TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 629 
For these and similar reasons the charm of intelligence is gone. Education is 
reduced toa continuous cram to the boy or girl as a sort of human telephone; and 
voluntary reading or independent inquiry will inevitably decrease instead of in- 
creasing. The capability of reading will descend in thousands of cases to the 
clumsy mastering of a few verses in the New Testament or a sensational paragraph 
in a newspaper; the power of writing will collapse till the person writing can 
only sign his or her name; and arithmetic will diminish to the power of adding a 
column of a few figures. 
The remedy for all this is to teach the elementary subjects with a vast deal 
more care, so that the pupil may advance from step to step with facility and plea- 
sure. There will then be no necessity for taxing the memory to retain what has 
been acquired, as the very words which have been read will rise spontaneously and 
pleasurably, and the intellectual enjoyment will add a charm to existence. 
5. The Education of Pauper Children, industrially and otherwise. 
By the Rev. Jas. O. Bevan, M.A., F.G.S. 
The class of children affected may be gathered from the following table :— 
Total number : : 4 : - : Q . 90,223 
Classified thus = per cent. 
Orphans : : : : 7 ; : - . 25:20 
Deserted : : : : . : : - . 20:23 
Tilegitimate . : : . - : - : . 21:90 
Legitimate . : : : : - - : . 32°67 
100-00 
There are six methods of maintenance and instruction adopted, viz. :— 
. Within the walls of the workhouse. 
Tn district schools. 
. In cottage homes. 
In industrial homes, whence children are sent to elementary schools. 
. Boarding out. 
. In training ships, &e. 
Q oP coho 
1. Is the worst plan that could be adopted. The children are massed together. 
They become familiar with pauperism, and the life of paupers, as the normal state 
of existence ; they are brought into occasional close contact with degraded inmates ; 
they become acquainted with life on a scale very different from an ordinary house- 
hold. They exchange parental love for official supervision. 
On the other hand, the cost is low, and many opportunities are presented for 
industrial training. 
2. District Schools.—Here the association with chronic and professional pauper- 
ism is avoided, and the surroundings are rendered more favourable; but the evils 
attaching to the association of large numbers of young children under unnatural 
conditions still remain. 
3. Cottage Homes.—Here the workhouse school and home are split up, and the 
parts set down in some pleasant country district. Health, general welfare, 
industrial training are well attended to. Still there are certain disadvantages. 
(a) There are still in a single dwelling, thirty to forty children, imperfectly 
classified, with a certain percentage always changing. 
(6) There is a difficulty in the way of finding efficient foster-parents. 
(c) Education is carried on in face of great disadvantages. Children all of one 
grade, poorest of the poor, stunted in intellect, devoid of emulation, deprived of 
companionship of higher grades. 
(d) Ratepayers have thus to maintain children until the age of fifteen or 
thereabouts. 
(e) Children become restless. After age of thirteen or fourteen, the life does 
