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EXAGGERATED ESTIMATES
OF
READING AND WRITING,
AS
MEANS OF EDUCATION.
A
Paper read
Belfast Meeting of the Social Science
Association, on 24th Sept., 1867,
at the
BY
W. B. HODGSON, LL.D., F.C.P.,
one of the Examiners in the University of London.
•‘Sans lumieres point
de morale.”—Mirabeau
(l’Aind).
Tom. 5, p. 5S8„
1792.
LONDON;
PRINTED BY W. W. HEAD, VICTORIA PRESS, WESTMINSTER
1868.
�“ To suffer the lower orders of the people to be ill educated,—and then to
punish them for crimes which have originated in bad habits, has the appearance
of a cruelty not less severe than any which is exercised under the most despotic
governments.”—P. Colquhoun, LL.D., “Treatise on the Police of the Metro
polis.” 7th edition, 1806, c. 2, p. 34.
“ What is lhe use of arguing so pertinaciously that a black’s skull will
hold as much as a white’s, when you are declaring in the same breath that a
white’s skull must not hold as much as it can, or it will le the worse for him ?
It does not appear to me at all a profound state of slavery to be whipped into
doing a piece of low work that I don’t like. But it is a very profound state of
slavery to be kept myself low in the forehead, that I may r.ot dislike low work.”
—John Ruskin, Letter, March 30, 1867.
“It is true there are people who say the Bible is enough reading for the
poor, but they are evidently of a widely different opinion as to their own case,
though in religion more than any other subject do all classes stand alike. In
these days general knowledge is a fact for both the poor and the rich, yet it most
certainly is not communicated at the parish school; nor is there laid down the
Very lowest and roughest foundation j no, not a beginning, not an earnest, not a
pattern, not a morsel to speak of.”—Times, Saturday, Nov. 19, 1864.
“I am among those who think the greatest problem of legislation and
government unsolved so long as ignorance, sensual waste, or ciime keeps a large
part of the people, though emancipated from the serfdom of their ancestors, still
the thralls of appetite or p>rejudice, and consequently poor and miserable.”—Sir
J. K. Shuttleworth, at Opening of Art Workmen’s Exhibition.—Manchester
Examiner and Times, February 21, 1865.
“ One of the great objects now is that the education of all classes should
be harmonized.................... Whatever study can be commonly agreed upon as
conducive to formation of good character, of improved taste, and instrumental
in cultivating the faculty of accurate observation, that study is one which no
particular class should acquire, but to which all classes should devote them
selves.”—Sir Stafford Northcote, at Exeter.—Times, Jan. 4, 1865.
“In the most essential points, in the chief objects of life, and the most
necessary elements of education, rich and poor are really on a level....................
In the mansion and the cottage there is just the same necessity of methodical
habits, forethought, industry, order, cleanliness, peaceful and respectful bearing,
the study of one another’s wishes and good opinions, openness and the virtues
that make a good and useful being. These are matters of conduct; but even in
school work there is far greater community between rich and poor than people
are apt to imagine.”—Times, Jan. 6, 1865.
“ Let us, then, I beseech you, in the name of God, let us earnestly and heartily
have recourse to education. We must ‘begin at the beginning’—we must
prevent what is evil, by implanting what is good—we must enlighten the under
standing, as well as control the will.”—Dr. Parr’s “ Discourse on Education,”
p. 41, part II.
�EXAGGERATED ESTIMATES lit READING
AND WRITING.
N these days much is said about progress, and I am not disposed
to deny its reality in various regions, or to disparage its extent.
But, admittedly, general and ultimate progression is compatible with
partial or temporary retrogression ; and there are occasions which
tempt one to doubt whether the alleged progress be not a delusion—
whether the too obvious retrogression be not final and enduring. Or,
to take the somewhat hackneyed simile, which tells us that the
advance of the tide is not inconsistent with the retirement of indi
vidual waves after they have reached the shore, let us but continue
the analogy, and we find that the tide itself, after it has reached its
highest, its appointed limit, retires also, leaving a wide waste of
dreary sand; and that, though it returns again, it retires again, so
that we have, on the whole, not progress, but only oscillation and
repetition. The history of popular education tends to confirm the
notion that movement is by flux and reflux, and that there is now a
season of low watei’ and ebb tide.
Not much more than half a century divides us from the state of
social opinion which denounced, or dreaded, or ridiculed any and all
teaching of the great masses, which prompted even intelligent and
kindly men to predict the entire overturning of society as the
inevitable result of the teaching of“ the lower orders,” as if society
depended, for its very existence, on the domination of one small class
more or less enlightened, and on the unquestioning subserviency of
all other classes, whom any glimmering of light could not fail to
render discontented, insubordinate, insurrectionary.
Then came the period which may be called, for a well-known
reason, the era of the three R’s, Reading, Riling, and 'Rithmetic.
