And Dr. Fitch’s own experience confirms this fact. Mr. George Moore, wishing to devote £10,000 to scholarships, sent in a scheme for the consideration of some of the leading educationalists, when, finding mention only of boys, Dr. Fitch ventured to suggest the fact that boys have sisters, receiving the explanation from Mr. Moore that it was from no intention of excluding them that they had been omitted, but simply that it had never occurred to him to think of girls in such a connection.
With the Endowed Schools Commission this state of things came to an end. We cannot tell how far the influence of the evidence given by women to the Schools Inquiry Commission may have extended, but it was then decided that “in any enactment or constitution that may be brought into operation on this question the full participation of girls in endowments should be broadly laid down.”
Among Miss Buss’ most able supporters in obtaining the endowment for her new schools she counted five members of the Schools Inquiry Commission—Lord Lyttelton, the Rev. A. W. Thorold (Bishop of Rochester and of Winchester), Dr. Storrar, Mr. Fearon, and Mr. Fitch. In 1866, while the Commission were still at work, Miss Davies thus speaks of it in her “Higher Education of Women”—
“Specific schemes adapted to circumstances will be devised as occasions arise. In the meantime, any kind of recognition of the fact that the education of women is a matter worth thinking about is of the utmost practical value. In this point of view, as indicating and expressing a growing sense of the importance of the subject, the extension to girls of the Local Examinations of the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh, and the steps taken by the Schools Inquiry Commission in their pending investigations, have an indirect inference quite out of proportion to the immediate and calculable results obtained, affording a moral support and encouragement the effect of which it is not easy to estimate.”
The direct influence of the Commission may be gauged by the fact that within ten years of this date Miss Buss was able to make a list of forty-five new endowed schools for girls, to contain severally from fifty to four hundred pupils, with salaries for the head-mistresses varying from £100 a year to £200 (exclusive of capitation fees). Of this list she remarks—
“It is not complete, but will be useful in establishing my point, viz. that there are some good positions for properly qualified women-teachers.
“St. Paul’s is the greatest prize in the profession, or rather would be if the scheme had become law. Do you see, the salary might be £2000 a year. Ours is second, with a hundred more pupils, and therefore more work and less pay than St. Paul’s. My object in drawing up the list was to show the importance of training and high education for women-teachers. Such prizes are not to be had elsewhere. Look at Scotch girls’ schools, at German also. We women owe a deep debt to the Endowed School Commission.”
The verdict given as the result of the Schools Inquiry Commission does not, of course, exclude the fact that there were then, and had always been, some good private schools where a good education had been given. The true teacher, like the poet, “is born and not made,” the power to teach being as much a Divine gift as that of song or of painting. It is true that the perception of every gift must depend on its full culture, the extent of success being determined by the amount of genius; but there have always been born teachers, some self-educated and some developed by exceptional home surroundings. Women of this kind have always existed as the loved and honoured centres of exceptional influence, sending out pupils formed on their own model.
Doubtless, there could have been found, at any period in the world’s history, a sufficient justification for the attitude condemned in one of the early papers in Fraser on the then quite new Queen’s College:—
‘Educate the women!’ exclaimed an accomplished and excellent man in our hearing, and with marked surprise. ‘Where is the necessity? A college for ladies! Nonsense! Women are admirably educated! I see none but well-educated women around me!’ in the tone of a man who, when told of those who hunger for bread, should reply, ‘Want bread? Nonsense! Hunger! There is no such thing! I see a good dinner before me every day.’”