National education in its social conditions and aspects, and public elementary school education / James H. Rigg.

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Preface

WTIONAL education is a much wider and deeper matter than it is generally taken to be. One object of the following chapters is to indicate how much wider and deeper it is.

Foreign systems of popular education are generally misconceived in this country. I have endeavoured in the following pages to set forth truly the character and the leading principles of the great typical systems of school education, European and American.'"

What are spoken of as abstract principles are best discussed under the light of concrete experience and fact. The experience of Europe and America, in connection with various systems of school education, when truly ascertained and understood, affords a

* I had intended to sketch the Canadian system, but found that the limits of the volume would not allow this. Here I may remark that it* includes two classes of schools, the Protestant common schools, for all denominations, and a separate provision for Roman Catholic schools, under special management. Some recent articles in the London Newspaper Press, in which it has been stated that in Canada the problem of common schools for all denominations has been solved, ignore the fact that there is in Canada this special and separate provision for Roman Catholics.

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luminous commentary on the meaning and working of such principles as enter into the educational questions and controversies of this country at the present time. This, I hope, is made to appear in the course of the volume which I now offer to the consideration of the friends of national education.

That school provision alone, or even when supplemented by legal conrpulsion, so far as this can be applied, can never avail, apart from measures of social reform, to secure the true education of the people of England, is one of the conclusions which I have sought to demonstrate in this volume.

At the same time I have endeavoured to indicate on what principles it is possible approximately to solve the question of popular school education for England for the present transitional period, and on what principles the question must be ultimately and permanently solved.

There is no definite school of propagandism in regard to the educational controversy in England from which I do not materially differ, and none with which I do not more or less agree, although I differ more from the Birmingham school than any other, and can only wonder how some of the men who have connected themselves with that school can have departed so far from the sound principles, on the subject of National Education, taught by one whose writings they might have been expected highly to appreciate ; I mean that great economist, the late John Stuart Mill.

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Some of my readers will recognise here and there in the following pages passages which they have met with before. The subject of National Education, in the highest and most comprehensive sense, has been the study of my life, and during the last fifteen years I have often written about it in reviews, and have, in the course of my duty as Principal of a Training College, delivered a number of inaugural addresses in relation to different aspects of the great question. The chapter on “ Primary Education in Ireland” was originally published, almost as it stands in this volume, as an article in the London Quarterly Review* Some pages, also, in the second chapter have been published in a former volume which dealt partly with social subjects. The following chapters, however, not only, as I hope it will be admitted, form a real whole, but, for the most part, consist of fresh matter, now newly written.

A student and teacher through all my youth and in my earlier manhood ; afterwards, during more than twenty years of very extensive and various intercourse with the middle and lower classes of the people, in most parts of England, and among mining manufacturing, and agricultural populations, as well as in large middle-class towns, continually intent upon the study of social and educational facts and needs ; now, for five years past, having held the position of Principal in one of the largest Training Colleges in the Kingdom, and, for nearly three years,

January, 1872.

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having been a member of the London School Board, I venture to ask for what is set forth in the following pages the candid attention of those who desire to see England the home of an educated, provident, and self-respecting Christian people.

JAMES H. RIGG.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. EDUCATION AND NATIONAL EDUCATION 1

II. EDUCATION AND PROPERTY 42

Chapter I. Education And National Education

IT is common to speak of national education, as if all that was or could be meant was a system of schools, or at most of schools and colleges, for the people. The schools of the nation, it is never doubted, will educate the nation. Education itself is truly understood— —at least by most who have any thought about the matter — to mean instruction and training, to include the conveyance of knowledge, and the discipline and development of character. And all the world talks, nearly all public sjDeakers speak, public journalists — with here and there, or now and then, a rare exception — write, as if all that is needed adequately to furnish the mind, and rightly to mould the character, of the generations which are coming forward, would be secured and determined by a proper and effective school education, made compulsory and universal.

