David Melville

“ It is no question of sect or dogma when a hope is expressed that religious truth, as derived from the Bible, in its plain, preceptive, and historical teaching, might still be an item of necessary instruction, since without it, it is hard to see how the character of the pupil can be formed, or the authority of the teacher upheld. Right and wrong must be maintained in a school. ”

“ Even in the particulars which are matters of unwelcome fact, rather than of clear firm opinion, they act as a precedent rather than a warning. Before we trace these points of similitude more closely, we may remark that one point of difference will only make the Educational question more imperative. Many people thought, or like at least to suppose they thought, that the Reform Bill was expedient because it was inevitable; the Education measure will be recognized as inevitable because it is expedient. ”

“ That it should not use its child's labour to the hindrance or exclusion of Education, is as much perhaps as it will be prepared as yet to assert. This point then would hang on the last. If Education is to be compulsory, it probably would have also to be gratuitous; but as the compulsoriness will not now be laid down, so neither need its corollary. In this particular, also, the measure may be left to its working. Inability or unwillingness to pay will not be let impair or hinder the efficiency of Rate-raised schools. ”

“ Though, perhaps, theory might lay the duty at the door of the parent, the State will feel bound to take it up, rather than let it lie there unfulfilled. Then, further, the State having decided that Education on a more general scale must be, and that, failing the parents or others fulfilling the obligation, it itself must do so, it will pass at once to furnishing the means and machinery by which its determination may be carried out. ”

“ Anyhow, though a sense of the need of compulsory Education has much grown of late, the public mind is not yet sufficiently disabused of the notion that it is an interference with due personal freedom to make compulsoriness a condition of an Educational System. ”

“ The competition of industry with Education is the only hindrance that is worth any thing but the most summary treatment. There are two points that entitle that hindrance to the gravest consideration. First, the circumstances of the parents—next, the nature of the work. Mr. Henley, in conceding lately the necessity of increased education, pleaded only that the exigencies of a certain kind of labour might be taken into account. It is undeniably true that the agricultural labourer scarcely can dispense with such increase to his income as his children may bring in. ”

“ It must be comprehensive, not exclusive, and Denominationalism is exclusiveness. Voluntaryism is the very life-blood of Denominationalism, and these schools are not voluntary. When you say to a community throughout a given district, "You must have a school, irrespective of all other considerations whatever," you mean that instruction of the people in sound useful knowledge is the primary idea, with which nothing is to interfere. ”

“ A lie, a theft, a blasphemy must rest somewhere for their correction, and can rest nowhere but in the revealed will of God, sincerely reflected in the conscience and character of the teachers. The Bible must be an admitted subject of teaching, and the teacher a Christian man. ”

“ Nothing but a very stout faith and clear intelligence will avail at all, even if they will. There has been so much acting without conviction and acting against conviction of late, that half convictions are out of court altogether, and whole convictions much discredited. And if the late result forces this consideration upon us, much more so does the process by which it was attained. Both must signally influence all action on such a subject as Education. The late Reform Bill became possible through the confusion that had arisen hetween convictions and concessions. ”

“ If the education and character of the lower social strata had outrun their prosperity, such process were intelligible—the property qualification might then reasonably be reduced. But when the proof is all the other way, and the necessaries of life for the many have grown much more near the comforts, than ignorance has become intelligence or conduct virtuous—to lower the franchise test, be it rate or rent, seemed to be in direct violation of the rule which should regulate it. ”

“ Thus, then, we arrive at what the State might lay down as the guiding conditions of these Rate-raised schools. Fit buildings—a fit teacher—and fit teaching. And fitness in these two last would mean, for the teacher, a Christian man as well as an apt instructor; and Bible as well as secular instruction. On these conditions, tested by inspection. State grants for building and support would be assigned; but henceforth the Central Office would know nothing of any other conditions. Denominationalism, in its own schools, must take care of itself. ”

“ Up to this time, the State, or any thing like a National System, which alone the State properly can regard, has waited on Voluntaryism; henceforth Voluntaryism must wait on a National System. Doing as little violence as may be to existing methods and processes, and recognizing still such agencies, that will assert themselves under such regulations as it may lay down, the State will not any longer let the work come to a standstill any where, because such agencies are paralyzed or inoperative. ”

“ The kind of nature, mental and moral, of our lower orders, needs the quickening of change, else schooling becomes the dreariest of mechanical routines. But, if applied, as a relief from toil, the benefit is mutual, and there is a proportionate increase of knowledge through a more lively interest and keener intelligence. Any one acquainted with our Reformatory Schools, where a limited amount of school teaching is made the relief from farm-work, knows that the results attained would bear comparison with those arrived at elsewhere, through much longer periods of instruction. ”

“ There is no reason why this part-time system should not be extended to agricultural as well as manufacturing Pursuits—why, in fact, it should not be made the condition of all employment whatever, and forbidding out-door employment to any child under eight; enforcing alternations of work and school on all employed between eight and thirteen. Of course agriculture is more fitful than manufacture; but not so much so as to make school teaching at the same time impossible. The conditions might have to differ. It might not be necessarily a continuous daily attendance of half-time. ”

