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 EDUCATION 
 
 IN THE 
 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 LECTURES 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE EDUCATION SECTION OF 
 
 THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 
 
 SUMMER MEETING IN AUGUST 1900 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 R. D. ROBERTS, M.A., D.SC.(LOND.) 
 
 SECRETARY FOR LECTURES OF THE LOCAL EXAMINATIONS AND 
 LECTURES SYNDICATE. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 1901 
 
 [All Rights reserved.}
 
 Cambridge: 
 
 PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
 
 L.H 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 ^l A 7"ITH two exceptions the Lectures included in this 
 volume formed the series on "Education in the 
 Nineteenth Century" delivered at the Summer Meeting for 
 University Extension Students and others held at Cambridge 
 in August, 1900. 
 
 The Syndicate for Local Examinations and Lectures in 
 making the arrangements for the Meeting selected as the 
 general subject, "Life and Thought in England in the Nine- 
 teenth Century." Special prominence was given to the subject 
 of Education, not only because of the large attendance of 
 Teachers. English and Foreign, but also on account of the 
 new and growing demand for fuller knowledge about Educa- 
 tion amongst those not engaged professionally in teaching, 
 but who either as parents or as citizens feel a general interest 
 in educational methods and reforms. 
 
 The Lectures were not intended to present a scientific 
 treatment of Education embracing technical details, but to 
 display broad historical treatment shewing the main advances 
 which have been made in different departments of Education 
 during the Nineteenth Century. The attendance at the Lectures 
 was so large and the interest displayed so keen as fully to
 
 vi Preface. 
 
 realise the expectations of the Syndicate that the series 
 would prove to be attractive as well as useful. 
 
 In consequence of numerous expressions of hope by many 
 who were present that the lectures would be printed, the matter 
 was laid before the Syndics of the University Press and this 
 volume is the result. It is hoped that the book will prove of 
 value and interest, not merely to those who heard the lectures 
 at the Cambridge Meeting, but also to a still wider circle of 
 readers anxious to know something of the remarkable advances 
 in Education which have been made in England during the 
 Nineteenth Century. There is beyond question still plenty 
 of room for reform and improvement, but when the condition 
 of things even half a century ago is compared with the 
 educational facilities that now exist, it is impossible not to be 
 impressed with the important advances which have been made 
 in many directions. 
 
 One further explanatory word is necessary. Although the 
 lectures in one sense form a whole and deal generally with the 
 educational advances in different departments, they were 
 prepared by the individual lecturers quite independently of 
 one another. Each lecturer was asked to deal with a par- 
 ticular subject, and in the nature of the case he had no 
 knowledge of how the other lecturers proposed to treat 
 their branches. It necessarily follows that the lectures are 
 not so closely linked together as would have been the case 
 if the lecturers had been in communication with each other 
 when the course was arranged. 
 
 Chapters X. and XI. are the exceptions referred to at the 
 beginning of this Preface and were not delivered as lectures 
 at the Meeting. The question of University Extension, while
 
 Preface. vii 
 
 it was discussed at two informal meetings, was not the subject 
 of a special lecture. To secure completeness however it has 
 been thought well, with his kind permission, to insert the paper 
 read by Sir Richard Jebb on that subject at the University 
 Extension Congress in Paris three days before the Summer 
 Meeting commenced. Owing to the serious illness of Dr 
 Sidgwick, Mrs Sidgwick was unable to deliver the lecture 
 which she had kindly promised to give, and she has been 
 good enough to put together the material which she would 
 have used in her lecture, in order that the important subject 
 of the Higher Education of Women might not be entirely 
 omitted from the volume. 
 
 In the name of the Syndicate I take this opportunity of 
 expressing the great indebtedness felt to all the distinguished 
 experts in Education who were so good as to accept the 
 invitation to lecture, and who so readily consented to allow 
 their lectures to be published in this volume. 
 
 R. D. ROBERTS. 
 
 SYNDICATE BUILDINGS, CAMBRIDGE. 
 1 4 January, 1901.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Christian Work in Public Schools, by the Rev. H. MONTAGU 
 BUTLER, D.D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; 
 formerly Headmaster of Harrow (1859-85) and Dean of 
 Gloucester (1885-6) i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Some Aspects of Theory and Practice in Infant Education, 
 
 by Miss AGNES WARD, Lecturer in Kindergarten Methods 
 under the London School Board, Examiner to the National 
 Froebel Union ; and formerly Principal of the Maria Grey 
 Training College 15 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Primary Education in the Nineteenth Century, by Sir JOSHUA 
 FITCH, M.A., LL.D., formerly Chief Inspector of Training 
 Colleges .......... 34 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Secondary Education Legislation, with Special Reference to 
 Problems awaiting Solution, by R. P. SCOTT, M.A., 
 LL.D., Headmaster of the Parmiter's School, and Hon. 
 Sec. of the Incorporated Association of Headmasters . 59
 
 x Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Secondary Education of Girls and the Development of Girls' 
 High Schools, by Miss F. GADESDEN, Certificated Student 
 in Honours, Girton College, Cambridge ; Headmistress of 
 the Blackheath High School 81 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Teaching of History in England during the Nineteenth 
 Century, by H. L. WITHERS, M.A., Professor of Educa- 
 tion in the Owens College of the Victoria University . . 106 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Teaching of Science in Schools, by C. W. KIMMINS, 
 M.A., D.Sc. (Lond.), Secretary to the London Society 
 for the Extension of University Teaching, and Inspector 
 of Science Teaching to the Technical Education Board of 
 the London County Council . . . . . . 121 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Industrial Education, by Sir PHILIP MAGNUS, B.Sc., B.A., 
 Superintendent of Technological Examinations, City and 
 Guilds of London Institute ...... 140 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Training of Teachers, by Miss E. P. HUGHES, Associate 
 of Newnham College, Cambridge ; formerly Principal of 
 the Cambridge Training College for Women . . . 171 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The University Extension Movement, by Sir RICHARD JEBB, 
 Litt.D., D.C.L., LL.D., M.P., Regius Professor of Greek 
 in the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Trinity 
 College 193
 
 Contents. xi 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Higher Education of Women, by Mrs HENRY SIDGWICK, 
 
 Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge ... 201 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 National Education and Social Ideals, by M. E. SADLER, M.A., 
 Christ Church, Oxford ....... 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Outlines of the Development of Educational Ideas during the 
 Nineteenth Century, by W. REIN, Ph.D., Professor of 
 Pedagogy in the University of Jena .... 240
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHRISTIAN WORK IN PUBLIC 
 SCHOOLS, 
 
 BY 
 
 DR MONTAGU BUTLER. 
 
 THE subject on which I have been called to address you is 
 "Some Aspects of Christian Work in the igth Century." One 
 aspect of such work will to-day engage our thoughts. It is 
 the efforts of good men to bring not only healthy but distinctly 
 Christian influences to bear on our great Public Schools. 
 
 It cannot, I fear, be questioned that during (we will say) 
 the 1 8th Century and, roughly speaking, the first quarter of 
 the i gth, such distinctly Christian efforts were conspicuous by 
 their absence. There were indeed many earnest Christian 
 schoolmasters between 1700 and the time of Arnold; but the 
 conception of school life as a training in Christ both for boys 
 and masters, and the ambition of serving Christ as part of a 
 schoolboy's school ideal these things were either no longer or 
 not yet. 
 
 The evidence for this conclusion is to my mind as irresist- 
 ible as it is painful. I can but touch upon it. I find one 
 admirable man, with special opportunities of judging, writing 
 in 1844, "The tone of young men at the University" and 
 s. M. L. i
 
 2 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 he went to Balliol about 1825 "the tone of young men, 
 whether they came from Winchester, Eton, Rugby, Harrow, or 
 wherever else, was universally irreligious." 
 
 I find another saying, " The religious teaching in my school 
 days was not a strong point either in or outside our Chapel." 
 Another, " It cannot be said that our religious training was 
 sufficiently attended to. All that my Tutor did for me at 
 Confirmation was to ask whether I could say the Catechism, 
 to which I said 'Yes.' In no case was Confirmation followed 
 up by the Holy Communion ; in short, as regards the school, it 
 was, I fear, a thing unknown." This was in 1824. Yet again 
 another witness, " At my school we were literally without re- 
 ligious guidance " ; and yet another, " I received no religious 
 instruction whatever of any kind " ; and yet another, " In my 
 day not only no boys took the Lord's Supper, but no one 
 dreamed of it." 
 
 We know, my friends, that charges of this kind would not 
 be made against the great schools now. Can we, then, fairly 
 " locate " the beginning of a change, and can we connect the 
 change with one or more names ? I think we can. 
 
 It was in the year 1827, "the year that classic Canning 
 died," and that saw the publication of Keble's Christian Year, 
 that Thomas Arnold was elected Head Master of Rugby. 
 He was thirty-two years of age. His friends expected much 
 from him, and perhaps feared something. One of the "pro- 
 phecies" which "went before" upon him was from his lifelong 
 friend, Edward Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, who predicted that 
 "if Mr Arnold were elected, he would change the face of 
 education all through the public schools of England." 
 
 Such a testimonial, if now given to a candidate, might 
 probably blast all his hopes. But seventy years ago the twelve 
 noblemen and gentlemen of Warwickshire were, it would seem, 
 men of stout heart, and prepared to stomach even a Luther. 
 Arnold was elected in December 1827, and met his boys in the 
 following August.
 
 I.] Christian Work in Public Schools. 3 
 
 What, then, was the "aspect of Christian work" which 
 presented itself to his eager gaze ? What was his own concep- 
 tion of it? Had he before him any clearly cut design? Could 
 he have said what Edward Thring said, when asked whether 
 the structural and other ideas of Uppingham had grown upon 
 him as he advanced in his work, " No, among my papers 
 I can show you the sketch, almost in detail, of everything 
 I proposed to do, and which you now see here, just as I made 
 it in the very first years of my mastership " ? 
 
 I doubt if Arnold, on leaving his private Tutorship at Lale- 
 ham, had any such working model in his study or in his brain. 
 At the same time, he had doubtless a clear conviction that 
 there was a real Christian work to be done at Rugby, and that 
 he, with God's help, could do it. Writing to an intimate friend 
 just before the election, he says, " If I do get it, I feel as if 
 I could set to work very heartily, and, with God's blessing, 
 I should like to try whether my notions of Christian education 
 are really impracticable ; whether our system of public schools 
 has not in it some noble elements which, under the blessing 
 of the Spirit of all holiness and wisdom, might produce fruit 
 even to life eternal." 
 
 And yet again, some two months after the election, "With 
 regard to reforms at Rugby, give me credit, I must beg of you, 
 for a most sincere desire to make it a place of Christian educa- 
 tion. At the same time, my object will be, if possible, to 
 form Christian men ; for Christian boys I can scarcely hope to 
 make." 
 
 Now, my friends, so far as I can judge, this is a new 
 voice in the English world. The hour has come, and a man 
 has arisen who is equal to the demand of the hour. 
 
 As to his first "throw off," there is but little evidence. I do 
 not gather, nor is it at all likely, that he made any speech or 
 issued any kind of manifesto on first taking office. Even his 
 earliest published sermons do not cover just this interval of space. 
 According to Stanley, during his first half year he confined
 
 4 Education in tlte Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 himself to delivering short addresses, of about five minutes' 
 length, to the boys of his own house. But from the second 
 half year he began to preach frequently ; and from the autumn 
 of 1831, when he took the Chaplaincy, he preached almost 
 every Sunday to the end of his life, i.e. for thirteen years. 
 
 It is of course impossible in a lecture like this to give any 
 adequate account of these sermons, once so famous and so 
 potent for good. If we were to call witnesses, they would be 
 the boys who heard them, and the readers who have loved 
 them the boys as painted in Tom Brmvn, and the readers, 
 some of whom have become in their turn preachers. Hastily 
 but very carefully written, they are not so much writing as 
 talk grave, very grave talk, heart to heart, soul to soul ; talk 
 from a grown-up man to boys of various ages to whom he is 
 affectionately drawn not only by his office but by " all that is 
 within him," and "for whose everlasting good, as Christian 
 men," he feels profoundly responsible to God. 
 
 Such talk from a schoolmaster to schoolboys had not, to 
 the best of my knowledge, been heard for centuries. For the 
 last fifty years it has been heard, with more or less of likeness, 
 and of course with very different degrees of power, in almost 
 every boarding-school all over England. 
 
 Many new schools have come into being ; some absolutely 
 new, like Wellington, Haileybury, Clifton, Fettes, the Leys, 
 Cheltenham ; others virtually re-founded, like Sherborne, 
 Sedbergh, Marlborough, Uppingham. Week by week a suc- 
 cession of Head Masters, many of them once Rugby boys or 
 Rugby Assistant Masters, have striven hard to hold up before 
 schoolboys not only lessons of honour and manliness and 
 good fellowship, but lessons directly Christian ; faith in Christ, 
 brotherhood in Christ, consecration to Christ, forgiveness for 
 Christ's sake, prayer in Christ's Name, Missions at home and 
 abroad in Christ's Name, reverence for the poor in Christ's 
 Name, love of Christ's Church, of Christ's Sacraments, above 
 all of Christ's Person.
 
 I.] Christian Work in Public Schools. 5 
 
 This is, surely, one "aspect of Christian work." Many 
 grateful testimonies have been borne to the part played in 
 it by one most faithful and true Pastor. One of these, almost 
 too sacred to quote publicly, is in the well-known poem of his 
 brilliant son, Rugby Chapel. It gives, surely, and only as poets 
 can give, the very ideal of a Christian teacher. 
 
 But thou would'st not alone 
 Be saved, my father ! alone 
 Conquer and come to thy goal, 
 Leaving the rest in the wild. 
 We were weary, and we 
 Fearful, and we, in our march, 
 Fain to droop down and to die. 
 Still thou turnedst, and still 
 Beckonedst the trembler, and still 
 Gavest the weary thy hand, 
 Cheerful, and helpful, and firm. 
 
 Therefore to thee it was given 
 Many to save with thyself; 
 And, at the end of thy day, 
 O faithful shepherd ! to come, 
 Bringing thy sheep in thy hand. 
 
 There are those who have questioned both the depth and 
 the extent of Arnold's influence. A few years ago a brilliant 
 and not unkindly writer startled many of his readers with the 
 following sentence : " Dr Arnold unquestionably made a deep 
 impression on those boys who were brought into close com- 
 munication with himself, but I cannot find that his influence 
 over the school survived longer than that of any subsequent 
 Head Master ; while upon other schools, so far as I have been 
 able to ascertain, he produced I believe it is not too much to 
 say no effect whatever." 
 
 I hope I am not quite unable to enjoy a daring paradox or 
 a delicate stroke of irony, but I must confess that this last 
 clause produces on me much the same effect as the famous dis- 
 covery years ago that " Shakespeare is a vastly overrated man."
 
 6 Education in the Nineteenth Centnty. [CHAP. 
 
 " No effect whatever on other schools ! " 
 
 We shall hear shortly the testimony of Moberly as to 
 Winchester, Moberly, who differed so widely from Arnold as a 
 churchman and a theologian. But what would be the witness 
 of Prince Lee, who went from Rugby to Birmingham, after 
 being from 1830 to 1838 an assistant of Arnold; of Cotton 
 and Bradley, who both went from Rugby to re-found and re- 
 inspire Marlborough ; of Charles Evans, Percival, and Wilson, 
 who all went from Rugby to found Clifton ; of Benson, who 
 went from Birmingham and Rugby to found Wellington ; of 
 Arthur Butler, who went from Rugby to found Haileybury ; of 
 Bradby, Rugbeian of Rugbeians, and of James Robertson, who 
 succeeded Butler there ; of Jex-Blake, who went from Rugby to 
 preside over Cheltenham, and then returned to his old school, 
 bent on renewing and deepening its old Arnoldian traditions ? 
 
 No, paradox is paradox, and truth is truth. The prophecy 
 of Provost Hawkins has been more than fulfilled. The young 
 man who was selected by the Rugby Trustees at the end of 
 1827 has, under God, and by his quickening influence on 
 minds very different both from his own and from one another, 
 " changed the face of education all through the public schools 
 of England." 
 
 But here let us guard against an obvious error. It is not of 
 course my object to claim for Arnold that he alone originated 
 efforts for Christianizing life and work at schools ; or that the 
 lines on which he worked were the only true lines ; or that but 
 for him nothing would have been done. 
 
 Let us pass for a few moments from Rugby to Winchester, 
 not forgetting that Arnold himself was a loyal son of that 
 oldest of all old foundations. Winchester has always had both 
 her Cathedral and her school Chapel, long of course before the 
 Reformation. Her traditions are not religious only but ecclesi- 
 astical. More than two hundred years ago, in the bad times of 
 Charles II., we find the saintly Ken thus addressing his young 
 imaginary schoolfellow : " O Philotheus, you cannot enough
 
 I.] Christian Work in Public Schools. 7 
 
 thank God for the order of the place you live in, where there is 
 so much care taken to make you a good Christian as well as a 
 good scholar ; where you go frequently to prayers every day in 
 the chapel and in the school, so that you are in a manner 
 brought up in a perpetuity of prayer." 
 
 This was the tradition. How its light had gradually 
 waned, I do not know; but in 1835, seven years after Arnold 
 went to Rugby, there were at least two very earnest and very 
 able men who strove hard to revive it, Bishop Moberly, the 
 Head Master, and Bishop Charles Wordsworth, the Lower 
 Master. They had been simultaneously appointed in 1835. 
 
 In Wordsworth's Annals of my Life there are some deeply 
 interesting particulars as to how he went to work ; how he 
 strove to make prayer in the dormitories a regular practice, 
 and how on one memorable evening, Easter Eve, 1838, he got 
 a promise from the Prefects to enforce silence. And this, on 
 Wordsworth's part, was, so to speak, original. Moberly, it is 
 true, says, " I owe more to a few casual remarks of Arnold than 
 to any advice or example of any other person " ; but Words- 
 worth tells us explicitly that he "knew nothing of the great 
 work which Arnold had been doing for ten years. He had 
 never seen or even heard of his Sermons preached at Rugby." 
 
 The work of the two friends at Winchester was mainly on 
 what may be called " High Church " lines. Wordsworth him- 
 self writes : " The truth is, there was (in those years) a general 
 awakening, which in many instances, as with us at Winchester, 
 partook decidedly of a Church character, such as Arnold's 
 teaching and example, however excellent in their way, had 
 little or no tendency to create." This, I may say, is fully 
 borne out by his own work, Christian Boyhood at a Public 
 School, which consists of over fifty discourses delivered between 
 1842 and 1846. 
 
 During most of the time that Charles Wordsworth was at Win- 
 chester, his brother Christopher, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, 
 was working in much the same spirit at Harrow. He was
 
 8 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 appointed Head Master in 1836, in succession to Archbishop 
 Longley. One of his first acts, and it was a brave "venture 
 of faith " considering the small number of boys then in the 
 school, was to build for the first time a School Chapel. This 
 Chapel, together with his volume of School Sermons and his 
 work entitled Theophilus Anglicamis, are the chief visible 
 memorials of his religious influence as a Schoolmaster. Him- 
 self a saintly man, of rare beauty of character, he came at an 
 unpropitious time. He was known as a High Churchman, 
 and in the years between the publication of Tract XC. t 1841, 
 and 1845, when Newman joined the Church of Rome, a High 
 Churchman was a "suspect." 
 
 Dr Wordsworth left Harrow at the end of 1844, an d was 
 succeeded by Dr Vaughan, who, for just fifteen years at Harrow, 
 and afterwards for forty-three years, as Vicar of Doncaster, 
 Master of the Temple, and Dean of Llandaff, was destined to 
 leave a deep-set mark on the spiritual life of his time. He was 
 known, when he came to Harrow at the age of twenty-eight, 
 as a brilliant Cambridge scholar, as the son of that " Vaughan 
 of Leicester " who was for many years an enlightened leader in 
 the Evangelical party, and above all as a favourite pupil of 
 Arnold. The two Head Masters were singularly unlike each 
 other, in look, in voice, in manner, in range of learning, in 
 variety of interests, in theological bias. But there can be no 
 doubt that Vaughan brought to the service of Harrow much of 
 the Christian spirit of Arnold, besides those keenly tempered 
 gifts which were peculiarly his own. He was far indeed from 
 being a copyist of any man. He was even jealous of its being 
 supposed that life at Harrow was in any way an imitation of 
 life at Rugby. But writing at the close of his first year at 
 Harrow, 1845, in the preface to his first volume of Sermons, 
 he could not but own his debt to his great master so lately 
 and so suddenly called away. " It will," he says, " be seen at 
 once how much help I have derived, in the subjects of some, 
 and the general tone of all, from those addressed by Dr Arnold
 
 I.] Christian Work iu Public Schools. 9 
 
 to a like congregation. I find more and more how widely he 
 has occupied this ground." 
 
 I must not attempt to describe the "Christian work" 
 which Dr Vaughan attempted and carried through during his 
 fifteen years at Harrow. My judgment of it, even if true, would 
 certainly not be impartial. He has laid me and hundreds of 
 other pupils under such spiritual obligations as make im- 
 partiality a heartless phrase. But I can say, without reserve, 
 that at no time in my life have I been so conscious of living 
 in a directly Christian atmosphere, with Christian ideals of 
 duty habitually set up for reverence, as during the happy years 
 when he presided over Harrow. The main cause was no 
 doubt his impressive personality ; his remarkable combination 
 of deep devoutness with wit, penetration, and delicate sym- 
 pathy ; his quiet tenacity of purpose, and an inborn almost 
 humorous sense of masterfulness which no softness of manner 
 could disguise. But doubtless the spell of this personality was 
 confirmed week by week by his admirable sermons, so keen in 
 their insight, so tender in their touch, so winning in their 
 expression, so rich in the fulness of Christ. 
 
 It is easy to overrate, but it is quite as easy to underrate, 
 the lasting power of sermons. All I can say is, and many still 
 living would gratefully concur, that these sermons of our dear 
 master, as summed up in his Memorials of Harrow Sundays, 
 have been to hundreds of us the day-star of our lives. 
 
 No sketch, however slight, of Christian work at Public 
 Schools can omit the thirty-four years of Edward Thring at 
 Uppingham. Beyond all doubt he was a most original man. 
 His ideas, his plans, his methods, his manner of speech, his 
 whole bearing towards Trustees and Commissioners, boys and 
 masters, were his own. Consciously, he borrowed nothing. 
 He framed his schemes early in life, and pushed them forward 
 with the energy of a Caesar. 
 
 From first to last he was haunted by one fruitful thought : 
 no boy at school was fairly dealt with unless his surroundings
 
 io Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 were favourable to his health, physical, mental, and moral. 
 The schoolrooms must be large, light, cheery, well fur- 
 nished with good desks, seats, maps, and the like. The 
 large room in which they met must be stately. The Chapel 
 must be noble, awe-inspiring. In the long run, what he often 
 humorously called the "almighty wall" must tell upon the 
 feelings, the imaginations, the memories. By the "almighty 
 wall" I understand him to have meant all that is structural 
 and material. They are not the highest things in education ; 
 but unless they are high, the highest cannot be attained. 
 Sordid surroundings, overcrowded boarding houses, black, 
 forbidding, low, ill-lighted rooms, anything suggestive of the 
 barracks or the workhouse these are an insult to a liberal 
 education. 
 
 He himself once explained very clearly to his Trustees, 
 after they had had twenty-two years of him, without perhaps 
 even then understanding him, what had been his aims since 
 he first entered their service. " The two facts," he said, " on 
 which the present school has been built up are very simple and 
 easily stated. They are these two truths : Firstly, the neces- 
 sity in a true school that every boy, be he clever or stupid, 
 must have proper individual attention paid to him. If he has 
 not, the boy who has not, so far as he is neglected, is not at 
 school. 
 
 "Secondly, that proper machinery for work, proper tools, of 
 all sorts, are at least as necessary in making a boy take a given 
 shape, as in making a deal box. Out of these two axioms," he 
 continues, "the present school of Uppingham has grown." 
 
 Had he desired to formulate the chief moral aim of his 
 school, he might have said " true work " no shams, no half 
 and half, no shirking, but good, true work by every boy, be- 
 cause every boy can do something well, at all events he can do 
 his best. 
 
 All that has been said so far might have been said of any 
 original, clear-sighted, conscientious man. But Thring was
 
 I.] Christian Work in Public Schools. 1 1 
 
 much more than this. He was also a humble, brave, fervid 
 Christian. His faithful pupil and biographer, Mr Parkin, is 
 certainly not going one whit beyond the truth when he says 
 "that no one can gauge Edward Thring's work and character 
 unless he understands the supreme influence on his life of the 
 belief, nay, the passionate conviction, that education was in a 
 special sense a work for God. The feeling indeed that in 
 training young lives he was doing a special and direct work for 
 God dominated his own life and all his views of school life. 
 It gave him his starting point for practical work." 
 
 Yes, my friends, of the many holy men and women who, 
 in this fast fleeting century, have done good " Christian work " 
 for God, a high place must always be accorded little as he 
 would have cared for any praise but the love of his old 
 pupils to the devotion, the faith, the patience, the trust, the 
 dauntless self-consecration of Edward Thring. 
 
 Five years after the re-founding of Uppingham another 
 Founder appeared on the scene. In the spring of 1858 Edward 
 White Benson was appointed the first master of Wellington 
 College. Few men could be less like one another either in 
 appearance or in character than Benson and Thring. Yet in 
 reading what is written of the one Founder one is often 
 reminded of the other ; for each was essentially original, 
 creative, constructive, autocratic, " fervent in spirit," rapid in 
 temper and in action. 
 
 The following sentences by a shrewd friend of Benson have 
 quite an Uppingham ring. " He at once impressed me with 
 confidence and interest. The masters were made to feel from 
 the first that they were helping to work out a new plan. In- 
 stinctively we saw that there were grand possibilities in the 
 College as it grew under his hand.... There was very little 
 experience among the masters, but much enthusiasm. He 
 taught us one great lesson to be self-sacrificing for the 
 College, to be ready to give, and to enjoy giving, time, money, 
 thought, and whatever ability we possessed, to its developmen
 
 12 Education in tJie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 on every side, to the building and decoration of the Chapel, to 
 the organization of the games and of the work in school." 
 
 As to the directly Christian aspect of his work, it is perhaps 
 enough to remember that he became the Chancellor of Lincoln, 
 the Bishop of Truro, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. "There 
 was nothing in his whole Wellington life," so his son tells us, 
 " in which my father took such constant delight as the Chapel 
 and the Chapel service." He preached regularly, so we learn 
 from his widow, every Sunday morning. He used to think of 
 the sermon during the week, but he seldom put pen to paper 
 till the first service was over, about 10 o'clock. And he had 
 to preach the sermon at the 12 o'clock service. 
 
 Those who know his Sermons on Boy-Life, and how packed 
 they are with thought as well as feeling, may be surprised at 
 this seeming hurry ; but when the heart of an able man is full, 
 it becomes "the pen of a ready writer." It was the same with 
 the simple, massive talk of Arnold and the finished, tender 
 appeal of Vaughan. Both were produced at what might seem 
 to some " fever heat," but there was no other sign of fever in 
 them. 
 
 There is yet another piece of constructive and eminently 
 Christian work which I can but touch. I refer to the almost 
 heroic achievement of the late Canon Woodard. It is right to 
 own that I have no first-hand knowledge of himself or his 
 system. But there may be some here who, like myself, may be 
 not only gratified but even startled to learn how vast a bulk of 
 Christian work in the cause of education stands credited to his 
 name. His working years were, roughly speaking, from 1851 to 
 1880, much the same period as that of Thring. He conceived 
 the grand design of founding, by means of a society, all over 
 England three distinct grades of schools, for the gentry, the 
 upper middle class, and the poorer classes. These schools 
 were avowedly on High Church lines, "in the doctrines and 
 principles of the Church now established, and under the direc- 
 tion of clergymen and laymen in communion with the Church."
 
 I.] Christian Work in Public Schools. 13 
 
 Already upwards of half a million has been expended on 
 this group of schools. From the short account of the Founder 
 in the Dictionary of National Biography, I gather that there 
 are at least nine of them for boys, and at least three for girls. 
 Many thousands of boys and girls must already have been 
 trained there. A great work for forty years ! That great 
 preacher and thinker, the late Professor James Mozley, has 
 devoted to these schools three of his most thoughtful sermons. 
 
 " And what shall we more say ? For the time would fail 
 me to tell of" other Christian foundations; of the High Church 
 College at Radley, founded by Sewell ; of the Wesleyan, " The 
 Leys," founded by Dr Moulton, here at our very gates ; of the 
 Evangelical work at Liverpool College by Conybeare, Dean 
 Howson and Canon George Butler ; or again at Repton by that 
 admirable man Stewart Pears, whom I remember in my boy- 
 hood as an Assistant Master at Harrow. Still less is there 
 time to enter upon another great parallel movement, the wide- 
 spread establishment of Schools for Girls, like that founded by 
 Miss Buss in North London, which only a few months since 
 held its solemn Jubilee in St Paul's Cathedral, the roll of 
 benefactors being read out by the Bishop of London, and the 
 sermon preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 My friends, I have told you a long story, and yet you must 
 see that our chief difficulty has been to suppress. 
 
 The last three-quarters of our century must always surely 
 stand out well in the records of Christian work at our Public 
 Schools. The evidence is complete that the effort not only 
 to improve their intellectual culture but to penetrate their life 
 with the true Christian spirit has, at least since the time of 
 Arnold, been earnest and continuous. 
 
 Is there any reason to fear that the tide so long flowing is 
 beginning to ebb ? One fact is certain that the proportion of 
 clergy to laymen among the Masters is nothing like what it was 
 even twenty years ago. It is more and more difficult I speak 
 as a Governor of four of our chief schools, and as one intimately
 
 14 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. I. 
 
 acquainted with many others to secure as a Head Master a 
 man who is at once in Holy Orders and also in the very front 
 ranks of University distinction. I hold it to be certain that 
 during the coming century the chief posts at the Public Schools 
 will be largely held by laymen. Nor would this prospect have 
 any terrors for me if only it be understood by the coming 
 generations, as it has been by our own, that one of the chief 
 qualifications for a Head Master is to care for the spiritual 
 growth of his boys, and if, in consequence of this belief, it be 
 one of his recognized duties to speak to them constantly, if not 
 weekly, from the Chapel pulpit. This has been done already 
 by laymen from not a few pulpits, and with the happiest 
 results. It is by extending this system far more widely, and, if 
 necessary, removing any legal obstacles, that I seem to see the 
 best guarantee for the maintenance of what has been, under 
 God, one of the chief religious forces of our time. 
 
