1802 First Factory Act for regulating employment of children.
Adopted.
1807 Whitbread's Parochial Schools' Bill introduced.
Rejected by the House of Lords
1816 Brougham secured a Parliamentary Committee to enquire into the
state of education of the lower classes in London,
Westminster, and Southwark.
Report—130,000 children without school accommodations
[1818]. (R. 291.)
1818 Brougham secured a Committee of Inquiry on Educational
Charities.
No report until 1837.
1820 Bill introduced proposing a tax for schools and the granting
of Government aid in building schoolhouses.
Opposed by Dissenters and Catholics. Withdrawn. Brougham's
first Educational Bill.
1833 Government aid for building schoolhouses re-proposed.
£20,000 a year granted. (R. 299.) Distributed through the
two great Educational Societies
1834 Committee of Inquiry appointed.
No result beyond statistics.
1835 | Brougham introduced bills to organize a system of elementary
1837 | education. Bills failed of passage. Educational Inquiry
Committee appointed [1837].
1838 Committee report: the deplorable conditions existing Bill of
1839. Education Department created.
1839 Bill to increase the government grant to £30,000 and to allow
all Societies to share. Inspectors to be appointed.
Committee of Privy Council on Education established.
Bitter opposition. Carried. Much discussion as to
"undenominational education."
1841 Annual grant to establish schools of design in manufacturing
districts.
Voted.
1843 Sir Jas. Graham's Factory Bill.
Opposed by the Dissenters and defeated.
1843 Address to the Crown on condition of the working classes.
No parliamentary action.
1846 Yearly grant extended to the maintenance of schools.
Gradual increase in the yearly grants.
1846 Minute and Regulations on annual grants and pupil teachers.
Foundations of a system laid.
Pupil-teacher system definitely established. Certificates to
teach. Annual grant extended to maintenance.
1847 Government proposals for nationalizing education.
Carried despite violent religious opposition.
1850 Fox's Bill to make education free and compulsory.
Defeated.
1853 The Government proposed a small local rate in aid of schools.
Bill dropped after the first reading.
1853 Department of Science and Art created, and National Art
Training Schools established.
Promotion of elementary education in art and science,
particularly after 1859.
1855 Three educational Bills introduced. Local rate proposed.
Failure to agree. All withdrawn.
1856 Commons asked to declare in favor of rate aid and local
Boards. Two Educational Bills introduced.
First bill tabled. Second bill withdrawn. Education
Department formed.
1858 A Royal Commission to inquire into the state of popular
education in England asked for.
The Duke of Newcastle's Commission created. Its Report
published in 1861. (R. 303.)
1861 No acceptable scheme reported. Code of 1861 proposed.
No advance. "Payment by results" began [1862]. Code adopted.
1864 Schools Inquiry Commission appointed on endowed schools.
Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission in 1867.
1866 Report of a Select Committee of the House of Commons on
Education.
1867 The Government introduced proposals as to education.
Voted down.
1868 Government Bill proposing changes in distribution and larger
grants.
Parliament adjourned without action.
1869 Endowed Schools' Act passed.
1869 Two Educational Bills introduced.
Withdrawn at the request of the Government.
1870 The Elementary Education Act of 1870 introduced.
Much amended and passed. (R. 304.) Beginning of a National
system of education.
1871 Religious Tests at universities withdrawn (R. 305).
THE LEADERS IN THE CONFLICT. The main leader in the parliamentary struggle to establish national education, from the death of Whitbread, in 1815, to about 1835, was Henry, afterwards Lord Brougham. He was aided by such men as Blackstone, and Bentham and his followers, and, after about 1837, by such men as Dickens, Carlyle, Macaulay, and John Stuart Mill. Dickens, by his descriptions, helped materially to create a sentiment favorable to education, as a right of the people rather than a charity. He stood strongly for a compulsory and non-sectarian state system of education that would transform the children of his day into generous, self-respecting, and intelligent men and women. Carlyle saw in education a cure for social evils, and held that one of the first functions of government was to impart the gift of thinking to its future citizens. Writing, in 1840, he said:
Who would suppose that education were a thing which had to be advocated on the ground of local expediency, or any ground? As if it stood not on the basis of everlasting duty as a prime necessity of man.
