Practicable Socialism, New Series

by S. A. Barnett; Mrs. S. A. Barnett

8 November, 1909.

Thirty years ago the “bitter cry” of the poor disturbed the public mind. Housing has since been improved. Technical teaching has since been established. The expenditure on the Poor Law has been greatly increased. General Booth has raised the money for his social scheme. Philanthropy has redoubled its efforts, and taken new forms. But still the “bitter cry” is raised. The number of the unemployed is greater than ever. There is more vagrancy, which the Prison Commissioners complain is adding to the inmates of the prisons, and the amount spent on poor relief goes up by leaps and bounds. Royal Commissions, Departmental Committees, philanthropic conferences, scientific professors have been facing the problem which every year becomes more threatening to the national welfare. Their recommendations are many. The striking fact is that in one recommendation they all concur. The one thing which they agree to be necessary is further training for young people between the ages of thirteen and seventeen.

The report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education, lately published, gives the final word on the subject. The reports begin by showing that out of the 2,000,000 children in England and Wales who have passed their fourteenth birthday, and are still under seventeen years of age, only one in four receives on week-days any continued education. “The result is a tragic waste of early promise.” The children go out of the elementary schools, which have been built up at immense expense, and before they reach the age of seventeen, when the technical schools may be entered, many have acquired desultory habits, and lost the power of study. Released from school, they become idle and lawless, or they enter “blind alley” employments, and for the sake of high immediate wages, miss the chance of ultimate responsible employment. The Committee agree with the Poor Law Commissioners, “that the results of the large employment of boys in occupations which offer no opportunity of employment as men are disastrous,” and go on to quote the Minority Report: “The nation cannot long persist in ignoring the fact that the unemployed, and particularly the under-employed, are thus being daily created under our eyes out of bright young things, for whose training we make no provision”.

The Committee having brought out this extravagant waste of money and effort and young life, sets itself to consider a remedy. It suggests improvements in the day schools by giving a larger place in the curriculum to subjects which train the hand and eye, and develop the constructive powers. It further suggests that steps should be taken to prolong the school life of children, and it will be a surprise to many readers that under the age of thirteen years 5,300 every year pass out of school, and that the extension of the age to fourteen would involve the addition of 150,000 children to the registers. These numbers do not include the scholars now partially exempted from school attendance by the wisdom or unwisdom of managers, who may be estimated as numbering some 48,000 children, between thirteen and fourteen years of age. The Committee add their opinion that the law which permits half-time in the textile districts should be materially changed, and it goes on to recommend that “no children under sixteen should be allowed to leave the day school unless they could show to the satisfaction of the local education authority that they were going to be suitably occupied, and that such exemptions should only continue so long as they remained in suitable employment”.

This recommendation follows on evidence of how large a proportion of boys and girls enter forms of employment “which discourage the habit of steady work, lessen the power of mental concentration, and are economically injurious to the community, and deteriorating in their effect on individual character”. Employment or apprenticeship Committees have been formed, whose members spare no pains in advising the older scholars, and the parents of such scholars, in the choice of an occupation. They have done enough to show how much more might be done could the advice be driven home with more system and authority. If the recommendation were made the law, no child under sixteen would be allowed to enter upon industrial life without sufficient guidance, both as to the choice of a place, and as to continued education.

“Continued education,” whatever be the improvements in the day school or the laudation of exemption from attendance, comes thus to be regarded as the one thing necessary. “It is clear to the Committee that the lack of continued educational care during the years of adolescence is one of the deeper causes of national unemployment.”

Continuation schools have greatly developed during late years. They are more frequent, they offer teaching which is more attractive and more adapted to the social needs of the neighbourhoods in which they have been opened. Educational authorities and private organizations have taken pains to commend the schools and make them known. Employers have in some cases required attendance at continuation schools as a condition of employment, and in other cases have encouraged attendance by giving off-time, by payment of fees, and by the offer of prizes. Workpeople have taken pleasure in visiting the schools, and when they are represented on the management, get rid of some suspicions, often to become enthusiastic supporters.

Continuation schools may thus be said to have passed the period of experiment, and it is now recognized that the curriculum should neither be that of the old night-school, nor of the modern recreation evening. It should aim rather at providing a good general education, to equip men and women for intelligent citizenship, as well as to supply workers with technical knowledge, and with that adaptability which is one of the most valuable possessions of workpeople under modern conditions. It cannot too often be repeated that the aim of education is not to make machines, but to make men and women. People who know how to think and to reason, who have capacities for enjoyment which do not need the stimulus of excitement, will be more valuable citizens, and when they lose one form of work, will more readily take to another.

The right sort of continuation school is now known. Such schools increase yearly in number, and the attendances also increase, but the Committee has been led to the conclusion that voluntary methods alone will not solve the problem. There must be recourse to compulsory powers. In many districts the authorities are apathetic, in other districts voluntary methods are powerless against the ignorance and indifference of the people. The majority of employers, moreover, are indifferent, failing to recognize that closer care for the educational interest of their young employés would enhance their own profit, and the pupils are often too tired to attend any school. The law at present says, “Children are compelled to attend school till the age of thirteen,” it therefore creates the impression that at the age of thirteen the obligation ceases. The law alone can remove this impression, and it must in the future say: “Young people are compelled to attend continuation schools till the age of seventeen”.

The Committee, in coming to the conclusion that a compulsory system is necessary, has been confirmed in the conclusion by the elaborate organization of day and evening schools (continuation) in Germany and Switzerland, and by the movement in France for the extension of educational opportunities during the years following the conclusion of the day-school course. The Committee has also discovered signs of the growth of opinion in England in favour of such a course, and this Government has already adopted it in the Scotch Act of 1908. Out of eighty-nine witnesses examined on this question sixty declared themselves in favour of this compulsion, and of the twenty-nine who objected, many modified their objections. The Committee felt themselves justified in recommending that the example of the Scotch Act be followed, and that every local education authority should be required to establish suitable continuation classes, and that attendance should be made compulsory for all young persons under seventeen, when the local education authority make by-laws to that effect.