[To THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR."] Sin,— " We all talk
education, but we confine the talk to the poor, and there is danger in the difficulties and dangers of the rich being ignored." Such was the beginning of an article in your issue of the fith inst. There seems to me, however, a very much greater danger, viz , that the difficulties of the middle-class will be ignored. We, comparatively poor middle- class people. find ourselves surrounded with palatial Board- schools, which we are taxed to build, and where working-men's children obtain an excellent education. Why should we not have good schools provided for the education of our own children ?
This is the way education is managed in the North of London. Children begin under some lady who transforins her breakfast-room or dining-room into a class-room, and charges, perhaps, 22 2s. per term. When the boys (the girls have a splendid school in the Camden Road) get too big for the lady's school, they go to other private schools in the neighbourhood, where the fees are 23 3s. and upwards per term. They are not, however, proper schools, but only private houses adapted to teaching purposes. I consider it most unjust that in a large suburban neighbourhood, where we support schools with large, well-ventilated class-rooms for the working-class, we should have no properly constructed school available for the education of four or five hundred of the children of those who are now paying two, three, or four guineas and upwards per term in the so-called colleges or collegiate schools of North London.
Several of the City Companies are now devoting their atten- tion to education—the Grocers have an admirable school at Hackney. Should you allow my letter to appear in your columns, the Fishmongers', or some equally wealthy Company, might commiserate us, and build a school for the benefit of the large population now existing within, say a radius of a mile, from the "Nag's Head," a well-known landmark in this neighbourhood.
I am, Sir, Src , A. B. B. Holloway, September 10t1,, 188 J.
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