Hasty generalizations from the study of Punch throughout this period might easily lead one to the conclusion that the two great evils in national education were the craze for athletics in Public and Preparatory, and over-pressure in Board and Elementary, Schools. A more detailed examination of his pages tends to correct or modify this view. Punch was in the main a firm believer in the public school system as an instrument of character-building, and he was no enemy of the ladder of learning which had been erected by Forster's Act of 1871. But while he detested snobbery, extravagance and complacent Philistinism, he was by no means satisfied that the State was getting good value for its constantly increasing expenditure on education. Thus to take the Elementary schools first, we find continual references, mostly unfavourable, to the administration and working of the Board School System. In 1875 he falls foul of the pedantry of over-zealous officials—the red-tape methods of inspectors, and the action of visitors who sent children back to school before they were free from infection. These inquisitorial activities roused Punch's old democratic sympathies, and some ten years later we find him suggesting that a similar method might fairly be applied to the upper and upper middle classes—that what was sauce for the goose in the slums might be served up to the gander in the squares.
PREDESTINED!
Northern Matron (before the School Board): "I'm not against Eddication, Ladies and Gen'l'men. I al'ays make him take his Book o' nights. But reelly I calls it a flyin' in the face o' Providence to be keepin' a Boy out o' the Stables with such a pair o' Legs as his'n!!"
In the series of articles on "Education Made Easy" in 1887, Punch sympathizes with the mothers who were constantly harried by "attendance officers" for neglecting to send their children to the Board Schools. Ignorance was a great evil, but the Board Schools were attempting too much. The essentials were not thoroughly taught; pupil-teachers were overworked; there was too much of the 'ologies, and the three R's were in danger of going to the wall. The reactionary protest against the teaching of music—"We don't want Grisis at Board Schools"—is ironical; but Punch espoused the cause of those who condemned over-cramming in Board Schools, and based their crusade on Sir James Crichton-Browne's Report on over-pressure in 1884. But his great point was that there was too much teaching of the things that did not matter. His "Indignant Ratepayer" in 1887 welcomes the decision of the London School Board to hold an inquiry into the curriculum of their schools. The special committee were also to report "whether such changes can be made as shall secure that children leaving school shall be more fitted than they now are to perform the duties and work of life before them." One of the speakers had declared that "the boys educated in public elementary schools scorned all handicraft work, and wanted to be clerks, while girls in like-manner scorned all domestic service." The "Indignant Ratepayer" congratulated the School Board on turning over a new leaf, though it had taken them sixteen years to realize that they were on the wrong tack.
Indignant Ratepayers
A week later Punch published another letter from another "Indignant Ratepayer," deprecating the congratulations as premature and indiscreet:—
I, too, Mr. Punch, am a ratepayer; I have seen my rates trebled since the creation of the School Board; and I am now told that I ought to thank my stars that, after sixteen years' work, they have at length displayed a glimmering of common sense. There seems to be something ominous in this term of sixteen years, for it appears that it is just for this period that we have been supplying the Army with bayonets that won't stab, and the Navy with cutlasses that won't cut. We are always calling ourselves, though nobody else does, a practical people. But what care we for the opinion of our neighbours, so long as we are happy in the calm contemplation of our superiority?
"The unexpected always happens," so said Beaconsfield, and it seems he was right, for who would have ever dreamed that the School Board would have ever made such a confession? But although they confessed much, they did not confess all. They said nothing of the numberless half-starved children whose health has been impaired or ruined by the tasks imposed upon them. Nothing of the hundreds of thousands spent in bullying and worrying their poor parents. Nothing of the money spent in endless litigation. On all such subjects the Board are discreetly silent. They draw attention only to the outcome of their labours, namely the boys and girls whose education has been completed—the survival of the fittest in short—but who are fit for nothing.
"No handicraft work for the boys, no domestic service for the girls." The boys all want to be clerks; what the girls want to be we are not informed, but domestic service is not to be thought of, so the sooner my wife and daughters take to such work the better. And for this have I paid trebled rates. For this have we been passing Code after Code, and fixing Standard after Standard, to find at last that the whole work must be begun afresh. I too am indignant, as well as your Correspondent, not that the School Board have been telling the truth, but that they have been so long in telling it.
I protest against my money having been spent in injuring the health of half the poor children of London, and of injuring the morals of the other half.
Punch was ready to give a hearing to economists who really felt the burden, but he had no sympathy with the "old gang" of City Fathers who were frankly obscurantist on the subject of education, while they were proud of having dined and wined themselves into the possession of "first class stomachs":—