My object in this chapter will be to show how serious a mistake is involved in this expectation — a mistake, indeed, fatal, as I conceive, to any prospect of attaining to a true solution of the all-important problem which presses for solution. Many years of study and observation, of inquiry and discussion, have

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settled and sealed the conviction in my mind that the nation never will or can he educated, as a whole, until it is understood that schools can only furnish a part, perhaps hardly the most important part, of the education of the people. A nation may have a system of schools as complete as can be organized, and yet be very imperfectly educated. On the other hand, a nation might have a very imperfect system of schools, or no system of schools at all — might have none but purely voluntary schools, or none but voluntary and parochial or municipal schools, without anything like a State system, and yet might be much better educated, might be a people of better knowledge and of better character, than the people of another country where the system of schools was as complete and as theoretically perfect as could well be organized. At the same time it is, of course, true and beyond doubt that no nation can be thoroughly educated — can be as well educated as it ought to be — unless the national school education be thorough, and adequate to the national demands and capacities.

An educated man is a man who has the power and habit of forethought and of self-control, and has also knowledge and mental discipline adequate to his position and opportunities in life. So an educated nation is one which, taken collectively, may be said to have the power and habit of forethought and of self-control, and knowledge and mental discipline adequate to its position and opportunities. Class by class this character should be predicable of all the people. National education in the wide, adequate, true sense, which we are now thinking of, is the course of discipline, or the combination of influences, by means of which the whole nation, throughout its various

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classes, is brought under the control of good habits, habits of moral reflection, of providence, of self-restraint, and is furnished with the requisite knowledge and mental discipline to enable it to discharge efficiently all the duties, and to embrace the fair opportunities, which belong to its position. When the scope of national education is thus indicated, a little reflection will serve to show that school education cannot do more than furnish a fractional part of the total sum of a thorough and effective national education.

National education, thus regarded, will be seen to include — besides the general, pervasive, influence of religion — the influences of home and family, of street, school, work-place, — be this a shop, or office, or factory, or pit, or simple chamber, — of each person’s business, craft, or profession, of society, of civil and political duties and ideas, of the public press, including books and journals, especially the cheapest and most widely circulated of these, and finally of all life’s prizes to each man, as these successively come into view, that is, in other words, of the various motives, incentives, and opportunities which stir up desire and suggest or determine action. All these things, and such things as these, go to elicit, to mould, to form and fix character. The process begins with the first opening of life, and continues through all life’s stages, until the character has been determined in its final maturity. In the sum-total of this human education the schooling of the child is but one among many important elements.

The influences of home and family are yet more important than those of schools ; they precede, surround, and interpenetrate all the ideas and impressions which

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make up the sum of the school education. Unless the school discipline is searching and thorough, uninterrupted and long continued, it is likely to avail little indeed against the injurious influences of an ignorant and immoral home. It is probably safe to say that half of the children who have gone to the public elementary schools of England have been but little better morally and humanly, still less intellectually, for the irregular, often little more than nominal, attendance at school, — the school itself too commonly a very inferior school,- — which has constituted their title to be counted among the number of English school children. And, whatever be the merit and efficiency of the school teaching and training, whatever, also, the regularity of attendance (under, let us suppose, an effective compulsory law), it is certain that adverse home influences will, to a lamentable and most discouraging extent, counteract the good effects of school attendance. Decent and virtuous homes are, accordingly, a necessary preliminary condition to a good and effective national education. The children of a people can never be well educated, if their parents live under family conditions incompatible with self-respect or with moral purity.

The education of the streets, again, has, in this country, up to the present time, been commonly such as largely to counteract the best school influences. If the nation is to be educated, the streets must be cleared of ignorant and neglected children ; for the sake not only of those children themselves, but of the children of better families, who will else learn vice and lawlessness in the streets.

The homes, the streets, and the schools themselves may be said not only to furnish the distinct lessons of early life to children, but the educational atmosphere in which they live. If this atmosphere has been wholesome and kindly, pure and genial, and if the actual instruction and the systematic training given in the school has been good and sufficient, the process of national education may be said to have been successfully carried forward up to the close of the school age. But national education must by no means stop here, if it is not to be a failure. German school education has, in some of the States at least, been good for more than one generation, good, continuous, and thorough ; nevertheless, as respects many of the qualities and habits most necessary to individual success and national advancement, the Germans not only have been, but are yet, greatly inferior to the English, whose school education has been so grievously wanting, and still more to the people of the United States, whose school education, as a whole, is, as I shall presently show, less systematic and thorough than even that of England. The successes of German arms, a branch of “art” and service in which all classes of the nation have been equally and universally educated, as diligently as ever they were taught in their Real-schulen or their Gymnasia, must not mislead our judgment in regard to this point. Notwithstanding their superior education, and notwithstanding their superior providence and thrift, — qualities which the German people owe, as we shall soon see, to another sort of education than that which they obtain at school, — German workmen, taken as a whole class, are inferior to English workmen ; and German tradesmen, and men of business generally, are inferior in promptitude, enterprise, and business energy, to the English. This is owing in part to the

