MR. CUMIN ON RAGGED SCHOOLS.
IT is with no slight reserve that we attempt to reply to that section of Mr Cumin's report which refers to ragged schools. A more honest or intelligent report we never remember to have read. It bears in every line the mark of a singularly acute mind, free from every prejudice except a whimsical antipathy to paupers, and dis- posed to accept any conclusion, provided only it is supported by the facts. Even with regard to ragged schools, Mr. Cumin, after all the censure he has undergone, sums up his arguments without bitter. ness, and states his result without undue exultation. But acknow- ledging all this, and accepting without reserve most of the reporter's facts, we must still dissent with some emphasis from the conclusion it is his obvious tendency to draw. Mr. Cumin does not openly deprecate State assistance to ragged schools, but he would only con- cede it when every other educational claim had been liberally met. We, on the contrary, hold that the " street Arabs are the °last whom it is the interest of the State before all others to improve.
In the first place it must be remarked Mr. Cumin gives up from the beginning one-half of his own case. He allows that "no one can doubt the beneficent influence exerted by evening ragged schools." The sentence is repeated twice in his preface, while it is expanded In the body of his report into the following decisive approval : "The history of some of those boys whom I saw in Bristol and Plymouth, sitting quietly in their rough clothes at their rude desks, was singularly interesting. Accustomed to pass the night in lime- kiln, or on doorsteps, many of them had come originally "for a lark," as they said, or out of mere curiosity; and one boy was pointed out to me who, during the first nights of his attendance, insisted upon challenging his teacher to single combat, but whose barbarous turbu- lence had been so subdued by kindness and forbearance that in case of any disturbance he was, when I saw him, the foremost on the side of order, and always prepared to chastise whoever ventured to disturb it. No doubt, on cold, rainy nights the attendance was un- usually large, for the fire was bright and the room comfortable. But, making every allowance, I cannot doubt that a very considerable in- fluence for good is exerted by these ragged evening schools, conducted by voluntary teachers ; though I must repeat what I have already observed, that the personal character of the teachers seems essential to produce the effects which I have described." Nothing can be clearer than this admission, and though Mr. Cumin carefully ascribes the results attained to the voluntary character of the tuition, still his objection to the schools, as places for gratis in- struction, does not extend to schools opened after dusk. As these schools are intended for lads who, though "Arabs," are occupied daring the day, an immense class is thus willingly left to the tuition afforded by ragged schools. So far, then, as schools held in the even- ing are concerned, State help might, he will allow, be given without serious injury to the population. This of itself would be a most im- portant concession, as the charitable, relieved of these schools, might be enabled to perfect the organization of the day ragged school. The latter, however, Mr. Cumin emphatically condemns for reasons we will repeat, as nearly as possible, in his own words. The ragged schools, lie contends, are filled almost exclusively with children whose parents, can afford to pay for a more regular education, and one which, by enforcing cleanliness and discipline, must prove in the long run more beneficial. Thus, in Plymouth, he found the occupation of the parents who sent the children to the ragged school to be as follows : Labourer, washerwoman, pensioner, tailor, mason, lamplighter, shoemaker, chair-maker, tinman, navvy, brick-maker, fisherman, stoker, stone-cutter, chimney-sweep, platelayer." Precisely the classes who send their children most regularly to the national school. Bat, he adds—and the admission seems to us to destroy all the effect of his argument-
" The real difference between the parents who send their children to the rugged schools and those who send them to the ordinary schools, consists not in their occupation, nor in their poverty, but in their moral character. " Both at Bristol and at Plymouth it was an admitted fact that the parents of more than half the children were drunkards ; and, indeed, one of the leading members of the Bagged School Society stated as much, both to myself and at a public meeting. The reason why a dissipated parent prefers the ragged school to the other schools is obvious. Like many other parents, he acknowledges the necessity of education, bat he would rather spend his penny on a glass of gin than on a week's schooling. Taking little interest, and exercising little control over his child, the drunkard takes no trouble to send his child to school regularly, or to provide it with clothes sufficiently clean to appear amongst other more re• spectable children. In good schools discipline and cleanliness are considered essentials, and the gross neglect of these lead to rejection, punishment, or expel- sion. But the ragged school overlooks these essentials. The boy or girl may at- tend when he pleases, he may be regular or irregular, and may come with filthy hands, undressed hair, and a costume no matter how odoriferous. Education is an excellent thing, if conducted on reasonable principles; bat to suppose that boys or girls are to receive any real benefit by being taught their alphabet or to form their letters, for a few hours during the week, whilst they pass the larger portion of their time in the street or amidst scenes of the greatest profligacy, seems a little extravagant. There may, perhaps, be one or two cases in which, under