THE EDUCATION CONFERENCE.
TO endure the slow and gradual processes of growth and development, seems just now for the world at large quite impossible. Everything must grow like the Indian conjurer's shrub, or be pronounced without life and use. No sooner, too, have we planted a tree, than a clamour begins that we ought to dig up the roots and see how they are growing. In politics this desire to tamper with every settlement and reopen every old controversy is universally apparent. It is but some fifteen years since the system of national education established by the Act of 1870 has been in actual operation, and yet the majority of the Commission appointed to examine into its working light-heartedly declare that the tree should be forthwith grubbed up, and that the country should begin once again to wrangle over all the old difficulties and disputes which it was hoped had been buried in Mr. Forster's settlement. If for no other reason but this of time, the Commission should have re- ported that the present settlement ought to be adhered to. After all, the real test of an educational system is; " How has it educated ? " But this question cannot be answered until a generation has grown up under its provisions. In another fifteen years it may be well to consider the question of whether we shall or shall not alter our system of elementary education. Till that time we had much better abide by the compromise, which, if it does not satisfy the zealots on either side, at any rate has met with general approval on the part of the country at large.
How unwise was the action of the Commission in re- awakening the old bitterness in regard to the Voluntary schools, may be seen by the record of the proceedings of the Educational Conference which sat in London during the past week to consider and protest against the proposals of the majority Report. Naturally enough, the enemies of the Voluntary schools, when challenged so openly, did not refuse the gauge of battle, but plunged into the fray and did their best to carry the war into the enemy's country. The language used by the speakers at the Con- ference evidently showed that at heart they had no strong desire to interfere with the compromise of 1870. Still, if that compromise was to be thrown over, they were quite pre. pared to declare that the system must be altered, not in the direction of crushing out Board schools, but of abolishing Voluntary schools. If there was to be a change, it must be forward, not backward. The speeches made at the Con- ference, though they all breathed this tone, were for the most part conceived in a moderate spirit, and laid down general principles which it would be very difficult to gainsay. Mr. Henry Fowler, for instance, stated four propositions which seem to us, if we understand them properly, to be eminently sound and reasonable. To begin with, Mr. Fowler declared that " money expended out of the rates for education should be under the control of the representa- tives of the ratepayers." With such a principle we are entirely in accord. It cannot be right that the ratepayers should be required to raise money and hand it over to private persons over whom they would have no real control. If a Voluntary school can earn a State grant for efficiency, strictly defined and enforced, that is all it can expect. If, however, a school cannot get on without a local subsidy, let it become a Board school, and pass directly under the control of those who support it. Mr. Fowler's next point is somewhat less definite. It is " that the School Board system must have fair-play, as the extension of an unsectarian school system under the control of the ratepayers." If by this is meant that the Education Office and the inspectors must be forbidden in any way to give Voluntary schools advantages over Board schools, then we most heartily assent to the proposition. No doubt individual inspectors may occasionally act in such a way as to favour Voluntary and discredit Board schools, though we are not aware that they are more disposed to do so than to favour Board schools and discredit Voluntary schools. That the Education Office, however, can consciously pursue such a policy, we can hardly believe. At any rate, no sort or kind of restriction should be thrown in the way of any parish or town anxious to have a School Board. Mr. Fowler's next principle is, we should have imagined, so obvious as hardly to need stating. Indeed, the fact that he thinks it necessary to state it is a sign how angry and suspicious the advocates of unsectarian education have been made by the unwise action of the majority of the Commissioners. It is that "there must be no tampering with the conscience clause, which must be supreme in all schools where the public money is spent." To insist on a proposition of that elementary kind seems absurd. It would be the height of injustice to force parents to send their children to a school in which they might be exposed even in the smallest degree to religious influences of a kind which such parents would regard as spiritual contamination. Lastly, Mr. Fowler lays down that " there must be no lowering of the standard of education." Here, too, we agree with him. It may prove advisable to alter the system of education in certain particulars—for instance, in the country the boys might with great advantage learn some- thing about the nature of the earth they are to till and the animals they are to tend—but it is, of course, absurd to think of in any sense lowering the standard.
We have written above, perhaps, somewhat too much as if the education controversy were really going to become a matter of practical politics. We do not believe it will, nor do we imagine that any of the speakers at the Con- ference really thought that there was the slightest fear that Parliament would adopt the suggestions of the majority Report. Parliament has not the faintest intention of touching the compromise of 1870, and Sir W. Hart- Dyke has made no secret that he is in this matter heartily on the side of Parliament. The Government knows that the country entirely approves of that compromise, and means that it shall continue. Taken as a whole, we do not believe that there is any real dislike of the Voluntary-school system, safeguarded as it is by the provisions of the Act of 1870. We believe, too, that of late the country has begun to reap certain substantial indirect advantages from the Voluntary schools. In effect, such schools, in the larger towns, often meet the educational wants of the lower middle class. The artisan on £4 a week does not like to send his children to a Board school where they will possibly have to associate with the children of the slums. However little inclined to be genteel the father may be, he dreads the possible bad influences to which his children may be subjected. At the present moment, many of the Voluntary schools, charging as they do sixpence or ninepence per week, and so keeping out the very poor children, give him exactly the form of superior school he wants,—a school where the children are all of respectable parents, and where a higher form of education is given. Abolish the Voluntary schools altogether by with- drawing the grant, and many of these lower middle-class schools would be entirely destroyed. Such a result would, we believe, be extremely disastrous to the interests of education. For this, then, as well as for the even more important reason that we ought to let the education system of 1870 grow till it has fairly borne the test of time, we are entirely of opinion that the Report of the majority of the Commissioners should not be acted on.
Previous page