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absurd restrictions and limitations under which the various handicrafts and other occupations of the Germans have been carried on for ages, and are still to a considerable extent carried on, notwithstanding recent reforms. Liberty is the spring of life. In England the crafts and trades have long had perfect legal liberty ; in Germany the reverse has been the case. Over-governing in all spheres and in all directions has been the vice of German governments. On this point, the Rev. Mark Pattison, in his report to our Education Commission on German Popular Education, both speaks himself very suggestively and quotes some striking remarks from Mr. Horace Mann’s “ Educational Tour.” “ When the children,” says Mr. Mann, “ come out from the school, they have little use either for the faculties that have been developed, or for the knowledge that has been acquired. Their resources are not brought into demand ; their powers are not roused and strengthened by exertion. Our common phrases, ‘the active duties of life,’ ‘ the responsibilities of citizenship,’ ‘ the career of action,’ ‘ the obligations to posterity,’ would be strange-sounding words in a Prussian’s ear. Government steps in to take care of the subject almost as much as the subject takes care of his cattle. The subject has no officers to choose ; no inquiry into the character of candidates to make ; no vote to give,” &c. Mr. Pattison says, “ The influence of the elementary school on national character and national civilisation appears to have been estimated too highly, and power ascribed to it which it does not possess. It is not till after fourteen, till he has come into contact with the social order as it is arranged for him, that the German youth acquires that torpor which is so much complained of, and that which was docility in the child, develops into stupidity, submissiveness, and a mechanical routine existence. As soon as he leaves school, he ceases to learn or to have any motive for doing so. No one around him thinks of acquiring information except in his own pursuit. He is content to pursue with a sort of military precision the track of his profession, and its adherent information. He is the creature of forms, and walks leisurely by rule.”*'

The value of the school education is, that it immediately prepares for the active duties of life in youth and manhood. But if it closes the preparatory education of the child, it lies only on the threshold of the education of the youth and rising man. Whether the school education shall prove to be worth much or little, depends as much on what follows in life’s actual work as on what precedes and accompanies in home influences. The passages I have just quoted as to German education will have furnished an illustration of this truth. In the after education which develops the seeds of knowledge and the germs of character which the school has planted or fostered, England is, for all classes of her people, except the lowest, peculiarly rich. Except her own colonies and the United States, there is no country in the world to compare in this respect with our own. From the bare, low ground, indeed, on which the peasant stands to the lowest rung of the ladder of advancement is a height which exceedingly few peasants have strength or skill to climb. But for all who are placed already by birth and early advantages above that interval, even though it be but on the lowest

* Reports of Assistant Commissioners, &c., 1861, vol. iv. pp. 242-3.

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rung itself, the way of ascent is more than possible ; to industry and character it is freely open, and is seldom very difficult. At every step of advance, too, the collateral aids and accessories in the work of individual education, the education of the man and of the citizen, multiply and become more important, calling into play all the knowledge and all the faculty which each possesses. The education of the school introduces the scholar immediately to the further discipline and instruction of the shop, or factory, or office, or farm, or mine, — of the college or the studio ; — meanwhile the whole life of the community, the daily and weekly press, parish questions, municipal controversies, general politics — the sessions, the assizes, the great courts of law, the elections, the business of Parliament — all that belongs to public affairs, to general trade, to the government of the country, whether imperial, or provincial, or local — all that belongs to the multitudinous energies and progress of the nation, — is contributing to the education of the rising English citizen.

Public business furnishes a very important part of the education of the Englishman, and has had much to do with the development of the national character ; in the future it is not unlikely that its influence may yet be more important than in the past. It has been especially important in its effect upon the character of the middle and higher classes of British citizens. In strong contrast to Germany, perhaps still more to France, a genuine local self-government has schooled the Briton in those elementary lessons of political temper and self-control, of political instinct and principle, which have made it possible to govern our empire stably by the genuine power of public