such unpromising circumstances, a boy or girl has derived benefit from a ragged achool, though I admit that I have been unable to discover any. There are, of course, many cases in which both boys and girls, who, after being with- drawn from the contamination of a vicious home, and supplied with food, lodging, and instillation, have turned out extremely well. But I have been able to dis- cover no case in which a boy or girl, allowed to live in scenes of profligacy, has been permanently improved by attendance on a day ragged school" But how are these children to be caught at all? If education were compulsory in England, they could, of course, be sent to the State school, and doubtless might profit much more than under the more irregular arrangement. But the resort to compulsion being as yet in advance of English opinion, the choice lies not between the ragged school and the State school, but the ragged school and no school at all. Mr. Cumin evidently thinks that if n carpenter can send his children to the national school, so may the chair-maker, who now prefers its ragged but cheaper rivaL He forgets that by his own showing the difference is not between a carpenter and a chair-maker, but a sober carpenter ands drinking chair-maker. He holds that the drunkard wishes for education for his son, and if he could not get it for nothing, would retrench to procure it ; but where is the proof of that ? As a matter of fact, all who know the poor know that the last thing a regular " drinking-man."—the poor, unless irritated, never speak of a drunkard—concerns himself about is the education of his child. It is the wife who is wretched, because her child loses the chance his father himself has thrown away. It is impossible for her to secure him entrance to a decent school, and she grasps eagerly at its ragged neighbour, not as the best, but as her only alternative. A woman, even if she drinks, seldom forgets her child. Mr. Cumin says she might easily put by the penny a week, and secure the decent clothes ; but the unhappy woman would tell him the father would pawn the latter and treat the former as evidence of wealth hidden from his control. There are thousands of women whose only defence against their " masters" lust for drink, is to hide so much of their earnings as will suffice to procure bare bread. They dare not retain a surplus, though it be but a single penny, unless, perchance, when it is to be laid out, as in a coal-olub, in something the drunkard will himself enjoy. We suppose the woman in this case to be a sober one, but suppose she drinks too. She will send the child to the ragged school, which satisfies her conscience and keeps him out of the way, but she neither can nor will spare the pennies which would send him to the national school. Mr. Cumin calls the sum one penny, but it costs many pennies to keep the children of the poor respectable; and his second argument, that they might be assisted with clothes, he would himself, on second thoughts, repudiate. Begging is not the way to learn the habit of independence he so wisely desires to foster. The mother who drinks instead of finding the penny re- quired may be deserving of any epithet language can supply, but that is no reason why the State should not remedy her neglect. The true remedy would be to make her supply it ; but Mr. Cumin knows better than we do that to demand compulsory education is, in Eng- land, to cry for the moon. The only alternative is a school without fees, and that school must be a ragged school. Mr. Cumin says such a school teaches no cleanliness, but if his object is to deter the respectables, so much the better. To our minds, there is no reason why cleanliness should not be enforced, for we are certain the admis- sion of even two children belonging to the criminal class would be sufficient to deter the respectables from crowding to the school.
But, argues Mr. Cumin, the day ragged school does not improve the children. "I have been able to discover no case in which a boy or a girl allowed to live in scenes of proflicacy has beenpermanently improved by attendance on a day ragged school." Their promoters have discovered thousands, and prima' facie reason would appear to be with them. If education improves anybody, it must improve ragged-school children. It may not make them good members of society, but it makes them a great deal less evil members than blank ignorance would have left them. Does not Mr. Cumin know that there are degrees even in ruffianism—that the London " rough " of to-day is decent compared with his prototype of half a century ago? And to what. is the improvement owing, if not to the civilization which is gradually penetrating even into the criminal class a ragged school attracts ? With respect to the girls it is difficult to argue. The English world outside the Haymarket does not comprehend degrees in chastity, and so much the better for said world. But we maintain that any policeman of experience will prove that there is a progress perceptible in the very worst of his enemies ; that the brutes are less brutal; the corrupt more sensible of honour; and all more amenable to that first evidence of civilization, the dread of the law. Ragged schools will not suppress crime any more than steam-printing will; but they diminish pro tanlo the tendency to commit it. The ragged schools, Mr. Cumin acknowledges, do catch the chill-
dren of those whose moral character restrains them from using the ' stage, and varying. in price with the ratio of height. In a theatre so national school; and that, we humbly submit, is the exact ground constructed, the single entrance with its crush and confusion might be upon which their promoters claim the sympathy and assistance of the replaced by staircases as broad as the building itself, and the central
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