conciliate the Nonconformists by excluding all
denominational teaching from the curriculum. Simple Bible
lessons, the ever-ancient and ever-new device, were expected
to satisfy all the sects, and the Lord’s Prayer was the only
element of ritual to be admitted. For the sequel we have
only to recall our recent experience, and remember that
history repeats itself. Neither religious party was satisfied ;
neither would abate its claims to any practicable extent. The
�8
A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY
Bill had to be withdrawn, and for another thirteen years we
continued to bear what Malthus had called our “ national
disgrace ” because our clergy could not find a compromise in
regard to their conflicting claims.
I do not mean that the disgrace was removed in 1833, but
that year witnessed the first modest beginning of national
action in regard to the schools. It will be remembered that
1832 had seen the passing of the great Reform Bill. Enor
mous expectations had been aroused in the workers of the
country, and it was under pressure of a more or less serious
danger of civil war that Parliament was at length reformed
and the franchise extended. The whole hope of social
reform in the country now centred on the reformed House of
Commons, but the hope was quickly converted into disap
pointment as far as education was concerned. Under pressure
of Mr. Roebuck and others, Lord John Russell was induced
in 1833 to Pass an annual grant for educational purposes of
,£20,000. In that same year the small State of Prussia granted
.£600,000 for its schools. But the niggardliness of the grant
was not the worst feature. Dreading the religious feeling in
the country, the Government decided to hand over the money
each year to the two rival societies of voluntary schools. Not
only did the Journal of Education warmly protest at the time,
but experts are now agreed that this distribution utterly
prevented any increase of educational work and augmented
religious rivalry. As the grant was given on a basis of
funds already provided by the societies, the more wealthy
Church-society got the lion’s share. Of £600,000 granted in
the next seventeen years, the Church schools got £475,000.
A body of educational reformers had by this time formed
themselves into a Central Society of Education, and pressed
unceasingly for national action. But the Bishop of London
and other prelates denounced the Society, and for six years
more thwarted its action. By the year 1839 more than half
the children of the country were still utterly illiterate, and the
majority of the remainder received only a pretence of educa
tion. Dean Alford was moved to write in that year : “ There
is no record of any people on earth so highly civilised, so
abounding in arts and comforts, and so grossly and generally
ignorant, as the English.” There was, indeed, a minority of
�A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY 9
liberal and distinguished Anglican clergy who deplored the
situation—men like Whately, Hook, Stanley, and Kingsley;
but the overwhelming majority of the clergy of all sects
were obstinate in their respective claims. A few words on
the situation at this date (1839) from the two leading
historians of the subject will make it clear that I do not
exaggerate the injury done to education by the religious
controversy. Mr. Holman says, in his English National
Education (in the “Victorian Era Series”) : “This continued
impotence of Parliament to provide a national remedy for
what every single member of both Houses admitted to be a
national disgrace and danger is probably one of the most
striking features in the whole of its history. The only thing
that kept the Government from making the mass of the
people human was the determination of some to keep them
from being made anything less than divine.” And the only
other English writer of distinction on English education in
the nineteenth century, Mr. Adams, says: “The interdict
against a united and national system came from the moral
teachers of the people, and was pronounced necessary in
the interests of religion.” Even liberal Churchmen like
F. D. Maurice would admit no compromise. Any children,
he said, ought to be admitted to the Church schools (now
receiving ,£20,000 a year from national funds), but they must
submit to Church teaching.
Two observations on the situation at this period are not
without interest in view of our actual controversy. In the
first place, we must note that it is the very sincerity and
devotedness to their doctrines of the clergy that raised the
most formidable obstacle to the progress of education. How
ever much one may dissent from their doctrines and differ
from their estimate of the value to mankind of those doctrines,
one may respect their zeal in the interest of what they deem
to be of great importance. In the earlier years of the educa
tion controversy one can understand how they could lose
sight of the general civic interest under the stress of their
religious zeal. But it is surely time that their modern
successors realised the error of thus mixing up civic and
ecclesiastical ideals. We look back on a stretch of history in
which that mixture has wrought terrible mischief to the civic
�IO
A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY
ideal. The interminable wrangle has shown us that no
satisfactory adjustment of their conflicting claims is possible ;
and that the civic interest must be studied on a purely civic
basis, and the religious interest confined to religious teachers
in the religious atmosphere of the church or chapel.
The second observation I would make is that there has
been a remarkable change since those days in the character of
the instruction given in elementary schools. Some politi
cians still speak of the “ religious atmosphere ” in the
denominational school, and maintain that it is not a mere
question whether we shall transfer a few religious lessons
from the school to the church. The use of this phrase is very
largely an empty tradition of the earlier school. Up to the
middle of the century the whole curriculum was pervaded
with religious ideas. When we listen to-day to the claim
that the Anglican or Roman Catholic school has a general
permeation of religious feeling, we wonder how it is possible
to find this religious atmosphere in the long hours that are
filled with lessons on arithmetic, geography, grammar, and
such subjects. There is, of course, no religious element
whatever in these lessons to-day (and they form four-fifths of
the whole curriculum of the denominational school),1 but
there was fifty and more years ago. Manuals of arithmetic
and geography are still to be found that show a real
“ religious atmosphere,” and Mr. Holman gives many details
in his interesting history. Arithmetical problems were
founded largely on the Old Testament, and geography
centred on Palestine much as a medieval map would have
done. Now that these lessons have become purely secular,
and religious instruction is confined to a few prayers and
hymns and half-hour lessons, no very great change will be
involved in transferring them to the proper home of religious
cultivation.
However, let us return to the historical study. Statistics
showed that whereas in Prussia one in six of the population
attended school, in Switzerland one in seven, and in Holland
one in nine, in wealthy England the proportion was one in
1 The present writer was educated in a denominational school, was after
wards co-manager of a denominational school, and later rector of a denomina
tional college.
�A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY n
fourteen. Clearly the voluntary societies were not dis
charging-the function of educating the nation. Educationists
redoubled their pressure. They obtained an increase of the
annual grant from ,£20,000 to £"30,000—not a formidable
matter, Brougham pleasantly observed to the Lords, seeing
that they were that year voting £70,000 for the building of
royal stables—and they at last secured a beginning of
governmental action in the work of education. One of the
most pressing needs in the country was for the efficient
training of the teachers. Even in the Lancastrian body six
months’ training was thought amply sufficient for an
elementary-school teacher. Indeed, what was given in the
great bulk of the schools of the country would not be admitted
by any modern expert to be “ education ” at all in any real
sense. The teachers were miserably inefficient; and when
we learn that their average income was only about £22 a
year we can imagine what type of people they were. The
Government therefore proposed to set up a Normal School
(training college) at Kneller Hall.
They were at once
confronted by the religious difficulty, and their scheme
foundered once more on it. They proposed to pay only the
teachers of secular subjects in the training college, and leave
the students of each denomination free to bring in ministers
of their respective bodies for religious lessons. Once more
the conflicting interests of the Churches wrecked the scheme,
and it was years before there was any effective training of
teachers in the country.
But Lord John Russell triumphed over clerical opposition
in one important respect, and made a beginning of national
action. He formed a Committee of the Privy Council on
Education, and this slender institution was destined to grow
in time into our modern Education Department. But what
storms of religious opposition it had to face in its early
months I The Bishops of London and Chichester led the
vast majority of the clergy in a violent assault upon this
intrusion, as they called it, of the State on the Church’s
domain. There were Churchmen, like the Bishop of Durham,
who saw how gravely national interests were being thwarted,
and were willing to compromise. But the vast majority of
the clergy were vehemently opposed to State action.
�12 A HUNDRED
YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY
Nonconformists proclaimed the new Committee to be “a
secular tyranny, ” while Churchmen denounced it as a menace
to the Establishment. The religious war of 1906 was tame
ness itself compared to the war on the new education
authority, slight as it was, in 1839. The bishops and the
lords temporal actually walked in procession from the House
to Buckingham Palace—a unique incident, I think, in the
annals of that dignified body—and begged Queen Victoria to
abolish the Committee. The young Queen answered them
with a truer dignity than their own. She told them that she
had sanctioned the Government’s proposals from a deep and
well-considered sense of duty to her people, and the Lords
went away disappointed.
The controversy went on for some time with great vigour,
and in fact it was only moderated by another of those fatal
concessions to the clergy that hindered the real progress of
education. By a more or less secret arrangement the
Anglican clergy were granted control over the inspectors of
schools who were appointed under the new authority. It was
an abdication of its functions that would be listened to with
amazement if it were proposed in our time, and it was an
unjust arrangement. The religious lessons given in the
(undenominational) schools of the British and Foreign
Society were controlled by Church inspectors, and the
irritation and rivalry were greatly increased. The new
Committee fell so far under the dictation of the archbishops
that in 1840 it passed a minute directing that “ their lordships
were of opinion that no plan of education ought to be
encouraged in which intellectual instruction was not subor
dinated to the regulation of the thoughts and habits of the
children by the doctrines and precepts of revealed religion.”
This unjust preponderance stirred the Nonconformists to
continuous action, while expert educationists tell us that
elementary education steadily deteriorated. The passing of
the Factory Acts was supposed to have secured some measure
of instruction for the children of the factory-workers. In
point of fact the Act was flagrantly scouted. Children of
tender years were still worked for twelve hours a day, and
the education provided for them was farcical. The lodge
keeper, or the stoker’s wife, would gather them in some dark
�A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY 13
shed—often in the coal-house—and laboriously teach them to
identify the letters of the alphabet. The country was over
run with poor widows, crippled workers, and all kinds of
impoverished people who earned a few shillings a week
by “teaching.” The Central Education Society fought
desperately for some improvement, and in 1843 two important
efforts were made. Both were wrecked on the perennial
religious difficulty. The first was a Bill for the effective
instruction of factory children. They were very largely of
Nonconformist parentage, yet the Bill unluckily gave higher
control to the Anglicans—who had wrecked every measure
that did not do so—and the Dissenters naturally resented it.
They had now become sufficiently powerful to oppose such
measures with effect, and they forced the withdrawal of the
Bill. This triumph brought home to them the fact that the
extension of the franchise had enormously increased their
political power, and this deepened the long political struggle
over the schools, and added the further complication of our civic
and political life with the conflicting and irreconcilable claims
of the clergy. The situation became worse than ever. Let
me express it impersonally in the estimate given by Mr.
Holman, the impartial historian of the subject.
The
Dissenters, he says, “ now fought for their own hand in the
same way as the Church party did, and combined with the
latter and others to resist the exercise of control by the State
authorities ; and thus they became real obstructionists to
national progress in education.” The Congregationalists
alone deserve a partial exemption from this heavy censure.
They at least refused to accept State aid, and enjoined their
members to support their own denominational schools. The
Roman Catholics were in the same logical position until a
few years ago.
The second effort of the reformers in 1843 was to introduce
a Bill, in the name of Mr. Joseph Hume, for purely secular
and moral education, but it was counted out. The reformers,
however, manfully continued their work, and gradually won
some of the great Dissenters to their view. In 1847 they
founded in Lancashire—always honourably placed in the
history of education—a league for the furtherance of their
aims. The famous Corn-law orators, Cobden and John
�i4
A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY
Bright, lent their support to it. The radicals of the south
joined forces with it, and it gradually attained considerable
power. From a “Lancashire Association” it became a
National Public Schools Association.” There seemed a
prospect at last of convincing the country of the impractica
bility of balancing religious claims in regard to the
elementary schools, and rescuing the instruction of the
people from this harassing association with theology.
In 1850 the League decided to test their strength. The
minister of South Place (London) Chapel, Mr. W. J. Fox, a
brilliant speaker on social reforms and member of Parliament
for Oldham, introduced a comprehensive measure into the
House. The inspectors were to report on the deficiency of
schools in particular districts, and an efficient provision for
universal education was to be made out of the local rates.
Denominational schools were not to be superseded, but would
in future only be paid for the secular instruction they
imparted. On the other hand, the new Government schools,
which were to give free education, should be controlled in
the matter of giving or omitting undenominational instruction
by a kind of local option. The Bill projected a vast advance
in the field of elementary education, but it was resented by
both religious parties, and was heavily defeated on the
second reading. The National Association—supported as it
was by Dissenters like Cobden, Fox, Milner Gibson, and
W. E. Forster—was fiercely attacked, and denounced as
irreligious. They had put before the country, members said
in the House, a choice between Heaven or Hell, God or the
Devil. So for the sixth time a fair and promising scheme of
national improvement was shattered on the rock of the
religious difficulty.
The various acts in the drama of our educational history
are, in fact, so similar in essence, so closely parallel to the
act we are taking part in to-day, that one moves rapidly on to
the end of the century. Education remained in a state of
partial paralysis. Mr. Fox had read to the House a manifesto
issued by a large body of London working men, in which
they complained pathetically of this paralysis. It concluded :
“ The controversy has waxed hotter and more furious; our little
ones have been forgotten in the fray, and their golden moments
�A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY 15
have been allowed to run irrevocably to waste.” It needs
little reflection to convince one that this was no exaggeration.
The member of schools in England at the time is no test
whatever of the educational work done. The vast majority
were ridiculously inefficient. Teachers were given an absurd
modicum of training, and inspectors were given no training
whatever until 1857. The greater part of the machinery was
rusty and antiquated, and the salaries were too slender to
attract competent men. Anyone who reads Mr. Kay’s
comparison of England with the continental countries in
1850 will be amazed at the appalling statements of this great
expert. As late as i860 it was stated in a Government
report that out of the two and a-half million children in the
country only one and a-half million were at school ; and of
these 800,000 were found in flagrantly inefficient schools,
under teachers who themselves reached no decent standard of
education. London was far below the level of any large
Roman town of fifteen centuries earlier. In fact, few children
of the Roman towns had been without elementary education.
Yet every measure for the betterment of the situation was
met with the same resistance. Mr. Forster’s Bill for the
education of the poor was rejected in 1867, and the storm
that raged about his great Bill of 1870, when the Board
schools were founded, is too well known to enlarge upon.
Forster found that two-fifths of our children between the
ages of six and ten, and one-third between the ages of ten
and twelve, had no education whatever ; that, in other words,
one and a-half million of our children were still untouched
by the influence of the teacher, such as it was. No wonder
that he wrote bitterly to Kingsley : “ I wish parsons, Church
and other, would all remember as much as you do that
children are growing into savages while they are trying to
prevent one another from helping.”
The rest of the story needs no telling. The familiar
device of giving “ simple Bible lessons ” was again dignified
with the position of a great political expedient, and thirty
seven years of hard experience have again proved its futility.
Surely it is time that we all, clergy and laity, recognised this
plain fact of its uselessness ? Mr. Birrell rightly disavowed
any claim to originality in bringing it forward in 1906. It
�16
A HUNDRED YEARS OF EDUCATION CONTROVERSY
goes back to the time of his grandfather. It was CowperTempleism in 1870. It was Russellism in 1850, and
Durhamism in 1840, and Broughamism in 1820, and
Lancasterism in 1807. If is discredited by as prolonged and
explicit a political experience as was ever given to a
suggested compromise. It is as bitterly and powerfully
assailed to-day as it was in 1807. As long as it is retained,
it holds out a prospect of fresh wrangling with every swing of
the political pendulum.
