628 REPORT— 1883. 
classes face to face with knowledge otherwise out of their reach. We must raise 
our artisans above the crime-laden floor of ignorance and pauperism, and secure, 
by proper instruction for those who ‘toil and spin,’ the foremost place in the civilised 
world as artificers. There is no national economy in ignorance and pauperism. 
The statistics prove large sums expended on national schools. We must not 
stop here. Government must aid by grants those artisans who are unable to pay 
for advanced technical work, by placing them in national workshops containing all 
the requirements to teach the industries of the country after passing a certain grade 
in general education. The State should imitate the Whitworth scholarships, make 
small grants of money to the poor class of artisans in aid of general elementary 
as well as practical education, and encourage art and science teaching in every 
place, and the Queen’s prizes in elementry art and science classes must not be with- 
drawn. The State to establish and supervise evening classes in connection with 
colleges, mechanics’ institutions, and kindred places, for teaching those who are 
beyond the ordinary age of school life technology and cognate subjects. 
4. The True Reason why so many Children try to avoid School Attendance. 
By the Rey. Canon Hume. 
There has been a good deal of discussion of late respecting the causes of non- 
attendance at school by a large number of the children of the poor. Those most 
frequently assigned have been two in number, which may be called, (1) the bodily 
weakness of the young, arising from deficient food or clothing, and from natural 
delicacy of constitution; (2) the over-exercise of the brain and nervous system 
from mental labour continued during many hours, to which home lessons are added, 
and an insufficiency of healthy exercise and agreeable relaxation. 
There is no doubt that both these causes exist, and yet it appears to me that 
they are very unimportant factors in the production of the result which is admitted. 
The author's decided opinion, based upon a large experience, is that education is 
not now made at all so interesting as it was before the Government undertook the 
patronage of it. The fixing of rewards for the three subjects of reading, writing, 
and arithmetic has led to an unhealthy pressure which has really retarded progress 
and disgusted the learners. 
For example, except in a few of our best schools, there is a constant effort to 
teach reading, spelling being scarcely at all known, or rather almost utterly un- 
known; and instead of each pupil analysing and discovering every word for him- 
self, we find the two horrible systems of ‘look and go on,’ and some intelligent 
boy or girl shouting out the difficult word. But the intellectual understanding of 
the piece read is, in a large majority of cases, wholly neglected ; so that at the best 
all that is learned is a bundle of words, and at the worst a blundering and stumbling 
guess at these words. In numerous instances the illustrative wood engraving could 
not be explained, and the instances in which the story or lesson could be in- 
telligibly explained amount to a very small percentage. From forty to fifty years 
ago it was not unusual for two-thirds of the class to be able to repeat a piece from 
memory, especially if it were in poetry, the judgment having been made subservient 
to the memory throughout. But now memory is the only faculty appealed to, and 
that is badly treated, so that the matter of school lessons is forgotten, not in a few 
years, but in a few months. 
Arithmetic is still worse taught. There are thousands of children in England 
who have been engaged in Addition in Standard I. during a year, and yet who 
cannot add four figures, or even three, correctly. The simple fact is that they 
have practised attempting to add daily, but the subject has never been taught to 
them, or tested for them, and when they reach subtraction they try to add the two 
lines together, or take the smaller figure from the greater whether it be above or 
below. 
In Church of England schools the Catechism is still worse taught, but on this 
subject the author does not propose to dwell. He has shown elsewhere that to a 
learner it is one of the most difficult books in the English language, and it is 
certainly the worst taught. 