’
The inconveniences of total darkness were more and more recognized,
and the advantage of, at least, a sort of twilight state of mind was
more and more perceived ; but it may well be questioned whether
the noonday blaze of knowledge was not more dreaded by the educa
tional patrons of the lower’ classes than even the midnight blackness
of total ignorance. Teaching was encompassed with many limitations
and precautions. It might be well for all to be able to read their
Bible, according to the famous wish of George III.; but no other
literature was encouraged. A good plain hand-writing, with a
certain knowledge of ciphering, as it was called, might be useful for
the taking of business-orders, and the keeping of accounts. But a
too facile or graceful penmanship might be dangerous ; it might even
lead to forgery, and through that to the gallows. With acquirements
so restricted, it was not unlikely that the lower classes would still
demean themselves with due humility towards their superiors in
I
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station, and believe and act and suffer according to the will of those
placed in authority over them, whether spiritual or secular.
By degrees, the scope of popular education was widened, so far, at
least, as regards the admission of other subjects of instruction. I
cannot think that there was generally a more philosophic estimate of
the true nature of education ; but the frequent modern examples of
individuals rising from humble station to wealth and rank, familiarized
men’s minds with the thought that so much culture should be
generally given as would assist the exceptionally clever boy in his
social ascent, rather than improve the condition of the great body of
the working classes. Geography, and history, and sundry other
things, were more and more generally introduced. It may well be
doubted whether these additions were always or commonly improve
ments. Time w’as consumed in committing to memory the events of
so called history, one half of which was probably false, while of the
other half, one half was probably doubtful, while a large proportion
of the whole was unimportant. History must, of course, be begun
at the beginning, and the ancient Britons, and the Danes, and the
Saxons, and the Nonnans must have due attention, though, probably,
the pupils had passed away from the schools before they had gone
down the stream of history below the time of Henry VIII., the names
of whose wives, with the order of their execution, furnished excellent
material for questions,—or of Elizabeth, whose character was
summed up and recited in the pithiest phrases of the Pinnock order
of historians. As for geography, such facts as the height of the
Himalayas, and the length of the Brahmapootra, were stored up
for reproduction at the stated examinations, where the effect was
striking, in proportion to the recondite nature of the information, and
in inverse proportion to its utility. The barrenness of this kind of
teaching, for which, in some cases, no doubt, things of more impor
tance were neglected, did much to damage popular education in the
esteem of many, and to give occasion to those previously so disposed
to disparage or deny the efficacy and the value of all popular educa
tion whatsoever. This tendency was brought to a crisis by the fact that
the Educational Department of the Government was in danger of
breaking down from an accumulation of routine work, while the
annual cost of the educational grant had risen to an amount that
shocked the frugal temper of the House of Commons ; and the
opportunity afforded by the complaint of the Royal Commissioners
of 1858-9, that reading, writing, and arithmetic were in some cases
neglected, and especially in the younger classes, was readily seized
for the introduction of the Revised Code. Of that I need say little
more here, than that it gave a new or renewed prominence to reading,
writing, and arithmetic, confining practically its rewards to a
certain measure of proficiency in these branches, under the name
of payment for results, as tested by individual examination.
As to the actual result, opinion is considerably divided, and I
cannot here weigh the conflicting testimony. My own belief, how
ever, is that, as might have been expected, it has injuriously affected
�5
the higher education, that is, all that deserves the name of education,
while it has not generally succeeded in ensuring even mechanical
proficiency in the three arts thus specially fostered. It has done
much, I venture to think, to throw us back into the second of
those stages of national opinion on educational subjects which I
have hastily sketched; that, namely, in which this merely ele
mentary sort of teaching was deemed enough for the masses of the
people.
And here let me say that it is of reading and writing, and not at
all of arithmetic, that henceforth I mean to speak. Arithmetic holds
a quite different position from the other two things. Besides its
actual uses in the working world, it is a science, capable of becoming
the instrument of important training, and though when Baillie Nicol
Jarvie said that the multiplication table (i.e. arithmetic) is the root
of all knowledge, he had rather in view its application to bills of
parcels, and tare and tret, and profit and loss, than to cosmic harmo
nies, or numerical proportions in the framework of the universe,
the doctrine of numbers may truly be regarded as at once a root
science and a great power in education. I would rescue it from the
slur cast on it by the company in which it is usually found.
Of reading and writing, then, we are often enough told in words
that they do not constitute education. By many this is considered
a mere truism, but a truism quite as often means a truth neglected
as a truth made real. It is with words as with things, (though words
too are things), “ Too much familiarity breeds contempt.” The coin
which passes from hand to hand, loses gradually the clearness, and
finally the traces, of its image and superscription. Now, in spite of
the currency of this truism, I venture to think that reading and
writing are far too much regarded not as all education, but as all of
education that can be secured for and by the children of the mass,
nay, as all that it is important for them to obtain ; and that thus a
low, unworthy, and mischievous estimate of education, so far as con
cerns the masses, prevails among us.
