15 MARCH 1856, Page 11

2 Crown Terrace, Scarborough, 11th MraivA 1856. you can find

space for me, I wish to say a few words,en the...sub- ject of National Education. It is rather remarkable that out of the ous schemes for instructing (hardly educating) the people, no one.lias at- . tamed such an amount of popularity as to excite a positive demand for it on the part of those who are most interested in the matter. Yet experience has shown us that the labouring daises are not at all apathetic about eclu,c cation. They do not interest themselves in any of the existing plans, hipu cause not one of them meets their requirements, or is anything else but a miserable instalment of instruction of little practical value to them. At the present time the main difficulty with which educators have to contend is the small space of time which children are allowed to remain at school. Lord John Russell feels this, and makes an attempt to remedy it, which, in my opinion, will not prove successful. The poor do not allow their children to remain at school till the age when instruction (moral as well as secular) is really beginning to take effect, because they cannot afford 63 do so. And this happens, not because they have to keep them in food and clothing, or because they have to spare a few pence weekly out of their earnings, but because when a child has left school he has yet to be taught how to earn his own living. Now, no public payment of rates can remedy this, unless a more comprehensive system of education be adopted. Our schools must be so managed that when the children leave them they will be able to main- tain themselves. Curiously enough this kind of education is only to be had in prisons or reformatory schools! A young pickpocket is put into a way of earning a livelihood. An honest man's son is thrown upon the world, fur- nished with nothing more than a capacity to read, write, count, and spout a few dry facts of geography or geology. This is not the way to make the masses interest themselves about education. Make your schools schools of industry ; have them on a large scale, so that any boy or girl may have the choice of a fair range of useful employments ; teach the children to work with their hands at the same time that you teach them to work with their heads ; and you will find that parents will not object to leave their children at school until they are old enough to comprehend moral lessons, such as are likely to make them useful members of society. All this might be done at a very small increase of cost to the nation, and I am fully persuaded that money so laid out would be saved in other departments of public expenditure. If it is not attempted, I, for one, de- psir of any other satisfactory solution of the vexata qutestio of National Education.