28 JUNE 1873, Page 14

EDUCATION AMENDMENT BILL AND MR. SEEBOHM.

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPEOTATOIC1

Sm.,—If Mr. Seebohm knew well the rural districts of the Midland Counties, he would not, I venture to think, regret so deeply the Bishop of Peterborough's opposition to Rural School Boards, or deem his clergy hopelessly " prejudiced " because they happen herein to agree with their Diocesan.

Will you permit a Northants Rector, who always reads and mostly approves the opinions advocated in the Spectator, to state the ground of his opposition to Rural School Boards ? The want of individuals qualified to form intelligent and efficient Boards.

In these counties the members of School Boards would be taken almost necessarily from the class which supplies the guardians of the poor.

Any one acquainted with the average Rural Guardian, his views of his duty, capacity for business, &c., would probably hesitate to commit the education of a parish to a Board composed of Guardians, without the ex-officio members.

Local or sectarian jealousies, indifference, inaptitude for the discussions and business of a Board would frequently exclude both squire and parson from a pariah School Board, and leave • the management of the education of a parish, if not the majority at the School Board, to the Prime Ministers of public-houses, liberal in beer, and leading a compact body of devoted and thirsty adherents.

We clergy fear lest the cause of education, for which many of us have spent the best years of our lives and a considerable pro- portion of our small properties, would suffer from such an arrange- ment; we dread to see schools now reported efficient and flourishing pine and decay, through being transferred from the tender, watchful care of voluntary managers, to the hard rules of an unsympathetic and probably inexperienced Board.

We fear lest such Boards should prove both extravagant and niggardly, incapable of exercising personal judicious supervision, and unwilling to frame, or having framed, unwilling to enforce, compulsory bye-laws.

Not altogether from our inner consciousness have we formed this opinion ; we have seen and noted around us schools built by Rural Boards which cost twice as much as schools built by voluntary agency, while yet supplying no greater accommodation, and violating what we deem to be the first principles of school architecture. We have. heard, too, of School Boards close at hand where the spelling of the corresponding member has been so peculiar as to require her Majesty's Inspector to call the attention of "My Lords" to it. By all means let as have universal compul. aion ; without it, another generation must pass away uneducated ; but Barely we can have compulsion in rural districts without School Boards. The Factory and Workshops' Act really enforced in the large shoe-making villages of Northants and Leicester would do much ; the Children's Agricultural Labour Bill would farther assist the work of education ; but a Board of a few in- telligent and cultivated individuals, exercising over a large area, such as a Union, or even a county, compulsory educational powers, would, we think, beet supply what is now wanting for the success-

ful carrying-on of the work of education in the rural districts.—