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opinion. Trial by jury may not have deserved, as an institution, all the eulogies which have been lavished upon it ; but, at any rate, our institutions of justice have furnished an excellent training ^for our people in regard to public law and mutual civil responsibility. The county magistracy have not seldom betrayed ignorance, prejudice, and incapacity, and more or less, accordingly, have at times brought ‘‘justices’ justice ” into disrepute. Nevertheless, the institution of such a magistracy, maintained from age to age, has afforded most valuable instruction to country gentlemen in regard to the knowledge, the duties, and the responsibilities proper to their station, and has contributed not a little to compel their culture and advancement in the ideas belonging to their generation, and' to keep them, as to social and political questions, from lagging too far behind the main current of the age. The J ustices Shallow of the present age are doubtless a far superior class at all events to their prototypes of the Elizabethan period. Above all, the free and energetic parliamentary life of the nation, pervading all classes, penetrating to the very depths of society, has provided a most wholesome occupation for the energies of Englishmen. One great, prime reason of the vice and profligacy, the effeminate luxury and shameless sensual excesses, which, at all periods of settled commercial advancement and growing national wealth, of customary peace and of material prosperity, have disgraced the wealthy and fashionable society of France, whether under monarchy or empire, has been the want in that country of the true, civil self-government, and of the genuine political power and life which belong to the British nation.

France cannot but become wealthy in times of internal peace and general order — her incomparable natural riches and resources, and the many gifts of her spirited and ingenious people, ensure this. The climate of France, also, and the natural temperament of the people, overflowing with vivacity and buoyancy, incline to every kind of pleasure, and render various entertainment and play of life, in some sort or other, a necessity. What are such a people to take to, when they are debarred from self-government and from true political life ? Municipal and general government and politics are at once the pastime and the business of Englishmen. Parliament is the heart and centre of English society, alike in town and country, in London and throughout all the provinces, in fashionable life, and in county circles, and in borough coteries and parties. Political life, speaking broadly, may be said to absorb the best energies of the most able and energetic Englishmen ; it fills their thoughts, occupies their time, engages their keenest interest, lays a heavy tax on their strength and spirits, often on their health. If our men of wealth and leisure, of high mettle and exuberant spirits, were not able to occupy themselves with political life, into what channels would they pour their overflowing energies, and their strength and zest of passion and of will ? It is no wonder that Frenchmen of wealth, and leisure, and high blood, are often vicious. What career of active engagement, suited to their position, is open to them ? It is evident enough how much the political liberty and life of our own land has to do with the indisputably manlier and nobler character of our Engli sh gentlemen of high degree, as compared with the aristocracy either of France or of any other country. England’s civil life and political liberty have helped to make her men of high rank manly and capable, often truly noble and virtuous. Here, then, we have one of the most potent and beneficial elements of our national education.

From the thought of our national institutions, civil and political, of what belongs to the constitution and government of the country, including subordinate as well as imperial spheres of government, the transition is easy to the public press in all its branches, by means of which the civil and political education of the people is so largely aided, perhaps I should say, is mainly carried on. So far as the mere acquisition of knowledge is concerned, the press is the immediate supplement of the school. Without a large supply of cheap and attractive publications, and especially a cheap newspaper press, the instruction given in the elementary school would soon be forgotten, would fade quite out of the mind, in the case of the vast majority of scholars. Whereas, with good penny or halfpenny papers, and cheap and taking little books, a very defective school education may yet furnish an available introduction to a large and effective selfeducation. Who can doubt that the abolition of the taxes on knowledge in this country did more for the education of the people than any measure which had previously been enacted by Parliament ? It is impossible to over-estimate the educational value of the “penny daily” in one direction, and of such illustrated penny papers as the British Workman in another. One great reason, doubtless, why in the United States, despite the very small tincture of schooling which the great majority of the people have ever acquired, and the generally defective organization of the schools, the mass of the people have grown up

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reading and intelligent, smart and well informed, at least in regard to their own country, has been the universal diffusion for a great many years past of a very cheap newspaper literature. The halfpenny newspaper has been the schoolmaster of the American people. The halfpenny newspapers of Paris have helped not a little to make the Parisians what they are. The influence of a cheap press is prodigious, and may be as potent for evil as for good. But, in any case, it is a great educational force and agency. A truly national and noble, and at the same time a thoroughly free and practical, newspaper press for Germany — a press animated and sustained not only by the yearning for a grand national unity, but by all the instincts of true liberty, both civil and political, both imperial and local, — unfolding from the root and principle of personal freedom, and civil and political individuality, for each man, — would furnish, in great part, the effective educational supplement, which is so much needed, to the powerful and pervasive school system of Germany. But such a press can itself only grow out of the realities of national life ; as yet national life in Germany is not free. In our own country the cheap press has become, and is becoming more and more, the chief elementary educator of the people, carrying on to great and permanent results the education begun in the school. We have reason to be deeply thankful that, on the whole, it is so good, so able and Christian, as it is. Those who know the Paris press will feel the truth of this. Nor will Englishmen feel any abatement of their thankfulness when they compare it with the American press. For dignity, propriety, purity, for thoroughness of knowledge, genuine power and ability, and for force