The object of this essay is to inform those who fancy
that the giving of “simple Bible lessons” is a new
and imperfectly-tried device how completely it has
proved its impotence. And no other compromise is even
proposed to us. Happily the lesson is being read more
candidly to-day. The modern Secular Education League
has the support of distinguished Roman Catholics and many
clergy of the Anglican and Dissenting Churches. They
believe that they can sufficiently tend their religious interests
in their chapels, and they plead that we no longer hamper
our highest civic ideals and embarrass our political issues with
religious differences. We cannot call back on to our planet
the millions who have passed through England in the
nineteenth century without ever having their finer powers
developed ; the millions who have gone down into the
darkness with stunted souls, after a life of heavy drudgery
and the coarsest surroundings. But we can unite in the
framing of a unified and thoroughly effective system for
training the body, mind, and character of the child, and
we may leave the clergy to give the training in their own
doctrines in their own institutions.
PRINTED BY WATTS AND CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
�
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A hundred years of education controversy
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McCabe, Joseph [1867-1955]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Advertisement for the Secular Education League and its publications (published by Watts), inside front cover, i.e. p.[2].
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Education
Religion
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Education
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THE
CURRICULUM OF MODERN EDUCATION,
AND
THE RESPECTIVE CLAIMS OF CLASSICS AND SCIENCE
TO BE REPRESENTED IN IT CONSIDERED :
BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF TWO LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE MONTHLY
EVENING MEETINGS OF THE COLLEGE OF PRECEPTORS,
APRIL 11TH, & MAY 9th, 1866.
By JOSEPH PAYNE,
LATE OF LEATHERHEAD;
FELLOW, AND ONE OF THE VICE-PRESIDENTS, OF THE COLLEGE OF PRECEPTORS,
MEMBER OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY, ETC.
“ Not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom: what is more is fume,
Or emptiness, or fond impertinence,
And renders us, in things that most concern,
Unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek.”
Milton.
LONDON:
VIRTUE, BROTHERS, & CO., 26, IVY LANE,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
1866.
�°So each study in its turn can give rea
sons why it should be cultivated to the utmost.
But all these very arguments are met by an
unanswerable fact, that our time is limited. It
is not possible to teach boys everything.
“ If it is attempted, the result is generally a
superficial knowledge of exceedingly little value,
and liable to the great moral objection, that it
encourages conceit and discourages hard work.
A boy who knows the general principles of the
study, without knowing its details, easily gets the
credit of knowing much, while the test of putting
his knowledge to use will quickly prove that he
knows very little. Meanwhile he acquires a dis
taste for the drudgery of details, without which
drudgery nothing worth doing ever yet was
done.”—Dr. Temple’s Answer to Questions of
the Commissioners on Public Schools.
“ If we are to choose a study which shall pre
eminently fit a man for life, it will be that which
shall best enable him to enter into the thoughts,
the feelings, the motives of his fellows.”—Ibid.
“ All education really comes from intercourse
with other minds. The desire to supply bodily
needs and to get bodily comforts would prompt
even a solitary human being (if he lived long
enough) to acquire some rude knowledge of
nature. But this would not make him more of
a man. That which supplies the perpetual spur
to the whole human race to continue incessantly
adding to our stores of knowledge; that which
refines and elevates, and does not educate merely
the moral, nor merely the intellectual faculties,
but the whole man, is our connection with each
other; and the highest study is that which most
promotes this connexion, by enlarging its sphere,
by correcting and purifying its influences, by
giving perfect and pure models of what ordinary
experience can, for the most part, show only in
adulterated and imperfect forms.”—Ibid.
“The classic life contains precisely the true
corrective for the chief defects of modern life.
The classic writers exhibit precisely that order
of virtues in which we are apt to be deficient.
They altogether show human life on a grander
scale, with less benevolence, but more patriotism;
less sentiment, but more self-control; of a lower
average of virtue, but more striking individual
examples of it; fewer small goodnesses, but more
greatness and appreciation of greatness; more
which tends to exalt the imagination and inspire
high conceptions of the capabilities of human
nature. If, as every one must see, the want of
the affinity of these studies to the modem mind
is gradually lowering them in popular estima
tion, this is but a confirmation of the need of
them, and renders it more incumbent on those
who have the power, to do their utmost to aid
in preventing their decline.”—John Stuart
Mill.
“ We would have classics and logic taught far
more really and deeply than at present, and
would add to them other studies more alien than
any which yet exist to the ‘business of the
world,’ but more germane to the great business
ofevery rational being—the strengthening and en
larging of his own intellect and character.”—Ibid.
“ In nations, as in men, in intellect as in social
condition, true nobility consists in inheriting
what is best in the possessions and character of
a line of ancestry. Those who can trace the
descent of their own ideas and their own lan
guage through the race of cultivated nations,
who can show that those whom they represent
or reverence as their parents have everywhere
been foremost in the field of thought and in
tellectual progress: these are the true nobility
of the world of mind; the persons who have
received true culture; and such it should be the
business of a liberal education to make men.”—
Anon.
“ The ancient classics would not be worse, but
better taught in th'- highest forms, did the pupil
receive a more general culture in his early
course.”—Dr. Hodgson, “Classical Instruc
tion,” an Article reprinted from the Westmin
ster Review, Oct. 1853.
" It is the early age at which classical studies
are begun that, rendering the work at once
tedious and unprofitable, necessitates so terrible
an expenditure of time, and prevents their suc
cessful prosecution. Difficulties which are now
surmounted, if at all, with infinite labour and
many tears; details which are now mastered, if
at all, by children who can have but little compre
hension of their meaning and purpose, and but
little motive to mental effort, would afford only
an easy and a pleasant exercise to minds more
mature and better prepared.”—Ibid.
“1 claim for the study of physics the recog
nition that it answers to an impulse implanted
by nature in the human constitution, and he
who would oppose such study must be prepared
to exhibit the credentials which authorize him
to contravene nature’s manifest design.”—On
the Importance of the Study of Physics as a
Branch of Education for all Classes. By
Professor Tyndall.
“Leave out the physiological sciences from
your curriculum, and you launch the student
into the world undisciplined in that science
whose subject matter would best develope his
powers of observation; ignorant of facts of the
deepest importance for his own and others’ wel
fare ; blind to the richest sources of beauty in
God’s creation; and unprovided with that belief
in a living law, and an order manifesting itself
in and through endless change and variety,
which might serve to check and moderate that
phase of despair through which, if he take an
earnest interest in social problems, he will as
suredly, sooner or later, pass.”—On the Educa
tional Value of the Natural History Sciences. By
Professor T. H. Huxley.
. “ J’aime les sciences mathfimatiques et phy
siques; chacune d’elles, 1’algfcbre, la chimie, la
botanique, est une belle application partielle de
l’esprit humain; Les Lettres. e'est Vesprit luimtme; l’6tude des lettres,Jc’estl’^ducation gfinfirale qui prepare h tout, l’iducation de l’ime.”—
Napoleon I., quoted by Dr. Hodgson.
“ Wenn uns miser Schulunterricht immer
auf das Alterthum hinweist, das Studium der
griechischen und latcinischen Sprache fordert,
so konnen wir uns Gluck wiinschen, dass diese
zu einer hoheren Cultur so nothigen Studien
I niemals riickgangig werden.”—Gothe.
�PREFACE.
The following pages contain the substance, with some alterations and
additions, of two Lectures lately delivered at the College of Preceptors, and
the writer seeks by the publication of them the suffrages of that larger audi
ence with which lies the ultimate decision in discussions of this kind.
The question of the curriculum is daily becoming more and more im
portant. The demand that it shall represent, in a far greater degree than
it has hitherto done, the wants and wishes, the active energies, and in
short the spirit, of the age, cannot be, and ought not to be, set aside.
This claim, which involves particularly the pretensions of physical science
to be represented in the curriculum, is much strengthened by the con
sideration, that science furnishes, when properly taught, a kind of educational
training of special value, as a complement to that of language. The writer has
attempted to show, that science teaches better, that is, more directly and
soundly, than any other study, how to observe, how to arrange and classify,
how to connect causes with effects, how to comprehend details under general
laws, how to estimate the practical value of facts. Having, however, dealt
out this measure of justice to science, he maintains that the difficulties
which lie in the way of the attainment of these valuable results, by means of
school education, have not yet been overcome ; and that even if they were, and
science were fully admitted into the curriculum,—which ought to be the case,
—that the classical and literary training is better adapted to the development
of the whole man than the scientific, and should therefore take the lead. In
pursuing this argument, he has been led specially to deal with two fallacies,
which, under a variety of forms, are extensively prevalent at present, and, by their
evil influence, tend very much to hinder the cause which they are, apparently,
designed to promote. The first is, That because there is so much to know in
the world, we are bound to try to make our children learn it all. The second is,
That because there is so much to do in the world, we ought to force all kinds of
business upon children’s attention beforehand, by way of preparation for it;
in other words, that the onine scibile and the omne facibile (to use a barbarous
Latin word) ought to be comprehended in every good curriculum of education.
If he has succeeded in exploding these fallacies, and in making good his own pro
position, that all true education involves, fundamentally, training, and training of
a kind that is quite incompatible with the claims of any system in which accumu-
B 2
�IV
lation is the first principle, and special preparation the second, he hopes to
gain the thanks of all judicious and really competent authorities in science; of
all who mean by teaching science, training the mind to scientific method, to
habits of investigation, and the diligent search after truth.
There can be little doubt that the recent Report on the results of classical
teaching in our public schools, and especially in the case of Eton, has done
much to strengthen the cause of those who wish to see a reform in the curri
culum. Few men, perhaps, at the head of public institutions have ever stood
in a more humiliating position than that occupied, about four years ago, by the
Head-Master of Eton, who, being under examination before the Commission on
Public Schools, could only say, in reply to the following pungent remarks
of Lord Clarendon, the chairman, that he was “ sorry —thus allowing the full
force of the charges implied. “Nothing can be worse,” said his Lordship,
“than this state of.things, when we find modern languages,geography,history,
chronology, and everything else which a well-educated English gentleman
ought to know, given up, in order that the full time should be devoted to the
classics; and at the same time we are told, that the boys go up to Oxford not
only not proficient, but in a lamentable state of deficiency with respect to the
classics.”
It is not to be wondered at, that those who were before discontented with
the established course of study in our public schools, became, after such a state
ment of facts, amply borne out as it was by the evidence, so indignant, as to
demand, in the interests of philanthropy as well as science, that the system
which had borne such fruits should be not only degraded, but deposed. This
violent reaction cannot, however, be sustained. The abuse must not be con
founded with the use. It may be true that very little besides classics is taught
at Eton, and that they are not learnt; but this is no argument against either
the theory or the practice of classical instruction. But while the present
writer, who has had long experience in teaching, defends generally that theory
and practice, he believes that the time is come for such a modification of its
working, at least in middle-class schools, as will admit of the honourable intro
duction of science into the curriculum. It is then as a friend, and not an enemy,
to science, that he has endeavoured to clear the ground of some of the frivolous
and damaging arguments which theorists have imported into the discussion,
and to plead that it shall be so taught as to make it a real mental exercise.
Thus introduced as a coordinate discipline, it would prove a most valuable ally
in education, and take its proper place among the great elements which are
moulding the civilisation of the age.
4, Kildare Gardens, Bayswater,
July 1, 1866.
�THE CURRICULUM OF MODERN EDUCATION,
AND THE
RESPECTIVE CLAIMS OF CLASSICS AND SCIENCE TO BE REPRESENTED
IN IT CONSIDERED.
From tlie time when the idea was first con out by Wisdom to build her house upon. The
*
ceived of interfering with the natural liberty structure, however, then, and for a thousand
of children, and setting them down on benches years after, remained unfinished ; and even at
or on the ground to “learn,” the question of the present day it must be acknowledged that
what they should be taught could not fail to Wisdom’s house of education is by no means
be one of great interest. An inquiry into the distinguished for symmetrical beauty and
details of the various curricula arranged for completeness. In the rivalry which, not un
the purpose of instruction by the wise men of naturally, arose between these two courses of
the different nations of antiquity, would no study, it would appear that the physical or
doubt elicit much that would be valuable for strict sciences were usually defeated; for,
the purpose of a writer on the History of either from indolence or distaste, the founda
Education, but opens up far too wide a field tion of the Trivium, to which precedence in
for our present limits. It may, however, be education was considered due, was generally
observed generally, in passing, that the scien so long in laying that the pupil rarely reached
tific or practical element seems to have pre what was then treated as the higher course.
vailed more in the primary schools of Egypt, Practically, indeed, in the lower schools, no
India, Phoenicia, and Persia ; the linguistic attempt was made to go much beyond
or literary in those of Judea, China, Greece, “ Grammar,” which, in connection with the
and Rome. Exception may, no doubt, be study of Latin alone at first, and subsequently
taken to this general statement, which, how of Greek, with a little reading, writing, and
ever, I must leave in its vagueness, without arithmetic, formed the common course for
even a momentary effort to estimate the com English boys in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and
parative value of the various curricula in their sixteenth centuries. If the curriculum of school
relation to the spirit and character of the education is to be considered as reflecting the
respective nations which adopted them ; and spirit of the age, which, however, is not, as we
without even contrasting, as educational pro see in our own case, a fair criterion, it would
ducts, Plato, the pupil of Socrates, on the one appear that physical science was in those
side, and Alexander the Great, the pupil of times, if not altogether neglected, at least
Aristotle, on the other.
treated with indifference; for not only in
Descending, then, as at a leap, to the com schools, but even in the universities, the quamencement of the Middle Ages, in Europe, we drivials were, as Harrison remarks, “ smallie
find the omne scibile comprehended, for the pur regarded.”} This state of things, continuing
pose of teaching, in two groups; the Trivium, almost unaltered to the seventeenth century,
consisting of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric ; roused the indignation of Milton, who denounces
and the Quadrivium, of Arithmetic, Music, Geo
metry, and Astronomy. These subjects were de * “Wisdom hath builded her house: she hath
hewn out her seven pillars.” (Prov. ix. 1.)
signated by Cassiodorus, the literary adviser and I f Harrison’s “Description of England,” prefixed to
friend of Theodoric, the “ seven pillars ” hewn Holinshed’s Chronicle, 1577.