 A Head Master of a boarding-school who had no desire to 
 speak habitually to his boys of God, of sin, of the words and 
 works of Christ, of the consecration of their lives to Christ, 
 both in boyhood and manhood, would in my judgment have 
 mistaken his calling. A Head Master, whether lay or clerical, 
 is a Pastor, or he is nothing. That lesson at least has been 
 taught us by one aspect of Christian work in the reign of 
 Queen Victoria.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SOME ASPECTS OF 
 
 THEORY AND PRACTICE IN 
 
 INFANT EDUCATION, 
 
 BY 
 
 Miss AGNES WARD. 
 
 [The writer desires to acknowledge the help derived from, amongst 
 others mentioned in the text, The Child and his Book, Mrs Field; Child 
 Life in Colonial Days, Mrs Morse-Earle.] 
 
 YEARS before the igth Century dawned Saint-Cyran (that 
 great, if sombre, genius who moulded Jansenism and with- 
 stood the Jesuits in the heyday of their power and success) 
 denned the teacher's calling as une tempete de resprit. The 
 phrase is significant: Uttered 100 years before Rousseau's 
 decisive dogma, that in "the return to Nature" lay the uni- 
 versal panacea for all the ills of a rotting civilisation, Saint- 
 Cyran's phrase went, sounding at once the knell of hope 
 and ringing out that irresistible summons to pity and tenderness 
 in dealing with the weakness and ignorance of childhood which 
 sanctifies and irradiates the Jansenist conception of education. 
 
 Two hundred and fifty years have passed since Saint-Cyran's 
 incisive phrase rang out: but whether its echoes are yet silent 
 may well be doubted by those who note the confused and con-
 
 1 6 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 fusing ideas which inspire our theory and practice of education 
 in the present day. The confusion probably lies rather deeper 
 than at first sight appears. I hope to indicate what I take to 
 be one of its causes, and, if I do not seem unduly optimistic, to 
 suggest the lines on which some result more consoling, some 
 vista more inspiring, may be reached. 
 
 When the igth Century opened the child was still in 
 disgrace, except from the point of view of the Revolutionary 
 theorist. The costumes of children in the first half of our 
 century are not without significance. They are in general 
 abbreviated editions of those worn by their elders. Frills, 
 feathers, reticules, sandals, shoe buckles, trousers and short- 
 waisted jackets remind the child at every turn that he is a 
 growing animal, immature and therefore awkward a being 
 whose very clothes emphasize the antagonism between his 
 physical instincts and the demands of conventionality. Clothes 
 are, as a matter of fact, the first signs which a child understands 
 from close personal experience of the restrictions imposed by 
 an alien civilisation on his nascent liberty. Locke, as we all 
 know, advocated bad shoes as a necessary part of that harden- 
 ing practice which physically he desired : Rousseau, wiser 
 amid all his extravagances than Locke, attacked swaddling 
 clothes, heated rooms, unnatural diet, and eloquently and 
 forcibly preached the duty and necessity of personal hygiene, 
 of simple habits, of fresh air and activity, of a development of 
 self-reliance in place of luxurious habits, dependence on others, 
 and artificial standards of life. But in spite of teaching such as 
 this, the Infant of the igth Century was still tied and bound in 
 garments which, however much they delighted adult rela- 
 tions, must have worried and heated and pricked and 
 scratched the tiny, soft-fleshed, gelatinous baby. Conservatism 
 in baby-clothes is, when we consider the point, still stubborn. 
 In the Tudor Exhibition of some few years ago some baby- 
 clothes were exhibited. These were said to be the work of the 
 Princess (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth for the expected child
 
 II.] Infant Education. 17 
 
 of Mary Tudor. In fashion and execution they differed 
 scarcely at all from the modern layettes with which the modern 
 baby of well-to-do parents is greeted, and tortured. After 
 infancy, clothes became for children much what they were for 
 adults, but fashioned with a determined intention of hardening 
 young lives and innuring them to extremes of temperature. 
 Bare arms, necks, chests, legs, were the rule and a rigorous 
 enforcement of early rising, chilly rooms, and cold water was 
 common enough to make us believe that Charlotte Bronte's 
 picture of Cowan Bridge is not exaggerated 1 . Indeed we need 
 but turn to Arthur Young's Autobiography and read the touch- 
 ing pages which record the brief school experiences of his darling 
 little daughter in 1797 to realise how, even in the case of the 
 well-to-do, the physical helplessness of childhood was treated. 
 
 " I brought my dear angelic child (aged 14) with me (to London) who 
 went to school in January in good health but never in good spirits for she 
 abhorred school. Oh ! what infatuation ever to send her to one. In the 
 country she had health, spirits and strength, as if there were not enough 
 with what she might have learned at home, instead of going to that region 
 of constraint and death Camden House. The rules for health are detestable, 
 no air, but in a measured formal walk, and all running and quick motion 
 prohibited. Preposterous ! She slept with a girl who could hear only 
 with one ear, and so ever laid on one side; and my dear child could do 
 no otherwise afterwards without pain ; because the vile beds are so small 
 that they must both lie the same way. The school discipline of all sorts, 
 the food, etc., etc., all contributed. She never had a bellyful at breakfast. 
 Detestable this at the expense of .80 a year. Oh ! how I regret ever 
 putting her there or to any other, for they are all theatres of knavery, 
 illiberality and infamy ! Upon her being ill in March I took her to my 
 lodgings in Jermyn Street where Dr Turton attended her till April 12, 
 when I carried her to Bradfield. He certainly mistook her case entirely, 
 not believing in a consumption, and by physic brought her so low that she 
 declined hourly; he stuffed her with medicine at a time when sending her 
 at once to Bristol or even to Bradfield, she went little more than skin and 
 bone, with prescriptions for more physicking under a stupid fellow at Bury 
 till she was a spectre. On June 13, she went to the Smith's (Bradfield 
 
 1 See also Recollections of Life and Work, Louisa Twining, Chapter II. 
 S. M. L. 2
 
 1 8 Education in ttie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 neighbours) and there complained ' that such a young girl as I who came 
 for air and exercise should be thus crammed with physic.' 
 
 Poor thing ! her instinct told her it was wrong, but she submitted." 
 
 {Autobiography of Arthur Young. Edited by Miss Betham-Edwards, 
 pp. 2634.) 
 
 Thus far "that wise and honest traveller" as Mr John 
 Morley calls Arthur Young. Charles Dickens writing of the 
 state of boarding schools such as Dotheboys Hall probably did 
 not exaggerate the general features of ignorance and neglect 
 which marked too many. It was only between 1852 59 that 
 Mr Spencer published his striking chapters on Education, and 
 thus gave a vague currency to the idea of infancy as an age 
 with physical requirements of its own. If these are ignored the 
 later work of those whose profession it is to care for childhood 
 is hindered in no slight degree. Far less by the intelligence of 
 teachers than by the work of scientific men we may, I believe, 
 claim that at least a glimmering consciousness of the child's 
 right to live his own life more or less at his own pace is, 
 physically speaking, conceded now-a-days by all who con- 
 sider themselves enlightened. 
 
 As to formal education in the early years of the century 
 it is difficult to choose the sources of our information. But 
 perhaps we may safely take as our guides some of the writings 
 designed especially for what are called Infant minds. 
 
 A little book (published in London 1778) called Lessons 
 for Children of Three Years Old is before me. It is well 
 printed, with good margins and bold type and is meant to be a 
 first reading book. It served indeed as this to the great-grand- 
 father of a friend of mine. What strikes the modern critic 
 most in this and like booklets is the general formal courtesy of 
 the language employed and that the difficulties of thought and 
 language are neither graduated nor explained. There is (luckily) 
 little or no explicit moralising but moral lessons of an unmistak- 
 able nature are enforced by stories : the child who is cruel to a 
 robin is abandoned by his parents and friends and finally eaten
 
 II.] Infant Education. 19 
 
 by a bear in a wood in the good old direct fashion. We are not 
 informed as to what becomes of the parents and friends nor 
 what kind of a bear in a wood it is which eats the boy : points 
 which the modern " restless " curiosity would no doubt insist 
 upon elucidating. The child in this and like books is tacitly 
 held to be silly because he is little: to be "grown up" is more or 
 less explicitly taught to be synonymous with wisdom. Models 
 of Juvenile Correspondence (date 1803) are given in a volume 
 of The Bookcase of Knowledge. I quote the preface and two 
 of the model letters supplied. 
 
 JUVENILE CORRESPONDENCE. 
 To OUR YOUNG READERS. 
 
 To be capable of carrying on an epistolary correspondence with ease 
 and credit to yourselves, is what we hope you will all endeavour to 
 accomplish. The hints necessary to facilitate this important branch of 
 education, are but few and we give them with the sincerest wishes they 
 may be attended to. Let your language be natural and easy, avoid all 
 high-flown far-fetched expressions and all useless repetitions; to your 
 superiors, write with a becoming confidence, neither assuming nor servile; 
 to your equals with an engaging freedom; to your inferiors with an 
 affability that may prevent their feeling their inferiority ; to all with respect ; 
 in a word, express your thoughts in writing as you would in speaking. 
 
 With these rules and a few specimens which follow, you will soon find 
 the practice become delightful. 
 
 Front a Young Gentleman to his Acquaintance. 
 DEAR SIMPSON, 
 
 We have been at Windsor and I must confess it is a most 
 delightful place. We have passed our time very agreeably; yet I must 
 own that there is nothing like home and my books. I am very much 
 fatigued with the journey, and can only add that I am, 
 
 Your sincere friend, 
 
 And humble servant. 
 
 To a Young Gentleman on the recovery of his health. 
 The answer. 
 DEAR SAM, 
 
 I receive your obliging letter, which contains a fresh mark of 
 your friendship for me. I am now, I thank God, perfectly recovered. 
 
 2 2
 
 2O Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 I know not, whether I should not consider my last illness as a punishment 
 for my crime in robbing Mr Freeman's orchard, breaking the boughs, and 
 spoiling the hedges. However, be that as it may, I will do so no more. 
 
 Believe me ever, 
 
 Your real friend, 
 
 And schoolfellow. 
 
 The volume devoted to Natural History in this Bookcase of 
 Knowledge gives short accounts of animals of which I quote 
 those descriptive of the Hen and the Peacock. 
 
 The Hen. The material assiduities of the Hen are become almost 
 proverbial. When her chickens are old enough to provide for themselves, 
 she abstains from all the food that her young can swallow, and she will 
 boldly fly at every creature that she thinks is likely to injure them. In 
 this domestic creature we have a striking instance of the goodness of our 
 Creator, for while her young supplies (sic) our tables with the most delicate 
 food, her eggs contribute to restore to health the sickly and weak. 
 
 The Peacock. Peacocks were first introduced into Europe from the 
 Asiatic Indies. When it appears with its tail expanded, none in the 
 feathered creation can vie with it in elegance and magnificence, but the 
 harsh scream of its voice diminishes the pleasure received from its brilliancy, 
 while its insatiable gluttony tend (sic) still more to alienate our attachment 
 from the only merit which it can claim, its incomparable beauty. 
 
 The little girls whose brothers were desired to write such 
 letters passed many hours of their lives in needlework 
 especially in working samplers. 
 
 So high an authority as Miss Twining, born in 1820, bears 
 this interesting testimony to the use of such employment. 
 
 " Needlework was an important part of education in those days and 
 samplers were an invariable performance. At six years old I worked one 
 in cross-stitch letters, with the alphabet and numerals, and, of course, 
 appropriate mottoes, one of which I remember and have acted upon since, 
 ' A stitch in time saves nine ' : however defective in rhyme, it is wise and 
 useful. This was followed, by a still finer sampler, two years later, when 
 we spent the summer at Tunbridge Wells, one motto being singular for 
 a child of eight, ' After labour rest is sweet,' a prophecy which was to be
 
 II.] Infant Education. 21 
 
 fulfilled after a long interval, by my removal to the same place, in search 
 of repose and quiet after the work of my life was, as I supposed, nearly 
 finished. Intense enjoyment was caused by these little performances and 
 I doubt if any kind of needlework for children of the present day can 
 furnish occupation so useful and so pleasant." 
 
 Recollections of Life and Work, Louisa Twining, pp. 33, 34. 
 
 A recent Exhibition of samplers (1900) showed the kind of 
 verse employed : here are one or two examples from the cata- 
 logue : 
 
 1798. Vase of flowers, trees etc. 
 
 " O may Thy powerful word 
 
 Inspire a worm 
 
 To rush into Thy Kingdom Lord 
 & take it as by storm." 
 
 Sarah Becket, aged 8, December 1798. 
 
 1814. Alphabet and verse. 
 
 When I was young and in my prime 
 
 Here you may see 
 How I spent my time. 
 " Aged 6." 
 
 In the most interesting Journal of Emily Shore (who was 
 born in 1819) mention is made of a Bookcase of Knowledge. 
 Could it be that from which I have been quoting ? If so how 
 curious is the contrast between her methods of studying natural 
 history, so delicate, candid, persevering, and the pompous 
 fatuities of the Bookcase of Knowledge \ Emily Shore in her 
 quiet country home watching nature with keen, loving observa- 
 tion learns at every turn some new and illuminating truth as to 
 bird or plant. She is the fit contemporary of Darwin, fit no 
 less by her modesty than by her method. 
 
 These specimens of literature and hard work for the very 
 early stage of childhood cannot be taken in isolation. They 
 should be classed with the writings of Dr Watts, Jane and Ann 
 Taylor and Mrs Sherwood (1775 1851). Dr Watts' Divine and
 
 22 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 Moral Songs 1 influenced, and even formulated the theological 
 ideas presented to children during the first fifty years of the 
 century ideas which are perhaps still current to-day. It is no 
 exaggeration to say that the Divine and Moral Songs and the 
 Fairchild Family sum up the Evangelical movement in all its 
 terrors for the nursery. God is an awful and vengeful master 
 who teaches by striking and terrible object lessons. Endless 
 torment, clanking chains and bitter remorse are the fate of the 
 nursery Ananias : while both Mrs Sherwood and Dr Watts 
 persistently represent the child's heart as his direst foe*. The 
 Fairchild Family, which was amazingly popular and widely 
 known, has still a fascination for the student. Mr Fairchild, the 
 father, observing his three children of 6, 7, and 9 quarrel, 
 takes them a walk through a gloomy wood in which clanking 
 metallic sounds are heard ; these proceed from a gibbet on 
 which a corpse is hanging. The children, two girls and a boy, 
 implore to be taken away but the father declines; seats himself 
 with great deliberation on the stump of a tree and (with quite 
 needless elaboration) tells the story of the poor wretch to the 
 
 1 In Dr Watts' wonderful book he deals incidentally with the animal 
 world. Here is a specimen of his teaching: 
 
 " If we had been ducks, we might dabble in mud, 
 Or dogs, we might play till it ended in blood, 
 So foul and so fierce are their natures: 
 But Thomas and William, and such pretty names, 
 Should be cleanly and harmless as doves or as lambs, 
 Those lovely, sweet, innocent creatures." 
 
 We all remember Dr Watts' lines on " the little busy bee." Whether he 
 thereby made the bee attractive or instructive in any desirable sense to the 
 child may well be doubted. 
 
 In this connection we may note that Dr Arnold, appointed Head- 
 master of Rugby in 1827, writing in 1830 to a friend owns himself amazed, 
 bewildered and depressed by the deep roots which sin struck in the hearts 
 of the very youngest of his boys : boys in his day (he died in 1841) went to 
 Rugby when between 7 and 8 years old. Observe the uncompromising 
 word sin : not temperament, or impulse, or inherited tendency : none of 
 our temporising, picturesque vagueness: but sin and nothing short of it.
 
 II.] Infant Education. 23 
 
 shivering children who exhibit the greatest interest but still 
 implore to be taken away. " We will go immediately," said 
 Mr Fairchild, " but I wish first to point out to you my dear 
 children that these brothers, when they first began to quarrel 
 in their play, as you did this morning, did not think that death, 
 and perhaps hell, would be the end of their quarrels. Our 
 hearts by nature, my dear children," continued Mr Fairchild, 
 "are full of hatred." 
 
 And so on, till after a self-complacent account of his own 
 new heart, Mr Fairchild ceases and Lucy (age 9) suggests 
 a prayer. ' " Willingly, my child," said Mr Fairchild. So he 
 knelt upon the grass, and his children around him ; and they 
 afterwards all went home 1 .' 
 
 Mrs Sherwood was an indefatigable writer for children and 
 her books may be fairly taken to contain the ideas current 
 in middle class society as to child nature and child intelligence. 
 Habits of introspection and self-examination were fostered, as 
 the following extract will show. 
 
 Lucy FairchilcTs Journal, written when she was 9 years and a half old. 
 
 " When I woke this morning, mama called me to make my bed; and I 
 felt cross and wished I was like Miss Augusta Noble, and had servants to 
 wait on me; and that Lady Noble was my mama and not my own dear 
 mama. 
 
 Mama gave Emily a bit of muslin and some pink ribbon ; and I was 
 envious and hated Emily for a little while though I knew it was wicked. 
 When Papa gave Henry the strawberry, I was angry again : and then I 
 thought of Mrs Giles who loves one of her little girls and hates the other. 
 I thought that my Papa and Mama were like Mrs Giles and that they loved 
 Henry and Emily more than me. When papa was reading and praying I 
 wanted to be at play : and was tired of the Bible and did not wish to hear 
 it. And then I thought a very bad thought indeed ! When Mrs Barker 
 came I despised her for not being pretty, tho' I knew that God had made 
 her such as she is and that he could make me like her in one moment." 
 
 As soon as Lucy had finished writing these words, she heard her mama 
 come upstairs and go into her room: she immediately ran to her and 
 
 1 Fairchild Family, ig\h Edition, 1853. Vol. I. pp. 59, 60.
 
 24 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 showing her the book, " O mama, mama," she said, " you cannot think 
 what a wicked heart I have got ! Here is my journal ; I am ashamed to 
 show it to you : pray do not hate me for what is written in that book." 
 
 (Mrs Fairchild replies suitably.) 
 
 Then Mrs Fairchild gave the book back to Lucy and told her to 
 continue every day to keep an account of what passed in her heart, that 
 she might learn more and more to know and hate her own sinful nature. 
 After this Mrs Fairchild and Lucy knelt down and confessed before God 
 the exceeding vileness of their hearts as follows. 
 
 (Here follows a prayer entitled, 'Confession of the exceed- 
 ing vileness of our hearts.') 
 
 One of my correspondents in writing of this book says : 
 "The Fairchild Family used to send me to bed when I was a 
 little child, to dream of an angry God and a torturing hell 
 before I knew what wickedness was." A loving and gentle 
 father told his only child, a contemporary and friend of my 
 own, that he clearly remembered that at the age of six or so 
 (which would take us back to about 1815) he used to contem- 
 plate his arms and legs and reflect on the probability of their 
 burning in hell 1 . So late as the year 1868 his daughter re- 
 members hearing him exhort his Infant School children (he 
 was a Scotch minister) to do the same. This sort of teaching, 
 with the unlimited and indiscriminate reading of the Bible, no 
 doubt strongly influenced children of an imaginative or sensi- 
 tive turn. 
 
 In a booklet, published privately in 1881 and entitled The 
 Little Girls of Fifty Years Ago, we have a record of an English 
 child between 1820 and 1830. In this booklet reference is made 
 to a conscientious father who forces himself to take his little 
 girl to see a criminal hung as a lesson against crime in general 
 The child fainted and suffered acutely from the experience. 
 
 We may thus infer that the example of Mr Fairchild and the 
 teaching of Dr Watts bore fruit of a bitter kind for children. 
 What strikes one, indeed, in the first fifty years of the century, 
 
 1 Cp. Calvin's vision of children in hell a span long.
 
 II.] Infant Education. 25 
 
 is the place which, educationally, fear held. The Scotch 
 minister already mentioned used to quote, in proof of his baby 
 daughter's sensitive conscience, how that he had found her, at 
 the age of two and a half, sitting in the middle of the room "in 
 an agony but a perfect agony of conscience " because she had 
 thoughtlessly run near a window which she had been forbidden 
 to approach. From whatever cause, we of to-day have to deal 
 with a race of practically fearless infants, fearless, that is, in 
 the sense of having few or no terrifying illusions. An infant 
 between three and four years old in an elementary school in 
 London recently gave it as his opinion that "bogies were things 
 to frighten kids with." This attitude towards the unknown has, 
 I believe, in very large part superseded that of Charles Lamb 
 towards " Witches and other night fears." 
 
 With all these terrors awaiting wrong-doing, it must be 
 owned that children of the Fairchild type were, when once they 
 began a downward course, naughty in no temperate measure. 
 Here is an abstract of a right royal day of childish wrong-doing 
 as they conceived it. The record is made the more complete 
 when we remember that the parents had been obliged to leave 
 home for the day, and consequently the children were doubly 
 naughty in being naughty. 
 
 1. They over-ate themselves at breakfast with buttered 
 toast, after having played in their bedrooms and neither washed 
 their faces, combed their hair, or prayed. 
 
 2. They began to learn lessons, but had eaten too much 
 to do so. They quarrelled. 
 
 3. A little pig was seen in the garden. 
 
 4. They chased it over a spring and got up to their knees 
 in mud. 
 
 5. They ran on to a farm kept by Mr and Mrs Freeman, 
 with whom they were forbidden to associate. 
 
 6. Mrs F. saw them, brought them in, and dried their clothes. 
 
 7. Mrs F., finding them unwilling to stay all day and play 
 with her children, gave them cake and cider.
 
 26 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 8. They all became tipsy and fell down in the lane : their 
 heads ached, and they sat down by the road and there John 
 found them. 
 
 9. They told lies as to where they had been, and were 
 locked in their playroom till dinner. 
 
 10. They made good resolutions. 
 
 11. They dined on apple dumplings, and were then told 
 to play in the barn and not to leave it till supper. 
 
 12. They spied a forbidden swing tied up, and loosed it, 
 Henry tearing his coat as he did so. 
 
 13. Emily, insisting on being swung higher and higher, 
 fell out and bled from mouth and nose. 
 
 14 John to the rescue. Emily's nose, eye and lip were 
 swelled and two of her teeth were out. 
 
 15. John tied Lucy and Henry with his blue pocket- 
 handkerchief to the kitchen table, and placed Emily in a little 
 chair by the kitchen fire. 
 
 1 6. They remained so till nearly dark, when the parents 
 returned, and Lucy fell on her knees and confessed. 
 
 The history of Sandford and Merton by Thomas Day can- 
 not be passed over in silence. The author was an ardent 
 admirer of Rousseau's Emile, and his book, published in 1783, 
 ran through many editions. I have been using the pth, pub- 
 lished in 1 80 1. It is "a work intended for the use of children," 
 and follows the simple idea of establishing a strong contrast in 
 health, happiness and intelligence between the rich man's family 
 and that of the farmer. The rich man's son Tommy and the 
 farmer's son Harry are confided to the care of Mr Barlow, the 
 neighbouring clergyman, who declines to receive any money 
 for his services. The teaching he gives is, entirely & la 
 Rousseau, science, and moral precepts. The result is that 
 Tommy, the rich boy, doffs his best shoe- buckles, combs the 
 powder from his hair, forswears his curls, and informs his 
 mother that " from this time I shall apply myself to the study 
 of nothing but reason and philosophy : and therefore I have
 
 II.] Infant Education. 27 
 
 bid adieu to dress and finery for ever." This determination on 
 the part of an infant between six and eight years old leaves but 
 little for formal educators to effect. 
 
 No account of ideas current as to children in the first half 
 of the century would be even outlined which omitted the work 
 of Wordsworth. To most of us he is known in this connection 
 by his immortal Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from 
 recollections of early childhood and by little else. The first 
 four stanzas of the Ode were written two years before the rest 
 and the whole dates from 1803 6. A new conception of child- 
 hood is here presented, one entirely different from that which 
 filled the minds of Dr Watts, Mrs Sherwood and the Taylors, 
 though the genius of Jane Taylor, if left to itself, would probably 
 never have bowed before the sombre teaching of Dr Watts. 
 "Simplification was the keynote of the Revolutionary time," 
 says Mr John Morley in his introduction to the complete 
 edition of Wordsworth, and he proceeds to show how Words- 
 worth was affected by it : " Simplification of life and thought 
 and feeling was to be accomplished without summoning up the 
 dangerous spirit of destruction and revolt." Of this simplifica- 
 tion Wordsworth stands out as the literary and philosophic 
 type and in the Prelude, begun in 1799, finished in 1805, and 
 published in 1850, we have, as a recent writer 1 has pointed out, 
 a very pregnant and significant study in education. 
 
 From poems such as " We are Seven" " To H. C., Six 
 Years Old" the Ode already mentioned, Book III. of the 
 Excursion and the lines entitled " Characteristics of a Child 
 three years old" written in 1811, no less than from the Prelude, 
 we may gather a new and consoling conception of childhood. 
 Education to Wordsworth is no longer une tempete de I'esprit; 
 nor is it necessarily, as with Rousseau, a war on society. By 
 1803, Pestalozzi, that well-nigh divinely-inspired worker, had 
 stumbled on to his best work. Between 1799 1804, while at 
 
 1 Wordsworth's Prelude as a Study of Education. James Fotheringham.
 
 28 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 Burgdorf, he had found the true lines of his activity and had 
 definitely decided that the elements of knowledge were three, 
 number, form, language. It was to simplify these, and by so 
 doing " to psychologise instruction " that he worked for the rest 
 of his life, which ended in 1827. In 1799 Herbart, then a 
 keen, young philosopher, visited Burgdorf and instantly saw 
 the value of Pestalozzi's method and the significance of teach- 
 ing by Anschauutig. This, as bringing the child face to face 
 with real objects, and as appealing directly to innate power, 
 was, in the Festal ozzian School, to replace the older rote- 
 learning the learning, that is, of other people's thoughts in 
 other people's words. It was thus that the irresistible scientific 
 movement of the Encyclopaedists came to influence the school- 
 room curriculum of the younger pupils, and it was thus that 
 Rousseau's phrase, "the return to Nature," came to have a 
 direct and fruitful bearing on the work of Pestalozzi. His 
 poverty, his enthusiasm, his zeal, his imaginative conception of 
 citizenship, all helped. Here were the poor and needy ; here 
 was the Fatherland : how unite them ? Both suffered in isola- 
 tion : united they might both prosper. It is partly this 
 enlightened view of teaching as a work which tends as no 
 other does to solidify and raise the Fatherland, and partly that 
 tender love for children which impelled him that makes Pesta- 
 lozzi so grand and yet so pathetic a figure. Nothing quite 
 spoilt him, not even success, not even crowds of visitors, 
 among whom we English may reckon Miss Edgeworth and 
 Dr Bell. He still stands there, indefatigably striving "to 
 simplify the elements " for little children, recording his con- 
 viction that " the leading principle of education is not instruc- 
 tion : it is love." 
 
 The Pestalozzian method seems to have reached England 
 early in the century, and to have influenced schoolroom tradi- 
 tions in the direction of teaching from things instead of merely 
 by words. But, in education, as we all know, a method is one 
 thing in one pair of hands and quite different in another. We
 
 II.] Infant Education, 29 
 
 can all testify to the occasional stupefying effect of what are 
 called Object lessons. And yet the idea that, innate power 
 once developed, the child would teach himself from his sur- 
 roundings was a very valuable idea for the schoolmaster to 
 apply in the schoolroom, and this became possible, if not in- 
 evitable, to those who studied Pestalozzi. The main revolution 
 thus created was the destruction of the partition wall between 
 real life and schoolroom life. The child, in the Pestalozzian 
 School, learnt that the selfsame powers and activities which 
 made "mischief" so entrancing out of school the desire to 
 observe, to investigate, to experiment for himself were the 
 very same powers and activities which would avail him most 
 in the schoolroom. 
 
 Froebel, who visited Pestalozzi in '1805 for a fortnight, and 
 again in 1808 10 for two years, saw the value of this for 
 a stage below that of the schoolroom proper. No less imbued 
 than Pestalozzi with the importance of working at the indi- 
 vidual for Society and at Society for the individual, Froebel, 
 though his scope and aims differ from those of Pestalozzi, 
 elaborated his kindergarten system and invented an apparatus 
 which is complete, flexible, adaptable, for giving the child, what- 
 ever his race or tongue, elementary notions of number, form, 
 colour and language, the four elements, as Froebel held, of all 
 knowledge. But to say that Froebel's contribution to the 
 problems of Infant Education consists in bricks, in mat-plaiting, 
 in chequer-drawing, and in clay-modelling, is to give proof 
 of signal incapacity for appreciating his true work. In truth, 
 some of us have, in moments of despair, almost regretted 
 that he ever elaborated his concrete instruments. They 
 have no doubt often been stupidly used and allowed to 
 obscure the principles which they should, in part at least, 
 elucidate. 
 
 His conception of childhood has much in common with 
 that of Wordsworth, as will be apparent to those who read 
 the Mother's Games and Songs, the Education of Man, and the
 
 3O Education in the Nineteenth Century. . [CHAP. 
 
 poems of Wordsworth, which I have already mentioned 1 . In 
 part this conception must, as I believe, be discarded by the 
 really observant and devoted teacher : and it must be discarded 
 because it is not borne out by experience. Our modern infants 
 do not always, so far, at least, as I may speak from experi- 
 ence, trail clouds of glory about them in our infant school- 
 rooms of to-day. But Froebel and Wordsworth are still wise 
 in bidding us take heed to train and develop that nobler and 
 purer self which no less an authority than Herbart insists does 
 exist in all. It is in training and developing the ideal self that 
 we may make it the real self : and this is specially the right line 
 on which to work in the early and essentially plastic years of 
 life. 
 
 The idea that hand- work and head-work should be simul- 
 taneous and mutually complementary, stimulating and suggestive, 
 is the root idea of that perpetual realisation of thought in act on 
 which Froebel places such emphasis 2 . His own reminiscences 
 of childhood led him to desire ardently that the wearying sense 
 of contradiction, of fragmentariness, of antagonism, which so 
 often disturbs or even arrests mental development should be 
 provided against. Thus harmony is his great watchword : it is 
 in an atmosphere of harmony that the religious and consoling 
 idea of the unity of all life must become the central truth to the 
 individual. 
 
 Students of Froebel find it at times difficult to follow his 
 philosophy, and no doubt he lacks lucidity in exposition ; but 
 if we remember that many of his favourite words and phrases 
 are those of contemporary philosophy his meaning will become 
 easier to grasp. 
 
