III. THE STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL EDUCATION
THE PARLIAMENTARY STRUGGLE. During the whole of the eighteenth century Parliament had enacted no legislation relating to elementary education, aside from the one Act of 1767 for the education of pauper children in London, and the freeing of elementary schools, Dissenters, and Catholics, from inhibitions as to teaching. In the nineteenth century this attitude was to be changed, though slowly, and after three quarters of a century of struggle the beginnings of national education were finally to be made for England, as they had by then for every other great nation. In 1870 the "no-business-of-the-State" attitude toward the education of the people, which had persisted from the days of the great Elizabeth, was finally and permanently changed. The legislative battle began with the first Factory Act [25] of 1802, Whitbread's Parochial Schools Bill [26] of 1807, and Brougham's first Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry of 1816 (R. 291); it finally culminated with the reform of the old endowed Grammar Schools by the Act of 1869, the enactment of the Elementary Education Act of 1870 (R. 304), and the Act of 1871 freeing instruction in the universities from religious restrictions (R. 305). The first of these enactments declared clearly the right of the State to inquire into, reorganize, and redirect the age-old educational foundations for secondary education; the second made the definite though tardy beginnings of a national system of elementary education for England; and the third opened up a university career to the whole nation. The agitation and conflict of ideas was long drawn out, and need not be traced in detail. The following tabulated summary will give the main outlines of the struggle, and the selection on "The Educational Traditions of England" (R. 306) gives a good brief history of the long conflict.
THE PARLIAMENTARY STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL EDUCATION IN ENGLAND
Dates Proposals, Reports, etc., and Results
1802 First Factory Act for regulating employment of children.
Adopted.
1807 Whitbread's Parochial Schools' Bill introduced.
Rejected by the House of Lords
1816 Brougham secured a Parliamentary Committee to enquire into the
state of education of the lower classes in London,
Westminster, and Southwark.
Report—130,000 children without school accommodations
[1818]. (R. 291.)
1818 Brougham secured a Committee of Inquiry on Educational
Charities.
No report until 1837.
1820 Bill introduced proposing a tax for schools and the granting
of Government aid in building schoolhouses.
Opposed by Dissenters and Catholics. Withdrawn. Brougham's
first Educational Bill.
1833 Government aid for building schoolhouses re-proposed.
£20,000 a year granted. (R. 299.) Distributed through the
two great Educational Societies
1834 Committee of Inquiry appointed.
No result beyond statistics.
1835 | Brougham introduced bills to organize a system of elementary
1837 | education. Bills failed of passage. Educational Inquiry
Committee appointed [1837].
1838 Committee report: the deplorable conditions existing Bill of
1839. Education Department created.
1839 Bill to increase the government grant to £30,000 and to allow
all Societies to share. Inspectors to be appointed.
Committee of Privy Council on Education established.
Bitter opposition. Carried. Much discussion as to
"undenominational education."
1841 Annual grant to establish schools of design in manufacturing
districts.
Voted.
1843 Sir Jas. Graham's Factory Bill.
Opposed by the Dissenters and defeated.
1843 Address to the Crown on condition of the working classes.
No parliamentary action.
1846 Yearly grant extended to the maintenance of schools.
Gradual increase in the yearly grants.
1846 Minute and Regulations on annual grants and pupil teachers.
Foundations of a system laid.
Pupil-teacher system definitely established. Certificates to
teach. Annual grant extended to maintenance.
1847 Government proposals for nationalizing education.
Carried despite violent religious opposition.
1850 Fox's Bill to make education free and compulsory.
Defeated.
1853 The Government proposed a small local rate in aid of schools.
Bill dropped after the first reading.
1853 Department of Science and Art created, and National Art
Training Schools established.
Promotion of elementary education in art and science,
particularly after 1859.
1855 Three educational Bills introduced. Local rate proposed.
Failure to agree. All withdrawn.
1856 Commons asked to declare in favor of rate aid and local
Boards. Two Educational Bills introduced.
First bill tabled. Second bill withdrawn. Education
Department formed.
1858 A Royal Commission to inquire into the state of popular
education in England asked for.
The Duke of Newcastle's Commission created. Its Report
published in 1861. (R. 303.)
1861 No acceptable scheme reported. Code of 1861 proposed.
No advance. "Payment by results" began [1862]. Code adopted.
1864 Schools Inquiry Commission appointed on endowed schools.
Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission in 1867.
1866 Report of a Select Committee of the House of Commons on
Education.
1867 The Government introduced proposals as to education.
Voted down.