�“ the haling and dragging of our choicest and commended, too, by their much closer connec
hopefullest wits to that asinine feast of sow tion with the interests and happiness of mankind.
thistles and brambles, which is commonly set The fact cannot be denied, that our general
before them as all the food and entertainment school curriculum includes much that is not
of their tenderest and most docible age
practically available in the world for which it
while Cowley, rather later, pleads for the is by theory a preparation, and excludes much
initiation of children into “ the knowledge that is ; that it rests mainly on the traditions
of things as well as words,” and for the “ in and experience of the past; and that it does
fusing knowledge and language at the same not appear to keep pace, pari passu, with the
time into them.” Both these eminent men actual life, the feelings, and hopes, and aspi
constructed schemes, on paper, for revolution rations of the present. If these admissions,
izing the existing curriculum in accordance with literally interpreted, are to be considered
their views. Inasmuch, however, as they were sufficient causes for condemnation, the ques
in no respect themselves the fruit of the system tion is at once decided, and society has only
they advocated, nor recommended it (I allude to order the delinquent for execution without
specially to Milton) by their own practice, delay. Before, however, the matter is thus
the public generally seems to have attached summarily disposed of, the defendant should,
little importance to their views, and certainly and indeed must, in all fairness, be allowed to
showed no desire to adopt them.
plead his cause at the bar of reason and com
After their days, the established system was mon sense. In the case of this as of other
occasionally complained of (notably by Locke, time-honoured institutions, it will probably be
and Clarke, and more recently by Sydney found that we are not so very much wiser
Smith); but within the last fifty years, various than our fathers as we may at first sight be
causes have tended to strengthen the assailants disposed to flatter ourselves. The very fact of
and give piquancy to the strife ; and at the pre the antiquity of an institution is, at all events,
sent moment, more than ever before, the advo a respectable plea, and should not be wantonly
cates of the old and new systems respectively rejected. It must, however, be admitted that
are pertinaciously presenting their claims to the this plea has not in our day the strength which
arbitration of the public. The maintenance it once had. Old institutions, of whatever
of a hostile feeling is, however, much to be kind, are nowrequired to prove that they deserve
deprecated. This question may be, it is to live, if that privilege is to be allowed them.
hoped, dispassionately discussed; and for
In the case before us, we have an extreme
myself, though advocating the retention of party of reformers, who without hesitation
much of the old system, I am, as will be seen, declare that the proper place for Classical
strongly impressed with the great claims of instruction in the curriculum is no place at
science, and disposed to recommend a fair all—who would not only dethrone it from the
and liberal compromise. I cannot but think position it has so long held, but thrust it
that a curriculum framed in such a way ignominiously forth. This is the not unnatural
as to retain the sound discipline of the old reaction against the unwarrantable assumption
classical course, and to embrace the vivifying on the other side, that the proper place of
influences of the scientific element, would prove classics in the curriculum is the whole cur
advantageous to both. Science, judiciously riculum ; that they alone constitute “ learn
and thoroughly taught, supplies a training of a ing
and that the most honourable and
different kind from that supplied by classics, lucrative positions in society ought to be
and of a kind especially adapted to correct the allotted, as a matter of course, to those who
defects of the latter. This has been, indeed, hold their certificate. Exaggerated preten
to some extent, admitted by the general intro sions, however, on whichever side they are
duction of mathematics into the curriculum. held, only injure the cause of those who main
It will, however, be shown that pure mathe tain them, and in the present case are espe
matics are not sufficiently comprehensive for cially unsuitable. For, as between the rival
the purpose. The observational and experi claims of language and literature on the one
mental sciences, besides being more generally side, and science on the other, there is surely
inviting as a study than mathematics, are re much to be said for both so true and so reason-
�able as to claim the respectful attention of all
fair and competent judges. It must never be
forgotten that out of those ages in which
science, properly so called, was unknown,
came forth the great teachers of mankind, the
pioneers, nay more, the efficient agents, by
words and deeds, in originating and carrying
on the civilization of the human race. /Phis
important work was accomplished by men
utterly unacquainted with geology, the steamengine, the electric telegraph, spectrum
analysis, or the dynamic theory of heat.
Without these means and appliances, or even
an atom of the spirit of which they are the
fruit,—without any of the enthusiasm of
modern physical philosophy,—statesmen and
warriors, heroes, patriots, and artists, of whom
all ages are proud, have so lived as to leave an
imperishable name behind them. Whether
the age of science will produce grander results,
has yet to be proved. On the other hand, it
is most reasonable that science too should, in
our day especially, claim its proper place
in education as a civilizing agent. It may
point with pride to what it has done and is
doing, and may without rebuke exclaim : “If
you need memorials of my power and influence,
look around you ; the results are everywhere.
Nay more, if, instead of mere details, dry facts,
and practical applications, you have a taste
for sublime speculations and theories, I can
furnish you with views into the distant and
the past almost unequalled for elevation, range,
and depth, and fraught with the profouudest
interest to the present and all future genera
tions.” We may therefore, without slavish
humility, bow reverentially before both these
claimants on our homage, and denounce
impartially the zealots and fanatics on either
side,—the men who audaciously, declare that sci
entific instruction is “ worthless,” and equally
those who stigmatize the classics as “ useless,”
—in the curriculum of modern education.
In dealing with the subject of my lecture,
I propose in the first place, to consider
generally the curriculum of modern education
for the middle classes, and to discuss some ot
the plans proposed for its reformation; and
secondly, to advocate the claims of classical
instruction to continue to hold the leading
place in it as a mental discipline.
The object we have in view is to discuss
the curriculum of modern education, as
far as the middle classes of society are con
cerned— excluding, on the one hand, those
whose instruction must, from circumstances,
be limited to the barest elements of learn
ing ; and those, on the other hand, whose
course is intended to terminate in a uni
versity career. The question then is—con
sidering the age in which we live, with its
immense accumulation, and wonderful appli
cations, of knowledge; considering too that
the longest life is too short for securing for
the individual man any large portion of this,
which constitutes the treasury of the race; and
that the immature faculties of the child can
grasp only a very limited portion of that
which is ultimately attained by the mau—
whether we do wisely in giving up any consi
derable portion of the small space of time
available for acquisition, to the attainment of
a kind of knowledge which appears, in com
parison with scientific and general information,
to be only slightly demanded by the wants
and the wishes of the age. If it is neces
sary, or even important and desirable, that
we should all attempt to know all things,
this question is at once settled by the exi
gencies of the case. Every moment of the
time devoted to instruction must, on that
assumption, be given up to the earnest and
unremitting pursuit of the “ things that lie
about in daily life;” and everything which
impedes or interferes with that pursuit must
be regarded as impertinent. It is, however,
perfectly clear that the attempt to force the
individual man to keep up with the intel
lectual march of the human race, must end in
utter disappointment; and, moreover, involves
a fatal misconception of the object which all
true education should. have in view. It can
not be too frequently repeated, that develop
ment and training, and not the acquisition
of knowledge, however valuable in itself, is
the true and proper end of elementary educa
tion, nor too strongly insisted on, that
he who grasps too much holds feebly, or,
as the French pithily express it, qui trop
em.brasse mal etreint. The fact that there is
a vast store of knowledge in the world is no
more a reason why I should acquire it all, than
the fact that there is an immense store of food
is a reason why I should eat it all. We may
mourn over the limitation of our powers, but
as our fate in this respect is quite inevitable, it
�is our duty, as rational creatures, to submit to sented in the former. The other principle
it, and to be satisfied with doing, if not all seems to be, that as men are often found
that we fondly wish, yet all that we can, and, “ unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek,”
what is more important, as well as we can. in regard to the circumstances in which they
1 cannot but think that the protest of the are actually placed in life, we should anticipate
high-minded and conscientious men who are this difficulty by making children acquainted
in our day aiming at the reform of the beforehand with “ the leading kinds of activity
school curriculum, would be much more whicji constitute human life”—in other words,
influential with the public if they would keep with all varieties of practical business. In
closely to the true issue in discussing this enforcing both these views, touching appeals
question. It is most desirable, certainly, that ad misericordiam are made by their supporters,
there should be a thorough reform; but it is based, first, on the cruelty of withholding from
equally desirable that the reform should be the child that knowledge of science which has
established on a sound basis, and that both become the inheritance of the race, and which
parties should co-operate in arriving at a wise he so much desires to have ; and again, on the
decision on this point.
criminal neglect of his teachers in not secur
It is much to be regretted that so many of ing him, by ample knowledge of practical
those who have handled the subject of the business, against the dangers into which, from
curriculum in the interests of philanthropy, ignorance and inexperience, he is not only
should be disqualified from treating it judi likely, but certain to fall. The theory, then,
ciously by a want of practical acquaintance with stated in its bare simplicity, is, that the boy
education. Very much at their ease, they con is to be provided by his education, first, with
struct airy and fantastic theories, founded not all scientific knowledge; and secondly, with
on what is practicable, but what is desirable ; all practical knowledge, as his proper equip
recommend them earnestly, as if they were ment for the battle of life.
the genuine fruits of experience, and too fre
That I may not, however, be suspected
quently reproach the hard-working teachers, of misrepresenting these theoretical views of
who, however much they may admire such the curriculum, I will now endeavour to ex
theories, cannot by any amount of labour hibit them, as taken from the works in which
realize them, and therefore feel themselves they are to be found.
aggrieved at having their actual educational
In the first number of the “ Westmin
product unfairly brought into comparison with ster Review,” published in 1824, we find
the highly-coloured results promised by the an article mainly devoted to the explanation
theorist. These writers, men, if you will, of and enforcement of Mr. Bentham’s “ Chrestobenevolent hearts, certainly of lively imagina mathia”* as a scheme of instruction which
tions, evince far too little sympathy with -(to use the reviewer’s words) should “ compre
the actual work of the practical teacher, with his hend the various branches of education which
arduous, long continued, little appreciated toils, are spread over the whole field of knowledge,
his never-ending struggle against the natural giving to each its due share of importance
volatility, ignorance, dulness, obstinacy, and with a view to the greatest possible sum of
sometimes depravity, of his pupils ; and com practical benefit.” It is curious to see the
prehend not the true vital organisation of that course of study proposed by Bentham, and
“ pleasing, anxious (professional) being,” which which has been extended by the enthusiastic
perhaps, after all, no earnest teacher ever resigns Mr. Simpson, in his work entitled “ The Philo
without some “ longing, lingering look behind. ’ ’ sophy of Education.”
Two leading principles seem to charac
The subjects proposed for the Chrestomathic
terize most of the theories which have been, in
modern times, proposed for the reform of the
* “ Chrestomathia: being a Collection of Papers
old curriculum. The first is, that the cur explanatory of the Design of an Institution proposed
to be set on foot, under the name of the Chrestoma
riculum ought to be considered as a counter thic Day-Schools, or Chrestomathic School, for the
part or reflex of the world of knowledge to Extension of the New System of Instruction to the
Higher Branches of
of the
which it is introductory, and that therefore Middling and HigherLearning, for the use Jeremy
Ranks of Life.” By
the omne scibile of the latter should be repre Bentham, Esq. London: 1816.
�9
curriculum of study in the case of boys, and
girls too, “ between the ages of seven and four
teen,” are as follows :—
Elementary Arts.—Reading, writing, arith
metic.
1 st Stage.—Mineralogy, botany, zoology, geo
graphy, geometry (definitions
only), history, chronology,
drawing.
2nd Stage.—Same subjects, with mechanics,
hydrostatics, hydraulics, pneu
matics, acoustics, optics.
Chemistry, mineral, vegetable,
animal.
Meteorology, magnetism, elec
tricity, galvanism, balistics.
Archaeology, statistics.
English, Latin, Greek, French,
and German grammars.
3rc? Stage.—Subjects of previous stages, and
mining, geology, land-survey
ing, architecture, husbandry,
including the theory of vegeta
tion and gardening.
Physical economics—i. e., the ap
plication of mechanics and che
mistry to domestic manage
ment, involving “maximization
of bodily comfort in all its
shapes, minimization of bodily
discomfort in all its shapes,”
biography.
4.th Stage.—Hygiastics (art of preserving and
restoring health), comprising
physiology, anatomy, patho
logy, nosology, dietetics, mate
ria medica, prophylactics (art
of warding off evils), surgery,
therapeutics, zohygiastics (art
of taking care of animals).
Phthisozoics (art of destroying
noxious animals : vermin kill
ing, ratcatching, &c.).
5th Stage.—Geometry (with demonstrations),
algebra, mathematical geogra
phy, astronomy.
Technology, or arts and manu
factures in general.
Bookkeeping, or the art of regis
tration or recordation.
Commercial book-keeping.
Note-taking.
Such is the scheme of the Chrcstomatbia,
which designedly omits (as Mr .’Bentham tells
us) gymnastic exercises, fine arts, applications
of mechanics and chemistry, belles lettres, and
moral arts and sciences. These are omitted
on various grounds which I have no time to
specify, except to mention one, which might
indeed have very suitably excluded five-sixths
at least of those enumerated—“time of life too
early.”
Mr. Simpson, approving of the whole of the
above curriculum, thought it still incomplete,
and therefore introduced the department of
Moral Science omitted by Bentham, as a
6th Stage.—History, government, commerce.
Political economy.
Philosophy of the human mind.
Risum teneatis, amici! Was anything more
extraordinary ever proposed in the whole his
tory of man ? This imposing display of the
triumphs of the entire human race is actually
presented as a curriculum of study for children
between seven and fourteen years of age 1
Such is the scheme lauded by a writer who
complains that “ hitherto the education proper
for civil and active life has been neglected, and
nothing has been done to enable those who are
to conduct the affairs of the world to carry
them on in a manner worthy of the age and
country in which they live, by communicating
to them the knowledge and the spirit of their
age and country.” This is the panacea, then,
proposed by the Chrestomathic school for the
cure of the educational maladies of the day.
Education, according to this view, is to con
sist in the administration of infinitesimal doses
of knowledge: a little drop of this, a pinch of
that, an atom of the third article, and so on ;
the names and technicalities of a great range
of subjects, and mastery and power over none.
Comment on such a scheme is unnecessary.
It condemns itself, as a method of teaching
superficiality and sciolism on system. Is
there any connection between such a course
and the “complete and generous education”
(these are Milton’s words) that “ fits a man to
perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously
all the offices, both private and public, of peace
and war”? Are we not rather injuring than
aiding true mental development, and perhaps
moral too, by pretending to teach the sciences
when all the while we are teaching little beyond
their names ? Is such a scheme as this to super
sede the sound instruction and invigorating dis-
�10
eipline of the old school ? Is this the desidera
tum so eagerly looked for as a means of pro
ducing men capable of carrying on the affairs
of the world in “a manner worthy of the age and
country in which we live ”? I quite agree with
the most advanced of the reformers in ques
tion as to the need of reform ; but I hope they
will agree with me that this is not the direction
in which it is to be promoted, and that if the
new crusade is to be successful in its objects,
Messrs. Bentham and Simpson must not be
permitted to head the movement.
Another theoretical writer on modern edu
cation is Mr. Herbert Spencer, who, in his
work entitled “Education, Intellectual, Moral,
and Physical,” has presented us with a scheme
—evolved apparently out of the depths of his
own consciousness; for he does not profess to
have any practical experience as a teacher or
schoolmaster—so ingenious, and pretty, and
complete, that one can only sigh over the
limited capacity of human nature, which will,
it is to be feared, for ever prevent its being
realised. While agreeing for the most part
with Mr. Bentham, that a child can and ought
to learn—at least, what he calls learning—an
immense number of subjects, he insists with
great earnestness upon the principle (which,
if rightly interpreted, no one questions), that
education should prepare the pupil for the
duties of life; or, as he styles it, for “ the
right ruling of conduct in all directions, and
under all circumstances.” This, as he remarks,
—and everyone will agree with him,—is the
“ general problem, which comprehends every
special problemand he goes on further to
tell us, that the solution of it involves our
knowing “ in what way to treat the body; in
what way to treat the mind ; in what way to
manage our affairs ; in what way to bring up
a family; in what way to behave as a citizen;
and in what way to utilise those sources of
happiness which nature supplies; how to use
our faculties to the greatest advantage of our
selves and others; how to live completely.
