THE NATIONAL EDUCATION CONTROVERSY.

THE Parliamentary recess opens with peculiar advantages for advancement in the question of National Education ; for we re-

gard the recess, in all great questions, as an essential preparative to the subsequent session. The discussion of the subject has at- tained a very useful stage. The two rival leaders, Lord John Russell and Sir Robert -Peel, have for some years been bidding against each other with progressive increases of the small annual grant, until the persevering in that poor contest would be absurd, and something more must be done. Both statesmen have made allusions and declarations in the past session which they can scarcely neglect to follow up with practical measures.

But a novel and remarkable discussion, still more pregnant,

has arisen among the public. The appearance of Dr. Hook's pamphlet was the proximate and the worthy cause. Dr. Hook

was well known as the Vicar of Leeds ; a leader of the new lights in the Church of England, eminently pertaining to the "High Church" section, and signalizing his zeal by strenuous endeavours

to effect a very striking pecuniary sacrifice—the subdivision of his own living in order to the better cure of souls. He had disPlayed an exalted ambition, a zeal to promote the pomp of the Church, a devoted eagerness to sacrifice worldly consiclerations at the shrine-

of ecclesiastical power,—all in a degree supposed to belong exclu- sively to the palmy days of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. That same man has come forth with an emphatic declaration of the doe- trine, that the Church of England has neither the right to claim ex- clusive tuition of the people nor the power to put such a privilege into effect. The Church of England, he contends; ceased to be a real

national "establishment" when full toleration was granted to all denominations of Christianity : it then sank to be one of the maw corporations in this country claiming protection from the State for

their rights and property. He shows that it will be impossible to establish such a system of education as shall satisfy the reli- gious exactions of all the sects in the country ; and therefore he insists on the necessity of separating spiritual from secular edu- cation. Dr. Hook suggests a mode of reconciling. that separation

with the highest regard to religion: all pupils attending the schools for secular education should be required to produce certi- ficates that they had received spiritual instruction from the lip-. pointed pastors of their parents' persuasion.

But that does not satisfy those who insisted that secular eau: cation ought to rest solely on a religious basis. Mr. Edward Baines junior, editor of the Leeds Mercury, has been publishing

long weekly letters to Lord John Russell, to frighten him from the project imputed to him of establishing a purely secular sys- tem of education. The letters are crammed with statistical figures, which, if you were implicitly to trust them, might make you believe that there are so many schools and such ample school accommodation as to render all interference superfluous. As to the quality of the instruction given, the writer says, it is not so bad as people try to prove it; but even if it were, he does not think that any Minister would venture upon the " pedantry" of interfering solely because the quality is bad. He insists that a purely secular education will shock the religious principles of the people, and will evoke all the opposition encountered by the edu- cational clauses of the Factories Bill. He stands upon the ground of Voluntaryism ; and asserts that " freedom and competition" will do all that is wanted to extend popular education. The- length to which Mr. Baines will go in defending eduCatien as it is, may be surmised when we say that he defends " dame schools " ! But it seems that he himself attended a dame school;

which may at once account for his affectionate championship and for that low estimate of what education ought to be that per- mits him to be so content with what it is.

Mr. Baines's attack on Dr. Hook and Lord John Russell has called out a remarkable series of rejoinders from Dr. Robert

Vaughan, well known as a leading divine among Dissenters, and one, we believe, who may be classed among the Voluntaries in affairs of religion. Dr. Vaughan shows that Mr. Baines proves too much—so much, and that so inconsistent with notorious facts, as to expose the worthless nature of his statistics. In truth, all the figures in the world would not prove that the education of the

English people is anything but a melancholy farce : the speech and writing of the " masses" are palpable evidence that even those mere means of education are not given to all. Mr. Baines, indeed, while apologizing for admitted deficiencies in the present system, brings forward some curious testimony on the matter of "quality " : to account for the numbers who can- not write, he says that many forget what they have learned ; and then he appends this foot-note-

" A remarkable proof of this was found at Pendleton, near Manchester, in the survey of the Manchester Statistical Society: of the adults who had attended the day-school when children, 2,000 were found able to write,' 100 barely able to write,' and 2,282 ' unable to write.' Thus, more than half of those who had (we may presume) learned to write had forgot the art. This certainly leads to the inference that their attendance at day-school had been very short. (Report of Manchester Statistical Society, Journal of the Statistical Society, March 1839, p. 80.) The same society, in their report on the state of education in Hull, say that, as in Pendleton, it may here also be remarked, in Hull, that of the adults who cannot write, more have attended day-schools than have not done so.' (Journal of the Statistical Society, July 1841, p. 159.)" Mr. Baines argues the subject of national education as if it were "analogous to free trade.' There is no analogy. The ne- cessity for education is not indicated by imperious physical appetite—wherefore the demand is not efficient ; and in an un- educated people there is not a sufficiency of teachers—wherefore the machinery for a trade is not efficient. It has hitherto been a matter of charity, and Mr. Baines would keep it so : but of all reliances, a free trade in charity is the most precarious. How is the supply of education from charitable bodies remunerated? By self-glorification ; emotive of uncertain influence, and not always of the purest kind.

