A few thoughts on national education and punishments
/^-^M-^l-^iC^ ^ l^/CC-C4^^-^^cZn^ /f/^i^ X^/Ot^A't^ J^^:t,^f-ir< /^^!nL-^ 3 ^t^ ^Uy^^t^t^c-^-^ y ^1 (/^.^t /C^-^^^./^^^, NATIONAL EDUCATION PUNISHMENTS LONIiOX: riilXTKU IIY SPOTTISWOOUK AXii CO., >K\V-.sTUKKT S<iUARB AM) lAUl.l.VMKST blRKKT A PEW THOUGHTS NATIONAL EDUCATION AND PUNISHMENTS BY THE ET. HON. SIE C. ADDEELEY, K.C.M.G., M.P. LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1874 -'lUC ' NATIONAL EDUCATION AXD PUNISHMENTS. PART 1. EDUCATION. In this discussion I am not about to touch on what, to the disgrace of our public men, at this moment would be generally expected under such a title. I am not intending to criticise the present demand of soi-disant educationists, that we should sacrifice all religious teaching in order to get national education out of the hands of the Church and of the religious denominations which have chiefly provided hitherto the national schools of the country. I beheve that the Church, whose national influence and successful energy has done so much in the cause, has incurred this blinded jealousy so late as only to expose the impudence of the attack. The self- stigmatized ' League ' has already ceased to attract serious attention, except so far as it serves for the embarrassment of its party. It gains no sympathy from the great aggregate of religious non-conformity, every B 2 National Education and Punishments. section of which has too earnest a sense of educational necessity to reject assistance from any quarter. How many soever may recruit the League out of the reli- gious democracy, all denominations unite in requiring some religion to be taught to children whose brief and scanty education is more or less supplied by the State in loco parentis. No body of Dissenters would prefer that from ten thousand parish schools all religious teaching should be banished rather than left, with the security of conscience clauses, in even the Church's hands, whatever danger they may anti- cipate from dogmatic teaching to the prematurely polemical intellects of ploughboys. Mr. Bright may assert that all the great educational work of the last forty years should not be supplemented, but superseded by what would seem more national to his mind. I suspect the nation is too sensible to throw away the practical work that has been done, and tax itself for a theoretic substitute, suggested by jealousy ; and that the Church is more in earnest, and far stronger in the nation's affections, than Mr. Bright imagines. He may desire to root out its establishment, and with that view draw false parallels between it and the establishment of a small minority in Ireland : he may even be ready to root up the ancient parochial system, solely that the Church may fall with it ; but he must find some stronger argument than that every phase of non- conformity ought to be put on a par with the original National Education and Punishments. 3 institution. On such a principle he must assert that all opponents should have an equal right to recognition with the supporters of every national institution they may object to. There are non-conformists, indeed, who boast that the aggregate of their divisions equals in numbers the body of the Church. The only com- mon factor of such an aggregate is Separation — in itself hardly constituting a Christian bond. But the ' League' place themselves in antagonism mth the Church and with all the religious denominations which have been the supporters of national education, and prove the falsehood of their claim to be educationists by being ready to kill the child simply to spite the mother. What, however, I wish to bring under public atten- tion is a very different point in relation to National Education ; namely, the advance we have made in the last forty years, since the nation has shared the under- taking with the rehgious bodies who began it, and the possibility of our having gone somewhat wide of the strict limits we had first in view — the education of children of the working class. I would suggest, if that be so, that we should consider whether the elaborate machinery we have provided might not, perhaps, be utilized on a still wider scale, and enabled to offer education to a higher class at their own expense, while it should still afford to the class first contemplated all the assistance which the little education they have time for requires. The elementary schools in that B 2 4 National Education and Punishments. case would be avowedly made suitable to the middle classes who now irregularly use them, and to such of the working class as show talent to justify a prolonged education for a higher station, while the ordinary childi'en of manual labourers would receive in a better way the educational bounty of the nation. In testing whether there be any surplus power in our educational apparatus, I consider what the best schools do under our present system. It is said by those who wish to decry the voluntary efforts which have led the way that the existing schools are bad, and that the ministers of religion have been the cause of detriment to them. I am far from thinking that all that has been done has succeeded in making education what it should be, and I doubt if School Boards will succeed better ; but the question I wdsh to raise is, whether the present system, when fully carried out, with teachers, schools, and apparatus according to its assumed standard of excellence, is not in advance of its given work, and if so, capable of doing more. It is high time for this country to reflect on the great strides it has taken during the last forty years, in reform of National Education. We must re- member that a few vigorous and enthusiastic thinkers, and bold theorists, have had an immense, and almost controlling, influence in this matter over the Govern- ments which have prevailed during most of that time ; and they have, for weal or woe, led the country's National Education and Punishments. 