John Hall Gladstone. 191 



London for the Chelsea District ; for three years he was Vice-Chairman 

 of the Board, and for many years he was Chairman of the Books and 

 Apparatus Sub-Committee. As a practical educationist his consistent 

 aim was " to improve the methods of instruction, and to arrange for 

 due provision in the schools for carrying out the more important 

 branches of education those that would best fit the children for the 

 needs of later life, and give them the best attainable knowledge of the 

 world and of the forces around them." To this end he set himself to 

 investigate the school systems in various Continental countries, and in 

 Canada, the United States, and in Algeria. 



Dr. Gladstone was an expert phonographer, and his intimate 

 acquaintance with the art was no doubt the reason why he so 

 persistently advocated the necessity for a reform in English spelling. 

 In 1876 he succeeded in inducing the London School Board to pass, 

 by a large majority, a resolution affirming that a great difficulty was 

 placed in the way of education by the present method of spelling, and 

 suggesting that a Royal Commission should be appointed to consider 

 the best means of reforming and simplifying it. The topic was 

 extensively discussed, and a considerable number of the provincial 

 School Boards were induced, in spite of the opposition of the late 

 Mr. Firth (then Chairman of the London School Board), to join in a 

 memorial to the Committee of Council on Education in favour of the 

 reform. Dr. Gladstone helped the movement by the publication of a 

 small work on " Spelling Reform from an Educational Point of View," 

 which went through several editions, and he induced the now defunct 

 Social Science Association to take up the subject. The outcome of 

 this was the foundation, in 1879, of the Spelling Reform Association, 

 which continued to press upon the Education Department the need for 

 inquiry. The attitude of Sir Francis Sandford was consistently 

 unfavourable, and but little is heard to-day of the question of phonetic 

 spelling. Dr. Gladstone was, however, successful in helping to 

 abolish the use of the ordinary spelling-books, and in making 

 shorthand a subject of tuition in the day and evening schools of 

 the Board. 



He was further instrumental in forwarding the movement for 

 manual instruction in Board Schools, and in securing greater attention 

 to technical training. He had a firm belief in the value of object- 

 lessons, and in 1883 published a lecture on " Object Teaching." 



During the religious controversy, which was in full swing at the 

 Board in 1894, in which year he did not seek re-election, he spoke 

 strongly against the action of those who attacked the system of 

 religious instruction adopted in the schools of the Board, as the result 

 of the Cowper-Temple Clause of the Act of 1870. 



At the time of his death he was an Almoner of Christ's Hospital, 



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