Richard Gardner

“ With a plentiful supply of schools, and an efficient staff of teachers, there will still be many children who will seldom, or never, enter a school door. A universal system of compulsion has not yet been enacted by Parliament, still the principle is embodied in the recent Education Act. You know that the power of compulsion is vested in the School Boards, but only as a permissive privilege. There is no doubt that the Boards of our large towns will avail themselves of it, but that every School Board will enforce the attendance of the children is by no means probable. ”

“ Therefore, in conclusion, I would say to all teachers who wish to magnify their office, and to all those who earnestly desire the education of the poor as a means to enhance the reputation and prosperity of our noble empire, endeavour to obtain a universal system of compulsory education. ”

“ Simply because there is no law to compel children to attend school. So, too, will the rating system fail to educate the children of our country, unless every board uses its powers of compulsion. For what does it matter whether the schools are built and supported by the rates or by voluntary subscriptions, so that they are built and supported. To make education national in every sense of the word, and to obliterate even a residuum of ignorance, some system of compulsion must be resorted to. Parents must be compelled to send their children to school. ”

“ I need not say much to you teachers on the advantages of compulsory education. Almost every child would then be educated, and the education of our country would indeed be national. The poor would not only have—as, alas! too many have now—simply their carnal senses as a means of enjoyment, but their mental faculties would be developed, and the vast storehouses of knowledge to which only educated persons have access, would be open to all. ”

“ In order to substantiate these assertions, I will examine a few of the causes which keep children from school.
1st.—I believe the most fruitful source of all to be the apathy of the parents. So much ignorance and its natural companions, poverty and vice, exist among the lower classes, that having no education themselves they do not see the necessity of it for their children. Many say, "I have got along through life without knowing how to read or write, and so can my children." ”

“ Every child capable of being taught should be educated. It is well known that in numerous cases, it is useless to offer education. To the minds of some members during the debates in Parliament, this offering of education was deemed a sufficient panacea to dispel the ignorance of our land. But we may provide an adequate number of schoolrooms, and a sufficient and efficient staff of teachers—we may even go further and offer education gratuitously,—and still large numbers of our children will not be educated. ”

“ They are also so absorbed in obtaining the bare necessaries of life, or in the gratification of their sensual desires,—for, alas! in many, the life of the mind is torpid or dead—that they are entirely careless about the education of their children. Hence, the children of such parents never go to school, and never will, unless they are compelled by the power of the law. Do we not see every day numbers of children running about during school hours? But some will say—this system of compulsion will interfere with the rights and liberties of the parent. ”

“ Now it has been ascertained that very few children under twelve are regularly employed day by day; and more especially is this the case in agricultural districts, where no laws affecting the labour of children at present exist. They work for a period of a few days, or it may be of a few weeks, and when their employment ceases, instead of attending school, they are allowed to roam about, not uneducated, alas!—for there is no such thing as an uneducated child—but receiving such an education as blunts and vitiates their minds. ”

“ As a national school master, I feel fully convinced that large numbers of children, notwithstanding the Education Act, will grow up in ignorance, and many more through the irregularity of their attendance will still receive an education unworthy of the name, unless some scheme is adopted to make attendance at school universally compulsory. ”

“ For the peculiarities of child-labour vary in different localities. If a law were passed compelling all children to attend, say one hundred days in the year, how could it be enforced? I would suggest the following plan:—Let Parliament cause a School Board to be formed in every place, where under the present Act none need now exist, and let each board be compelled to frame a system of compulsion adapted to the requirements of the locality, and which system shall cause every child within its jurisdiction to attend school a certain number of times in the year. ”

“ If you cannot afford to pay the school fee, and we shall know, being residents of the parish, we will pay it for you out of the poor rate, but in this case you will be regarded as a recipient of parish relief." All that refuse to send their children to school ought to incur certain penalties, as if they wilfully deprived their offspring of food. ”

“ Let theoretical educationists aver that physical science and other cognate subjects should be taught in our elementary schools, and let cynical writers assert that our schools are below the standard imagined in their impractical mind; but as long as the normal average of attendance remains at two-thirds of the number on the books, and as long as the majority of our children are allowed to leave school before they are eleven years old, the educational standard must be low, and the curriculum of instruction must be mainly confined to the essential R's. ”

“ In cases where only one school exists in a parish, no matter of what religious denomination it may be, the children must be sent there, and it would be the duty of the Board to see that the provisions of the Education Act as regards the religious instruction are stringently enforced. If, when this is carried out, there is found to be insufficient accommodation in any particular school, the denomination to which it belongs must enlarge their buildings, supposing there is no room elsewhere within a reasonable distance, or a rate school must be established by the Board. ”

“ Then I believe we should see less vice, less drunkenness, and less poverty. Men would become better parents and better citizens. Besides this, the advancement of science and its application to almost all kinds of labour demands from a man in these days not merely strength, but skill. In the use of our military weapons and in the modern modes of warfare, we require not only animal courage and dogged perseverance, but the cultivated intelligence of educated men. ”

“ You may send the child to any efficient school you please, if there be more than one in the parish, but if there be only one, whether belonging to the Church or Dissent, you must send him there, and we will see that no religious dogmas distasteful to you are taught to your child. ”

“ Master of the Tonbridge National School.
The subject of National Education has engrossed a considerable share of public attention during the past eventful year. The education of the poor is now regarded as an absolute necessity. The opinion of the people of England has wonderfully changed upon this question of the education of the poor. Not many years ago the popular fallacy was very prevalent that if the lower strata of the population were released from their bonds of ignorance, it would tend to disorganise the normal condition of society. ”

“ Lawless children who defy the authority of their parents, and of the Board, should be sent to Industrial Schools. Far better this, than that their wayward wills, unchecked by any restraint, should make the lives of these children a curse to themselves, their parents, the neighbourhood where they dwell, and eventually, in all probability, a curse to their country. The children of professional vagrants should be similarly dealt with, while the children of gipsies and other nomads should be compelled to attend schoool during the time they are encamped in any locality. ”

“ Here again, therefore, I say regularity of attendance will only be accomplished by compulsion.
3rd.—Another cause which prevents many children attending school is the poverty of their parents. The wages of their children is to them an absolute necessity. A man who earns 15s. per week and has half-a-dozen olive branches to support, cannot be expected to do without the wages of those children who are able to perform such labour as is suited to their early years. For these poor children there is no school-life, or very little ”

“ I argue from the fact that since the Government demands school accommodation for one-sixth of the whole population to be provided everywhere, when the buildings are erected, they will find some means of filling them. I think it is a fair deduction that since compulsion is applied to the buildings it will eventually be applied also to the children. ”