EDUCATIONAL OVER-PRESSURE AGAIN.
BR. CRICHTON BROWNE must have had enough of it this time. He has whirled and flashed his intellectual sword round the head of his redoubtable adversary, Mr. Fitch, till the eyes of the public were almost dazed ; but he never got inside the guard of the trident, and when he had tried every cut and thrust in his power, the deadly net of that logical retiarius was thrown over him, and the poor gladiator might struggle as he liked, he could not wriggle out of it. " Habet " is the verdict of the public on the unfortunate doctor. He had fifty-four pages of print in his original Report, against twenty-five pages of Mr. Fitch's Memorandum, and five columns in the Times in two letters of two-and-a-half columns each, as against one letter of a column and a half occupied by Mr. Fitch ; but it was all no good. On all Dr. Browne's fallacies, and half-truths, and rhetorical amplifications, the merciless logic of his opponent has come "pat as the catastrophe of the old tragedy." And as at the end of Handel, after all the stir and strife, nothing remains but dead bodies, a dead march, and the rites of sepulture "amongst the cold Mc facets of the dead." We have already discussed the original controversy at some length, and we agreed with Mr. Fitch that the alleged wide-
spread over-pressure in elementary schools did not exist, or at all events, that Dr. Crichton Browne had not produced any solid and trustworthy evidence of its existence. In his sub- sequent letters to the Times, Dr. Crichton Browne attacks., every statement made by Mr. Fitch, and reopens the whole question.
As regards the purely personal part of the controversy, whether Dr. Browne had any bias one way or the other whether he had any qualification for the inquiry, and whether his inquiry was an official one, Dr. Browne has certainly not improved his case. He admits that he had written a letter denouncing "the grinding tyranny of education " in connection with School Boards before he had any practical experience of its working ; and the effect of the admission is not discounted by the tu quo que that Mr. Fitch's prejudice must be worse, which, if true, had nothing to do with the case, inasmuch as it was not Mr. Fitch's judgment, but his own, which was under examination. He does not say that he had any special knowledge of the condition of the poor or of elementary education. As to the official nature of the in- quiry, it is one with which the public have small concern. But, on the pure question of fact, it cannot be contended, in face of Mr. Mundella's distinct assertion, through Mr. Fitch, that "he did not commission Dr. Browne to prepare any Re- port for the Department or for publication, and that Mr. Fitch was not instructed to accompany him on any general official mission," that the inquiry could be put any higher, to say the most of it, than as a semi-official one. But whether it was private, semi-official, or official, so long as its method was sound and its results well drawn, the public would attach the same importance to it, and greater importance, probably, if private than if official.
But before passing from the purely personal controversy, it is necessary to touch one personal topic which has a grave bearing on the substantial issue. Dr. Browne accuses Mr. Fitch of having garbled and misrepresented his Report, and gives instances in which this has been done. Would any one have believed, after such an accusation in the public Press, that the real fact is, that in the published Report Dr. Browne garbled and misrepresented himself ? Yet so it is. Having sent in a formal and signed Report to Mr. Mundella, in which con- clusions were drawn and facts stated, which he afterwards saw to be ill-drawn and untrue, he at the last minute altered them in a proof which Mr. Fitch had not seen, and from which, therefore, he could not quote. The changes thus made are highly significant, because they show Dr. Browne's talent for drawing the widest possible conclusions from the smallest possible premisses, his entire want of accu- racy, and his deficiency in the knowledge of facts connected with the matter in hand, and, we must add, his talent for glozing. For instance, it is palpable all through the Report, even as printed, that Dr. Browne attributed a great deal of over-pressure to the assumption that it was the pecuniary interest of the teacher to hustle as many pupils as possible through as many standards as possible. Mr. Fitch pointed out that this was an entire misapprehension of the position of affairs in London, where "payment by results" does not exist, the Government grant being paid not to the teacher, but to the Board, and the salary of the teacher
having no relation to the grant earned. Dr. Browne complains of Mr. Fitch having garbled his Report in attri- buting to him the statement,—" Every child that the teacher fails to pass is so much out of his own pocket," whereas his printed statement was, "Every child that they fail to pass is so much loss of professional reputation." It is hardly credible, yet the fact is (according to Mr. Fitch, and Dr. Browne does not attempt to deny it) that the first sentence is the one actually in the Report, and the second is only Dr. Browne's "garbled" correction of it, after he had discovered his mistake. This very same mistake, similarly corrected, occurs in another passage. In fact, the tables are completely turned on Dr. Browne ; and the allegation of misrepresentation thus effectively refuted, effectively disposes of the trustworthiness of his con- clusions. For it is perfectly obvious that whatever tempta- tion there might be to over-pressure by a teacher paid in proportion to passes, the temptation must be, if anything, the other way, when the teacher is paid by fixed salary. The teacher paid "by results" would have an inducement to hurry on pupils, and drive them through the standard ; the teacher paid by fixed salary, and with a discretion to keep pupils back on the ground of stupidity and ill-health, would have an inducement to find stupidity and ill-health passim so as to save himself trouble. This single mistake of Dr.
