SCHOOLS AND RITES. T HE attack upon the Education Bill in
the House of Commons resembles in one important particnlar the attack upon it out of doors. There is more decorum, of course, less wildness of statement, less imputation of motive ; but there is the same unwillingness to say plainly what alternative measure the Opposition would have brought forward had the task fallen to them and not to the Government. If the changes embodied in the Bill were introduced merely for change' sake, this silence would be perfectly reasonable. The Opposition might then plead that being quite content with things as they are, there is no need for them to be prepared. with proposals for making them other than they are. But this is not at all a true account of the situation. No one pretends to be satisfied with the educational system we have. There is abundant difference of opinion as to what sort of a system ought to be set up in its place, but there is complete agree- ment up to the point that we want something which we have not yet got. We can say with the utmost sincerity that we have not an idea as to what this something would be if the Opposition leaders were left to frame a Bill to take the place of the present one. They would have, it must be remembered, to meet one very inconvenient fact. The debate on Monday was prefaced by some very significant figures drawn from Sir John Gorst. In answer to a question —we may fairly say in this case a well-timed question —he said that the number of Board-schools on the annual grant list in August, 1901, was 5,857, and the number of voluntary schools 14,294; and, further, that the number of children on the registers of the Board-schools was 2,721,173, and of children on the registers of the voluntary schools 3,041,673.
These significant statistics supply a curious com- mentary on Sir Charles Dilke's contention that the measure will destroy education in the rural dis- tricts. The County Councils, he thinks, in those districts will have the fear of the farmers befere their eyes, and when the rates have been increased by having the cost of maintaining the present voluntary schools thrown upon them, these authorities will be constitution- ally unwilling to spend any money on the improvement of education. That there is some reason for this fear we do not deny, though we suspect that in the first instance the County Councils will be inclined to extravagance rather than to parsimony. The desire of doing at least as much as the neighbouring counties will be strong upon them, and they will not, we fear, take time enough for considering in what way the rates they are prepared to levy may be best laid out. But putting aside this possibility and accepting Sir Charles Dilke's apprehensions as well grounded, what else is there that the authors of the Bill—or for that matter the authors of any Bill that would have a chance of pass- ing—could possibly have done ? What fate would Sir Charles Dilke, if left to himself, reserve for the 14.294 voluntary schools and for the 3,041,673 children attending them ? He might, of course, declare that schools in the hands of non-representative managers shall receive no further support from the State, and take credit to himself for thus sparing the rates the additional burden which a reactionary Government are laying upon them. But this heroic counsel would not supply the place of the closed voluntary schools, or provide education for a single one of the children who would be shut out from them. It is plain, therefore, that new schools would have to be built, and accommodation found for the children while they were building. We will con- cede, for the sake of argument, that the new schools would in every way be superior to the old ones,—that their teachers would be more competent, their apparatus more .• up-to-date, their buildings better ventilated and more convenient, their managers one and all appointed by the local authority. But to build schools for more than three millions of children, and to fit them up in the latest and most approved fashion, would cost a great deal of money, and where is this money to come from but out of the rates ? This is what has puzzled us throughout the con- • troversy raised by the Bill. Let us concede for the sake of argument that every charge brought against the managers of voluntary schools by Nonconformists is well founded, how is it proposed to get over the fact that there are more than fourteen thousand of them, and that more than three million children have no other school to go to ? It may be said perhaps that though it is a easel for making terms, the terms exacted might have been much higher,—that, for example, the denominational managers might have been one-third of the whole number, and the managers appointed by the local authority two- thirds. Probably with this concession the majority of Nonconformists would have been satisfied, and we should have heard nothing of the threatened refusal to pay the School-rate. But why would they have been satisfied? Because the possession of a two-thirds majority on the managing body would carry with it the virtual control of the religious as well as the secular instruction. In other words, Nonconformists will tolerate the continuance of denominational schools provided that they have at least a veto on the denominational teaching given in them. But this arrangement would effectually close the majority of the very schools it was designed to perpetuate. When the object of keeping a school alive is gone, why should any one be at the trouble of either managing or subscribing to it ?
We have no difficulty in answering the question which Mr. Lee-Warner puts to us in another column. We are more than ready, we are anxious, to see such an amend- ment as he describes introduced into the Bill. But Mr. Lee-Warner is evidently not familiar with the history of this proposal. He had hoped, he says, that Convocation would have suggested such an amendment. The two Convocations did suggest such an amendment last year. It was one of the four proposals which they published, and which were doubtless laid before the Government by the Archbishops, as satisfying the Church demand. Why, when the Government adopted three of these proposals, did they leave out the fourth? It could not have been left out to please the clergy, for it was pressed on the Government by their legal representatives. Probably the reason why Mr. Balfour dropped a provision which found a place in the Bill of 1896 was fear of the hostility of what may be called the Board-school party. It is obvious that if the managers of denominational schools are to admit undenominational teaching into their schools, the managers of undenomi- national schools must return the compliment. There was a good deal of opposition to the plan on the part of the friends of Board-schools in 1896, and we have little doubt that it was the fear of the renewal of this opposition that led Mr. Balfour to make no mention of it in the present Bill. But this particular opposition would have no strength worth speaking of if Nonconformists and Churchmen were agreed in supporting such a proposal, and the Government could have no motive for resisting an amendment which was textually reproduced from their first and best Educa- tion Bill. We agree with Mr. Lee-Warner that the present Bill would be greatly improved by this addition, but as the Church has already asked for it in the most formalway with- out success, it seems plain that this time the proposal must come from the Nonconformists. If it were moved on their behalf in Committee it would probably be passed without a division. Possibly when the Bill has been read a second time and the criticisms lavished on it take the practical shape which becomes discussions in Committee, there will be more willingness on the part of Nonconformists to meet half-way those who, like ourselves, are quite ready to admit that they have just grievances in the matter of schools, and equally ready to welcome every reasonable plan for remedying them.
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