At that point—and it ought to be reached at a much earlier age than is now usual—the State's, concern in the matter ends. The child has become, a man, and henceforth must work out his own intellectual salvation; but in the earlier stages the State can and must exercise a potent influence. The earliest stage must be compulsory—that was secured by the Act of 1870. In the succeeding stages, the State, while it does not compel, must stimulate and encourage; and above all must ensure that no supposed exigencies of money-making, no selfish tyranny of the employing classes, shall be allowed to interfere with mental or physical development, or to divert the boy or the girl from any course of instruction by which he or she is capable of profiting. This ideal Mr. Fisher's Bill, with its plain enactment that education shall be free; with its precaution against "half-time"; with its ample provision for Continuation Schools, goes far to realize. Even if it is a "small" reform—and I should dispute the epithet—it is certainly "on the lines and in the direction" of that larger reform which the enthusiasts of education have symbolized by the title of "The Golden Ladder."[*]
[Footnote *: Happily for Education, Mr. Fisher's Bill is now an Act.]
III
OASES
My title is figurative, but figures are sometimes useful. Murray's Dictionary defines an oasis as "a fertile spot in the midst of a desert"; and no combination of words could better describe the ideal which I wish to set before my readers.
The suggestion of this article came to me from a correspondent in Northumberland—"an old miner, who went to work down a mine before he was eight years old, and is working yet at seventy-two." My friend tells me that he has "spent about forty years of his spare time in trying to promote popular education among his fellow working-men." His notice was attracted by a paper which I recently wrote on "The Golden Ladder" of Education, and that paper led him to offer some suggestions which I think too valuable to be lost.
My friend does not despise the Golden Ladder. Quite the contrary. He sees its usefulness for such as are able to climb it, but he holds that they are, and must be, the few, while he is concerned for the many. I agree. When (following Matthew Arnold at a respectful distance) I have urged the formation of a national system by which a poor man's son may be enabled to climb from the Elementary School to a Fellowship or a Professorship at Oxford or Cambridge, I have always realized that I was planning a course for the exceptionally gifted boy. That boy has often emerged in real life, and the Universities have profited by his emergence; but he is, and always must be, exceptional. What can be done for the mass of intelligent, but not exceptional, boys, who, to quote my Northumbrian friend, "must be drilled into a calling of some kind, so as to be able to provide for themselves when they grow up to manhood"? When once their schooling, in the narrow sense, is over, must their minds be left to lie fallow or run wild? Can nothing be done to supplement their elementary knowledge, to stimulate and discipline their mental powers?
The University Extension Movement was an attempt to answer these questions in a practical fashion, and my friend does full justice to the spirit which initiated that movement, and to the men—such as the late Lord Grey—who led it. But I suppose he speaks from experience when he says: "University Extension, as it is, will never become established in working-class villages. Forty-five to fifty pounds is too big a sum to be raised in three months, and is also considered too much to be paid for a man coming to lecture once a week for twelve weeks, and then disappear for ever like a comet." My friend uses an astronomical figure, I a geographical one; but we mean the same thing. The idea is to establish Oases—"fertile spots in the midst of deserts"—permanent centres of light and culture in manufacturing districts. "The Universities teach and train ministers of religion, and they go and live in their parishes among their flocks all the year round. Why not send lecturers and teachers of secular subjects in the same way? A system something similar to the Wesleyan or Primitive Methodists' ministerial system would answer the purpose. The country might be divided into circuits of four or five centres each, and a University man stationed in each circuit, to organize Students' Associations, give lectures, hold classes, and superintend scientific experiments, as the case may be."
This is a good illustration. The Church professes to place in each parish an official teacher of religion and morality, and most of the Nonconformist communities do the same. To place an official teacher of culture (in its widest sense) in every parish is perhaps a task beyond our national powers as at present developed; but to place one in every industrial district is not conceivable only, but, I believe, practicable. The lecturer who comes from Oxford or Cambridge, delivers his course, and departs, has no doubt his uses. He is like the "Hot Gospeller" of an earlier age, or the "Missioner" of to-day. He delivers an awakening message, and many are the better for it; but if culture is to get hold of the average lads and young men of an industrial district, its exponent must be more like the resident minister, the endowed and established priest. That he should live among the people whom he is to instruct, know them personally, understand their ways of thinking and speaking, is at least as important as that he should be a competent historian or mathematician or man of letters. If the State, or voluntary effort, or a combination of the two, could secure the permanent presence of such a teacher in every district where men work hard, and yet have leisure enough to cultivate their intellects, a yawning gap in our educational system would be filled.
It would not be polite to mention actual names; but take by way of example such a district as Dickens's "Coketown," or Disraeli's "Wodgate," or George Eliot's "Milby," or any of those towns which Cobbett expressively called "Hell-Holes." Let the State establish in each of those places a qualified and accredited teacher for adult students. The teacher may, if necessary, be paid in part by voluntary subscription; but it is, in my view, all-important that he should have the sanction and authority of the State to give him a definite place among local administrators, and to the State he should be responsible for the due discharge of his functions. In Coketown or Wodgate or Milby his lecture-room would be a real Oasis—"a fertile spot in the midst of a desert." Even if it has not been our lot to dwell in those deserts, we all have had, as travellers, some taste of their quality. We know the hideousness of all that meets the eye; the necessary absorption in the struggle for subsistence; the resulting tendency to regard money as the one subject worth serious consideration; the inadequate means of intellectual recreation; the almost irresistible atmosphere of materialism in which life and thought are involved. The "Oasis" would provide a remedy for all this. It would offer to all who cared to seek them "the fairy-tale of science," the pregnant lessons of history, the infinitely various joys of literature, the moral principles of personal and social action which have been thought out "by larger minds in calmer ages."