SECULAR EDUCATION IN SCOTLAND.
London, 4th December 1856.
Sin—In reading over your article on " Lay Schools," of the 15th No- vember, it occurred to me that such a school as you recommend to illustrate the working of the secular or separate system of education does actually exist in the High School of Edinburgh. It is not a strictly elementary school, but boys enter it at an age of seven or eight to ten years, when their religious instruction is certainly not finished ; and from the very moderate rate of fees, the children of all classes, except the very poorest, are found in it.
If I am not much mistaken, there is no attempt to teach doctrinal or sectarian religion in the several academies and institutions for the educa- tion—elementary education—of the children of tradesmen and the middle- classes in Edinburgh. The clergy have "ignored" this and the existence of the system at the old High School in their denunciations of the secular system.
Previous page
