[CHAPTER XI]
GENERAL PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION
Establishment of Compulsory Education in England—The Religious Controversy—Huxley Advocates the Bible without Theology—His Compromise on the "Cowper-Temple" Clause—Influence of the New Criticism—Science and Art Instruction—Training of Teachers—University Education—The Baltimore Address—Technical Education—So-called "Applied Science"—National Systems of Education as "Capacity-Catchers."
In the last chapter, the special relation of Huxley to scientific education was described, and, naturally enough, it is in special connection with scientific education that his influence is best known. But he was keenly interested in all the larger problems of general, university, and technical education, and he played a great part in shaping the lines upon which these problems have been solved in England.
In the years immediately before 1870, all England was wrestling with the great problem of elementary education, in the arrangements for which it was far behind not only the leading European countries but even its sister-kingdom, Scotland. In 1870 there came into operation an Act of Parliament for the regulation of elementary education under the supervision of locally elected school boards. Hitherto elementary education had been controlled by the Established Church, and by other denominational religious bodies, and the quality and quantity of the instruction provided, for financial and various other reasons, had been extremely unsatisfactory. But a long and furious battle had raged around the religious question; elementary education was now to be national, compulsory, and universal; where religious bodies maintained schools that complied with certain fixed standards of efficiency, attendance of children at these was to be regarded as satisfactory, and in addition to the ordinary subjects, such theological and religious teaching as the supporting bodies chose might be added. But in the schools for all and sundry, under the control of boards representing the whole population, and deriving that part of their income represented by the subscriptions of the religious bodies in the denominational schools from public rates, levied on the whole population, was any definite creed to be inculcated? The extreme Church party, perhaps naturally, held that the creed established by law in the land should be taught in these new schools; extreme supporters of other creeds, and a majority of ordinary people of all creeds or of no creeds, objected to a new establishment of a sectarian doctrine, even though that sectarian doctrine were the doctrine of the national religion. The final result of the dispute as codified in the Act of Parliament was what was known as the Cowper-Temple Clause: "No religious catechism or religious formulary which is distinctive of any particular denomination shall be taught in the school." The actual value of any clause, however it may appear to be a fair compromise, depends on the spirit in which it is practically interpreted, and no sooner had the Act been passed than the battle was renewed again over the interpretation of the clause. Many of the Church controversialists held that the liberal or more advanced party intended to exclude all reference to the Bible or to religion, on the plea that some sect could be found to which the most attenuated expression of religion would appear to be against the plain meaning of the clause, and Huxley, who had been in the forefront of the controversy, and who was a candidate for the first London School Board, was decried as an enemy of the Bible and of all religion and morality because he had expressed what he called a secular interpretation of the clause. In an article published in the Contemporary Review immediately after the election, Huxley explained precisely what he took the clause to mean, and, afterwards, at all events during the existence of the Board to which he was elected, succeeded in carrying out his intentions in the main.
His first general point was to deprecate the action of those extremists of both sides who tried to make the education of children a mere battle-ground of religious dogmas. He then laid down what he conceived to be the lines of most general utility upon which, under the provisions of the Act, the education of children should be conducted. In the foreground he placed physical training and drill, as of supreme importance to young children, especially in the case of the poor children of large towns.
"All the conditions of the lives of such are unfavourable to their physical well-being. They are badly lodged, badly housed, badly fed, and live from one year's end to another in bad air, without a chance of a change. They have no play-grounds; they amuse themselves with marbles and chuck-farthing, instead of cricket and hare-and-hounds; and if it were not for the wonderful instinct which leads all poor children of tender years to throw themselves under the feet of cab-horses whenever they can, I know not how they would learn to use their limbs with agility."