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and finish of style, happily combined, no one will pretend that the American press is to be compared with that of Great Britain.

I have now but one more educational element in our national life on which I wish particularly to touch. The home, the street, the school, the craft or business or profession, the civil and political institutions of the country, the public press, especially the cheap newspaper, these are the means of education for the people which we have thus far passed in rapid review. There is one great section, however, of educational forces, of which as yet nothing has been said in detail,- — I refer to the motives and incentives to providence and thrift which are likely to operate upon the poorest and lowliest of the people. It is evident that a large part of our English population stands in this respect greatly in need of education. The need in this respect is represented and summed up in one word — English pauperism.

English pauperism is a problem and a portent which seldom makes a due impression on an Englishman. It is a customary evil, and its monstrous character and dimensions are so familiar to us that they seldom strike us as monstrous. We take it as an unfortunate but seemingly inalienable part of our grand national inheritance, tarnishing in some degree its splendour, and, like a considerable charge on a vast hereditary property, diminishing to a certain extent the net value of our national estate ; but it scarcely disturbs our self-complacency more than the national debt, of which we so easily pay the interest, and which appears to many, when regarded from a proper point of view, to be only one form and phase of our national wealth. There are those, indeed, who seem

H to discover in our Poor Law system nothing but matter for self-congratulation. The pauperism they appear to regard as the inevitable concomitant of national and individual opulence, and of general freedom and progress ; the poor-rate provision as the grand and noble benevolence of a Christian people. It does not seem to enter their minds that our widespread pauperism is fed from springs and tributaries which rise far back among the institutions of our country, and which, to a large extent, might be cut off or absorbed ; and that the evil cannot be necessarily involved in national life and progress, because, in the character and extent in which it prevails in this country, it is absolutely a unique fact, because there is nothing comparable to it in the world besides. If, indeed, it were but the counterpart and concomitant of our vast material progress, we should have to come to the conclusion, that we must expect it to increase instead of diminishing in the future, which would indeed be a melancholy conclusion.

Unless, however, there be some possibility of applying a radically remedial course of treatment to this vast and complex evil, this ulcer in the body politic of our grand British empire, there can be no prospect but that of a continual increase of the evil. It is certain, also, that up to this time our legislation has never even attempted to grapple with the problem, as a whole, and one which was to be resolved in the sense of bringing pauperism, as the ordinary and hereditary condition of a large class of our population, to an end. Some valuable measures tending to the mitigation, and even in some degree to the diminution of pauperism, have been passed into law. The “ Union Chargeability Act ” was one of these. All

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sanitary measures, moreover, such as that which was passed last year, tend in the same direction. These must have some value in preventing the increase and aggravation of pauperism. But what is needed is an investigation, searching and thorough, into the origin and the aggravating causes, as these have risen into operation from age to age, of this masterevil of our land, and a scheme of measures designed gradually to absorb the morbid and morbific accumulation of pauperism which has come down to us in the present generation, to reverse the pauper tendencies which have become hereditary instincts among a large proportion of the population, and to provide for the permanent elevation into a different position and character of the lowest classes of our countrymen. Such an investigation as I have now spoken of has never been undertaken by Parliament ; nor has any scheme of legislation for the cure of pauperism been brought forward by any government. No offer has been made to go to the root of the mischief. We go on, at a charge of millions a year for mere poor-rates, not to speak of our enormous expenditure for criminal prosecution and prison discipline and maintenance, — which is largely caused by our pauperism, — merely providing reservoirs for the deep and wide overflow, and contrivances to regulate its influx or outflow, but doing little or nothing to check it at its fountain and absorb it in its course. What makes matters worse, the. very pro vision which we make at present for the wTants of our pauper population tends to aggravate that desperate recklessness from which, in part, our pauperism springs.*