And this being the great thing needful for us
to learn, is by consequence the great thing
which education has to teach.”
This is an epitome of Mr. Spencer’s views
on the curriculum, and it appears to be impos
sible to satisfy the conditions of his theory
by anything short of special preparation for
all the contingencies of life. My limits will
not allow of a close investigation of arguments
and illustrations, spread over nearly sixty
pages of his book; but a practical school
master has surely some right to inquire,
whether he is serious in adducing, as evidences
of defect in the school curriculum, nume
rous instances of persons injuring their eye
sight by over-study, and their limbs by over-ex
ercise ; of others suffering “ from heart-disease,
consequent on a rheumatic fever that fol
lowed reckless exposureand again, of
“ the engineer who misapplies his formulae for
the strength of materials, and builds a bridge
that breaks downof the shipbuilder who,
“ by adhering to the old model, is outsailed
by one who builds on the mechanically-jus
tified wave-line principle;” of the bleacher,
the dyer, the sugar-refiner, the farmer,
who fail more or less, because unacquainted
with chemistry ; and notably of the mining
speculators, who ruin themselves from igno
rance of geology; and the constructors of
electro-magnetic engines, “ who might have
had better balances at their bankers,” if they
had understood “ the general law of the cor
relation, and equivalence of forces.” Are all
these sad delinquencies, and many more,
recounted with terrible accuracy by Mr. Spen
cer, fairly to be laid to lack of service and
duty and sense in the schoolmaster ? Ought
the elementary schoolmaster—that is the real
question—to have furnished all hispupilsoffrom
seven to fourteen years of age with the know
ledge, and judgment, and common sense, and
experience, which are the proper safeguards
against the failures I have enumerated ? I
answer distinctly, that he is not responsible;
and I might say this much more strongly, but
that I respect Mr. Spencer’s earnestness and
true sincerity of purpose. But Mr. Spencer, who
is no schoolmaster himself, having, it would
appear, a most exalted opinion of the omnipo
tent and omniscient faculties of that func
tionary, demands still something more of him,
and regarding it as “an astonishing fact, that
not one word of instruction on the treatment
of offspring is ever given to those who will by
and by be parents,” that is, given by the
schoolmaster, lays that obligation also upon
him. Here too, it appears to me, the prac
tical schoolmaster has a right to ask, very
specifically, what kind of information “on the
treatment of offspring” Mr. Spencer would
�11
himself propose to give, as a sortof model school inefficient and enervating. General truths, to
lesson, to a child of twelve or fourteen years be of due and permanent use, must be earned.’’
of age ? The child is, to be sure, in a certain
The same principle would seem to decide
sense, “the father of the man’’; but it is coming the question of special preparation. The ex
down rather sharply upon him to apply this perience of those who have gone before us
literally, and make him leave his tops and cannot supersede our own ; and no conceivable
balls so early in life, and set about this unsea improvement, therefore, in the curriculum will
sonable preparation for the duties of paternity. ever provide for “ the right ruling of conduct
The general conclusion, then, from our re in all directions, under all circumstances ;” or,
view of Mr. Spencer’s theory is, that its due in other words, furnish a child beforehand
satisfaction involves the assumption that every with the mental and moral powers which are
man is to be his own doctor, lawyer, architect, to be developed in the actual life of the man.
bailiff, tailor, and, I suppose,—clergyman; so It is by living that we learn to live.
that the Chrestomathic scheme, which required
I have already suggested, that development
the child to learn the omne scibile, is supple and training, not the acquisition of knowledge,
mented, as not being comprehensive enough, however valuable in itself, is the true and
by Mr. Spencer’s, for learning also the omne proper end of elementary education. In a
*
facibile; and both must, I fear, be condemned, I general way it may be asserted that the former
not only as being utterly impracticable, (though is the main tenet of the old or conservative,
that might beasufficient objection,) butas being the latter of the new or reforming school. We
based on a total misconception of what ele shall have to dwell at some length on this
mentary education ought to be.t
point, that we may be prepared to recognise
The fact is, that however captivating to the the respective claims of various subjects to be
imagination the idea may be of communicating admitted into the curriculum. It is perfectly
to our pupil those immense stores of knowledge, true that neither view of necessity excludes
the possession of which distinguishes the pre the other. Any subject, however suitable in
sent from all previous ages, it is one which, itself for the discipline of the pupil, may be so
when brought to the test of experience, proves taught as to involve no good training ; and a
utterly illusory. A higher power than that subject presumptively unsuitable may, by the
of either the theoretical educationist, or the skill of the teacher, be made to yield the
practical schoolmaster, has ordained that into happiest fruits. Still the prominence given
the kingdom of knowledge, as into the king to these respective features in theory must
dom of heaven, we must enter as little children. materially affect the practice founded on them.
We must begin at the beginning, and learn I need not refer to the very etymology of the
the prima elementa each for himself, as all word “ education” to support the more oldchildren before us have done, gaining little ad fashioned view of the case. All will allow
vantage as individuals from the achievements that it means training or development; but
which science has effected for our race. We I would dwell for a moment on the meaning of
find, too, that if, from a desire to spare our the cognate term“ instruction,”in support of the
pupil the labour of learning fact after fact in same argument, and also to show that a real
apparently endless succession, we frame com and judicious teaching of science, not a ran
pendious formulae, rules, and general prin dom gathering together of scraps of “ useful
ciples, founded on other men’s mental expe knowledge,” does indeed involve a genuine dis
rience, and endeavour to feed his mind with cipline of the mind. The original meaning
them, they prove, in the early stage of instruc of instruere is to heap up, or pile up, or
tion, utterly indigestible, and minister no put together in a heap generally, and seems
proper nourishment for him. Mr. Spencer, in somewhat to countenance the Chrestomathic
another part of his book, justly remarks: notion ; but the secondary meaning, and that
“ To give the net product of inquiry, without with which we are more concerned, is “ to put
the inquiry that leads to it, is found to be both together in order, to build or construct”; so
that instruction is the orderly arrangement
* This phrase is, I am aware, non-classical. It is,
and disposition of knowledge, a branch of
however, to be found in Ducange.
t See Appendix, Note A.
mental discipline which all must acknowledge
�12
to be of great importance and value. But rate, and mature all the faculties, so as to
heaping bricks together, and building a house exhibit them in that harmonious combination
with them, are two very different things. The which is at once the index and the result of
orderly arrangement of facts in the mind im manly growth. In order to gain the ends I
plies a knowledge of their relation to each have specified, or indeed any considerable
other ; and, if carried out to a certain extent, number of them, it is essential that the studies
furnishes the ground-work for the establish embraced in the training course should be
ment of those general laws which constitute few. We cannot hope to have, in the early
what is properly called science. The knowledge, stage of life, both quantity and quality. In
however, of these mutual relations is gained by giving a preference to the latter, we do but
quiet, earnest brooding over facts, viewing them consult the exigencies of the case. At the
in every kind of light, comparing them care same time, it may be hoped that, because the
fully together for the detection of resemblances aim is to enrich and prepare the soil, the ulti
*
and differences, classifying them, experi mate harvest will be proportionately bountiful.
menting upon them, and so on. Allowing,
I have said that the subjects to be studied
then, to science, properly so called, all in the training course should be few. But I
that can be claimed for it as a con proceed further, and maintain that for the
stituent of the curriculum—and of its im purpose of real discipline it is advisable—nay,
mense value in education I shall have to even necessary—to concentrate the energies
speak presently—we must explode, definitely for a long period together on some one general
and finally, the notion that these valuable subject, and make that for a time the leading
results can be elicited by frittering away the feature, the central study of the course—
powers of the mind on a great variety of keeping others in subordination to it. By
subjects. Nor must we be led away by the giving this degree of prominence to some par
frequently meaningless clamour for “ useful ticular branch of instruction, we may hope to
knowledge.” Knowledge which may be un have it studied to such an extent, so closely,
questionably useful to some persons may so accurately, so soundly, so completely, that
not be useful at all to others; therefore, it may become a real possession to the pupil
although education is to be a preparation —a source of vital power, which the mind
for after life, yet it is to be a general, not “ will not willingly let die.” The concentration
a professional, preparation, and cannot pro of mind and range of research necessary for
vide for minute and special contingencies. this purpose obviously involve many of the
The object of education is to form the man, advantages I have recently enumerated. In
not the baker—the man, not the lawyer—the this way, too, the pupil will become fully con
man, not the civil engineer.
scious of the difference between knowing a
What then, we may now inquire, should be the thing and knowing something about it, and
main features of a training, as distinguished will be forcibly impressed with the superiority
from an accumulating, system of instruction ? of the former kind of knowledge. This con
It should, I conceive, aim at quickening and viction is of no small importance; for it gives
strengthening the powers of observation and him a clear, experimental appreciation of the
memory, and forming habits of careful agency—the measure and kind of intellectual
and persevering attention; it should habitu effort—by which the complete and accurate
ate the pupil to distinguish points of difference knowledge was gained, and thus can hardly
and recognise those of resemblance, to analyse fail to exercise a valuable influence upon his
and investigate, to arrange and classify. It character. He who has learned by experience
should awaken and invigorate the understand the difficulty of obtaining a thorough mastery
ing, mature the reason, chasten while it kindles of a subject, has made no trifling advance in
the imagination, exercise the judgment and re
fine the taste. It should cultivate habits of * The opinion of Locke confirms this view. His
words are:—“ The business of education is not, as I
order and precision, and of spontaneous, inde think, to perfect the learner in any of the sciences,
pendent, and long continued application. It but to give his mind that freedom, and disposition,
and those habits which may enable him to attain
should, in short, be a species of mental gym every part of knowledge himself.” (Some Thoughts
nastics, fitted to draw forth, exercise, invigo concerning Education.)
F
-
�13
the knowledge of himself. He has tested his preceded it; he must also keep it in recollec
power of struggling with difficulties, and ac tion, that he may observe its connection with
quired in the contest that command over his what follows. When he encounters difficulties
faculties, and that habit of sustained and which he cannot at the moment solve, he must
vigorous application, which will ensure success retain them in mind until the clue to their
in any undertaking. He who has only begun solution is gained. He must often retrace his
a study, or advanced but little in it, is a steps with the experience he has acquired in ad
stranger to that consciousness of strength and vancing, and then advance again with the added
range of mental vision which are involved in knowledge gained in his retrogression. It is only
the cultivation of it to a high point. The by thus wrestling—agonising, as it were—with
knowledge, thus thoroughly acquired and pos a subject, that we eventually subdue it, and
sessed as a familiar instrument by the pupil, make it ours, and a part of us. By such or
becomes not only a powerful auxiliary to his analogous processes, constantly and patiently
further attainments, but a high standard to pursued, we rise at last to the highest gene
which he may continually refer them.
*
ralisations ; so that a knowledge of the pheno
One of the chief reasons why the study of one mena of the material world is digested into
thing, one subject, or one book, is so valuable Science, a knowledge of the facts and matter
a discipline, is that the matter thus sub of language is elaborated into Learning, and a
mitted to the mind’s action forms a whole, knowledge and intimate appreciation of the
and by degrees reacts on the mind itself, and facts of human life ripens into Wisdom.
'creates within it the idea of unity and harmony. Everyone will bear me out in the remark,
Suppose, for instance, that we read a book that it is from those few books that we
with the view of thoroughly studying and read most carefully — that we “chew and
mastering it. We find, as a consequence of digest,” to use Bacon’s words—that we pe
the unity of thought and expression pervading ruse again and again with still increasing
it, that one part explains another, that what interest—that we take to our bosom a3 friends
is hinted at in one page is amplified in the and counsellers; it is from these that we are
next, that the matter of the first few sentences is conscious of deriving real nourishment for the
the nucleus (the oak in the acorn, as it were) of mind. Nor is it perhaps rash to assert that
the entire work. Thus the beginning of the book the general tendency, in our day, to dissipate
throws light upon the end, which the end in its the attention on all sorts of books, on all sorts
turn reflectsupon the beginning. He who studies of subjects, which just flash before the mind,
in this way must carefully weigh each word, and excite it for a moment, leave a vague impres
estimate its value in the sentence of which it is sion, and are gone, is stamping a character
a part, and its bearing on those which have upon the age which will render nugatory the
well-meant efforts which have of late been
made for the enlightenment of the popular
* The above argument is powerfully confirmed in
the following passage from an “ Introductory Lecture” mind, and the extension of useful knowledge.
by Professor De Morgan, delivered at University It is, I say, characteristic of the age, that we
College, October 17,1837:—
“ When the student has occupied his time in learn emasculate and enfeeble our powers by the
ing a moderate portion of many different things, vain attempt to know everything which every
what has he acquired—extensive knowledge or useful
habits? Even if he can be said to have varied body else knows ; and learn, in conformity to
learning, it will not long be true of him, for nothing the fashion of the times, even to feel it as a
flies so quickly as half-digested knowledge; and when reproach that we have not “dipped into,” or
this is gone, there remains but a slender portion of
useful power. A small quantity of learning quickly “skimmed over,” or “glanced at” (very
evaporates from a mind which never held any learn significant phrases) all the articles in all the
ing, except in small quantities; and the intellectual
philosopher can perhaps explain the following pheno newspapers, magazines, and reviews of the
menon :—that men who have given deep attention to day. We indolently allow ourselves to be
one or more liberal studies, can learn to the end of
their lives, and are able to retain and apply very carried on, in spite of our silent protest,
small quantities of other kinds of knowledge; while against our real convictions, with the shallow
those who have never learnt much of any one thing tide which is sweeping over the land; and,
seldom acquire new knowledge after they attain to
years of maturity, and frequently lose the greater' inasmuch as we do so, are neutralising the
part of that which they once possessed.” (p. 12.)
real interests of the cause we profess to be
�14
advocating, and preventing the formation
of valuable and useful judgments on any
subject whatever. If you consider with me
that this general dissipation is an evil, you
will also sympathise with the desire to prevent
the organization and establishment of the prin
ciple in the curriculum of elementary education.
A thousand times better, in my opinion, to
have the old hum-drum monotony, the cease
less drill, which ended only in preparing the
faculties to work to some purpose, when they
did work, on the problems of life, than the
counterfeit knowledge which can give an opi
nion on every subject because substantially
uninformed on any.
It is not, perhaps, too much to assert, that
concentration of mind on a few subjects is,
and ever has been, the only passport to excel
lence. All the great literary and scientific
men of all ages, whose opinions we value,
whose judgments are received as the dictates
of wisdom and authority, have acted on the
conviction, that the powers of the mind are
strengthened by concentration, and weakened
by dissipation.
*
The practical inference from the foregoing
remarks is, that in order to train the mind
usefully, concentration, and not accumulation,
must be our guiding principle; in other words,
we must direct the most strenuous efforts of
our pupils to the complete and full comprehen
sion of some one subject as an instrument of
intellectual discipline.
