September 28, 191 ij 



NATURE 



429 



to implant in them a certain knowledge, and with it that 

 love of knowledge without which education, so soon as it 

 ceases to be compulsory, is only too apt to become a 

 negligible factor in the citizen's life. It follows, too, that 

 where the interest of the State is not wholly connected 

 with the interest of the parent, or the class, or the Church, 

 some degree of regard for the State will ultimately prove 

 to be a not unjust condition of receiving public money. 

 Vet, again, a sense of the importance attaching to the 

 nal and professional qualities of the teacher leads 

 almost necessarily to an insistence upon official registra- 

 tion as a condition of undertaking educational work, upon 

 the training and testing of teachers by all such means as 

 are suitable to prepare them for their responsible duties, 

 and upon pension 'schemes for facilitating the retirement 

 of teachers when they have lost or are losing their vigour 

 and have earned a period of repose. For education is a 

 science ; it is exacting, as all sciences are ; and while the 

 educational profession needs to be made as attractive as 

 possible, especially in days when so many other pro- 

 fessions enter into competition with it, and while it loses 

 attractiveness if teachers, both men and women, are com- 

 pelled to retire from it at too early an age, yet it is 

 obviously wrong to sacrifice the many to the individual 

 or the scholars to the teacher by obliging a schoolmaster 

 or mistress to continue in office when he or she is no 

 longer able to perform the duties of the scholastic calling 

 with full efficiency. 



More than forty years have elapsed since the passing of 

 the Education Act of 1870. That Act was a signal legis- 

 lative achievement ; it still reflects lustre on the names of 

 Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster. In the intervening years 

 it has been subjected to severe controversy, not so much 

 on educational as on ecclesiastical grounds. It has under- 

 gone some grave modifications at various times, especially 

 in 1002. But, after all, the main principles embodied in 

 til-* Act of 1S70, viz. that education is a national concern, 

 that the children are the greatest asset of a State, and 

 that it is the interest no less than the duty of the State to 

 provide, or to see that provision is made, for the educa- 

 tion of all children in elementary or other schools, have 

 not been, and in all probability will not be, seriously 

 challenged. 



The Act of 1S70 has proved to be a great moral reform. 

 It lilted the nation as a whole to a new level of self-respect. 

 For the child who has acquired even such elementary 

 learning as is popularly symbolised by the " Three R's " 

 is a higher being than the child who cannot read or write. 

 The elementary-school teacher, not in denominational 

 schools alone, has been a missionary of civilisation, and, I 

 think I may say, of Christianity, in many a dark region 

 of many a populous city. I have been told that to the 

 influence of the Board Schools in East London was trace- 

 able a marked advance among children in kindness to the 

 lower animals. Any disparagement or depreciation of the 

 Education Act of 1870 is little less than treason to the 

 moral interests of the people at large. 



But it is permissible to inquire what fresh light has been 

 shed by the experience of forty years upon the established 

 system of elementary education in England. 



Perhaps the two dangers most evident at the present 

 time are the tendency of the Board of Education towards 

 bureaucratic control over all the schools coming under its 

 jurisdiction, and the habit of imposing upon the local 

 education authorities, whether by Act of Parliament or 

 by ordinance of the Board of Education, a number of new 

 duties without ensuring any corresponding increase of the 

 public funds which are placed at their service. 



It is idle, and it would probably be foolish, to resist the 

 concentration of educational authority in the Board of 

 Education. There are signs that the Board will before 

 long exercise a direct influence even upon t It • ■ great public 

 schools. But who or what the Board of Education is re- 

 mains somewhat of a mystery. It is too apt to mean a 

 subordinate individual acting in the name, but without the 

 knowledge, of his superiors. 



