Since the very establishment of the High Schools was a protest against the superficiality and showiness condemned by the Royal Commission, their main endeavour was to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors. Accomplishments were relegated to the background. Arithmetic and mathematics were taught for their mental training and the development of accuracy. ‘The noxious brood of catechisms’ was abandoned in favour of a system of oral teaching: object lessons were introduced into the lower forms to induce observation, and in the science lessons facts were taught first-hand and not through the medium of books. The slipshod French chatter of the boarding-schools gave way to stricter grammatical training; parsing and analysis took the place of rote repetition of the parts of speech. Accuracy and thoroughness were the aim everywhere. At first the instruction was attended with many difficulties. There were few well-educated and no trained teachers, and very little agreement as to the really best methods. Hence it was natural that the revolt against the abuses of the past should produce some fresh faults. The reaction against the old text-books caused the introduction of a lecture-system; an excessive amount of note-taking, writing out, and correction by the teacher seemed to afford both parties the maximum of effort with the minimum of result: books were shunned as though the printed word were in itself hurtful, and much matter was laboriously dictated that might have been taken from any intelligent hand-book. The girls spoiled their handwriting, instead of straining their memories; that was the chief difference. Happily this plan has given way to more intelligent inductive methods, though even now there is a tendency in some schools to rely too much on written notes and too little on training the attention and memory. High School girls still need to learn how to use a book intelligently, and to appreciate knowledge that comes to them in an unaccustomed fashion. They have learnt the use of writing, to make ‘an exact man,’ but reading as a means of producing the ‘full’ woman has hardly as yet touched the High School system. This defect is now being realised and efforts will doubtless be made to remove it. Already the improvement in the teachers has produced a beneficent revolution in girls’ schools. To their inadequate education the Royal Commissioners largely attributed the unsatisfactory state of things they found. Side by side with the growth of the high schools went the movement for admitting women to the universities, both acting and re-acting on each other, since the high schools sent up their best pupils to college and the college sent them back to teach and train future students. A great proportion of the mistresses are now university women, while a smaller number have been trained at the Cambridge Teachers’ College or the Maria Grey or other Training Colleges—Kindergarten Colleges provide teachers for the little ones.
While the High School puts intellectual subjects first, it does not disregard accomplishments, though it seldom uses that word. Music is taught to all in the form of class-singing; piano and violin and solo singing are ‘extras,’ and do not belong to the general school work. Drawing has really won a more important place than before, because it is used as an educational factor, and not merely for purposes of show. The scheme of the Royal Drawing Society, organised by Mr. Ablett, is in use at nearly all the high schools. It is essentially a class system, and aims at training the eye, hand, and memory, rather than producing mere technical skill. The little ones in the first form are taught to present graphically objects interesting to themselves, by means of simple ruling, memory, and brush-work exercises. Special features are judgment at sight, memory and dictated work, the early introduction of drawing from objects and simple geometrical design. The schools are examined once a year. The examination takes place in the school itself under the superintendence of the head-mistress and drawing teacher, the work is sent up to London, and promotion to the next division depends upon the pass. Pupils who pass all the six divisions with honours are entitled to a full Drawing Certificate which has a commercial value for teaching purposes. Drawing, a little modelling, and needlework in the lower forms, represent at present the manual side of High School teaching. Cookery, dressmaking, etc. though popular in a different class of school, have hardly as yet been able to effect an entrance, nor does it seem altogether desirable that they should. That every school cannot teach everything is an axiom long ago accepted for boys’ education, and it must be realised for girls too, if the outcry against overstrain is to cease. Differentiation is the only safe course. It is partly the strength and partly the weakness of the High School that it represents, in fact, two schools: the first grade for girls who are to proceed to the university, and whose life at home makes a certain amount of literary and linguistic attainment desirable, and the second grade for those who must leave at fifteen or sixteen, and look forward to a career in business or to practical utility at home. In the lower forms the need of both is the same: a good general education; afterwards bifurcation seems desirable. When a school is not large enough to allow of this, it is the early-leaving girls who go to the wall. For these an entirely different scheme of education might be best—this too is a problem that will have to be faced. Physical training is also considered at most of the High Schools. Generally, fifteen minutes in the middle of the morning is given to some form of drill. In a few large schools, e.g., the North London Collegiate, this daily drill is undertaken by a specialist. Usually it falls to one of the assistants, though it is very common for a special teacher of Swedish drill to visit the school once or twice a week, and take all the girls in divisions. The North London Collegiate and the Sheffield High School have gymnasiums, and take this side of the work very seriously. A physical-record book is kept, and every child on entering is examined by