The next consideration, then, is, what the
subject submitted to this accurate and com
plete study ought to be. And here we come
again nearly to the point at which we set out,
and must now for ourselves renew the friendly
strife between the “ trivials” and the “ quadrivials” once more. I say “ friendly,” because
the claims of both are so reasonable, that it
really ought not to be very difficult to adjust
them, and no angry feeling therefore ought to
accompany the discussion. We have left the
theorists behind, and are now to settle such
questions as practical and experienced men,
with reference to their real merits, judicially,
and with some degree of authority.
On the general subject of the curriculum, I
will quote some remarks which I have lately
met with in a pamphlet by an able American
writer, apparently acquainted by experience
with his subject.
*
He is strongly opposed to
what we usually call the Classical System,
but candidly admits that its defenders have
hitherto had greatly the advantage of their
opponents in the line of argument they have
pursued. “Disagree with them,” he says,
“ as you may as to what studies go to make up
a liberal education, you must go to them for a
true definition of that training of mind in
which a liberal education consists.” As he is
one of the ablest advocates of the claims of
science, we may listen to what he says on
its behalf as a part of school education.
He assumes, then, as axioms these following
propositions:—
“1. That in the Science and Art of edu
cation we must study and follow nature,—that
we shall only be successful as far as we do.
“ 2. That there is a certain natural order
in the development of the human faculties ; and
that a true system of education will follow,
not run counter to, that order.
“ 3. That we may divide the faculties of the
mind, for the purposes of education, into
observing and reflective; and that in the order
of development the observing faculties come
first.
* See some very interesting illustrations in
D’Israeli’s “ Curiosities of Literature,” in the essay
entitled, “ The Man of One Book.” To these may be
added, as an instructive, though somewhat extra
vagant, specimen of the non-multa-sed-muUwn
principle advocated in the text, the following, taken
from the “ Foreign Quarterly Review” for 1841:—
“ Porpora, an Italian teacher of music, having
conceived an affection for one of his pupils, asked
him if he had courage to pursue indefatigably a
course which he would point out, however tiresome
it might appear. Upon receiving an answer in the
affirmative, he noted upon a page of ruled paper, the
diatonic and chromatic scales, ascending and descend
ing with leaps of a third, fourth, &c., to acquire the
intervals promptly, with shakes, turns, appoggiature,
and various passages of vocalisation. This leaf
employed master and pupil for a year; the follow
ing year was bestowed upon it; the third year there
was no talk of changing it: the pupil began to
murmur, but was reminded of his promise. A fourth
year elapsed, then a fifth, and every day came the
eternal leaf. At the sixth it was not done with, but
lessons of articulation, pronunciation, and declama
tion were added to the practice. At the end of this
year, however, the scholar, who still imagined that
he was but at the elements, was much surprised
when his master exclaimed, ‘ Go, my son; thou hast
* “ Classical and Scientific Studies, and the Great
nothing more to learn; thou art the first singer of
Italy, and of the world.’ He said true. This singer Schools of England.” By W. P. Atkinson, Cam
bridge (U.S.), 1865.
was Caffarelli.”
�15
“4. That individual minds come into the
wor'd with individual characteristics; often,
in the case of superior minds, strongly marked,
and qualifying them for the more successful
pursuit of some one career, than of any other.
“ 5. That the study of the material world
may be said to be the divinely appointed
instrument for the cultivation and development
of the observing faculties ; while the study of
the immaterial mind, with all that belongs to
it, including the study of language as the
instrument of thought, is the chief agent in
the development of the reflective faculties.”
Speaking in the interests of that reform in
the curriculum which is very decidedly needed,
I would frankly accept these propositions,
though the terms of some of them, especially
those of the fourth and fifth, might give a
caviller a favourable opportunity. Of one
point essentially involved in them, I have no
doubt; and that is, that any rational curriculum
of elementary study must be based on the fact
that the observing, are called into action before
the reflecting, faculties ; in other words, that
the food must be swallowed before it is
digested ; though 1 believe it to be an educa
tional fallacy to maintain that therefore no
food should be swallowed that cannot be
instantly digested. The general consideration
would, however, seem to justify us in carry
ing forward, before anything else is attempted,
the instruction which the child has already
commenced for himself, in the study of the
phenomena of the external world, and in that
of the mother tongue. Professor Tyndall has
shown, in his interesting lecture on the study
of Physics, that even the new-born babe is an
experimental philosopher, and improvises by
instinct a suction-pump to supply himself
with his natural food, and day after day, by
experiment and observation, makes himself
acquainted with the ordinary properties of
matter, acquires the idea of distance, sound,
and gravitation, and so on, and, by burning
his fingers and scalding his tongue, learns
also the conditions of his physical well being.
In this hand-to-mouth way the pupil in the
great school of nature begins his lessons, and
surely it is most natural that he should be
encouraged to continue this self-education,
and, under judicious guidance, he may very
properly be made acquainted with the things
“ which lie about in daily life,” and also be
trained to the study of that proper con
nection between things and words which is
the true basis of a good knowledge of his own
language. Such a course of instruction, such
“ lessons on objects,” will no doubt amuse and
interest the young natural philosopher, and may
be the means of eliciting, even quite early in life,
thosepredilectionsofwhichMr. Atkinson speaks
as the special characteristics of the individual,
and which, in certain cases, may furnish sug
gestions to be afterwards employed in con
ducting his education.
Having arrived at this point in the discus
sion of ray subject, I must make a confession ;
—which, however, is not humiliating, because,
though I have to speak of personal failure, I
am supported by the consciousness of honest
intentions. I have always been fond of
science in every shape, and well remember
the delight with which, when a boy, I
adopted as the pocket companions of my
leisure hours the little volumes of Joyce’s
“ Scientific Dialogues,” and Miss Edge
worth’s charming “ Harry and Lucy.” I
say this to show that in the experiments
which I made in teaching something that
might be called science to young children, I
was working con amore, and with a real desire
to succeed. But I found my young natural
philosophers somewhat difficult to manage.
As long as everything was new, and striking,
and amusing, they were attentive enough :
but as soon as anything like training was
attempted, as soon as I required perfect accu
racy in observing, and careful classification
and retention of results, my popularity waned
astonishingly. They were, for the most part,
satisfied with the attainments which they had
made in the knowledge of the external world
within the first three or four years of their
lives, and did not discover that “craving after
knowledge’’ which, I am told by Mr. Spencer
and others, is always exhibited by children
until it is for ever extinguished by the spectral
display of the Latin grammar, which, like the
famous Medusa’s head, turns every one that
looks at it into stone. According to my own ex
perience, the young natural philosophers gene
rally preferred choosing their own subject of
instruction, and their own arena for the exer
cise ; and that subject was what is usually
called play, and the arena the playground.
It is true enough that there is a great deal to
�]6
be learned of the properties of matter,—resist with this evening. Neither children nor men
ance, elasticity, action and reaction, the com naturally like the difficulties, the drudgery of
position of forces, &c.,—in playing at bat, any subject whatever. No practical teacher
trap, and ball ; but I doubt very much will pretend that they do. Yet these diffi
*
whether there is any natural craving after culties must be overcome, if the subject is to
such knowledge as the final cause of the game. be really learned. But we may test my posi
In general, I must say from experience that tion by reference to music. I might, of course,
it is as possible to make even abstract subjects, indulge in any amount of rhapsody about
such as arithmetic and grammar, quite as music,—its exquisite charms,—its universal
interesting to young children as those parts popularity, and so on,—but what verdict
of science which really call for mental effort, would a jury of little girls give on what is tech
and involve minute accuracy and care. Facts nically termed “practice,”and on the “gram
and phenomena certainly do interest the mar of music”? That “practice,” however, and
young; but science, as such, the knowledge of that “grammar, ” are the very foundation of the
the relations between them, does not. Practical excellent performance which so delights our
teachers are well aware of this fact, which ears and our taste, and without the one we
theoretical writers too often forget, or, most absolutely cannot have the other. I wonder,
indeed, whether, if we could collect all the
probably, do not know.
Because children attending a lecture on tears which have been shed by children re
natural science open their eyes very wide, and spectively learning the Latin grammar and
look intensely interested when they hear a the piano in two separate receptacles, the
loud bang, or see some of those striking ex music lachrymatory would not contain the
periments performed—often in a sort of a la\ larger quantity. And yet music is so delight
Stodare fashion—which form the stock-in- ful, and the Latin grammar so horridly dis
trade of the lecturer on, say oxygen and agreeable 1 To return, however, to my main
hydrogen gases, it is too hastily concluded argument.
that that would be the normal condition of
The early stage of life is doubtless the most
their attention to the science of chemistry in suitable time for improving and exercising
general. Look, however, at the same children the natural faculty of observation, and much
when the lecturer takes his chalk in hand, may be done at this time in preparing the
and endeavours, by a diagram of very simple mind for the great benefit which the proper
character, to make them understand the study of science is to confer upon it. But I
causes of the phenomena. The lack-lustre must protest against dignifying the desultory
eyes and the yawning mouth very soon tell us scraps of information thus acquired — the
that what we just witnessed was simple excite results of the process of taking up one sub
ment, a matter of the senses, nerves, and ject after another to keep the child in good
muscles mainly, and being connected with humour — the cakes and honey supplied
amusement, and therefore involving no mental to sweeten the youthful lips—by the name
exertion, caught the attention for an instant, of science; nor do I feel inclined to think
but was not in itself an element of mental that we have at last reached the long-sought
improvement. The moment the mind was desideratum in teaching, when a band of chil
called on, it obeyed the summons with just dren, in all the frolic and fun belonging to
as much alacrity as it usually displays their nature, gather handfuls of flowers, and run
when invited to dissect a diagram of up to the teacher to ask the names of them, and
Euclid. The assertion, that, as a general —to forget them as soon as named.
*
How
rule (and independently of the all-important ever, if this is science, I would certainly teach
question of what sort of a man the teacher is), it in the early stage of instruction. Children
children love science and hate language, is generally like this desultory style of skipping
another fallacy of the same kind as those
* Mr. Henslow’s interesting experiments in teach
we have been already so liberally dealing ing village children accomplished much more than
this; and, indeed, proves the applicability of the sub
* Thia is very pleasantly exemplified in Dr. Paris’s ject to the wants of the early stage of education. (See
Museum, vol. iii. p. 4, and Educational Times, Nov.,
ingenious little book, “Philosophy in Sport made
Science in Earnest.”
I860.)
�17
from subject to subject. It stimulates their
senses, brings them into contact with nature
herself in the open air, interests them in
her glorious variety and boundless fulness,
and thus supplies happy emotions; it calls
for little exertion on their part, does not
“bother their brains,” and is rarely the occasion
of tears or punishments.
*
If this is science, I
would teach it as a part of the training of the
observing faculties, a discipline which has been
too much neglected by the ordinary systems
and in the hands of a judicious teacher, out of
these random efforts real instruction may grow;
and the bricks thrown together in a heap, and
so far valueless, may, under the genial influ
ence of the educational Ainphion, rise up, like
the walls of the fabulous Thebes, into the form
of a harmonious fabric.
We must not, however, forget that our young
philosopher, who has learnt so much by him
self in the first two or three years of his life
by exercising his faculty of observation, also
developes, in the same space of time, eminent
powers as a linguist; and if we follow nature
in aiding and encouraging his researches in the
one field, it appears quite right to do the same
in the other. Indeed, the two faculties are
exactly adapted to assist each other ; for not
withstanding all that is said about the learning
of things as opposed to the learning of words,
there is a sense in which they are one and the
same, and it is very curious to see how Mr.
Spencer, for instance, in describing what he
evidently considers model lessons in elementary
science, speaks as if a great part of the object of
these lessons was to teach the accurate mean
ing of words. “The mother,” he says, “must
familiarize her little boy with the names of the
simpler attributes, hardness, softness, colour; in
* It is well, too, to encourage children to make
eollections of leaves, butterflies, Deetles, &c. Every
thing should be done to make the connexion
between teacher and pupils pleasant for both; and
therefore sympathy should be warmly evinced in
such pursuits as these. Professor Blackie has well
expressed these views in the following passage from
a lecture delivered in Latin, at the Marischal College,
Aberdeen:—“ Exeant in campos pneri, fluminum
cursus vestigent, in montes adscendant; saxa, lapides,
arbores, herbas, flores notent, et notando amare
discant; oculis non vagis, fluitantibus et somniculosis, sed apertis, Claris, firmis; auribus non obtusis
incertisque sed erectis atque accuratis rerum varietatem percipiant.” (De Latinarum literarum proestantia atque utititate, p. 13.)
t See Appendix, note B.
doing which she finds him eagerly help by
bringing this to show that it is red, and the
other to make her feel that it is hard, as fast
as she gives him words for these properties.”
There is much more to the same purport, which
I have no time to quote. But is it not singular
that so ingenious a man does not see that this
process, which he lauds so highly, is only a
sensible way of teaching, not science merely,but
the mother-tongue? The teacher is trying to get
the pupil to attach clear ideas to the use of
words; and, while professing to despise the
teaching of words, is in reality doing little
else; for words are, in a well understood sense,
the depositories of the knowledge, spirit, and
wisdom of a nation.
*
I am perfectly aware
that the pupil, while thus engaged, is learning
much more than mere words ; but I maintain
that he is also learning words while he is
learning things, and that the antithesis so
much insisted on is more specious than real.
However this may be, I quite approve of these
lessons on things, or lessons on words, which
ever they may be called, as a part of the ele
mentary stage of instruction, which may be
practically considered as terminating at twelve
years of age.
But this stage is also the most suitable for
learning the use of a foreign tongue, and, there
fore, to the elementary subjects which must,
as a matter of course, come into the cur
riculum—reading, writing, arithmetic, taught
at first by palpable objects, or counters;
geography, commencing with the topography
of the house and parish in which the pupil
lives ; history, made picturesque by oral teach
ing in such a way as to arrest the attention
and stimulate the imagination ; lessons on
objects as introductory to the rudiments of
science; word-lessons,t gradually extended
from the names of material objects to those of
moral and intellectual notions—should be added
the study of French. The lessons in this lan
guage should be eminently practical; accurate
pronunciation should be insisted on, and as
* He who completely knows a word knows all
that that word is or ever was intended to convey, its
etymological origin, its first meaning as fixed in the
language, its subsequent history, its varying for
tunes, and the idea it suggests to various classes of
persons.
f Hints for such lessons might be gained from
Wood’s Account of the Edinburgh Sessional School;
but better ones can easily be framed.
C
�18
rapidly as possible the actual practice secured. the Curriculum ; and henceforth the develop
This is the main point. At no period of life ment of the reflective faculties, and the acquisi
will so good an opportunity be found' for tion of habits of industry and hard work, are
doing this in an easy, natural way. The the main objects to be kept in view. This is
organs are in a flexible condition, the ear to be especially the stage of discipline ; disci
is apt at catching, the mouth at imitating, pline by means of Science (including Mathe
sounds ; and without even talking of grammar matics) and Language. The question now is,
(should such talk seem very alarming) a true which shall take the lead.
Vitiation into the language may be gained.
Science may, for our present purpose, be
All that has now been suggested appears to defined to be the knowledge of the laws of
be quite consistent with the principle above nature, as gained by reflection on facts which
recommended, of continuing the exercise of the have been previously arranged in an orderly and
faculties of observation and imitation already methodical manner in the mind, in accordance
commenced by nature.
with their natural relation to each other.