In last Friday’s meeting one speaker drew forth strong expressions
of dissent, by saying that often it is thought enough to apportion
knowledge to the station in which the pupil happens to be born, and
in which it is assumed that he is likely to remain. I must confess
that my own experience supports this statement. Thus, not many
years ago I visited a school for female orphans in London, and I
was told distinctly by the secretary that only a very plain education was
even aimed at, “ because,” said he, “ they are destined to be domestic
servants, and it would not do for them to be too near the level of
their employers’ attainments ! ” It may not be necessary here to speak
in condemnation of that spirit which would keep back those who have
so few and so slight opportunities of culture for the supposed sake of
those who have so many and so great advantages within their reach;
or to contend that the lot to which human beings are really and truly
called by Providence (that Providence so often appealed to as a
justification of existing evils which it is sought to maintain), is not
�6
the condition in which they are born, or in which their parents live,
but that of which by the best culture of all their faculties, they
qualify themselves adequately to do the work ; or to argue that the
education of the lower classes is in the interest even of the upper.
But that this spirit prevails largely beyond the circle of such an
association as this I cannot doubt. There are persons who, as I once
heai’d Archbishop Whately say, embark in the ship of knowledge
in order to delay the voyage, being quite willing to appear as pro*
moters of education if they can but gain the power to limit it within
what they consider to be safe bounds.
Even among those who regard education with very different
feelings, and who have no unworthy jealousy of others less favoured
by fortune than themselves, a similar estimate of the sufficiency of
the mere elements of knowledge in schools for the people may be
traced. “ Teach a child to read and to write, and he will educate
himself,’’ this is a common saying. No doubt, your Stephensons,
and your Faradays, and those with large natural capacity for any
kind of mental effort, will, with this simple help, do all besides for
themselves. Nay, even without this help, their innate energy would
still surmount every obstacle in their way. But such men are the
exceptions, not the rule ; and the frequent appeal to such cases in
evidence of the sufficiency of reading and writing in humble schools,
is one more proof of the prevalence of the error which looks at
popular education rather as a means of enabling the peculiarly
gifted to rise into a higher station, than of enabling and disposing all
efficiently to discharge the duties of their actual station, even though
they should x’ise to none higher. It is to the average capacity, the
average disposition of ordinary school pupils, that teaching must be
adapted, and it is by its success in dealing with that average capacity,
that average disposition, that its efficiency is to be judged. Now, that
for such natures reading and writing will be a master-key to all
or much beyond, is not to be thus proved, or without proof to be
accepted.
Another sign of the current estimate of reading and writing may
be cited. We are all familiar with the statistical tables about crimi
nals, and the proportions among them of those who can read and
write well, imperfectly, or not at all. Crime, we are told, flourishes
most rankly among the last, less among the second, least among the
first. What, then, is the natural inference from such statements ?
Of course, diminish the ignorance, and you diminish the crime (1.)
But the ignorance of what ? Of course, of reading and writing.
Ignorance of reading and writing is productive of, or accompanied
by, a great amount of crime. Knowledge of reading and writing
will, therefore, diminish crime I There may be fallacies more
palpable than this ; there can be few more gross or serious. The
inability to read and write argues, in our present state, it may be
freely granted, great ignorance of all beyond that it is good or useful
to know. But the ability to read and write, (not to cavil about the
degree of ability), by no means argues the knowledge of aught
�1
beyond. Negatively, the ignorance implies much, positively the
knowledge implies little. Let us take an obvious illustration. If a
man does not possess a penny, he is undeniably very poor; if he does
possess a penny, is he therefore rich ? Is he removed more than
very slightly from absolute impecuniosity ? It may be said that,
with even one penny, a man may begin to increase his store ; but his
doing so, his striving, or desiring to do so, depends on considerations
widely apart from the mere possession of the penny. The tabulation
of such statistics may be useful in various ways. It is not in the
facts or in the figures, but in the application of them that the danger
lies. By all means let those tell-tale columns make us blush for the
deplorable and disgraceful national ignorance that they reveal; let
them spur our determination to remove it; but do not let them lull
us into the delusive fancy that the presence of the minimum of
knowledge will cure the evils which the absence of that minimum,
indicates, if it does not cause.
We will now test a little more closely the real educational value of
reading and writing.
1. Reading is a mechanical means, one of_ several means, of
gaining knowledge and ideas. Writing is one mechanical means of
conveying knowledge or ideas to others, as well as a means of
recording them for either others or ourselves. What is the educa
tional value of either ? There is, I am well aware, a high sense,
in which it may be contended that he who can read easily, intelli
gently, appreciatively, pleasurably, even one valuable book, especially
if he can read it aloud with due “ emphasis and discretion,” correct
intonation, and utterance at once expressive and impressive ; and
who further can give written form to his thoughts and knowledge,
if, that is, we take writing to mean not merely penmanship, but
what is called composition also,—may be said to have received no
mean or narrow, though it may still be a defective education.
But it is obvious that we are here concerned with such measure of
the powers of reading and of penmanship, as is commonly obtained
in our cheap and general schools. Now, the first thing that strikes
us, is, that they are at most, not knowledge, but means of knowledge.
