SIR JOHN GORST AND MR. LLOYD GEORGE.
SIR JOHN GORST has earned a reputation which, as not infrequently happens, stays by him even when he does not deserve it. We do not mean that he has abandoned that perfectly detached and separate attitude which is so unusual, and consequently so interesting when exhibited on the Treasury Bench. We have no doubt that the Vice-President of the Council will have, and use, other opportunities of applying to educa- tional matters that searching criticism which he delights to employ when the thing criticised is the work of his own chiefs. The gaiety of the House of Commons would be seriously impaired if Sir John Gorst were to leave the Government, or to take some other office in it. The point we wish specially to note is that every remark that he makes is now assumed by the Opposition to be . of that candid kind which is so delightful in a Minister speaking on matters in which his Government is supposed to take interest. The report of his reply to Mr. Lloyd George on Tuesday is an example of this. It is punctuated throughout with " Opposition cheers " and " Opposition laughter." The speech was welcomed by the opposite benches as being simply another example of the conflict which is supposed to be continually going on between his position and his convictions. " The right hon. gentleman," said Sir William Harcourt, " is a real educationist at heart. If we could only strike off his arms those fetters which we are very conscious restrain his true inclinations, I believe we might have something done. I am extremely sorry the right hon. gentleman should not be in a position to carry his convic- tions more completely into effect." There have been passages in some of Sir John Gorst's speeches in the present Parliament to which this description would have been perfectly applicable, passages which showed that the speaker had a very poor opinion of what the Govern- ment were proposing to do, and that he was not at all anxious to conceal that opinion from the House. But his speech on Tuesday does not seem to us to be at all of this kind. It was a, straightforward answer to Mr. Lloyd George, and its object was to show that the evils of which Mr. Lloyd George complained were either trifling or could not be remedied without provoking greater evils, and that evils of far more real importance had been passed over by him. In all these respects we think Sir John Gorst was completely successful.
Mr. Lloyd George's first point was that a, public elemen- tary school under local representative management ought to be placed within reach of every child in England and Wales. That there is a genuine element in this grievance, which this expedient is designed to remedy, we do not deny. It is quite true that in a great number of parishes there is only one school, and that a school belonging to the Church. Of course, Mr. Lloyd George could not be content with stating an admitted fact. He must needs go on to describe Church schools as under the exclusive control of one " sect," and that sect by no means the predominant religious denomination of the country. Sir John Gorst described Mr. Lloyd George's position very neatly. The Act of 1870, he said, was a compromise. The Noncon- formists had the best of it in Board-schools, " because there they have a religion taught at the public expense which is exactly that in which they believe, and would teach in their own schools." The Church, on the other hand, had the best of it in village schools, and Mr. Lloyd George's proposal is virtually an attempt to remove the Nonconformist grievance while leaving the Church grievance untouched. This is the way in which people usually deal with compromises. Each side wants to emancipate itself from the agreement while holding the other party bound. That is perfectly true, but it is not at all what Mr. Lloyd George meant to impress upon the House. Sir John Gorst might indeed have said a good deal more on this point. He might have reminded the House that the Nonconformist grievance in villages is paralleled by the Church grievance in many towns ; that if, where there is only a Church school, Nonconformists have to choose between allowing their children to have Church teaching or giving them no religious teaching at all, it is equally true that where there is only a Board- school Churchmen have to choose between allowing their children to have undenominational teaching or giving them no religious:teaching at all. And further, he might have pointed out that the Nonconformist has one con- spicuous advantage over the Churchman. The Noncon- formist may dislike the religious teaching given in Church schools, but he has not to pay for it. The Churchman may dislike the religious teaching given in Board-schools, but inasmuch as the cost is defrayed out of the rates he has to bear his share of it. Again, he might have asked Mr. Lloyd George why he showed so much hostility to the first Education Bill of the present Government, con- sidering that in that Bill provision was expressly made to give facilities to Nonconformist parents to have their children taught in the Church schools by ministers or teachers of their own denomination. Perhaps in these and one or two similar omissions we may trace a survival of Sir John Gorst's earlier manner.
Further, the remedy proposed by Mr. Lloyd George would substitute a worse state of things for that which he proposes to alter. To bring a school " under local representative management " within the reach of every child would mean the establishment of a School Board in every village. That, says Sir John Gorst, would be a fatal step to take from the point of view of educational efficiency. Board-schools in towns are for the most part more success- ful than voluntary schools, for the simple reason that they have the rates to draw upon. " But in rural districts the case is absolutely reversed. The country clergyman is a far better and more competent school manager than the parsimonious tradesman or the ignorant village tradesman." Here, again, Sir John Gorst might have recalled the Education Bill of 1896, the aim of which was to place elementary education under local authorities dealing with larger areas. The particular objection taken against village School Boards would not have held good if that Bill had passed, since it would have vested the ultimate control of elementary education in rural neighbourhoods in County or District Councils. Or take the case of pupil teachers. Mr. Lloyd George complains that in country schools Nonconformist children have no chance of being employed as pupil teachers. " IE doubt," replies Sir John Gorst, "whether there are many managers of Church schools who would reject a promising Nonconformist boy or girl for the position of pupil teacher,"—and considering how much trouble is saved, to the head teacher by having a clever subordinate rather than a dull one, we doubt it too. If any grievance is to be set up in the matter of pupil teachers it should be a far more comprehensive one. It is not the difficulty of becoming a pupil teacher that needs insisting on so much as the hard lives the pupil teachers themselves lead. They are "a great deal more of a school drudge than a pupil." They have to get their instruction before the other children come to school, or after they have gone home, or when the rest are at dinner, or during the play-hour. We are sorry to say that the chief defender of this system is the National Society. We trust that the Church of England is not again about to make the great mistake of associating the main- tenance of Church schools with a low educational standard, and oppose the recommendations of the De- partmental Committee which has been considering the question, not because their adoption would be injurious to education, but because, in improving education, it would tend to increase the cost of it. Why did not Mr. Lloyd George, if he must deal with the status of pupil teachers, deal with the whole question, instead of confining himself to so very small a part of it ?
Sir John Gorst goes further. He complains, with too much truth, that debates of this kind do but touch the fringe of education, while the heart and kernel of it— how to get more children into the schools, how to get them there in a condition fit to receive instruction, and how to keep them there when you have got them—is left unnoticed. Why are children allowed to be kept away from school as they are ? Why are they allowed to ex- haust their strength by working for wages before and after school ? Why does Parliament blow hot and cold in the same breath by declaring that it is the duty of every parent to send his child to school from the age of five to the age of fourteen, and then, by statutory exemptions or local by-laws, allowing the parent to take the child away while he is still young enough to forget everything he has learned ? If Mr. Lloyd George would raise questions of this magnitude, he would be doing a real service to education. Would not that be as well worth doing as merely making education a stick with which to beat the Church dog ?
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