Brougham was untiring in his efforts for popular education, and some idea as to the interest he awakened may be inferred from the fact that his Observations on the Education of the People, published in 1825, went through twenty editions the first year. He introduced bills, secured committees of inquiry, made addresses, [27] and used his pen in behalf of the education of the people. His belief in the power of education to improve a people was very large. Warning the "Lawgivers of England" to take heed, he once said:
Let the soldier be abroad, if he will; he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage abroad, a person less imposing—in the eye of some insignificant. The Schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full uniform array.
The conqueror stalks onward with the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of war," banners flying, shouts rending the air, guns thundering, and martial music pealing, to drown the shrieks of the wounded and the lamentations for the slain. Not thus the schoolmaster in his peaceful vocation. He meditates and prepares in secret the plans which are to bless mankind; he slowly gathers around him those who are to further their execution; he quietly, though firmly, advances in his humble path laboring steadily, but calmly, till he has opened to the light all the recesses of ignorance, and torn up by the roots the weeds of vice. His is a progress not to be compared with anything like a march; but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to laurels more imperishable than the destroyer of his species, the scourge of the world, ever won.
[Illustration: FIG. 190 LORD BROUGHAM (1778-1868)]
[Illustration: FIG. 191. AN ENGLISH VILLAGE SCHOOL IN 1840
(After a drawing by Hablôt K. Browne, and printed in Charles Dickens's
"Master Humphrey's Clock")]
Parallel with the agitation for some state action for education was an agitation for social and political reform. The basis for the election of members to the House of Commons was still mediaeval. Boroughs no longer inhabited still returned members, and sparsely settled regions returned members out of all proportion to the newly created city populations. Few, too, could vote. Only about 160,000 persons in a population of 10,000,000 had, early in the century, the right of the franchise. The city populations were practically disfranchised in favor of rural landlords, the nobility, and the clergy. In 1828 Protestant Non-Conformists were relieved of their political disability, and in 1829 a similar enfranchisement was extended to Catholics. In 1832 came the first real voting reform in the passage of the so-called Third Reform Bill [28] after a most bitter parliamentary struggle. This reapportioned the membership of the House on a more equitable basis, and enfranchised those who owned or leased lands or buildings of a value of £10 a year. The result of this was to enfranchise the middle class of the population; increase the number of voters (1836) from about 175,000 to about 839,500 out of 6,023,000 adult males; and effectively break the power of the House of Lords to elect the House of Commons. Progressive legislation now became much easier to secure, and in 1833 a Bill making a grant of £20,000 a year to aid in building schoolhouses for elementary schools—the first government aid for elementary education ever voted in England—became a law (R. 299). During the few years following the passage of the Reform Bill many progressive measures were enacted, among which should be mentioned the abolition of slavery in the colonies; the beginnings of legislation looking to a scientific treatment of poverty and non- employment; the Municipal Reform Act (1835); the institution of the penny post (1839); and the abolition of the Corn Laws (1846); while after 1837 education began to take a prominent place in the programs of the new working-class movement.
PROGRESS AFTER 1833. The Law of 1833, though, made but the merest beginnings, and up to 1840 the money granted was given to the two great national school societies, and without regulation. Beginning in 1840, and continuing up to the beginnings of national education, in 1870, the grants were state-controlled and distributed through the different educational societies. The total of these grants, by years, and the proportional share of the different educational societies are well shown in the chart (Fig. 192.) In 1846 the grants were extended to maintenance as well, and in 1847 Catholic and Wesleyan societies were admitted to share in the grants. Soon thereafter we note a sharp upward turn of the curve, though the Church-of- England schools obtained the greater proportion of the increased funds. Proposals to add local taxation, in 1853 and 1856, were dropped almost as soon as made. The commercial and manufacturing interests, though, secured separate aid for art and science instruction (1841, 1853), and the creation of national art training-schools (1853). Training-schools for teachers also were begun, and aided by grants. In 1845 the English "pupil- teacher" system [29] also was begun in an effort to supply teachers of some little training. A State Department of Education was created, in 1856, though without much power, and the various "Minutes" which were now adopted were organized into a system and presented to Parliament as a School Code, in 1861, and finally approved.