PAROCHIAL SCHOOL EDUCATION.

PROFESSOR PILLANS, in the second of his two letters on Ele- mentary Teaching, complains with justice of the total want of

provision for the regular breeding of schoolmasters in this coun- try. Of this defect in its institutions, the community is so far from being sensible, that it does not even recognize the necessity of any previous training at all on the part of those who conduct the busi- ness of education. They are not expected, like the members of the other professions, to go through a laborious course of prepara- tion begun at an early period of life ; or even to study, at any period, with a direct view to the duties they have to discharge. The instructors and trainers of youth are, for the most part, either merely provisional schoolmasters, who, like Reuben Butler, are pro- bationers in divinity, and hope sooner or later to become " placed ministers"—a term significant of the warm comforts of the glebe and manse ; or they are disappointed individuals, who, having broken down in some other career of life, are thought good for nothing but filling the most important office in the community.

Thus, as Professor Pillans happily expresses it, " while there is a prize to be run for in the different race-courses of human life, a purse is made up, at the expense of the rising generation, for the beaten horses in them

All this while the fact is, that the profession of a schoolmaster theoretically involves the most arduous study that the human mind has ever engaged in--the study of itself; and is practically one of the most difficult arts which a member of society can be called on to practise. There is a legislation of the school, com- pared with which, in respect of the ends contemplated and the means of effecting them, Parliamentary legislation is coarse and easy work. The first has a province peculiar to itself; and in this it is to the intellect, what gymnastics, which develope the muscles by severally appropriate exercises, are to the body. And it is con- versant with the moral equally as with the psychological phenomena of the mind ; in which department public legislation is only supplementary to it. The one has the more delicate and difficult task of forming the character ; the other protects society from the evils of defective education. A race of schoolmasters, versed in the science on which their craft is founded, and dexterous practitioners of the moral as well as the intellectual branch of their profession, would do more than the most philosophical legislature towards making sinecures of the places of judge and magistrate.

Education, though the least cultivated of human arts, has not wholly escaped the ameliorating influence of the times. Joseph

Lancaster, and others, have done much towards substantiating its claims to be considered as something more than an affair of hexameter and pentameter, birch and ferula. But the code of scholastic legislation, moral and intellectual, is still lamentably imperfect. As long as this is the case, the schoolmaster can at best but darkly discern the principles of his art ; and has no rule to regulate his conduct but such as he makes himself. He is at once legislator, judge, professor, and practitioner.

Defective, however, as the theory is, hardly anything has been done towards securing to the public the benefit of instructors ac- quainted with the few principles that have been recognized, or * The Carcanet, a Literary Album. Pickering. 12mo. 1828. t "There are honourable exceptions," adds the Professor, who best knows the general character of the class and its exceptions. Indeed the mere circumstance of the school being so often the halting stage between the Humanity Class and the Manse, brought, though but temporarily, into the business of education a great number of well-informed men, and for a long time secured the superiority of Scot- land over her neighbours ; a superiority she would still have kept, hut for the partial introduction of Laneasterian schools into the south; against which system, not- withstanding the splendid example of the Edinburgh Sessional School, the Scotch are still prejudiced. For our part, we owe it to the memory of past hospitality to say that such of the parochial masters as have fallen within our observation, have been donee men and canny scholars. More especially we owe this tribute of testi- mony to a meritorious class, out of regard to our hones.t friend of Castleton, in Caithness, with whom we had the honour one autumn evening of being rocked in the Pentland Firth; and who, after a brisk night's march of twelve miles, which in his reckoning were only three soda bittock, welcomed us to his Act-of-Parliament dwelling-house of" two apartments—not more," with a glass of right unexcised, sod a lengthened grace before it.

skilled in the practice of the profession, so far as it merits the name of one. This neglect has arisen from confounding two things quite distinct,—the knowledge which the schoolmaster is to convey, and the knowledge of the art of conveying it ; and from separating two characters which ought ever to be combined,—the moral and 1he intellectual disciplinarian. A scholar or a mathematician is no more necessarily a good schoolmaster than he is a good lawyer ; and an able teacher of language or of mathematics is no more ne- cessarily a complete one than an eloquent preacher is also a good parish-priest. The most learned men are sometimes the poorest teachers ; and the ablest teachers are as frequently the worst moral trainers. The schoolmasters whom the welfare of the rising generation and the interests of the state at large require, must unite liberal information with the requisite mental and moral qualities ; and large experience and long practice with a profound knowledge of the nature of the human mind at the different epochs of infancy, youth, and manhood.

