THE NEW MINUTE ON EDUCATION. T HERE is a flutter in
the Education Department. Mr. Lowe has issued a revised code for grants in aid, and the whole brood of committees, managers, schoolmasters, clergymen, certificated teachers, pupil teachers, and phi- lanthropists, are in a fever of alarm and irritation. They all belong to the class that can scream when it is hurt, and they are all doing it with more or less of hoarseness, and quite sufficient noise to compel quiet people to ask what it is all about.
The grievances are not stated very distinctly, but they seem, on inquiry, sufficiently grave to demand careful in- vestigiation. Mr. Lowe, who acts with an inferior title as th7Snglish Minister of Public Instruction, under cover of a revised code, intended to secure economy, has introduced changes which materially affect the whole course of popular education. Besides some innovations in detail, the merit of which can only be recognised or denied by men actually en- gaged in tuition, he has introduced two new rules, the first of which diverts the whole course of elementary instruction, and the second affects the tone, position, and prospects of the entire body of pupil teachers, while both together will seriously modify the attitude of the State in reference to national education. The teachers, clergy, and classes affected are in such a blind rage that they insist on huddling all changes up together, and covering them with a mass of detailed grievances, amidst which the principles at stake seem in danger of being altogether forgotten, but the new orders can only be considered with effect as if each were a separate and distinct edict. 1. Up to the issue of this code the Committee of Privy Council has made its grants to teachers depend upon the attendance of their scholars. The theory was that the English poor did not want to be taught, that it required address and labour to catch their children, and that the teacher who caught the most was, on the whole' the most deserving of reward. Consequently, the State allowed a grant to schools, at a rate of from 46. to 5s. a head on every boy who attended 176 days during the year. Some atten- tion was, in theory, paid to the quality of the teaching, through the inspectors, but generally it was considered that a numerous attendance of itself proved efficiency, and the grant was in practice a true capitation allowance. The system was extremely pleasant to masters whose "augmentations" were thereby made very certain, and to managers, who were allowed to reckon seven-tenths of the allowance among the voluntary subscriptions necessary to secure State aid. Un- fortunately, the reports of the commissioners published this year, proved that the grant, though it secured numbers, did not secure proper teaching. There was a grievous—we bad almost written a gross—deficiency in elementary instruction. The trained teachers, naturally enough, find it pleasanter to teach a few lads whose intellect responds readily to their own, and the mass of scholars quit school unable to read, write, or cypher properly. It is impossible that evidence should be more conclusive than it is upon this point. In- spectors of the most widely different tendencies and most contrary prejudices, all agree in this statement, which is confirmed by the testimony of all who really understand the poor, and are not blinded by a secret wish that their education may never be real. Mr. Lowe strikes straight at the very root of this great evil. Clause 40 of the new code makes the capitation grant dependent upon the child satis- fying the inspector in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The clause is : "The managers of schools may claim per scholar id. for every attendance, after the first 100, at the morning or afternoon meeting's, and after the first 12 at the evening meetings, of their schools, within the year defined by Article 17. Attendances under Half-time Acts may be multiplied by two to make up the preliminary number. One- third part of the sum thus claimable is forfeited if the scholar fails to satisfy the inspector in reading, one-third if in writing, and one- third if in arithmetic respectively, according to Article 44." The clause as might have been expected, has driven the teachers wild with vexation. They dread a reduction in the total amount, but that is not their real grievance. Are they, certificated teachers, competent as they think to any work, to be degraded into teaching the elements, to see that pot- hooks develop into intelligible signs, to make thick-lipped babies read without slurring little words, and drive into ploughboys' heads the "coat of a dozen eggs at five for two- pence 2" They are made for nobler things, teaching geometry, for example, as was actually done recently, and they resist with all the energy wounded vanity can inspire. We have not the faintest sympathy with their complaint, except as regards the amount of grant. If that is too small it may be raised, but we believe it better that education should come to a momentary stand than that a principle which involves its soundness should be even modified. The very object of national instruction is to enable its subjects to acquire knowledge for themselves, to develop the smith's muscles, not teach him to make a horse-shoe, and till that object is attained nothing has been accomplished. We need not say we have no sympathy with the timid talk about regulating education by the social position of the educated. If all the ploughboys in the parish know Greek, so much the better for the ploughboys. But the taller the house the more carefully must the builder look to the foun- dation' and without reading and writing, so perfectly ac- quired that they are instinctive and not reflective acts, education, however lofty, is naught. Mr. Reynolds, secre- tary to the School Association, said at a meeting of the clergy that for such education an old woman was as good as a trained teacher. Considering that most really edu- cated men are taught to read by old women, viz., their mothers, we should say she was a good deal better, but the remark indicates exactly the radical blunder of