5 action on this most vital subject in a groove, the direction of which we can now trace clearly, and if good w^e should pursue vigorously, but if in error we cannot too soon correct. For forty years we have abandoned the laissez-aller principle ; we have con- demned the principle of free trade as inapplicable to the subject of education ; we have empowered the Government, and largely appropriated public money, to bring a high artificial pressure to bear on the elementary education of the people. Let us test our work by the principles which essen- tially belong to it, and by the programme of our first undertaking. The course we have run can be briefly recounted, and at all events is highly creditable to the generation which devised, and has achieved it. No man has his name more thoroughly interwoven through- out its history, though many others occur to one's mind as deserving of signal honoiu-, than Sir James Kay Shuttleworth. Of his ' Four Periods of Pubhc Education,' (Long- mans, 1862), he thus recorded the first, dating 1832, ' Our present means of mstruction for the labouring population are confined to Sunday Schools, and a few Lancastrian and National Schools.' The Church, and some Dissenting bodies, and private individuals, fur- nished the first scanty supply to this great national want, and offered a slight counteraction to the demoral- isation caused by long defect of moral influences on 6 National Education and Punishments. the hardening lot of labour. The State left the entu-e nation to find its own education, and cared not for the numbers who went without any, or with only what private charity might give them. Parliamentary Eeform awakened more thought about the condition of the people who w^ere to be enfranchised. In the second period, dating from 1839, came into existence the Committee of Council on Education, with its great machinery, power, and results, raising the standard of school agency, and setting up training institutions for masters and pupil-teachers. School Inspectors also were then appointed, as the chief secu- rity of reform. Minutes of Council regulated, on Parliamentary authority, the distribution of public aid, by Treasury grants, to voluntary undertakings for national education. A higher standard of teaching was required, and the rehgious was specially indicated as the most important part of instruction. ' Eehgion,' said Lord John Eussell, writing officially, as Secretary of State, to Lord Lansdowne, as President of the Council, on what he considered the first object — a normal school — ' was to be combined with the whole matter of instruction, and to regulate the entire system of discipline. In any normal or model school foiu: principal objects should be kept in view ; namely, religious instruction, general knowledge, moral train- ing, and habits of industry.' Eights of conscience, and National Education and Punishnients. 7 the principle of religious liberty were unfortunately soon made pretexts for opposition, and the bugbear so introduced has ever since obstructed progress. It became necessary for the State as a neutral body to pay over its aid to local committees of management, whether Chiuxh or Dissenting, and to leave the provi- sion of religious instruction to the Clergy, or licensed ministers of the parents' persuasion. The primary idea of a fit candidate for training as a master, how- ever, appears still to have rested on moral and rehgious considerations, by the rule that — ' dihgent enquiry should be made as to previous habits and associations, quiet disposition, fondness of education, and sense of religious responsibility.' Industrial instruction was considered an important part of the work of a model school. The education of the poorer classes seems always the aim in every part of the undertaking. All this indicates what was the original idea of the system which the third period, 1846, simply extended and developed. The chief addition during this period was a separate training school for masters of work- house and prison schools. The fourth period, beginning in 1861, is marked by the emanation, from a Eeport of a Eoyal Commission, of the notorious Ee vised Code. The Council Minutes on Education had first been codified in 1859, during my Vice-Presidency. This was a much revised edition. 8 National Education and Punislime7its. Parliament had become alarmed at the increasing charge for education on the public revenue, and its tendency to an indefinite increase. (' Eeport of Educa- tion Commission,' p. 542). The principle of Treasury- subsidy to the voluntary support of schools by parents and promoters was maintained. The Commissioners' suggestion of drawing assistance from county rates was entertained, but not adopted. A half-time alternation between work and schooling, for children in mines and factories ; special grants for evening schools ; and better application of endowments, were the chief new provisions of the Eevised Code ; but the principle was first introduced of measuring the Treasury aid to school managers by tests of standard minimum results of instruction, ascertained by Government examination. The vindication of the Eevised Code was based (says Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth, p. 577) on the denial that the existing system, secured adequate results, the fail- ure being attributed to misdirection of efforts, the teachers being thought above their work. ' Hitherto,' said Mr. Lowe, in moving the Estimate for 1861, 'we have been hving under a system of bounties and protection ; we prefer a httle free trade.' ' The teachers must be subject to the law of supply and demand, the managers must make the best bargains they can.' The attaching Treasury aid to a condition of specified results of instruction was strongly condemned by Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth, as tending to lower the education alto- National Education and Punishments. 