THE MIDDLE-CLASS EDUCATION REPORT. T HE Report of the Middle-Class Education

Commission will probably mark an era in English history. Although the secondary education—the education of the classes which are not so pressed by poverty as to accept for their children the very minimum of knowledge and intelligence which enables them to communicate otherwise than orally with their fellow-creatures,—is not in itself equal in importance to the primary, it has a far closer relation with it than is usually supposed, is far more difficult to organize perfectly, and is at present, if not absolutely so deficient in quantity, worse in quality, and in a far greater tangle of disorder. The Commissioners, in their invaluable Report, which has just appeared, tell us that "if the total number of boys requiring secondary edu- cation be 255,000, nearly 80 per cent. of the whole are educated in private schools, or at home, or not at all." 52,000 boys are educated apparently in endowed and pro- prietary schools, generally very badly, almost always without any attempt to adapt their teaching to the condition of modern knowledge, or (even more important still) to the time over which the process of education is to be extended. We may say, roughly, that there are about 500,000 children (of both sexes) of the middle class under sixteen who need good teaching,—and by good teaching we mean skilful teach- ing so adapted to the period over which it is to extend as to be as thorough and informing as possible for its purpose ; and that of these, about one-tenth get taught in schools of a more or less known character, our knowledge of which is far from cheering. The other nine-tenths (we are roughly including all the girls of the middle classes as taught in private schools or not at all) are taught we know not how much or how little, how well or how ill. The Commissioners are quite fair to private schools, admitting that in many cases they are in advance of endowed or proprietary schools in their methods of teaching, and that, being more flexible to the demands of the parents, they are more liable to be influenced by them both for good and for ill. Bat the net result of the inquiry is this,—that that middle-class education which is now best known and which has been fully reported on is,—we mast say, taken as a whole,—exceedingly capricious, and in a very great proportion of cases exceedingly bad ; and that there is every reason to believe that the middle-class education which is unknown and has not been reported on, falls below, at least as often as it excels, the education which is known. Let us compare this condition of things with that of Prussia. In England, in a population of about 20,000,000 souls, there or thereabouts, we are told that the total number of middle- class boys undergoing some sort of secondary education in en- dowed or public schools is 52,000, and that this education is full of all sorts of the most glaring deficiencies. In Prussia, before the war, with a population of 18,476,000, there were 74,162 boys of the middle class receiving a carefully planned secondary educa- tion, thoroughly inspected by the State, all under the superin- tendance of men whose qualifications have been thoroughly sifted and tested by the highest authorities. Indeed, Mr. Arnold main- tains that the true number of middle-class English boys under- going an education which can, by any amount of straining, be asserted to be public at all in any sense, is only 15,880,—or little more than one-fifth of the number in Prussia on a smaller population. But even taking the larger numbers of the Commissioners, we find that in Prussia a number of boys, larger by nearly 50 per cent., in infinitely better regulated schools, are receiving a far higher order of secondary education from better qualified masters. On our own higgledy-piggledy system 210,000/. a year is spent out of permanent endow- ments alone, with the most wonderfully capricious and thrift- less results for that expenditure. How shockingly the grammar schools,—the most important class of endowed schools,—fulffi the purposes for which they were originally intended may be gathered from this pregnant fact, recorded by the Commis- sioners, that out of upwards of 700 endowed grammar schools specially designed to prepare boys for the higher education of the Universities, at least 550 send none at all, and 83 more send only an average of 1k each,—this number repre- senting "all that had left each school for the University in three successive years." Thus, while our grammar schools are conceived and arranged on a plan of education which nobody would for a moment approve, except as preparatory for a Uni- versity education, the vast majority of them do not, in fact, act as feeders to the Universities at all, and their plan of education is wholly adapted for a sequel which never follows. A better illustration of the amazing confusion of our system of secondary education cannot be conceived. If we were to build all our cottages with a staircase leading up to what would be the &Or storey, if there were an upper floor at all, but, in nine cottages out of every ten, were to finish them off without an upper floor,—the staircase answering no purpose except that of diminishing the available space in the interior of the house,—we should act only just as foolishly, and by no means more so, than we do in entrusting these grammar schools, intended to lead up to the Universities, with an educa- tion which in the enormous majority of instances never gets itself continued there. This remarkable Report shows that our middle-class education in England is a confusion of accidents, accidents depending on ulterior intentions which have never been fulfilled, on tastes which have been changed, on opinions which are obsolete, and on movements of population which were never anticipated at the time the schools were founded.