a lady doctor attached to the school. Particulars of sight, hearing, throat, breathing, lungs, heart, chest, and waist measurement are recorded, with any observations considered necessary. Suitable gymnastic exercises are then prescribed, and the examination repeated from time to time, and note made of any changed condition. Some such plan might be tried in all High Schools, were the parents willing to pay for it. The low fees charged cannot be expected to include medical supervision as well as all the other advantages. At present Sheffield and the Camden Schools are almost the only day-schools that consider the physical training as systematically as the intellectual. Still, the Girls’ Public Day School Company has now appointed a qualified lady inspector of physical training. Exercise doubtless plays an important part in every high school, but it is sometimes pursued with more zeal than knowledge. Just now athletics are taking a very prominent place. School playgrounds and playing fields have become a necessity. Girls have learned to play cricket, hockey, and rounders; they choose their elevens, elect their captains, and have their practices and matches much like their brothers. How far this particular kind of exercise is conducive to a girl’s health is another of the still unsolved problems. One thing is certain: these games do much to improve the general tone of a school. Their effect in producing loyalty and public spirit and promoting cheerfulness is quite as marked in girls as in boys, and the development of the play side, along with the greater liberty, the giving of responsibility as a reward, and all that belongs to a real public school are features at least as valuable as the improvement in the teaching. The High Schools have produced a new type of girl, self-reliant, courageous, truthful, and eager for work. A full record of their after careers would prove interesting. Many pass straight from school to Oxford or Cambridge, a great many have gained scholarships, and the women’s colleges are largely recruited from their ranks. Some pass on to the medical schools, others gain County Council scholarships for technical or scientific work, large numbers are engaged in teaching, one or two have taken up gardening at Swanley Horticultural College, and a good many are making themselves generally useful at home as wives or daughters. Almost everywhere the High School girl proves herself capable, accurate, and trustworthy. She is sometimes blamed for a want of grace, such as belonged to a few rare ladies of the olden time, but she also lacks the helplessness and silliness that were prevalent then. Physically, morally, and intellectually, these schools may claim that they are improving large numbers, and with them surely the race.
CHAPTER V
ENDOWMENTS FOR GIRLS
The history of endowed schools carries us far away into the misty realms of the past, before ever the Conqueror set foot in England and put back the clock of civilisation a hundred years. The earliest schools of which we have any knowledge were attached to the chief collegiate churches, where one officer would be specially told off to teach the boys, just as another would conduct the singing. Convent and school or church and school were invariably allied. The first separable school endowments were merely assignments of a specific part of the general endowment for the support of the chancellor or his deputy, the grammar school master. Like the earliest colleges these schools were founded ‘for prayer and study.’ The first person to reverse this order, and endow an independent school, was William of Wykeham, when in 1393 he founded Winchester College, to give free instruction to seventy poor boys, and so help them to holy orders or the university. Thus the new school became ‘a sovereign and independent corporation existing of, by and for itself, self-centred, self-controlled.’ ‘To make education, and that education not the education of clerics in theology or the canon law, the paramount and pronounced object of an ecclesiastical institution, with all the paraphernalia of Papal bull and royal and episcopal license, was no small innovation. It was a new departure, which opened a new era in the world of education, and therefore of thought.’[[13]] Later founders, following in the steps of William of Wykeham, gave sums of money for the training of youth in ‘grammar and good manners.’ Grammar meant Latin and Greek, the ‘key to all the sciences’; the manners were to be those of a true gentleman, ‘trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie.’
Following on these came the schools of the Reformation age, of which the most familiar example is Dean Colet’s foundation of St. Paul’s. These were established or assisted by the gifts of ‘pious founders,’ or sometimes by diverting old funds originally destined for other purposes. Reading school was founded out of funds obtained by suppressing an almshouse for poor sisters, and under Elizabeth made into a grammar school ‘for educating the boys of the inhabitants of the said borough and others in literature.’ Such schools were often placed under lay control, but the clerical idea was still in the background. Not priests, but ministers of the reformed religion, were needed, and learning became even more essential for men who had to make knowledge take the place of tradition.
The clerical purpose of most of these schools naturally tended to exclude girls or make them of secondary importance. What place was actually assigned to them in the 353 schools founded between the accession of Henry VIII. and the death of James I. is a problem that must be left to antiquarians. Certain it is that in the ensuing period the education of both sexes was more on an equality, since the standard was one of inferiority. An age of political disturbance was followed by an epoch of frivolity. Learning fell into contempt. The foundations of the eighteenth century were not grammar but charity schools, and though girls were not forgotten, it was with the hope of training servants for themselves that rich persons supported these schools. Not to give a liberal training, but to teach the poor to ‘keep their proper station,’ was the aim of eighteenth century founders.