The Board may have stereotyped elementary education 

 overmuch ; it may have laid down too rigid rules or have 

 administered its own rules with too much rigidity ; it may 

 have set an excessive store by results which could be easily 

 tested by examination, forgetting that the best and most 



lasting results of the teacher's influence are just such as 

 cannot be easily weighed in the examiner's balances. But 

 there can be no doubt that the control of the Board has 

 exercised a wholesome influence upon the less satisfactory 

 schools. It assures at least a minimum of efficiency. But 

 the maximum of efficiency lies beyond the power of the 

 Board. It depends upon the close, intimate, sympathetic, 

 personal relation of the teacher to his or her pupils. 



Nor, again, is there any doubt of the advantage arising 

 from the gradual pressure of one and the same education 

 authority, not only upon all schools of the same type, but 

 upon schools of different types in the educational field. It 

 is well that elementary schools should within certain limits 

 exhibit something like uniformity of system ; it is well, 

 too, that the ladder by which students rise or may hope 

 to rise from the lowest to the highest rungs of educational 

 competency should be so set up as to make the process of 

 climbing them no more difficult than it must needs be. 

 But freedom, spontaneity, individualism, have been the rule 

 in all departments of English life. No power can be more 

 chilling in its effect upon intellectual enthusiasm than the 

 dead hand of a code. Individualism with all its faults is 

 better suited than the rigidity of the French or the 

 formality of the German educational system to the 

 hereditary genius of the English people. It is necessary, 

 therefore, that the control of the Board of Education, 

 while it is definite, should be as elastic as possible. 



Again, the State has laid upon the local education 

 authority the duty of supplying the necessary accommoda- 

 tion in elementary schools, except so far as it is supplied 

 in non-provided or denominational schools through the 

 agency of voluntary subscriptions. But it has scarcely 

 taken account of the difficulties lying in the way of an 

 education authority which can issue no precept of its 

 own. Every education committee in England to-day is 

 harassed by the obligation of persuading a body so hard- 

 hearted as a city council, which is naturally inclined to 

 look upon economy with more favour than upon education. 

 The antagonism between the schools and the rates remains 

 constant. Happy indeed is the education committee in a 

 city where the council rises above the temptation of regard- 

 ing education as an extravagance or a luxury. 



The provision of free meals for hungry children is an 

 admirable reform. For if children under the law must go 

 to school, they cannot go with any advantage if they are 

 hungry. But free meals cost money ; and the money spent 

 upon the meals may easily be deducted from the total sum 

 which is spent, or ought to be sepent, upon education. 



Not less admirable a reform is the physical inspection of 

 children in elementary schools. Educational as well as 

 medical science has learnt that hygiene is a powerful factor 

 in the success of schools. But it is necessary to pay for 

 a doctor's time and a doctor's skill; and if the physical 

 welfare of the children is improved by medical attention, it 

 is possible that their mental welfare may be impaired for 

 lack of money. 



It must be added that, in proportion as Education Com- 

 mittees undertake and prosecute the benevolent work of 

 caring for the crippled and afflicted children of the country, 

 their just demands upon the public purse will necessarily 

 become more pressing. 



Upon the whole I am not disposed to criticise the educa- 

 tion which is given in the different standards of elementarv 

 schools. It is not, I think, ill adapted to the twofold 

 object of preparing the children for their normal duties in 

 after-life, and of offering to especially intelligent children 

 the chance of rising to a higher position than that in 

 which they have been brought up. But no teaching, how- 

 ever reasonable in itself, can be properly imparted wher° 

 the classes of children are too large. If I have learnt any 

 lesson by my educational experience, it is that difficult 

 cases — and these are the cases which try the teacher'- 

 skill — need a great deal of individual time and thought. I 

 used to feel, when I was a schoolmaster, that there were 

 not more than two or three of my oupils whom I did not 

 think I could have helped and possibly saved, had it been 

 in my power to spend sufficient thought and time upon 

 them. It is overcrowding which is the difficulty in schools 

 as well as in homes; and I do not believe that any school- 

 master or schoolmistress can do full justice to a class of 

 more than twentv or at the most twenty-five small children. 



NO. 2l87, VOL. 87] 



