Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 1. No 1, June 1850

by Various

Upon none of the various classes of official men who have been employed for the last twenty years in introducing or extending social and administrative reforms, has a more delicate, invidious, and thankless task devolved, than upon those who have had the charge of the preliminary arrangements for a system of national education.

A growing sense of the importance of this great subject has been slowly manifesting itself since the close of last century. The Edgeworths diffused practical views of individual education. Lancaster demonstrated the possibility, by judicious arrangement, of imparting instruction to great numbers of children at once, and, by thus reducing the cost of education, of rendering it acceptable to the poorest. Before Lancaster entered the field some benevolent persons, among whom Nonconformists were the most numerous and active, had set on foot Sunday schools for the benefit of those whose week-day toil left them no leisure for mental cultivation. The High Church and Tory parties at first very bitterly opposed these Sunday and Lancaster schools; but finding the tide too strong against them, they set up Dr. Bell, as a Churchman, against Lancaster the Dissenter, and organized the National School Society in opposition to the British and Foreign School Society. Controversy, as usual, not only increased the numbers of those who took an interest in the discussion, but rectified and improved public opinion on the matters at issue. The Edinburgh Review took the lead, and for a considerable time kept it, as the champion of unsectarian education; and the wit and wisdom of Sydney Smith did invaluable service in this field.

The result was, that, very gradually, by means of individuals and private associations, opportunities of education were extended to classes who had not previously enjoyed them; improved methods of tuition were introduced; and the good work went on in an imperfect, scrambling, amorphous way till after the passing of the reform bill, and the establishment of the Whigs in power. From this time we have to date the first regular efforts—poor enough at first, lamentably inadequate still, but steadily and progressively increasing—to countenance and extend general education by the government and legislature.

The beginnings were very feeble, as we have said. From 1833 to 1838, £20,000 was annually voted for the promotion of educational purposes, and this paltry sum was administered by the Lords of the Treasury. Since 1839 the annual grant has been administered by the Committee of Council on Education, and its amount has been progressively augmented. From 1839 to 1842 inclusive it was £30,000 per annum; in 1843 and 1844 it was £40,000; £75,000 in 1845; £100,000 in 1846 and in 1847; and in 1848 it was raised to £125,000. The distribution of this grant being intrusted to a committee of council, the president became to a certain extent invested with the character of a Minister of Education. A machinery of government inspectors of schools was organized, and a permanent educational secretary attached to the committee. Not to mention other valuable results, we may add that the establishment of workhouse and factory schools, and the institution of the normal school for training teachers at Kneller Hall, are among the most prominent benefits for which we are indebted to this growing recognition of a care for the extension of general education as one of the duties of government.

When we thus look back on the twenty years since 1830, it can not be denied that a great advance has been made. We have now the rudiments of an educational department of government. The grants annually voted by parliament for educational purposes are still, it must be confessed, unworthily small, when contrasted with the sums freely voted for less essential objects; and the operations of the committee on education have been thwarted, impeded, and obstructed by all kinds of narrow-minded and vexatious opposition. Still we can console ourselves by the reflection that we have got an educational department of government; that the public mind is becoming familiarized with its existence, and convinced of its utility; and that its organization, slowly indeed, but surely, is being extended and perfected.

This was substantially admitted by Mr. Fox in the able speech introducing his supplementary educational plan to the House of Commons; and with the strongest sense of the merits and claims of the government measure, we find ourselves able very heartily to approve of the proposal of Mr. Fox. It would remedy the defects of the existing system with the least possible jar to existing prejudices. With nothing heretofore set on foot for the promotion of educational purposes would it in any way meddle—being addressed simply to the remedy of notorious defects, and for that purpose using and strengthening the machinery at present employed by government. It is on every account desirable that a fair and earnest consideration should be given to the second reading of this bill. It has been mixed up with other educational projects lately set on foot, and not a very correct impression prevails respecting it.