1868 Government Bill proposing changes in distribution and larger
grants.
Parliament adjourned without action.
1869 Endowed Schools' Act passed.
1869 Two Educational Bills introduced.
Withdrawn at the request of the Government.
1870 The Elementary Education Act of 1870 introduced.
Much amended and passed. (R. 304.) Beginning of a National
system of education.
1871 Religious Tests at universities withdrawn (R. 305).
THE LEADERS IN THE CONFLICT. The main leader in the parliamentary struggle to establish national education, from the death of Whitbread, in 1815, to about 1835, was Henry, afterwards Lord Brougham. He was aided by such men as Blackstone, and Bentham and his followers, and, after about 1837, by such men as Dickens, Carlyle, Macaulay, and John Stuart Mill. Dickens, by his descriptions, helped materially to create a sentiment favorable to education, as a right of the people rather than a charity. He stood strongly for a compulsory and non-sectarian state system of education that would transform the children of his day into generous, self-respecting, and intelligent men and women. Carlyle saw in education a cure for social evils, and held that one of the first functions of government was to impart the gift of thinking to its future citizens. Writing, in 1840, he said:
Who would suppose that education were a thing which had to be advocated on the ground of local expediency, or any ground? As if it stood not on the basis of everlasting duty as a prime necessity of man.
Brougham was untiring in his efforts for popular education, and some idea as to the interest he awakened may be inferred from the fact that his Observations on the Education of the People, published in 1825, went through twenty editions the first year. He introduced bills, secured committees of inquiry, made addresses, [27] and used his pen in behalf of the education of the people. His belief in the power of education to improve a people was very large. Warning the "Lawgivers of England" to take heed, he once said:
Let the soldier be abroad, if he will; he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage abroad, a person less imposing—in the eye of some insignificant. The Schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full uniform array.
The conqueror stalks onward with the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of war," banners flying, shouts rending the air, guns thundering, and martial music pealing, to drown the shrieks of the wounded and the lamentations for the slain. Not thus the schoolmaster in his peaceful vocation. He meditates and prepares in secret the plans which are to bless mankind; he slowly gathers around him those who are to further their execution; he quietly, though firmly, advances in his humble path laboring steadily, but calmly, till he has opened to the light all the recesses of ignorance, and torn up by the roots the weeds of vice. His is a progress not to be compared with anything like a march; but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to laurels more imperishable than the destroyer of his species, the scourge of the world, ever won.
[Illustration: FIG. 190 LORD BROUGHAM (1778-1868)]
[Illustration: FIG. 191. AN ENGLISH VILLAGE SCHOOL IN 1840
(After a drawing by Hablôt K. Browne, and printed in Charles Dickens's
"Master Humphrey's Clock")]
Parallel with the agitation for some state action for education was an agitation for social and political reform. The basis for the election of members to the House of Commons was still mediaeval. Boroughs no longer inhabited still returned members, and sparsely settled regions returned members out of all proportion to the newly created city populations. Few, too, could vote. Only about 160,000 persons in a population of 10,000,000 had, early in the century, the right of the franchise. The city populations were practically disfranchised in favor of rural landlords, the nobility, and the clergy. In 1828 Protestant Non-Conformists were relieved of their political disability, and in 1829 a similar enfranchisement was extended to Catholics. In 1832 came the first real voting reform in the passage of the so-called Third Reform Bill [28] after a most bitter parliamentary struggle. This reapportioned the membership of the House on a more equitable basis, and enfranchised those who owned or leased lands or buildings of a value of £10 a year. The result of this was to enfranchise the middle class of the population; increase the number of voters (1836) from about 175,000 to about 839,500 out of 6,023,000 adult males; and effectively break the power of the House of Lords to elect the House of Commons. Progressive legislation now became much easier to secure, and in 1833 a Bill making a grant of £20,000 a year to aid in building schoolhouses for elementary schools—the first government aid for elementary education ever voted in England—became a law (R. 299). During the few years following the passage of the Reform Bill many progressive measures were enacted, among which should be mentioned the abolition of slavery in the colonies; the beginnings of legislation looking to a scientific treatment of poverty and non- employment; the Municipal Reform Act (1835); the institution of the penny post (1839); and the abolition of the Corn Laws (1846); while after 1837 education began to take a prominent place in the programs of the new working-class movement.
