Matthew Arnold

by George William Erskine Russell

One of the most characteristic passages which he ever wrote is that in which he describes his interview in 1865 with Cardinal Antonelli, then Secretary of State at Rome. "When he asked me what I thought of the Roman schools, I said that, for the first time since I came on the Continent, I was reminded of England. I meant, in real truth, that there was the same easy-going and absence of system on all sides, the same powerlessness and indifference of the State, the same independence in single institutions, the same free course for abuses, the same confusion, the same lack of all idea of co-ordering things, as the French say—that is, of making them work fitly together to a fit end; the same waste of power, therefore the same extravagance, and the same poverty of result."

Enlarging on this congenial theme, and applying it to England and English requirements, he promulged in 1868 a very revolutionary scheme for Public Education. At the apex of the pyramid there should be a Minister of Education. "Merely for administrative convenience he is, indeed, indispensable. But it is even more important to have a centre in which to fix responsibility." In 1886 he said to the teachers at Westminster, "I know the Duke of Richmond told the House of Lords that, as Lord President, he was Minister of Education—(laughter)—but really the Duke of Richmond's sense of humour must have been slumbering when he told the House of Lords that. A man is not Minister of Education by taking the name, but by doing the functions. (Cheers.) To do the functions he must put his mind to the subject of education; and so long as Lord Presidents are what they are, and education is what it is, a Lord President will not be a man who puts his mind to the subject of education. A Vice-President is not, on the Lord President's own showing, and cannot be, Minister for Education. He cannot be made responsible for faults and neglects. Now what we want in a Minister for Education is this—a centre where we can fix the responsibility." This great and responsible officer, who presumably was to be a Cabinet Minister and change with the changes of administration, was to preside over the whole education of the country. The Universities, the Public Schools, the Middle-Class Schools, and the Elementary Schools were all to be, in greater or less degree, subject to his sway. The Minister was to be assisted by a Council of Education, "comprising, without regard to politics, the personages most proper to be heard on questions of public education." It was to be, like the Council at the India Office, consultative only, but the Minister was to be bound to take its opinion on all important measures. It should be the special duty of this Council to advise on the graduation of schools, on the organization of examinations both in the schools and in the Universities, and to adjust them to one another. The Universities were not to be increased in number, but all such anomalous institutions as King's College and University College were to be co-ordinated to the existing Universities; and the Universities were to establish "faculties" in great centres of population, supply professors and lecturers, and then examine and confer degrees. Then the country should be mapped out into eight or ten districts, and each of these districts should have a Provincial School-Board, which should "represent the State in the country," keep the Minister informed of local requirements, and be the organ of communication between him and the schools in its jurisdiction. The exact amount of interference, inspection, and control which the Minister, the Council, and the Boards should exercise should vary in accordance with the grade of the schools: it should be greater in the elementary schools, less in the higher. But, in their degree, all, from Eton downwards, were to be subject to it. Then came the most revolutionary part of the whole scheme. Mr. Creakle and his congeners were to be abolished. They were not to be put to a violent death, but they were to be starved out. The whole face of the country is studded with small grammar-schools or foundation-schools, like knots in a network; and these schools, enlarged and reformed, were to be the ordinary training-places of the Middle Class. Where they did not exist, similar schools were to be created by the State—"Royal or Public Schools"—and these, like all the rest, were to be subject to the Minister and to the Provincial Boards. Arnold contended that ancient schools so revived, and modern schools so constituted, would have a dignity and a status such as no private school could attain, and would be free from the pretentiousness and charlatanism which he regarded as the bane of private education. The inspection and control of these Public Schools would be in the hands of competent officers of the State, whereas the private school is appraised only by the vulgar and uneducated class that feeds it.

And so, descending from the Universities through Public Schools of two grades, we touch the foundation of the whole edifice—the Elementary Schools. On this all-important topic, he wrote in 1868: "About popular education I have here but a very few words to say. People are at last beginning to see in what condition this really is amongst us. Obligatory instruction is talked of. But what is the capital difficulty in the way of obligatory instruction, or indeed any national system of instruction, in this country? It is this: that the moment the working class of this country have this question of instruction brought home to them, their self-respect will make them demand, like the working classes of the Continent, Public Schools, and not schools which the clergyman, or the squire, or the mill-owner calls "my school." And again: "The object should be to draw the existing Elementary Schools from their present private management, and to reconstitute them on a municipal basis."

That word which he italicized—public—is the key to his whole system. The whole education of the country was to be Public. The Universities, already "public" in the sense that they are not private ventures, were to be made public in the sense that they were to be supervised and to some extent regulated by the State. The Public Schools, traditionally so-called, were to be made more really public by being brought under the Minister and the School-Boards. The lesser foundation-schools were to be made public by a redistribution of their revenues and a reconstruction of their system; and new schools, public by virtue of their creation, were to be put alongside of the older ones. So schools of private venture would be eliminated. And thus the whole elementary education of the country was to be taken out of the hands of societies or individuals, and was to be organized and conducted by the officials of the State. Finally, all four (or three, as you choose to reckon them) grades of public education were to be co-ordinated with one another and subordinated to a chief Minister of State presiding over a great department.

