NA TURE 



385 



THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1890. 



THE NEW CODES, ENGLISH AND 

 SCOTCH. 



THE country is once more within a month of a new 

 Education Code. Once more the Lord President 

 and the Vice-President of the Council are being besieged 

 by representatives of all interests and opinions, anxious 

 to impress them with the exclusive importance of their 

 particular views. Last year, it will be remembered, the 

 Code — great advance as it was on its predecessors — fell 

 a victim to the fears of one party and the lukewarmness 

 of the other. The extreme School Board partisans gave 

 but scant support to any scheme which did not prac- 

 tically embody the recommendations of the minority of 

 the late Royal Commission, while the champions of 

 voluntary schools shrank from any changes which, by 

 raising the standard of efficiency, seemed likely to ac- 

 centuate the difference between the Board school, which 

 has the ratepayers' pocket to draw on, and the voluntary 

 school, which depends on a fast-shrinking fund of private 

 subscriptions. And so the Code was sacrificed, and 

 the friends of education were condemned to wait another 

 year. 



This is what is constantly happening, and what will 

 continue to happen, so long as there are ten experts 

 forthcoming on all matters relating to educational 

 machinery for one who knows and cares about education 

 itself. Whether elementary schools should be free ; 

 whether they should be under representative control ; 

 whether they should all receive rate-aid — these and the 

 like disputes are always sure to gain the ear of the public, 

 while the problem of making the education provided 

 worth disputing about is passed by almost unnoticed. 



How few among our so-called "educationists" (a 

 newly-introduced word with an ominous ring about it) 

 ever sit down deliberately to face the central problem of 

 elementary education — the only problem of fundamental 

 importance : Given a child between the ages of 5 and 

 13, with the limitations imposed by its age, by its home 

 surroundings, by the pressing necessity that it should 

 begin to earn a living as soon as possible, and by the fact 

 (most neglected of all by theorists) that there are only a 

 certain number of school hours in the day — what is the 

 best kind of training through which it shall pass 1 How 

 can those few precious years be best utilized ? 



Theories, indeed, there are, enough and to spare, till 

 we could wish sometimes that all those in high places 

 who talk of education were made to go through an 

 apprenticeship as school managers, in order to gain some 

 practical acquaintance with the limits imposed on the 

 range of instruction by the nature of the child-material 

 with which they have to deal. For no designer trained 

 to make "designs-in-the-abstract" — who produces pat- 

 terns for carpets which cannot be woven, for wall- 

 papers which cannot be printed, for copper that cannot 

 be beaten, and for wood that cannot be carved — could 

 be more out of touch with the material in which his 

 designs have to be executed than the educational "re- 

 former-in-the-abstract," who sketches fabulous plans for 

 Universal National Systems of Education which have 

 only one defect — that they are impossible to carry out. 

 Vol. xli. — No. 1061. 



And now, having relieved our feelings, we may turn to 

 the question of immediate importance— namely, the pro- 

 spects of educational advance under the new Code which 

 is so eagerly expected. 



It is rumoured that the authorities at the Education 

 Department are earnestly engaged in the attempt to make 

 the Code a real advance on former efforts. They have 

 many difficulties. If they can successfully run the gaunt- 

 let of the Treasury, they have to reckon with the factious 

 criticism of political partisans. We hope, however, that we 

 may assume that the draft Code as it issues from the 

 Department will embody at least all the purely educational 

 reforms which appeared in its unlucky predecessor. The 

 clause requiring English as a class subject will go, the cur- 

 riculum and regulations for evening schools will be made 

 more elastic, an attempt will be made to spread the teaching 

 of drawing, and further facilities will be afforded for science 

 instruction at central schools and classes. It will be the 

 task of outside critics to see that these proposals, already 

 made in last year's Code, are not whittled down, and that 

 they are supplemented by other changes on which al 

 educational reformers are practically agreed. What these 

 changes are may be gathered from the discussion 

 on elementary education, especially in its relation to 

 scientific and technical instruction, which followed Dr. 

 Gladstone's paper at the Society of Arts last November. 

 The programme has been since embodied in a more 

 definite and concrete form in the suggestions which have 

 just been submitted to the Education Department by 

 the Committee of the National Association for the 

 Promotion of Technical and Secondary Education. 

 Among other suggestions they propose that drawing 

 should be made compulsory in boys' schools, of course 

 being allowed a due interval before the regfulation 

 comes into operation, during which schools may adapt 

 their staff for the purpose. Elementary drawing should 

 be introduced into infant schools for boys to corre- 

 spond to needlework for girls, as proposed in last 

 year's Code. The absurd minute of the Science and 

 Art Department — forced on them, it is only fair to say, 

 by the Treasury — confining grants on drawing in girls' 

 schools to departments where cookery is taught, ought of 

 course to be repealed ; not so much in the interests of the 

 girls, as of the boys in mixed schools, for whom under the 

 existing regulations provision for drawing cannot well be 

 made. Drawing is not only the basis of all technical in- 

 struction, but is a subject ofvery high educational value, and 

 on both grounds its spread is much to be desired. A further 

 change which is to be hoped for is the extension of 

 the Kindergarten methods from the infant school into 

 the lower standards, and their continuation by means of 

 graduated object-lessons so as to lead up to more dis- 

 tinctive scientific and manual instruction for the more 

 advanced scholars of the school. Manual instruction of 

 some kind ought to be introduced throughout boys' 

 schools to balance needlework instruction for girls. 



By manual instruction we do not merely mean instruction 

 in woodwork (called, rather unhappily, the " use of tools " 

 in the recent Act), which is evidently only suitable for the 

 higher standards, say the sixth and seventh. We doubt if 

 it can be profitably given to children below the age of 11, 

 and even in the case of these it can of course only take 

 the form of the " hand and eye " training — not of specific 



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