TEACHERS AND TENURE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—May I be allowed to write a few remarks upon an article in your issue of April 21st with the above heading ? I make the request as one very closely interested in teachers' work and in the members of the Teachers' Union. As such, you will, 1 am sure, understand that I cannot allow your strictures on Mr. Jackman's speech at York to pass altogether unchallenged. I am not surprised that his statements should have called forth opposition, though it is somewhat dis- appointing to find the Spectator in the opposing ranks. And still more so does it appear to me that the writer of the article, whilst appearing to set out with the intention of anathematising the foes of the teacher, ends by bless- ing them altogether. In dealing with Mr. Jackman's statements, you quote, fairly enough, some of the most glaring cases brought forward by the speaker as illus- trating the way in which the tenure of office by teachers has been tampered with. I take more particularly those in which the " squarson " or clerical school-manager appears as the agent of removaL The farmer who is member of a small School Board sins throegh ignorance when he resents the efforts of the schoolmaster to teach the young idea something higher than bird-keeping ; but your squarson sins against light and knowledge. He knows what is best, but deliberately prefers what is worse,—I translate the hackneyed quotation for his benefit. In one case a master is asked to accept lower salary because the church has to be " repaired,"—a somewhat elastic term in these critical days.
A mistress is dismissed for refusing to attend early Commu- nion. One teacher is cashiered because he does, and another because he does not, attend a particular religious service.
Yet another is turned out for declining to chant the Psalms. A new clergyman thinks he would like a new schoolmaster. A. Nonconforming management thinks the Chapel should have a turn—for the squarson is not necessarily "by law Established "—and so on, until, to use a popular phrase, the teacher does not know where he is. He holds office —and a very important, responsible office, as you acknowledge — at the caprice of, in the majority of cases, a clerical manager. You yourself say—that is, you give your imprimatur to the writer who says—" the number of dismissals certainly appears very large." More- over, you fairly describe the exceptional injustice under which the teacher labours when you point oat that a teacher who is dismissed loses not only his current salary but his pension, which latter is, as you put it, in part deferred payment for past work. And yet, whilst acknowledging all this, you bestow your benediction on the squarson. At least you aver that there is something to be said even for his most odious acts of tyranny. They can be explained if not defended. So far I cordially agree with you. The explanation is only too obvious ; but I must cross swords with your writer when he adds, in reference to the wrongful dismissals cited above, "there is more to be said in their defence than is immediately evident." There is nothing better than special pleading for their apologia. I will only take one instance where your writer's zeal for the squarson makes him lose sight altogether of the point at issue. The church needs "repair," he says. The parson has to cut his garment according to his cloth, and how many "repairs "resolve themselves into "cutting garments "! The squire, you urge, has to do the same. He "dismisses his daughter's expensive governess and gets a cheaper one." The governess is treated as though she were a piece of dry goods, —but this is a detail. Nobody questions the right of the squire to deprive his own daughters of education. But when the squire and the parson are merged in that incongruous compound the squarson, he is dealing, not with his own off- spring, but with other people's children who have been entrusted to him by the State—not by "the Church" but by the State—to train up into useful citizens. Is it possible that any clear-headed writer can fail to see the boundless differ. ence between the rneura and the Mum, in this case ? The squarson's apologist seems really to lose his ethical equilibrium in his effort to champion the foes of the teacher. It is the glamour of "the Church" which thus perverts his view. "The clergy are apt," you say, "and naturally apt, to regard the parish schoolmaster as a sort of additional curate." But where does the " naturally " come in ? Why should the teacher be regarded as an additional curate any more than as an additional footman or an extra housemaid ? Even were such the case, the curates, who have hitherto been a "feeble folk," are beginning to feel their strength and to assert themselves against the squarson. But, in point of fact, as your writer knows very well, the teacher is not a curate, or in any way analogous to a curate, And mark my words, this effort to canonise the teacher into the curate, and then to play fast and loose with him as one of the very "inferior" clergy, will have two results which possibly your writer would consider more disastrous than I should. In the first place, it will hasten on Disestablishment, if the clergy persist in throwing this shadow of ecclesiasticism over everything they touch ; and secondly, from the still more important, that is, the secular, side, if the voluntary schools are thus perverted into the squarson's preserve, the schools will go too. It may be that this generation shall not pass away before an educational democracy takes the whole matter out of bands in which it has been, and is being, so transparently abused, yet which—most marvellous fact of all—still find apologists even in the columns of the Spectator.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Warwick Castle.
FRANCES EVELYN WARWICK.
[We have been obliged owing to the pressure on our space to leave out a considerable portion of Lady Warwick's letter. —ED. Spectator.]
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