PROGRESS AFTER 1833. The Law of 1833, though, made but the merest beginnings, and up to 1840 the money granted was given to the two great national school societies, and without regulation. Beginning in 1840, and continuing up to the beginnings of national education, in 1870, the grants were state-controlled and distributed through the different educational societies. The total of these grants, by years, and the proportional share of the different educational societies are well shown in the chart (Fig. 192.) In 1846 the grants were extended to maintenance as well, and in 1847 Catholic and Wesleyan societies were admitted to share in the grants. Soon thereafter we note a sharp upward turn of the curve, though the Church-of- England schools obtained the greater proportion of the increased funds. Proposals to add local taxation, in 1853 and 1856, were dropped almost as soon as made. The commercial and manufacturing interests, though, secured separate aid for art and science instruction (1841, 1853), and the creation of national art training-schools (1853). Training-schools for teachers also were begun, and aided by grants. In 1845 the English "pupil- teacher" system [29] also was begun in an effort to supply teachers of some little training. A State Department of Education was created, in 1856, though without much power, and the various "Minutes" which were now adopted were organized into a system and presented to Parliament as a School Code, in 1861, and finally approved.
New Educational Commissions were created to inquire into educational conditions and needs in 1858 and 1864, and these reported in 1861 and 1867, but without important results. The most notable of these was the Duke of Newcastle's Commission, appointed in 1858 to review conditions, progress, and needs, and to make recommendations for the future. This Commission reported in 1861. It stated that one in every eight of the population was then in some kind of school; gave statistics as to conditions (R. 303 a); and held that the plan of leaving popular education to the voluntary initiative of communities had been justified by the results. The report presented no plan for national organization, but recommended a number of minor changes in conditions. In particular it recommended the introduction of the system of "payment by results"—that is, of making money grants to schools on the basis of the number of pupils passing set examinations in reading, writing, and arithmetic (R. 303 b). This plan was begun in 1862, and the consequent drop in money grants for a few years thereafter is shown in the curves of the chart. The other Commission, appointed, known as the Taunton Schools Inquiry Commission (1864-67), dealt with the old endowed schools, and in particular called attention to the lack of secondary-school facilities, especially in the cities, and recommended an extension of secondary-school facilities and a democratization of the whole system of secondary education. The important legislation of this period was the freeing of the old universities from Church-of-England control (R. 305) and making them national in spirit.
[Illustration: FIG. 192. EXPENDITURE FROM THE EDUCATION GRANTS, 1839-70 Between 1833 and 1839 no Government regulation of grants. The above figures do not include administration expenses, or grants made to Scotland (about the same in amount as the Br. & F. S. Soc.) or to the Parochial Schools Union (very small). The drop in the curve between 1862 and 1867 was due to the introduction of the "payment by results" plan.]
[Illustration: FIG. 193 LORD MACAULAY (1800-59)]
DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED. In the meantime liberal leaders, Schools Inquiry Commissions, official reports, and educational propagandists continued to pile up evidence as to the inadequacy of the old voluntary system. A few examples, out of hundreds that might be cited, will be mentioned here. Lord Macaulay, in an address made in Parliament, in 1847 (R. 300), defending a "Minute" of the "Committee of Privy Council on Education" (created in 1839) proposing the nationalization of education, held it to be "the right and duty of the State to provide for the education of the common people," as an exercise of self-protection, and warned the Commons of dangers to come if the progressive tendencies of the time were not listened to. The Census Returns of 1851, as well as the abundance of data published by the Schools Inquiry Commissions, were effectively used to reveal the inadequate provisions for the education of the masses. The Reports of the school inspectors, too, revealed conditions in need of being remedied in all phases of educational effort. The Report on the Apprenticing of Pauper Children (R. 301) is selected as typical of many similar reports.
FACTS REVEALED BY THE CENSUS OF 1851
Items 1833 1851
(1) Population of England and Wales 14,400,000 17,927,609 (2) Middle and upper classes population 2,000,000 2,489,945 (3) Laboring class populations 12,400,000 15,437,664 (4) Population 3-12 years of age of (2) 420,000 522,888 (5) Population 3-12 years of age of (3) 2,604,000 3,241,919 (6) Number of schools for children of (2) 14,807 16,324 (7) Number of schools for children of (3) 24,074 29,718 (8) Pupils of class (2) in schools 481,728 546,396 (9) Pupils of class (3) in schools 705,219 1,597,982 (10) Percentage of children of class (2) at school 114.6 104.4 (11) Percentage of children of class (3) at school 30.5 49.2
So deeply ingrained, though, was the English conception of education as a private and voluntary and religious affair and no business of the State; so self-contained were the English as a people; and so little did they know or heed the progress made in other lands, that the arguments for national action encountered tremendous opposition from the Conservative elements, and often were opposed even by Liberals. The reasoning of Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth (R. 302), Secretary of the Committee of Council on Education and one of the clearest heads in England in his day, who held that a fee for instruction had a moral value and vindicated personal freedom, and who resented the interference of the State in the matter of a parent's relation to his child, was typical of thousands of others. Edward Baines (1774-1848), proprietor of the Leeds Mercury, the chief Liberal organ in northern England, bitterly opposed any action looking toward nationalizing education. He expressed the feeling of many when he wrote:
Civil government is no fit agency for the training of families or of souls…. Throw the people on their own resources in education, as you did in industry; and be assured, that, in a nation so full of intelligence and spirit, Freedom and Competition will give the same stimulus to improvement in our schools, as they have done in our manufactures, our husbandry, our shipping, and our commerce.