“ It is scarcely less true that, for certain field processes, juvenile labour is the best. On the other hand, any one acquainted with our rural districts must know that for no class are the elevating effects of Education more needed. Better houses and better wages would be great auxiliaries; but without Education they are little likely to attain either, or to turn them to any good uses, even if they did attain them. ”

“ Doubtless it must have seemed incontrovertibly absurd to push down such indications as a man's circumstances afford to his fitness for political responsibility at all lower, much less to zero, at a time when his circumstances were much in advance of his mental and moral condition. ”

“ The public and the parents are partners in the duty of Education. If the public, by Rate-aid and State-aid, secure schools for the parents, it is not likely to let the junior partner defeat the end, by a remiss attendance. A Rate-supported school will insure compulsion if it is needed, and the point may be so left. ”

“ So also on the second point, whether tho teaching should be gratuitous, or tho parents should contribute.
Without going through all the arguments, there can be no doubt that personally, socially, and politically, it is much better the parents should pay a fee graduated according to their circumstances. Besides the duty, all that encourages or tends to maintain the sense of responsibility, self-help, and independence, is most valuable. But all these are conditions of Voluntaryism. They are at least hard to maintain, when you say must to a man. "You must send your children to school!" ”

“ The weary fight over facts and figures will be no more heard, or little heeded if heard. Nobody will care whether the 150,000 without education in London, or the 42,000 in Manchester, are strictly accurate statements, whether it is quite true that Prussia has 96 per cent., and England only 46 under Education. ”

“ We may be sure that all checks, scruples, doubts, difficulties, or vague common-places, will scarcely gain audience against a simple clear expression of want, and a determination to supply it. Our wisdom then would seem to lie in trying to forecast these necessary or likely conditions, since any disasters or disadvantages can but be aggravated by being unforeseen. ”

“ Quarter Sessions would probably have to institute a well-chosen Educational Board, who would elect one or more competent Inspectors and Examiners, and, considering that the public itself is more enlightened in the question than it used to be, and that the Central Office could always turn its bull's-eye upon them, we might, perhaps, expect that the want to be met and the duty to be discharged would not be marked by the prejudice and ignorance which are often regarded as the characteristics of local administration. ”

“ The first point is a matter of strictly local detail; but to the difficulty a thin and scattered rural population may seem to offer to district schools, the old solution, solvitur ambulando, applies with a very literal force. Four miles is not an unknown distance for children to walk to school, though of course most undesirable; whilst it is certainly true, that children will attend often more punctually and regularly from some distance than if living close by. I have proved it by the same family under the different conditions. ”

“ Those rocks and quicksands, too, by driving the vessel on which people often seem to try and escape the duty of pilotage, will be taken as sufficiently marked on the chart of discussion for avoidance. The distinction between instruction and Education will not be allowed to bar even instruction, where there is no pretence of the existence of either. ”

“ This notion will be seen, sooner or later, to rest on that liberty of doing what one likes with one's own, which must be allowed to be either inapplicable or perforce to carry so much more as to be proved thereby to be absurd. ”

“ It will not be necessary that any educational measure should distinctly rule the point of detail on which we have just touched; nor some others which, while of great interest, are not of primary importance, and certainly are not ready for positive solution. ”

“ But there are three points, which it would be disingenuous and unwise to avoid. They will still as much influence men's judgments as they ever have, and should be fairly faced and candidly treated. These three points have been already touched upon; they are,—1. The condition of attendance, is it to be optional or compulsory? 2. Are the schools to be free, or is payment from parents to be exacted? 3. Is there to be any religious element in the teaching; and if so, what?
My opinion on the first may be gathered from what has preceded. Compulsoriness is not nearly so ugly as it is made to look. ”

“ The campaign has swept far beyond, passing them by; and, though it is no more use crying over turned fortresses than over spilt milk—it is well to note the fact, that one of the great lessons of the late Session is, that strongholds, however apparently impregnable, may be disregarded. ”

“ Perhaps the extent to which individuals or bodies may affect the Education question will depend very much on the amount of recognition they give to this condition. What we would wish should be, must wait very much on what will be. ”

“ Nor let any one fancy that such teaching for shorter periods is worthless. There is no doubt that our drawn-out teaching all day long is not advantageous. A dull sodden mindlessness does ensue on the prolonged din of the school process. ”

“ Nor will the law of demand and supply be longer upheld for a case, in which its application can only produce a dead-lock, since supply must, like the water poured down a pump to encourage the up-stream, of necessity precede any demand whatever. ”

“ If a hint of Household Suffrage, almost casually dropped by the Attorney-General in 1866, became the index of the franchise in 1867, much more will these educational conditions thus, however hastily, legislatively enforced, be found in kind in any larger measure. In fact, they only require to be extended to all children of the community, employed or unemployed, with such adaptations as those differing conditions of life would involve, and the thing is done. ”