The practice of this country involves the following absurdities : that he who without some preparatory study would be judged incompetent to train a horse, is without any preparation held competent to train a man ; and that a classic or divine is ex-officio a teacher, as though a graceful rider were by right of his horse- manship a horse-doctor or a farrier. Society has long been alive. to the propriety of taking measures to provide a sufficient supply of regularly-bred practitioners in surgery and medicine. In this instance men reasoned through "the cardia and the pylorus,"— their intestines and bodily organs became " intellectual." The mischiefs wrought in individual character and in the frame of society by scholastic quacks are not so exquisitely felt or so easily traced to their source ; it is by a longer and less palpable route of ratiocination that we arrive at a sense of them ; and ac- cordingly to this day the community is in most cases an unresist- ing and unsuspecting sufferer.

A few intelligent and zealous alarmists, like. Professor Pillans` will do much to awaken the country to the necessity of guarding against the fomenters of moral and mental as well as of corporeal maladies ; and of making for the weal of men's minds provisions similar to those so happily instituted for the good of their bodies. When once awakened to this necessity, they will not have far to look or long to seek for the means of accomplishing their end. What has been found the surest mode of making intelligent and able practitioners in the other departments of human art, must needs prove equally effective in this. Let education be voted a craft, and distinguished by all the signs and formalities usually employed in hedging in and intrenching a profession. Suppose that in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, Professorships of Education were instituted. Is not this in all countries at this day the approved method of diffusing scientific truth, and educating men in the way in which they are to walk ? Are there not profes- sorships of law and of medicine in their several branches, and of all the other departments of art and science, useful or orna- mental? Has not society derived much benefit from these insti- tutions? And what is there peculiar to education, that a knowledge of its principles and skill in the practice of it, should not be pro- moted and diffused by the same means as have been found efficacious in extending the empire of other sciences ? Certainly the importance of promoting such knowledge and of creating such skill will not be disputed.

If professorships are instituted, let the men whom the voice of the country shall point out as of the largest experience and most enlightened views, be appointed to fill them ; and let the terms of the institution be such as to secure the greatest possible degree of diligence and alacrity in fulfilling the ends of it. The means of accomplishing this object are obvious: there may, on each stage, be two rival professors ; or should it be convenient to have only one, his emoluments may be made to depend on his exertions. The professorships may be connected or not with the Universities, according as such a connexion shall be thought likely to promote the object of the foundation. The duty of the professor will be to unfold to his pupils so much of the science of mind as is necessary to develope the principles and found the rules of the art of training it, and to prescribe what ends the discipline of schools properly contemplates, and by what means they are to be achieved. But this is not all. While the future schoolmaster is hearing the theory of his art expounded, he ought, as Professor Mans observes, to be employed in observing the theory carried into prac- tice, and even in conducting the operations himself. The means of affording him these opportunities, if not existing, the enlightened public of Scotland must create. When it was proposed to make the London UniverSity a school of medicine, the founders began next to project the establishment of an University Hospital, as something necessary to the right training of medical practitioners.

When our professorships are instituted, the next step will be to gather the -youthful population of the towns in which they are

established into Hospital Schools, one, two, or more, as conve- nience and the extent of the population may dictate. Let the ablest men that can be got, be appointed permanent rectors ; and under them, let a certain number, nominated by the professors out of their most deserving pupils, serve as probationary masters. The latter will thus be enabled at once to study and practise the art of which they are destined to become in other places responsible head ministers, under every advantage derivable from wisdom, expe- rience and publicity.