Isay not the means, but means of knowledge. They are no more
knowledge or education, as has often been said, than a knife, fork,
and plate constitute a dinner. Given the dinner,—the knife, fork, and
plate are useful in enabling us to deal with it. But, though the com
bination is best, it is bettei' to have the dinner without the imple
ments, than the implements without the dinner. That the two can
be separated is undeniable; and so it is quite possible, though not
common, to find a man shrewd, sagacious, even well informed, who
can neither write nor read, and it is not only possible but very
common to find the grossest ignorance and the greatest dulness
associated with ability to read and write (2.) But it may be said that
a knife, fork, and plate are instruments not for gaining a dinner, but
for helping us to consume it when gained ; whereas reading and
perhaps writing are instruments for actually gaining knowledge.
�8
Let us grant that they are tools for gaining knowledge ; they are
not crop, but plough and harrow. Now, given the plough and the
harrew, the mode of using them remains to be taught ; the disposi
tion to use them remains to be encouraged. Neither of these
things follows inevitably from the mere conferring of the tools ;
the workman may still be unskilful, or indolent or both. To give a
man a loom is one thing ; to teach him to weave well and indus
triously is quite another thing.
This leads me, dropping metaphors, in which fallacy may lurk, to
say in the second place—
2. That the power of reading and of writing often rusts unused,
if it is not wholly lost, through neglect and apathy after leaving
school. The attainments are not usually carried far enough to
render their use either easy or pleasant, and the power gradually
decays (3.) For, in the third place—
3. A knowledge of the sounds and forms of the letters, the sylla
bles and words made up by the letters, is too commonly confounded
with knowledge of the things read about, with the taking in of the
ideas verbally expressed. An extreme instance may be given. The
late Principal Baird, of Edinburgh University, reported that on an
official visit which he made to some schools in the remote highlands
and islands of Scotland, he was greatly surprised and pleased by the
fluency and correctness with which the children read some verses
from the New Testament in English. He ventured to put some
question, and then discovered that the children knew nothing
whatever of English, that they spoke Gaelic solely, and that they
read the English words aloud, by imitation, as mere sounds, without
any sense to which they could be echo. Let me cite another
instance less extreme. In a school in Hampshire I once heard some
girls read, as I thought, with rather unusual correctness, a descrip
tion of a crab. I happened to ask, as it was an inland place, if any
of them had ever seen a crab. After a pause, one girl acknow
ledged her having seen a crab ; but, on inquiry, it appeared that it
was a crab-apple she had seen, and it never had occurred to her
that the description did not at all fit the object supposed to be
described ! So, after reading about the straining out of gnats, and
the swallowing of camels, one of the pupils (as Miss Cobbe vouches)
being asked what was the great sin of the Pharisees, answered, not
hypocrisy, but “ eating camels.” These are detached examples of
misapprehension of the things for which the equivalent words are
given : but thousands escape detection, and, whether it is through
the eye or through the ear that the words reach the sensorium, it is
a sad truth, that in innumerable cases they excite no ideas, or false
ideas. For such condition of mind is it wonderful that reading
should be an irksome, not a pleasing task, one to be soon laid aside,
and as seldom as possible resumed ? The great mass do not, like the
few, persevere sufficiently to surmount those hampering difficulties
and earn the reward which such perseverance brings. But, in the
fourth place, as I have already said,—
�9
4. Reading is but one means, if, in the long run, the most impor
tant, for acquiring knowledge. On Saturday last I had a letter from
home which, by an apt coincidence, illustrates what I mean. My
little boy, not yet four years old, says to his mother, “Mamma, why
does cousin Bella learn lessons ?” “That she may grow up to be
wise and useful.” “But don’t I learn by asking questions ?” “ Out
of the mouth of babes.” The radical fallacy is in supposing that no
knowledge or improvement is obtainable except from books, and the
result is the confounding of means with ends. A child is a living,
restless, never ceasing interrogator, “perpetually wanting to know,
you know,” perpetually asking, What ? and how ? and when ? and
where ? and above all (as I have observed with some surprise) why ?
perpetually putting all around it “to the question.” This is to
nurses and parents and teachers a disturbing, fatiguing, and exas
perating process, and questions are commonly discouraged, 01* evaded,
if not forbidden. “ Children ought not to ask questions : ” “ Child
ren should be seen, not heard:” such are the ethics of the nursery.
I willingly allow for the difficulty of at once carrying on, at
least in school, a continuous course of teaching with many pupils
simultaneously, and of caring for individual differences of mental state.
But principles do not cease to be principles because their application
is difficult; and it cannot be doubted that one intelligent answer to
such a question as a child will ask and at the time when it asks it,
when its interest is aroused and the mental soil is prepared, does
more good, has more suggestive and stimulative power than pages of
“useful knowledge” which are not “en rapport” with the child’s
mental state, and which respond to nothing then active within its
little brain. A child of average health and capacity sucks in know
ledge at every pore; its craving for knowledge is truly insatiable.
“It is as natural” says Quintilian, “for the human mind to learn as for
the bird to fly, or the fish to swim.” But many who spend dreary
years in seeking the power to read Quintilian in the original, and
most^frequently without succeeding in the endeavour, tell us a very
different tale. The youthful mind, they say, is averse from know
ledge, that is, what they call knowledge, or, at best, indifferent to it,
and it must be artificially coaxed, or bribed, or threatened into the
semblance of interest. A child eagerly examines every object
around it, or, in lack of objects, then the pictures or images of objects.
