Lord Shaftesbury, in a letter to Thursday's Times, asserts that
the high conditions imposed on schools by the London School' Board have practically broken up the Ragged Schools of London, which used to account for some 80,000 street Arabs,---and while probably absorbing a few into schools of a better kind, have sent a very large number of those who mestineeded civilising, back into
the streets, without any sort of provision for humanising them. If this statement be true, it is a very serious one. No doubt it is very difficult to sanction schools of such low calibre in some cases, and yet keep up the requisite conditions in other cases where higher requisites are practicable. But certainly the effort ought to have been strenuously made. It has been, in great degree, the scruples of the more respectable parents which have rendered it impossible to admit the street Arabs into ordinary schools, and therefore others of a kind suited to them should have been provided during the interval that would have been needed to render them fit for better schools. Washing, decent clothing, intercourse with civilised beings, are no trifles for children of this class, even where it is impracticable to enforce "the three'It's" at all. Lord Shaftesbury's statement deserves the most careful consideration by the London School Board.
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