Besides the shock to the religious predilections, Mr. Baines foresees another tremendous consequence of a state education. What, he asks, is the principle ? " Is it not this—that it is the duty of a government to train the mind of a people ? " and then he recognizes in such a process a terrible power to regulate opinion, through tuition, according to the official will. This is a strange objection to come from one who does not like the notion of perfect freedom in religious opinion, but wishes to retain for each sect the power to perpetuate its own doctrines through the tuition of the young; which is a claim identical with that denied to the State. But as applied to any conceivable measure of State education in this country, the argument is a bugbear. No project more idly hopeless could be entertained than that of teaching the people into servility. Nor would any English Government at- tempt to " train the mind of the people " : that must be done by other engines than the school teaching of children. What the State can and ought to do, is to secure that the materials of ele- mentary knowledge are placed within the reach of all.

Do the present means supply any such want? It is notorious that they do not. The educational bodies profess to give some spiritual instruction, with reading, writing, and arithmetic, and possibly a trifle or so besides. But of the vast proportion of scholars it may be said, that their spiritual instruction is a mere learning by rote of things taught by those who do not under- stand them, so that the comprehension by the pupils is a sheer impossibility. And as to the secular learning, very little of it is carried out of the school-room—very, very few of the scholars who can get through the set page or copy, can read or write to any purpose. Dr. Hook says the people ought to be so taught "that they may be capable not only of reading but of thinking." In which of the schools vaunted by Mr. Baines do they acquire the materials for such a process ?

It is in the " quality" far more than in the quantity that effectual interference is needed ; or rather, the thing wanted is a real system of elementary instruction, instead of the miserable counterfeit which has usurped the name. Reading, writing, and arithmetic, are the mere tools of learning ' • and not only should they be fully given, but the pupil should also receive some in- struction as to the use of them. A national system of instruction should comprise some portion of the commoner elements of know- ledge : and by elementary we mean, that kind which does not supply full special information, but puts the pupil on the road to acquire more than is imparted. The principles of historical chro- nology and of geography are instances. Another is drawing. It is a common question to ask, of " what use" is draw- ing, to one who is not to be a draughtsman, an engineer, or at least a cabinetmaker? Now there is no study whatever which so rapidly and greatly develops the natural powers of observation. In like manner, a very proper item in the course of tuition would be some elementary instruction in the conduct of the understand- ing. We will not use the formidable and imperfect word " logic "; but there could be no objection to giving the more advanced pupils some insight into the nature and operation of the intellectual faculty as applied to the processes of learning, argument, and in- duction. The teachers ought to be fortified by some such know-

ledieState education might comprise all this without professing any enterprise so wide and extravagant as that of "training the mind of the people." Its proper office would be, not to teach the whole people, but to supply a standard system Of instruction. If there is that benevolent energy on which Mr. Baines counts so strongly—if emulation would have any influence—the mere exist- ence of a State education would not " put down" any other plan ; it would simply offer a s,ystem accessible to all. No doubt, it Would practically supersede any that was not as good ; but that result might be prevented by the obvious expedient of excelling the State education. Government would set the lowest level aecessible to the poorest and most helpless class ; those who wished to draw pupils to their special methods would have to proceed by beating the State in the excellence of the tuition offered. What a held for voluntary benevolence! Indeed, it would be easy to devise enactments for recognizing such volun- tary systems, by placing them on the footing of the official sys- tem in respect of privileges, if they were reported by competent authorities to come up to it in point of sufficiency. In that way, private bodies might blend their own system of religious instruc- tion with secular tuition.

It is to be hoped that the leisure of the recess will be employed in maturing this question. It has been greatly forwarded by the calm discussion which it has received at the hands of men so able, so zealous, and so honest in purpose. We hold the service performed by Mr. Baines to be not inferior to that of his ant mists : he has boldly marked out and occupied the ground of Edu- cational Conservatives, and has thus supplied data which will help active statesmen to calculate what must and can be done.