9 gether to the specified minimum standard, and to diminish the required staffs of pupil-teachers, ' Eesults hitherto,' he said, ' have consisted in getting rid of pre- vious barbarism and brutish incapacity to learn, teaching the first elements, training teachers, gaining a fij'st moral influence ; and on these results the Commissioners had favourably reported. National education does not de- pend on the school training of one generation.' (p. 580.) In short he thought much had been done which the change would not promote. A fifth period has followed Sir James's publication, signahsed by the last Education Act of 1870. Then was at last adopted the recurrence to local rates, and the institution of School Boards, so long resisted on the score of the unequal incidence of local charges. But it was thought necessary to supplement the deficiencies of voluntary agency, by all means, to national com- pletion. The step was most eagerly urged by those who most escaped the local charge, and who also were bent upon getting education out of the hands of the Church, though Mr. Forster honestly kept deficiencies only in view. The resort to local elections and support was sure to stir up more religious strife ; and it may be doubted whether, if necessary for towns, tliis dis- advantage was compensated in the country, where, as Mr. Cobden liberally observed, the Church has always the wealth, and generally the will, to educate the poor. The State, however, was bound to see education made 10 National Education and Punishments. co-extensive with the nation, and the supplement has added vigour to the vohuitary foundation. Such is the history, in brief, of National Education in this country during the last forty years. I come now to consider what has been the nature of this work. ' It is possible,' said Mr. Forster, in introducing the Act of 1870, ' with measures of this kind, that, with the best intentions to do good, we may have been doing harm.' It is possible that the education of the poor having been adopted as a great national undertaking ; com- mitted to a department of State administration ; made a topic of Parliamentary oratory, and, by its necessarily religious aspect, exposed to the keenest controversy ; may have shot over or aside its mark. Some have already ridiculed the disproportion of the machinery to the work, as using artillery to shoot at sparrows. A great agency seeks to justify and glorify itself by great achievement, and few can merge themselves simply in their work. When also an ordinary matter becomes the subject of rival theories, and party polemics, it is very hkely to lose its own simplicity. What has this country really taken in hand, or had in view, during these forty years of debate, experiment, enterprise, and large expenditure, on National Educa- tion ? What is our National Education ? In the first place, what is Education ? It is generally defined as the art of preparing youth for the business of life. The business of life is the occupation which comes National Education and Punishments. 11 naturally and fitly to everybody's position, circum- stances, and capacities. Some line of life is open to every one in this country whatever position he may be born in ; and to rise from a lower social posi- tion to a higher is freely open to all. A vigorous and high-spirited youth will seek so to rise ; but that is not the object of education, commonly as it is mistaken to be so. The object is not success in any immediate work, but its result on character by the spirit in which it is done. The object of om^ present passing life, we have the highest authority and in- stinct to know, is the traming of character, and testing of principles, and proof of submission to the Divine will in daily accountable work, as in a school for futm-e permanent hfe. For this object work must be well done. Everybody, therefore, must have some work ; and, if it fit him, it is equally good for the common ultimate purpose whatever it be. Whether servile work or princely, whether laborious or suffering, the end which gives it value is the same. A ploughboy leaving school prepared for honest and intelligent ploughmg, is in the hio'hest sense as well educated as a gentleman proportionately well prepared to take his higher social position ; and an artizan who has been brought up to skilful and faithful business is as well educated, though he may be far less instructed or accomphshed, as a Minister of State similarly prepared for his depart- ment, and better than one conducting it ill. Indeed, 12 National Education and Punishments. we are divinely taught to know that the humble labourer's post is the best adapted for the highest education of character, both for present and future life. It has been lately well said, that ' The true edu- cation is that which assumes that everybody has need to conquer selfish nature, selfwill, idleness, and all that is contrary to his welfare ; and to rise out of it. Whatever teaching most sets him on this must be the best for the citizen, and the man.' (Maurice on ' Eepresentation and Education of the People,' p. 188). How many mis- take the means for the end, the making a livelihood or acquiring knowledge, for the Hfe which is to be formed by such occupations ! ' Is not the hfe more than meat ? ' But the preparation for life by education must deal with the means by which this common end is to be accom- plished ; and first with the development of faculties, and acquisition of elementary knowledge. I will only consider the education of boys. That of girls, equally or more important, must differ much in kind and process. The preparation of boys for the business of life of coLirse depends on their position in hfe. There are three classes in the community — the first, that of manual labourers, whose boys must leave school for their business at the early age of twelve or earher. During infancy, according to Aristotle, the body is the chief subject of education, and the art of educating lies chiefly in presenting what is good to the opening eyes National Education and Punishments. 