THE DEBATE ON RURAL EDUCATION.
WE fear that the main impression which the country will gather from the debate of Tuesday night is that the Government are willing to make up for the smallness of their concessions to the tenant-farmers on the subject of Tenure, by refusing still smaller concessions to the farmers' labourers on the subject of Education. It was, however, a satisfactory feature of the debate, and one of which we hope Mr. Disraeli will take note, that Mr. Pell, the Conservative Member for South Leicestershire, virtually gave strong support to the drift of Mr. Fawcett's resolution, though, on the plea that it was too abstract, he voted against it. His amendment was indeed more specific than Mr. Fawcett's motion. He proposed definite steps for urging on the education of the Rural Districts, though he opposed the policy of immediate compulsion, and though, if we may judge from the account he himself gave of the mode in which he desired to see the machinery worked, we cannot but infer that the steps he advocated were intended to be somewhat feebly tentative. If the only duty of the additional Inspectors whose appointment he desired, would have been "to explain the Agricultural Children's Act, and to point out to employers what the consequence would be if it were not complied with," we doubt whether the appointment of these Inspectors would have taken much effect of any sort in the direction of promoting the education of the rural districts. Still, no evidence could be more impressive than Mr. Pell's as to the necessity for that new stimulus which the Government appear so much to resent. When a Tory landowner tells us that " letters which he had received proved to him that- it was now above all things de- sirable that some provision should be made on the part of the Government for securing the observance of the Act, since parents who were last year unselfish enough,—and it required a great deal of unselfishness on their part to give up the earn- ings of their children with a view to their going to school,—now found that they were objects of ridicule to their neighbours when they saw that the Act was not enforced,"—when, we re- peat, such evidence as this is volunteered by a Tory landowner, we hardly need to appeal to Mr. Dixon's not less trustworthy, but certainly less • reluctant evidence that in a rural district containing twenty parishes, into the condition of which he had inquired, he found that the Act had produced no in- crease of school attendances at all in eleven parishes, while in
• the other nine, the total increase of attendances could not be placed higher than thirty in all. Some teachers, it was shown, had never heard of the Agricultural. Children's Act, and were, of course, entirely ignorant of the new motive-power in- tended to be brought to bear on the children of the poor by it. Even where the Act was known, it was known to be a feeble one, for the enforcement of which nobody was respon- sible,—and of course this kind of knowledge of the Act was not productive of much good effect. With this sort of evidence brought forward on both sides of the House, it was somewhat childish for the Government and their friends to plead that the Act had had no fair time in which to come into play, and that you should not pull up a plant every morning to look how its roots were shooting. That is all very well, if you have any reason to believe them to be shooting at all ; but if you have good reason to know that there is no root to shoot, that the stick was a dry one before it was planted, there is no meritorious patience in waiting till next year, before taking it out of the ground and planting something with a root in its place. In fact, the Agricultural Children's Act has really produced one living shoot, and only one, and that has been only an impression on the mind of Parliament. It has been with- out effect in the country, but Parliamentary conviction has ripened under the sense of the responsibility which Parliament has voluntarily undertaken. And now, unfortunately, it is pretty certain that the legislative conscience, even of the Con- servative side of the House, on this matter, is more active than that of the Government. To hear the still small voice of Lord Sandon's conscience responding doubtfully and reluctantly to the promptings of Mr. Pell, is an impressive, though a somewhat grotesque experience. The Roman Senate was moved when Livy could chronicle that a steer had spoken,—Bos locutus est. But when the country squires appeal to the conscience of the Govern- ment, the reply is not so prompt, though the marvel is hardly less.
