THE RIVAL EDUCATIONAL POLICIES.
THE able letters from Mr. G. 0. Trevelyan and from our anonymous correspondent " 0," which we publish in another column, and the quite as able and more exhaustive " memorial " to Lord Lawrence and the Metropolitan School Board adopted at the Cannon Street Hotel on the 5th October, which has only just been circulated, make as strong a case for the policy of those who attack the Educational position of the Government as it is at all likely that any of their assailants will be able to achieve. In fact, the unscrupulous rhetoric of the cleverer agitators of the party, though it will, no doubt, have its effect in raising the requisite steam-power of popular feeling, will rather injure the cause in the eyes of really tem- perate and judicial politicians. In such documents as we have referred to, any impartial critic will perceive a real and abstractly tenable line of argument and basis of opinion, though how oven those who expound that argument and doctrine, being, as they are, statesmen or practical politicians, persuade themselves that the Government might, had it so wished, have accepted their principles and carried them into effect in the Education Act of 1870, is, we confess, to us a pure enigma. For let us say at once, that in accusing the Dissenters, as we have done, of " dictatorial arrogance," we did not in the least mean to imply (as Mr. Jenkyn Brown, in the eloquent but almost fiercely partizan irony of his letter of to-day, seems to suppose), that we admired the extreme for- bearance and patience they have shown in times past,—on the contrary, we think they are right in demanding equality to the very letter, and are not in the least bound to be grateful for it when they have it, except so far as all honourable men feel grateful to companions who have struggled honestly with them in a pure cause. What we meant and mean is this,—that in a matter which, if there ever were such a one, cannot be determined by any abstract principle, but ought to be con- formed as closely as possible to the wishes of the various ele- ments in the nation, the Nonconformists and the Secularists (or, if they prefer the title, the Non-sectarians) demand as a right that their own view of the matter should be made the paramount basis of legislation, and no popular wishes be con- sulted at all except those fractional elements of such wishes which come under the patronage of the Education League. What we say is, that if education is to become truly national, you must as much as possible consult all the elements of opinion in the nation, and not try to make one or more ride rough-shod over all the others. But this is precisely what the Birmingham League and its friends wish to do. They say they are abso- lutely in the right, that denominational education ought to be everywhere discouraged and placed at a disadvantage, whether the people prefer it or not ; and they would not be in the least moved, supposing a plebiscite, if we were in the custom of resorting to plebiscites, showed that nine-tenths of the people of any district positively preferred it. They would none the less root it out, not indeed as if it were precisely a crime, by penal legislation, but as if it wore at least a mischief almost proximate to crime, by imposing heavy differential duties against it. That, and that alone, is what we mean by the dictatorial arrogance of the Nonconformist party. For the first time in their history, they seem to us to be claiming, not equality, but a right to impose on those who seriously and conscientiously differ from them, the heaviest disadvantages, only because they favour a kind of education more strictly religious than that unsectarian ' system which is probably intended, by the most enthusiastic of its advocates, to become before long the 'secular' system of the Board Schools. But putting that matter aside for the present, let us attempt to contrast, with as much impartiality as is given us grace to achieve, the rival educational policies, and point out what seems to us the insuperable practical difficulties,—at least for the present generation,—in the policy of the League, —difficulties which alone must have compelled any statesman who was really intent on dealing efficiently with the matter, and dealing with it at once, to adopt the policy of the Govern- ment.
The educational policy advocated by the League and Mr. Trevelyan and our other correspondents of the same political creed, we take to have for its object the steady discourage- ment of denominational schools and the steady encouragement of common schools for children of all Churches and sects,— the question of whether these are to be provided with a non- sectarian religious teaching, or with no religious teaching at all, being regarded by them as a matter of quite secondary importance. And in placing this object before them these politicians have a double motive,—first, a genuine dislike to the cliquishness and narrowness of sectarian com- binations,—secondly, and this is held with much more intensity, an utter detestation of any system which aids and abets the social predominance of the Established Church. What this party would have desired by way of car- rying out their policy would have been, (1) the gradual reduc- tion, and certainly no increase, of the central grants to de- nominational schools ; (2) the setting up of a ratepayers' School Board in every rural parish as well as every town, with powers to compel attendance, but no right to remit the fees for any child except at a School-Board school ; and (3) the establishment of unsectarian and secular training colleges for schoolmasters and mistresses in which no denominational teaching of any kind should be allowed,—a point which ought, we think, to be conceded by the Government, As regards the relative importance attached to different elements in this pro- gramme, we do no injustice to its chief supporters if we say that they would greatly have preferred a delay in the settle- ment of the whole question of education to any sacrifice of the objects we have named ;—that important as they think the compulsory power, they would give up almost anything in the matter of compulsion rather than concede anything to pro- mote what they call bigotry ;—(of course they always prefer to ignore the parent, and to represent the clergyman or the priest as the true wire-puller, who makes a mere tool of the parent);— and that as regards taxation they are comparatively indifferent to the outcry of the ratepayer, and would even enforce the rates necessary for free schools throughout the kingdom, rather than admit anything likely to assist the growth of the denominational system.