Here was a scheme of National Education, clear enough in its general outlines, and sufficiently far-reaching in its scope. But its author, promulging it thirty-five years ago, saw one "capital difficulty" in the way of realizing it, and he stated the difficulty thus: "The Public School for the people must rest upon the municipal organization of the country. In France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the public elementary school has, and exists by having, the Commune, and the Municipal Government of the Commune, as its foundations, and it could not exist without them. But we in England have our municipal organization state to get; the country districts, with us, have at present only the feudal and ecclesiastical organization of the Middle Ages, or of France before the Revolution.... The real preliminary to an effective system of popular education is, in fact, to provide the country with an effective municipal organization."

It would be impossible, unless one could trace the mental processes of the Bishop of Rochester, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Sir John Gorst, and other eminent persons who had a hand in constructing the Education Acts of 1892 and 1893, to say how far the system now in existence owes any of its features to the influence of Matthew Arnold. It is the lot of great thoughts to fall upon very different kinds of soil; to be trodden under foot by one set of enemies, and carried away by another; and yet sometimes to find a congenial lodgment, and after long years to spring into life and manifest themselves in very unexpected quarters. So it may well have been with Arnold's educational theories. Certainly during the last five-and-thirty years people have come to regard Education in all its branches as far more a matter of public concern, far less a matter of private venture, than formerly. More and more we have come to see that the State and the Municipality, in their respective areas, have something to say on the matter. The idea of the Golden Ladder, having its base in the Elementary Schools and its top rung in the highest honours of the University, has taken hold of the public mind, and has passed out of the region of abstractions into practical life. Institutions of Local Government have developed themselves on the lines desiderated by Arnold in 1868. The subordination of education to municipal authority is a new and a risky experiment, but it is exactly the experiment which he wished to see. The resuscitation of the Edwardian and Elizabethan Grammar Schools all over the country has brought the notion of the Public School to the very door of the Middle Class, and has shaken, if it has not yet destroyed, Mr. Creakle's stronghold. Even in the matter of Denominational Education in the Elementary Schools, where many deem that a retrograde step has been taken, the State has acted on a hint which Arnold gave to the extreme reformers of his time.

"Most English Liberals," he said, "seem persuaded that our Elementary Schools should be undenominational, and their teaching secular; and that with a public elementary school it cannot well be otherwise. Let them clearly understand, however, that on the Continent generally—everywhere except in Holland—the public elementary school is denominational (of course with what we should call a 'conscience clause') and its teaching religious as well as secular."

In one important respect the State, which has so often adopted his views, at once outstripped and fell short of his ideal. He was not a strong or undiscriminating advocate for Compulsory Education. He believed that, in the foreign countries where compulsion obtained, it was not the cause, but the effect, of a national feeling for education. When a people set a high value on knowledge, they would insist that every child should have a chance of acquiring it. But you could not create that high value by compelling people to send their children to school. As late as the end of the year 1869, he seems to have feared that any legislation which hindered a child from working for its own or its parents' support would be highly unpopular and would be evaded. "A law of direct compulsion on the parent and child would probably be violated every day in practice; and, so long as this is the case, a law levelled at the employer is preferable."

But when those words were written, compulsion was near at hand. The Parliament of 1868-1874—the first elected by a democratic suffrage—was intent on Reform, and the right of a father to starve his child's mind was strenuously denied. Forster, then Vice-President of the Council, was charged with the duty of preparing a Bill to establish Compulsory Education. Arnold was Forster's brother-in-law, and "heard the contents" of the Bill in November, 1869. When in the following February it was brought in, he wrote: "I think William's Bill will do very well. I am glad it is so little altered"; and, after the Second Reading, he wrote: "The majority on the Education Bill is a great relief; it will now, if William has tolerable luck, get through safely this session." By this time, therefore, he must have become a convert to the system of compulsion. Perhaps he regarded the demand for the Bill as a proof that the English people were at length waking up to a sense of the value of Education. But, while the State thus outstripped his ideal by establishing compulsion, it fell short of his ideal by severely limiting the area of the population to which compulsion was to apply. Again and again he warned his countrymen, then unaccustomed to the practical working of Compulsory Education, that it would be intolerable, unjust, and absurd if it were applied only to the children of the poor. He contended that the Upper and Middle Classes were every bit as much in need of a compulsory system, if their children were to be properly educated, as the working classes for whom it was proposed to legislate. This theme he illustrated, with the most exuberant fun and fancy, in a letter addressed to the Pall Mall Gazette in 1867, and afterwards republished in Friendship's Garland. Arminius, the cultivated Prussian, accompanies his English friend to Petty Sessions in a country town, and is horrified by the degraded plight of an old peasant who is tried for poaching. The English friend (the imaginary Arnold) says that for his own part he is not so much concerned about the poacher as about his children. They are being allowed to grow up anyhow. Really he thinks the time has come when compulsion must be applied to the education of children of this class. "The gap between them and our educated and intelligent classes is really too frightful."