Such rudimentary lessons in science as have Every one must see that such a subject as
been proposed above, do not appear to involve this affords abundant scope for a life-long, and
much strict mental discipline ; nor do I believe, not merely a school, education. Considering,
for reasons which will presently be suggested, too, that this knowledge is not only deeply
that true science can advantageously be studied interesting in itself, but, being gained for the
by very young pupils.
*
There is, however, one very purpose of diffusion, adds greatly to the
subject, which might, perhaps, be taken as sum of human happiness and prosperity, the
the disciplinary study of the elementary stage, motives to its pursuit are indeed transcendantly
and with the greatest advantage. That sub powerful, so that it must be a matter of great
ject is Arithmetic, which, ifjudiciously taught, concern to all to secure for those who are to
involves a genuine mental discipline of the pursue it, even in a subordinate degree, a worthy
most valuable kind ; and though really abstract training.
in its nature, is capable of exciting the live
If science, then, is to constitute a real
liest interest, while it forms in the pupil habits discipline for the mind, much, nay every
of mental attention, argumentative sequence, thing, will depend on the manner in which
absolute accuracy, and satisfaction in truth as it is studied. In the first place, it is to be re
a result, that do not seem to spring equally membered that (to use the oft-quoted phrase)
from the study of any other subject suitable to the pupil is about to study things, not words ;
this elementary stage of instruction.
and therefore treatises on science are not to be
At twelve years of age the pupil may be in the first instance placed before him. He
considered as entering on the second stage of must commence with the accurate examination
(for which he has been partially prepared by
* It is only fair to place in view here the opinions the first stage of instruction) of the objects and
on this point of Dr. Carpenter and Mr. Faraday, to
whose judgment on any subject great deference is phenpmena themselves, not of descriptions of
due; only adding, that I should attach more value to1 them prepared by others. By this means not
their opinions on teaching men, to which they are |
accustomed, than on teaching children, to which, as only will his attention be excited, the power
far as I know, they are not accustomed. In this of observation, previously awakened, much
matter as in others referred to before (see p. I strengthened, and the senses exercised and
13), going through with a thing is very different
from merely beginning it, or touching it at special disciplined, but the very important habit of
selected points. Have these gentlemen taught children doing homage to the authority of facts
hour after hour, year after year?
“ At ten years old a boy [and therefore the average rather than to the authority of men, be initiated.
of boys] is quite capable of understanding a very These different objects and phenomena may be
large proportion of what is set down for matricula
tion at the London University under the head of placed and viewed together, and thus the
Natural Philosophy.” (Dr. Carpenter's Evidence mental faculties of comparison and discrimina
before Commission on Public Schools, vol. iv. p. 364.) tion usefully practised. They may, in the next
. “ I would teach a little boy of eleven years of age
ft. e. the average boys of eleven?] of ordinary intel place, be methodically arranged and classified,
ligence, all these things that come before classics and thus the mind may become accustomed to
in this programme of the London University, i. e.
mechanics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, optics,” &c. an orderly arrangement of its knowledge.
(Mr. Faraday's Evidence, vol. iv.p. 378.)
Then tlie accidental may be distinguished from
�19
the essential, the common from the special, and
so the habit of generalization may be acquired ;
and lastly, advancing from effects to causes,
or conversely from principles to their necessary
conclusions, the pupil becomes acquainted
with induction and deduction—processes of
the highest value and importance. Every one
will allow that such a course as this,
faithfully carried out, must prove to be a
very valuable training. It would not, in
deed, discipline the mind so closely as pure
mathematics, yet its range is wider, and
it is more closely connected with human in
terests and feelings. It is no small advantage,
too, that it affords, both in its pursuit and its
results,—both in the chase and the capture,—
a very large amount of legitimate and generous
mental pleasure, and of a kind which the pupil
will probably be desirous of renewing for himself
after he has left school. After all, however, it
will be observed that, while the study of the
physical sciences tends to give power over the
material forces of the universe, it leaves un
touched the greater forces of the human heart;
it makes a botanist, a geologist, an electrician,
an architect, an engineer, but it does not make
a man. The hopes, the fears, the hatreds and
the loves, the emotions which stir us to heroic
action, the reverence which bows in the presence
of the inexpressibly good and great; the sen
sitive moral taste which shrinks from vice and
approves virtue ; the sensitive mental taste,
which appreciates the sublime and beautiful
in art, and sheds delicious tears over the
immortal works of genius—all this wonderful
world of sensation and emotion lies outside
that world which is especially cultivated by
the physical sciences. This is no argument,
of course, against their forming a proper, nay
an essential, part of the curriculum, but it is an
argument against their taking the first place.
They are intimately’connected, of course, with
our daily wants and conveniences. The study
of them cultivates in the best way the faculties
of observation, and leads naturally to the for
mation in the mind of the idea of natural law,
and so ultimately to investigations and sugges
tions of a very high order, in the pursuit of which
it is sought to define the shadowy boundary be
tween mind and matter, or to reveal to present
time the long buried secrets of the past. But
in order to attain at last these eminent heights
of science, the preliminary training must be
rigorous and exact. It must embrace the
difficult as well as the pleasing and amusing
—that which requires close and long-con
tinued attention as well as that which only
ministers to a transient curiosity. It must
be based on the “ firm ground of experi
ment,” and be ind .pendent of mere book study,
which, it has been well observed, is, in rela
tion to science, only as valuable, in the absence
of the facts, as a commentary on the Iliad
would be to him who had never read the poem.
We may assent then, on the whole, without
hesitation, to the wise and careful judgment
passed on the study of physical science as a part
of the Curriculum by the Public School Com
missioners in their report. “ It quickens,’’they
say, “ and cultivates directly, the faculty of ob
servation, whichin very many personslies almost
dormant through life, the power of accurate and
rapid generalisation, and the mental habit of
method and arrangement; it accustoms young
persons to trace the sequence of cause and effect;
it familiarizes them with a kind of reasoning
which interests them, and which they can
promptly compreheud ; and it is perhaps the
best corrective for that indolence which is the
vice of half-awakened minds, and which shrinks
from any exertion that is not, like an effort of
memory, merely mechanical.” In spite, then,’
of Dr. Moberly’s denunciation of such studies as
“worthless,” and as “giving no power” in edu
*
cation, 1 maintain that it is utterly impos
sible to exclude a subject with pretensions like
these from our curriculum. They must and will
occupy a considerable space in it—they deserve
to do so. For reasons, however, already stated,
I would not give them the post of the highest
distinction, which ought to be reserved for the
studies which exercise, not special faculties,
but the whole man ; not the man as a profes
sional and with a utilitarian end in view, but
as a citizen of the world, as one who is to
meet his fellow men and to influence their
decisions upon the difficult and complicated
problems of society.!
* “ In a school like this (Winchester), I consider
instruction in physical science, in the way in which
we can give it, is worthless......... A scientific fact....
is a fact which produces nothing in a boy’s mind....
It leads to nothing. It does not germinate; it is a
perfectly unfruitful fact..........These things give no
power whatever.” (Evidence before Commission on
Public Schools, vol. Hi. p. 344.)
f See Dr. Johnson’s opinion, Appendix C.
�20
Some think that pure mathematics should
occupy this central post of honour. A
moment’s consideration, however, will show
that the study of algebra, geometry, the
calculus, <fcc., not only does not embrace
those topics of common interest which are
essential for our purpose; but has a special
and limited office to perform — I mean, of
course, independently of their practical appli
cations. Lord Bacon has judiciously summed
up their special functions. “ They do,” he
says, “ remedy and cure many defects in the
wit and faculties intellectual ; for if the wit be
too dull, they sharpen it; if too wandering, they
fix it ; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract
it. So that, as tennis is a game of no use of
itself, but of great use in respect it maketh a
quick eye, and a body ready to put itself into
all postures ; so with mathematics, that use
which is collateral and intervenient is no less
worthy than that which is principal and in
tended.” These words aptly characterise the
advantages of the study of mathematics, and
point out their proper office in education.
They cannot, from their very nature, exercise
a formative power over the whole mind ; but
they are very profitably employed in correcting
certain defects, and in teaching, as scarcely
anything else can teach, habits of accu
racy. They call into play but few of the
faculties ; but these they exercise rigorously,
and therefore usefully. It has been objected
to them, that when pursued to any considerable
extent, without the counterpoise of more gene
ral studies, they become particularly exclusive
and mechanical in their influence; but this
perhaps can hardly be considered as an essen
tial characteristic. On the whole, however, it
can scarcely be maintained that mathematics
will serve as the basis we require for our educa
tional operations, though no education can be
considered as complete which excludes them.
Having then shown that, notwithstand
ing the great value both of physics and of
mathematics in education, they are too special
in their application to serve as the central
subject in our curriculum, we turn once more
to language, and especially to the Latin lan
guage which I should propose as the exer
cising ground best adapted for the intellectual
drilling of our young soldier. Greek, in the
case of those whose school education is to
terminate at sixteen years of age, must, I
think, be displaced in favour of the prac
tical claims of German. This concession, and
this only, would I recommend making to pub
lic opinion. And it is the less necessary to con
test this point, as nearly all the disciplinary
advantages which so eminently characterise the
study of the classical languages may be gained
from the study of Latin alone. It may then,
I conceive, be fairly maintained that the
place which classical instruction holds in the
curriculum of English education is not due
to prejudice, as some believe; nor to ignorance
of what is going on in society around us, as
others pretend; but to a well-judged estimate
of its importance and value as a discipline for
the youthful mind, and as an element of the
highest rank among the civilising influences of
the world.
This study may be considered under two
aspects, the language itself and its literature.
My first proposition is that the study of the
Latin language itself does eminently discipline
the faculties, and secure, to a greater degree than
that of the other subjects we have discussed,
the formation and growth of those mental
qualities which are the best preparatives for
the business of life—whether that business is
to consist in making fresh mental acquisitions,
or in directing the powers, thus strengthened
and matured, to professional or other pursuits.
Written language consists of sentences, and
sentences of words. In commencing the study
of a language, we may consider these words
as things, which we have to investigate and
analyse. They possess many qualities in
common with natural objects, and may be
therefore treated in a somewhat similar way.
They have material qualities; they can be
seen — they can be named (their sound is
their name)—they can be compared together
—their resemblances and differences discrimi
nated, and arrangements or classifications of
them made in accordance with observed simi
larity or difference in form. The memory,
too, is practically and systematically exer
cised. The paradigms of inflexions must be
accurately learnt by heart, and so familiarly
known that the constant comparison between
them as standards, and the varying forms
which arise for interpretation, may be spon
taneous and easy. And these acts of com
parison are themselves of great value, and
tend to cultivate accuracy of judgment: the
�21
very blunders made are instructive: the half when placed in juxtaposition with words
perception induced by indolence must be of our language, or when viewed in connec
corrected by increased labour. The attempt tion with cognates of their own, capable of
at evasion ends in a more complete reception ; affording vivid illustrations of the methods
hence a moral as well as a mental lesson. Thus, and artifices by which languages are formed.
acts of attention, observation, memory, and Hence arise exercises in derivation, or tracing
judgment are called forth; and these acts, by of words up to their roots, and in analysis,
being performed numberless times, grow into or breaking up the compounds into their
habits. Again, these words can be analysed, several components. These exercises in deri
separated into their component parts, and these vation cultivate moreover, when properly car
parts severally examined, and their functions ried out, the habit of deducing the secondary
ascertained. Conversely, we may employ the and figurative senses of words from the pri
synthetic process. We may fashion these mary and literal. Such an exercise leads the
elements in conformity with some given model, pupil beyond the boundaries of mere language.
and thus adapt them to some given end. By In pursuing it, he learns to study the mode
closer investigation and comparison, affinities in which the early stages of society formed
before unperceived are traced and appreciated, their conceptions, and to notice how, as
the transformation of letters detected, and civilization advanced, the language too bore
the foundation laid for the science of Philo evidence of the change. Thus the word guberlogy. It should be observed, that all these nare primarily means to pilot a vessel; second
operations or experiments (for so they may be arily, to direct the vessel of the state, to
*
called) are performed on facts—on objects (a govern
But words, in themselves vital organisms,
word is as much an object as a flower)
directly exposed to observation; that they are though frequently the life is rather latent than
at the same time simple in their nature, and visible, are also to b3 considered in their com
though requiring minute attention, and so bination in sentences. Their vitality now
forming the habit of accuracy, are evidently becomes intensified. The original author,
within the competency of a child. It is no speaking to men of his own nation, and aptly
small advantage that the means of training employing the resources of his craft, had by
the mind to such habits are always within a kind of intellectual magnetism converted
reach, and available to an unlimited extent; the neutral and indifferent into the active and
and not, as is often the case with respect to significant, and constrained all to cooperate in
physical objects, adapted to elicit somewhat effecting his great purpose of speaking out to
similar exertions, obtained with difficulty, and other minds. And there before the eyes of
therefore, perhaps, only heard of, and not seen. our pupil is the result. But it does not speak
But the attention of the pupil, at times out to him. That sentence, beginning with a
necessarily occupied with the accidents or in capital and ending with a full stop, is a body
flexions—the characteristic point of difference with a soul in it, with which he has to com
between his own and the Latin language—is municate. But how to do this? His eye
at others directed especially to what we may passes over it. It looks unattractive, dark,
call the being of each word, the idea which it and cold. Soon, however, something is seen
is intended to convey or suggest. And now in the words or their inflexions, which he
these words, lately treated as simply material, recognises, by a kind of momentary flash, as
inanimate, and dead—anatomical “ subjects” significant. The soul within begins to speak
—are to be considered as invested with a kind to him ; and he catches some faint conception
of physiological interest, and as exhibiting
* Tnis
phenomena of life whose nature it becomes interestingsort of investigation, often opens a very
field of inquiry. Thus the word virtue,
important to study. Our pupil’s interest in in different stages of the Roman history, meant suc
cessively, active physical courage or manhood, and
them, viewed under this aspect, cannot but be
active moral courage, or virtue ; while later, in
much augmented. Words are now no longer Rome’s comparatively degenerate days, virtu signified
things merely, but significant symbols of ideas. a taste for the fine arts! a pregnant commentary on
people. That people, however,
These little organisms, in one sense mere the character of the has already begun to restore the
it may be remarked,
torpid aggregations of matter, are in another, original meaning of the word.