But between the child and nature we interpose an opaque medium
called a book, and we expect the child to profit by symbols which to
us, indeed, are full of meaning, but which to it are mysteries, whose
significance it is slow to discover. Pedants snort disdainfully at the
thought of teaching science to children. Yet what is science, in great
part, but observation methodized ? A child cannot be easily kept from
observing and even from generalizing. The question is whether it.
shall do both ignorantly, of its own wild fancy, or under the guidance
of maturer judgment and ampler knowledge. As all children, not wholly
stupified by the compression and distortion of the school, form for
themselves a kind of science, draw inferences and make generalizations,
�10
probably erroneous, certainly incomplete, shall they be left without
guidance, as without encouragement ? (4.)
Even attempts to teach science are often marred by confounding
it with literary or verbal knowledge. Nature is treated on the
system of the Eton Latin grammar. Technical names and lists of
genera and species are committed to memory without due explanation
of the grounds of distinction. I have before me a catechism for the
young, entitled “ First Lessons in Physiology.” All the know
ledge runs freely from the pupil, when tapped by the teacher
with a question. The teacher says: “ How many varieties of
absorption are there, and name them ?” The pupil answers : “Inter
stitial, cutaneous, recrementitial, respiratory, venous, excrementitial,
and lacteal.” Such are the new husks upon which babes are fed !
Without a revolution in method no mere change of subject can do
much good.
5. Again, the learning of the art of reading, being treated as an
end, is made much more difficult than it needs to be. The letters
are taught by their names, not by their sounds; in the arbitrary
order of the alphabet, instead of in the natural order of the organs
by which they are pronounced. Spelling is still taught by means of
columns of long, hard, unconnected words, selected for their very
difficulty and rarity, to be learned by rote, or, as is said with
unconscious irony, “by heart.” At a large and well-endowed
school in London, I have seen dozens of boys engaged simulta
neously in laborious efforts to learn to spell badly, with the aid
of a most ingenious book, in which every word was incorrectly
spelled. Then the process of teaching to read begins too early, as
it is continued too long. I know well the difficulty in a school,
where the minds of the pupils may be, nay must be, in different
stages of development; still, the first thing being to rouse an appetite
for knowledge, and the second to gratify it when roused, all attempts
to reverse this order, or even to anticipate its evolution, must be
injurious. A child that, eager to heai’ a story over again, puts to its
ear the book in which it is told, is in a fair way of learning to read
swiftly, easily, gladly. Before it reaches that sjtage, the instruction
might have been tedious and ineffectual. These are but hints which
it is impossible here to follow out in detail.
6. Then, what is the literature by means of which reading is too
often taught ? In Scotland still, the shorter Catechism of the West
minster Assembly of Divines (in my boyhood I used to wonder what
the longer could possibly be), has prefixed to it an alphabet which is
learned as a preliminary to plunging into the depths of Calvinistic divi
nity. Even in London I have visited a “ respectable” school, in which
reading is taught from the Bible, and so soon as the pupil is tolerably
proficient, he is promoted to the dignity of secular reading 1 And
this is done in the supposed interests of religion 1 It is as if we
were to begin the teaching of our children with Milton’s Paradise
Lost, and then advance them into Robinson Crusoe, or Miss Edger
worth’s Tales. In many Scotch schools the Bible is almost the only
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reading book ; the junior and senior classes are called respectively
the Testament class and the Bible class. I have heard of a boy so
taught who, having been asked by his mother to read a passage in
a newspaper, was suddenly roused from his monotonous chaunt by a
box on the ear, accompanied by these words—“ How dare ye, ye
tcoundrel, read the newspaper with the Bible twang ?”
7. With such a spirit in the school, is it wonderful that the whole
teaching should have a narcotic tendency, that it should crush intel
ligence, and breed disgust, weariness, hatred of all study ? At a
former meeting of this Association, I heard one of Hei' Majesty’s
Inspectors of Schools (since dead), declare that in certain schools he
could tell pretty accurately by the pupils’ faces how long they had
been at school. The longer the period, the more stupid, vacant, and
expressionless the face. Another school inspector (Diocesan), has
told me that when, examining a class in the Acts of the Apostles, he
asked:—“Why did the eunuch go away rejoicing,”—the answer’
frankly was—“ Please, sir, because Philip had a done o’ teaching on
him.” What hours of weariness and waste are summed up in this
brief story! Such teaching defeats its own end; the power to read
is gained at the cost of the desire to read. This, if, in spite of false
quantity, I may adapt the words of the Roman poet, is “ propter
legendum legendi perdere causas,” for the sake of reading to lose
that which makes reading to be desired.
8. Lastly, it ought never to be forgotten that the power to read
does not in the least determine the use to which it is to be put. What
will be the nature of the books or journals read ? How much of
mischievous, not to speak of idle, literature is there in the world
that must all find readers, admirers, purchasers ! With the diffusion
of the mere power of reading, without intellectual and moral culture,
must we not expect that this sort of literature will be multiplied ?