The Commissioners have fairly grasped the fact that what is wanted in the secondary education of England is before all things and beyond all things,—method. The whole Report of this Commission is one long commentary on the mischiefs arising from a total want of method in every department of our secondary education, and the necessity of restoring it. There is no method in the individual schools, no attempt to adapt either the teaching to the wants of the scholars, or the endowments to the various wants of the district. There is no method as between school and school, no division of labour, no classification of pupils. The whole system is a rank wilder- ness of overgrown and wasted endowments, neither adapted to the wants of the pupils who come, nor succeeding in mould- ing them, before they leave, into fitness for the career for which it professes to prepare them. In this, as in so many other departments of affairs, the profound love of the English nation for an incoherent individualism has succeeded in worse than wasting,—abusing,—resources which, though exceed- ingly inadequate to the draught upon them, would effect very much indeed if carefully husbanded and systematically applied; but which, as it is, are efficient only for filling the educational ground with weeds instead of flowers. Mr. Fitch, in the lucid passages quoted by the Commissioners from his report on the schools in the West Riding of York, tells us what the so- called grammar schools there now are. They do not teach grammar decently, and they scarcely teach anything else at all. "The classical learning prescribed by statute in the large majority of the grammar schools may be safely pro- nounced a delusive and unfruitful thing. It is given to very few in any form. It is not carried to any substantial issue in the case of five per cent, of the scholars. It is more often taught to keep up a show of obedience to founders' wills than for any better reason. It is so taught in the majority of instances that it literally comes to nothing. Finally, it furnishes the pretext for the neglect of all other useful learning, and is the indirect means of keeping down the general level of educa- tion in almost every town which is so unfortunate as to possess an endowment." As an illustration of the remark that the pseudo-teaching of classics "furnishes the pretext for the neglect of all other useful learning," take this delight- ful commentary on the general attainments of the grammar scholars :—" Three-fourths of the scholars whom I have examined in endowed schools, if tested by the usual standards appropriate to boys of similar age, under the Revised Code, would fail to pass the examination, either in arithmetic or in any other elementary subject." Such Is the result of our loved English laissez-faire, that resources much needed for educa- tion not only do not supply those needs, but are used to prevent the far better education we should have if they had never existed.

The remedial measures which the Commission propose seem to us thoroughly wise, more moderate in form than in reality, for without something like revolutionary measures no good result can come, and carefully adapted to interest the public in the task of reorganizing our secondary education. The Commissioners' proposals are elaborate in detail, but simple in principle, and we will sketch them in outline, to show how much power they really give, and how much unity of plan they would introduce. First of all, the Commissioners propose to find power to over-ride all founders' wills which, having been in operation for more than thirty years, seem to work injuriously or inefficiently,—especially to sweep up into the educational fund a number of useless charity funds, doles for apprenticeship, doles for marriage portions, and other vague, or bad, or obsolete purposes,—and to consolidate and redistribute existing endowments in accordance with the educational requirements of the district. The machinery suggested for these purposes is as follows :—The Charity Commission, reinforced by some man of great authority on matters of education, should have either a Minister of Education with a seat in the Cabinet at its head, or, if it be thought desirable to keep it independent of party, should have some weighty member of Parliament on the Board, who could give explanations of what it was doing in Parliament. This Commission so reinforced would then have power to approve or reject all schemes for the resettlement of educa- tional trusts or other charities deemed useless or obsolete, and when approved to submit them to Parliament. The scheme

• so submitted would, after 40 days, if neither House disap- proved it, become law by the mere assent of the Crown. The Commissioners would also allow an appeal to the Privy Council on two points,—whether the new scheme was one legally

within the competency of the Charity Commission to propose, i.e., whether educational or not ; and, if not educational, but

proposed for conversion, whether it was wise to convert it ?