13 and ears, and keeping what is bad away. So tliat, in the first stage of infancy the culture of all being chiefly physical, the mental school- work of the labouring class must be confined to the short interval between the ages of five and twelve, at the utmost, during which but little stock of knowledge can be soundly given ; but the means of acquiring it may ; and the main object of education — moral discipline, sense of right, moulding of character, and development of faculties — can be most efiectually secured in this prime season of impressibility. The second class in the community consists of those whose schooling ends, and business of fife begins, about the close of Aristotle's second period of education, at the age of eighteen. These are the children of higher artizans, tradesmen, and men of the smaller professions, and their schooling can include a great deal more of mental culture and of acquisition of general knowledge. Lastly, there is the upper class, who have sufficient wealth to be able to continue their children's schoohng throughout their nonage, and to defer their entrance on the proper business of their lives till youth has reached maturity in manhood. Their proper business is the highest socially, and in the nature of attendance on the wants of others less wealthily endowed, and of serving on public duties which others cannot afibrd time to discharge. Their general training, previous to the exercise of specific occupations, ought to be more extensive and complete ; but only the bhndness of 14 National Education and Punishments. human pride makes men of the two former classes envy this social eminence, as if there were intrinsic worth or any ultimate advantage in it. Hence the common error of judgment which estimates the object of schools to be the education of children out of rather than in the station in which each of them happens to be born. It should be borne in mind, in all considerations of this subject, that the actual schooling of all classes is much the same at its outset, though the wealthier classes have higher ideas, and more refining influ- ences, presented by circumstances to their minds. It is the shortness of schooling, and the earlier apprenticeship to the business of life, that makes the chief difference of education in each class. All schooling, however, though properly general in its nature, should bear some special reference to the business which is to follow. One moral advantage which the shorter school-time has over the more complete, is that the earlier entry on the duties of life ripens character sooner, but this is counterbalanced by the subsequently stagnant monotony of most ordinary industrial employments. Business, however, is itself a powerful educator, if faithfiilly followed, after the education of school is over. I will now consider what the National Education which this country has lately undertaken has been meant to include. National Education and Punishments. 15 It is the interest of the State that sufficient and effi- cient education should be accessible and received by- all the youth of the nation, so that no children should be growing up into citizens without the necessary training for an honest and industrious discharge of tlieir proper duties. How much of the poverty, and of the crime in any country comes from permitting children to lose the early culture wdiich God has made necessary and due to them all, and to grow up igno- rant of the simplest elements of social duty ! The burden of heavy poor rates, the loss of self-respect and vigour in a great mass of the people, the caging up and -waste of industry in costly and degrading prisons, the national crime of punishing the infraction of laws w^hich have never been taught — these and many more public misfortunes — are directly the result of such neglect. The education of children is, indeed, a natural obligation on their parents ; but, failing that, becomes the necessity of the State, It matters not in wdiat rank of life, the State must, for its own safety, fii'st encourage, next enforce, and lastly undertake, this pa- rental obligation. We are not considering the indirect education, powerful as it is, which consists in the influence of institutions and national habits, even upon children ; but actual schoohng — the training of chil- dren's minds and bodies under the care of teachers. In the old Greek Eepublics the State undertook the education of all free citizens. In Sparta some parents 16 National Education and Punishments. only, as a special favour, were allowed to elect, or educate their children out of the hands of the State. Lord Brougham derives the word ' education ' from this fact, the Eomans having allowed the same kind of option to parents. In this country we adopt the converse principle, and impose on the State the education of children in the last resort, only out of the hands of incorrigibly negligent or incompetent parents. In the development of English institutions, on the tabula rasa of America, primary educational