THE EDUCATION BILL AND TRAINING COLLEGES.
[TO TER EDITOR. OF TRH "SPROMFOR.1
Sin,—The Bill purports to be one of conciliation, by which the Christian character of our national education will be duly respected, and the legitimate moral influence of the teacher not impaired, while the Training Colleges will be improved into truly national institutions, without detriment to their character and influence in the moulding and elevation of the teacher's character. I have, however, reluctantly come to the conclusion that the effect of the Bill, if it should become law, will be greatly to lower, if not to nullify, the responsibilities, and therefore the character, of the teacher, as a moral guide and personal influence, and the trainer of his (or her) pupils, and to secularise the Training Colleges.
The public elementary teacher is of vital importance to the " body politic," to the " masses " of our English nation, in pro- portion to the moralising, the ennobling, in a word, to the Christianising, influence which he exerts over his scholars. No mere scholarship or cleverness will enable our national teachers to train the children of the community into a truly Christian nation. The teacher must himself be a trained, true-hearted, modest, but sincere and settled Christian, neither bigoted nor wavering, neither sectarian nor half-hearted.
This is an ideal, no doubt, but thousands of such teachers during the last two generations have made our national inspected schools wonderfully happy, and at the same time more efficient as training schools for a free and intelligent national life than the elementary schools of any other country. I venture to say as much as this, after having made a close and continuous study on two visits to the UniteeStates, and by the help of the Reports sent me yearly from the National Bureau at Washington of American schools, and also after careful study, including personal visitation, of some of the most approved schools of Germany, where for several years a branch of my family resided, and the younger members received their education.*
In order to produce such teachers, mere professional lectures and instructions, however luminous and interesting, and though illus- trated and supplemented by appropriate practice, are not sufficient. There must be in the Training Colleges a vital atmosphere, a persuasive and infectious moral tone and influence, a discipline of self-control and generous sympathy, which no mere pro- fessional lectures, no merely intellectual influence, can produce. There must, in brief, be a Christian spirit. Without an atmo- sphere of faith in the divine power and presence, through which the appropriate elements of character are touched and quickened into active and sympathetic life, teachers whose work and influence will be morally elevating cannot be effectively instructed and prepared for the nation's service, and especially for the most necessary work of rudimentary training and moral guidance and control for the children of our streets and villages. Mere intelligence will not suffice; moral influence, the happy infection of self-forgetting sympathy, and the enthusiasm of a divine ideal are needed for this difficult but noble, this self- forgetting but inspired and inspiring life-work. Can teachers who are not touched with the Christian inspiration, and sustained by a religious sense of duty to the Saviour of Men, and to the race He gave Himself to save, supply the nation's need in this greatest and most necessary work for the saving and uplifting of the men and women of this providentally commissioned people ? Can mere science, can political philosophy, can the casual play of influences which are abroad in society, in our streets, our lecture- rooms, our political contests, our daily toil, our domestic experience, do what is needed at the present hour for the uplifting„ the ennobling, the purification and salvation of this realm ? Is there any influence, or combination of influences, except what takes moral hold of the rising generation, which can provide for our country the moral insurance from greed and lust and selfish ambition on which, and on which alone, in this critical and testing hour the continued greatness of England depends? Never was the conflict between selfishness and self-sacrifice, between lust, whether in the form of greed or avarice or sensuality, and Christian nobleness and purity, so keen and close and critical as now. Can we afford to lose the grand, the vital, the critical force and inspiration of Christian faith and example, Christian teaching and influence, from our national system of elementary education?
Our teachers, then, must be trained under distinctly Christian influences in a school and on a system of high and sustained inspiration and self-devotion for the good of those they teach. Only Christian and Christianly trained teachers can do the nation's work, can meet the very deepest need of our country at this hour when we have reached the acme of our fate. We must have Christian national teachers, and therefore our teachers must be Christianly trained,—trained in a truly catholic spirit, not sectarian, but evangelical in the deepest and broadest sense. Our Training Colleges, therefore, must have their work and training based on Christian faith.
Doubtless there are clever teachers who are not, in the sense I have described, imbued with the fit and right spirit for the bumble but truly noble work of which I have been speaking. These will find spheres for their genius in schools of science, in philosophical lecture-rooms, in University Professorships. They will graduate and fulfil their vocation in the sphere of purely intellectual and scientific abstract ideas or mechanical invention. The moral training of the national character is a different, but not less noble or beneficent, vocation. The two spheres stand apart, but are not opposed. Nay, they may be mutually helpful and allied. What help and instruction to the Christian national teacher can be more valuable than Sir John Herschel's intro- duction to natural philosophy ?
But if what I have thus written is the truth, truth confirmed by the experience of the Christian world, how can our Teachers' Training Colleges be made independent of moral tests ? How can candidates for professional education as teachers be admitted to Training Colleges merely on the strength of their intellectual
• As to American schools, I may refer to an article I contributed to the Quarterly Review in 1675, and another in the London Quarterly for 16843.
attainments ? I need not pursue this inquiry. To me it seems logically evident that the young men or women who aspire to become the teachers of the English people must bring evidence of Christian faith and character to sustain their intellectual pretensions to enter upon a course of training for the work of becoming the nationally recognised teachers of the children of the nation.
Here, Sir, I must bring to a close this long letter, for which, besides the unspeakable importance of the subject, the apology may, I hope, be accepted that I was for five-and-thirty years Principal of one of the largest Training Colleges in the country.
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