317 
of Edinburgh, Session 1870 - 71 . 
rather for emancipation from clerical management. The Govern- 
ment depends much on the moral influence of the clergy in pro- 
moting regular school attendance among the people, and generally 
in playing a conciliatory part in relation both to the school board 
and the master. In many cases the clergy appear to perform 
these offices in a most Christian and self-denying spirit. But, on 
the oth^r hand, they appear frequently to fall into a state of apathy 
and indifference about the schools. Their labours, as school 
inspectors, are an unremunerated addition to their proper functions, 
and are such as often, individually, they have no taste for. 
The present system is recommended by its cheapness, as under 
it school inspection costs nothing to the Government. But, on the 
whole, it can hardly be called successful, and it is probably doomed 
to alteration. It is not only the clergy themselves, who in many 
cases exhibit a want of interest in the schools, but the local com- 
munities also have their sympathies chilled, in the first place, by 
an over predominance of the clergy in school management, and, 
secondly, by the excessive interference of bureaucratic action from 
above. The nature of this bureaucratic action has now to be 
described. 
The kingdom of Prussia is divided into provinces, each province 
into departments, each department into circles or districts, each 
circle into parishes or communes. For the whole kingdom, the 
central educational authority is, of course, the minister of public 
worship, and medical and educational affairs. Beneath him there 
is a gradually descending scale of officers, for the superintendence 
of instruction on the system that a civil authority is always asso- 
ciated with clerical or scholastic affairs. Thus for the province, 
the president of the province is associated with a provincial school 
council. For the department, the prefect of the department is 
associated with a departmental school councillor. For the circle 
or district, the landrath, or district councillor, is associated with 
the superintendent, who is an ecclesiastic of about the same 
dignity as an archdeacon in England, and who supervises the 
inspection of schools in from twenty to forty parishes. In the 
parish there is the school board associated with the local clergy- 
man, who, as we have seen, is ex officio school inspector and school 
manager. 
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