 Kindergartens were first opened in England in the early 
 fifties, but England is hard to move in matters educational. 
 Still, two results began, by slow, insidious degrees, to make 
 
 1 See also Froebel and Education by Self-activity, by H. C. Bowen, 
 especially Chapter IV. 
 
 2 See Education of Man. Trans. l>y W. N. Hailmann, pp. 30 39.
 
 II.] Infant Education. 31 
 
 themselves felt : first, that teaching of all elements should be in 
 the concrete ; second, that teachers, especially of little children, 
 should, in addition to receiving a sound, general education, be 
 specially prepared for their work. I am not defending the 
 way in which these ideas were carried out in the past or are 
 carried out in the present : I simply note them as being, in my 
 opinion, mainly due to Froebelian influences. I regard them 
 as blessed ideas both for teachers and children, and I therefore 
 bow reverently before the genius who forced us to give them 
 even that imperfect and halting trial which is all we can claim 
 to-day as having been won for them. The blessedness of getting 
 hold of a vital idea in education is after all this : that no amount 
 of stupidity in application can really kill it. One day, after 
 ages of bungling, of stripes and tears and theories and pedantry, 
 we hit upon the true application, and lo ! the idea is there un- 
 spoilt, and goes forth blessing and to bless. 
 
 In other directions Pestalozzi and Froebel are influencing 
 us ; perhaps it would be truer to say that they are beginning at 
 last to influence us. Their influence may be recognised in the 
 happier tone of our schoolrooms, in the greater freedom of our 
 tiny pupils, and in our more effectual knowledge of child- 
 nature, in spite perhaps of what is fashionable to-day under the 
 title of Child-Study. 
 
 In 1802, Charles Lamb, writing to Coleridge, regretted the 
 substitution of Mrs Barbauld's "stuff" and Mrs Trimmer's 
 "stuff" for all the old classics of the nursery. He deplores the 
 loss of Goody Two Shoes, of which, as we know, Goldsmith was 
 believed to be the author 1 . Mrs Trimmer, if we judge her from 
 her once widely-read History of the Robins, does really deserve 
 the epithet which Charles Lamb uses : but I demur to it being 
 applied to Mrs Barbauld's Prose Hymns. 
 
 "Hang them !" writes Charles Lamb, "I mean the cursed 
 Barbauld crew, those blights and blasts of all that is human in 
 
 1 See in Journal of Education, Nov. 1900, a letter from Mr Charles 
 Welsh on this point.
 
 32 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 man and child." The delicate, fanciful genius which created 
 that exquisite "Dream Children, a reverie" redresses the 
 balance for us the balance upset by the correctors of youth 
 a la Trimmer or their instructors d la Barbauld. The moral 
 and edifying tale is rare to-day ; we have books for children 
 which, without being written down to what we poor grown-ups 
 suppose to be their level, do aim at delighting, refreshing, and 
 interesting their readers. 
 
 Miss Martineau's Settlers at Home and the delightful 
 Crofton Boys came before the century was fairly middle-aged : 
 in its old age it was cheered by Alice in Wonderland, and in 
 its dotage comes the Jungle Book. 
 
 In conclusion, the story of Infant Education in England 
 during our century is, on the whole, one that moves us to hope, 
 especially if we consider the starting-point. We need no 
 longer stifle our courage by defining the work of education as 
 une tempete de r esprit; nor need we confuse ourselves by a 
 vague phrase such as the "return to Nature." Mere altering 
 conditions, even for the better, is not, and never will be, 
 enough ; that point certainly needs insistence to-day. Mr 
 Fairchild was right so far about the human heart. But he, 
 and all like enemies of the human race, were wrong, miserably, 
 stupidly wrong, when they thought that to insult, to browbeat, 
 to sermonise, to degrade human nature in its own eyes, was the 
 curative plan. The opposite is, I believe, true : to ennoble, to 
 encourage, to study, to elevate child-nature is the more excellent 
 wav and in this more excellent way I believe that, after all 
 deductions made, Pestalozzi and Froebel are still our best 
 leaders. Limited here, impossible there, pedantic at times, 
 confused at others, they are still the best, because they were 
 not afraid : they did not bluster, they did not coerce, they did 
 not succeed as the world counts success : they took a little 
 child and set him in their midst, and watching, helping, 
 encouraging, they worked to free him and to give him the joy 
 and delight of exercising in friendly surroundings his higher
 
 II.] Infant Education. 33 
 
 powers and instincts. Self-mutilation as a means of saving 
 one's soul had made of education in the past une tempete de 
 fesprit. Self-realisation for the nobler end of perfect service 
 may effect a revolution even in the nursery and infant school- 
 room of to-day. Meantime we who have won our scant measure 
 of freedom with so great a sum may still, as we work for our 
 children, find it possible (as we assuredly shall find it divinely 
 refreshing), to "dream the dream of the soul's slow disentangle- 
 ment." 
 
 s. M. L.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN THE 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY, 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR JOSHUA FITCH. 
 
 IT has been deemed desirable by those who have framed 
 the regulations of this Summer Meeting to cause a brief survey 
 to be taken of the principal influences which have affected 
 intellectual progress in the century now coming to a close. 
 To me has been assigned the humble and rather prosaic task 
 of reviewing the history of our primary education during this 
 period. But before doing so I must ask you to bear in mind 
 the fact so often reiterated, that our country differs from most 
 others in Europe and in America, in the manner in which it 
 has approached and treated the subject of popular education. 
 Our system if so it deserves to be called is the product of 
 growth, not of manufacture. You cannot point to any states- 
 man or thinker who has formulated its principles and has 
 predicted the manner in which principles should be embodied 
 in laws and ordinances. John Bull is in this and the like 
 matters frankly empirical. He is impatient of theories, and 
 has a chronic distrust of doctrinaires and philosophers. Carlyle 
 put this fact in a rather brutal form when he said that the 
 English as a race are logically very stupid, and wise chiefly by 
 instinct. What we have achieved in the department of public
 
 CHAP. III.] Primary Education. 35 
 
 education has been gained by a process of gradual evolution, 
 by experiment, by opportunities, by successes and failures, by 
 compromises and concessions, and not by any predetermined 
 plan or clear forecast of the future. There is a curious analogy 
 between the life and growth of institutions and the history of 
 a single human life. We start with more or less of a career 
 before us corresponding to the predilections of our parents or 
 ourselves. But new and unexpected conditions arise. What 
 appeared to be openings full of promise prove to be closed; 
 possibilities of honour and usefulness present themselves, which 
 were never included in our programme ; the ' divinity that 
 shapes our ends ' reveals itself in the form of environment, of 
 new wants, of new possibilities, of new resources, and of con- 
 stant occasions for adapting ourselves to new circumstances 
 and needs. If we are wise we shall not rebel against these 
 conditions ; we would rather say with Wordsworth, when he 
 looked back on the illusions of his youth and found they had 
 vanished, 
 
 " Not for this 
 
 Faint I nor mourn nor murmur : other gifts 
 Have followed, for such loss I would believe 
 Abundant recompense." 
 
 And so if by slow degrees institutions though they seem to 
 be clumsy and unsymmetrical in form, prove to be convenient, 
 and to suit well the peculiar genius, the traditions, the wants, 
 and sentiments, and the religious convictions of the nation, we 
 may be well content to use them, and to reconcile ourselves to 
 their uncertain origin and to some at least of their inevitable 
 defects and limitations. 
 
 Let us see how far these general statements are true in 
 regard to primary education in England. I have enumerated 
 roughly three or four of the main sources of the influence 
 which has shaped our course, (i) Endowments, (2) Philanthropic 
 and voluntary effort, (3) Legislation, and (4) Municipal and 
 corporate action, and (5) Private adventure and enterprise. 
 
 32
 
 36 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 It can hardly be said that primary instruction in England 
 owes much to the first of these sources of assistance. Univer- 
 sities and secondary education indeed owe much to pious 
 founders. In the i6th and lyth centuries many educational 
 foundations were established, as a result partly of the general 
 revival of learning and partly of the Reformation. They were 
 generally intended to place a liberal education, founded espe- 
 cially on the ancient classical languages, within the reach of 
 all who had the ability and the time to pursue them. The 
 ancient Grammar Schools did not indeed fulfil all the hopes of 
 their founders, but many of our most illustrious statesmen 
 and writers owed all their early education to these schools. 
 Although the present generation has found it necessary to alter 
 some details in the original statutes, the spirit of Erasmus, of 
 Colet, and of Lyly has survived in them to this day, and in the 
 new shape which modern legislation has provided, the Grammar 
 Schools of the i6th and iyth century are among the most 
 potent factors in modern education. But the founders of 
 Grammar Schools never contemplated what we call elementary 
 education, nor did they provide any instruction specially 
 designed to meet the needs of the poor. That task was left 
 to an entirely new class of testators and benefactors, who after 
 the Restoration period, and especially in the time of Queen 
 Anne, established all over England what are generally known 
 as Charity Schools. The religious struggles which attended 
 the passing of the Act of Uniformity, Charles II., and the 
 Toleration Act of William III. stimulated the conservative 
 churchmen of that day to devise some plans by which the 
 labouring classes might become attached to the Established 
 Church ; and the creation of schools exclusively designed for the 
 poor was regarded as one of the effective instruments for the 
 attainment of that object. But the educational aims of these 
 schools were very low. Reading and writing and needlework, 
 with a little arithmetic, and diligent enforcement of the Cate- 
 chism, and of church attendance satisfied the intellectual ideal
 
 III.] Primary Education. 37 
 
 of the ecclesiastical and other personages who maintained 
 these schools. The children were clothed in a conspicuous 
 charity dress, they were picturesquely arranged in the gallery of 
 the church, and many persons now living can remember the 
 annual festival of the Charity School children of London in 
 St Paul's Cathedral, and the gratification evinced by the trustees 
 and supporters of these schools, as they saw the objects of 
 their bounty arrayed in bright colours and listening to a sermon 
 from some dignitary of the Church, who reminded them of 
 their low estate, and accentuated that fact of the ' duty to my 
 neighbour,' which teaches to 'order myself lowly and reverently 
 to all my betters.' The conception of popular education 
 which dominated these schools does not appear to you or to 
 me a very high one ; in fact they were rather designed to restrict 
 than to encourage intellectual progress and activity. Their 
 moral ideal is to be seen in the well-known couplet : 
 
 God bless the Squire and his relations, 
 And make us keep our proper stations. 
 
 But after all their aim was not an ungenerous aim. Relatively 
 to the state of opinion in the nation, it was an honest aim, it 
 represented a real desire to be of service to the poor in the only 
 way then known. The Schools Inquiry Commissioners of 1865 
 found nearly 2000 such schools; some of these have become 
 ordinary public elementary schools receiving a grant from 
 Government, in nearly all of them the distinctive charity dress 
 has been given up, and all of them have lost under the in- 
 fluences of modern legislation the sectarian narrowness which 
 once distinguished them. Apprentice funds and other like 
 privileges have been converted into scholarships. At any rate, 
 endowments for primary schools have ceased to be made, as 
 the need for them has practically disappeared, since gratuitous 
 elementary education is now provided by the State. Such gifts 
 as are accessible for the children of the poor are now very 
 properly applied rather to the purpose of enabling them to
 
 38 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 proceed to places of advanced education than to the provision 
 or equipment of the elementary schools themselves. 
 
 The only provision other than that furnished by the Charity 
 Schools which existed at the beginning of the present century 
 was that furnished by private enterprise. A few so-called 
 schools were held in private houses, and chiefly by incompetent 
 and often disreputable people, who earned a scanty living from 
 the weekly pence of the parents. 
 
 Dame schools, such as that of Shenstone's Village School- 
 mistress, and boys' schools, such as were described in Crabbe's 
 Borough and in Joseph Lancaster's early tracts, furnished 
 almost the only means of instruction accessible to the children 
 of the poor, and although in 1805 Lancaster made the first 
 experiments which resulted in the formation of the British 
 and Foreign School Society in 1809, and Andrew Bell's moni- 
 torial system was adopted by the Church of England and 
 became the basis of the National Society in 1811, private enter- 
 prise of a somewhat ignoble character continued to flourish till 
 a much later date. In 1869, with a view to obtain the data for 
 the Education Bill of the following year, I was, at the instance 
 of Mr Forster, appointed one of two Special Commissioners, 
 Mr D. R. Fearon being the other, to report to Parliament on 
 the educational provision then existing in four great towns, 
 Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Leeds. Our report 
 showed that besides 'National' and 'British' schools, which by 
 that time were receiving Government aid and inspection, there 
 were still in the poorer parts of those great towns some hundreds 
 of children whose only instruction was gained in private houses, 
 or in the rooms attached to chapels, but rented by the masters 
 and mistresses themselves. Here, for example, is my own 
 description, extracted from the Parliamentary paper, of some 
 personal experiences in Leeds and Birmingham : 
 
 I. In a small low room (12 ft. 6 in. by 12 ft.) in a back court I found 
 44 boys of ages varying from 4 to 14. In the middle sat the master, 
 a kindly man, but a helpless cripple, whose lower limbs appeared to be
 
 III.] Primary Education. 39 
 
 paralysed, and who was unable to stand up. At first it was difficult to 
 recognise him in the crowd. The boys formed a dense mass round him, 
 swaying irregularly backwards and forwards, while he was protesting feebly 
 against the noise, his head rising in the midst like a ship in a storm. 
 In a corner the wife was sitting, engaged in "minding "the six or eight 
 youngest children. The room is insufferably close and dark : there are not 
 forms enough for all to sit on, and only three old desks. It is difficult 
 to move in the room, and still more difficult to arrange the older boys for 
 a short examination. 
 
 Since the few who are provided with reading books have books of all 
 sorts, most of them with half the leaves out, it is a work of time to organise 
 a reading lesson. With the help of two or three copies of the New 
 Testament I made a beginning and heard the reading of the twelve older 
 scholars. It was very bad, inarticulate and unmeaning. No boy could 
 explain the simplest words, and the master said he was not accustomed 
 to ask questions. The writing lessons consist mainly of copying a whole 
 slateful at a time from a book, then rubbing it out and beginning again. 
 Although spelling in columns from a book is a conspicuous lesson, on which 
 much labour is spent, the spelling of a simple sentence which I dictated 
 was full of gross mistakes. 
 
 There are only two boys who can do an addition sum, although the 
 average age was nearly n. All the sums, I was informed, were copied out 
 of books, or from examples "set" in writing by the master; the boys had 
 never been used to hear a sum given out in words. The ignorance, dirt, 
 and confusion which characterise the school are deplorable. It has, how- 
 ever, one specialite : the boys spend much of their time in ornamental 
 printing of texts, mottoes, and announcements suited to a shop window. 
 Each boy has a little box of cheap paints, and colours his performances 
 liberally. A great number of these works of art were exhibited to me with 
 considerable pride by master and pupils, and I was requested to accept 
 some specimens. The parents are much pleased with this feature of the 
 school work, the boys enjoy it, and, as the master explained to me, it has 
 the great advantage of keeping them quiet. "For when the 'spellings' are 
 said, and the sums are done, there is," he observed, "a good deal of leisure 
 time in a school, and he knows no nicer way of occupying it than this." 
 He has kept school here for 20 years, and has always had it full. Parents 
 in the neighbourhood probably feel sympathy for his affliction, and are 
 content to pay him fees a little higher than those charged in a national 
 school. " Besides," as he remarks, "they like a private school better than 
 one of those large two-penny schools, where boys are only taught and 
 knocked about by other boys." 
 
 II. In a school in Leeds containing 40 children, of whom the majority
 
 4O Education in t/it Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 were under 7, but several had reached 10 years of age, I found an elderly 
 woman sitting in the midst of a group of girls who were engaged in knitting 
 while one of the elder girls was minding the little ones and trying to make 
 them sit still. It is very hard to keep the boys quiet the governess explains 
 to me. There is nothing for them to do but write, and when they have 
 done slateful after slateful they get tired; the only other lessons they do 
 consist of reading and a little spelling ; no one learns to cipher. The 
 mistress complains much of the capricious way in which children are 
 removed. It is almost better, she thinks, not to teach them much, for 
 the more you teach them the more quickly they are removed; as soon 
 as they learn a little parents think they can read, and take them off to 
 work. Of the neighbouring National schools she speaks with considerable 
 irritation, not unmixed with contempt. She has known some children to be 
 nine months in such a school and never to have learned a single task. 
 She knows of no form of instruction except saying lessons ; her room is 
 very dirty and ill-ventilated, and her own qualifications are of the humblest 
 kind. 
 
 III. In the front room of a small dwelling-house, half rilled with dirty 
 household furniture, there were 35 boys, all of whom were entirely un- 
 employed, except eight who were writing in copy-books. The master 
 had retired (u a.m.) to a neighbouring house for luncheon. He was 
 a cloth-dresser by trade, and " took to schooling because work was slack." 
 He finds the employment very hard, as he does not know what to do 
 to keep the boys occupied so many hours. He regrets that he is not 
 " a bit of a singer," for if he were, he would " learn them a few ditties, and 
 the time would pass away quicker." There are five "sixpenny boys" 
 at the top of the school, who are writing fairly, but not well, and who 
 enter sums in a ciphering-book but without understanding them. The 
 " fourpennies " are very backward, no one of them has yet mastered simple 
 notation. Their only employments are occasional reading, the learning by 
 heart of " spellings " from a book, and a little scribble on broken slates. 
 During the larger part of every day they are expected simply to sit 
 still. Notwithstanding the prominence given to spelling lessons, all the 
 elder boys failed to write an easy sentence without gross mistakes. The 
 master does not profess to be qualified for his work, or to care about it, and 
 would willingly find other employment if he could. 
 
 IV. A more important school, known in the neighbourhood of Birming- 
 ham as an academy, is held in a large upper room, which at one time formed 
 part of a factory, and at another was used as a dancing saloon. It is now 
 rented by a schoolmaster of 30 years' standing, who has 50 boys in it, but 
 whose numbers have sometimes reached 90 or 100. He says that the 
 school has been subject to many vicissitudes ; that since he has been in the
 
 III.] Primary Education. 41 
 
 profession more than 1000 scholars have passed through his hands, and that 
 accident and the state of trade cause the numbers to be exceptionally low 
 just now. He has no assistance ; the room though low and somewhat gloomy 
 is well provided with long desks, and not ill supplied with school requisites. 
 The boys are seated and are nearly all engaged in the preparation of 
 coloured texts and shop bills, not, as I am specially informed, with any 
 view to exhibition at the approaching Christmas, but as part of the regular 
 work of the school. I examined the twelve elder scholars ; their reading was 
 rather indistinct and slovenly; they were not accustomed, as I found, to be 
 checked so long as the words were pronounced ; and no heed was given to 
 expression, or to any investigation as to the purport of the reading lessons. 
 My questions on the meanings of some simple words were met by blank 
 silence and astonishment on the part of the boys : and by the master's 
 explanation to the effect that he was not accustomed to put questions of 
 that kind. The writing was the best feature of the school work, many 
 of the copy-books being neat and otherwise creditable. Before giving 
 a sum in arithmetic I asked, as usual, how far the lads professed to go? 
 The answers varied : discount, square and cube root, decimals, fellowship, 
 etc. were mentioned, and all professed to have gone beyond proportion and 
 fractions. Yet the question, "How many articles costing 3^-. 4^. each can 
 I buy for ;,so? " which I desired them to write down and think over before 
 they worked it, baffled them completely. Not one boy could work it out, 
 and the master urged, in explanation of their failure, that he did not think 
 there was such a sum in the book. 
 
 There were in the four towns on which Mr Fearon and I 
 reported in 1869 many thousand children of persons of the 
 artizan class taught or 'minded' in schools of this type. 
 
 It is very characteristic of England that the awakening of the 
 national conscience to any sense of responsibility in relation to 
 the education of the people did not begin until a later period 
 than in most other civilised countries, and that when it did 
 begin it was a slow process. Scotland had made its first pro- 
 vision at the instance of John Knox. In several of the German 
 states, in Wurtemburg, Saxony, and Prussia, public provision was 
 made for schools in the middle of the i8th century. In France, 
 Turgot and Talleyrand had formulated plans for a national system 
 of education, and, under the regime of the first Napoleon, legisla- 
 tive effect was given to a comprehensive plan with the same 
 object. The founders of the New England States had from
 
 42 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 the first set apart certain lands to furnish a revenue for the com- 
 mon schools ; and in Switzerland, the home of Fellenberg and 
 Pestalozzi, education has, as we all know, been a matter of 
 national concern ever since the foundation of the Republic. 
 But in England it was not till 1 8 1 6 that the energy of Brougham 
 induced the House of Commons to appoint a Select Committee 
 to enquire into the educational condition of the metropolis ; nor 
 was it till nearly 20 years after that any practical step was taken 
 to carry the recommendations of that Committee into practical 
 effect. In 1832 the first grant of ,20,000 was made by Parlia- 
 ment for the building of schoolrooms, and this sum was dis- 
 tributed through the agency of the British and Foreign School 
 Society and the National Society. In 1835, Brougham brought 
 before the House of Lords his resolution affirming that it was 
 the duty of Parliament to encourage the establishment of 
 schools, and also of proper seminaries for the training of 
 teachers. In 1838 the first of the Queen's reign another 
 Parliamentary Committee disclosed a lamentable lack of educa- 
 tional provision, and urged the necessity for legislative action. 
 In 1839 a Committee of Privy Council was formed, at the 
 instance of Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell, and charged 
 with the task of administering any sums which Parliament 
 might from time to time assign to educational purposes. The 
 first Secretary of this Committee was Dr J. Philips-Kay, after- 
 wards better known as Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth. He had 
 visited Switzerland, Holland and Prussia, had familiarized him- 
 self with the working of the State system in those countries, 
 and he returned home profoundly impressed with the serious- 
 ness of our own educational deficiencies, and full of zeal for 
 the success and usefulness which the new Department seemed 
 to him to promise his own countrymen. He was a man of 
 large and statesmanlike views, and fine and generous en- 
 thusiasm ; and he had before him a vision of a great system by 
 which the State, with the cooperation of good men of all 
 parties, might place popular education on a basis not inferior
 
 HI.] Primary Education. 43 
 
 to that attained by any continental country, and might express 
 and give effect to the highest national ideals. But he under- 
 rated the forces of the opposition which had to be encountered. 
 In particular, his continental experience had profoundly im- 
 pressed him with the indispensable importance of training for 
 the teacher's profession ; and he desired to make such training 
 a great State function. So he urged on the Government the 
 duty of establishing Normal Colleges. Pending the decision of 
 Parliament on this point, he and his friend Mr Carleton 
 Tufnell, at their own private cost, set on foot such an establish- 
 ment at Battersea. But the religious bodies took the alarm. 
 Bishops and Nonconformists alike were unwilling that the 
 training of the public teacher should pass out of the hands of 
 voluntary societies into those of the State. Battersea College 
 was acquired by the National Society ; diocesan institutions, 
 ii for men and 14 for women, were hastily brought into exist- 
 ence; the British and Foreign School Society increased its own 
 training accommodation at the Borough Road, and afterwards 
 added at Darlington and Stockwell new colleges on its own dis- 
 tinctive principles ; the Roman Catholics and the Wesleyans 
 soon followed, and hence it has happened that the whole busi- 
 ness of preparing teachers for their professional work is to this 
 hour in the hands of voluntary bodies, and that no single 
 training college in England is under either State or municipal 
 government. Shuttleworth was much disappointed, but he 
 could not part with the hope that the new education bureau 
 could by its own action do much to control and ennoble 
 popular education, and to help teachers to improve their pro- 
 fessional qualifications. Accordingly, the Committee of Council 
 hired Exeter Hall and other public buildings, and instituted 
 courses of pedagogic lectures : Mr Hullah gave a series of 
 demonstrations of his method of teaching singing, Mr Butler 
 Williams held classes for the teaching of drawing on a new and 
 improved system, and courses of lectures were freely opened to 
 teachers on the Pestalozzian method of instruction in Arithmetic
 
 44 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 and other school subjects. Teachers flocked to these lectures 
 in considerable numbers. Text-books on various school sub- 
 jects were published with the authority of the Committee of 
 Council. But this and the like experiments were viewed with 
 great disfavour by many, and especially by the founders of the 
 new sectarian Colleges, who regarded it as art encroachment 
 by a Government bureau on the domain of the Churches. 
 What remained to the new department of education was the 
 examination of candidates for the teachers' orifice and the award 
 of certificates. The first of these examinations was held in 
 1848, two years after the famous Minutes of Council, and it is 
 very significant of the view which the energetic Secretary took 
 of the functions of his Department, and the spirit in which he 
 undertook those functions, that in his official circular to the 
 Inspectors who were entrusted with the supervision of the first 
 examination there occurred these words : 
 
 " For the first time from 800 to 1000 Schoolmasters will be assembled, 
 by the invitation of the Government of this country as Candidates for the 
 formal recognition of their capacity to instruct the humbler classes of Her 
 Majesty's subjects, and as a consequence of such recognition to receive 
 immediately from the State an annual stipend proportioned to their merits 
 and exertions. Such a fact is in itself very significant of the continually 
 increasing interest which the Civil power takes in the condition of the 
 working classes, whose moral and religious state and whose intelligence are 
 acknowledged to be objects of vital importance to the common weal. 
 
 It is important that the assembled candidates should be impressed with 
 a conviction of the anxiety of Government by means of a higher description 
 of moral and religious education to improve the condition of the poor, and 
 of their determination, as an indispensable means to this end, to elevate the 
 position of the elementary teacher, by qualifying him to occupy a higher 
 station and by rewarding his more efficient services by superior emoluments. 
 
 They should be reminded that the present low standard of salaries 
 of schoolmasters and their equivocal if not mean position in society are the 
 consequences of the humble estimate of attainments and skill which has 
 been adopted in respect to them, and that it is impossible to raise them to 
 a position of dignity or comfort unless the disposition of the Government 
 towards them be seconded by their own efforts to qualify themselves to 
 obtain these rewards.
 
 III.] Primary Education, 45 
 
 They ought to receive from you the imprauion thai they are 
 upon to cooperate with youraelf and with the Committee of GflOTr* 1 on 
 Education, for the attainment f great national object* by mean* urictly 
 comittcnt with the interests of every indimriotu, intelligent, and well- 
 intentioned teacher." 
 
 The policy here foreshadowed in the early days of the 
 Education Department was thus to stimulate the best ambition 
 of teachers and to invite their cooperation with the State in 
 achieving a great national object. Grants were made direct to 
 the schoolmasters and mistresses, and graduated in proportion 
 to their standing in the examination, and some direct payments 
 were made to managers under the name of 'capitation grants' 
 calculated on the number of scholars who had attended school 
 a certain number of times. The grants rose rapidly: in 1839 
 the sum voted was ,30,000, in 1846 to ,100,000, in 1853 it 
 had risen to ,260,000, and in 1856 to .451,313. In 1858 to 
 ,663,435, and in 1859 to ,836,920. Statesmen and church- 
 men alike became alarmed at the rapid growth of the national 
 expenditure, and a Commission of which the Duke of New- 
 castle was chairman was instructed in 1858 to report on the 
 working of the system. Their report was somewhat disheart- 
 ening; they declared that far too small a proportion of the 
 children of school age were to be found in the schools, that 
 the attendance of the scholars was irregular, that as to the 
 instruction, although the more promising scholars received a 
 good deal of attention, the rank and file of undistinguished 
 scholars were often neglected. And they recommended a very 
 drastic remedy, that instead of paying the teachers directly, 
 in proportion to their own attainments, and the general equip- 
 ment of the school, the children should be individually 
 examined ; and that the grant paid to the managers -no longer 
 to the teachers -should be assessed strictly in accordance with 
 the number of scholars who could pass a simple examination in 
 Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. This was the method of 
 payment by results to which Mr Ixiwe, who was Vice- President
 
 46 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 of the Council, gave effect in the crudest and most pitiless form 
 in his celebrated Revised Code of 1861. 
 
 It need hardly be said that this step was a bitter disappoint- 
 ment to Sir James Shuttleworth, who had now retired with 
 a well-earned baronetcy and in rather broken health. He saw 
 the abandonment of some of his own cherished ideals. His 
 successors were no longer to take the initiative in educational 
 reform. They were simply to be the dispensers of a large sum 
 of public money in aid of local efforts, and to see that the 
 nation gained a good shillingsworth for every shilling that it 
 expended. The attitude of the Department towards school 
 managers was to be summed up in the formula, " We do not 
 prescribe what you should do, nor ask you to do it, but if you 
 are willing to fulfil certain conditions we will pay you for your 
 work." And the attitude of the Department towards Parlia- 
 ment and the taxpayer was summed up in Mr Lowe's famous 
 formula, "We do not assert that the system will be economical, 
 or that it will be efficient. But if it is not economical it will 
 be very efficient, and if it is not efficient it will be very 
 economical." Thus it came to pass that during several years 
 the Education Department having renounced its earlier ambi- 
 tions came to be regarded by the public merely as a grant- 
 distributing office, and the school as a grant-earning machine. 
 This result was defended on the plausible ground that as the 
 State neither appointed the teachers nor paid them and could 
 not dismiss them, the only means at its disposal for influencing 
 popular education was the making of money grants, the pay- 
 ment for certain subjects and measurable results, and the 
 imposition of a money fine if those results were not obtained. 
 To the scientific economist this appeared to be a very business- 
 like arrangement, but from the point of view of educational 
 science it proved unsatisfactory. For it sets up a very inadequate 
 standard of what the " results " of school training ought to be. 
 It measures those results in a hard and mechanical way. It 
 takes no account of general intelligence, of the order and spirit
 
 III.] Primary Education. 47 
 
 in which work is done, of the methods adopted, and indood of 
 the ;&* of a school and the moral influence it exerted. It 
 tempted even the best teachers to the adoption of crude 
 methods designed to secure the maximum number of ' posset ' 
 rather than to secure the highest results of school education. 
 Nevertheless, it undoubtedly forced upon teachers the necessity 
 of attending more closely to the 'rank and file' of the scholars, 
 and it produced at least one result especially satisfactory to a 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer ; for the Government grant shrank 
 in 1865 to ,636,806 as compared with ^836,920 in 1859. 
 
