EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 4 



should naturally look neglect their claims ; and, where this is not the 

 <?ase, the business of education is taken up by a set of politicians, who 

 look on human beings as mere particles in a great machine which 

 they would work to serve their own purposes. To stop the current, 

 or to retard it, would be impossible ; and to sit waiting till the rage 

 should have passed or the general thirst for knowledge have been 

 assuaged is an act scarcely less silly. 



" Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis, at ille 

 Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis sevum." 



It becomes the friends of education, under these circumstances, to 

 use every exertion that those kinds of knowledge which are suitable 

 for the working classes should be freely furnished in conjunction with 

 a judicious moral and religious training. 



We shall proceed to declare our meaning a little more particularly 

 with respect to the topics of general instruction, the moral and re- 

 ligious parts of it having been briefly explained a little above; and 

 here, perhaps, we shall make our intentions better understood by 

 showing from what already exists what we do not mean. An intel- 

 ligent stranger on entering for the first time a good working model 

 of the national-school system cannot fail to be struck with the admir- 

 able order, regularity, and apparent intelligence that pervades the 

 school, as though it were one man ; his curiosity is excited, and he 

 prepares to examine in detail the various components of the teaching 

 machine. No school of this kind, however, can bear a close examina- 

 tion: the whole consists in the following of a certain routine by a 

 large collection of automata that can only say or do what the ma- 

 chinery empowers them ; and, accordingly, a very slight examination 

 of even the most intelligent boys as to their substantial acquaintance 

 with the narrow range of subjects there taught proves incontestibly 

 the hollowness of the scheme.* Children must not be treated as ma- 

 chines, although the arrangements of the school itself should be as 

 perfect and its movements as regular as the most exquisite machinery. 

 No teaching can be good that is not based on the principles of mental 

 development ; and no teacher can be regarded as performing his busi- 

 ness efficiently who does not continually regard his pupils as pos- 



* " 1000. Should you say the system of the National Society gives them confused 

 notions? Yes ; I think it gives them nothing else. 1 do not see how, from the mode 

 of teaching in such schools, the boys could be made anything they wished to be made, 

 or the girls either. If you attend to that system, you will find how little is taught : 

 and the mode of teaching the doctrine of the Church of England, is in a way that can- 

 not make a good impression on the children. 1001. You think that the pupils of the 

 National School Society will never retain a correct knowledge of the doctrines of the 

 Church of England 1 'They never will. 1002. There is nothing in the rules which 

 prevents the fullest explanation of the scriptures? No; but, if you sit for hours to 

 see how it is done, you will be satisfied of its inutility. Do you mean to say that the 

 system is defective in communicating knowledge, or that the knowledge is such that the 

 children will never attain to a full understanding of it by any system ? It is clear to 

 me, that the younger children can have no interest in any particular doctrine, teach it 

 how you will : they may be made submissive, but their understandings are not suf- 

 ficiently formed for the purpose. And those who are older, excepting in some schools 

 where a particular clergyman is very diligent, they are not likely to attain it. In the 

 great schools of London, the teachers do not inculcate it." Mr. Place's Evidences 

 before the Commons' Select Committee. 



M.M . No. 3. X 



