Compulsory Attendance. 429 to consider whether school fees in elementary schools shall be given up. The proposal is inexpedient. It involves the necessity of paying school fees for children attending denominational schools, and will create a thousand perplexing and irritating difficulties, which may destroy all hope of educational reform. It would render necessary such an increase both in the rates and the annual parliamentary grants, that the country would shrink on economical grounds from the whole scheme. Let school committees determine, according to the varying circumstances of every district, what fees shall be paid, and under what conditions free orders' shall be given. There is no insuperable difficulty in the way of determining what families should receive parochial relief to save their children from starvation; there would be no insuperable difficulty in the way of determining what families should receive relief of another kind to save their children from ignorance. No doubt many persons perfectly able to pay school fees would obtain 'free orders;' no principle of discrimination could be applied with infallible accuracy; but practically, no serious injustice need be inflicted on the deserving poor, and no encouragement given to the reckless and improvident. We believe that the Education Societies of Manchester and Birmingham have carried out the principle for which we contend with a very fair amount of success. But all other difficulties are insignificant compared with the great difficulty of inducing parents to send their children to school. Already in many districts there is a large amount of school accommodation which is not occupied; and there are very many efficient masters and mistresses who could take twice as many scholars as are actually under their care. In a series of Acts, extending over more than a quarter of a century, Parliament has recognised the obligation of the State to protect and enforce the right of a child to receive elementary instruction. Last session the principle of the Factory Acts was extended to many trades which had been previously untouched. Mr. Fawcett is resolved that it shall be extended still further, so as to protect the intellectual rights of children engaged in agricultural labour; and although the squires who have always boasted that they were the true friends of the poor, on the ground that they carried the Factory Acts against the heartless cruelty of the manufacturers, are strenuously opposing the attempt to effect for the rural districts what they glory in having effected for the great towns, the attempt will be successful. But what shadow of reason can be shown for compelling children who are at work to go to school, and leaving children who are not at work altogether uncared for? The workshop is itself a kind of school; it not only teaches a child how to earn its bread; it disciplines him to habits of order, obedience, and industry. Children who are at work are actually receiving an education, though an imperfect one; children who are in the streets are receiving no education at all, except in vice and crime. There are economical arguments, which at first sight have considerable force, against diminishing the supply of juvenile labour, by compelling all children employed in the principal manufactories of the country to spend three hours a day at school on five days in the week, and requiring that these hours should be between eight o'clock in the morning, and six in the evening-the best working hours in the day; to take the children away from the mill or the workshop altogether on every alternate day appears equally perilous. With the cheap labour at the command of continental manufacturers, it appears extremely inexpedient to increase the cost of labour in England. The manufacturers protest that the first thing is to feed the country, and that while we are so eager to get the people taught, we appear to be perfectly indifferent to the possibility of their being starved. They protest, too, that the interference of inspectors, the perplexing and annoying regulations which the Factory Acts oblige them to observe-regulations almost as hard to master as a new language or a new science-must impede the improvement of manufacturing processes, and place them at a serious disadvantage in competing with foreign manufacturers. To allege that all these difficulties are the suggestions of the mere selfishness of the masters is a slander; to allege that they are the proofs of stupidity is an impertinence. Every one who has any practical knowledge of some of the trades affected by recent Acts is aware that there are grave economical objections to them, objections to which the only immediate and effective reply is, that if our manufacturing supremacy can be maintained only at the cost of permitting one generation of our people after another to grow up in a state of semi-barbarism, our manufacturing supremacy must be sacrificed. But to a law compelling children who are not at work to attend school, none of these economical objections apply. There is another class of objections to our recent legislation. The wages of children are an important part of the income of innumerable families. To put the children on half-time, in order to secure their education, may, in very many cases, make all the difference between independence and pauperism; for Compulsory Attendance. 431 of course the manufacturer cannot afford to pay a whole week's wages for half a week's work. There is a typical widow, with a large family, always appealed to in discussions on compulsory education. She has one boy nearly twelve, whose earnings pay the baker, and another just ten, who earns half-a-crown a week, which exactly covers the rent. We are asked whether we can be cruel enough to throw her on the parish, by compelling the children to go to school. We are told that the habits of filial piety in which the boys are being trained are of greater value than reading, writing, and arithmetic. We are warned that, in our eagerness for mere intellectual culture, we are likely to ruin the noble spirit of independence which still survives among the English poor. But all this, though it requires an answer from the advocates of what is called 'indirect compulsion' compulsion applied to children who are at work-is simply without meaning, when urged against a general compulsory law. The poor widow's two children have nearly half their wages struck off by the Acts already in existence; her case may be a very hard one, but Parliament and the nation have determined that we must risk inflicting such evils as these on individuals for the sake of the general good. What we are contending for is, that the boys who are playing leap-frog or pitch-and-toss in the next street all day long, and earning nothing, should be put on 'half-time' too. Who would be hurt by this? Compulsion is said to be 'un-English;' why it should be 'un-English' to enforce