THE BEGINNINGS OF NATIONAL ORGANIZATION. By 1865 it had become evident to a majority that the voluntary system, whatever its merits, would never succeed in educating the nation, and from this time forth the demand for some acceptable scheme for the organization of national education became a part of a still more general movement for political and social reform. Once more, as in 1832-33, an education law was enacted following the passage of a bill for electoral reform and the extension of the suffrage.
Though the Liberal Party was in power, it was well satisfied with the Reform Act of 1832 because through it the middle classes of the population, which the Liberal Party represented, had gained control of the government. The country, though, was not—the working-classes in particular demanding a share in the government. Finally the demand became too strong to be resisted, and the Second Reform Act, of 1867, became a law. This abolished a number of the remaining smaller boroughs, and greatly extended the right to vote. In the country the amount of property to be owned to vote was reduced from £10 to £5, and the leasehold value from £50 to £12. In the cities and towns the vote was now given to all householders, and to all lodgers who paid a yearly rental of £10. This legislation gave the vote to a vastly increased number of people, particularly city workers, [30] and was a political revolution for England of great magnitude.
From the passage of this new Reform Act to 1870, the organization of national education only awaited the formulation of some acceptable scheme. "We must educate our new masters," now became a common expression. The main question was how to create schools to do what the voluntary schools had shown themselves able to do for a part, but were unable to do for all, without at the same time destroying the vast denominational system [31] that, in spite of its defects, had "done the great service of rearing a race of teachers, spreading schools, setting up a standard of education, and generally making the introduction of a national system possible." The way in which these "vested interests" were cared for was typically English, and characteristic of the strong sense of obligation of the English people. In 1870 a compromise law was proposed and carried. Mr. Gladstone, then Prime Minister, stated the attitude of the Government in framing the new law, when he said: [32]
It was with us an absolute necessity—a necessity of honour and a necessity of policy—to respect and to favour the educational establishments and machinery we found existing in the country. It was impossible for us to join in the language or to adopt the tone which was conscientiously and consistently taken up by some members of the House, who look upon these voluntary schools, having generally a denominational character, as admirable passing expedients, fit, indeed, to be tolerated for a time, deserving all credit on account of the motives which led to their foundation, but wholly unsatisfactory as to their main purpose, and therefore to be supplanted by something they think better…. That has never been the theory of the Government…. When we are approaching this great work, which we desire to make complete, we ought to have a sentiment of thankfulness that so much has been done for us.
[Illustration: FIG. 194. WORK OF THE SCHOOL BOARDS IN PROVIDING SCHOOL ACCOMMODATIONS London taken as a type. Note the deficiency in school accommodation in 1838, that the voluntary schools made no appreciable gain on this deficiency up to 1870, the attempt to cope with the situation between 1871 and 1874, and the long pull of the new Board schools necessary to provide sufficient schools and seats.]
Accordingly the Elementary Education Bill of 1870 (R. 304) preserved the existing Voluntary Schools; divided the country up into school districts; gave the denominations a short period in which to provide schools, with aid for buildings; [33] and thereafter, in any place where a deficiency in school accommodations could be shown to exist; School Boards were to be elected, and they should have power to levy taxes and maintain elementary schools. Existing Voluntary Schools might be transferred to the School Boards, whose schools were to be known as Board Schools. The schools were not ordered made free, but the fees of necessitous children were to be provided for by the School Boards, and they might compel the attendance of all children between the ages of five and twelve. Inspection and grants were limited to secular subjects, though religious teaching was not forbidden. The central government was to be secular and neutral; the local boards might decide as they saw fit. Such were the beginnings of national education in England. That the new Board Schools met a real need, especially in the cities, is shown by the chart on the preceding page, giving the results in London.