For here we must be allowed to remark, in passing, that of all the caviling and vexatious obstructions which the committee of council have had to encounter, the most ungracious and indefensible appear to have been those offered by advocates of unsectarian education less reasonable and considerate than Mr. Fox. We are not going to challenge any particular respect for the feelings of men in office. It is the well-understood fate of those who undertake reforms to be criticised sharply and unreflectingly; such unsparing treatment helps to harden them for the discharge of unpalatable duties; and even the most captious objections may be suggestive of improved arrangements. But making every allowance on this score, it remains incontrovertible that men entertaining sound abstract views respecting unsectarian education, and the importance of intrusting to the local public a large share in the control of educational institutions, like the members of the Lancashire School Association and others, have not only refused to make due allowance for the obstructions opposed to the committee of council on education by the prepossessions of the general public, but, by assuming an attitude of jealous opposition to it, have materially increased the difficulties with which it has had to labor. These gentlemen think no reform worth having unless it accord precisely with their preconceived notions; and are not in the least contented with getting what they wish, unless they can also have it in the exact way they wish it. Other and even more factious malcontents have been found among a class of very worthy but not very wise persons, who, before government took any charge of education, had exerted themselves to establish Sunday and other schools; and have now allowed the paltry jealousy lest under a new and improved system of general education their own local and congregational importance may be diminished, to drive them into a virulent opposition to any scheme of national education under the auspices or by the instrumentality of government. But all this parenthetically. Our immediate object is to comment upon an opposition experienced in carrying out the scheme of operations which the state of public opinion has compelled government to adopt, coming from the very parties who were most instrumental in forcing that scheme upon it.

The committee of council, finding it impossible, in the face of threatened resistance from various religious bodies, to institute schools by the unaided power of the secular authorities, yielded so far as to enter into arrangements with the existing societies of promoters of schools, with a view to carry out the object through their instrumentality. The correspondence commenced in 1845 under the administration of Sir Robert Peel, and the arrangements were concluded under the ministry of Lord John Russell in 1846. It was agreed that money should be advanced by government to assist in founding and supporting schools in connection with various religious communions, on the conditions that the schools should be open to the supervision of government inspectors (who were, however, to be restrained from all interference "with the religious instruction, or discipline, or management of the schools"), and that certain "management clauses," drawn up in harmony with the religious views of the respective communions, should be adhered to. On these terms arrangements were concluded with the National Society, representing the promoters of Church of England schools; with the British and Foreign School Society; with the Wesleyan body; and with the Free Church of Scotland. A negotiation with the Poor-school Committee of the Roman Catholic Church is still pending.

With the exception of the National Society all the bodies who entered into these arrangements with the Committee of Council have co-operated with it in a frank and fair spirit, and to good purpose. A majority of the National Society, on the other hand, have made vehement efforts to recede from the very arrangements which they themselves had proposed; and have at length concluded a tedious and wrangling attempt to cajole or bully the committee on education to continue their grants, and yet emancipate them from the conditions on which they were made, by passing, on the 11th of December last, a resolution which virtually suspends all co-operation between the society and government. The state of the controversy may be briefly explained.

The "management clauses" relating to Church of England schools are few in number. They relate, first, to the constitution of the managing committee in populous and wealthy districts of towns; second, to the constitution of the committee in towns and villages having not less than a population of five hundred, and a few wealthy and well-educated inhabitants; third, to its constitution in very small parishes, where the residents are all illiterate, or indifferent to education; and, fourth, to its constitution in rural parishes having a population under five hundred, and where, from poverty and ignorance, the number of subscribers is limited to very few persons. There are certain provisions common to all these clauses. The master, mistress, assistant teachers, managers, and electors, must all be bona fide members of the church; the clergyman is ex-officio chairman of the committee, with power to place his curate or curates upon it, and with a casting vote; the superintendence of the religious and moral instruction is vested exclusively in the clergyman, with an appeal to the bishop, whose decision is final; the bishop has a veto on the use of any book, in school hours, which he deems contrary to the doctrines of the church; in matters not relating to religious and moral instruction, an appeal lies to the president of the council, who refers it to one of the inspectors of schools nominated by himself, to another commissioner nominated by the bishop of the diocese, and to a third named by the other two commissioners. It must be kept in mind as bearing on the composition of such commissions, that the concurrence of the archbishop of the province is originally requisite in appointing inspectors of church schools, and that the third commissioner must be a magistrate and member of the church. We now come to the points of difference in these "management clauses." They relate exclusively to the constitution of the local school committees. In the first class of schools, the committee is elected by annual subscribers; in the second, it is nominated by the promoters, and vacancies are supplied by election; in the third it is nominated, as the promotions and vacancies are filled up, by the remaining members, till the bishop may direct the election to be thrown open to subscribers; in the fourth no committee is provided, but the bishop may order one to be nominated by the clergyman from among the subscribers.