establishments were provided for all, all being considered socially equal. There, however, practically, higher academies and endowed colleges have sprung up for the use of the wealthy, which unfortunately incur the sectarian jealou- sies we feel so much at home. In England, the Legislature interferes by requiring efficiency in all, including the higher, education ; of which there has been ample recent proof in the several Acts and Commissions relating to educational endow- ments, universities, colleges, and public schools. The idea that Government is concerned only with police supervision, and preservation of peace, is certainly not entertained by this nation. The State looks after its interest in general education, but never losing sight of the first parental obhgation, and when that fails, making the cost still fall, if possible, on the defaulting home. The ordinary National Education which the State National Education and Punishments. 17 lias systematically iindertakeu to aid during the last forty years in this country, is that of the labouring class who cannot wholly support the charge, and of the desti- tute and neglected ; chiefly, and solely till the Act of 1870, through private and religious agencies. There must always be a class unable to defray wholly, and some wholly unable to defray, the cost of a sound education for their children, however sanguinely we may hope that English labourers are not always to hang upon the verge of poverty, but some day may, with more saving habits, become more independent and proportionately more capable and desirous of their cliiidren's education. The increase of skill and mechanical invention engaged in industries tends to tliis happier state of things. There are, however, now a large proportion of manual labourers, not to speak of the more indigent, who could ill afford even the thirty shillings a year per child, to wliich low amount the large scale and skilful management of national under- taking have reduced the cost of a sound elementary education. For them specially the fourth clause of the Code declares that the Treasury grants in aid of education are intended. The Parliamentary Education Vote is distinctly stated to be taken " for the promo- tion of the education of children belonging to the classes which support themselves by manual labour," Such has been the express language also of all official documents and speeches in debates on the subject, from c 18 National Education and Punishments. first to last; and Mr. Forster, in moving for the latest Education Bill (February I7tli, 1870), was precise in laying down the same limitation. In arguing against making education free, he said, ' the middle class would step in — tlie best portion of the working classes would step in — the cost would be alarming, and not only unnecessary, but mis- chievous. Why should we reheve the parents from all payments for the education of their children, so far as they are able to pay ? ' Lord Granville, in introducing the Eevised Code to the House of Lords, February 13th, 1862, said, ' the sons of the middle class are just those for whose in- struction the country ought not to be required to pay.' Mr. Lowe, in introducing the Code to the House of Commons the same day, said, ' When we are estimating what we will do, what money is to be spent, what establishment we should support, and so on, we ought always to bear in mind that we are making arrange- ments for the very poorest children, the children of parents who laboiu" with their hands, and that, of these children, seventy per cent, are under ten years of age, and eighty per cent, under eleven.' For the lower stratum of wholly destitute, and hope- lessly, or even wilfully, neglected children, a special class of boarding schools is provided. The main public provision in this country for daily elementary education, hitherto in co-operation with private vohmtary agency, National Education and Punishments. 1 9 is for the encouragement of poor working parents to give proper schooling to their Httle children till the early age at which they must go to work. Such being the avowed principle of our present system, the State coming only in aid of parental duty in case, and on the score, of necessity, we should not carelessly, or without dehberate adjustment, in- fringe this self-supporting principle. If we allow ourselves, under the profession of merely aiding, to undertake ; or, in offering help in need, to relieve the able ; we set up a principle and pursue a widely different practice. However good the practice may be, the viola- tion of principle may do infinite miscliief, weakening the sense of parental responsibility, and pauperizing a large portion of the community through the very path opened for their elevation and independence. Even in aiding those intended, so long as the prin- ciple is that of aiding only, the charge left on the parent should be as high as he can afford, the whole cost being kept down to the standard of the education befitting his children, lest he take it to be as valueless as it is made needlessly cheap to him. As the Poor Law only offers a last resource against destitution, and refuses to charge the industry of the country with the sustenance of the idle, yet acknowledjj^es a rio:ht to five even to those who have been criminally neghgent of providing for themselves; so our principle of public aid to national education has 20 National Education and Punishments. been that of a last resource to poverty, but still offer- ing a rescue from moral starvation, even to the crimi- nally neglected, recovering as much as possible fi'om the parent the charge wliich he has thrown off from himself, and inllicted on others. In voting educational aid to the working class, hopes