THE EDUCATION DEBATE.
MR. Walpole was probably right when he reduced the discussion on the Revised Code to the form of a de- bate on a bill, and on Tuesday only moved that the House go into Committee upon his resolutions. He thus gained two nights for the debate upon the general question, before entering into the details with which for some days more newspaper readers must be bewildered. The discussion, wearisome as it is from the deluge of facts and figures almost every one deems it necessary to pour out, is educating the country, and it has been conducted 88 yet in a spirit most creditable to the Legislature. Mr. Whiteside, it is true, imported a little bitterness into the argument when he pro- fessed his readiness to set "a statistical Chadwick against a visionary Vice-President," and declared that the former, "being a clever and sensible man, differed in every respect from the Right Honourable gentleman ;" but Mr. Lowe, with his quaint superciliousness, and habit of talking to Members as if he were lecturing to a class, really brings that kind of remark on himself. For the rest, Members on every side are speaking as if they honestly wished to secure as thorough a system as Parliament can devise, and already the facts on which the compromise must at last be based are becoming sufficiently clear. The issues are getting themselves laid down, and, apart from mere details, may, we think, be de- scribed as pretty nearly these : There is, it is evident, a large amount of content with the ancient Code. The opposition which hailed it at first, the fierce wrath of the clerical party, the fears of the old Con- servatives, the doubts of all manner of voluntaries, seem to have died away. Mr. Baines, it is true, made a speech de- nouncing all grants in aid, and Mr. Bernal Osborne made another denouncing nothing, but insinuating, with mild aci- dity, that State aid only weakened the cause—that the wall would stand all the better for being deprived of its buttress. But the general voice is in favour both of Go- vernment help and help as at present administered through the Committee of Privy Council. The system had elicited aid greater than its own cost, or, as Mr. Walpole well put it, the country had granted 4,400,000/. in 28 years, and private benevolence just about double that sum, while as to results, the number of persons who signed with a mark had decreased to 30 per cent. and one person in every nine was now attending a school. These and similar facts were admitted, and it was allowed that the results were attained with the full con- sent of the people. The rich we know do not protest, and as Mr. Forster observed, no petition had ever come from the poor against the expense upon their education. Indeed, the wrath excited by Mr. Lowe is a significant proof of content, though not in itself a proof that this content is wise.
The grant in aid must be held, therefore, so far as it goes, to succeed, and the consent on that point leads to this important deduction. Any innovation upon the Code must, to succeed in Parliament, supplement, not destroy, and the only subject for statesmen is the direction and extent of that supplementary action. On this head also we are not left without light, though we shall have more when tne debates have been heard in Committee. Everybody seems to allow— and the fuller their knowledge the more candid their avowal— that the grant does notreach to the poorer districts, that it does not secure sufficient attention to elementary teaching, andthat it has created a machinery too elaborate for a Government such as ours. Already we have, says Mr. Walpole, 8000 certificated teachers, 1000 assistant teachers, 16,000 pupil teachers, and 2500 Queen's scholars, an army of educationists all looking more or less to the State as their nursing mother. The object of the Revised Code is to correct these evils, firstly, by making grants depend upon the pupil's knowledge of reading, writing, and figures : secondly, by allowing a cheap instructor instead of a pupil-master ; and thirdly, by taking away the stipendiaries' chief temptations. That these devices will be efficient has not been questioned by anybody. The only charge is that they will be a little too much so, that the weapon will be sharpened until its edge is worn off. The examination, it is said, is too hard. The children of the cities migrate so often that the men who taught them for eleven months may not have them during the twelfth, when the inspector comes round.
Then, girls are included in the averages, and the attendance of girls is, for domestic reasons, excessively irregular. A girl of ten cannot keep "baby" out of the fire and the gutter, and sit at school doing sums. Then the grant, as proposed, is given too much after the work. It is while the teacher is drilling the ignorant, teaching little savages how to read, that he wants aid, and not when his work is done. Reading and writing do not "come by nature," though the middle classes, who are taught by their mothers, are apt, under that best of all teaching, to fancy they do, and a teacher wearing out body and spirits in that elementary work wants encouragement while he is doing it. Then, too, the public, on the faith of a grant, has built schools—often a great deal too good—has hired masters, and involved itself in all sorts of pecuniary claims, and it does not like to find a promise exchanged for a contingent reversion. As Mr.
Forster, who always contrives to express the floating feeling as well as the arguments of those on whose side he is fight- ing, excellently put it, there is an implied partnership in the matter, and the State must not throw up its share without something like adequate notice. All these arguments have more or less strength, and are backed by votes amounting, we suspect, to a very close run ; yet there remains un- answered the allegation that we ought to have clear results. The only remedy is a compromise—a concession of half the grant on the Inspector's report, and half on the examination. The teacher will struggle as sharply for part as he would for the whole, while all existing arrangements will not be thrown into confusion. The idea of saving, of course, is by that course overthrown, but if the country likes the expenditure, it is no business of Mr. Lowe to preach a detested economy. For ourselves, we have on that point nothing to object, as we have contended from the first that the charge of extravagance was absurd. If State education costs two millions a year, so much the better, provided only that education is really obtained. The present allowance about which would-be economists make such a fuss, is far less than the cost of the full Colonels, who do not command anything, but are supposed to be ornamental.
The objections to the second and third principles are al- most equally decided, though not, we think, equally strong.
It seems to be the conviction of the country gentlemen that the pupil teacher is necessary, that a cheap man will not do, and that as regards existing interests Government has been guilty of something equal to a breach of faith. They say the certificates and the pupil teachers were introduced in order to remedy the proved evil of inferior masters. We have a strong suspicion that men above their work are rather more useless than men a little below it, and a general belief that women teach both sexes, while under eleven, a great deal better than men do, but we may let that pass. After all, the local managers must be the best judges which of the two classes they like, and—the wish for economy not existing— the only imperative change is in the mode of administration. The department cannot go on corresponding with a whole army, and the compromise suggests itself naturally. Let the teachers still be supplied in slightly reduced numbers, leave their gratuities and incomes and all other advantages alone, but place them under the local managers. They will cease to be State stipendiaries, cease to hold "moral pistols" at the bead of Mr. Osborne, because, as he tells us, he has a "political conscience "—over which, of course, he chuckles like any other savant over a newly-discovered rarity—the managers will cease to protest, and nobody will suffer except the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He will not suffer long. When managers find that gratuities drain their funds, then ideas of the use of gratuities will very soon become—Scotch.
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