The increased numbers of cheap “ sporting ” papers, of papers de
voted to police reports, with coarse and exciting woodcuts, and
of the literary master-pieces of the “ singing saloon,” have of late
attracted notice. Nay, the power to read and write arms with
greater force the disposition for evil, as well as that for good. In
every wicked enterprise such attainments are helps to its success.
It used to be argued that writing ought not to be taught to the
people, lest it should lead to the commission of forgery, or other
fraud ; but this sort of argument, if futile against teaching to write,
supplies a reason why the power of writing, or of reading, should be
associated with such training and guidance as will tend to ensure its
beneficial employment.
As I rejoice to see in this Association, and elsewhere, a growing
tendency to regard the teaching of all classes, and of both sexes,
from the same points of view, and to apply to all alike the same
fundamental principles, I will here briefly say that what I think to
be the exaggerated estimate of reading and writing in the instruction
of the poor has its exact counterpart in the hitherto far too exclu
sively literary character of the instruction of the rich. In this
�aspect, how pregnant with meaning is the title, “ Grammar school,”
so almost universal as the designation of our upper schools ! Not
to insist on the practical identification of “ Grammar ” with the
teaching of Latin and Greek, what a petrifaction is this term of the
whole cast of opinion, which viewed all instruction as an affair of
books and words 1 What a record it preserves of the habit of regarding
even Science as a knowledge less of things than of what men have
written about things, and of the style in which they have written 1
Widen as we may the sense of grammar, far beyond the scope and
practice of schools, past or present, till it become, if you will, co
extensive with philology, and even literature, (and far be it from
me to disparage such studies), how lamentably does this title fall
short of what ought to be the aim of education in such a country, in
such an age as ours 1 Over the door of the Bradford Grammar
School stands this inscription
“ Quod Deus optimus maximus bene vertat
Aedificium hocce ad literarum antiquarum
Studium promovendum juventutemque doctrinA
Elegantiore imbuendum extructum est atque
Musis in perpetuum consecratum.”
—“ For promoting the study of ancient literature, and for imbuing
youth with elegant learning, this building has been raised, and for
ever consecrated to the muses.”
A noble part of a liberal education, the polished and graceful
capital of the educational column, but assuredly neither its shaft
nor its base ! Try mentally to realize what Bradford or Belfast is,
and what it needs for the instruction and guidance of the youth who
are to do its actual work, to maintain and to extend its prosperity, to
remove its evils, to raise the charactei* of its people, to improve their
sanitary and social condition, to teach them how to lead a clean,
healthy, happy, human life — and how painfully one-sided and
defective it is ! How it ignores the essential! How it magnifies
the less important! How it subordinates strength, solidity, and
service to grace and ornament and surface-show I Assuredly the
time is coming, I think it is at hand, when such a title- as that of
“ Spelling school” will be regarded as scarcely less expressive of the
purposes, grand and manifold, at which our uppei’ schools, aye, all
our schools, ought to aim. Even in our higher, even in our highest
schools, improvement is slowly but surely creeping in ; slowly but
surely is it being recognized that any school which ignores the know
ledge of man himself, of the objects animate and inanimate with
which he is surrounded, and of the relationship between him and them,
his social duties, his economic interests, and the reciprocal bearing of
the individual and the social well being is radically, deplorably, dis
gracefully defective. Every improvement in our lower schools will
react upon the upper, and vice versa. And when the instruction of
our higher classes is what it ought to be, and in proportion as it shall
be what it ought to be, will the problem of our lower education be
practically solved. Had our upper classes ever been really educated,
�13
they would not, and could not, so long and so complacently have
endured the ignorance and consequent degradation of the masses of
their fellow citizens, of those whom, as if in mockery, they style
their fellow immortals, their brothers and their sisters.
It is, however, of the lower schools that I here speak. It is even
fortunate that narrow and selfish fears are beginning to urge on what
enlarged conceptions and generous impulse have failed hitherto to
effect. Thus (1) the recent extension of the suffrage is opening
the eyes of many to the necessity of training the masses to the ju
dicious and beneficial exercise of the power thus conferred. One
whose name will be, in history, connected as well with the political
changes that he resisted as with the educational changes that he
introduced, has said that we must now teach our future masters their
letters. That this was said in bitter irony there can be little doubt;
and it cannot be taken to mean that in the opinion of the speaker
that amount of teaching will suffice. Those who have already had
the suffrage can, for the most part, read and write. But they, too,
need enlightenment, and moral as well as intellectual training; so do
those whom they elect to represent them. On the one hand, reading
and writing have not prevented dishonest voters in thousands from
selling their votes for bribes, solid or liquid ; on the other, reading
and writing, and much besides, have not prevented unscrupulously
ambitious millionaires from debauching whole constituencies by
lavish expenditure, or from masking their immoral and demoralising
practices by liberal donations to charities, to schools, and even to
churches. Nevertheless, the fear of the large classes now admitted
within the pale of the constitution for the first time has given no
slight impulse to the general zeal for education. It is for us to see
that the movement now begun be turned to good account. Let us
help to educate, but in what ? That is the question of questions.
Then, again (2), foreign nations, we are told, are beginning to beat
us at our own weapons. They have learned more than their letters.