have always been entertained of the supply gradually creating the demand which may ultimately find the means of efficient self-support : and when Parliament became alarmed at the increasing estimates for education, the reassuring prospect was held out that the expenditure would so bring about its own reduction. The parallel drawn between physical and moral destitution is faulty exactly in this particular, that a painful craving creates a natural demand in the one case which has to be artificially produced in the other. The fear of physical death, too, in the former, has no parallel in the distant and hazy fears of moral death in the latter. The want of education itself prevents all appetite for it, and deadens all sense of its necessity. The self-interest, as well as the humanity, of others must ehcit the first sense of a need unfelt by its sufferer, but injurious to all. Professor Leone Levi well suggests that getting the most intelHgent working men themselves on the new School Boards will be the surest way of interesting them in the work, just as Boards of Guardians have educated their constituent ratepayers. National Education and Punishments. 21 Under a sense of public necessity, this country has undertaken to aid the education of the working class, wliile insisting on the higher classes providing for themselves, ' The education of the common people,' says Adam Smith (Book 5, Chap. 1) ' requires, in a civi- lized and commercial society, the attention of the public more than that of people of rank and fortune, who are eighteen or nineteen years of age before they enter on business, and have full time and means to acquire every accomplishment, and by their mixed employments have their understanding more exercised, and have many incentives to excel, and a feeling of shame at inferiority.' 'And now,' says Maurice ('Eepresentation and Educa- tion,' p. 184), ' is the time when the condition of these classes must be faced, when all that amazing develop- ment of manufacturing industry and power, wliich must otherwise derange all pohtical calculations, must be contemplated in reference to this question of educa- tion.' If then the schooling of children of manual labourers up to the age of twelve, or as Mr. Forster stated, February 17th, 1870, 'the great majority of whom are under ten years,' is the important, but limited work that we mean by National Education, let us consider what can be well taught to that class of childi'en in the given time. Evidently moral disciphue, training of mental faculties, and moulding of character. 22 National Education and Punishments. must be the chief part of the education so limited, and the actual communication of knowledge cannot be ex- tensive, though the thirst and means for some future acquisition may be given. There is often much confusion in considering the working class as the same in m^ban and rural districts. This confusion caused nine-tenths of the controversy in Parhament on the extension of the franchise, and so puzzled even the prescient Scotch in the extension of their early education laws to modern towns, as almost to have illustrated the fable of the hare and tortoise in their educational race with the English. But the schoohng of any cliildren which must merge in the apprenticeship of hfe at the early age of twelve cannot either in town or country achieve much in the way of learning. It may do much in the more important function of forming character by discipline and influence, awakening thought and conscience, and presenting higher ideas, and a finer sense of right and wrong to minds exposed to grovelling circumstances and depressed by narrow means. The object, however, being to educate children in a lower line of hfe, out of which any may rise, but in which they have to begin life, it would be a fault in the system if it aimed at compressing for them an amount of learning which could only be well accomplished in the longer years at the disposal of chikben in a higher social position ; nor should they, with this view, be kept buck from the National Education and Punishments. 23 business for which they are being prepared. It is clearly wrong to attempt to keep ordinary children of the working class at school after the age at which their proper work begins, and there are some kinds of work which, to be ever done handily, must be begun very early. The mischievous result of tax- ing other classes to keep the working class out of work must be the upsetting of divinely appointed, and necessary social order : the educating, by the artificial stimulus of large pubhc expenditm-e, a par- ticular class out of, instead of in, the condition of life in which they natiu-ally fill an important part of the community must upset the social equilibrium. That the greater part of the population should find themselves not only free to rise by industry out of the lower level, but forced up by an education supplied them from the industry of others, would be a state of things sacrificing to intellectual experiments, impossible to maintain, the ordinary interests of well- ordered society, and the gradations which are meant to dove-tail all classes together. The object of edu- cation is not to enable men to five othermse, but to live together well. Our earhest Parish Schools were chiefly intended to offer access to learning to youths of humble origin showing superior natural capacity. The great mass of laboiu:ers' children were not, in the days of those foundations, contemplated. ' The Eeformation (says Sir 24 Natio7ial Education and Pimisliments. J. Kay Shuttleworth, p. 438) gave birth to the idea that a certain amount of learning was indispensable for all those earning their bread by manual labour.' The idea, in that more