The whole drift of the debate was in fact summed up in Mr. Forster's remark, that on this subject " special knowledge was apt to mean special pleading,"—that it was used, not to show what was really wanted, but to serve as a forcing-house of excuses why what is really wanted cannot yet be done. As he very justly pointed out, a much more complete Education Act for Factory children than any which is now in force for Agricultural children, was enacted thirty years ago, and was enacted through the pressure of the party which had least special knowledge of factory children, and in spite of the resistance of those who had most special knowledge of them. The like service is now wanted for the agricultural children from the party which knows least of agricultural children, and again experience shows that,—with certain honourable exceptions, like Mr. Pell's,— the resistance comes from those who know most of them, and who in their turn use their special knowledge for purposes of special pleading. A little ignorance,—just enough to insure that your interests shall not fight against your sense of justice, —is perhaps no bad guarantee of sobriety of judgment on issues of this kind. The agricultural labourers themselves not being represented in Parliament, and the classes most closely connected with them having various interests in their labour which are not entirely consistent with their thorough education, what is needed is not too much anxiety that the agitation for their better education shall not go too fast, but rather that it shall go a little faster. Lord Bandon was impressive, almost magniloquent, on the " state of poise " in the mind of the country, and especially of the Agricultural districts, on this subject of compulsory education. He was so anxious that there might be no reaction against education, that he was timid to the last degree about disturbing the state of poise. But surely, when you have got a " state of poise," a very little pressure in the right direction changes the " state of poise" into a state of motion, and motion in the desired line. When you are launching a ship, you don't argue that because it is in " a state of poise " it ought to be left alone, but, on the contrary, that for that very reason another turn of the screws, another inch of pressure in the Bramah press should be added, so as to change the state of " poise " into a state of sliding. Lord Sandon said that, according to Mr. Forster's own admission, the great manufacturing cities had been thirty years in learning to love education. No doubt they have. But then the Factory Act of thirty years ago was not as neutral an affair as the Agricultural Children's Act which it is now proposed to improve. The Factory Act of 1844 did not leave the opinions of the great cities in " a state of poise," but undertook very effectually to precipitate the poised opinion into active movement. More- over, Lord Sandon himself supplies us with a fair amount of evidence that the opinion of the rural districts is not in quite so complete a condition of equilibrium as, in other parts of his speech, he desired to convey. He says that whatever may be the deficiency in quantity of the agricultural children's education, its condition as to quality is rather remarkably good. He had compared sixty urban with sixty rural districts in relation to the quality of the education gained, and he found, that in the sixty rural districts " more than one-fourth of the full-timers and one-half of the half-timers passed the higher standards, while in the urban districts only one-sixth of the
full-timers and one-sixth of the half-timers attained the same grade." We should rather like to know whether Lord Sandon's sixty rural districts were chosen from all parts of England, or were limited to the canny North. But the more readily we admit this evidence to apply equally to all England, the more clear it is that the peasantry themselves have a value for education which shows them not to be in a " state of poise" on the subject. The best test you can have of the value felt for education by the children themselves, is the use they make of their opportunities. If in one place a larger proportion of children go in for the higher standards than in another, it is clear that in the former of these two places there needs far less driving to get the child- ren educated than in the latter. But, in all probability, the true explanation of Lord Sandon's comparative results is this, —that in the urban districts, where, as a rule, all must go to school, the proportion of good results is greatly diminished by "the residuum" who have no wish to learn ; while in the country districts, where only those for the most part go to school who desire education for themselves, or else whose parents desire it for them, the use of their opportunities made by average children, is more satisfactory. You will always get a better type of soldier among volunteers than among conscripts. But it does not follow that you will get anything like the available force by a law which makes soldiering a volunteer matter, which you will get by a law of conscription. Still, so far as Lord Sandon's figures go, they undoubtedly justify Mr. Fawcett and Mr. Pell, not Mr. Cross and Lord Sandon. If so many do well, it is not probable that there will be any strong feeling against obliging all to do something. Besides, one defect of the Agri- cultural Children's Act is a flagrant one, for which there is no justification. Unquestionably the children who are declared by law not old enough to go to labour in the fields at all, ought to be compelled to go to school. The difference between a child trained from the earliest age and a child not trained at all till he is eight years old,—the difference, we mean, in the use that the two will make of the two or three years of half- time education after they pass the age of eight, will be found to be a vast one. At present there is no educational compul- sion in most of the rural districts, direct or indirect, below the age of eight ; between the age of eight and an age which need not be higher than ten years and four months, there is theo- retically a mild indirect compulsion which it is no one's duty to see applied, and which is therefore defied by the farmers, and is nearly a dead-letter. And after the age of twelve, even that mild theoretical compulsion does not operate at all. As Mr. Fawcett said, a greater farce in the way of educational legislation cannot be conceived. The rural dis- tricts pay their full share of the costly Education grant which, as Mr. Forster showed, is £1,700,000, not far short of two millions sterling, but they do not get their full share of the advantages. The school accommodation is provided for their children, but the childen are not there to use it,—the pressure on their parents to employ them otherwise is at present too great. It is not creditable to the House of Commons to have decided by a majority of 80 against the concurrent evidence both of Liberal and of Tory witnesses, that nothing further need be done to help them to their fair share of the Educational advantages of the country, till the Government have convinced themselves, by taking up, at their leisure, the worthless stick that was planted two years ago, that it has not begun to grow.
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