Subject to the conditions that neither House of Parliament should vote an address to Her Majesty to refuse the Royal assent, and that no appeal should be made to the Privy Council, the plan for the reconstituted or converted charities would be- come law by mere assent of the Crown. Here is, as we think our readers will admit, the creation of an immense and most beneficial power of educational reform,—without any needless interposition of embarrassments and delays. This machinery, however, would be dangerous,—would be too powerful,—were

it not carefully linked to other machinery securing a local approbation, and, indeed, generally a local preparation, of all

such readjustments, redistributions, and conversions of trusts. The great intervening body between this final enacting body and the various schools would be either a District Council of Education,—one Council for each of the Regis- trar-General's " districts " of England and Wales,—or, when-

ever the county chose to take it into its own hands, a County Council. In the former case, the Charity Commission (re- formed, as we have explained) would appoint a District Com- missioner of Education for each of these educational districts, who would be inspector of all the schools for secondary edu- cation in his district, and ex officio a trustee for every educa- tional trust in the district above the primary schools. With

him would be associated six or eight unpaid residents in the district—men well acquainted with local feeling and possessing local respect. This would be the Provincial Board of Educa- tion. It would be their duty to organize the relations between thevarious schools of their district, to classify the schools into those of the three proposed secondary orders,—schools for children whose education is to extend to fourteen only,— schools for children whose education is to extend to sixteen only,—and schools for children whose education is to extend to eighteen. It would also be their duty to decide which schools should be day schools and boarding schools, or part one, part the other. They would consider and sanction all schemes for consolidating driblets of endowments, all removals of schools from one locality

to another ; in short, all important changes in the economy of the educational resources of their district. But the Commissioners propose, in case the counties care enough for the matter, to let each county constitute an educational Council for itself, which would then supersede entirely the District Council. If any Board of Guardians wished the county to have•

a Council of its own, the matter would then be submitted to all the Boards of guardians in the county, and if the majority of the Boards agreed, the County Council would be constituted by associating with all the chairmen of the Boards of guardians half as many more nominated by the Crown. The District

Commissioner would be an ex officio member of the County

Board. This proposal of a County Council as an alternative to the District Council is in order to encourage local interest in education,—the Commissioners believing that even a poorer educational system, in which the county took a living interest, would be more efficient than a better system to which no local interest or attention was excited. Towns of 100,000 popula-

tion or upwards would rank as provinces of themselves, and the Board for such towns would be made up of the official:

Commissioner, a certain number of members to be named by the trustees of the larger endowed schools, and an equal number to be added by the Town Council. Finally, it is proposed that the trusteeships for each school should be reformed by compelling the present boards of trustee& to strike off a certain number, and to add to the re- mainder an equal number of trustees elected (for five years) by the householders of the town or parish, and then, again, to accept an equal number appointed by the Provincial Board.

These "governors" would have power, subject to any order from superior authority, to spend money on building or improving the school, to determine the subjects of instruction, though

not to alter the grade of the school (i.e., whether it is a school for boys who leave at 14, at 16, or at 18) ; to appoint the head master, subject to his having the special certificates required, and to receive and account for the fees. The head master himself would appoint all his assistant-masters, subject to their possessing certain certificates required, would be supreme over the discipline in all things short of expul- sion, which would require the assent of the "governors," and would choose all the text-books.

Here we have, as it seems to us, a very complete and effi- cient scheme of organization,—with a central power strong enough for anything, and a most carefully defined sphere of separate responsibility for each power in the descending scale between the central authority and the individual school. The report is full of able discussion and of further recommen- dations which we cannot enumerate now. But there can be no manner of doubt that it proposes a revolution in the scheme,—or rather a revolution to a scheme from a no-scheme or chaotic tangle,—of secondary education in England, and does not propose it at all before it is urgently needed.