religious age, was that some teaching was requisite for the whole nation to take an intelligent part in the rites and services of the National Church. The school endowments were mainly intended for the middle class, but secondarily for such of the lower class as could make use of them. The schemes of the Endowed School Commission, if properly carried out, might revive their original use, and, with the educational provision now made from the Treasury, might extend it to what the advancing in- telligence of the age requires above former times. The whole lower class is now the object of national education. The progress of science and invention, and the greater skill and mechanism introduced into manufacturing and agricultural industry, demands a much higher standard of primary education for labourers of all kinds. Skilled work itself is an intel- lectual education, amazingly quickens the intellect, and forms character, after schooling is over; and requires, and consequently elicits better schooling in preparation for it. We have wisely met this growing demand by what is called the half-time system, splicing the apprenticeship of industry with the instruction and disciphne of school. Night schools also serve to engraft the specific on the general National Education and Punishments. 25 training, and to keep up the flow of the cultured sap through the after-growth of hard and busy life. To revert to the question what, on our present plan, can or should be taught at public elementary schools ; by bearing in mind that the main education in such early childhood is discipline, and rejecting fictitious crams of knowledge, we shall find the ques- tion simplified. All allow that the principles of religion are the first things which, in some way or other, should be taught to children. As Mr. Gladstone says (' Homer,' ii. 43), ' Abstract truth will not sustain itself among men, but requires a teaching organ,' and these schools, for the children of the poor, give the first teaching to the great mass of our population of essential truths which will die out without them. The bug- bear of proselytism conjured up by religious jealousy would drive this primary instruction to take its chance in some separate way, or in no way. I do not be- lieve that the narrow egotism which hides behind the protest that national means should not be used to promote special dogma, will ever prevail upon prac- tical Englishmen to exclude religious teaching from their National Schools. Even if the present denomina- tional system, which has done so much, ever merges in a common public provision by rates, from which the Eoman Catholics will certainly seek freedom for themselves by a special self-support as in Canada, 26 National Education and Punishments. I feel sure that the general principles of the Christian religion, and the Bible, will never cease to be the substratum of our national teaching. Ireland may long continue characteristically satisfied with the neu- trality of a national system wliich teaches at the public expense in contiguous parishes that the Pope is infallible and Antichrist, and pilgrimages sacred and absurd. If England were to substitute an uniform for a denominational system, neutrality would have to take a more definite form, nor ever sink all religion to zero. School Boards wiU always be, as was predicted, the focus for rehgious fighting, even if they could be- come, like schismatics in Scotland, all agreed in creed and catechism. Keligious strife is not really religious, but personal ; or, as in the case of the English historical horror of Saracen and Pope, more pohtical than doc- trinal. The simple arts of inteUigible reading and writing may be sufficiently taught even to the remotest village boy before his earhest summons to the farm ; and a con- siderable advance may be made in common arithmetic, especially now that metric tables are hung up in every school, accustoming the national eye to easy cal- culation, and discovering a possible escape from the inveterate tyranny of complicated tables. For the exercise of reading, much better books might be prepared than those now used in National Schools, which are desultory collections of fragments National Education and Punishnieiits. 27 about Abraham, the Hippopotamus, New Zealanders, and Captain Cook, or scraps of poetry, without any completeness or consecutiveness. Where so httle knowledge can be acquired, there is all the more reason for combining with mere practice in reading as much of information as possible, in such a course as will draw out and interest the mind, and arrange itself in the memory. An easy course of history, geography, study of nature and domestic arts, would train the httle boys' minds in consecutive study and thought, and give them an intelligent interest in subjects they would usefully continue reading about afterwards. Such a course would differ in extent and kind in town and country schools, according to the usual difference both in quickness and intelhgence, and in dura- tion of schooling, between children so differently cir- cumstanced ; but Lord Brougham's famous Eesolution for extension of national education, moved in the House of Lords in 1835, did not go beyond proposing ' that the insufficient kind of instruction then afforded to the poorer classes, being for the most part confined to reading, writing, and a httle arithmetic, might be extended to the elements of the more useful branches of knowledge.' Useful knowledge may be communi- cated in the process of teaching to read as easily as use- less knowledge ; and elementary drawing may be made a part of the art of writing, as not confined to letters only, but, especially in this illustrative age, extended 28 National Education and Punishments. 