They are, it is said, driving us out of the markets which, with insular
arrogance, we have fancied should for ever be ours exclusively.
A cry of alarm is raised for more and better technical instruction ;
and, though this is narrow enough in the thoughts of many who raise
it, more and better general culture will certainly come out of it;
a greater development of general mental power, and the formation
of better social habits, will ere long be discovered to be the things
really needful.
Again (3), our industry is partially paralyzed, our capital is wasted,
our prosperity, our very national existence, are endangered by strikes
and trade combinations and restrictions, which check production,
often by means as unscrupulous and truculent as the end sought is
false and mischievous. The masses have been suffered to grow up
in ignorant and angry defiance of the elementary principles of
economic science, and reading and writing will not cure this long
rankling sore. Broadhead, who could read and write (as he has
amply shown), believing at the time that the introduction of a certain
�14
machine would injure his craft, instigated an act of criminal violence^
He confessed that he had discovered his error ; but the discovery came
too late. Had he made it sooner, one outrage less would have been
attempted. With wider knowledge others, perhaps all, might have
been prevented. Knowledge is not merely power; it is restraint
and guidance, if not impulse. It is the rudder, if not the sail ; the
fly-wheel, if not the steam-boiler. It is true that there have not
been wanting men of so-called education to defend such blunders,
and even to extenuate such atrocities ; but their education has lacked
the special direction which alone could save from error in this matter.
It is true that the employers are often not more intelligent in this
respect than the employed ; but the enlightenment of the latter, who
are the many, and from whose ranks the former, hitherto the few,
must largely come, will extend to, and react upon the former
also, and do much to soften their mutual relations, to make all see
their common interest, and to fuse them together, so as in time to
modify, if not, as some hope, to obliterate the distinction itself (5.)
For such reasons as these, a new educational agitation is arising,
or the old is reviving with fresh vigour. One and all point to something
far beyond reading and writing. I am, I must say, hopeful of the
ultimate, if not of the early, issue. The now swelling call for
“ compulsory” education will force on the public mind the funda
mental inquiry, what ought education to be. If, by compulsion,
what now passes under the name of education were rendered even
universal, I presume to think that the existing mass of pauperism,
crime, vice, misery and disease, would scarcely be perceptibly
abated. But it is no small gain to have recognized the claim of even
the poorest, still more even because the poorest, to something that is
called education. Bad or grossly defective education in any quarter
cannot continue long aftei’ education has ceased to be regarded as the
heritage of the few. Just as air becomes stagnant and foul when con
fined, so education when restricted to the few loses its vital freshness.
To diffuse education of any kind is indirectly to improve it. Make
education general, universal, and the (so called) higher education
will be rationalized, and, as I think, liberalized (6.) Youths will no
longei* be sent into active life from costly seminaries, accomplished
it may be in Greek metres, but ignorant of the structure of their own
bodies, the constitution of their own minds; filled with mythologic
lore, but unaware of their social duties ; primed with verbal scraps of
inconsistent moral precept, but less ashamed of debt than of honest
industry; looking on the world as a spoil for the lucky, or the
crafty, oi' the strong, not as a field for useful and ennobling labour
to the benefit of all as well as of self; of self just in proportion as it
tends to the good of all. Then, instead of the rich being fed on
intellectual sweetmeats, while the poor are starved, or gathei’ up the
crumbs that fall from the others’ table, all, rich and poor alike, shall
be nourished with plainer, more substantial and wholesome diet, not
without such lighter fare as may be obtainable by either. As know
ledge will be no longer confounded with books, or with words about
�16
knowledge, so morals, of which the laws are as eternal as they are
simple, as universal as they are strong, the morals in which all sects
and conditions of thinking men agree, will be dissociated from the
verbal and dogmatic formularies about which men differ, and, while
becoming less sectarian and theological, will become more widely
Catholic, more truly religious (7.) We, or our survivors, will then look
back with a smile, not of contempt or pride, but of joy and pity, on
the time when there was so great a pother about so small a matter
as reading and writing, and when even this beggarly amount of
teaching was found to be a tremendous national difficulty, just
because so little more was aimed at, or desired, or perhaps conceived.
The less is included in the greater, and the little becomes easy from
the effort to do much.
Notes.
(1.) p. 6. “ A Maiden Session.—At the Salisbury Quarter Sessions, just held,
there was not a single prisoner for trial. The Mayor of the city (Mr. S. Eldridge)
had therefore the pleasing duty of presenting the Recorder (Mr. J. D. Chambers),
the clerk of the peace, and the governor of the gaol with a pair of white kid
gloves each, according to custom on occasions of this sort. The Recorder, in
addressing the grand jury, said that he had read the other day in The Times that
Wiltshire was one ot the best educated counties in England, and it was highly
satisfactory to learn therefore that the decrease of crime had been in proportion to the
spread of education.” (/)—Times, 2nd Jan., 1868.
(2.) p. 7. “ Although the perusal of such works must, in strictness of speech,
be denominated reading, yet, so far as the cultivation of mind is concerned, it is
little else than the sheer act of deciphering so much letter press, without the
acquisition of a single new idea that can at all conduce towards improvement.”