attendance at school upon children who are not at work-though it is perfectly 'English' to interfere with the internal arrangements of mills and workshops, and to diminish the small income of poor parents, by enforcing attendance at school upon children who are at work-quite passes our comprehension. Every extension of the principle of our factory legislation renders a direct and general compulsory law more urgent and imperative. Parents who know that their children will be obliged to go to school when they begin to earn wages, think it unnecessary to send them to school before; and hence in factory districts there are fewer children receiving instruction under eight years of age than in other parts of the country. If business happens to be dull, and the child cannot get work as soon as he reaches the legal age, there is a considerable probability that he will not see the inside of a day-school before he is nine. There is also very little doubt that the inconveniencies incident to having half-time' workers-inconveniencies which in some trades are alleged to be almost insuperable-will lead to the dismissal from workshops of very many of the children under thirteen who are now employed. In some parts of the country the effect of recent legislation will very probably be-not to send all the children who are now at work to school for half the day,-but to send a large number of them into the streets all day long. It is infinitely far from our intention to impeach the justice or the expediency of our factory legislation; but we maintain that nearly every serious objection to a law rendering attendance at school compulsory, lies against the form of compulsion which Parliament has already sanctioned, and not against that new form of compulsion for which 'extreme' educational reformers are now contending. Our true wisdom, perhaps, at present will be to develope still farther the principle already established in our Factory Acts, and to increase the efficiency of the Industrial Schools Act, which, notwithstanding recent improvements, is almost inoperative. But when we have travelled as far as we can on the lines already laid down, the country will recognise the extreme absurdity of refusing to go farther. It will insist upon protecting the right of every child to be taught, just as it insists upon protecting the right of every child to be fed. We are convinced that those who suppose that a general compulsory law would provoke the violent resistance of the working classes altogether mistake the true temper of the common people. For once, even the sagacity of Mr. Bright is at fault. Working men have an inordinate faith in the power of legislation to promote social reform; and they are among the most enthusiastic supporters of the theory of compulsory education. So far as we know, whenever their opinion on this question has been fairly tested, they have pronounced most firmly in favour of compulsion. We fear that nothing is likely to be done during the present session of Parliament. Mr. Bruce's bill will be vigorously opposed by the clergy, who have an instinctive dread of any measures which appear to threaten the denominational system; nor can we recommend Nonconformists to support it unless some of its principal clauses are expunged. The Government have too much on their hands to venture to introduce any bold scheme of educational reform, even if they were disposed to do it. They may propose the cancelling of the eighth clause of the Revised Code; and to this, of course, we shall heartily consent. They may also attempt to make such changes in the Minutes as will bring the grants more within the reach of small rural schools; we must look to Mr. Lowe to resist any insidious Our Immediate Duty. 433 tampering with the general principle of paying for results. It will be the wisdom of Liberals and Nonconformists to use the remaining months of the present year in drawing up a bill in which they can heartily unite, and which they can lay with confidence before the new constituencies. The simpler it is in its provisions the more likely it is to be carried. It should leave the denominational system untouched, but should provide for the establishment, under local authorities and by local rating, of new schools in destitute districts. The changes which are necessary in the present Minutes, and a law rendering schoolattendance compulsory, should be fought for separately. In all these reforms we shall have against us the vast majority of the clergy, and nearly the whole strength of the Conservative party. The fight will be a severe one. But in the new electors there is a force which, if wisely and resolutely used, will enable us to defy all resistance. In relation to this great question the interests of the Nonconformists and the interests of the great mass of the English people are identical. We can, if we please, place ourselves at the head of a great popular movement, and render the country the most substantial and illustrious service. 6 Note.-After the greater part of this article was in type, a report came into our hands on the educational condition of young people between the ages of thirteen and twenty-one, employed in the manufactories of Birmingham. This report strongly confirms our worst impressions concerning the lamentable failure of our present system. Twenty-six manufactories were visited, and 908 candidates were examined, of whom 529 were males and 379 females. Forty-five per cent. had been at school for four years or more; thirty-eight per cent. had been at school for less than four years; seventeen per cent had not been at school at all. Only twenty-seven per cent. could write fluently; twenty-one per cent. wrote with difficulty; nearly thirty per cent. could not write at all; twentytwo per cent. just managed to sign their names. This is to my mind,' says the writer of the report, as bad as nothing at all. Unless a person can write well enough to set down his thoughts on paper-as in a letter, or to make notes of what he reads, or sees, or hears-his signature is only the old "mark" or cross, under another form, conventionally elaborated, in order to save appearances. Many of the passes in writing proved upon inquiry to be due, in great measure, to the instruction given on Sundays in certain Nonconformist Sabbath 'schools. Thirty-six per cent. read well; twenty per cent. read without fluency or accuracy; forty-four per cent. were either unable to read at all, or read so badly that the power of reading was practically useless. From a cursory examination of some of the papers we are inclined to think that very many of those who read well owe it largely to the influence of Sunday-schools. Five per cent. were sufficiently familiar with the compound rules of arithmetic to work at least one example out of three accurately; six per cent., though not quite ignorant of these rules, failed to reach this standard; eighty-nine per cent. showed 66 |