�22
of what it would reveal. As he still gives heed, described, can only be accomplished by <5ne
other points show symptoms of life, and the who is armed with grammatical power. With
lately brute and torpid mass becomes vocal out this, the efforts made to communicate with
and articulate. One after another the words the soul of the author must be feeble and
kindle into expression ; clause after clause is ineffectual. It is one of the special objects of
disentangled from its connection with the the course I am advocating, to cultivate this
main body of the sentence, and appreciated faculty, because in doing so we are in fact cul
both separately and in combination, until at tivating to a high degree the reasoning powers
length a thrill of intelligence pervades the of the pupil. The construction of words in a
whole, and the passage, before dark, inani sentence does not depend upon arbitrary laws,
mate, and unmeaning, becomes instinct with but upon right reason, upon the exact cor
light and life.
respondence between expression and thought,
By these and similar processes, which it is and therefore “ good grammar,” as has been
needless to specify, the pupil learns to apprehend well observed, “ is neither more nor less than
his author’s meaning, though perhaps at first good sense.”*
only obscurely. The next stage in his training
A wise teacher—one who wishes to quicken,
is to find wordsand phrases in his native tongue and is anxious not to deaden, his pupil’s mind—
suited to express it. To do this adequately, he will not, of course, force upon him those indi
must not only ascertain the meaning of each gestible boluses, the technical rules and defini
term, but conceive fully and correctly all the tions of syntax, before training him to observe
propositions that constitute a complete sen the facts on which the rules are founded ; but
tence, in their natural connection and interde will accustom him to the habit of reasoning only
pendence ; he must observe the bearing of the in the presence offacts, which is so valuable
previous sentences on the one under considera at all times. The habit of reasoning on the
tion, and the ultimate point to which all are construction, the syntax of one language, is,
tending. Now, in order to convey perfectly of course, generally applicable to others ; and
to others the meaning, which he has himself its practice in connection with Latin tends by
laboriously acquired, he must not only have an amount of experience which countervails
made an exact logical analysis of the sentence, all theory, to prepare the pupil for learning
so as to see what he has to say, but must his own language thoroughly.
exercise his judgment and taste (not to say
In addition to the grammatical advantage
knowledge) on the choice of words and just named, there are two others I would men
phrases which will best answer the purpose, tion, which prove that learning Latin is a
and truly represent the clearness, energy, or good preparation for the better knowledge of
eloquence of the author. To do this fault the mother tongue. The one is, that as so large
lessly requires of course the matured judg a part of the vocabulary of the English lan
ment and refined taste of the accomplished guage is derived from the Latin, either directly,
scholar; but the very effort involved in the or indirectly through the French, no accurate
attempt to grasp the spirit of the author, to study of the former can be accomplished
rise to the elevation of his thoughts, and to gain without a fundamental knowledge of Latin.
the sympathy of others for them by an ade According to Archbishop Trench, thirty per
quate and worthy representation of them in
his native language, cannot but elevate his
* As the analysis of sentences is now become a
own mental stature. “ We strive to ascend,
regular part of the study of English in all good
and we ascend in our striving.”
schools, I would strongly recommend its also being
The advantages of such a course as I have made ancillary in the study of Latin. Lessons on
a sentence,
and
now sketched must be acknowledged to be the essential elements of predicative,on “subject” and
“predicate,” and on the
attributive,
very great, although only the language is as other relations (such as may be found admirably dis
Mason English Grammar),
form
yet under consideration. But there are two or played in of the ’steaching of Latin, asshould do of
the basis
they
three other points that must not be omitted. English, syntax. Their application to Caesar, Cicero,
The first of these is the value of the strict or Virgil, would be not only most valuable in itself
as mental training, but would greatly lessen the diffi
grammatical analysis required. The process culties felt by a boy in dealing with complicated
of eliciting light out _of darkness, before constructions which are new-Jto him.
�23
cent, of the vocabulary actually used by our
authors is derived from the Latin; and the
proportion is still greater, if we analyse the
columns of our English dictionary, where the
words are what is called “ at rest.” Indeed,
to so great a degree have we admitted these
aliens into our language, that we have learnt
to attach Latin prefixes and suffixes to pure
English roots, so as to form new and hybiid
compounds. But further,—and this point is
less obvious than that just adduced,—as almost
all our greatest authors were trained in the clas
sical school, both their vocabulary and phrase
ology, their language and their thoughts,
bear a characteristic stamp upon them which
can only be fully appreciated by those who
have undergone a similar training. It is not too
much to say that many exquisite graces, both
of thought and expression, in the works of
Bacon, Milton, Sir T. Brown, Jeremy Taylor,
Sir W. Temple, Gray, Young, Cowper, and
others, must elude the notice—and so far fail in
their object—of a reader not qualified to meet
the authors as it were on their own ground.
*
And may I add that, as far as my own observa
tion goes, by far the most enthusiastic lovers
of our own language and literature are the
votaries of classical learning. They love more
because they can appreciate better.
But it will be thought that I have sufficiently
pleaded the cause of Latin as fai as the lan
*
guage is concerned. I must, therefore, devote a
few words to its literature. In a course such as
I have proposed, and which I would commence
at 12, with the idea of carrying it on up to
the age of 16, and employing in it half the
hours of every school day, and which would
comprehend, besides the study of the lan
guage, such cultivation of geography, history,
* Examples are numberless: just three or four
occur at this moment. Take Milton—
“ Satan exalted sat, by merit raised
To that bad eminence.”—(Par. Lost, ii. 5.)
“ The undaunted fiend what this might be admired ;
Admired, not feared.”—(Par. Lost, ii. 677.)
“ That wise and civil Roman, Julius Agricola.”
(Areopagitica.)
“ Sadness does, in some cases, become aChristian, as
being an index of a pious mind, of compassion, and a
wise, proper resentment of things.”—(Jeremy Taylor.)
‘‘ Prevent us, 0 Lord, with thy most gracious favour.”
(Book of Common Prayer.)
“ This proud man affects imperial sway.”—(Dryden.)
It is obvious that a mere English scholar, unedu
cated in classics, would not, of himself, see the exact
meaning of the words in italics.
archaeology, <fcc., as would be required for the
elucidation of the text, and also the parallel
study of English literature, we could not hope
to read many authors. Indeed, faithful to
the principle, multum non multa, I would not
even attempt it. A selection of the best might
be made, to be studied on the principle that
they were to be actually known, not merely
“ gone through,”* by means of which not only
would the pupil profit by the invigorating dis
cipline I have described, but be subjected to
the enlarging and refining influence which
would place him in communion with some of
the master spirits of antiquity, and therefore
give him an introduction to those great authors
of all modern times whose labours have tended
to form the civilization of Europe. In no
other way can he so well be introduced to the
commonwealth of letters, and be made free
to avail himself of its privileges. The fact
that these finished works of literary art still
survive amongst us, as real substantial powers
whose influence cannot be gainsaid, is a won
drous proof of their merit as models of com
position. They present us with histories which
still enlighten and instruct men in the art of
government, with oratory which still speaks
in trumpet tones to the human heart, with
poetry still “musical as is Apollo’s lute”; in
short, with matter which, however now dispar
aged, has served in successive ages both to
furnish men with thoughts, and to teach them
how to think; so that in truth, though styled
dead, they are, in the highest sense, ever liv
ing ; having (to use Hobbes’s eloquent expres
sion) “ put off flesh and blood, and put on
immortality.”
But I must pass in review a few of the
objections commonly taken against the posi
tions I have maintained in this paper.
1st. Some object to the very principle of a
central or fundamental study, and denounce it
as a fundamental fallacy. Since it is admitted,
they say, that it is not so much the subject as
the manner of learning it that constitutes the
discipline, one subject is as good as another ;
and as it is a matter of great importance to
interest the pupil, we had better adopt sub
jects pro re nata, which seem likely to accom
plish that object, without respect to their rank
in the circle of knowledge. We may thus se
* See Appendix, D.
�cure the object in view without the difficulty,
perplexity, hard work, and sometimes even
tears, which are attendant on a stricter disci
pline, and which often set the pupil against
learning altogether. To refute this objection,
I should have to repeat much of my previous
argument, in which you will remember I con
tended for the upholding of one subject, or at
least very few subjects, on the principle that
while, with regard to some, we may be con
tented with a general knowledge, there should
be one at least which should be learned as well
as possible, and serve as a sort of standard of
comparison. I accept, however, these objec
tions as valid, on condition that those who
uphold them will promise that their pupils
shall not shirk the drudgery, the drill, which
must be undergone in the learning of any sub
ject whatever, and which often constitutes the
most valuable part of the process; that in
teaching music they will strictly require the
“ practice” and also the “grammar of music
in teaching languages, perfect grammatical
analysis; in teaching science, rigidly close
attention to details, however irksome, and
to every step of the reasoning properly de
duced from them. If the objectors accept
this test, they surrender the position that the
study is to be accommodated to the pupil, and
therefore tacitly allow the principle of a train
ing subject; if they do not, they are driven
back upon the Chrestomathic curriculum, and
the idea of real education, as I understand the
term, is given up.
2nd. It is maintained that if a leading sub
ject is desirable, modem languages, or our
jown, would more usefully occupy that position.
First, with regard to the modern languages.
Their eminent claims to a high place in our
curriculum are at once admitted. They have a
great practical value as languages; and their
literatures are brilliant and attractive, and
fraught with modern interest. Both French
and German, too, have affinities with English,
the one as being a daughter of that paternal
stock from which we derive so much, and the
other as belonging to the great Teutonic
family of languages, of which ours is also a
member. Then, in consequence of the in
creasing intercourse between nations, they are
becoming every day more and more useful;
and lastly, involving as they do many of the
advantages claimed for Latin, they are much
more easily and rapidly acquired; These are
valid reasons for admission into the curriculum,
but not for taking the leading place in it. As
to French, so many of its words resemble our
own, and its construction is apparently so
simple and transparent, that a pupil is
tempted to guess or scramble at the meaning,
rather than carefully approach it by thought
ful consideration, as he must do in Latin.
Without dwelling on this as an evil in itself,
I must insist on it as a great disadvantage in
a training subject. A certain amount of
resistance, enough to encourage effort, and not
enough to intimidate, is an advantage rather
than otherwise to the pupil. It serves to detain
him awhile in face of the difficulty, and gives
him the opportunity of estimating both it and
the resources with which past experience has
furnished him for its solution, and thus trains
the mind to encounter successfully other diffi
culties. On the other hand, as we avowedly
learn French and German more for practical
than literary purposes, more as means than
ends, the less resistance we meet with, the
more rapid the acquisition, the better. The
training subject is, however, in a certain sense,
the end itself; and losing time in acquiring
it may be an ultimate gain. The same general
remarks apply, though less strictly, to Ger
man, which I have recommended as a sub
stitute for Greek.
Secondly, as to the claims of English to
occupy the leading place. The main objec
tion to this claim, as far as the language
itself is concerned, is that we are, as is some
times said of a material object, too near to see
it. We must stand at some distance from it,
in order to comprehend its form and features,
or, which is often easier, study the form and
features of something else of the same kind,
and then apply the knowledge thus gained to
the case in point. Those who ask us to study
the general principles of grammar, by the
acknowledgment of all so valuable, in our
own language first, pretend that they are
substituting the easy for the difficult; but it
is not so. The real difficulty is to abstract the
clear and transparent medium in which our
ideas circulate, and to view it by itself. So
with the study of human nature; obvious as
it seems to look at home, to know ourselves,
to watch the operations of our own hearts and
minds, yet general experience admits that it
�25
is far easier to gather its principles from valuable, so indispensable, as a means to the
observing the actions of other men projected, end they have in view, the attainment of com
as it were, before our view, and favourably plete command over them, that they recommend
adapted for our examination. Our own lan constant repetition of the same exercise until
guage, then, is to be the object, rather than it is thoroughly mastered, rather than rapid
the means, of our pupil’s training. Through advancement to the next stage of knowledge;
out his entire course his training in another so that for a while—to the horror of the objec
language is preparing him most effectually to tors just quoted—they treat the means as if
learn his own, and the practical application of they were the end. The usual success of this
the disciplinary power should keep pace with policy may perhaps be allowed to pass as an
its attainment.
argument for its continuance. This view, of
Another objection against the spirit of the course, does not satisfy those who think that
method I would recommend has been taken, everything should be made pleasant to a child
and may be deserving of a brief treatment. —that he should have no experience of diffi
It is said that much of what I have described culty, or trial, or ennui.
*
Such is not, how
is simply “drill,” and that it is absurd to ever the spirit of the old system. We con
expend a great amount of labour on mental sider that the man who has not encountered
gymnastics, merely for the sake of the dis and overcome difficulties is only half a man.
cipline, while, by taking up a more suitable Nor would we be so little friendly to the child
subject, we may get both discipline and know as to remove them all from his path, and
ledge together. Why, says the objector, make leave him unwarned and unprepared for those
a postman, who has to walk about all day, go which he must meet with in his journey through
through a preliminary drill every morning, life. If the result of the training be that the
since he gets his exercise in his work ? And pupil comes forth from it firm in mind and
*
the argument seems to be, that exercise for limb, robust and well developed, in perfect
the direct purpose of developing power, which health and capable of enduring fatigue, we
may be developed by ordinary action, is un may be well contented with these as the results
desirable. Without attempting a full reply of the process that he has gone through.
to this objection, I would however suggest,
And now, before closing my paper, I would
in the first place, that, if logically carried out, make a few remarks on the pretensions of
it would abolish education altogether. If the science to supersede—for that is what some re
ordinary spontaneous action is sufficient, teach formers aim at—the classical training of our
ing is tyranny, for it implies that the pupil schools. I have shown my appreciation of the
must be constrained. Why not allow the great value of science, not only in itself, but
child to wander about and play from morning as a means of education; but I confess that I
to night, ‘ ‘ at his own sweet will ’ ’ ? His senses have not, never having been enlightened on this
and his thoughts will be employed in some way point, a clear idea of the manner in which it
or another, and practice will make perfect. is to be taught, so as to be a real mental dis
No teacher, however, adopts such principles cipline in schools. Those gentlemen—one of
as these, nor are they worthy of serious refu whom we proudly include in the governing
tation. Secondly, I would remark that the body of our College — who a few years
practice of all professed trainers, whether of
men or animals, refutes the objection. In
* This too is one of the notions of Mr. Spencer.
order to make a soldier, it is generally thought Everything is to be made easy and delightful. He
forgets that this is not really consistent with his own
well to keep him on the parade-ground a long idea of education as a preparation for life. A prac
time, doing goose or other steps, which he is tical teacher would remind him of the established
not to use at all after the training is over. So dictum, On ne s'instruit pas era s’amusant. Every
study is, indeed, to be rendered interesting to the
it is with music, dancing, riding, rowing, and pupil. The work of the teacher fails if he does not
other accomplishments, in which the training accomplish this. The apt teacher, however, succeeds,
not by amusing his pupil, but by sympathising with
exercises are the essence of the teaching. The him, and thus gaining his confidence—by under
teachers of these arts consider practice so standing and entering into his difficulties—by en
* See Atkinson’s pamphlet, before quoted, p. 33.
couraging him with word or look, when he is puzzled,
—never intruding help when it is not needed, never
withholding it when it is.
