ENGLISH EDUCATIONAL APATHY.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR." a Sra,—Is it any wonder that we are apathetic about educa- tion, when the Education Department has for thirty years abstained from doing anything which could stimu- late us into taking keen interest in our schools ? Let me give an example of the way in which the Board of Education fosters apathy. I am a manager of a rural national school which receives about £150 of the money paid to the Government in taxes, and the school controls the destiny, as far as a school can affect human destiny, of over eighty children. This has been a year of extraordinary excite- ment. The continued movement of the population from the country into our body-and-soul-killing towns has at last led to the formation of an Agricultural Education Committee, which has strongly urged the Board to try to cause schools to interest country children in country things, and the Board has assured the Committee of its concurrence with their views. And this year the country has seen more clearly than for many years before the need for giving better physical training and some training in drill to boys in school, and several strong Associations have urged the Board, or the Government, to let these things be done; and the Associations also have been assured of the Board's approval of their views. What has the Board done to cause effect to be given to the views ? The school with which I am connected has as teachers a certificated head- master; his wife, who has not a certificate and has several very young children; and " an Article 68" teacher, a very nice, bright girl who has never studied educational matters. The managers are the clergyman of the parish, the two churchwardens (one a farmer, the other a pro- fessional man), a cotton-spinner, and several working men. The clergyman is indefatigable in visiting the school, and has the kindliest relations with teachers and scholars ; but, like his colleagues, he has not studied either the theory or practice of teaching. Such a school would seem, then, to need constant stimulation for managers as well as for teachers. Yet this school is regarded by the Board as so entirely satisfactory in its work that it is excused examina- tion, and gets its income after receiving a visit of inspection from one of her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. And this is all the advice and exhortation which, in this year of crisis, it has received from the Board of Education : " Mixed School— the school is taught with creditable success and very good order is maintained. Infants' Class—the class continues to be efficiently taught and good order is maintained." And in all the great number of years during which I have been a manager of schools I have never received more help towards taking an intelligent interest in my work from the Inspector who visited the schools than that empty report can give. Once, finding in a reading class which I had held that hardly a boy in the village could read decently, I asked her Majesty's In- spector if he did not think that we should get better results if we taught more reading and less spelling, and he gravely assured me that he attached great importance to accurate spelling. If this kind of inspection is not a sin against the nation, I really do not know how a Government Department can sin against a nation. We managers, as a rule, are not fools, nor do we lack desire to be of use, and if we do not show an intelligent interest in the work of our schools, it is because the Board of Education has never cared to show us how to do our work well. If, instead of appointing to the immensely important positions of Inspectors young men who have taken good degrees at Oxford and Cambridge, of whom all begin, and not a few end, with almost complete ignorance of the science and art of education, the Board would do as Germany does, and appoint men who have proved themselves to be efficient teachers, and would cause these men not only to visit our schools but to call the teachers and managers of a small district together once a year and take counsel with them, and tell them how to work to the greatest advantage for their scholars and their country, more progress would be made in our schools in a year than has been made in the last thirty, and there would not long be occasion to complain of English educational apathy.—I am, Sir, &c., Swanscoe Park, near Macclesfield. T. C. HORSFALL.
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