20 Middle-Class Education. 



may fairly say, without any undue disparagement, that the 

 Report of the Commissioners shows that they have not kept 

 pace with the general advance of education among the lower 

 orders. If, however, those for whose benefit they are especially 

 designed are satisfied with the amount of intellectual and moral 

 culture there obtainable, the question ceases to be of much prac- 

 tical importance to those who have neither the desire nor the 

 means to participate in those advantages. Between these two 

 extiemes lies the great middle class, composed of men who are 

 becoming daily more and more sensible of the inefficiency of the 

 existing means of providing education for their children, and 

 more alive to the importance of providing such means as shall 

 enable them to "hold their own" in the great stru^afle of life. 



Of this gi'eat middle class (without regard to any other con- 

 sideration than that of numbers) no section is of as great im- 

 portance as that which is connected with agriculture ; and for 

 this large body of persons there are at present no adequate means 

 of education provided. Let us briefly look at the question in a 

 practical point of view. One great cause — we may say the vital 

 cause — of this deficiency has arisen from education not being duly 

 appreciated by that class. What men have never had, they never 

 feel the want of. The higher classes, so far as they have reaped 

 the advantages of a good education, take every care that their 

 children shall share the same. Those for whom they can and do 

 legislate they take care to provide in a proportionate degree with 

 similar advantages. But the middle classes cannot and %vill not 

 be legislated for ; and in most instances have been hitherto 

 quite satisfied if the modicum of education which they have 

 themselves received continue to be doled out to their children. 



It is true of course that there is a gradually increasing feeling 

 among the middle classes that something better should be pro- 

 vided for their offspring, and that a few noble efforts have been 

 made in order to attain that end ; but is it not a fact that the 

 feeling of this deficiency has come upon them from without, 

 rather than arisen spontaneously within their own body ? This 

 remark especially applies to the agricultural middle classes. As 

 a rule, farmers are not "speculative" men. They are hardly, 

 in the truest sense of the word, " men of business ;" their isolated 

 lives, and the nature of the subjects which generally occupy 

 their minds are not conducive to united action either for social 

 or political objects. 



But the education of the agricultural section of the community 

 cannot be advantageously severed from that of others occupying 

 the same social position ; let us therefore look to these few 

 practical points, under which the general subject of middle class 

 education may be regarded : — 



