Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland

by Daniel Turner Holmes

Probably, as I have hinted, one of the chief benefits of the Education Act, was that teaching had to be carried on in conditions of space and air. Given such conditions and an enthusiastic master, some good progress will certainly be made.

Connected with the physical side of education we have had, of late, signs of a new departure. There is a talk of feeding the hungry.

Every parent worthy of the name is proud to provide food and clothing for his children. That's what he's there for. But it does not require much keenness of vision to see that there are many parents unworthy of the name, and that, by the dark and inscrutable degrees of Heaven, such worthless individuals are often allowed to be parents of a numerous progeny. We must (i) inject into these wastrels the feeling of responsibility and (ii) prevent the children from dying of starvation. The first problem requires lengthy treatment and is perhaps hopeless of accomplishment; the second can be done at once by philanthropy, either individual or national.

However much it may wound the pride of our gilded youth, it can hardly be asserted that birth and rank are matters that involve the slightest personal merit. It seems to be an affair of the purest accident into what class of society a child is born. We have overcome the difficulties and dangers of youth—most of us—but it might well have been otherwise. Soften your hearts, ye political economists, and cease to regard the poor, the weak, and the wretched as criminals. If there is no wealth but life, our country must soon be poor indeed should the rising generation be sickly and underfed. Bairns must not be allowed to study on an empty stomach.

PARISH COUNCIL BOARDERS.

Let me here mention a point alluded to by more than one friend of the Highlands. It has reference to one aspect of the new science called Eugenics, which deals with the means for producing the maximum of vigour in our nation. It is not well enough known that for years the authorities have been pouring into a few of the islands and straths of the North and West a great number of maimed, consumptive, and mentally defective children. Some houses in the Hebrides have three or four of these children, who, but for the action of the authorities, would be living under the most deplorable conditions of life in the towns. The results, as regarding improvement in health and physique, are of the most encouraging kind.[21]

After a certain age the official subsidy ceases, and the children as a rule go to work on the farms and crofts. It is evident that such extensive planting out of city boys and girls is bound by and by to work a great change in the composition of our rural districts. It is believed that some of the islands would soon be without children but for these incomers: it is a well-known fact that the indigenous youthful population of certain of them is very meagre indeed. We are thus in modern times witnessing some most instructive operations of Nature: for generations the country has been depleted to swell the bloated population of the towns; and now the wastage of the cities is being sent back to the country to get a renewal of vigour at the primeval fountain of health.

There is one further point of great moment. As a proportion, relatively large, of these children come of morally dubious parentage, it is of supreme interest to know their subsequent career and conduct. I have seen reports and statistics which seem to prove that questionable heredity can be overborne by healthy surroundings and good training; in other words, that the offspring of criminals may, if rescued early from a vicious environment, become respectable citizens. Such facts ought to rejoice the hearts of all moral reformers.

DWINDLING ATTENDANCES.

It is in the country school that the need for new blood is most apparent to the eye. In schools capable of holding 120 children, you will often find a shrunken roll of less than a dozen. A gentleman of mature years usually does all the teaching and keeps himself from getting insane by breeding hens and cultivating roses in his spare time. He has also, in all likelihood, the little pickings of officialdom in the district, and is registrar, session-clerk, and precentor. One facetious teacher, who dwelt on a wide moor, headed his letter to me Parish Council Chambers, thereby suggesting marble staircases and sumptuous furniture. It was this same teacher who, on being asked to bring forward Standard V. for inspection, had to admit that Standard V. was laid up with a broken leg. For such small schools there is an increasing difficulty in finding male teachers.[22] Widows, who in their ante-nuptial days, had been engaged in teaching are often preferred to men, for reasons of salary. The lot of such women, who have usually families to support out of their meagre earnings, is hard indeed: if they keep their health, they manage tolerably well, but when illness comes into the house, there must be a deal of suffering and distress. The young pupils who attend the remote schools of the uplands, also deserve much sympathy. During the heavy snows and extreme cold of winter, these children—often ill-shod and scantily fed—have to trudge along miles of country cross-roads or hill-paths to their little school. Our country is a glory to the eye when mid-summer and autumn are there, but think of the harsh winter months with their torrents of driving rain, their whirlwinds of hail and sleet and the icy nip of the blasts that blow down the snow-sheeted glens.