'And your granny keeps you now?' says the teacher, as she concludes the little history, and turns to the girl.
'Yes, teacher; and when I grow up I'm going to keep granny.'
So may it be!
There are some hundred girls in the room. Some of them come from decent homes, and some from cellars; many of their histories are romances; but they are romances which mostly tend one way—to show the misery, the guilt, and the poverty in which they have been reared; and to recount them would be but to dwell upon a note which perhaps I have touched too often already.
There are brighter stories, too, to be told of their parents, but none so bright as they will be able to tell of themselves when, after years of discipline and culture, they go forth to lead lives which with their fathers and mothers were impossible.
Close to the school where the elder girls are educated, and in the same building, is the department for infants. Here the children under seven are prepared to pass into the upper department.
Directly we enter we are struck with the appearance of these children. Bad faces there are among them—bruises and scars, and bandages and rags—but the bulk of these younger children have a generally better appearance than their little neighbours.
There is a theory in the school, and it is borne out to a certain extent by fact, that some of the youngest and best-looking are the children of girls who just got the benefit of the Education Act before they were too old, and who in their young married life have reaped the benefit of those principles of cleanliness and thrift which the Board School inculcates. The young mothers are already a race far ahead of the older ones in this district, and the children naturally benefit by it. It must be borne in mind that the girls of this class marry or take a mate at a very early age. Many of them have three or four children by the time they are twenty, so that they would have been brought under the influence of the present Education Act. These young women, too, live in a better way; their room is tidier and cleaner, there is a little coquetry in them, and they have a sense of shame which renders them excellent service. They are anxious about their children's education, they recognise the advantage the discipline and instruction have been to them, and the general tone of their lives is every way a distinct advance on the old order of things.
I quote these facts because they so fully bear out the theory that Education must be the prime instrument in changing the condition of the poor for the better, whatever results it may have later on upon the condition of the labour market, and the political and social questions of the future. The many theories which are put forward about the result of educating the masses, it is not my province here to discuss; nor need I consider those doctrines which are closely akin to Socialism, and which are the favourite arguments of a school of advanced thinkers when discussing the future condition of the masses.
I have only to confine myself to the facts before me, and I think this great improvement in the children of the young mothers a most important one.