Browne's vitiates a large proportion of his theories,—they cannot be called facts,—and certainly "goes to his credit" generally.
Now, as to the facts elicited by Dr. Browne. His whole case really rests on his statistics of headaches. These were gathered by show of hands in answer to inquiries of the children assembled in class as to whether they had morning, afternoon, or evening headaches. He thinks these statistics are trustworthy, because the numbers of morning, afternoon, and evening headaches generally tallied with the whole num- ber. But that is hardly a very convincing coincidence ; and, in fact, it is not so certain that the coincidence is not in itself suspicious. The children who held up their hands for the fun or for the distinction of the thing,—and no one who has been at a public school can think such a course otherwise than a highly probable result of the vial voce method adopted,—would not be likely to think that they ought to appear in more than one division of headaches. But if the headaches were all habitual and all bond fide, surely a certain proportion at least would appear both as frontal and vertical, both as afternoon and evening headaches, and possibly as morning head- aches, too. However, allowing that the startling average of 45 per cent, of habitual headaches was established, the fact that they were due to over-pressure remained, and still re- mains, to be proved. If it be admitted, which we do not admit, that the post-hoc of headaches in school be proved, the propter-hoc that they are caused by school remains unproved. On this point Dr. Browne's letters have added nothing to his Report ; and his report showed not a single specific fact, nothing but vague allegations of increased mental and nervous diseases, to arrive at which he had to manipulate the reports of the Lunacy Commissioners and the statistics of the Registrar-General.
But, says Dr. Browne, education must necessarily be bad for those who are hopelessly poor ; the mere use of the brain is over-pressure to the under-fed. To this it may at least be answered that warmth is better than cold, that ventilated and clean rooms are better places in which to spend even an un- happy day, than the close and filthy styes from which too many of our " wastrels " come ; and wholesome and interesting, if not more or less amusing, occupation for the mind must be better than the atmosphere of onerous labour or vacuous idle- ness, foul language, and blows, in which they would pass their days at home. If the mere attempt at education is a wrong to these children, while they remain half-starved, the remedy is not to stop the education, but to stop the starvation. Penny dinners to the children, however dangerous in them- selves on economic grounds, would at least be a better remedy than the appointment of medical inspectors in the interest of the medical profession, or the lowering of standards and remission of tasks in the interests of the Trades-
Union of Teachers. Dr. Crichton Browne ought not to complain of the rough treatment his dithyrambics have received at the hands of Mr. Fitch, when he sees the impetus that they have given to the penny-dinner movement. If we cannot but regard his Report, considered as an indictment of the present system of Elementary Education, as nothing more than the declamations of a would-be sensationalist, and if we regard Mr. Fitch's Memorandum as an effective counterblast which the treatment at first accorded to the Report by our excitable contemporary, the Pall Mall Gazette, shows to have been necessary, yet there is no doubt that Dr. Browne has done a good work by the interest he has reawakened in our "poor scholars." Therefore, though we think that as a con- troversialist on education Dr. Crichton Browne's reputation is dead and buried, yet we feel we ought to inscribe on his tomb, with the alteration of the Christian name, Praed's epitaph, and say to the reader :— " Go down and see before you
Bic jacet J. Crichtonins Browne, Vir null& non donandns 'aura."
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