SCHOOLS.
There are three schools in these two villages. One of them is a Dame school, or an unpretending private one, which I did not visit; but the two principal ones deserve attention from the students of our institutions and of English ones. They are public schools, although people pay for tuition. That in Haddenham is a National school, that in Stonea a British school. In the former, Mr. Rounce, the rector, is manager, and the doctrines of the Church of England are taught. The other, the British school, is under charge of a board, or of a committee, of which several members are dissenters.
I first visited the National or Church of England school. Eighty-one names were upon the roll and fifty in attendance at one of my visits. (Some little ones were at work in the fields, weeding, or perhaps hay-making.) Pupils may enter at two years. The printed form issued by government asks, “How many have you under three?” And by the obligatory law the schools can claim them at five.
Upon the walls of the school were several maps, a large printed copy of the Creed, large tablets of the Commandments, and little pictures from the Bible, with perhaps a few from natural history. The blackboard was an insignificant one, about four feet square. I observed the small amount of blackboard surface provided, and the youngest teacher said that in the British schools there is blackboard on the sides of the room.
There was in the school a little picture of the royal family. “We teach them loyalty to the queen,” said one of the teachers.
Connected with the school was an infant department. Here the blackboard measured about one foot by eighteen inches. There were a few objects upon the walls, but there seemed to me a general bareness of appliances for instruction.
This school is an endowed one, having fourteen acres of land; it has always been a National school, or one where the principles of the Church of England are taught. Five years ago it became a government school,—i.e., it has become an “efficient elementary school” under the government; it is examined by a government inspector, and for children coming up to the government standard the school receives a small sum in payment on each. These “results,” as they are called, all pass into the rector’s hands, as manager of the school, to be appropriated either toward the payment of teachers or for school apparatus. Here all apparatus is paid for from this fund.
For instruction of children farmers pay four cents a week for each child; others two. The parish pays for pauper children. The amount of the endowment and the government grant are not even enough, I am told, to pay the principal; and the two assistants are paid by the rector.
National or, in other words, Church of England schools are also visited by a diocesan inspector, appointed by the bishop to report their progress in “Holy Scripture, Prayer-Book, and Catechism.” This school having been reported very good last year, a gift of about seven dollars was made to the teacher and monitor.
Instruction must be given for four hundred sessions yearly, equivalent to two hundred days.