 All later experience has led by degrees to the modification 
 of the 'payment by results' theory as originally embodied in 
 Mr Ixme's Code. His successors have one by one sought to 
 encourage the teaching of other subjects than Reading, 
 Writing, and Arithmetic, and have made part of the grant 
 contingent on attendance as well as on examination. Mr 
 Forster in 1869 obtained facts which showed how lamentably 
 insufficient was the provision which up to that date had been 
 made by voluntary effort to meet the educational needs of the 
 people. My own report in that year showed that in Leeds 
 with a population of 253,1 10, there were in average attendance 
 in schools under inspection 12,422, in schools not under 
 inspection 7,070, in other schools, reformatory, poor law', &c., 
 3,040, total 22,932 ; or less than ten per cent, of the population. 
 
 In the whole of the inspected schools of Ixreds, only 274 
 scholars were presented in Standard VI, that being the class 
 appropriate to scholars of 1 2 years of age. Contrast with these 
 figures the returns just issued by the Ix*eds School Board for 
 the year 1899. The population was 409,472, average attend- 
 ance in inspected schools 67,375; and there is a good supply 
 of Higher (trade and Technical Schools. 
 
 \Vhat Mr Korster's great measure did for the whole country 
 cannot be measured merely by statistics. But it may be worth 
 while to contrast the figures for the Metropolis alone in the 
 year 1870 with those of the present day. With a population
 
 48 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 of 3,258,000, requiring, according to the ordinary calculation 
 543,000 select places, there were in the former year in the 
 various National, British, and other voluntary schools, places 
 for 275,136. At the present moment, with a population of 
 nearly 5,000,000, there are in London 226,381 on the rolls of 
 voluntary schools aided and inspected, or rather fewer than in 
 1871 ; while in the course of thirty years about 450 new schools, 
 each consisting of three departments, boys, girls, and infants 
 have been erected by the London School Board, and the number 
 of scholars on the rolls of these schools is 752,259, or three- 
 quarters of a million. Thus more than three-fourths of the 
 children now attending Elementary Schools in London are 
 provided for by the School Board, and the proportion increases 
 yearly. 
 
 I said that the tendency of the Codes and Regulations of 
 the Education Department had been steadily to mitigate what 
 might be deemed the hard and mechanical operation of the 
 system of 'paying by results.' Mr Forster sought then in 
 introducing the Education Act to make the Code more 
 elastic and to encourage the teaching of other than the three 
 elementary subjects. Grants for discipline and organization 
 were afterwards added; and in 1881 Mr Mundella recognised 
 for the first time the system of training and of manual exercise 
 which had been devised by Frobel, and which has since done 
 so much to brighten the school lives of the infant scholars and 
 to increase their intelligence. He also sought by a graduated 
 payment under the name of the " Merit Grant " to place it in 
 the power of the Inspector to recommend a special award 
 in respect of general intelligence, order, skilful method, beauty 
 and perfectness of equipment, or any form of excellence which 
 could not be adequately measured by the results of individual 
 examination as tabulated in a schedule of " passes." Another 
 Royal Commission, presided over by Lord Cross in 1887, 
 discussed with much fulness and ability the conditions under 
 which the grants ought to be assessed, and the bearing of the
 
 III.] Primary Education. 49 
 
 mode of assessment on the efficiency of the schools. They 
 finally concluded that : 
 
 " The distribution of the Parliamentary grant cannot be wholly freed 
 from it* present dependence on the remits of examination without the 
 risk of incurring graver evils than it is sought to cure. Nor can we believe 
 that Parliament will continue to make so Urge an annual grant as that 
 which now appears in the Education estimates without in some way satisfy- 
 ing itself that the quality of the education given justifies the expenditure. 
 NevertheleM we are unanimously of opinion that the present oystcro of 
 ' payment by results ' is earned loo far and is too rigidly applied, and that it 
 ought to be modified and relaxed in the interests equally of the scholars of 
 the teachers, and of education itself." 
 
 Accordingly the Report proceeded to recommend some 
 substantial modifications of the system then in force, c. that 
 there should be a fixed grant of ior. per scholar, and a variable 
 grant of about the same amount, dependent partly on the 
 results of individual examination and partly on various condi- 
 tions hitherto recognizable under the name of the ' Merit 
 Grant,' the principle of which they sought to retain, though 
 under a slightly altered form. Effect was subsequently given 
 to these recommendations by changes made during the Vice- 
 Presidency of Sir W. Hart Dyke and of Mr Acland. But later 
 experience has, under the present regimt^ led to the complete 
 aliamlonment of all attempts to graduate the grant according 
 to the degrees of efficiency in a school. In place of a report 
 on the individual examination of scholars there is to be one 
 summary estimate of the school as a whole ; in place of an 
 annual examination, occasional inspection without notice ; and 
 in place of a variable grant, dependent on a report in detail on 
 the several subjects of instruction and on specific merits or 
 educational defects, one ' block ' grant, payable to all schools 
 alike, which are not found to be bad enough to justify the 
 withholding of the grant altogether. 
 
 This change of policy has been received with much public 
 approval, but it is too early to forecast all its consequences. 
 The policy which trusts the teachers, and provides that if a 
 s. M. L. 4
 
 5O Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 school is not up to a high level of excellence it shall neverthe- 
 less receive the maximum, or nearly the maximum grant, in 
 order that it may make itself better, is a generous policy. The 
 reaction against a discredited mode of awarding the public 
 grant has been complete, and it remains to be seen whether 
 the opposite of wrong proves to be right. Yet, after all, liberty 
 to improve may imply in some cases liberty to remain un- 
 improved. Many of the best school managers are beginning 
 to complain that some of the safeguards for thorough and 
 accurate teaching have disappeared, and they are looking 
 anxiously for some other safeguards to take their place. The 
 motive force in the grant-earning system was not a very noble 
 one, but some motive force may still be found needful in 
 hundreds of schools, which are neither good nor bad, but dull 
 and apathetic, contentedly acquiescing in routine and in a low 
 standard of aim as well as achievement. We do not want to 
 bring about again the state of things which existed when the 
 Duke of Newcastle's Commission made its report, and when 
 slovenly teaching and slovenly inspection seemed to call for 
 a sharp and summary remedy. So it may be that further 
 modification in the Code will prove to be needed and that new 
 precautions will be required. 
 
 The Scotch Education Department, which on more than 
 one occasion has set an example worthy of imitation, has in its 
 new code for this year taken two such precautions: (i) the 
 permission to the Inspector to recommend deductions of one 
 to five-tenths, from the Block grant, for faults of instruction, or 
 imperfect discipline; and (2) the award of a leaving or Merit 
 Certificate to scholars who at the end of their school course 
 prove on examination to have received a satisfactory general 
 education appropriate to their age. The former of these 
 expedients will discriminate the degrees of efficiency in the 
 inspected schools, will make the inspectors' reports more de- 
 tailed, and therefore more helpful to managers in their efforts 
 to improve ; and the latter will set before every teacher the
 
 ill.] Primary Education. 51 
 
 goal which ought to be attained, and, by means of an effective 
 individual examination at the seventh standard, correct any 
 tendency to laxity which may have been observed in the 
 ordinary work of the school. Neither of these two expedients 
 has yet been adopted in England. The great problem which 
 confronts all Governments in regard to education, how to 
 give guidance and regulation to those who need them, and 
 liberty to those who know how to use it, is not yet finally 
 solved ; and the nineteenth century, though it has made 
 distinct advance and tried many fruitful experiments, leaves to 
 its successor a system which with all its merits is still imperfect, 
 and on which the last word has not yet been said. 
 
 One of the greatest needs of our time is that of some means 
 of prolonging educational discipline and cultivating the desire 
 for self-improvement beyond the age of fourteen, when the 
 strictly primary course is finished. In Germany and Switzerland 
 this object is largely attained by legislation, which compels the 
 boy or girl to attend a supplementary school for two or three 
 evenings in the week. In France and Belgium it is met partly 
 by the Ecoles Primaires Superieures, which carry on the primary 
 course to new subjects, but on the same lines, to the age of 
 1 6 or 17 : and partly by various technical and industrial institu- 
 tions, apprentice schools, schools of commerce, and the like. 
 We are waking up to a sense of the need which exists for some 
 provision of this kind, but it is curiously characteristic of the 
 haphazard character of English legislation on this subject that 
 we owe the chief modern resources for this supplementary 
 instruction to unexpected accidents. In 1890 Parliament was 
 called upon to deal with the excise duties derived from the sale 
 of spirits, and it was proposed by the Government to devote 
 a considerable portion of this sum to compensation to publicans 
 for the loss of licenses. But energetic efforts were made to 
 prevent such an appropriation. Mr A. Acland interposed, and 
 suggested that this part of the revenue should be ear-marked 
 and devoted to Technical Education. The moment was favour- 
 
 42
 
 52 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 able, ' the blessed word ' Technical, though its meaning was 
 only very imperfectly understood, touched the imagination of 
 the House of Commons and the country; and in this way a sum 
 of nearly ^1,000,000 per annum was definitely secured for 
 distribution among the County Councils of England and Wales, 
 in proportion to the several populations. The share of this 
 sum accruing to the London County Council is upwards of 
 ;i 80,000 a year, and this sum has been most judiciously de- 
 voted to the encouragement of scientific instruction in schools, 
 to apprenticeship and scholarships for promising scholars, to 
 manual training, and in many ways to the improvement of the 
 intelligence and skill of young artizans of both sexes. For- 
 tunately the Act of Parliament gives a very elastic meaning to 
 the word ' technical/ and it is becoming daily more evident 
 that preparation for a skilled handicraft alone would prove 
 very unsatisfactory except as a part of a wider and more 
 general curriculum of a secondary type, in which the claims of 
 language, literature, and the 'humanities' generally shall be 
 duly co-ordinated with physical science and manual industry. 
 
 The other windfall which has come into the possession of 
 the public recently is derived from the City Parochial Charities. 
 Mr Bryce, in 1883, succeeded in drawing attention to the large 
 sums available in the City parishes, from ancient endowments, 
 which were once useful when the citizens of London resided in 
 their places of business, but which had become obsolete, and 
 were indeed mischievously wasted. The Commissioners found 
 that large local charities for doles, for apprenticing, for pensions 
 and Christmas gifts had ceased to be of use, partly because no 
 worthy recipients were to be found, and partly because the 
 value of the estates had in many cases increased out of all 
 proportion to any conceivable local requirements. So, after 
 devoting ;i 55,000 to the purchase of open spaces and an equal 
 sum for erecting Polytechnic institutions in the suburbs of 
 London, an annual revenue of about ^50,000 was secured for 
 the maintenance of those institutions, and otherwise for placing
 
 III.] Primary Education. 53 
 
 within reach of the young artizans of London, trade labora- 
 tories, classes and special instruction adapted to the industrial 
 needs of the Metropolis. The London School Board, also, 
 by means of its continuation schools, is strenuously exerting 
 itself to afford additional means of advanced and appropriate 
 instruction to scholars who have passed through the primary 
 school course. 
 
 It need hardly be said here that finality has not been 
 reached. There are grave problems yet unsolved, which will 
 call for the exercise of all the experience and wisdom of the 
 new Board of Education, even when aided by its Consultative 
 Committee. There is first of all the question of the training 
 of teachers. After all that has been said of the urgent import- 
 ance of this question, it is a little humiliating to reflect that one 
 half of the schoolmasters and mistresses who enter the profes- 
 sion each year have received no regular training, and have had 
 no means of obtaining it. Last year about 4400 new recruits 
 obtained certificates scarcely enough to supply the yearly 
 waste in an army of 60,000 fully qualified teachers, and of these 
 only 2 200 proceeded from Training Colleges, 1400 being from 
 denominational institutions Anglican, Roman Catholic, or 
 Wesleyan and 800 from undenominational colleges, including 
 the day students from the normal departments of the great 
 provincial Colleges of University rank. The rest amounting 
 to about one-half of the total number are assistant teachers and 
 others who have qualified by passing the certificate examination, 
 but are untrained. It is evident that we need more normal or 
 training institutions. Yet the Government does not establish 
 them ; the School Boards have no legal power to do so ; and 
 from the first the Government has relied mainly on the provision 
 for training which has been furnished by the Churches. Nobody 
 has better reason than I have to know how much faithful and 
 valuable work has been done in the denominational Colleges 
 and what devoted teachers they have succeeded in producing. 
 But there are inevitable limitations to the usefulness of close
 
 54 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 professional seminaries, founded mainly with a view to strengthen 
 the religious influence of particular sections of Christians. 
 And though there are honourable exceptions, yet as a rule the 
 intellectual aims and the consciousness of national as distin- 
 guished from denominational requirements are not so high as in 
 colleges of another type. Hence I do not think it desirable 
 that the nation should depend mainly for augmenting our supply 
 of trained teachers on any increase in the proportion of training 
 colleges under ecclesiastical influence, although these colleges 
 have undoubted value and appropriateness for certain classes of 
 students. 
 
 In the near future it will become more necessary both in 
 regard to Training Colleges and to Elementary Schools to 
 revise the relations between the Government and the religious 
 bodies, and to consider the conditions under which the 
 Government can continue to avail itself of the cooperation 
 of those bodies. The truth is that the State cannot make 
 itself more denominational, but the denominations can make 
 themselves more national. They can continue to cooperate 
 beneficially with the Government without parting with the reli- 
 gious instruction, to which they naturally attach high import- 
 ance : and they can do this in two ways, (i) by determining 
 that the schools and colleges controlled by the Churches shall 
 not be content with a lower ideal either of educational efficiency 
 in the schools, or of professional qualification for the teachers, 
 than that which is accepted by purely educational and non- 
 sectarian bodies ; and (2) by accepting and indeed welcoming 
 the representatives of the public, in the management of the 
 denominational institutions. They will be able to strengthen 
 their position by a more cordial recognition of the great public 
 and social aims which should dominate a national system. But 
 they will not secure it by advancing new claims for denomina- 
 tional influence over the training of teachers or for denomina- 
 tional teaching in the public schools. There is for example no 
 demand on the part of parents for a separation of the children
 
 III.] Primary Education. 55 
 
 for religious instruction according to the tenets of their respec- 
 tive sects ; that demand comes wholly from the clerical and 
 other supporters of those sects, and if ever complied with it 
 would dislocate the internal arrangements even of good schools, 
 and would introduce among the children sectarian distinctions 
 which would neither be intelligible to them, nor appropriate to 
 their childish needs. It is not likely, however, that the English 
 Legislature will ever consent to try this new and most serious 
 experiment. 
 
 In fact the relation at present subsisting between the State 
 and the religious bodies may be described as one of unstable 
 equilibrium. Consider how the conditions have altered during 
 the last 30 years. At the time of Mr Forster's Act it was 
 computed that one-third of the whole cost of elementary 
 education was contributed by the State, one-third from the 
 fees paid by parents, and one-third from voluntary subscriptions. 
 To-day the total annual cost of primary instruction in England 
 and Wales is eleven millions, of which more than ten millions 
 are derived either from the public treasury or from local 
 taxation, hardly three-quarters of a million or one-sixteenth of 
 the whole from voluntary contributions; the total of all such 
 contributions including church collections and some share of 
 local endowments being ,603,241 in Church of England 
 schools. The liberal grants from the Central Department 
 have little by little reduced the necessity for voluntary aid. 
 Even in 1894 before the special aid grant of 5^. per head to 
 voluntary schools was added to all former grants to managers, 
 a Parliamentary return showed that there were 1061 voluntary 
 schools with no subscriptions whatever, 674 in which the 
 subscriptions amounted to less than a shilling per head, 1095 
 with more than is. and less than 2s. 6d., and 1967 with more 
 than 2s. dd. and less than 55. When it is considered that since 
 that time voluntary schools have been exempted from the 
 payment of local rates, and have thus received an enforced 
 contribution from the ratepayers, it is obvious that there will
 
 56 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 be an increasing number, probably many thousands of schools, 
 chiefly rural, managed wholly by private and self-appointed 
 persons, who neither contribute anything to the funds nor 
 represent contributors, and who yet are free to obtain for them- 
 selves and for the schools whatever denominational advantage 
 the exclusive management of a school can give. 
 
 But the readjustment of the relations between the State and 
 the religious bodies is only one part of the larger problem which 
 awaits the statesmen of the future. How far can any effort on 
 the part of a central authority towards the unifying and co- 
 ordination of local agencies be effective, without discouraging 
 individual and corporate initiative, or doing something to 
 weaken the independence, the enterprise, the inventiveness, and 
 the personal enthusiasm, which are among the most valuable 
 factors, in this country at least, of a system of national educa- 
 tion? We want legislation and a central authority it is true, 
 but we must not expect too much from it. The gravest pro- 
 blems which lie before us cannot all be solved from Whitehall. 
 There are better methods of teaching to be discovered than any 
 which have been yet devised. We want a clearer perception of 
 the true relation between primary and secondary instruction, and 
 we may well dread the creation of an arbitrary line of demarca- 
 tion between them. We need also in all our places of education, 
 from the Infant School to the University, more definite views as 
 to the relative values of those studies which have a visible 
 bearing on commercial and professional success, and are helpful 
 in getting a 'livelihood,' and those other studies which shall help 
 the man or woman to live an intelligent, honourable, and interest- 
 ing life. We have to devise means whereby schools shall be made 
 instrumental in preparing our children for the duties of citizen- 
 ship, and for rendering to the State unpaid and willing service. 
 Schools can do much to cultivate patriotism, not by seeking to 
 introduce rifle clubs and military drill into schools, still less by 
 encouraging that boastful and rather theatrical patriotism which 
 expresses itself in waving the Union Jack and singing Rule
 
 III.] Primary Education. 57 
 
 Britannia ; but by steadily inculcating a grateful sense of the 
 debt we owe to our ancestors for their efforts and for the great 
 inheritance which they have bequeathed to us, and by urging 
 scholars to live and work so as to be worthy of that inheritance. 
 All these objects must be attained if at all by the personal skill 
 and enthusiasm of our teachers, and not by means of State 
 direction or authority. 
 
 The gravest of all the tasks before us is to discover in what 
 way schools may do more for the formation of character. If 
 the result of so much of religious teaching as takes the form of 
 enforcing creeds and catechism has proved somewhat dis- 
 appointing, are there not yet resources open to us for touching 
 the imagination, exciting reverence, and encouraging aspira- 
 tion after righteousness and the love of truth ? There is also 
 the duty of determining how the best results of school work 
 are to be wisely tested and assessed for the information of 
 parents and for the due satisfaction of the State? I am dis- 
 posed to sympathize a little with a young candidate whom I 
 once examined for the Indian Civil Service, and who in the 
 course of an essay on the changes which the present century 
 had witnessed, said, 'The public exacts every year a higher 
 standard of education from those who seek employment in 
 its service ; in proof of which I may refer to the extraordinary 
 difficulty of the questions set at the present examination.' 
 Then there is the great subject of the qualifications of teachers. 
 Do our present methods succeed not only in imparting a know- 
 ledge of the technique of the profession, but also in inspiring 
 our teachers with high aims and a consciousness of the need 
 of something far better than we have yet attained, and a de- 
 termination to take an honourable share in the task of attaining 
 it? Above all we must seek to generate among legislators and 
 the public, and especially among parents, a truer conception 
 of what a good school can be, and can do. We yet need a 
 higher ideal of a generous and noble education directed to the 
 development of the best intellectual faculties, and also to the
 
 58 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CH. III. 
 
 preparation of the scholar for becoming a valuable member of 
 the body politic. 
 
 Such are some of the tasks which await the reformer and 
 the statesman of the coming time. They will call for all the 
 resources of the new Board of Education and its Consultative 
 Committee, as well as of teachers, managers, and philanthropists. 
 And if the rather halting, tentative, and imperfect experiments 
 of the nineteenth century have enabled us to do much, we 
 may yet hope that the twentieth century, with the record of 
 the mistakes and failures of our predecessors before us, will 
 do still more to spread the love of learning and culture, to 
 beautify the homes and industries of the workers, and to 
 ennoble the whole of our national life.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SECONDARY EDUCATION 
 LEGISLATION, 
 
 WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO PROBLEMS 
 AWAITING SOLUTION. 
 
 BY 
 
 I)R R. P. SCOTT. 
 
 IN treating of Secondary Education with special reference 
 to those of its problems which now await solution, I do not 
 propose to dwell on the most attractive features of the system 
 if system it may be called which obtains in England. Of 
 set purpose I say nothing of the dignity and high aims of the 
 great Public Schools, of the excellent services rendered by our 
 Grammar Schools and Modern Schools, or to the originality 
 and initiative observable in the best private schools. 
 
 I propose rather to survey briefly the gradual and hesitating 
 steps by which Secondary Education has at length won its way 
 to the position of a great public question in England. 
 
 Amongst the problems which from an educational point of 
 view press for an early solution are the following : a State 
 survey of existing schools ; inspection ; examination ; curricula ; 
 registration and tenure of teachers ; salaries and finance gene- 
 rally ; the mutual relations of Governing Bodies, Local Educa- 
 tion Authorities, and the Central Authority. All these are but
 
 60 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 different aspects of one great problem to secure in the in- 
 terests of the nation the highest possible efficiency of all its 
 schools. And, after all, this efficiency is nothing more than 
 a means to a still greater end, the training up of good men and 
 women who shall be capable of answering to all the varied calls 
 made upon the citizens of this great Empire. 
 
 Even before the early years of this century there has been 
 a vague feeling that the public is in some measure responsible 
 for education, and that grants of public money might reason- 
 ably be made for its encouragement. After an inquiry extend- 
 ing from 1818 to 1837, educational charities were effectively 
 distinguished from other charities : a generation later, the 
 endowed grammar schools of the country were inquired into, 
 and in large measure were more closely adapted to existing 
 requirements ; but secondary education, as distinct from 
 secondary schools, and from technical instruction, received no 
 official recognition or support, until in 1889 1890, under the 
 Technical Instruction and Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) 
 Acts, local authorities began to extend effectively over the whole 
 area of England the benefits of a certain type of secondary 
 education. Full recognition, however, of secondary education 
 as a matter of national concern has been reserved for the 
 closing decade of the century in the Bryce Commission and the 
 Board of Education Act, 1899. 
 
 These are the most prominent features of the prolonged 
 movement which has resulted in a partial organisation of 
 secondary schools ; yet hardly a year of the Queen's reign has 
 passed which has not been marked by some public inquiry or 
 Commission, or by some private or Government Bill, and 
 though the statute which became operative in the very last 
 year of the century may appear to be but a modest instalment 
 in payment of a great debt, yet it cannot be doubted that the 
 early years of the coming century will witness in England a great 
 development and a wide extension of secondary education. 
 
 It will perhaps be enough to mention in order of date the
 
 IV.] Secondary Education Legislation. 6 1 
 
 official inquiries, the Acts of Parliament, and the administra- 
 tive changes during the century which have been of determina- 
 tive importance to secondary education. 
 
 The Committees or Royal Commissions are : 
 
 1818 37. Brougham's Committee on Endowments. 
 
 1849 53. Chichester Commission. 
 
 1850 52. Oxford and Cambridge University Commissions. 
 
 1 86 1 4. Public Schools Commission, under Lord Clarendon. 
 
 1864 7. Schools Inquiry Commission, under Lord Taunton. 
 
 1 88 1 4. Technical Instruction Commission, under Sir B. 
 
 Samuelson. 
 18945. Secondary Education Commission, under Mr J. 
 
 Bryce. 
 
 The Statutes are : 
 1853. Charitable Trusts Act. 
 
 1868. Public Schools Act. 
 
 1869 ) 
 
 to > Endowed Schools Act, and amending Acts. 
 1874. ) 
 
 1888. Local Government Act. [Important as mapping out the 
 
 whole country into local administrative areas]. 
 1889 j 
 
 and I Technical Instruction Act and amending Act. 
 1891. ) 
 
 1889. Welsh Intermediate Education Act. 
 
 1890. Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act. [Im- 
 
 portant as providing all Counties and County Boroughs 
 with funds for technical instruction]. 
 1899. Board of Education Act. 
 
 With regard to Public Departments, the following steps 
 mark the chief administrative departures : 
 1839. Committee of Council on Education established. 
 
 1852. Department of Science and Art established. 
 
 1853. Charity Commission established.
 
 62 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 1856. Vice-Presidency of Committee of Council esta- 
 
 blished, and the Department of Science and Art 
 coordinated with the Education Department. 
 
 1900. Board of Education, including Consultative Com- 
 
 mittee, established. 
 
 Twice also has the Government of the day recognised that 
 the organisation of education is a matter of national import- 
 ance, viz. in 1869, when Mr W. E. Forster was admitted to 
 the Cabinet with the purpose of giving the full weight of 
 Governmental influence to his Education Bill, and again in 
 1892, when Mr Arthur Acland, though occupying no higher 
 post than the Vice-Presidency of the Committee of Council 
 on Education, was nevertheless admitted to the rank of a 
 Cabinet Minister. 
 
 Thus the lack of legislation for secondary education in 
 general has been due not to want of information on the sub- 
 ject, but to the absence of public interest in the matter and to 
 a practical disbelief in national responsibility with regard to 
 education as a whole. 
 
 Let us consider in order the several Inquiries into the 
 subject, and their respective outcomes as regards legislation : 
 
 1. THE BROUGHAM COMMISSION. This was the first 
 Commission appointed with powers of inquiry into Secondary 
 Schools, though its range extended over charitable endowments 
 in general. A Select Committee of the House of Commons, 
 having considered their Report, recommended in 1835 the 
 establishment of a permanent Commission to superintend 
 the Administration of Charities. 
 
 2. THE CHICHESTER COMMISSION. Nothing effective was, 
 however, done until this second Commission had reported that 
 the abuses complained of by the former Commission had not 
 yet been sufficiently remedied. As a consequence the Charity 
 Commission was constituted by Act of Parliament in 1853, and 
 empowered to conduct inquiries into Charities and to make
 
 IV.] Secondary Education Legislation. 63 
 
 schemes for their administration. But it may be remarked, 
 firstly, that such schemes were incomplete without confirmation 
 by Parliament ; and, secondly, that in the great majority of 
 cases they dealt with non-educational charities. 
 
 3. OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS. 
 In 1850, two Commissions were appointed to inquire into the 
 state, discipline, studies and revenues of Oxford and Cambridge 
 respectively. Both Commissions had a difficult task to perform 
 owing to the open hostility of the resident members of the 
 Universities. The Oxford Commission was exceedingly frank 
 in its criticism of the then existing state of things. The 
 Cambridge Commission was more guarded in its expression of 
 opinion. But the case for reform was so strong that in 1854 
 and in 1856 Acts of Parliament were passed for Oxford and 
 Cambridge, respectively embodying some of the chief recom- 
 mendations made. In the reforms which followed both Uni- 
 versities became accessible from a wider variety of schools than 
 had hitherto been the case. 
 
 4. THE CLARENDON COMMISSION. In 1861, a fresh Com- 
 mission was appointed - to inquire into nine great Public 
 Schools the boarding schools of Eton, Winchester, West- 
 minster, Charterhouse, Harrow, Rugby, and Shrewsbury, to- 
 gether with the day schools of St Paul's and Merchant Taylors'. 
 
 The result of this inquiry was practically to reveal the need 
 of a far wider inquiry, namely, as to the education given in 
 endowed grammar schools generally. The legislative outcome 
 of this Commission is seen in the Public Schools Act, 1868, a 
 measure of exceptional legislation in favour of the nine schools 
 above named. 
 
 5. THE TAUNTON COMMISSION. The Terms of Reference 
 of this Commission were contained in the following words : 
 
 " To report what measures, if any, are required for the 
 improvement of secondary education, having special 
 regard to all endowments applicable, or which rightly 
 can be made applicable thereto."
 
 64 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 Among the twelve Commissioners on this occasion were the 
 first Lord Lyttelton, Dr F. Temple, now Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, Mr W. E. Forster, and Mr (afterwards Sir) T. Dyke 
 Acland. This was the Commission to which Matthew Arnold 
 reported on the systems of secondary education existing in 
 France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, and which he sought 
 to impress with his cry of " Organise your Secondary and 
 Higher Instruction." One of the less obvious effects of the 
 Report was to reveal to Parliament the striking deficiency of 
 public provision for the secondary education of girls in England, 
 and the capability of girls to benefit by such a provision, if 
 made. 
 
 The Report of this Commission, which appeared in 1867, 
 was of a most able and thorough character, and had its Recom- 
 mendations been adopted, much of the subsequent waste and 
 confusion might have been avoided. No fewer than 572 
 Secondary Schools were reported upon ; amongst these, the 
 efficient schools were found to be few in proportion to the 
 needs of the community ; the best schools, moreover, were 
 boarding schools, designed chiefly for the wealthier classes. 
 There were 100 towns with at least 5000 inhabitants which 
 had no endowed grammar school at all ; in fact the supply was 
 utterly inadequate, and that which existed was in many cases 
 inefficient. Of this inefficiency two examples may suffice. 
 
 In one school the Commissioners found that the Head 
 Master and the Second Master enjoyed the freehold of their 
 offices and had not exchanged a word for thirteen years. In 
 another case the school was found to consist of a single pupil, 
 and the large school-room had become a billiard-room for the 
 master, who, when asked why he did not shew greater energy 
 in getting pupils, replied that the house was a good one, the 
 income was sufficient, and he was not ambitious. 
 
 "At Sedbergh there were 13 pupils, the schoolrooms were in a shame- 
 ful state, and the scholars, though showing signs of having had teaching, 
 were in a thoroughly bad state of discipline, and apparently only staying
 
 IV.] Secondary Education Legislation. 65 
 
 on to qualify for the school exhibitions. Thame had two masters, receiving 
 ^300 between them, one of whom had a good house also. Mr Fearon 
 found one boy in the school. A private school close by had 80 boarders 
 and 40 day scholars, paying higher than the grammar school fees.... Read ing 
 had three scholars, and there was no hope of the school reviving under the 
 then master.... At Whitgift's Hospital, Croydon, the late master (who died 
 in 1863), Mr Fearon was informed, found no pupils attending the school 
 when he came, and never had any at all during the 30 odd years that he 
 was master.. ..At Netherbury the master has other business, and at one 
 time carried on continuously with the school the business of a flour and 
 spinning mill. Mr Stanton examined the upper half of the school : " they 
 were profoundly ignorant on all subjects." [Vol. I. pp. 225, 6.] 
 
 "The faults that may be charged in the buildings," reports 
 Mr Bryce, speaking of the Lancashire Schools, " are of various 
 kinds. I will briefly touch on some of the most conspicuous : 
 
 " i. They are, as a rule, ugly without and dingy within ; ugly and dingy 
 to a degree which not even a photograph could faithfully represent.... The 
 interior is even more repulsive ; the roof is low, and the small windows 
 admit a feeble light. The walls are mostly whitewashed, or covered with 
 a wash which once was white, but is now a grimy brown. 
 