We suppose the rest of Scotland imitating the example of its learned and commercial capitals. If the town, which is to be the seat of a district school, be populous enough to fill one itself, well ; if not, let the youth of the vicinity be dra.ughted into it ; and should there be no town near pre-eminent in numbers, let the most central or conveniently situated village be the seat of the district-school. The number of boys in these establishments will vary according to the populousness of the district. In some thinly- peopled regions, as in the Highlands for example, it will be difficult to congregate a number sufficient to exercise the full energies of one of our regularly trained discipliners of youth. But this variety may, as hereafter to be shown, be converted to a useful purpose. As soon as a town or a neighbourhood shall have put away the prejudices which on the subject of education appear to cleave to the minds of canny Scots, like burs to their garments, and have become sensible that the " deep wheel-tracks of their predecessors" are not so well to travel in as the macadamized roads of modern make, it will, of course, instantly proceed to the formation of a school, on the most approved model—that of Edinburgh or Glas- gow to which seats of education it will, as naturally and properly, send deputies to procure a master instructed and drilled, after the most approved fashion, in the principles and practice of his art. The certificates which the candidate for such a mastership must be expected to produce are obvious. First, from the professor who has lectured and examined him, that he was, in his time, one of the most distinguished proficients in the education class ; second, from the rector under whom he has practised, that he is a skilful and indefatigable teacher ; third, from those who have taught and overlooked him, and especially from the pupils whom, during his probationary career in the metropolitan school, he has himself overlooked and taught, that he is a benevolent and self-dis- ciplined man. And, should it be difficult to decide among contending claimants of nearly equal pretensions, let the pro- fessor, rector, pupils, and such a council of enlightened Scots- men, as by their strenuous and well-directed efforts have brought these institutions into vogue, lay their heads together, and name the individual who combines in highest perfection all the requisites of a moral and intellectual trainer of men. When the institutions shall be old enough to admit of it, it will constitute an additional claim to the first vacant mastership, if the candidate has himself been bred in the metropolitan school, and distinguished himself as a monitor in it when a boy.

To preserve the masters of the district schools from any possi- bility of stagnating in their vocation, like the disappointed somno- lent unplaced—or diverging into pursuits inconsistent with it, like the busier " session-clerk," "taker up of the militia," " land-measurer," "cattle-dealer" schoolmaster, two characters whom Professor Pillans represents as the usual occupants of the province of national edu- cation, the two following measures will suffice. First, a system of inspection, not conducted by persons paid especially for that pur- pose—a method of which Professor Pillans is reasonably jealous, but by the professors and metropolitan rectors and the council of enlightened Scotsmen aforesaid, of whose duties such a visitation, made at such times and conducted in such a manner as may seem

most likely to answer the end in view, shall be understood to form an essential part. Secondly, a system of promotion. As the bishops of the English church arrive at the bench through Ches- ter and leave it by Canterbury, and Ministers find their account in maintaining this constant progression, so let the masters of the district schools be promoted, according to their deserts, ascertained by the above course of inspection, from less to more lucrative and honoui able posts, till a rectorship in a metropolitan school, or a professor's chair in the same, re- ward the talent and industry of the most eminent. As the salary of the master ought to be proportioned, according to a certain scale, to the number he teaches, and as the different den- sities of population, as already noticed, will occasion the numbers in, the district schools to be very unequal, a wholesome current of pro- motion may spring up from the poorest school in the kingdom and. flow on to the largest and richest. Finally, as regards the vigi- lance with which the proceedings of the masters should be observed,. it may be hinted, that before the fixed part of the master's income,.

which the district whose youthful population he disciplines con- sents to allow him yearly, is paid, he should be expected to produce. a certificate from the inspectors, to the effect that the due degree of: proficiency prevailed in his school at the latest period of inspection.. We had a few more particulars to add, necessary to the fall. development of the plan, a few remarks to make as to the practi- cability of it, and a few objections (chiefly pecuniary) to anticipate;, but these, for want of further room to expatiate in, must be deferred to another opportunity.