Wales

by William Watkin Davies

Coming to the nineteenth century, we find efforts to improve educational facilities in Wales so numerous and so varied as to be positively bewildering. The important date to remember is 1846. Prior to that landmark, efforts of a voluntary kind had been made by the National Society, and by the British Society. In that year a Royal Commission was appointed to make a thorough investigation into the condition of education in the Principality. When the Commission issued its report, a year later, a great outcry was raised in Wales; for it was discovered that it had gone much beyond the limits assigned to it for enquiry, and had made strictures, many of them demonstrably false, and others offensively expressed, upon the moral and religious condition of the people. The enquiry has been known in Wales, ever since, as "Brad y Llyfrau Gleision" (The Treason of the Blue Books). Nevertheless the Commission had done good work in that it had aroused interest in the question of education, and had impressed upon Parliament, and public men generally, the necessity of dealing with it. There was, in consequence, a decided quickening of the educational life of Wales; and, down to 1870, a steady increase in the number of schools, as well as an improvement in the quality of the teachers. In 1870 the separate history of elementary education in Wales comes to an end; for it was then assimilated in almost every respect to that of England.

An increase in the number of schools and scholars involved an increase also in the number of teachers; and to supply them proved to be one of the most difficult of problems. The salary paid was so low that no man who had been to a University could be expected to accept it. As yet there were no secular colleges in Wales, and but few secondary schools. A few truly excellent secondary schools there were; establishments like Ystrad Meurig, from which, for a considerable period, Bishops used to ordain young men without any additional training. The result was that schoolmasters were generally grossly incompetent, being one-legged army sergeants, or retired sailors, with no knowledge of Wales, and but little knowledge of anything. And not only were they ignorant, but they were also snobs of the most contemptible kind, toadying to the vicar and the squire, whose henchmen they were, and never hesitating to express their detestation and scorn of everything Welsh. A poor farm boy, who afterwards became one of Oxford's most brilliant scholars, has left, in his inimitable Clych Atgof, a half-amusing, half-pathetic account of his troubles in early life with teachers of this kind.

In 1846 there was only one normal college in the whole of Wales. To this were added two Church of England teachers' training colleges, the one at Carmarthen, the other at Bangor; and, in 1862, was established a second normal college. Sir Hugh Owen, one of the most illustrious names in the list of great Welshmen, had begun to agitate for a connecting link between elementary schools and places of higher education. No schools were then founded; but a "North Wales Scholarship Association" was formed; and this afforded much valuable assistance prior to the coming of the County School. The Magna Carta of secondary education in Wales was the Intermediate Education Act of 1889. This Act provided for the levying of a half-penny rate in all the Welsh counties by the County Councils. In every county a joint education committee was to be appointed to deal with existing endowments and buildings; and, where necessary, to provide new schools under the management of the recently appointed local bodies. In order that greater uniformity might be acquired, a Central Welsh Board was constituted, to which was entrusted the duty of supervising the schools generally, inspecting them, and examining the pupils. The Board continues to exercise some of its functions, but now shares a dual control with the Welsh Department of the Board of Education, a Department which was created as a concession to nationalist aspirations. From the commencement the success of the new Intermediate Schools was phenomenal. Schools starting with ten pupils would, in a dozen years, have two hundred or more. Of large gifts given by the rich there were very few. Apart from grants made by the Government, the schools depended upon the small, but generous, contributions of the poor. In the early days of their history they were admirably served by as devoted and far-sighted a body of teachers as any schools have ever been fortunate enough to possess. Only in recent years has the voice of hostile criticism been heard.

Side by side with reforms in elementary and secondary education marched the reform of higher education. The Established Church had depended upon Oxford and Cambridge for the training of its clergy; but the Dissenting Churches soon discovered the need of colleges of their own. The first to be founded seems to have been the Academy of Brynllywarch, in 1662. Eventually this was moved to Carmarthen, where it became the progenitor of the present College. We have already had occasion to allude to the founding of a college at Trevecka, by Lady Huntingdon; but this was moved to Cheshunt in 1792. A Welsh Methodist college was, however, opened there in 1842. In 1836 Dr. Lewis Edwards opened a Methodist college for North Wales at Bala. The Episcopal Church, feeling the need of a college at which living would be cheap, opened a college at Lampeter, and that became the first Welsh college possessing the power to confer degrees. Other denominations possessing colleges, many of them dating back to the eighteenth century or even earlier, reorganized them, and, in some cases, transferred them to new localities. In this way the Congregational colleges at Brecon and Bangor, and the Baptist college at Bangor came into existence.