Thus it came about that the Schools’ Inquiry Commissioners found a goodly number of girls in endowed schools of an elementary character, which would hardly bear comparison with the poorest of our modern board schools. While the King Edward Schools at Birmingham were giving 290 boys a classical and 300 a sound English education, none of these benefits fell to girls. In the elementary schools of the same foundation were 655 boys and 630 girls. At Christ’s Hospital, distinctly founded for both sexes, there were but 18 girls as against 1192 boys. Perhaps even the eighteen would have been better off elsewhere. They occupied a part of the junior boys’ school at Hertford; they had one ward under the charge of a nurse, their playground was a little over a quarter of an acre, they took their walks abroad under care of the nurse, they had no calisthenics or other physical training; their diet was bread and milk for breakfast, bread, meat, potatoes, and porter for dinner, bread and butter, milk and water for supper. There was no admission examination, no leaving standard of attainment; they learned a little Scripture, English (so-called), and History and Geography from abridgments. On leaving, at about fifteen, most of them were apprenticed to business. It did not prove easy to place them. No wonder!
A similar tale might be told of Bedford School. It was established in 1566 by Sir William Harpur and Dame Alice, his wife, ‘for the education, institution, and instruction of children and youth in grammar and good manners, to endure for ever.’ Did child mean ‘boy’ in the minds of the founders? It seems uncertain; for, as the endowment increased in value and some of it became available for purposes other than the free grammar school, the interests of girls were also considered. At various periods of the eighteenth century fresh uses were found for the surplus money, and it is characteristic of the age that the feminine equivalent for a sound education was a dowry. £800 a year was set aside for marriage-portions for forty poor maids of the town of Bedford, to be distributed by lot, provided that a successful candidate was married within two calendar months of drawing the lot, and not to ‘a vagrant or other person of bad fame or reputation.’ Naturally there was not much difficulty about claiming the lot. Young men came from far and near to woo the ‘maids of Bedford.’ Any residue was given to poor maid-servants who had resided five years at Bedford and were married within a year. The next addition was a hospital for boys and girls, an allotment of £700 to apprentice fifteen boys and five girls, and almshouses for ten old men and ten old women. Early in this century preparatory and commercial schools were added; and girls were considered to the extent of a foundation where the head-mistress received £80 per annum as against the headmaster’s £1000. Which figures very eloquently sum up the relative estimation in which girls’ and boys’ education was held before 1848.
The Schools’ Inquiry Commission had made it abundantly clear that the educational endowments of the country needed overhauling. Not only had many of them increased greatly in value, but the establishment of public elementary schools was making the appropriation of endowments for elementary schools unnecessary. Again, many free schools were giving a liberal education to the sons of rich men. By the institution of even a low fee considerable sums would become available for the improvement of existing schools and the establishment of new ones. Then there were the various charitable endowments left for special purposes which no longer existed. In some cases money had been bequeathed to the poor in a parish, and was simply used for the relief of the rates. In London alone there were sums of £1500 a year given for the relief of poor prisoners from debt. Among other out-of-date purposes were the ransom of Barbary captives, the destruction of lady-birds in Cornhill, etc. In a certain part of Worcestershire money had been left in 1620 for distributing bread among the poor of seven parishes and, as a secondary purpose, supporting a free grammar school, the surplus to be applied to repairing the church and bridges, and increasing, if expedient, the salary of the schoolmaster. By 1867 the total income had increased to £657, and was applied to elementary schools and a free grammar school for fourteen boys. In other cases money was left for doles; with the result that in a certain parish, too richly endowed, extra waiters had to be put on at the gin-shops for two weeks before and after the distribution. In fact it was a case of money in the wrong place; education starving for want of funds that were only doing mischief. The regulation of the educational charities, and appropriation of those others which were doing more harm than good, was becoming an urgent necessity. Some changes had already been made under the Charitable Trusts Acts, but these were a good deal limited in their operations, and a more systematic reorganisation was undertaken under the Endowed Schools Act of 1869. This appointed three commissioners for four years to inquire into the endowments of England and Wales, and the first to hold this office were Lord Lyttelton, Canon Robinson, and Arthur Hobhouse, Q.C. In 1874 this Commission was merged in the Board of Charity Commissioners for England and Wales.
‘In framing schemes under this Act, provision shall be made as far as conveniently may be for extending to girls the benefits of endowments.’ This clause is the Magna Charta of girls’ education, the first acknowledgment by the State of their claim to a liberal education. This result was in great part due to those same men and women who had brought about the opening of the local examinations, and induced the Commission to take cognisance of girls’ schools, and were striving, in face of all opposition, to win something like a university education for girls. As early as 1860 at the Social Science Congress Madame Bodichon had entered a strong protest against the theory that boys’ education must be assisted and girls’ self-supporting. ‘Magnificent colleges and schools, beautiful architectural buildings costing thousands and thousands of pounds, rich endowments all over England, have been bestowed by past generations as gifts to the boys of the higher and middle class, and they are not the less independent and not a whit pauperised.’ At first this was but a voice crying in the wilderness, but the cry was taken up first by a few supporters, then by the whole country, and at last the Times, certainly not a revolutionary organ, declared that, ‘This country is most abundantly and redundantly endowed for men and boys, as if they were unable to take care of themselves, whereas there is little—indeed nothing, we may almost say—for that which is contemptuously called the weaker sex.’