An attractive evening class will have to be established for the instruction of boys who have to work for their livelihood during the day, and for apprentices. I have proposed that half the fees be given to the educational staff, to insure their taking a direct pecuniary interest in the evening class.
In concluding this report, I wish to state, that I am fully impressed with the great benefit that the establishment of good Navigation schools would confer directly on the Royal Navy, the Commercial Marine, and the country; and that I see every reason for believing, that if the schools are placed on a proper footing, the classes will be largely attended, and the schools will answer every purpose for which they are established. The limited number of thirty Navigation schools, which I have suggested, should be forthwith established, although only professing to assist in providing a sufficient supply of educated young men to fill up the vacancies among the masters and mates, yet can not fail to tell with the best effect on the commercial marine generally. For these well-educated lads, who, after leaving the Navigation schools, have to struggle through that large body, the seamen of the commercial marine, before they can win the prizes of their profession, must raise the tone of the class through which they pass.
If the thirty schools are established, and after two or three years are evidently working well, it will be worth considering whether more schools of a simpler and less expensive character should not be established to educate a sufficient number of lads fully to supply the vacancies in the seamen class.
The alterations I have proposed in the mode of payment of the educational staff are those upon which I desire to lay the most stress; they have had but one object in view, the making it the personal pecuniary interest of each member of the staff to devote himself zealously to those duties, and to no other, which the Department wishes him to perform. In individual cases, we might appeal to higher motives than these, but in dealing with a body of men, however upright and conscientious, I am firmly convinced that there is no safer course than the appealing to the lower motive in aid of the higher.
The plan of payment of the teachers of navigation schools generally, presented by Capt. Ryder, was substantially adopted by the Department having charge of this, class of schools, in 1860, but was changed to the following Minute in April, 1863, on the recommendation of Capt. Donnelly, for the purpose of restricting the efforts of the teacher, and the industry of the scholars, to the subject of Mathematics, Navigation, Nautical Astronomy, and the Use of Instruments, leaving general elementary studies to be mastered in other schools.
[Aid to Navigation Schools and Classes.]
I. Payments will be made by the Department only on the results of instruction in the following subjects:
1. Mathematics, including such portions of Algebra, Geometry, Mensuration, Plane and Spherical Trigonometry, Logarithms, as far as necessary for understanding Navigation and Nautical Astronomy.
2. General Navigation.
3. Nautical Astronomy.