The object of the Education Act of 1870 was to supply all England with efficient schools. If voluntary effort failed, special machinery was devised “not to supplant, but to supplement.” Purists objected that “supplement” was a vile misuse of a noun as a verb. On the analogy of “complete,” “complement,” it should be “supplete”; but the nation shrugged its shoulders.
This machinery was summed up in the phrase “School Board”; and for thirty-two years the School Board was the idol of one party and the bugbear of another. It had the same strange effect on the morals of men that is attributed to horses. It is said that men, who in the ordinary affairs of life are honest, truthful, and temperate, lose all control over these qualities when they are concerned in the sale or purchase of a horse. And so it was with these Boards. When a question arose of the formation of a School Board, the parties on each side lapsed into heathenism; heathenism of a low type. Distorted figures and facts poured in at Whitehall, and were eventually forwarded to the Inspector “for report, and observations”; and if it had not been an unofficial act, H.M.I. would have blushed as he read them. “And then I saw what I had never seen before, Thrasymachus blushing,” says Plato in his Republic. There was one particular combatant, a buttress and eke a pillar of his denomination, a philanthropist, and an educational missionary, who, when any question of School Boards arose, exhibited so much of what a certain Lord Justice called “the inaccuracy of Ananias” that I had to warn the Education Department to allow him a special discount. He was happy in the opportuneness of his death; for he did not live to see the Act of 1902, which destroyed School Boards and thus took away the occupation alike of iconolaters and iconoclasts.
“Ower bad for blessing, and ower gude for banning like Rob Roy” was Andrew Fairservice’s immortal phrase, and it may be the epitaph of School Boards. “I watched by their cradle, and I followed their hearse” I may add in Grattan’s no less renowned phrase: for I rocked the cradle of many Boards in 1871, and mine were two of the dry eyes that noted the interment of the Manchester Board in 1903. But happily my connection with the institution did not end there; in the Isle of Man School Boards still exist; a population of 50,000 has twenty-one Boards to superintend its education, and not less than 110 devoted men and women struggle to keep down the rates.
The advantage of the School Board system was that it provided a body of men who had an opportunity of being acquainted with the wants of the place; usually qualified by residence to attend meetings; and with large powers of raising money to carry on the work.
The disadvantage was that it put technical, skilled labour into the hands of men from whom no proof of skill was required; and in very many places into the hands of men who were manifestly skill-less. In the large towns the Board might become a Debating Society, but if it escaped this snare, it often did well. In small villages sometimes it was a farce, sometimes a tragedy. In most places, whether large or small, the real power fell into the hands of one man, either the clerk or the chairman, who managed both School Board and Board School.
Do you ask for an instance? At a Board School inspection, noticing that there were not enough desks for the children, I asked the chairman, who was present, to see that the deficiency was made good at once. He assured me that it would be done without delay.
“When does the Board meet?” I asked.
“Oh, we don’t meet: I get what is wanted and then on market-day I go down to the town, where I am sure to find the members; they are all farmers. I say to Brown, ‘The Inspector was here last week; wants some more desks; always asking for something; suppose you agree?’ And he says, ‘Whatever you think is right, Mr. Chairman.’ Then I go on to Jones, and Robinson, and Snooks, and they all agree. We don’t bother about a meeting, except once a year to make up Form IX. for your inspection.”
What admirable discipline!
The absolute unfitness for any educational work of some Boards led to strange results. Somewhere in Wales I had sent notice to a Board that I proposed to meet them at a certain place on a certain day. They sent no answer, but I kept my own appointment, and found the Board duly assembled. I began by suggesting that it was usual to answer official letters. They declared inteet they did not know where I lived, and how could they send a letter? I pointed out that the official notepaper, upon which I wrote, had the address printed at the top. This embarrassed them: but the true explanation was given to me afterwards. There was not a man on the Board who could read and write, and they had to take all their correspondence to the market-town to get the advice of the Clerk to the Guardians before they could reply. They were in too small a way of educational business to have a clerk of their own.