But excellent as was the work done by these seminaries in preparing men for the Christian Ministry, educationally the central theme of interest is the movement which culminated in the foundation of the University of Wales. The idea was as old as Owen Glyndwr; it had been discussed by Cromwell; but it was not until 1853 that a powerful popular agitation was started on its behalf. A memorable meeting was held in London in the following year, attended by Hugh Owen, George Osborne Morgan, Lewis Edwards and others, at which the idea was fully debated. Nothing further, however, was done until 1863, when another meeting was held, at which a resolution in favour of a national University was carried, and an executive committee appointed. An attempt to persuade the authorities of Lampeter to unite in forming one unsectarian University failed; and the committee proceeded with the heavy task of collecting money. From 1871 until his death Sir Hugh Owen gave the whole of his time to this work. The appeal met with a warm response; and in 1872 Aberystwyth College was opened, having been secured literally with the pennies and the shillings of a hard-working peasantry. From the start it was felt to be a real national possession; and that feeling was deepened by the appointment of the saintly scholar-preacher, Dr. Thomas Charles Edwards, to be its first Principal. For ten years the College received no grant at all from the Treasury; yet it continued to flourish in ever-increasing measure. So successful was the venture that, in 1883, a similar College, for the use of South Wales, was opened at Cardiff; and in 1884 this was followed by one at Bangor. But so far the Colleges had no charter of incorporation, and were without the power to confer degrees. A further agitation in favour of an incorporation of the three Colleges in one University of Wales was set on foot. In this agitation the chief part was played by the Cymmrodorion, a society which, in the course of its long history, has conferred untold benefits upon Wales. When due investigation had been made, and the proposed charter had been fully discussed in Parliament, it was granted; and in 1893 the Welsh University came into being, with Lord Aberdare as its first Chancellor. Its success has been wonderful and sustained, and it is only with difficulty that the Colleges have been able to cope with the many hundreds of students who flock to them. So great has the pressure been, that it has since been found necessary to found a fourth constituent College, at Swansea. In most respects the Colleges are similar; but a particular branch of knowledge may be provided for in one, and not in the others. Thus Cardiff possesses a Medical School, Aberystwyth a Law School, and Bangor a Theological School. Aberystwyth is also the home of the Welsh Director of Musical Studies, and of the Wilson Chair of International Politics.

The work of the Universities has been helped and stimulated by the establishment of a National Museum at Cardiff, and a National Library at Aberystwyth.

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The political awakening in Wales came considerably later than the religious and the educational awakening; and when it did come it was largely as a consequence of the others. We have seen how, in the period of the Civil War, the Principality was almost wholly Royalist; and when two distinct political parties came to be formed at Westminster, in the closing years of the seventeenth century, it gave its steady support to the Tories. It is with shame that the historian is forced to admit that Welsh lawyers like the infamous Judge Jeffreys were among the most brazen and unscrupulous agents of Stuart tyranny. But just as there were a few Parliamentarians in Wales in the reign of Charles I, so also in the reign of James II there were a few prominent Welshmen, who gave strong support to the Revolution and the Bill of Rights. With the reign of Anne Wales settled down to the quiet Toryism from which it was not roused for over a hundred years. It is interesting to note that, as in the case of France, the first note of discord was heard among the men-of-letters. We hear it in the writings of Jack Glan-y-Gors, and in those of Iolo. But their rebellious sentiments found no echo in the hearts of the people; and the great leaders of the Revival were either strictly non-political, or else Tory. Nor did the French Revolution do much to rouse the country. An almost solitary exception was the philosopher-preacher Richard Price, the supporter of the American rebels, and the defender of the rights of man. He does not occupy a prominent place in history; but the man who occasioned the Reflections on the French Revolution of Burke, and who earned an able vindication from the pen of John Morley, certainly merits a passing allusion.