—Rev. Thos. Price, “Tour in Brittany, Literary Remains,” 1854, vol. 1,
p. 81. “No doubt the power of reading is a key to the whole literature of
England. But in the hands of persons ignorant how to use it, a key is of little
use.”—Saturday Review, 4th Jan., 1868, p. 20. In the very same article the
writer says:—« What is wanted is that every child should be able to read and
write fairly before he goes to work; that he should be enabled to turn this
knowledge to -laone intellectual account while he is at work; and that, in cases
where his parents’ means, or his own industry, can defray the cost, he should be
further enabled to perfect himself in the various branches of study which have a
bearing, general or special, on his professional occupation.” It is too obvious
that the reviewer does not expect the child to turn the ability to read and write
to any “ intellectual account ” during the school period!
(3.) p. 8. “ The imperfect instruction given to the children in factories, under the
half-time system, is retained by them during a year or two at most, when it is
forgotten, and many intelligent young overlookers are unable to keep correctly
the simple accounts which should form a part of the duties of their position.”—
Mr. Samuelson, M.P. (speaking of Bradford, Yorkshire).
(4.) p. 10. “Why are the people who notice what comes before them to be marked
by a separating name, and called naturalists? Why are we ashamed of a
failure in what comes to us through books and the costly instrumentality of
masters and teachers ? Why do we blush at any flagrant slip in history, or
science, or language, and keep cool and easy under any extravagance of error in
�what'nature, through our own observation, might teach us.”—Saturday Revieu),
28th July, 1863. Article on “ Ignorance.” Yet Canon Moseley, who is deservedly
an authority in education, would keep out of schools (not merely elementary
schools) all “ the sciences of observation,” specially so called. At Clifton College,
on 30th July, 1867, he is reported to have said: —“The subjects of human know
ledge, which claimed to be considered and taught in our schools, might be
divided into four groups. First of all,” (why ‘ first ? ’) “ there were the languages
and the subjects allied to them; secondly, the pure mathematical sciences, which
were pursued in the exercise of pure thought and rested upon abstractions ;
thirdly, the sciences of experiment, including physics and chemistry; and
fourthly, the great sciences of observation, such as natural history and the like.
He thought they might put the last out of consideration, as they had had quite
enough to do with the three others.” In like manner, I once heard it contended
that any new poetry is superfluous, because there is more poetry already written
than any human being can possibly read! In like manner, it has been urged
that the discovery of new planets is absurd, because we have as many already
as we well know what to do with! But, perhaps, we ought less to regret
that the subjects in the fourth class are thus shut out, than rejoice that those in
the third are admitted. Too often both classes are still visited with the same
arbitrary sentence of exclusion, and on the same ground, that there is quite
enough to do without them! It is not very long since subjects of even the
second class ceased to be regarded as unlicensed intruders on the traditional
monopoly of the first.
(5.) p. 14. “ To the three reasons given in the text a fourth may well be added.
Society is, not without reason, more and more alarmed by the rapid increase of
outrages which threaten its very existence. “ Education ” is hailed as the sure
if slow, remedy. The adult ruffian is probably beyond its influence, but the
embryo garotter may be tamed if only he can be taught to spell “ gallows; ” and
on the juvenile pickpocket a course of alphabet, with exercise in pothooks and
hangers, may have a salutary effect, deterrent or emollient! By all means let
trial be made. Its failure will open the eyes of many to the need of something
better, though it may also lead many to say, “ Education has been tried, and
tried in vain.”
(6.) p. 14. “ Coleridge, when he predicted that the effect of popularizing know
ledge would be to plebify it, erred in his vision of the future, as many seers have
done before and since. He uttered that prediction on the assumption that know
ledge, in its higher portions, was confined to the regions of theology and
psychology; and he overlooked the faot that, in proportion as these branches of
knowledge have been cultivated by the few,-ignorance has prevailed among the
many. He failed to observe that, if thousands rushed to Abelard’s lecture room,
millions outside of it were immersed in the grossest superstition.”—Saturday
Review, 26th Oct., 1867, p. 544.
(7.) p. 15. “As Sir R. Palmer reminded his audience, the line between ‘ religious’
and ‘ secular ’ is purely conventional. ‘ All knowledge, all instruction, in what
ever is honest and of good report, is essentially religious.’ Dogmatic theology
concerns itself with creeds; but religion has to do with common life; and its
sphere, though net identical, is co-extensive with that of education. The
clergyman and the schoolmaster are inevitably working together, whether they
are working in concert or not.”—Times, 2nd Nov., 1866.
�
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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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Exaggerated estimates of reading and writing as means of education: a paper read at the Belfast meeting of the Social Science Association, on 24th Sept., 1867
Creator
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Hodgson, W. B. (William Ballantyne) [1815-1880.]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: (OWN) From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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W.W. Head
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1868
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G5185
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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 (Exaggerated estimates of reading and writing as means of education: a paper read at the Belfast meeting of the Social Science Association, on 24th Sept., 1867), 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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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Education
Reading
Writing