TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 185 



are 2,200,000 children in England and Wales not at school, whose absence cannot 

 be traced to any legitimate cause. If Government educational help is given to 

 any portion of the population, it ought, for the good of society, to be directed 

 efficiently towards these. From this uneducated mass spring the pauperism and 

 crime which are so great a national burden. Union Inspectors find the state of 

 degraded ignorance in which children usually come to the workhouse indicative 

 of the existence of a large portion of the population untouched by existing institutions; 

 in Liverpool, out of 19,336 persons apprehended in 9 months, only 3 per cent, could 

 read and write. Industrial and Ragged Schools alone have attempted distinctly to 

 act on this class. Wherever they have been well conducted and efficiently siqjported 

 they have completely effected the object intended, but many have failed from want 

 of teaching power. The children of this class, in addition to ordinary instruction, 

 must have much moral and industrial training, and schools capable of acting on 

 them must be adapted to their wants, and of a very different character from the 

 ordinary pay schools. 



The Committee of Council on Education, in administering the Parliamentary 

 Grant, have adapted their regulations to the pay schools ; in 1859, 0222 Certifi- 

 cated Teachers for them were partially paid, receiving £80,328 ; Assistants, £6244; 

 Pupil Teachers, £252,550; thus providing a good teaching power for 9555 schools. 

 No teaching power (except a gratuity to certified masters, who very seldom are 

 qualified for such schools) and no educational help is allowed to the schools for the 

 destitute and neglected children. 



The importance of giving an efficient teaching- power to the lowest and most 

 ignorant children was acknowledged by Parliament in 1849, when an annual grant of 

 .£30,000 was made to teachers in union schools, with a much lower test than that 

 required for certificated masters. The Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, in 

 1853, into the Condition of Criminal and Destitute Juveniles, reported the " bene- 

 ficial effects produced on the most destitute classes " by the Ragged and Industrial 

 schools, and their need of help from the Educational Grant ; that aid is still re- 

 quired, to carry out efficient action on the destitute and neglected children of 

 Great Britain. 



On the Economical Faults of Military Drill in Popular Schools. 

 By Edwin Chadwick, Esq., C.B. 



On the Physiological as well as Psychological Limits to Mental Labour. 

 By Edwin Chadwick, Esq., C.B. 



The business of education still requires for its successful prosecution, scientific ob- 

 servation, and the study of the subject to be operated upon — the human mind. Even 

 to empirical observation, it should have suggested itself that the mind has conditions 

 of growth which are required to be carefully noted, to adapt the amount of in- 

 struction intended to be given to the power of receiving it. It is a psj'chological law 

 that the capacity of attention grows with the body, and that at all stages of bodily 

 growth the capacity is increased by the skilful teacher's cultivation. Very young 

 children can only receive lessons of one or two minutes' length. With increasing 

 growth and cultivation, their capacity of attention is increased to five minutes ; then 

 to ten, and at from five to seven years of age, to fifteen minutes. With growth and 

 cultivation, by the tenth year a bright voluntaiy attention may be got to a lesson 

 of twenty minutes ; at about twelve years of age to twenty-five minutes ; and from 

 thence to fifteen years of age, about half an hour : that is to say, of lessons requiring 

 mental effort, as arithmetic, not carried beyond the point at which the mind is 

 fatigued, with the average of children and with good teaching. By very skilful 

 teachers and with very interesting lessons, the attention may be sustained for longer 



!>eriods ; but it is declared by observers that prolonged attention beyond average 

 imits is generally at the expense of succeeding lessons. 



The preponderant testimony which I have received in the course of some inquiries 

 into educational subjects, is that with children of about the average age of ten, or 

 eleven, or a little more, the capacity of bright voluntary attention, which is the 

 only profitable attention, is exhausted by four varied lessons to subjects and exer- 

 cises requiring mental effort of half an hour each in the forenoon, even with inter- 