all tutors. They think a teacher's efficiency shown in the quantity he teaches, not in the thoroughness of the teaching. The trained teacher, if he is worth his salt, ought to be able to teach reading Aree times as well as the untrained one, his skill enabling him to fix his boys' attention, and interest them in their work. The use of training a master is to teach him to govern, not to enable him to read better than any other man. Doubtless teaching the elements is very weary work, but then it is to do that weary work that the department is kept up. The State is not paying a million a year that pupil teachers may have amusing occupation. The charge of unfairness to the master is simply ridiculous. If it is difficult to teach reading, so much the more necessity for Competent teachers ; if it is, as Mr. Reynolds says, too easy, so much the lighter will be the task of earning their "augmentation." As for the charge that a demand for reading, writing, and arithmetic is godless, and tends to secularize education, a charge now ringing from half the pulpits of England, it is just one of those assertions which produce so bitter a division between the educated thought of Eng- land and her clergy. Christian instruction is of vital importance, but what in this order stops it ? The teacher may teach all he taught before, and if the managers do their duty, he will teach religious truth more efficiently than ever. Nobody interferes with him. He may make the Bible his class book if he likes, or exercise children in the arithmetic of the Golden Numbers. The only change is, that a rapid gabble of the catechism has ceased to be of itself a claim to pecuniary reward. The existing system, by the almost unanimous verdict of the inspectors, did not impart religious instruction, unless it were of the kind de- scribed by Mr. Jelinger Symons: "In Scripture I find nothing commoner than a knowledge of such facts as the weight of Goliath's spear, the length of Noah's ark, the dimensions of Solomon's temple, what God said to David, or what Samuel did to Agag, by children who can neither explain the atone- ment, the sacraments, or the parables, with moderate intelligence, or tell you the practical teaching of Christ's life." (Report, p. 260.) We have not the smallest desire to see an English gene- ration of clever little heathens. If it is to be a question between moral and mental growth, we prefer the former, but we utterly deny that an inspector's examination secures or fosters it. Let the managers, always clergymen, look to the matter for themselves, and, if need be, dismiss the tutors who, under the present system, talk trash about Goliath's spear, and leave their scholars as ignorant of Christ's teach- ing as of the meaning of" holiness before the Lord." Upon the examination the teachers we contend have no sound case.
2. They have as to their remuneration. We are always re- luctant to endorse the cry about breach of faith which men who want more than they have got are so ready to raise, but this code really does appear to involve something approach- ing to repudiation. Tne Committee, for years, have pro- mised that the attainment of a certificate shall entitle its owner to a distinct annual grant. Thousands of men have under that promise given years to special work, and it ought to be kept. If the system is erroneous, which we greatly ques- tion, let it end, but to commit an injustice is not the way to repair a blunder, and as regards pupils now trained or passing through the colleges, the new code is unjust. The refusal of the certificate money would be unjust even in an individual, and is doubly unjust in a Government which underpays everybody on the well understood ground that the security of its promises makes up for their smallness. Nor are we contented with the new tone of the department as to any of its grants and allowances. It is quite too ready to believe that it is spending too much. A million a year for the edu- cation of the people of Eugland, so far from being an extra- vagance, is a marvel of well restrained and remunerative outlay. If it were doubled, and all England thereby enabled to read and write thoroughly, the expenditure would be the wisest the nation has ever sanctioned, would add to her money.getting force a pound for every penny. It is not to go on for ever. The people, once educated, will soon pro- vide for their own education, and the nation which spends twenty-six millions a year on defence, may well employ the thirteenth of that sum in making the people worthy their security. With dockyards kept up to secure votes, and money poured in masses into the sea off Alderney, starving the future is not the true beginning of retrenchment. Nor is pauperizing the teachers the best economy, even in the department itself. They are even now very much underpaid. The department has no prizes to offer, no fame, no position, no leisure, none of those things for which strong men strive. A tidewaiter has a better chance in the race of life than the teacher who trains five generations. The work, in itself, is singularly exhausting, and if, in addition to toil and hopeless- ness, the teacher is to be condemned to a perpetual struggle with poverty, competent men will desert it for the pleasanter and more gainful tasks of ditching or breaking stones. The inspectors argue that the pupil teachers forget the low posi- tion from which they have sprung, grow pert and greedy of - status, and therefore ought to be poorly paid. Why not pay a Lord Chancellor according to his origin? Is the educa- tional department to be the only one in which the rise of the village tailor's son through hard work is to be a matter of discredit to him ? We thought we had done with chatter about natural social positions, and it is with surprise as much as disgust that we see it advanced as a grave reason for depriving men of the advantages their energies have acquired. We protest warmly against the doctrine which underlies the new code, and which teaches that the education of the people is, after all, a task of inferior and temporary importance.
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