�26
ago, at the Royal Institution, pleaded so noble, aspirations. But the question returns,
eloquently the claims of chemistry, physics, How is science to be taught ? It will not be
*
philology, phys'ology, and economic science, pretended that the scientific mind is formed
to be adopted in the curriculum as branches by a lecture once a week on electricity or
of education for all classes, meant of course chemistry, as the case may be, nor by the
that all these subjects were to be intro occasional cramming of a text-book on the
duced. Even lately, two gentlemen, every subject. The advocates of science mean some
way competent to speak upon the subject, thing far transcending this, or they mean
have urged in this room the claims of botany just nothing. But I am compelled to say
and zoology as branches of education for all that their utterances on the practical part of
classes. We have, then—breaking up Professor the subject are singularly vague and unsatis
Tyndall’s “physics” into mechanics, hydro factory. “Teach science,” they say; but
statics, optics, pneumatics, sound, heat, &c„ then Professor Huxley does not mean, teach
some fifteen or twenty subjects claiming ad Pneumatics, he means, teach Physiology.
mission into the school curriculum. I again Professor Tyndall means by these words,
ask, how are they to be taught ? Each of Physics, and not Botany, and so on. Each
these accomplished men of course considers thinks, and naturally enough, that his own
his own special subject as worthy of every special subject is the one to be taught, and
attention, and would not be satisfied with therefore the general recommendation in
the communication of a mere smattering volves the teaching of them all, and we come
of it as representing his idea of its value. back to the Chrestomathic idea which, pre
Would any one of them be contented to hand sented pur et simple to these authorities in
over his subject to either Mr. Bentham or Mr. science, would be indignantly rejected. I
Spencer to teach ? Certainly not. They would have read with much interest the evidence
all wish the subjects which they know so well, given before the late Commission on Public
which they appreciate so highly, and on which Schools, by those eminent men, Carpenter,
they have expended so much thought and Lyell, Faraday, Hooker, Owen, Airey, and
labour themselves, to be thoroughly taught— Acland. Whatever such men say must, of
to become a real possession of the pupil. But course, be interesting ; but I confess that the
how is this to be done ? That is the question, impression left on my mind was not that of pro
the satisfactory solution of which will do more found admiration for their practical “faculty.”
to advance the claims of science to admission Their remarks and suggestions—very valuable,
into the curriculum than all the arguments no doubt, as “hints”—leave the real difficulties
that have hitherto been adduced. We hear of teaching science in schools untouched; and
the pleadings in favour of each fair claimant indeed will be found so various and inconsistent
for our regard, as she appears before us,—we as frequently to neutralize one another. With
admire her charms,—we admire all the char very few exceptions, these eminent men scarcely
mers,—but we cannot marry them all; we seem to have perceived, or at least appreciated,
cannot take them all for better, for worse, the fundamental principle, that teaching sci
to have and to hold, &c.
ence does not mean teaching electricity, or
What, then, are we to do ? We not only optics, or chemistry, or geology, but training
admit, but claim, the aid of science in educa the mind to scientific method; and that if all
tion. That general enlightenment—that apt the “ologies,” from A to Z, are to have a
handling of business—“faculty,” as some peo chance of occupying the field, a general meltie
ple callit; that appreciation of cause and effect; will be the result, which will effectually frus
that comprehension of details under general trate the object. In that case, all the sci
laws ; these, which are the proper fruits of ences might be taught—if that is the word
scientific culture, would form the best correc for it—but science would not be learned.
tive of Literature, would simplify and give a Dr. Acland’s evidence is, however, very much
definite aim to her somewhat vague, though to the point. He had clearly given thought
to the subject, and handled it like a man of
* The lectures were delivered by Drs. Whewell, business. He recommended that Physics, Che
Faraday, Latham, Daubeny, and Hodgson, and
mistry, and Physiology should be required of
Messrs. Tyndall and Paget.
�"As an educational means,” he says, in a letter
all educated men, and that the two former
should be learnt at school. When reminded, published by Mr. T. Dyke Acland, in a document
prepared by the latter for the Commission, “ che
however, that the Matriculation Examination mistry is not to be compared with other means of
of the London University comprised these and training the mind.......... The direct benefit result
other cognate subjects, he gave an opiuion, in ing from the teaching of analytical chemistry in
which I confess I agree, upon the value of such schools is nil.......... I grant that two or three boys
out of fifty may be benefited by practical instruc
scientific teaching as that examination pre tion in experimental and analytical chemistry;
supposes. It is so much to the point that 1 but am also bound to add, that the rest only
will quote it:—“ I may say, genei ally, that I waste the time which may be more usefully em
This is the result,
should value all knowledge of these physical ployed. experience, but also not only of my own
personal
that of many of my
sciences very little indeed unless it was other scientific friends in this country, at least of those
wise than book-work. If it is merely a ques who love science and desire its prosperity. More
tion of getting up certain books, and being over, I would direct your attention to the fact,
that the attempt has been made in Germany, on a
able to answer certain book-questions, that is large scale, to teach chemistry practically in
merely an exercise of the memory of a very schools for lads under sixteen years of age, and has
useless kind. The great object, though not proved so complete a iailure, that it has been all
the sole object, of the training should be to but universally abandoned in my native country.”
It appears, then, that there are difficulties in
get the boys to observe and understand the
action of matter in-some department or another, the way of teaching science, even where the
and though I am perfectly aware that what is subject is well chosen, the field comparatively
called practical knowledge, if merely mani limited, and the means and appliances am
pulatory, on any subject whatever, is a humble ply provided. Dr. Volcker’s cold and dry
thing enough ; yet, on the other hand, I must experience does not perfectly accord with Mr.
say that the utmost amount of knowledge on Spencer’s enthusiastic theory, and does not go
these subjects, without that practical and expe to prove that children eagerly hunger after
rimental knowledge, is to most persons nearly scientific knowledge as they do after their daily
as useless. You want the combination of the food. Of course it is easy to throw the blame
two; and for youths, I value very little the of failure on the teacher; but Dr. Volcker’s
mere acquisition of a quantity of book-facts on words are too definite, and apply to too large
these subjects. I want them to see and know an area to admit of this. Still, there can be
the things, and in that way they will evoke no manner of doubt that science is immensely
many qualities of the mind which the study of attractive; that it is favoured by the spirit
these subjects is intended to develope.” Thus of the age; and that it will and ought to
speaks the true teacher and votary of science, be extensively taught in schools. But its
llis anxiety is to form the scientific mind, not educational advocates have, as yet, no prac
merely to communicate information on science. tical plan involving good scientific discipline,
From a great part of the evidence of the men and no well digested results, to show. Their
whose names I just quoted, you can only gather voice will be powerful enough when they
a commentary, by “eminenthands” certainly, have, and will command the attention of
on the text, “ That the soul be without know all. As the case now stands, we have pracledge, it is not good;” which—though not a I tice on the one side, and theory on the other.
Solomon myself—I would supplement by add An amount of experience which no one can
ing, “ That the soul attempt to grasp all effectually gainsay attests the value of the
knowledge, it is not wise.”
Classical training ; while an amount of theo
Dr. Acland, it will be observed, recommends retical plausibility, which no sane man can
that chemistry be adopted as a general study ; affect to despise, supports the claims of Science
and from some little opportunity I have had of to a trial. Why should there not be a com
seeing that this subject may, to a certain promise ? Intellectual education is strictly the
extent, be adopted into the school course, I training of all the mental faculties in the best
should have thought it a wise suggestion. But way. Science teaches better, that is, more
observe what a practical teacher of chemistry on directly and thoroughly, than any other study,
a large scale, Dr. Volcker, of the Cirencester how to observe, how to arrange and classify,
Agricultural College, says on this point:—
how to connect causes with effects, how to
�estimate the practical value of facts. Why
not adopt it then as the proper complement
of the literary element ? Let botany be taught
quite early in life,—in the first stage of instruc
tion,—together with such parts of physics as
give general views of science, and interest the
mind in it. In the second stage, let some one or
two branches of physics be taken as the basis
of a sound training in science, with a view to the
formation of the really scientific mind.
*
The
classical course would thrive the better for the
collateral study of science, and the scientific
would thrive the better for the classical.
Why should not both work harmoniously
together in the curriculum ?
The principle appears to be sound in general,
that the spirit of the age should be repre
sented in the education of our schools;—
this is the reforming element of the question.
See Appendix, E.
At the same time it seems equally reasonable
that we should not forego our hold on that
mighty past of which the present is the legi
timate offspring ;—and this is the conservative
element. It is well for the son, when prepared
for the world of life, to leave his father’s home
and create one for himself. It is not well that
he should do so too early, before he is prepared.
Physical science may become—probably is des
tined to become—the organic representative of
the civilisation of the age. At present it can
not be so considered ; and its claims, therefore,
to take the lead in the curriculum of education
are inadmissible. While it is labouring to
attain that position, 1 would advise its votaries
to aid those of classical instruction in securing
the great advantages of the training I have
recommended. The minds so prepared would
be the fittest of all for sharing in the researches
of science, and promoting its triumphs.
�APPENDIX.
It is necessary to say this, since the confound
A. (See page 11.)
ing of the two is evident in many of the docu
In a very interesting address of Lord Ash ments that have been published of late on these
burton’s, at the Meeting of Schoolmasters in very important subjects. Many persons seem
Manchester, in 1853, we find the follow to fancy that the elements that should consti
ing remarkable words :—“ In this progressive tute a sound and manly education are anta
country we neglect all that knowledge in which gonistic ; that the cultivation of taste through
there is progress, to devote ourselves to those purely literary studies, and of reasoning
branches in which we are scarcely, if at all, supe through logic and mathematics, one or both,
rior to our ancestors. In this practical country, is opposed to the training in the equally im
theknowledgeof all thatgives power over nature portant matter of observation through those
is left to be picked up by chance on a man’s sciences that are descriptive and experimental.
way through life. In this religious country, Surely this is an error. Partisanship of the
the knowledge of God’s works forms no part one or other method, or rather department, of
of the education of the people, no part even mental training, to the exclusion of the rest,
of the accomplishments of a gentleman.” is a narrow-minded and cramping view, from
It appears from this passage that Lord Ash whatsoever point it be taken. Equal develop
burton does, after all, consider this to be a ment and strengthening of all are required for
progressive, practical, and religious country, the constitution of the complete mind ; and it
though nothing would seem to be done to is full time that we should begin to do now
make it so. The work goes on, and bravely what we ought to have done long ago.”
too, in spite of the assumed general low level
of attainments, and the indifference with
regard to progress. Lord Ashburton does
C. (Seep. 19.)
not see that there is, in fact, no “ common
“ The purpose of Milton, as it seems, was
measure” between the progress of a nation to teach something more solid than the com
and that of an individual. The time may mon literature of schools, by reading those
come when the progress of knowledge and the I authors that treat of physical subjects, such
practical applications of it may be tenfold as the Georgic (i.e. agricultural) and astrono
what they now are. But we shall still have to mical treatises of the ancients. This was a
consider the average capacity of the race as a scheme of improvement which seems to have
“constant quantity,’’and frame our curriculum busied many literary projectors of that age.
accordingly. The progress in question arises Cowley, who had more means than Milton of
from the impulses generated in the minds of knowing what was wanting in the embellish
those who, being endowed beyond their fellows, ments of life, formed the same plan of education
stand forth as their leaders to the promised in hi3 imaginary college.
land ; but the common mass have to begin at
“ But the truth is, that the knowledge of
the beginning still in their instruction, just as external nature, and the sciences which that
if none had gone before them.
knowledge requires or includes, are not the
great or the frequent business of the. human
mind. Whether we provide for action or con
B. (See page 17.)
versation, whether we wish to be useful or
The following valuable remarks on the cul pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and
tivation of the observing powers are from an moral knowledge of right and wrong; the
“ Introductory Lecture” on the Educational next is an acquaintance with the history of
Uses of Museums, by the late Professor Ed mankind, and with those examples which may
ward Forbes, 1865:—
be said to embody truth and prove by events
“ The great defect of our systems of educa the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and
tion is the neglect of the educating of the ob justice are virtues and excellencies of all times
serving powers—a very distinct matter, be it and of all places; we are perpetually moralists,
noted, from scientific or industrial instruction. but we are geometricians only by chance. Our
�30
intercourse with intellectual nature is neces
sary ; our speculations upon matter are volun
tary and at leisure. Physiological (physical?)
learning is of such rare emergence that a man
may know another half his life without being
able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or
astronomy; but his moral and prudential cha
racter immediately appears. Those authors,
therefore, are to be read at schools that supply
most maxims of prudence, most principles of
moral truth, and most materials for conversa
tion; and these purposes are best served by
poets, orators, and historians.” (Johnson’s
Lives of the Poets, vol. i. p. 92.)
D.
(See page 23.)
E.
_ Subjoined is a scheme of an amended cur
riculum :—
First Stage of Instruction.
(From about eight to twelve years of age.)
First Division (about two years).
1. Reading, Spelling, and Writing.
2. History, Scriptural and English.
3. Geography, Topographical and Physical.
4. French, Elementary Speaking and Read
ing.
5. Lessons on Objects.
6. Lessons on Words.
7. Arithmetic, chiefly Mental.
Second Division (about two years).
Same subjects, as far as may be necessary,
with
Arithmetic, as an art generally.
Botany, Structural ana Systematic.
Elementary Physics, general facts and
phenomena.
English Grammar, Parsing and Analysis
of Sentences.
Merely as a suggestion, the following scheme 1.
for the study of Latin may be proposed :—
2.
1. Dr. W. Smith’s Principia Latina, Parts I. 3.
and II.
4.
2. C®sar—De Bello Gallico.
3. Virgil—Eclogse, books 1, 3, 4, and 5.
Georgica, books 1 and 2.
Second Stage of Instruction.
JEneis, books I, 2, 3, 6, and 12.
(From about twelve to sixteen years of age.)
4. Cicero—Oratio pro Milone.
First Division (about two years).
Orationes in Catilinam.
Proportion of
De Amicitia.
time, taking
5. Livy, books 1 and 21.
40 hours per
week for
6. Terence—Andria.
school-work.
7. Tacitus—Agricola.
1. Latin, taught as a training subject 20
Annales, books 1 and 2.
2. French and German, practical
8. Horace—Odse, Epistolse, and Ars Poetica.
mainly ....................................
5
3. Mathematics, especially Euclid ...
5
This matter should be thoroughly studied in 4. Physics, taught as a training sub
the spirit of the method described in the text
ject ...........................................
6
(pp. 13, 20, 21), and would require therefore’to 5. English Language and Literature 5
be gone over, parts of it at least—the Caesar and
Second Division (about two years).
Virgil—three times: first very slowly, weighing
and investigating nearly every word; the second 1. Latin (time diminished)............... 10
time less deliberately, improving the transla 2. French and German (time increased
for more composition) ........... 10
tion and enlarging the illustration; and the
third time rapidly and in good English, so as 3. Mathematics — analytical, with
practical applications ...........
5
to evince familiarity with both language and
matter. The passages from Virgil and Horace 4. Chemistry or Human Physiology 10
5. English Language and Literature 5
should be committed to memory.
Of course “Latin” and “English” both in
clude the subjects—such as geography, history,
archaeology—which may be necessary for their
illustration.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The curriculum of modern education, and the respective claims of classics and science to be represented: being the substance of two lectures delivered at the monthly evening meetings of the College of Perceptors, April 11th, & May 9th, 1866
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Payne, Joseph [1808-1876.]
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Payne presents his recommendations for the reformation of the curriculum. He writes of his belief that science should be fully introduced and that education should represent the spirit of the age.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 30 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Inscription on title page: With the author's compliments. Printed in double columns. Includes appendices.
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Virtue, Brothers, & Co.
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1866
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G5191
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Education
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The curriculum of modern education, and the respective claims of classics and science to be represented: being the substance of two lectures delivered at the monthly evening meetings of the College of Perceptors, April 11th, & May 9th, 1866), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Classical Education
Education
Science and Education