 The desks and benches are old, clumsy, inconvenient. There is every- 
 where an air of discomfort and neglect. 
 
 2. It is seldom that they have any proper means of maintaining an 
 equable temperature. The fireplace is usually at one end the upper end 
 where the teacher's desk is placed of a longish room ; and the master is 
 fried while the boys are frozen. The floor is more frequently of stone than 
 of wood I have even seen it of mud, interspersed with puddles and thus 
 the maximum of noise and the minimum of heat is secured. 
 
 3. The room is generally dirty and untidy. There is often no porch 
 where the children may clean their feet and hang up their caps or coats. 
 
 4. The faults which meet the eye, however, are very far from being 
 the worst to be encountered in these schools ; it is another sense which 
 really suffers, and suffers more than can well be described... the ceilings are 
 generally low ; the windows small and few. Many have windows which 
 do not open; in others they are not opened from fear of the violent 
 thorough draughts which would ensue. The result must be felt to be 
 understood." [Vol. I. pp. 279, 80.] 
 
 The chief recommendations of the Taunton Commission 
 were : 
 
 s. M. L. 5
 
 66 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 1. That a Central Authority should be appointed a 
 strengthened Charity Commission. 
 
 2. That Provincial Education Boards for the local group- 
 ing of Secondary Schools should be established. 
 
 A difficulty was felt in determining the areas of local 
 administration and the Registrar-General's districts were 
 suggested : but this was only in default of an official unit-area 
 recognised for general administrative (including rating) pur- 
 poses. 
 
 The Commissioners were fully alive to the immense gain 
 which will accrue to Secondary Education when it can enlist on 
 its side local interest and local support. 
 
 " The necessity of dealing with schools in groups," writes the Com- 
 mission, " seems plainly to imply a corresponding necessity of local 
 provincial Boards to deal with them... local opposition to many changes 
 would be probably diminished and perhaps disappear if a considerable 
 district, such, for instance, as a county, were handled by itself, and the 
 endowments were administered for the benefits of that county It is plain 
 that a local Board has some very great advantages over a central authority. 
 It can act from personal knowledge of the district, and consequently can 
 consult the feelings and peculiarities of the people. It can inquire into all 
 important endowments on the spot, and give every person interested an 
 opportunity of being thoroughly heard. If in any substantial degree it 
 represents the people, it carries a force with it which it is impossible to 
 secure in any other way." [Vol. I. pp. 637, 638.] 
 
 3. That Boroughs should be empowered to rate themselves 
 up to 2d. in the for the supply and maintenance of Second- 
 ary Schools. 
 
 4. That an Examining Council should be appointed to 
 report upon the instruction given ; half of the members of this 
 Council were to be nominated by the Universities; the benefits 
 of examination to be open to all, not merely to endowed, 
 secondary schools ; and all schools to be capable of inclusion 
 in the list of 'efficient' schools. 
 
 Further, a Commissioner was to be appointed by the Central 
 Body to each District with powers of inspection.
 
 IV.] Secondary Education Legislation. 67 
 
 Such were the four Recommendations of this Commission 
 made so long ago as 1867: they cover in effect the whole field 
 of what was then under consideration; at that date there were 
 no Higher Grade Schools and no Technical Institutes to raise 
 the thorny problem of delimitation. It was indeed a golden 
 opportunity for legislation, but the issues involved were not 
 understood either by those in authority or by the public at 
 large, and the main outcome of this Commission on the passing 
 of the Endowed Schools Acts was to place the Charity Com- 
 mission in the position of a Central Authority for a large 
 number of Secondary Schools, though Secondary Education as 
 apart from Endowed Schools was naturally beyond the purview 
 of such an Authority. 
 
 The projected Provincial Authorities lacking touch with all 
 administrative and rating authorities alike remained in nubibus, 
 while the work of examination, having been already taken up by 
 the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge as well as by the 
 College of Preceptors, was left in their hands. 
 
 Following upon this Commission came the Endowed 
 Schools Acts (1869 to 1874) under which certain Commis- 
 sioners were appointed with powers to deal with Endowed 
 Secondary Schools. To their credit be it spoken, that within 
 the six years of their existence they obtained parliamentary 
 sanction for no fewer than 235 new schemes and left behind 
 them 200 draft schemes in an advanced stage. Such unpre- 
 cedented activity met with its natural reward ; the Commis- 
 sioners resigned office in 1874 and the Charity Commission 
 resumed sway and conducted operations with its characteristic 
 caution and avoidance of official friction. 
 
 The action of the Charity Commission subsequent to 1874 
 has no doubt been largely influenced by their interpretation of 
 the object in the preamble of the Endowed Schools Act of 1 869, 
 viz. that of "bringing a liberal education within the reach 
 of children of all classes." They interpreted this to mean that 
 in general the tuition fee was to be fixed as low as possible, and 
 
 5 2
 
 68 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 accordingly, without investigation as to the cost per pupil of 
 efficiency in the several types of school considered, the fees 
 were allowed to be fixed by Governing Bodies far below the 
 minimum cost of efficiency: in determining the scales of fees 
 permitted the Commission took no account of a possible 
 shrinkage of endowment, or even of the inevitable rise in the 
 cost of efficiency under the new conditions prescribed by the 
 Commissioners themselves ; in fact, while responding to the 
 public need for a wider diffusion of liberal education, they failed 
 to enlist public support for the work they had undertaken. 
 And why did they fail? Because, failing to perceive that finan- 
 cial considerations profoundly affect the questions of school- 
 efficiency, they omitted to collect, to collate and to report upon 
 the facts which it was their duty to investigate. The conse- 
 quence of this omission has been that no general standards of 
 educational efficiency have been evolved, and that a large 
 proportion of the schemes have been issued under serious 
 misapprehensions and hence have never been fully operative. 
 Instead of insisting that such schemes could not in many cases 
 from the aspect of efficiency be fully operative without further 
 financial aid, and that the public should not look to the Com- 
 mission for grants for aid, the Charity Commissioners were 
 content to perform their legal duty of launching the schemes 
 without concerning themselves in their future fate. 
 
 Such a policy could not of course prove final. Secondary 
 Schools in their financial distress looked around for aid from 
 other sources. 
 
 Such aid was immediately available on conditions. Among 
 the subjects of instruction lately admitted into Schemes was 
 that of natural science, and the Department for Science and 
 Art was at hand ready and willing to extend its operations by 
 subsidising the teaching of this subject as well to pupils of school 
 age attending Secondary Schools as to those of maturer years. 
 
 In 1852 a Department of Science and Art had been 
 established under the Board of Trade, but when in 1856 it
 
 IV.] Secondary Education Legislation. 69 
 
 was transferred to the Privy Council, like the Education De- 
 partment, it was placed nominally under the Lord President of 
 the Privy Council but virtually under the newly created officer 
 of State, the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on 
 Education. This arrangement, with its possibility of divided 
 counsels at head-quarters, has now been swept away by the 
 Board of Education Act. 
 
 The Science and Art Department received an Imperial 
 Grant which amounted in 1899 to as much as ^600,000, and 
 which it disbursed to Governing Bodies, to teachers and to 
 students. The conditions on which it distributed the money 
 have undoubtedly had a considerable effect in encouraging, 
 especially in the case of adults, the teaching of subjects in the 
 Science and Art Directory, but, in respect of Schools, the 
 examination tests which it imposed were not on the whole such 
 as tended to establish right methods of teaching or intelligent 
 learning. These tests, so far as Schools are concerned, have 
 been, and are still being, modified in the right direction ; but, 
 beyond this, a sound, if partial, system of educational Inspec- 
 tion is growing up in place of examination. Under this system 
 not only such results of teaching as may be ascertained by 
 written papers, but also practical work and the methods of 
 teaching employed come under the personal review of the 
 Departmental Inspector. 
 
 Since 1890, also, both teaching and learning in science 
 subjects in Schools have been much improved by the establish- 
 ment, under the term School of Science, of special departments 
 within Schools with a prescribed curriculum for three years (or 
 four) in certain subjects. 
 
 This step undoubtedly marks a real advance in adminis- 
 tration. State control is likely to be more efficient when it 
 recognises the limitations which school conditions necessarily 
 impose upon the mutual relations of one subject to another in 
 school courses of assigned length. But inasmuch as the con- 
 ditions imposed affect, not the School as a whole, but merely a
 
 7O Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 part of it, and affect that part only in certain subjects, these 
 regulations of Department must be regarded as an interim 
 arrangement calling for early modification. 
 
 The influence exercised by the Department upon Secondary 
 Schools has grown great from small beginnings. Broadly speak- 
 ing, it has caused the substitution in most of the less wealthy 
 endowed schools of grant-earning subjects for literary and 
 linguistic studies, and has tempted Governing Bodies of Schools 
 to surrender their own independent judgment as to the selec- 
 tion of the courses of study appropriate to their Schools, and to 
 adopt instead the only course which would procure them a 
 money grant. 
 
 This tendency was greatly increased by the working of 
 the Technical Instruction Act (1889) followed by the Local 
 Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act (1890). 
 
 The first of these two Acts was passed to remedy our 
 national deficiencies in the application of science and scientific 
 method to our industries : it was the direct outcome of the 
 Recommendations of the Royal Commission on Technical 
 Instruction which sat from 1881 4. That Commission 
 pointed out the need of good secondary schools of a modern 
 type and declared that legislation was necessary to enable 
 localities to found and support technical and secondary schools: 
 they further expressed their conviction that a good secondary 
 education is the best possible preliminary to all good technical 
 instruction. 
 
 The second Act made available a very large annual sum of 
 money, now ,800,000 a year, for the promotion of Technical 
 Education, and entrusted this sum to those Local Authorities 
 Counties and County Boroughs which had recently been 
 established (1888) and whose administrative powers extended 
 over the whole area of the country. 
 
 It will be remembered that when in 1867 the Taunton 
 Commission recommended the establishment of Local educa- 
 ion Authorities there was not, except in boroughs, any adminis-
 
 IV.] Secondary Education Legislation. 71 
 
 trative area available ; and, even in 1870, when the nation became 
 awake to the urgent need for organising Elementary Education 
 a new area the School Board area had first to be devised, 
 and secondly to be left, as a matter of local option, with the 
 consequence that, after thirty years from the passing of the Act, 
 only two-thirds of the country and about half the population 
 are now under the School Board system. 
 
 The definition of "technical instruction" which occurs in 
 the Act of 1889 can only by courtesy be regarded as a defini- 
 tion at all : it is both prolix and obscure, and even self-contradic- 
 tory 1 . Hence, even from the first, it has virtually been disre- 
 garded, and the Science and Art Department has been entrusted 
 with the responsibility of interpreting it by Minute. The 
 Department disregarding logic, but keeping essentials in view, 
 has proceeded to sanction one by one every subject taught in 
 schools except Classics, as coming under the head of "tech- 
 nical instruction." Thus, Local Authorities have been em- 
 powered bit by bit to aid secondary schools, and the majority 
 of County Councils and County Boroughs have in a greater or 
 less degree used their powers in this direction, but the indefi- 
 nite character of the statute itself and the indirect method (viz. 
 by Minute) adopted for supplying its deficiency have seriously 
 impaired the effectiveness of the powers conferred by confusing 
 the minds of local administrators. 
 
 The aid thus rendered to secondary schools has taken the 
 shape of capital and of annual grants, the former for equip- 
 ment, the latter for maintenance. In the County of London, 
 for example, for the year ending March 25, 1900, the equipment 
 grants made under this head were ^1900, and the mainte- 
 nance grants ,22,870 [of which .7143 was paid in scholars' 
 fees]. Further, it is to be remarked, that the London allo- 
 cation was consequent on a preliminary survey of secondary 
 schools within the County area, and is not based upon a mecha- 
 nical scale, but has been adapted to the special needs of the 
 1 See note p. 1 70.
 
 72 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 individual schools with a view to ensuring the efficiency of 
 each. Thus the varying sums allotted bear witness to an effort 
 to supplement deficiencies of income arising from small endow- 
 ments or low fees. 
 
 On the whole, and with few exceptions, the conditions 
 imposed by County Councils on grants to schools under the 
 Acts have been reasonably framed, but it is no less true that in 
 the distribution of these grants too little attention has hitherto 
 been paid to the question of efficiency and its normal and 
 ascertainable cost per pupil. 
 
 The third member of the Central Authority for Education 
 the former Education Department officially touched Second- 
 ary Education in three points only. 
 
 1. The Vice-President of the Committee of Council was 
 at once virtually head of the Education Department and of the 
 Science and Art Department. 
 
 2. The Education Department had the last word in 
 respect of all School Schemes framed by the Charity Commis- 
 sion and could, if it chose, remit them for further considera- 
 tion. 
 
 3. Lastly, in the necessary authorisation and inspection 
 which the Education Department had to provide not only in 
 Training Colleges, but within Elementary Schools, for Pupil 
 Teachers, many most important questions of Secondary Educa- 
 tion were raised in connection with the general course of 
 education to be thus established. 
 
 Thus though there were three Central Authorities with 
 powers bearing upon Secondary Education, viz. the Charity 
 Commission, the Science and Art Department, and the Edu- 
 cation Department, there was no Body which regarded 
 education as a whole, and Secondary Education as a matter of 
 national concern. Just sufficient touch between the three 
 Bodies was maintained to prevent official friction, but, as they 
 were united in no common educational aim, there resulted 
 in each Office a district administrative tradition. The Educa-
 
 IV.] Secondary Education Legislation. 73 
 
 tion Department came to focus its attention on one the 
 elementary type of education and rarely, if ever, considered 
 the bearing of its actions on other types. The Science and 
 Art Department was naturally limited to the scope implied by 
 its name, and whilst encouraging Science and Art teaching in 
 general, sought to establish a uniform test for all types of 
 education. Lastly, the Charity Commission, originating as it 
 did with a portion of the Court of Chancery, has regarded 
 educational charities rather from the point of view of the inter- 
 pretation of the trust than that of the interests of the persons 
 for whom the trust was held. 
 
 One effect of the office tradition of the Charity Commission, 
 which subordinates the financial to the legal aspect of the case 
 has already been touched upon [p. 68]. Another and even more 
 serious effect is to throw the office out of touch with the Schools 
 whose Endowment it guards. This loss of touch with the 
 changing requirements of education, which seems inseparable 
 from the legal point of view as carried to its logical conclusion, is 
 best exemplified in an extreme case by the famous judgment of 
 Lord Eldon in the case of Leeds Grammar School. In this 
 case the locality sought to improve the curriculum of Leeds 
 Grammar School, then a purely classical School, by including 
 arithmetic, writing and other subjects, but the learned Chan- 
 cellor whilst admitting that from an educational point of view 
 the proposal was not unreasonable, declined to sanction the 
 changes on the ground that the applicants had not produced 
 sufficient evidence to show that the estate of the Trust would 
 thereby be benefited 1 . 
 
 Again, the Science and Art Department till 1890 consist- 
 ently pursued the idea of payment by subjects, quite regardless 
 of those right combinations and proportions of subjects which 
 
 1 The exact words are worth preserving : " A provision for teaching 
 educational subjects in a separate branch of the school might be very useful 
 to the rising generation of Leeds, but could not possibly be represented as 
 useful to that charity" [The Attorney General v. Whiteley, II. Vesey, 241].
 
 74 Education in t/ie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 alone can constitute education not to speak of a liberal 
 education. From an educational point of view it is of course 
 useless to attempt classification by subject. Arithmetic, for 
 instance, belongs exclusively neither to elementary, nor to 
 secondary, nor again to technological instruction, for it enters 
 into the curriculum of each of these types. 
 
 Lastly, the Education Department, under the influence of 
 a somewhat narrow tradition, limited its powers as regards 
 Secondary Education to considering how far the Charity Com- 
 mission Schemes which were submitted to it bore upon the 
 Elementary School system which it had to administer. 
 
 THE BRYCE COMMISSION. We now come to the most 
 recent of the Commissions dealing with Secondary Education. 
 The Bryce Commission, which sat for 17 months (March 
 1894 August 1895), if not tne greatest of the Royal Com- 
 missions on the subject, was in several respects the most 
 important. In the first place, it set up a new precedent as to 
 the constitution of a Royal Commission, inasmuch as of its 17 
 members 3 were women. In the next place, its singular 
 unanimity in a matter relating to so many interests as Secondary 
 Education does, was paralleled by the cordiality with which the 
 Recommendations were welcomed throughout the country. 
 Doubtless some of this unanimity was directed rather to the 
 general principles than to the details, but the broad fact of its 
 general acceptability remains, and many of its Recommen- 
 dations have found, and more will find, their way into the 
 statute book. 
 
 The main Recommendations of this Commission were : 
 
 i. To create an Education Office under a responsible 
 Minister of Education, with a permanent Secretary, and an 
 advisory Educational Council to consist of 12 members, of 
 whom one-third should be appointed by the Crown, one-third 
 by the Universities, and one-third by co-optation. 
 
 Into the Office on the one hand were to be absorbed 
 the Charity Commission, so far as educational endowments are
 
 IV.] Secondary Education Legislation. 75 
 
 concerned, the Science and Art Department and the existing 
 Education Department. And besides the Office the Commis- 
 sion advised Her Majesty to appoint a permanent Body of 
 educational advisers, an Educational Council, whose functions 
 were indicated as follows [Vol. i, p. 258] : 
 
 " Most of the work to be assigned to the new Central Office would 
 naturally be despatched by the Minister and his departmental staff in the 
 usual way. There will be some matters however in which the counsel 
 of persons specially conversant with education and holding an independent 
 position, may be so helpful, and there will be some duties in their nature so 
 distinctly judicial rather than executive, as to make it desirable to secure 
 for the Minister the advice of persons not under his official direction. 
 There will, moreover, be some work to be done in a Central Educational 
 Department, so purely professional, as to belong rather to an independent 
 body than to a Department of State. For these purposes we propose that 
 there be created an Educational Council which may advise the Ministers in 
 the first mentioned class of matters and in appeals, while such a pro- 
 fessional function as the registration of teachers might be entirely committed 
 to it. We do not advocate such a council on the ground that it will relieve 
 a Minister of responsibility, for we conceive that the responsibility both for 
 general policy and for the control of administrative details ought to be his 
 and his alone ; but we believe that the unwillingness which exists in some 
 quarters to entrust to the Executive any powers at all in this branch of 
 education would be sensibly diminished were his position at once strength- 
 ened and guarded by the addition of a number of independent advisers." 
 
 2. To establish Local Authorities of definite and uniform 
 constitution in each County and County Borough (i.e. in 
 Boroughs of more than 50,000 inhabitants). 
 
 These Local Authorities should supervise all local Secondary 
 Schools and be bound to provide sufficient means of secondary 
 education, whilst the Central Office should see that this duty 
 is fulfilled. Non-local Schools were to be exempt from the 
 Local Authority [Vol. i, pp. 265, 272, 5]. 
 
 3. Finance. In addition to the grants already available 
 the Local Authorities were empowered to raise a local rate not 
 exceeding 2d. in the .
 
 76 Education in tlte Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 4. Inspection was to be separated from examination, and 
 was to be mainly administrative, i.e. to deal with the efficient 
 working of the School as a piece of administrative machinery 
 rather than as a place of education, and as such inspection 
 was to be conducted by the Local Authority, the examination 
 of pupils was to remain in the hands of University and other 
 examining bodies as before. 
 
 These Recommendations have suffered the fate of the 
 Recommendations of every other Royal Commission on Edu- 
 cation they have not been adopted in their entirety ; on the 
 other hand they were timely, they have served to focus public 
 opinion, and in consequence have profoundly affected the 
 important statute with which the century closes the Board of 
 Education Act, which came into legislative force in April 1900. 
 
 To come into legislative force is not quite the same thing 
 as to come into active operation ; that is left for the Twentieth 
 Century. 
 
 I have called this Act an important Act, perhaps I should 
 rather call it an Act of great potentialities. It appoints a 
 Minister of Education and gives him a wide scope with much 
 elasticity and freedom of action : it frees him from the detailed 
 control of Parliament and hands over a great task with but few 
 definite instructions. It is true that it leaves all the questions 
 under discussion open questions, and in consequence it has 
 been called vague, indefinite, and a mere skeleton of an Act ; 
 but in the existing state of public opinion this was inevitable, 
 and was on the whole the wisest thing to do. 
 
 Let us note what the Act does : 
 
 1. It creates a Board of Education bringing together not 
 at once, but gradually all the three central Authorities for 
 Education. This central consolidation is bound to produce 
 far-reaching results. 
 
 2. The Board of Education is placed, as the Bryce Com- 
 mission recommended, under a responsible Minister, who 
 (whatever his exact title may be) will be the Minister for
 
 IV.] Secondary Education Legislation. 77 
 
 Education. If the President of the Board is in the House of 
 Lords, he is to have a Parliamentary Secretary in the House of 
 Commons ; but it is probable that, owing to the extent of the 
 public expenditure involved, it will become customary for the 
 Minister to sit in the Lower House. 
 
 There is to be a permanent Secretary of the Education 
 Office with certain Principal Assistant Secretaries. 
 
 The following diagram will show the relative positions of 
 the chief officials at present appointed under the Board of 
 Education Act : 
 
 President of the Board 
 (Duke of Devonshire) 
 
 Permanent Secretary of the Board 
 (Sir George Kekewich) 
 
 Principal Assistant Secretary Principal Assistant Secretary for 
 
 for Elementary Education Secondary and Technological 
 
 (Mr John White) Education (Sir William Abney) 
 
 Assistant Secretary Assistant Secretary 
 
 (Literary Branch) (Technological Branch) 
 
 Hon. W. N. Bruce Mr G. R. Redgrave 
 
 The Board of Education Act, sweeping away as it does the 
 old Committee of Council on Education, abolishes the Vice- 
 Presidency of that Committee, but by special provision of the 
 Act Sir John Gorst still enjoys the title and powers of Vice- 
 President which, so soon as he leaves office, will become extinct. 
 In consequence of this special provision the need for appoint- 
 ing a Parliamentary Secretary has not arisen. 
 
 The appointments indicated above do not constitute, it 
 should be remarked, by any means an ideal arrangement, or 
 even so good an arrangement as reasonably might have been 
 expected from the assurances given on more than one occasion 
 in the House of Lords by the Lord President of the Council
 
 78 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 himself, who definitely promised to appoint three [not two] 
 Principal Assistant Secretaries of equal status. These as- 
 surances, which had the effect of disarming hostility to the 
 Board of Education Bill, have hitherto been disregarded in 
 these official appointments, but as the existing arrangements are 
 not prescribed by the Act they need not be regarded as an 
 ultimate solution of the problem, and they may, at no. distant 
 date, give place to the arrangement contemplated immediately 
 before the Act was passed. 
 
 3. There is to be attached to the Board of Education 
 a Consultative Committee, composed, as to at least two-thirds, 
 of persons " qualified to represent the views of Universities and 
 other Bodies interested in education." 
 
 In June 1900, the first appointments to membership of the 
 Consultative Committee under the Act were made by Her 
 Majesty in Council, and no reasonable objection can be raised 
 against the personnel of this educational Council of 18 as first 
 constituted. As in the Bryce Commission, there are upon 
 it three women Mrs Bryant, Miss Manley, and Mrs Sidgwick 
 but the method of selection is not that recommended by the 
 Bryce Commission, which suggested a representative Body 
 nominated in part by educational institutions. The Govern- 
 ment has preferred to keep the nomination of members in its 
 own hands. The Committee is empowered to frame regula- 
 tions for the registration of teachers, but, apart from this 
 function, has no power of initiative ; time alone can show how 
 this limitation will work. 
 
 4. But the Act goes far beyond mere administrative action : 
 it arranges for the Inspection of all such Secondary Schools as 
 shall apply to be inspected, and it draws no line (as has hitherto 
 been done by the Charity Commissioners) between administra- 
 tive and educational inspection. 
 
 Further, the Board is required to regard Inspection by the 
 Universities as equivalent to the official Inspection. This 
 provision will serve to keep together the great and the lesser
 
 IV.] Secondary Education Legislation. 79 
 
 Public Schools, and it need not snap (as the Bryce Commission 
 would have done) the link of fellowship between them. 
 
 This Act fully illustrates what have been the prevailing 
 characteristics of educational legislation during the century. 
 It postpones decision on every thorny question, and leaves the 
 decision to the Minister of the day and his advisers. Thus : 
 
 1. The educational functions of the Charity Commis- 
 
 sioners are to be absorbed when it seems fit. 
 
 2. The Consultative Committee is to have, apart from the 
 
 registration of teachers, only such duties as may be 
 assigned to it. 
 
 3. Inspection is to be optional to all Secondary Schools, 
 
 public and private alike, and, even then, alternatives 
 [i.e. by the State or by a University] are offered. 
 
 As a result, however, though organisation on a national basis 
 is not seriously taken in hand, yet Parliament has authorised a 
 plan of which organisation is the slow but inevitable outcome. 
 
 Thus far we have been considering accomplished facts and 
 legislative action, but it appears advisable not to conclude 
 without some reference to the prospect of the early establish- 
 ment of Local Education Authorities in England. An outline 
 Bill for this purpose was introduced last session by the Lord 
 President. It is in the main, and, so far as it goes, in harmony 
 with the Recommendations of the Bryce Commission : the 
 Authorities which it would constitute would administer a county 
 or a county borough area, and the rating powers seem not un- 
 reasonable ; but the Bill will need strengthening in more than 
 one direction before it can be considered as satisfactory from 
 an educational point of view : both the constitution and the 
 functions of the Local Authority as proposed lack to some 
 extent that definiteness which is necessary for an effective 
 treatment of the problem. 
 
 This defect of indefiniteness is, it is true, shared by the 
 Board of Education Act itself, and proceeds partly from our
 
 8o Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 national besetting sin of intellectual indolence, that is, shrinking 
 from the trouble of deciding between competing principles of 
 organisation, and partly from a fear of arousing opposition in 
 Parliament. 
 
 This shirking of responsibilities does not in the long run 
 attain its end. The administrative machine is set to work with- 
 out adequate instructions, and the details are gradually filled in 
 a haphazard manner and without any reference to a precon- 
 ceived principle or plan. This has happened before in every 
 branch of the Public Service in England, and, as regards educa- 
 tion, it remains for some great statesman to inform himself on 
 this national question and to interest the public in a policy 
 which he initiates. Without this, nothing fully effective will be 
 done. 
 
 We have been advised not to expect too much of the new 
 Office : this is good advice : it is always wise not to expect 
 too much of any institution or of any person. Yet in a matter 
 of national importance one ought not to be content to pitch 
 one's expectation low. To-day educationists and the nation 
 desire to be able to give their confidence to the new Educa- 
 tion Office, but confidence depends upon qualities within the 
 Office which no mere Act of Parliament can ensure. 
 
 For this confidence there are three requisites : 
 
 1. The Office must show a knowledge of the facts with 
 which it has to deal, and of similar facts in other countries. 
 
 Such information is being collected and disseminated by 
 the Special Inquiries Section, of which I have no hesitation in 
 saying that the publication of its singularly able Reports did 
 more than any other consideration to quiet the apprehensions 
 entertained by the Public Schools and the Universities as to 
 the Education Department absorbing the other Departments. 
 But the knowledge shown in these Reports needs to be 
 digested and applied in the Education Office itself. 
 
 2. The Office must show wisdom in selecting and formu- 
 lating principles and in applying them in detail. For though
 
 IV.] Secondary Education Legislation. 81 
 
 a symmetrical system, like that of Prussia, may be pronounced 
 an impossibility for us, we still need some official sanction for 
 educational ideals, and this depends on a right and full use of 
 the knowledge and experience of the Consultative Committee 
 whose members are in touch alike with Schools and with 
 Universities. 
 
 3. The Office must encourage in its Inspectors and in its 
 other officers both tact and insight in applying principles. The 
 transition stage is always one of hardship to individuals, and 
 the raising of the intellectual standard is bound to cause loss 
 and distress to many estimable persons. 
 
 Thus the choice of a fit and adequate Inspectorate will be 
 a crucial test of the degree to which the new Office is rising to 
 the level of its opportunities. How high this level will be 
 depends upon the nation, upon the tide of public opinion. 
 The Central Authority, in whose hands our national fortunes 
 are now placed, is like a great floating dock : as the tide 
 flows it rises unconsciously and automatically. It cannot be 
 doubted that the tide of interest in education is rising, and has 
 been rising, especially during the last twenty years. As I look 
 round Cambridge and note the new College and University 
 buildings, dating from 1880 and onwards, buildings for the 
 most part raised by the self-denial of those responsible in 
 College and University for the administration of a great trust, 
 I cannot but feel that in Cambridge, as elsewhere, the some- 
 what selfish individualism of the last generation is giving place 
 not so much to an impersonal collectivism as to a personal 
 feeling of trusteeship to a recognition that the educational 
 advantages which we owe to the past ought to be repaid by 
 anticipating the needs of the future in order that School and 
 University may never fail to send forth a full supply of men 
 qualified to serve God in Church and State. 
 
 s. M. L.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOLS 
 
 BY 
 
 MISS F. GADESDEN. 
 
 In the paper which I have the honour to read to you this 
 afternoon I propose to deal with the education of girls, and its 
 development through public day schools during the last 50 
 years. 
 
 The questions of elementary education, technical education, 
 home education, class education do not come within my scope. 
 As regards the last point, most happily for us, all our High 
 Schools receive, and rejoice to receive, girls of all classes. The 
 whole matter of admission is settled broadly on the grounds of 
 the ability to profit by the curriculum, and of good behaviour. 
 
 In a High School all the girls are on the same footing ; all 
 enjoy the same privileges, and all are expected to share in the 
 common responsibilities. This is the basis of a Public School 
 education. 
 
 To begin with the History of the movement for the better 
 education of girls : Miss Zimmern, in the " Renaissance of
 
 CHAP. V.] The Education of Girls. 83 
 
 Girls' Education" a book which I commend to all who desire 
 information on the subject gives an interesting and in some 
 respects a pathetic account of the condition of things in the 
 first half of the century. She tells how Miss Frances Power 
 Cobbe, in her autobiography, compares the education of her 
 own time unfavourably with that of the end of the i8th cen- 
 tury. " Then," Miss Cobbe writes, " there was no packing the 
 brains of girls with facts." Besides "Grammar and geography 
 and a very fair share of history" (Rollin and Mrs Trimmer), 
 they learned to speak and read French with a very good 
 accent, and to play the Harpsicord with taste." On the other 
 hand, at her own school, in 1836, the girls were expected to 
 learn pages of prose by heart and to practise showy and taste- 
 less music, to copy pencil drawings, and to dance. " Not that 
 which was good in itself or useful to the community, or even 
 that which would be delightful to ourselves, but that which 
 would make us admired in society was the raison d'etre of each 
 requirement. Everything was taught in the inverse ratio of its 
 true importance. At the bottom of the scale were Morals and 
 Religion, and at the top were music and dancing." 
 