On the other hand, the educational policy of the Govern- ment we take to have had for its object, to secure as early as possible the means of a really adequate education for every child in the kingdom, and therefore to use as much as possible existing machinery ; consequently, while absolutely ignoring all denominational objects, to put religious philanthropy, which is really at the root of much more than half the existing educational effort of the country, under as little needless dis- advantage as possible ; and also to pave the way for universal compulsion, by giving parental authority as much discretion as may be within the limits of that which our duty to the chil- dren demands. The machinery by which this policy has been carried out is well known, being the object of fierce criticism throughout England. It was the increase of the grants to all approved voluntary schools, denominational or otherwise, so as to throw as much of the first great pecuniary strain as possible on the philanthropic resources of the country ; and the establishment of unsectarian School Boards, with compulsory rating powers and the right to compel attend- ance, wherever these resources are inadequate,—these Boards having also power either to establish free schools in very desti- tute districts, or to pay or remit fees for the children of the very poorest at such qualified non-gratuitous schools as the parents may prefer. As regards the relative importance attaching to the various objects in view, the Government have, we take it, preferred an early achievement of something like universal education to every other end ; and while their chief motive has been the wish to attenuate the great difficulties in their path, especially the sordid fear of new taxation—the force of which Mr. Trevelyan and his friends, drawing their arguments from the precedents of a long-established sys- tem in Scotland, quite forget to appreciate,—and the resist- ance offered by religious zeal to what is held to be "godless ' education, they have no doubt appreciated the real value of earnest spiritual teaching of some kind for children (who, out of school, have very little chance of getting any light at all as to the invisible world), and have rather preferred that the teaching on that subject should be denominational to their having no teaching at all. Of any vestige of a wish to sustain or increase the social influence of the Establishment, all the cooler and candider opponents of the Government will at once and absolutely acquit Mr. Forster, though they will of course maintain that this has been the actual effect, though not in any way the intention of his legislation.
Now, let us compare for a moment the two rival policies with regard only to their practicability :--(1) Some of the opponents of the Government, though not Mr. Trevelyan, have more than once almost admitted that delay,—how long they have never specified,—would
certainly have been necessary to got a chance for the Act they would have passed ; and during that delay, of course, hundreds of thousands of children would have lost an im- portant fraction, if not the whole, of their education ; (2) even with a moderate delay, in many parts of the rural dis- tricts the enforcement of a universal education-rate would most probably have caused a fierce reaction against education, if not violent resistance to it. Parents aro selfish enough about the money value of their children's work in the poorer agricultural districts, as it is ; to have both lost it and to have had to pay a rate for losing it as well, would have well-nigh made them hate the very name of education ; (3) the indiffer- ence to parental preferences, which it is a part of the system to sustain, would, as regards the poorest class—i.e,, the class most in need of education,—have increased still more the repulsion to the new duties enforced upon them ; (4) the decided discouragement of all denominational zeal, which has hitherto been the very heart of the local effort for English education, would have alienated the very classes and individuals who have the experience needed to guide an educational movement, and thrown the management of it into the hands of persons at once indifferent and inexperienced.
Now any one who will consider fairly the enormous practical weight of these considerations, will see at once that the choice of the Government lay between enlisting all the existing machinery of education heartily on the side of the new movement, and doing everything in its power, by way both of diminishing burdens and consulting the wishes of parents, to render their new duties not unpalatable, and a quite indefinite postponement of all the solid advantages of the pro- posed Act. We say nothing of the question of principle, the enormous educating power of any truly religious teaching, even though mixed, as most of it would be, with manifold error. We speak now solely of the means of doing what it is so easy to do upon paper, and so difficult to do in fact,—get the work of education fairly begun. The League orators stated the other day that all the time since the passing of the Act had been wasted in fierce theological disputes. Well, all we can say is that no one who knows what an enor- mous amount of preliminary educational work has been actually got through in that year, would regard that statement as other than the fable of violent prejudice. Probably no country has ever done so much in one year towards the great work in view, and certainly none without imposing a far heavier burden on those who are at present least inclined, and perhaps in some respects least able, to bear it. The State, though it contributes fifty per cent. of the working expenses of the new denominational schools, gives no new building grants, and will be saved a vast amount of expenditure by the efforts of voluntary philanthropy, not without great advantage to the local administration of the schools when raised. How valuable is this aid towards a work which is most unpopular exactly where it is most needed, only those who have to carry out this difficult and gigantic reform can really estimate. We take it that of the two policies, the policy of the League would practically involve, though it will not believe it, violent rural reaction against education, keen religious resistance to the differential duty imposed on distinctive reli- gious teaching, and hopeless delays and difficulties from both sources. The policy of the Government involves, though it deprecates and certainly does not intend, a good deal of resist- ance on the part of Secularists and Dissenters, a certain neces- sary cliquishness in the spirit of much of the machinery used, and a certain degree of involuntary dependence for help on the wealth of the country, which unfortunately happens to belong in too great a degree to a single and already very powerful religious body. These are incidental defects of the scheme, but they are defects of a practicable scheme, and an immediately practicable scheme. The defects, of the rival scheme are defects which make it impracticable not only now, but for a long series of years, and would, we believe, on the whole, render the education less penetrating in an educational sense, oven when these difficulties were at last removed.
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