 Miss Zimmern quotes also from Miss Catherine Sinclair's 
 " Modern Accomplishments." 
 
 " Lady Howard's utmost ingenuity was exercised in devising 
 plans of study for her daughter, each of which required to be 
 tried under the dynasty of a different governess, so that by the 
 time Matilda Howard attained the age of 16, she had been 
 successively taught by eight, all of whom were instructed in the 
 last method that had been invented for making young ladies 
 accomplished on the newest pattern." 
 
 At the end of the i8th century there may have been no 
 system ; but if Lady Howard is at all a type of the mothers of 
 the first half of the iQth, there was among them no lack of desire 
 to benefit their daughters, and no hesitation in trying new 
 methods. But the desire and experiments were rooted in 
 ignorance and prejudice, and no real advance was made. 
 
 62
 
 84 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 On the actual condition of the teaching and discipline in a 
 school of this period, much light is thrown at first hand in the 
 very entertaining diary of a school girl published in the current 
 number of the " Modern Language Quarterly." 
 
 The girl was Miss Elizabeth Firth, the great friend of 
 Mr Patrick Bronte and his wife, and the godmother of Elizabeth 
 and Anne Bronte. The school was at Wukefield, and was one 
 of the most noted of its day. It was kept by Miss Richmal 
 Mangnall, the famous author of "Mangnall's Questions." 
 
 The diary covers the last two years of Miss Firth's school- 
 life. 
 
 The "ladies," they are never called girls, and they all, 
 except the very naughty ones, have the title Miss before their 
 surnames, are divided by age into the "great ladies" and 
 the " little ladies." They read, or had read to them by Miss 
 Mangnall, " The Lay of the Last Minstrel," " Rokeby," and 
 the "Vicar of Wakefield." That was their Literature. 
 
 They had geography on the globe, with latitudes and longi- 
 tudes. 
 
 The diary gives these records : 
 
 " Our Class of geography were two hours looking for the 
 Emperor of Persia's name. My governess (presumably Miss 
 Mangnall) told us it was Mahomet." 
 
 " My governess told our class of geography that if we did 
 not know the rivers off we might go away. They all went but 
 myself, though some of them knew them all." 
 
 "We had a brain-day in Geography," when the ladies had 
 a viva voce examination the day was distinguished as a " Brain- 
 day" " I had seven mistakes, which was the least of any one." 
 
 The writer was rewarded for her proficiency in geography 
 by the gift of an inkstand from Miss Mangnall, and of a silver 
 knife from her teacher. 
 
 There is only one reference to English History: 
 
 " I got the names of the Kings of England " (no mention 
 of the queens).
 
 V.] The Education of Girls. 85 
 
 But she also notes that "She began of reading ancient 
 history." 
 
 French and Drawing are dismissed very briefly. 
 
 " I began reading of Telemachus. 
 
 I began of painting my roses." 
 
 The backbone of the education at Miss Mangnall's Academy 
 was evidently Geography, Spelling, the Church Catechism 
 and Verses. And the spelling of the diary is by no means 
 faultless. 
 
 " We had dictionary excused. Several of the ladies were 
 sent to bed for missing at spelling. Those who did not lose 
 walked in the ring field." "Miss Fayrer gave 270 words of 
 dictionary for poking; I had ten." Miss Firth's deportment 
 appears to have been as good as her geography ! 
 
 " Miss Ropers were sent to Coventry till they could say 
 their Catechism. Some of the ladies had the Epistle and 
 Gospel, twenty-eight verses, for writing on their desks." 
 
 The teaching was evidently entirely that of facts, and these, 
 as in the instance of Mahomet, reputed by Miss Mangnall to be 
 King of Persia, were not always distinguished for accuracy ! 
 
 Of the moral tone among the "ladies" and the absence of 
 training in honour and unselfishness and public spirit, the diary 
 is significant. 
 
 Miss Mangnall's pupils were evidently very naughty. They 
 were greedy, noisy, and untruthful. They stole each other's 
 cake, they gossiped and raised evil reports about each other's 
 characters and the characters of their nearest relations. They 
 fought with each other. 
 
 For all these delinquencies they are punished severely. 
 They are made to suffer the indignity of wearing a dunce's cap 
 and have papers pinned on them, describing their faults of 
 omission and commission. They are whipped and sent to bed 
 with or without their tea. 
 
 But there is no indication of any attempt to distinguish 
 between faults of manner and morals. The "ladies" are
 
 86 Education in tJie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 rewarded by having good things to eat. They are punished 
 indiscriminately for telling fibs and stealing and "ippertinance" 
 and putting their feet on the fender. 
 
 Oct. 3oth. "There was a petticoat about, and we were 
 not allowed to wash till after supper, and threatened with twenty 
 verses if it were not owned. It was not owned." The diary 
 is dramatically silent as to what happened next. Perhaps, as 
 on another occasion, they were "whiped" (spelt with one p) 
 for obstinacy ! 
 
 One may assume that Miss Firth turned out a charming 
 woman in spite of the education which she received. Brilliant 
 exceptions there doubtless were, but is it any wonder that the 
 majority of the girls brought up in such a moral atmosphere 
 should have gone back to their homes selfish, prejudiced, and 
 helpless, with no object beyond their own pleasures, and no 
 appreciation or understanding of their duties, and of obligations 
 to themselves and others ? This is a type of a school which 
 provided for the rich daughters of England. For the poorer 
 there was no provision at all. 
 
 Between 1830 and 1850 "Reform" was in the air, and 
 amongst the questions raised was the education of girls. 
 
 By 1852 the conviction had been brought home to the 
 supporters of the " Governesses Benevolent Institution " that if 
 women teachers were to be self-supporting they must be com- 
 petent ; and to this end they must be educated. Classes must 
 be formed tests of knowledge and competency must be 
 instituted. A sum of money was collected by Miss Murray, 
 one of the Queen's Maids of Honour, and devoted to this 
 purpose. Some of the distinguished professors of King's 
 College offered their help ; among them were Professor Maurice 
 and Dean Trench and the Rev. Charles Kingsley. Before 
 long a house in Harley Street was taken for the purpose of 
 "holding classes in all branches of female learning," and 
 Queen's College was started. The organization was in direct 
 imitation of King's College, all the professors receiving a pro-
 
 v.] The Education of Girls. 87 
 
 portion of the College fees. In 1853 it was incorporated by 
 Royal Charter. 
 
 Each class was opened with a lecture, in which the lecturer 
 introduced and almost apologised for his subject, and for his 
 share in the inauguration of the new movement. 
 
 Thus Professor Maurice apologised for using the word 
 "College" and somewhat rashly made a forecast about the 
 capacity of women to learn mathematics. 
 
 " We are aware that our pupils are not likely to advance far 
 in mathematics, but we believe that if they learn really what they 
 do learn they will not have got what is dangerous but what is 
 safe." He saw that this is the root of the whole matter, "if 
 they learn really what they do learn." And again, " I cannot 
 conceive that a young lady can feel her mind in a more 
 dangerous state than it was, because she has gained a truer 
 glimpse into the conditions under which the world in which it 
 has pleased God to place her, actually exists." 
 
 Latin was to be taught not for its own sake but "as one 
 road, and perhaps the shortest, to a thorough study of English." 
 Miss Zimmern, who gives a very full account of these times 
 in her book, remarks: "These explanations strike us quaintly 
 now it is hard to realize how great was the terror of learned 
 ladies which in those days it was fashionable to assume." 
 
 I am not at all sure that the fashion of assuming this 
 terror of "learned ladies" has died out even at the present 
 time. 
 
 Next came Bedford College, for the first ten years of its 
 life a school rather than a college its beginning in classes held 
 at her own home by the founder, Mrs Reid. 
 
 Her name is perpetuated through the Reid Exhibitions, and 
 Scholarships awarded in connection with the London University 
 Examinations. 
 
 To Queen's College to which, then as now, a school 
 was attached came as pupils the first and greatest of the 
 Public School Mistresses, Miss Frances Buss and Miss Beale,
 
 88 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 whose names are always to be had in reverence by all who 
 belong to the profession of teachers, and by all who have in 
 any way benefited by the educational movement in which they 
 were such notable pioneers. 
 
 In the conception of their work, and what it meant and 
 involved in its developments, as well as in the performance of 
 its duties and details, they stand forth in the lengthening roll of 
 those who have done great service educationally to the girls 
 and women of England. 
 
 In 1856 Miss Beale was appointed Principal of Cheltenham 
 Ladies' College, which had been opened five years previously 
 as a Proprietary School to provide for the girls in the town the 
 same privileges as those enjoyed by the boys at Cheltenham 
 College. The subjects taught in these early days were Liturgy, 
 history, grammar, arithmetic, French, music, drawing, and 
 needlework. There is no mention of mathematics or science 
 or classics, or of physical training. 
 
 While Miss Beale was working at Cheltenham Miss Buss 
 was building up the School which now bears her name, and 
 which was to a greater degree than Cheltenham College typical 
 of the first High Schools. 
 
 The North London Collegiate School was at first a private 
 school. 
 
 In 1872 Miss Buss, seeing that public recognition and 
 public support give the best security for the permanence of 
 Institutions, placed the School in the hands of Trustees, and it 
 became a Public School. 
 
 It was subsequently endowed with lands and tenements by 
 the City Companies of Brewers and Clothworkers. 
 
 The schools having been started, the next step was to obtain 
 University recognition for them, and here Miss Beale and 
 Miss Buss had the valuable co-operation of Miss Emily Davis, 
 the founder of Girton. 
 
 Miss Beale invited University Examiners to inspect and 
 report on the Ladies' College.
 
 V.] The Education of Girls. 89 
 
 In 1862 a small Committee, with Miss Davis as Secretary, 
 obtained permission for girls to be examined informally, "as an 
 experiment," on the papers set for the boys in the Cambridge 
 Local Examinations started for them four years previously. 
 
 In this informal examination 30 out of 44 seniors failed in 
 Arithmetic. 
 
 A memorial was next sent to the Vice-Chancellor of Cam- 
 bridge from about 1,000 persons engaged and interested in 
 education praying for the formal admission of girls to. the 
 Local Examinations. This was granted ; and in 1865 the exam- 
 ination was held in six towns, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, 
 Manchester, London and Sheffield. 127 Senior Candidates 
 entered, 90 passed and only three failed in Arithmetic. A great 
 change was working the evils of the want of education, the 
 abuses of the cheap day schools and the miserable provision 
 made for teaching were not only recognised, but were beginning 
 to be remedied. 
 
 In 1865 a Royal Commission was making enquiries into 
 the condition of Boys' Secondary education. There was still 
 no mention of, or thought for the girls. Another memorial 
 was drawn up praying that girls' schools might be included in 
 the enquiry. 
 
 This too was granted, and among the ladies invited to give 
 evidence before the Royal Commissioners were Miss Davis, 
 Miss Beale, and Miss Buss. The Royal Commission was 
 followed by the appointment of eight commissioners who 
 visited selected districts to report on the Girls' Schools. Great 
 difficulties were experienced in getting information. What was 
 collected came presumably from the best Schools. How bad 
 must have been the worst! 
 
 The Report issued in 1867 brings the indictment which has 
 become familiar, from its place for so many years on the pro- 
 spectus of the Girls' Public Day School Company : 
 
 "Want of thoroughness and foundation; want of system; 
 slovenliness and showy superficiality; inattention to rudiments;
 
 90 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 undue time given to accomplishments and those not taught 
 intelligently or in any scientific manner; want of organization." 
 
 How could it be otherwise when the teachers were neither 
 taught nor trained, and when the majority of the "establish- 
 ments for young ladies " were kept by persons who had not 
 even a rudimentary knowledge of the duties they professed to 
 undertake ? 
 
 School Text Books, including Miss Richmal Mangnall's 
 Questions, are universally condemned. The teaching is said 
 to be poor, and there is no external standard to act as a 
 stimulus to the learner and help the teacher. But there is also 
 in the Report a general recognition of the latent capacities of 
 the girls and a lament over the want of opportunity and 
 encouragement to develop them. 
 
 The crying needs were for better schools, for endowments 
 and for more competent teachers. 
 
 Government had enquired but would do no more. The 
 remedy was left to private enterprise; and, most happily for 
 those who have come after, the women and the men with the 
 brains to understand what was wanted, and the capacity and 
 courage to carry out the reforms, were at hand, and through 
 their splendid work "Knowledge is now no more a fountain 
 sealed." 
 
 The report of the Commission was published. Meetings 
 were held, speeches made, notably by Mrs Grey, and in 1871 
 the next great step onwards was taken when Mrs Grey with 
 the late Lady Stanley of Alderley, Miss Gurney and others, 
 founded the "National Union for Improving the Education of 
 Women of all Classes." 
 
 Among the objects the Union had in view two were 
 specially mentioned. 
 
 i. To promote the establishment of good and cheap day 
 Schools for all classes above those attending the elementary 
 schools, with boarding houses in connection with them, when 
 necessary, for pupils from a distance.
 
 V.] The Education of Girls. 91 
 
 2. To raise the social status of female teachers by en- 
 couraging women to make teaching a profession, and to qualify 
 themselves for it by a sound and liberal education, and by 
 thorough training in the art of teaching, and to secure a test of 
 the efficiency of the teachers by examinations of recognised 
 authority and subsequent registration. 
 
 The initial work of the Union was the foundation of the 
 Girls' Public Day School Company. 
 
 This Company was inaugurated at a public meeting at the 
 Albert Hall in 1872, and was formed with the object of obtain- 
 ing capital to provide properly equipped schools. 
 
 The Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, signed the circular 
 explaining the object of the Company, and became its 
 "Patroness." Her interest in the Schools has never ceased, 
 and has been shewn in many practical ways. 
 
 Among the promoters were Lady Stanley of Alderley, Miss 
 Shireff, Mr Stone and Sir Douglas Gallon, K.C.B., who have 
 all passed away ; Mrs William Grey, Miss Gurney, and Mr 
 C. S. Roundell. To them and to those who worked with 
 them, and who are now carrying on the work, England owes a 
 great debt of gratitude. 
 
 The Council of the Girls' Public Day School Company 
 inaugurated and developed the scheme of a network of schools 
 all governed by the same Council, and yet each left to a 
 certain extent free to grow and develop on its own lines in 
 accordance with the individuality of its head and the require- 
 ments of the neighbourhood in which it is placed. The 
 education supplied for girls was to be the best possible 
 education ; it was to correspond with that provided for boys 
 in the great public schools ; it was to be given at a moderate 
 cost. The position of the Heads and Assistants and their 
 relation to the Council was clearly denned. The Council 
 chooses and appoints the Head Mistresses ; the Head Mis- 
 tresses select, and the Council appoint, the Assistants. The 
 Assistants serve for a probationary term during which they can
 
 92 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 be dismissed at one month's notice by the Head Mistress, with- 
 out reference to the Council, but on sufficient cause to be 
 reported to them. After the probationary term an agreement 
 is signed and dismissal must follow two months' notice given 
 by the Council. 
 
 This is a typical instance of the wise and statesmanlike view 
 of its functions taken by the Council of the Company. 
 
 The internal organization of a High School is as follows : 
 
 The pupils are divided into Forms, or arranged in divisions 
 for special subjects. School hours are approximately from 
 9 to i. In some schools work for the younger children 
 stops at 12 and goes on between 2.30 and 4. Practical 
 Chemistry and Greek are sometimes taken in the afternoon, 
 as are piano, violin, dancing, and special drawing lessons. 
 Lessons for the next day can be prepared at school or at home. 
 Most carefully prepared tables of home work are made to suit 
 the requirements of each girl, based on her position in the 
 School, her ability and her power of work. That these are in 
 some cases disregarded, and that "over-work" results, is in nine 
 cases out of ten the fault of the home authorities. 
 
 The girl who comes to school young and learns from the 
 beginning to work with method is rarely over-worked. It is 
 the girl whose early years have been wasted by incompetent 
 teachers, who comes to school at 14 or 15 or older, and finds 
 herself handicapped by want of knowledge and method, who 
 becomes over-anxious and then over-worked, and brings dis- 
 credit on the whole movement. 
 
 In all Public Day Schools for Girls the Saturday holiday is 
 universal. From the point of view of teachers and scholars it 
 is an unmixed blessing. 
 
 The first of the Girls' Public Day School Company's 
 schools was opened at Chelsea in 1873 with 16 girls. Netting 
 Hill followed with 26, Croydon came next in 1874 with 
 82, Norwich and Oxford in 1875 w ^ tn 61 and 59 respec- 
 tively.
 
 V.] The Education of Girls. 93 
 
 Now, in 1900, the Company possesses 33 schools, 15 of 
 these being in and round London. The number of its pupils 
 exceeds 7,100. 
 
 And while the Company was developing and adding to its 
 schools other famous ones were springing up in many of the 
 great towns. The battle for the endowments had been fought 
 and won, so far as could be ; and, following the Schools 
 Enquiry Commission and the Endowed Schools Act of 1867 
 came the establishment of the great endowed schools of Man- 
 chester, Birmingham, Bedford and others. Some of these are 
 old foundations worked on new schemes; others, at Manchester 
 for example, are the outcome of the work of Associations 
 formed for promoting the better education of girls. 
 
 To sum up : 
 
 Between 1862 and 1900 (only 38 years), the whole status 
 of girls' education has been altered, and this vast improvement 
 is due mainly to Miss Buss and to the Council of the Girls' 
 Public Day School Company. Their example on points of 
 organization and management has been widely followed in the 
 constitution and establishment of other Companies and of 
 local High Schools now scattered up and down the country. 
 It is to the exceeding benefit of all that the first Council of 
 the Girls' Public Day School Company was composed of men 
 and women ready and willing to take a wide and generous 
 view of their own duties and of the position of those to whom 
 their schools were entrusted. Guidance the Head Mistresses 
 can have if they ask for it, interference they need never fear 
 as long as their schools are recognised as efficient and pro- 
 gressive. 
 
 I now pass on to some comparison between the subjects 
 taught in the early High Schools and in those of to-day, and 
 between the methods and results of the teaching. 
 
 The subjects are now in name very much what they were 
 when the first prospectus of the Girls' Public Day School 
 Company Schools was drawn up in 1872. In this Classics,
 
 94 Education in tfie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 Mathematics, Science, Physical Training were included. But 
 the conception of the work and the ideals of the teacher of 
 to-day have entirely altered during the last twenty years. Miss 
 Richmal Mangnall taught facts, more or less accurately. So 
 did the early High School teachers. They aimed at instruc- 
 tion, while the modern schools recognise that training the 
 intelligence mainly by observation must go before instruction 
 in facts. 
 
 " It is better to turn out one thinking man than a score of learned 
 men." 
 
 This conception of what is required from the teacher has 
 led to one great difference in the manner of teaching, and has 
 made for progress which affects the work in all subjects. It is 
 that the lecture system in girls' schools is a thing of the past. 
 Note taking is discouraged ; notes when taken are rarely copied 
 out. 
 
 This is what one of the most successful teachers who taught 
 in the early days of High Schools writes on this point/c 
 
 " I think the great difference was in the teaching. It was certainly 
 superior to private teaching but also very inferior to what is given now. 
 I taught history by lectures, and had no idea of questioning or adapting 
 my lecture to the capacities of the girls. In class I simply ran along 
 during the whole hour and expected it all reproduced. The girls ran after 
 me taking notes at the top of their speed and afterwards vied with each 
 other in the number of pages they sent me in. The only text book I had 
 was ' Smith's Hume.' I made up my lesson from that and learnt it by 
 heart. I taught facts and nothing else. I had neither the knowledge of 
 history nor of teaching necessary, and I believe most of us were equally 
 limited. The Mathematical Mistress knew only two books of Euclid and 
 the Science Mistress's Botany would be scoffed at now. Of course my own 
 sense soon taught me to do better, but I expect many mistresses went on 
 in the same way for years." 
 
 Subjects are now valued for the training they give, for their 
 disciplinary value, as well as for the information gained in their 
 study. This is the great distinction. The recognised subjects 
 of a liberal education are all part of the general teaching and
 
 V.] The Education of Girls. 95 
 
 training of every pupil, and the time table for each girl is 
 arranged with a view to the supplementary value each subject has 
 for the other. There is less rigidity. Too many subjects are not 
 taken at the same time. Up to a certain stage, say a Lower Vth, 
 good all round work is the aim as a preparation for the special- 
 izing which is then gradually introduced in Classics, Modern 
 Languages, Mathematics, in English History and Literature, in 
 Natural Sciences, in Drawing, and Music. The Vth and 
 Vlth Forms are allowed Free hours, and in them the girls are 
 expected to work by themselves and read for themselves under 
 guidance only from the teacher. Thus the subjects are lessened 
 and the girls are encouraged to work for and by themselves. 
 
 Progress is also the direct result of the great improvement 
 in the teaching power in Schools. Every year the number of 
 women who leave the Universities to take up teaching in 
 Schools increases. They have been trained and taught at 
 School and College in a scholarly way ; they have learnt at 
 first hand from those who are masters of their subject. They 
 have acquired a certain amount of scholarship themselves. 
 Through them the education given to girls in the best High 
 Schools is advancing by leaps and bounds. The debt the 
 Schools owe to the Colleges for women, and to the Uni- 
 versities which receive them and teach and examine them, is 
 a great one. The Schools are beginning to repay it by sending 
 each year to the Colleges girls who are better prepared to begin 
 at once to take advantage of the special teaching the Uni- 
 versities offer. I can remember the time when it was the 
 exception for a girl to take the Previous Examination, at any 
 rate Part I., Latin and Greek, before the end of her first year. 
 From the best and most ambitious schools it is now the excep- 
 tion for her not to have taken the whole or its equivalent 
 before she comes into residence, or at the end of her first term. 
 
 Progress has also resulted from the view now taken in the 
 best schools of examinations. 
 
 In early days there was an almost feverish desire on the
 
 96 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 part of the teachers for public examinations. All untrained as 
 they were, they limited their teaching to facts, and really 
 believed the aim and object of their lessons was success in 
 examinations. 
 
 But as the Schools have become conscious of their progress, 
 university examinations have taken their proper place in the 
 scheme of work. 
 
 Inspection all through : Viva voce examinations of the 
 lower and middle Forms (personally I would cheerfully dis- 
 pense with these), the Oxford and Cambridge Schools Exami- 
 nation papers for the higher, and the Oxford and Cambridge 
 Higher Certificate and University Scholarship Examinations 
 for the highest Forms make a satisfactory scheme of Inspection 
 and Examination. It ensures thoroughness and gives en- 
 couragement to work done on the right lines. 
 
 The best authorities now agree that while it is well for a 
 girl to pass a good examination before she leaves school, it 
 only narrows the limits of her education for her to take public 
 examinations too early. The standard reached by many 
 Vlth Form girls is shewn by their performance in Scholarship 
 Examinations, and by the places subsequently taken by them 
 in University Honours Lists. 
 
 I have had no means of finding out the complete number 
 of University Scholarships won by public schools in any one 
 year, but from the Girls' Public Day School Company's schools 
 last year, 1899, 2 4 out f a possible 30 Scholarships were 
 gained. If more Scholarships were offered the number is 
 lamentably small I have no doubt that High School girls 
 would be immediately found competent to hold them. It is 
 not want of brains, but want of scholarships, and means, 
 that prevents many promising girls from sharing the great 
 advantages of University life and training. 
 
 In 1899 in the Final Honours Schools at Oxford two 
 former High School girl's (Girls' Public Day School Company) 
 were in the Mathematical List, five in the History, four in the
 
 V.] The Education of Girls. 97 
 
 English Language and Literature. In Moderations five were 
 in the Classical List, four in Mathematics and one in Modern 
 Languages ; a total of 2 1 . 
 
 In the Cambridge Tripos lists two were Wranglers, two 
 were Senior, four were Junior Optimes, three were in the Clas- 
 sical lists, five in the Natural Sciences, ten in the History, five 
 in the Modern Languages ; total 3 1 . Fourteen took a London 
 M.B., M.A., or B.Sc. degree, one a Durham, and three a 
 Victorian degree. 
 
 The total number representing 26 schools 70 for one year. 
 
 To sum up : 
 
 The great progress which cannot fail to be recognised in 
 our Schools is due : 
 
 1. To improved methods of teaching. 
 
 2. To the improvement in the teaching power of Schools, 
 notably by the employment of Specialists and trained teachers. 
 
 3. To the view now taken of the place of Examinations in 
 School work. 
 
 Improvements in certain directions have also resulted from 
 the conferences held from time to time, at which Papers on 
 special subjects are read by experts and discussed by persons 
 practically engaged in teaching them. 
 
 That there is much still to be done I should be the last 
 to deny. 
 
 The problem how best to fit girls for their home duties and 
 for the occupations of life and for the professions has been 
 met ; but how to make the most of the girl with rather less 
 than average ability, the girl who is so little benefited by the 
 ordinary High School curriculum ; how to enforce the training 
 which should bring with it to a greater number of girls the real 
 love of learning and the desire to continue learning when the 
 guidance of school is at an end : all these and many other pro- 
 blems remain to be solved we hope in the schools of the future. 
 
 Time does not allow me to say all I should like to on the 
 modern teaching of important subjects. 
 
 s. M. L. 7
 
 98 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 With regard to mathematics I do not propose to enter into 
 the improved methods of teaching any of its branches. I will 
 only compare the words of Professor Maurice, "We are aware 
 that our pupils are not likely to advance far in mathematics," 
 and those of one of the Royal Commissioners, "It would he an 
 affectation to say a word on behalf of the Arithmetic taught by 
 ladies ; it is always meagre and always unintelligent," with the 
 numerous mathematical scholarships won at the Universities 
 by schoolgirls and the report of the Oxford and Cambridge 
 Schools examiners in arithmetic for 1899, "The result showed 
 that arithmetic has been carefully and systematically taught 
 in the Schools that in nearly all the classes some girls, 
 and in some classes a considerable proportion of the girls, had 
 acquired a thorough grasp of the subject and reached a high 
 degree of excellence as arithmeticians." The teachers in all 
 cases were women. Equally good reports are given on the 
 Euclid and Algebra. 
 
 Modern languages: In the early days of High Schools 
 these were taught by means of written exercises full of stereo- 
 typed sentences, English into French or German, French or 
 German into English. Grammatical rules were learnt, great 
 stress being laid on all the exceptions to the rule, and any 
 curious and unimportant (to the general learner) peculiarities 
 of form and language. Translation followed, but the number 
 of books thought suitable for school use was lamentably de- 
 ficient. Conversation as part of the School teaching was not 
 recognised. There was method in the work and a certain 
 amount of training and education to be got out of it, but the 
 results were not to be compared with those which follow 
 the consecutive and continuous teaching on a more modern 
 scheme. 
 
 In the excellent scheme of which I have some personal 
 experience, teaching in the lower forms is chiefly oral, but the 
 pupils all through the lower and middle forms are encouraged 
 in every possible way to apply for themselves in sentences and
 
 V.] The Education of Girls. 99 
 
 translations the vocabulary and rules they learn. They learn 
 and act scenes from history and fairy stories in French and 
 German. Some grammar has to be learnt, and the greatest 
 stress is laid on what is learnt being learnt and applied accu- 
 rately, but it is the grammar which is necessary for the correct 
 speaking and writing of the language, not the grammar of 
 pedants and academies. Thus the foundations are well and 
 truly laid for the advanced work of the Upper Forms. 
 
 The manner and style of University examination papers in 
 modern languages has immensely improved, and now generally 
 consists of unseen translation from French or German into 
 English, translation from English into French or German, and 
 prepared books with comprehensive grammatical questions. 
 To do well on these papers the teacher had to make the pupil 
 pay great attention to idioms and construction, to accuracy 
 and to the improvement of style. 
 
 Conversation is greatly encouraged by the formation of 
 small conversation classes under a foreigner who possesses the 
 right temperament and who can interest her pupils and make 
 them talk. 
 
 What we aim at is : 
 
 1. Facility in understanding a foreign language spoken 
 by a foreigner. 
 
 2. That the pupil should express herself with facility and 
 accuracy in the language, and that her accent should be as 
 true as possible. 
 
 3. And, most important that the pupil's interest should 
 be so thoroughly aroused in what she is learning that she will 
 feel a wish to go on with the language and its literature when she 
 leaves school and not put away her books with her school days. 
 
 SCIENCE: Science subjects have been introduced into 
 girls' schools in the order in which they are usually taken up, 
 in any one school fairly well equipped for science work. But 
 all in the past have been taught as more or less isolated 
 subjects and in a fragmentary way. Object lessons and 
 
 72
 
 ioo Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 Natural History followed by Botany were first introduced, and 
 the work in them was almost entirely observational, completed 
 by some attempt at Classification. 
 
 That is now usually the first stage of science teaching, but 
 it has become more truly " Nature Study," since it is recognised 
 that animals and plants should be studied in relation to their 
 surroundings and that attempts in this direction can be made 
 even in schools in large towns. But Botany as a class subject 
 could not be continued as an experimental Science, and after 
 the early stages it was either taught didactically, and became a 
 mere exercise for the memory, or for it was substituted a series 
 of demonstration lessons, illustrating the elementary facts of 
 physical science of little if any higher educational value. 
 
 Not until the report of the British Association Committee 
 on Science Teaching was published in 1889 was public attention 
 drawn to the educational possibilities of Science as a School 
 subject, and the demand which it made upon time and re- 
 sources has retarded its development in girls' schools. But 
 after 10 years, Science has a fair footing in the curriculum of 
 many High Schools. Science Rooms which allow of free 
 movement, and are provided with firm benches, and gas and 
 water supplies, are being universally fitted up. The constant 
 outlay for material is gladly met, the one lesson per week is 
 increased to at least two or three, smaller classes are arranged, 
 and the teaching staff consequently increased. The aims and 
 ideals of the teachers it is true vary considerably. The heuristic 
 method is adopted in most schools where a course in elemen- 
 tary physics and chemistry follows the nature study of the 
 lower forms. But in many cases the teaching is still entirely 
 on the old didactic lines with the addition of practical work, 
 and the Science teaching is thus deprived of nearly all the 
 moral and intellectual value which is claimed for it. 
 
 DRAWING : Here again there is a strong contrast between 
 the teaching of the present and the past. The influence of 
 Mr Ablett's schemes and methods is happily well known and
 
 V.] T/te Education of Girls. 101 
 
 generally appreciated. Therefore little need be said here. 
 There is no copying. The pupil is taught to look at what is 
 before her and render it in her own way. The powers of 
 observation and memory are trained and developed, the eye is 
 awakened to see and discover, the brain to remember and 
 create. In the schools of to-day drawing, not as a handiwork 
 only, but as a means of training is taught to every child. 
 
 The excellence of the method has enormously increased 
 the pleasure of the pupils in their work ; it has added to their 
 equipment for their pursuits and work after school days are 
 over ; it has worked widely for good in the general curriculum 
 of our schools. 
 
 The last point in the development of girls' schools with 
 which I have to deal concerns the physical education and 
 training given and encouraged. Here too the development has 
 been all to the good. 
 
 Professor MacCunn in his excellent book on " The Making 
 of Character" asserts, and no one will contradict him, that 
 moral development is conditioned by bodily health. "Good 
 health is a prime condition of practical energy. For energetic 
 constitutions enjoy an advantage that goes far beyond the 
 mere superior ability to do what others cannot. 
 
 "We may not impute physical languor and weakness with 
 their attendant idleness as a sin ; yet we must as little refuse to 
 face the fact that a weak or sickly body is a grievous moral 
 disability." 
 
 That our girls shall not have weak or sickly bodies is our 
 keenest desire. 
 
 In many schools periodical examinations of backbones, 
 and ankles and eyesight are made. Records are kept, skilled 
 and scientific physical training is carried out. Nothing is 
 neglected which can serve to make the body straight and 
 strong and to develope perfectly all its powers. The benefit to 
 the present generation of girls of the skilled care and training 
 of their bodies cannot be exaggerated.
 
 IO2 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 Of the obvious advantages to girls as well as boys of playing 
 games in which their bodies are exercised, and through which 
 their characters grow stronger, I say nothing here. Every 
 High School of to-day has its playground, and nearly all have 
 playfields as well. Games are organised through Game Clubs 
 or by Games Mistresses and are played by mistresses and girls; 
 Hockey, Cricket, Basket ball, La Crosse, Lawn Tennis and 
 Rounders. Sports are arranged and carried through with not 
 less seriousness and enthusiasm, though for less costly prizes, 
 than in the case of boys. Swimming is taught and encouraged. 
 
 In this connection I will again quote, for the justification if 
 any be needed of those of us who may seem unduly to encourage 
 the playing of games, what Professor MacCunn has to say : 
 
 " If we are apt to have misgivings about the long hours and days given 
 in youth to the strenuous idleness of sports and games we must not think 
 too exclusively of the immediate results. We must think of the heavy 
 drafts which arduous vocations make in after years on bodily vigour and 
 endurance, of the habit of cheerfulness that follows health, and not least of 
 that sense of insurance against whatever the future can bring which comes 
 of the consciousness of calculable physical fitness. Plato startles us in his 
 educational ideals by assigning 2^ of the most precious years of life to the 
 exclusive pursuit of 'gymnastics.' If it seems too costly a tribute to the 
 body it is to be borne in mind that it is prompted by the principle, ' Body 
 for the sake of soul,' and finds its justification in the strenuous service to be 
 exacted by the state of its citizens in later years." 
 
 I know of course that the author whom I have quoted is 
 speaking of boys. I know too in the case of girls additional 
 care has to be taken to guard against over-exertion and too 
 great exhaustion. But I know also that nothing tends to better 
 health and better work than games regularly and strenuously 
 played. The body claims all that we can do for it. With 
 bodily health comes vigour and sanity of mind, and things take 
 and keep their right proportions the strain and worry of 
 mental exercises is lessened. 
 
 " Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, 
 Truth breathed by cheerfulness."
 
 v.] The Education of Girls. 103 
 
 I fear I may have seemed too laudatory of the work and 
 influence of High School education but in a paper not to 
 exceed an hour in length it is impossible to say everything, and 
 on such an occasion as this, while freely acknowledging that much 
 remains to be done, I naturally choose to play the optimist. 
 
 I do not forget the many brilliant, highly cultured women 
 whose names stand, and will always stand, in the front ranks of 
 the educated women of England and who never went to a 
 High School. Among those who leave our schools there are 
 none who surpass them, and few who equal them, but they 
 were and are the exceptions. But I compare the many women 
 of 50 years ago who, longing perhaps for the opportunities of 
 learning, and ambitious of sharing in the privileges so freely 
 bestowed upon boys, had to be content with the husks of 
 learning only, and to live out sombre, uninterested, self-centred 
 lives without having had a single opportunity of realizing the 
 advantages and pleasures of work honestly prepared for and 
 well done with the scores of happy contented High School 
 girls and University students of to-day. 
 
 The exception may be no higher than before ; but the 
 average of serviceableness and happiness resulting from High 
 School education is incalculably greater. 
 
 Briefly the influence direct and indirect of the better educa- 
 tion of girls and women has added to the sum of their useful- 
 ness and happiness individually and collectively. 
 
 When the first High Schools were opened the women 
 trained to work and capable of working on special lines were 
 few and far between. 
 
 The want was recognised and deplored by all who needed 
 their assistance. Miss Beale, Miss Buss, Mrs Grey put in the 
 front of their programme the training and teaching of women 
 and the testing of their powers and capacity. Thirty years ago 
 the notion that a well-born woman should belong voluntarily 
 to a profession was repugnant to parents and relations. That 
 a woman should teach, or be obliged to earn her living, meant
 
 IO4 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 that she became an object of commiseration to all who knew 
 of her misfortune. 
 
 Well might the "National Union" speak of "raising the 
 social status of female teachers." Women there were then who 
 by force of character and nobility of aim rose above all pre- 
 judices and carried on bravely and successfully the work which 
 they were inspired to do. Even for them the difficulties were 
 great; for the mass idleness was the only genteel occupation. 
 The new schools have changed all that. The need for teachers 
 created and encouraged the supply, and the modern spirit is all 
 in favour of women undertaking not only teaching but any 
 occupation, and adopting any profession for which by nature, 
 capacity and training they are best fitted. Honour to work 
 and to workers is the rule, and it is beginning to be fully 
 realised that through her work, and because of her work, 
 the modern woman claims and holds a position among those 
 who are honoured in the land. 
 
 The High Schools and Colleges are sending out their 
 pupils to be trained as Doctors and Nurses, Factory Inspectors, 
 Poor Law Guardians, Sanitary Officers, Teachers, Lecturers, 
 Examiners. In business and in professions and in the perfor- 
 mance of their home duties, where these call them, they are 
 justifying the confidence of those who have so nobly and 
 strenuously advocated the right of every woman to receive the 
 education best suited to her power and capacities, and who 
 have borne the heat and burden of the day in putting this 
 within her grasp. 
 
 Not the least of the peaceful revolutions of the igth Century 
 is that which has made English Schools places of real educa- 
 tion and training, which has raised the ideal of woman's 
 vocation, and which has brought home to thousands the con- 
 ception of what is due from them to their homes and to their 
 country and placed it within their power to realize their ideal. 
 
 It is to be remembered that there are High Schools of all 
 kinds good, bad, and indifferent. A school is not good
 
 V.] The Education of Girls. 105 
 
 because it is called a High School. I do not claim that even 
 our best High Schools are perfect. But I do assert that they 
 are alive ; that in them there is a constant reaching after 
 improvement, a constant study of new principles and methods 
 with a view to their adoption if proved better than the old. 
 If the schools of to-morrow they too offer a most fascinating 
 subject for discussion but they do not come within the scope of 
 this paper if the schools of to-morrow are consequently as 
 great an improvement on those of to-day as these are on those 
 of yesterday I for one shall be fully satisfied. I know that our 
 best High Schools are better than any that have gone before, 
 and that their influence on girls and women is for good. We 
 live for our children, to teach them and train them to be 
 worthy citizens of a great country.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE TEACHING OF HISTORY 
 
 IN ENGLAND 
 IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 BY 
 
 PROFESSOR WITHERS. 
 
 Analysis, (i) Connexion of the subject of the Lecture with the 
 central topic of the Summer Meeting, " Life and Thought in England in 
 the Nineteenth Century" (2) The 'historical method' and the 'historical 
 sense' distinguish this century from the 'a priori' philosophy and the un- 
 sympathetic treatment of the past which marked the Eighteenth Examples 
 of this tendency in the Theory of Government, in Theology, and in 
 Literature and Art The idea of development the central idea in the thought 
 of this century (3) At the opening of the century the striking feature of 
 the studies of our Universities and Public Schools was, with certain ex- 
 ceptions, the supremacy of the single classical curriculum, as instituted at 
 the Revival of Learning This contained 'implicit History,' although 
 History was not taught as a separate ' subject ' (4) The Nineteenth Century 
 is marked by the break-up of the single curriculum History emerges as a 
 substantive subject attempt of Thomas Arnold to preserve unity in the 
 scheme of a liberal education History the central subject in his system of 
 practice, as it was in Herbart's system of theory (5) The last third of 
 the century sees 'specialisation' dominate our studies The treatment of 
 History in every grade of our schools is unsatisfactory (6) The great 
 requisite for the progress of our education in the Twentieth Century is a 
 simpler and clearer idea of a liberal education Place of History in this 
 idea.
 
 CH. VI.] Teaching of History in England. 107 
 
 It is sometimes made a point of objection to meetings such 
 as the one that we are all attending during these weeks at 
 Cambridge, that the lectures delivered at them are upon topics 
 so various and so many that the effect is mainly to bewilder 
 and to distract. The student, it is said, goes from discourses 
 on Dante and the Nebular Hypothesis in the morning, to 
 addresses on Bacteriology and the Music, of Richard Wagner 
 in the afternoon. His hasty and rather puzzled pilgrimages 
 from one quarter of the town to another are, according to our 
 critics, a fit symbol of his wandering attention ; and the farrago 
 of his note-book is a picture of the confusion of his mind. 
 Such a criticism may have an element of truth in it, although 
 it is based on an exaggerated disbelief in the power of the 
 mind to deal with and to arrange the material which the mind 
 receives. But we may claim that the Syndicate has on this 
 occasion provided us with a core of thought round which we 
 may group our ideas, and so has given a certain unity of action 
 to our drama. " Life and Thought in England in the Nine- 
 teenth Century" is our unifying conception, in relation to 
 which we are to arrange all the multiplicity of our notions on 
 the many subjects of our Time-Table. It is a historical con- 
 ception and therefore in intimate connexion with the special 
 subject of my own lecture, which is that of the Teaching of 
 History. 
 
 History in its widest sense is perhaps the most characteristic 
 form of intellectual activity in the nineteenth century. In- 
 calculable as has been the influence of the study of the natural 
 sciences, it may be doubted whether after all the influence of 
 history in all its different forms has not been greater still upon 
 the life of the nation. 
 
 If one contrasts roughly the prominent type of mind towards 
 the close of the eighteenth century with the prominent type in 
 our own generation, one may question whether any difference 
 goes quite so near the centre as this, namely, that in the 
 eighteenth century the historical sense was in a great degree
 
 io8 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 absent or undeveloped. Take the chief spheres of national life 
 and compare them, then and now. In the theory of govern- 
 ment and law the eighteenth century dealt with its problems 
 abstractly and metaphysically. Voltaire, Rousseau, Montes- 
 quieu, working out the suggestions of Hobbes, produced 
 a priori doctrines on the nature of Sovereignty, on the Social 
 Contract, on the Rights of Man, which were completely un 
 historical in character. In England they had their counterpart 
 in Bentham and the Utilitarian School. These theories pro- 
 foundly influenced the great final movement of that century, 
 the French Revolution, which was an organised attempt to 
 abolish the history of a nation, and to create a new regime in a 
 vacuum. On the other hand, the nineteenth century has seen 
 the Theory of Government put upon a historical basis. Here, 
 in Cambridge, Sir Henry Maine in his famous work on Ancient 
 Law, and many other jurists have worked out the comparative 
 study of politics and the origins of political ideas, and have 
 given us the new conception of the State as a growth from 
 primitive conditions and customs, a growth which, if it is 
 to be healthy, must be gradual and continuous. The practical 
 politics of the century have confirmed this historical con- 
 ception : those elements of the national life which a priori 
 philosophy in France had sought to abolish by decree the 
 Monarchy, the Nobility, the Church have proved to be living 
 forces, which the new regime has to struggle with in a bitter 
 war, whereof the issue at this moment hangs in the balance 
 after frightful reverses and frightful victories for one side and 
 the other. By contrast, in England the principal institutions 
 of the State are in a position to-day of far greater security 
 than a hundred years ago, because they are seen in a historical 
 perspective, and their defence is based not upon logic but 
 upon prescription. 
 
 The same general difference between the two centuries is 
 observable in points of theology and religious practice. The 
 Tractarian Movement in the second quarter of this century and
 
 VI.] Teaching of Histoty in England. 109 
 
 the Biblical Criticism of its third and fourth quarters are of 
 a strikingly different character from the Wesleyan movement or 
 the Deistic Controversy of the eighteenth century ; and the 
 distinction may be most shortly expressed by saying that in the 
 eighteenth century the main appeal is to a priori arguments 
 and to religious or philosophical dogma, while in the nine- 
 teenth it is to history and to the historical method that the 
 disputants turn for their weapons. 
 
 So, also, in Literature and Art, the Romantic Movement 
 which marks the beginning of this century and is associated 
 with the names of Wordsworth and Walter Scott, and the later 
 Pre-Raphaelite movement led by Rossetti, and Holman Hunt, 
 and Millais, and supported in certain aspects by Ruskin, 
 originated in a return to earlier models and in sympathies 
 which we may call historical. Similar influences have inspired 
 our architects and our house furnishers : Pugin and Gilbert 
 Scott and William Morris have gradually altered our national 
 taste by taking us back to medieval examples. In the Drama 
 we have at least so far acquired the historical sense that we 
 should not be able to tolerate a Macbeth in the guise in which 
 David Garrick presented him a perruque and silk stockings, 
 conspiring with his lady in a hooped skirt and a turban. Even 
 in History itself, the whole tone and atmosphere have changed. 
 The mighty work of Gibbon, however accurate in mere state- 
 ments of fact, is falsified by a lack of historical sense and 
 historical sympathy, such as incapacitated him from under- 
 standing either the early Christian Church or the life of the 
 Middle Ages. One has only to compare him with Ernest 
 Renan to see the gulf that divides history as we conceive it 
 now, from the unimaginative and unsympathetic treatment which 
 it received 120 years ago. So also our entire conception of the 
 nature of language has been revolutionised within this century 
 by a study of its history and by the consequent discovery at the 
 hands of Schlegel of the Indo-European family of tongues, and 
 of the cousinship of English, and Greek, and Sanskrit. Even
 
 I IO Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 the greatest scientific generalisation of the century the theory 
 of evolution in a sense belongs to, and has itself profoundly 
 affected, the realm of history, since it reveals the long process 
 of infinitely slow development by which animal and plant life 
 have come to be what they are. It is, in fact, the idea of 
 dmelopment, the central idea of history, which, more than any 
 other single idea, characterises the thought of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 Ours then is the century of development, the century of 
 history. It is in accord with this fact that we find that the 
 study of history as a separate subject in our Public Schools 
 and Universities first emerges during this period. It would 
 not indeed be true to say that History was not taught at all 
 before 1800. The Professorships of Modern History at Oxford 
 and Cambridge were founded as long ago as 1724 by George I. 
 But these foundations seem to have produced no striking result 
 either in the shape of original research or of influence upon 
 University studies until the present century. The University 
 of Oxford rather resented the endowment as a Whig political 
 move. "Not only" says Dr Stubbs "did they acknowledge the 
 receipt of the King's letter in a most contemptuous way, 
 forwarding their letter of thanks by a bedell, but, when by due 
 pressure and by the example of Cambridge compelled to send 
 a formal answer by a deputation to the King, clothed it in 
 such words as showed that the introduction of the new study 
 was looked on as an unwarranted interference with the educa- 
 tional Government of the place." And it is quite certain that 
 no holder of the Professorship down to the time of Dr Nares 
 in the early years of this century did anything to overcome the 
 sullen suspicion with which the foundation of the chair was first 
 received. At Cambridge the only one of the Royal Professors 
 of Modern History during last century whose name is remem- 
 bered in this was the Poet Gray. So again in regard to the 
 Public Schools it would not be exact to say that there is no 
 trace of History having been taught a hundred years ago.
 
 VI.] Teaching of History in England. 1 1 1 
 
 Thus Dr James, who was Headmaster of Rugby from 1778 to 
 1794, used to devote the first lesson of the week, which began 
 at seven o'clock in the morning, to the subject of Scripture 
 History varied in a regular cycle with Goldsmith's Roman 
 History and the History of England. This was, however, only 
 the case with the Fifth and Sixth Forms. I cannot find that 
 History was taught in the lower part of the school. And the 
 single hour before breakfast given at Rugby appears to have 
 been wholly exceptional. I have not been able to discover 
 anything similar at Eton, Harrow, or Winchester. Even at 
 Rugby one could hardly say that History formed a part of the 
 regular curriculum. So that speaking broadly we may say that 
 History as a separate subject formed no part of the course of 
 studies at the Universities and Public Schools in the year i8co. 
 On the other hand the curriculum, such as it was, embodied 
 some of the most important facts of European History between 
 the age of Pericles and the Revival of Learning, and formed in 
 itself a historical document or relic of an extraordinarily interest- 
 ing kind. The classical curriculum of our Universities and 
 Schools which continued until well on into this century, prac- 
 tically unchanged, was itself in its origin a result of a movement 
 for reform, a movement which like those of our own time 
 assumed the shape of an appeal to the past and a return to 
 earlier models. The history of intellectual progress is marked 
 by a series of revolts against systems of education, in which 
 the human spirit seeks to save itself from being strangled in 
 formularies of its own making, by struggling back to a more 
 primitive and less complex stage in its own development, by 
 appealing from the Rabbis to Moses, from the Aristotelians to 
 Aristotle, from the Fathers to the Apostles. Such a revolt was 
 the substitution of the great classic writers for the works of the 
 Schoolmen, a revolt consummated in England in the sixteenth 
 century. Perhaps the essential advantage of this change was 
 that it put in the hands of schoolboys and students books 
 which, directly or indirectly, contained the history of Mediter-
 
 112 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP 
 
 ranean Europe at its highest point of culture. Scholasticism, 
 as was natural from its deductive methods, had no place in its 
 curriculum for history ; classicism, although it did not teach 
 history as a specific subject, yet offered its students historical 
 material of the most precious kind. Thus while it is true that 
 in 1700 history was to all appearances no more recognised as 
 a part of the curriculum at Oxford or at Winchester than it had 
 been in 1500, yet we must remember that at this later date our 
 ablest scholars read, as a matter of course, the great master- 
 pieces of Ancient History as well as the great Poets whose 
 works illustrated as nothing else could illustrate the history 
 of the age in which they wrote. Thus we may speak of the 
 classical curriculum as Implicit History, because it contained 
 in itself, not consciously disengaged from literature, a mass of 
 historical material. 
 
 At the close of the eighteenth century, however, classicism 
 had in effect fallen too completely into the hands of the com- 
 mentator and the versifier, and the subject-matter of the great 
 classic writers had ceased to be studied with the enthusiasm of 
 the sixteenth-century scholars. The intellectual life of our 
 Schools and Universities was torpid and unproductive to the 
 last degree ; the great stimulus of the Revival of Learning had 
 spent its force. It may even be doubted whether Oxford at 
 the very close of the scholastic period was quite so profoundly 
 asleep as she was towards the close of the classical period. 
 " For a moment, " says Mr Rashdall in his great book on the 
 Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, "for a moment the 
 " human world was brought into real and living contact with a 
 " new world of thought and action by the ' New Learning ' : 
 "but ere long classical education in turn became arid and 
 "scholastic as remote from fruitful contact with realities as 
 " the education of the Middle Ages. The history of Education 
 "is, indeed, a somewhat melancholy record of misdirected 
 "energy, stupid routine, and narrow one-sidedness. It seems 
 " to be only at rare moments in the history of the human mind
 
 VI.] Teaching of History in England. 113 
 
 " that an enthusiasm for knowledge and a many-sided interest 
 " in the things of the intellect stirs the dull waters of educa- 
 " tional commonplace. What was a revelation to one genera- 
 " tion becomes an unintelligent routine to the next. Considered 
 " as mere intellectual training, it may be doubted whether the 
 " superiority of a classical education, as it was understood at 
 "the beginning of this century, to that of the medieval 
 " Schools was quite so great as is commonly supposed. If in 
 "the scholastic age the human mind did not advance, even 
 " Macaulay admits that it did at least mark time. The study 
 "of Aristotle and the schoolmen must have been a better train- 
 " ing in subtlety and precision of thought than the exclusive 
 " study of a few poets and orators." 
 
 If you carry your mind from 1800 to 1900 and survey the 
 period between you will see that the significance of this century 
 in the history of the higher education is that the single uniform 
 curriculum of the classics which, with certain modifications (as 
 for instance the great attention given in Cambridge to mathe- 
 matical studies) had been handed down just as it was from the 
 age of the Renaissance, has been broken up, that alternative 
 schemes of study have been admitted side by side with the 
 classics, and that even where the classics remain the chief 
 staple of the intellectual training given, other subjects, in par- 
 ticular mathematics, history and modern languages and a little 
 natural science have been superadded. The unity of the 
 curriculum in the places of higher learning has been, for the 
 time at any rate, lost and the era of specialisation has begun. 
 The full effect of this immense revolution in our education is 
 but little grasped by any of us as yet. However we are not here 
 concerned with the general theory and history of our higher 
 curriculum but with the fortunes of a single portion of it. 
 
 The great impulse which the Romantic Movement in 
 
 Literature led by Sir Walter Scott gave to the study of History 
 
 took effect in general literature, in private reading and in 
 
 private schools, more particularly in schools for Girls, some 
 
 s. M. L. 8
 
 1 14 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 time before it touched the general body of the public schools. 
 In the second third of the century, Thomas Carlyle and 
 Macaulay began to exercise their prodigious influence over the 
 English middle classes, an influence which has perhaps done 
 more than any other single cause to familiarise the national 
 . mind with historical images and historical ideas. Neither can 
 be called a professed teacher of history. Macaulay declined 
 the Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge when the 
 Prince Consort offered it to him, and Carlyle lectured, not at a 
 University, but by way of private venture, in the Portman 
 Rooms in London. He gave four series of historical lectures 
 in 1837, 38, 39, and 40. In this last year his subject was 
 Heroes and Hero-worship, and this was the only series of the 
 four that he ever wrote out and printed. It is with Thomas 
 Arnold that the systematic teaching of History in our public 
 schools begins. His headmastership at Rugby lasted from 1829 
 to 1842. His peculiar glory in the records of our education is 
 that whereas, when he came to Rugby, he found on one side 
 a society of Boys with a strange corporate life of their own 
 with games, institutions, and laws of a spontaneous and irregu- 
 lar growth, and on the other side a system of instruction and 
 religious training entirely without relation to or influence upon 
 that corporate life, he contrived to fuse every part of the school 
 energies into a unity with a central purpose. The self-govern- 
 ing commonwealth of the Boys themselves he retained and 
 confirmed, with certain modifications, but this commonwealth 
 was to be so truly ordered as to train its members to take after- 
 wards an active part in the life of the larger commonwealth of 
 Church and State ; the instruction whether religious or secular 
 was to interpenetrate and to illumine the life of this common- 
 wealth by introducing the boys to the history of other such 
 communities and to the great literatures ancient and modern 
 by which the ideas of those communities, at their best, have 
 been interpreted and expressed. In Arnold's conception, the 
 English gentleman must not only learn to rule and to be ruled,
 
 VI.] Teaching of History in England. 1 1 5 
 
 and to play football and to speak the truth, but he must also 
 understand the history of his country and the history of 
 Christendom, and the literature of Greece and Rome, which 
 along with the sacred books of the Hebrews lies at the foundation 
 of Christendom. The unity of education, the unity of history 
 are his moving ideas ; and we shall fall short indeed of the 
 true estimation of Arnold's work for the study of history if we 
 confine it to such matters as his co-ordination of geography 
 with history, his constant use of the Blackboard in historical 
 instruction, his comparative method of treating ancient and 
 modern history, or even to the admirably devised cycle of 
 historical lessons which he embodied in his school curriculum. 
 Infinitely more important than all these important things was 
 the clearness with which he himself apprehended and taught 
 others to apprehend, the bearing of literature and of history 
 upon life, and of life, in its turn, upon literature and history. 
 He thus put upon an entirely new basis the claim of the old 
 classical curriculum to furnish the best training for the modern 
 Englishman. Our innermost intellectual and spiritual life, our 
 laws, politics, religion are charged with forces which we cannot 
 understand nor wisely deal with unless we study them in the 
 light of the single continuous historical process by which they 
 have come to be what they are. Arnold therefore, like Herbart, 
 concentrates and unifies his curriculum ; but he does far more, 
 he concentrates and unifies the whole of human life ; the core 
 of his circle of studies is active Christian citizenship, and their 
 proportionate value depends upon the degree in which they 
 help to make that citizenship intelligent and earnest. 
 
 Arnold's influence as a teacher of History was, of course, 
 not confined to his work at Rugby. In the last two years of 
 his life, 1841 and 42, he held the office of Professor of Modern 
 History at Oxford and, short as his tenure of the chair was, he 
 roused the greatest interest and enthusiasm by his lectures, 
 and placed the study of History in a position of importance 
 which it had never held before. He also profoundly affected 
 
 82
 
 Il6 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 the views of his successors and likewise of those who held the 
 corresponding Professorship at Cambridge. Edward Freeman 
 at Oxford and Charles Kingsley at Cambridge in very different 
 ways continued to expound the views of Arnold. The famous 
 saying that " History is past Politics, and Politics are present 
 History " was one of the sides of his teaching upon which they 
 laid most stress, and which in the last quarter of this century 
 Seeley made the central idea of his work as Professor at Cam- 
 bridge, in this slightly altered form, " Without History, Politics 
 has no root ; without Politics, History has no fruit." This 
 was a view which, to some minds, appeared to have its dangers, 
 and there arose in opposition to it a School which demanded 
 that History should be regarded as a purely abstract antiquarian 
 subject, and that the bearing of the past upon the present 
 should as a possible cause of prejudice and partisanship be 
 strictly kept out of its judicial investigations. Of this School 
 Bishop Stubbs, who was appointed Professor at Oxford in 1867, 
 has been the most distinguished representative in England. 
 Under the influence of men of this way of thinking the efforts 
 of historical students were bent specially to discover the exact 
 and minute truth before any inferences should be made from 
 it. Time forbids us to do more than mention the immense 
 services performed by this school of historians and by the 
 Public Offices which under their inspiration have, both in 
 England and abroad, issued copies of ancient documents, char- 
 ters, and records such as have revolutionised our ideas more 
 particularly of the Middle Ages. 
 
 This split of the historians into the political school and the 
 antiquarian school was followed by further subdivisions. Social 
 life and customs, details of dress, household furniture and the 
 like and all that we vaguely include under Archaeology or 
 Anthropology, had a greater attraction for some scholars than 
 the history of political or municipal institutions, and we have 
 seen arise in this last third of the century a School of Archaeo- 
 logists which by its excavations and researches have recon-
 
 VI.] Teaching of History in England. 117 
 
 structed before our eyes the minutest details of ancient domes- 
 tic life. One might pursue this process of specialisation and 
 subdivision into many other branches, but it is enough to say 
 that the study of History has become a general name for 
 several groups of highly differentiated scholars who work 
 exclusively at special sides of the whole historical field. 
 
 The consequence of this has been one, which is, in a way, 
 a direct contradiction of the view of Arnold. It has been 
 thought necessary to divide History from Literature, and to 
 make it a parallel and as it were alternative subject. A special 
 Tripos in History was established by a Grace at Cambridge in 
 1873 an d the first examination was held in 1875. A similar 
 step had been taken some years before at Oxford, where, how- 
 ever, for some time the school of history was combined with 
 the school of law. Henceforth, at both Universities, it became 
 possible to graduate in History, as an alternative to Mathe- 
 matics or Classics. 
 
 The general upshot of this was a curious one. We have 
 seen that, up to the time of Arnold, History was practically 
 not taught as a subject at our Public Schools and Universities. 
 His influence, however, was so great, and was backed by such 
 an overwhelming weight of social opinion that History gradually 
 came to be studied more or less thoroughly at both one and the 
 other. This process was, however, an exceedingly gradual one. 
 When the Public School Commissioners published their report 
 in 1864, it was still the case at Winchester that neither "ancient 
 nor modern history is taught in set lessons, and ancient history 
 does not enter as a separate subject into any of the School 
 Examinations." "I wish," says Dr Moberly, the Head Master, 
 to the Commissioners, " we could teach more history ; but as 
 to teaching it in set lessons, / should not knoiv how to do it." 
 It is worth while to compare with this remark of the good 
 Doctor's a passage in Mr A. F. Leach's History of Winchester 
 College, where, describing the extreme aridity and dulness of 
 the purely classical studies, even in the Sixth Form, he says
 
 Ii8 Education in tlte Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 that the one or two exceptions to this dulness live in his 
 memory: as for instance when one day in the year 1866, 
 Dr Moberly came into the room and told them that war had 
 been declared between Prussia and Austria. He delighted the 
 boys by giving them a vivid account of the relations of those 
 two powers in the past, and of the circumstances which had 
 brought on the war, and he wound up by hazarding the pro- 
 phecy that the war would perhaps last the lifetime of some of 
 them. As a matter of fact the war was over in six weeks. 
 This was just two years after Dr Moberly had said that he 
 should not know how to teach set lessons in history. 
 
 This entire absence of the set teaching of History at Win- 
 chester in 1864 may be compared with the account of the 
 elaborate system of teaching of the subject, as now conducted 
 there, given on pp. 220, 221 of the Report of the American 
 Committee of Seven on the Study of History in Schools. 
 
 Similar particulars might be given with regard to other 
 Public Schools, but the main point is that whereas in the first 
 third of the century, history was scarcely taught at all, and that 
 in the second third it was introduced into Rugby by Arnold, 
 and elsewhere by his pupils and followers, as for instance by 
 Vaughan at Harrow, in the third section of the century it 
 practically became universal in Schools, in one form or other, 
 and was made a Special subject at the Universities as one of 
 the alternative avenues to a Degree in Arts. 
 
 The specialist character given by this change at the Uni- 
 versities to the study of History seriously threatens its position 
 as a part of a liberal education. Arnold's view was, as we have 
 seen, that History was essential to a comprehension alike of 
 literature and of life, and must indispensably be taught in 
 appropriate shapes to every class of the School. 
 
 On the other hand, the recent view tends to the specialist 
 conception, namely that History is one of a number of options 
 which a boy may choose between, as soon, at any rate, as he 
 reaches the age of 15 or 20. While the classical specialist is
 
 VI.] Teaching of History in England. 119 
 
 doing Greek Iambics, the history specialist is reading Mommsen 
 and Stubbs, and the mathematical specialist is doing the 
 Binomial Theorem or Trigonometry. 
 
 An exactly similar conception prevailed until this very year 
 1900, in the Primary Schools. History was an option which 
 might be taken or left at the discretion of the schoolmaster, 
 with the further provision that it must not be taken if any two 
 other class subjects were selected. Thus if Geography and 
 English Grammar were taught at any Elementary School, ipso 
 facto History was excluded. 
 
 This extraordinary view of knowledge that you can cut 
 it into slices like a melon, and that it is unwholesome for 
 any one person to take more than two or three of these 
 slices for himself, has practically destroyed within the present 
 century the idea of an 'all-round' liberal education in England. 
 That idea does not exist at our Universities ; it does not 
 exist at our Public Schools ; it does perhaps, exist, though 
 precariously, at some of the Girls' High Schools ; it has 
 sprung into existence again in the Primary Schools, through 
 the introduction of the Block Grant in this present year of 
 grace. 
 
 But at the moment we see the paradoxical result that the 
 emergence of History as a distinct subject from Literature, so 
 far from securing it a safe place in the curriculum of a general 
 education, threatens to relegate it to the limbo of alternative 
 specialisms, along with Organic Chemistry and the Integral 
 Calculus. Poor Clio ! scarcely had she once more taken her 
 place among the Muses, welcomed by her sisters of Poetry and 
 Science, than she and the rest of them are torn from the lovely 
 group in which they moved with arms intertwined, and shut up 
 by the grim inquisitors of mysterious Examination Boards, into 
 separate compartments, where, in spite of their shrieks, they 
 are cut up into subdivisions, such as archaeology, palaeography, 
 anthropology, epigraphy, and I know not what. Every sub- 
 division is carefully dried into mummy, and then labelled
 
 I2O Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CH. VI. 
 
 Part I Division II of Subject xxxiii (c) in some University 
 Calendar. 
 
 We all of us know the forces which have relentlessly driven 
 us in this direction. The difficulty is truly a great one. The 
 field of knowledge has been extended and deepened during the 
 last 75 years to a degree unparalleled in the previous history of 
 mankind, and the question how to give a general education 
 which shall be at once wide and at the same time not super- 
 ficial, has been made immensely more complicated. It is to 
 that question, on the solution of which our intellectual vitality 
 in the future more than on any other depends, that we shall 
 have to address ourselves in the twentieth century. I venture 
 to think that Herbart in theory, and Arnold in practice, have 
 done much to suggest the practicable solution. We must 
 lighten our curricula not by throwing away this or that indis- 
 pensable limb of the organic unity of knowledge, but by making 
 those curricula consciously represent that unity, by showing the 
 organic connexion of their different parts and obliging each sub- 
 ject to play into the hands of all. When we seriously set ourselves 
 to carry out that task, we shall find that history, in its widest 
 sense, as the record of the process by which man has come to 
 be what he is, already furnishes a subject by means of which it 
 will be possible to correlate the various aspects of knowledge, 
 as they have in positive fact been correlated in the gradual 
 upward progress of humanity.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SCIENCE TEACHING IN SCHOOLS. 
 
 BY 
 
 DR KIMMINS. 
 
 THE subject of this lecture is such an extremely wide one 
 that I propose to devote my attention almost exclusively to the 
 teaching of experimental science and botany, because it is in 
 these directions that very special attention has been given in 
 recent years to the methods of teaching. 
 
 In tracing the history of science teaching in schools, it is 
 important to notice the very powerful influence that has been 
 exerted by the Science and Art Department. It has become 
 the fashion in recent years to abuse this Department in season 
 and out of season for all the shortcomings in methods of 
 scientific instruction, and undoubtedly its influence on the 
 teaching in schools has been far from an unmixed good. It 
 would, however, be impossible to overestimate the beneficent 
 influence it has exerted in adult instruction in science and art 
 throughout the country. The reason of its comparative failure 
 in the schools in the past is not difficult to explain. 
 
 In 1835, schools of design were established by the Govern- 
 ment under the Board of Trade for the purpose of extending a 
 knowledge of art and design among the manufacturing popula- 
 tion. In 1852 this was extended to elementary schools, under 
 a separate department, the department of practical art. In
 
 122 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 1857 the control and direction of science and art teaching was 
 taken over by the Committee of Council, and grants were 
 instituted for art, so that localities desiring to have them, could 
 start schools of art, which were subsidised in this way by the 
 Government. In the following year a department of science 
 was formed to bring under one management the control of the 
 science, trade, and navigation 'schools which already existed. 
 
 The declared object of the Science and Art Department 
 from the first was to give higher education, and it was only 
 some time after its institution that certificates were granted to 
 teachers to teach science in the schools. In 1861 the first 
 May examination in Science and Art was held, and in 1862 
 the principle of payment by results was adopted. Thus from 
 the first, in art teaching as well as science teaching, the 
 instruction was mainly intended for adults, and was only 
 subsequently introduced into the schools. This goes far to 
 account for the shortcomings of the system. 
 
 The syllabuses of the examinations in science were based 
 entirely upon the information required by the average man in 
 his daily work, and the educative value of the course laid 
 down and the method of approach of the various subjects were 
 matters of subordinate importance. For the purpose for which 
 they were intended these syllabuses were undoubtedly admir- 
 ably adapted, and if they had been confined to adults all would 
 have been well. But the work of the Science and Art Depart- 
 ment extended very rapidly, and, under certain conditions, 
 children in day schools were admitted to the examination, in 
 many cases, I fear, rather with the view of obtaining grants 
 than for the appropriateness of the subjects chosen for educa- 
 tional purposes. It was in this haphazard way, which is so 
 eminently characteristic of educational movements in England, 
 that the general idea arose that the one object of education in 
 science was to give information which would be of value in the 
 after-life of those attending the classes. 
 
 The time-honoured maxims, " learn by doing," " never
 
 VII.] Science Teaching in Schools. 123 
 
 teach a child that which he can learn by himself," and others 
 which convey the same idea, are well known to all interested 
 in the theory and practice of education. That the science 
 teaching in English schools has, generally speaking, been in 
 direct opposition to such maxims is also well known. Here 
 comes in the great difficulty which has been the most important 
 factor in retarding the progress of rational teaching in this 
 country the absence of any direct influence of those im- 
 mediately concerned in the teaching of children with those 
 who are responsible for drawing up the syllabuses of public 
 examinations. 
 
 Mr Reeves, who was for a long time Minister of Education 
 in New Zealand, read a paper at an Educational Congress a 
 short time since, on Education in New Zealand. In that 
 paper he described how in that go-ahead colony they have a 
 Central Department, with its Minister of Education, exercising 
 control over powerful Local Education Boards throughout the 
 country, these being aided again by district school committees 
 responsible for the inspection of the schools, supplemented, of 
 course, by Government inspection. And what, to my mind, is 
 a matter of supreme importance, they have an Educational 
 Institute, which is practically a national union of teachers, 
 which is recognised by statute, is consulted continually by the 
 Central Department and the Local Boards, and exerts a very 
 considerable influence, to the great advantage of teachers and 
 administrators. 
 
 Had there been any such official connection between 
 teachers and the public departments concerned in education 
 in this country the old style of science teaching in schools 
 would long since have disappeared. Unfortunately, those in 
 control of public educational institutions are not necessarily 
 qualified to judge of the value of the instruction being given. 
 But it is quite remarkable how many people, otherwise modest 
 and estimable, persuade themselves without the slightest founda- 
 tion that they are competent to judge on all matters relating to
 
 124 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 education. All who have been so unfortunate as to be present 
 at many prize-givings at schools know too well how anybody, 
 from the curate fresh from the university down to the local 
 mayor, is prepared to speak at great length, to the infinite 
 boredom of everybody, on the subject of education. Governing 
 bodies exercising little influence in educational matters, teachers 
 have been very largely at the mercy of boards of examiners. 
 
 It will be interesting to see in the future administration of 
 education how far the matters to which I have referred will be 
 remedied by the presence of a consultative committee of 
 educational experts which shall advise the Board of Education, 
 as provided for in the Board of Education Bill. Very much 
 will depend upon the extent to which this committee will be 
 consulted in drawing up syllabuses and schemes of study. In 
 the Bill it is stated that the work of the committee will consist 
 of (a) framing, with the approval of the Board of Education, 
 regulations for the formation of a register for teachers, and 
 (b) advising the Board of Education on any matter referred to 
 the committee by the Board. It is evident from (b} that the 
 consultative committee is not to speak unless it is spoken to ; 
 it rests entirely with the Board of Education how much or how 
 little influence this committee shall have. It will hold a very 
 different position from the Educational Institute in the scheme 
 of administration in New Zealand. However, we must hope 
 for the best. 
 
 The syllabuses of the Science and Art Department were 
 drawn up by men distinguished in science, holding the highest 
 academ.ic positions, but who disregarded entirely in the course 
 of instruction laid down the suitability of such subjects for 
 mental training and discipline. The consequence was the 
 ground covered by the syllabuses represented the amount of 
 information which could be imparted by a successful teacher in 
 thirty lessons, and the subject-matter was largely determined 
 by its value as information. 
 
 This is the issue on which the whole matter turns. Is
 
 viz.] Science Teaching in Schools. 125 
 
 instruction to be given in schools in science for the purpose of 
 information in these subjects, or for the purpose of mental 
 training ? a perfectly plain issue, utility or education an issue 
 on which there can be no compromise. A syllabus of work 
 excellent from one point of view is quite useless from the 
 other. If the intelligence is to be developed by this means, if 
 the child is to find out things for himself, if he is to perform 
 experiments, address his own questions to nature, make his 
 own observations, and draw his own conclusions, and simply 
 have the proper conditions supplied by, and receive suitable 
 information and guidance where necessary from, his teacher, 
 the amount of marketable information which he will acquire, as 
 tested by ordinary methods, in a session will be about the 
 same as his teacher might have imparted to him as information 
 in two or three lectures. Further than this, the teacher who is 
 most successful in storing the child's mind with the greatest 
 amount of information is also the most successful in removing 
 any necessity for the child to think for himself. He has simply 
 to receive information and reproduce it preferably in the exact 
 order in which it was given at a suitable opportunity in reply to 
 examination questions. 
 
 There is a vast deal of truth in Thring's condemnation of 
 this kind of teaching. " Education," he says, " is not book- 
 worm work, but the giving the subtle power of observation, the 
 
 faculty of seeing If the cursed rule-mongering and technical 
 
 terms could be banished to limbo, something might be done. 
 Three parts of teaching and learning in England is the hiding 
 common sense and disguising ignorance under phrases." 
 
 A very influential committee was appointed by the British 
 Association in 1887 to enquire into the present methods of 
 teaching chemistry. The full report, issued in 1889, was 
 strongly in favour of chemistry being taught as a branch of 
 mental education. As this report has had such a remarkable 
 influence in modifying the teaching of science in schools, I 
 make no apology for giving some important extracts from it.
 
 126 Education in tfie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 British Association Report, 1889. 
 
 "The Committee are convinced that the high educational 
 value of instruction in physical science has never been exhibited 
 to its full advantage in most of our educational institutions. 
 Nevertheless, there exists already a considerable body of 
 experience which proves that there is no more effective and 
 attractive method of training the logical faculties than that 
 which is afforded by a properly arranged course of instruction 
 in physical science; by no other means are the powers of 
 accurately ascertaining facts, and of drawing correct inferences 
 from them, so surely developed as they are by the study of this 
 subject. 
 
 " It cannot be too strongly insisted that elementary physical 
 science should be taught from the first as a branch of mental 
 education, and not mainly as useful knowledge. It is a subject 
 which, when taught with this object in view, is capable of 
 developing mental qualities that are not aroused, and indeed 
 are frequently deadened, by the exclusive study of languages, 
 history, and mathematics. In order that the study of physical 
 science may effect this mental education, it is necessary that it 
 should be employed to illustrate the scientific method in in- 
 vestigating nature, by means of observation, experimenting, and 
 measuring, with the aid of hypothesis ; the learners should be 
 put in the attitude of discoverers, and should themselves be 
 made to perform many of the experiments. The lessons ought 
 to have reference to subjects which can be readily understood 
 by children, and illustrations should be selected from objects 
 and operations that are familiar to them in every-day life. 
 Chemistry is particularly well adapted for affording this kind of 
 instruction, and the committee are of opinion that a course 
 which is mainly chemical will be most useful in developing 
 logical habits of thought. 
 
 " Chemical enquiry involves, however, the use of various 
 physical processes, and these are themselves of great value
 
 VII.] Science Teaching in Schools. 127 
 
 from the point of view from which the instruction is being 
 given. It is also of great importance that the learners should 
 become acquainted with the characteristic instrument of 
 physical science, viz., measurement, and therefore quantitative 
 processes should be largely made use of. 
 
 "They do not desire to bring forward physical science as a 
 substitute for any of the subjects of study, but they ask that 
 like these subjects it should be looked upon everywhere as a 
 necessary part of education, and that it should receive a due 
 share of the time devoted to school work." 
 
 So much for the report. Here then is a very definite 
 answer to the question, an answer given by a very distinguished 
 committee of scientific men and experts in educational matters. 
 The ruling spirit on this committee was Professor Armstrong, 
 who since the issue of the report has left no stone unturned to 
 get the kind of teaching it recommended introduced into teach- 
 ing institutions. It is very largely due to his untiring advocacy 
 that public opinion regards it at the present day with so much 
 favour. 
 
 As an answer to the other side of the question, it may be 
 said that, in an enquiry instituted by the Technical Education 
 Board of the London County Council in reference to the 
 teaching of chemistry, the evidence of chemical manufacturers, 
 chemists at chemical works, and others was strongly in favour 
 of chemistry being used as an instrument of education in 
 schools rather than for the purpose of information. The 
 opinions expressed were to the effect that the information so 
 imparted in schools was of little value, even when the boys 
 were afterwards to be employed in chemical works. 
 
 The recommendation of this committee with regard to the 
 teaching of chemistry in secondary and continuation schools 
 was as follows : 
 
 We are of the opinion that the teaching of chemistry in 
 schools should be solely of an educational nature, and should 
 have no reference to practical applications.
 
 128 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 1. That chemistry is a valuable subject for school teach- 
 ing, but that it should not exclude training in mathematics and 
 languages, but should with these form part of a general educa- 
 tion. 
 
 2. That it should be preceded by an elementary course of 
 physics, to be treated as much as possible as exercises in 
 measurements and practical arithmetic. 
 
 3. That the work should be always largely practical. 
 
 4. That attention should be paid to the style of the daily 
 record of work, so that it may serve as an education in hand- 
 writing, grammar and English composition. 
 
 5. That no attempt should be made to impart in schools 
 any knowledge of the application of chemistry for commercial 
 purposes, except in so far as the products of such operations 
 concern the common phenomena of every-day life. 
 
 Although the Report of the British Association was issued 
 in 1889, and the conclusions were not combatted but highly 
 approved by educational authorities, for a long time it made 
 practically no headway in schools. Public examinations on 
 which grants were obtainable, favoured the old style of teach- 
 ing, and it was quite impossible to carry on the science depart- 
 ments of poor schools without these grants. 
 
 Here again we meet with the difficulty of having no organ- 
 isation for bringing the influence of teachers' opinions to bear 
 upon the proper authorities. If such a report had been 
 published in New Zealand, the kind of teaching recommended 
 would probably have been introduced into schools in the 
 following session, or the Educational Institute would have 
 known the reason why. 
 
 In some discussions which have taken place in reference to 
 the tardy introduction of reforms in science teaching, blame has 
 been cast most unjustly on headmasters and science teachers. 
 Whoever may be to blame, we must surely exempt the teachers. 
 Naturally they are anxious to make the science teaching in 
 their schools as efficient as possible, but in many cases it
 
 VIL] Science Teaching in Schools. 129 
 
 would have meant financial disaster to cut themselves adrift 
 from the grants, by which alone it was possible to keep the 
 science department of the school afloat. Moreover, the 
 improved method of teaching meant more laboratory accom- 
 modation, better equipment, smaller classes, and an increased 
 teaching staff. 
 
 In 1890, the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act 
 altered the position of affairs. Money was placed in the hands 
 of the County Councils for distribution for purposes of technical 
 instruction. One useful avenue was at once discovered in the 
 assistance of secondary schools under public management for 
 the strengthening of the science side. Liberal grants were 
 made for equipment of laboratories, lecture-rooms, and work 
 shops, and maintenance grants were made to enable the schools 
 to live up to their increased facilities for science teaching by 
 an increased staff, and in many cases a more efficient staff. 
 I believe throughout the country the treatment of secondary 
 schools in this respect has been very generous, and I venture to 
 think no money has been better spent. 
 
 In inspecting secondary schools in London in 1892 for the 
 purpose of Mr Llewellyn Smith's report, I was very much 
 impressed with the unsatisfactory nature of the science teaching, 
 especially in connection with experimental science. Young 
 boys were introduced to difficult branches of the subject, and 
 facts the bearing of which was imperfectly understood were 
 committed to memory to meet the exigencies of grant-earning 
 examinations. The recent introduction of courses in experi- 
 mental science in which the work is almost entirely practical, 
 and includes useful exercises in elementary mensuration, 
 weighings and elementary mechanics, has been attended with 
 the best results. Boys and girls take the greatest possible 
 interest in this work, and when the exercises are arranged in a 
 systematic manner it forms a valuable introduction to other 
 branches of physical science. 
 
 In the teaching of chemistry radical changes have also been 
 s. M. L. Q
 
 130 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 introduced. Qualitative analysis, which has always been the 
 bane of practical chemistry teaching, is now taking its proper 
 position in the courses of instruction in this subject. In badly- 
 equipped laboratories, where thirty or forty boys were taken by 
 one master, it was the only kind of practical work possible. 
 The necessary appliances consisted almost entirely of test tubes 
 and bottles of reagents ; and, moreover, grants were awarded 
 on the results of examinations in this subject. A scheme 
 of work including the investigation of bodies, the preparation of 
 gases, etc., and the general introduction of quantitative exer- 
 cises, is only possible where the laboratory is well equipped, 
 and, which is a matter of the greatest importance, where there 
 is an adequate teaching staff, so that not more than twenty boys 
 do practical work together under one master. 
 
 In a few cases there is a tendency to cling to old methods 
 of practical work, but the more rational kind of instruction is 
 rapidly gaining ground, and the teaching in the lecture-room 
 and laboratory is no longer divorced as in the days of qualita- 
 tive analysis. The science masters and mistresses generally 
 appreciate the change as much as the boys and girls. 
 
 The equipment of science lecture-rooms supplied with 
 adequate apparatus has rendered possible the proper illustra- 
 tion of science lectures. Under the old conditions, where an 
 ordinary class-room usually served the purpose, there was a 
 natural tendency to dispense with experiments, their place 
 being taken by diagrams on the blackboard or the descriptions 
 of them in text-books. The appointment of additional science 
 masters has had a marked effect on the improvement in this 
 direction. The preparation of the experiments for a lecture 
 should take as long as the delivery of the lecture itself, and it 
 is imperative that a lecture-room with proper appliances should 
 be set apart for work of this kind, and that the staff should be 
 adequate. 
 
 In the county of London, as the result of liberal grants 
 made for the equipment of science lecture-rooms and labora-
 
 VII.] Science Teaching in Softools . 131 
 
 tories in secondary schools, a very great change has been 
 effected in the practical nature of teaching. To give some 
 idea of the influence so exerted I may perhaps be allowed to 
 give some statistics which were obtained in this connection, 
 following on the award of grants for this purpose. 
 
 1893-4 1894-5 1895-6 
 
 Percentage of those receiving theo- 
 retical instruction in physics 
 taking practical work in this 
 subject '7'' 26-2 66-8 
 
 Percentage of those receiving theo- 
 retical instruction in chemistry 
 taking practical work in this 
 subject 3' - 7 437 5^' i 
 
 The improvement indicated in this table has continued to 
 the present time, so that at present there is very little theo- 
 retical instruction given in public secondary schools in London 
 which is not definitely associated with suitable practical work. 
 
 Here then we see how gladly teachers avail themselves of 
 opportunities of making science instruction more practical, and 
 consequently more rational. In this they have been aided 
 in every possible way by the very enlightened and generous 
 action of the Science and Art Department in connection with 
 what are termed schools of science, in which, so far at any rate 
 as the first and second years' courses of instruction are con- 
 cerned, great latitude is permitted to the teachers in drawing 
 up schemes of study suitable to their schools, provided they 
 come within the fundamental requirements of the regulations 
 with regard to these schools. 
 
 In a syllabus which has been drawn up by a Committee of 
 the Incorporated Association of Head Masters, a very satisfac- 
 tory and rational scheme of work on elementary science has 
 been produced. In submitting this scheme to teachers the 
 Committee say : 
 
 92
 
 132 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 " It is not intended that the teaching should be limited, 
 either to the experiments here given or to the order in which 
 the different subjects are stated. It is hoped that these experi- 
 ments will be sufficient to indicate the lines on which the 
 teaching should be based, and to assist the teacher in invent- 
 ing others." 
 
 It would be a great misfortune if the teaching became in 
 any way stereotyped, and of this there is always a danger in 
 following a fairly detailed syllabus. There are splendid oppor- 
 tunities, opportunities of which many workers on these lines 
 have already availed themselves for continual research on the 
 part of the teacher in devising other simple and ingenious 
 experiments in illustration of the various points. The great 
 object throughout the course is to let the pupil, as far as 
 possible, find out things for himself, make his own observa- 
 tions, and draw his own conclusions, following on from step 
 to step in a logical order. 
 
 Of the value of physical science for the purpose of this 
 training there can be no possible doubt. Writers on education 
 are practically unanimously in favour of it. Mr Holman, in 
 An Introduction 1o Education, says : 
 
 " Physical science subjects are not only of high disciplinary 
 value from the nutritive point of view, but also from the point 
 of view of pure exercise. For in dealing with pure, as opposed 
 to practical and applied science, we have for the most part to 
 do chiefly with the rational elements of experience with 
 general truths and principles. The mind is constantly exer- 
 cised in that which is for mind only the meaning or interpre- 
 tation of experiences. And the discipline thus obtained is 
 particularly valuable, because it is in such work that the mind 
 gains the power and habit of fully and accurately receiving and 
 responding to stimuli, of judging relations rightly, and of 
 making those universal judgments about phenomena which, 
 when properly expressed, we call laws or principles." 
 
 The child as far as possible is to become a discoverer ; he
 
 VII.] Science Teaching in Schools. 133 
 
 is to have what Pestalozzi called "the sacred right of discovery." 
 We all know what a delight it is to a child to discover how to 
 do things, and what an intense fascination there is in working 
 out problems. The boy to whom the learning of definitions 
 and rules is intolerably irksome, becomes interested directly 
 there is something to work out, something to discover, using 
 these definitions and rules as data. Do not we all remember 
 how we slaved away at the propositions of Euclid, longing 
 for the end of the lesson, but how we would willingly stay 
 up half the night trying to work out interesting problems 
 on them ? This is one of the most powerful arguments in 
 favour of this method of science teaching, that under proper 
 conditions the teachers can awaken the greatest interest in the 
 pupil by its means, and this interest should be maintained at 
 all costs. Without it the best teaching is of little avail. The 
 child must do its own part, you cannot do it for him. Teach- 
 ing a child who is uninterested is like forcing food down the 
 throat of an invalid who has no appetite. The food will do no 
 good, because there will not be the necessary flow of secretions 
 and other adjuncts to the successful carrying on of the diges- 
 tive processes. This simile may be carried still further. In 
 the case of people suffering from chronic dyspepsia there are 
 certain preparations equivalent to the digestive secretions which 
 are added to the food in order to digest or partly digest it 
 outside the body, and these people are kept alive who other- 
 wise would, and probably ought to, die. The result is, how- 
 ever, that if these processes are carried on for any length of 
 time the secreting glands, having no work to do, degenerate 
 and become functionless. 
 
 It is just the same in educational processes : the child must 
 digest the food himself, it must not be digested for him by 
 the teacher. As sure as children are nourished on pepto- 
 nised information, the powers which ought to be developed 
 and strengthened by its means will degenerate and become 
 functionless, the child will lose all power of originating, all
 
 134 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 power of thinking for himself. He will become an automaton 
 instead of a living organism. Of course, it would be foolish to 
 dogmatise as to how much help should be given to children. 
 It depends upon the part of the subject, the amount of time 
 that can be obtained for practical work, the nature of the 
 equipment, and many other things. All that can be asked is 
 to let the child do as much as possible for himself; you want 
 to make him intelligent, capable and resourceful, and this can 
 only be done by suitable mental training. This point is very 
 well put by Froebel in speaking of the training of young 
 children. He says : 
 
 " Do not send it away ungently, do not drive it from you ; 
 be not impatient of its questions, its continual questioning : 
 with every cross repelling word you destroy a bud, a shoot of 
 its life-tree. But do not answer in words, where it can answer 
 itself without your word. As soon as, and as far as, they have 
 strength and experience, give them the conditions of the ques- 
 tion, and let them make out the answer from their own know- 
 ledge." 
 
 Of course, to carry out this effectively you must have small 
 classes. With large classes it is such a terrible temptation to 
 give the information instead of putting the child in the way of 
 getting it for himself; it is so much less trouble. 
 
 In a charming book, published at the beginning of this 
 century, and now, unfortunately, out of print, by Maria and 
 R. L. Edgeworth, on Practical Education, some very interesting 
 instances are given of the facility with which children investi- 
 gate problems for themselves if properly trained. Here is 
 a delightful example : 
 
 " A boy of nine finds a kind of rainbow on the floor. He 
 calls his sister to see,, and wonders how it came there. The sun 
 shines brightly through the window. The boy moves several 
 things upon which the light falls, saying, 'This is not it. Nor 
 this.' At last, when he moves a tumbler of water, the rainbow 
 vanishes. There are some violets in the tumbler, which he
 
 VII.] Science Teaching in Schools. 135 
 
 thinks may explain the colours on the floor. But when the 
 violets are removed the colours remain. Then he thinks it 
 may be the water. He empties the glass. The colours remain, 
 but they are fainter. This leads him to suppose that the water 
 and the glass together make the rainbow. ' But,' he adds, 
 ' there is no glass in the sky, yet there is a rainbow, so that I 
 think the water alone would do, if we could but hold it together 
 without the glass.' He then pours the water slowly out of the 
 tumbler into a basin, which he places in the sunlight, and sees 
 the colours on the floor twinkling behind the water as it falls." 
 
 How easy it is to lead children on in this way, by making 
 use of their natural activities. What sources of information 
 can be imparted to the child as a result of its own reasonings ! 
 And, moreover, the child makes such information for ever its 
 own, because it forms part of a chain, and is connected so 
 indissolubly with its previous experiences. And what a sure 
 basis such information becomes for future reasonings ! Thus, 
 step by step, the intelligence develops, information is assimi- 
 lated, the child becomes stronger and stronger, and all along 
 the line it is making use of its natural mental energy. Pesta- 
 lozzi says : 
 
 " I believe that the first development of thought in the 
 child is very much disturbed by a wordy system of teaching, 
 which is not adapted either to his faculties or the circumstances 
 of his life. According to my experience, success depends upon 
 whether what is taught to children commends itself to them as 
 true through being closely connected with their own personal 
 observation and experience.'' And again : 
 
 " So the sole instruction given to the human being consists 
 merely in the art of giving a helping hand to this natural 
 tendency towards its proper development ; and this art consists 
 essentially in the means of putting the child's impressions in 
 connexion and harmony with the precise degree of develop- 
 ment the child has reached. There must be then in the 
 impressions to be given him by instruction, a regular grada-
 
 136 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 tion : and the beginning and the progress of his various know- 
 ledges must exactly correspond with the beginning and increase 
 in his powers as they are developed." 
 
 Assimilated information is as valuable as undigested, un- 
 connected information is deleterious. Rousseau was never 
 tired of insisting upon the importance of this. "When the 
 understanding," he says, " makes things its own before they 
 are committed to memory, whatever it afterwards draws forth 
 belongs to it; but if the memory is burdened with what the 
 understanding knows nothing about, we are in danger of 
 bringing from it things which the understanding declines to 
 acknowledge." 
 
 These " knowledge lumps," as Thring called them, are of 
 no real value to the boy or girl, and directly the memory alone 
 has to bear the burden with no reference whatever to the 
 reasoning faculty the result is disastrous, as is shown by the 
 remarkable answers too often obtained in examinations. 
 
 If the rational teaching of science is to be followed in 
 schools, it means, of course, more work, though intensely in- 
 teresting work, for the teacher. 
 
 Professor Miall said recently, at a conference of teachers : 
 " Many a teacher has said to me ' I cannot inquire : I never 
 made an inquiry in my life. Moreover, I have not time to 
 inquire. As soon as I get out of school I have papers to mark, 
 and, as soon as my papers are marked, I must enjoy myself and 
 recreate my mind.' The only answer that one can make is, 
 ' If that is really your condition, if it is impossible for you your- 
 self to inquire, if you never do inquire, you are not fit to teach. 
 Your lamp has gone out.'" 
 
 So much, then, for the teaching of elementary experimental 
 science. The same principles apply to the teaching of botany 
 in schools. It should be used as an instrument of education 
 rather than for purposes of information. There are great possi- 
 bilities in botany, but probably there is no subject which is 
 so badly taught. I have had some melancholy experiences in
 
 vii.] Science Teaching in Schools. 137 
 
 inspecting the methods used in teaching it to young children 
 especially. The dreary text-book botany lessons are as worthless 
 as practical rational lessons are valuable. 
 
 Professor Miall, who has given very special attention to 
 rational methods of teaching botany, strongly advocates this 
 subject for object lessons for children from the ages of 8 12, 
 and in doing so lays down certain maxims to be followed : 
 
 (1) No Latin or Greek technical terms. 
 
 (2) No lectures or information lessons. 
 
 (3) No book to be produced in class. 
 
 (4) The object lesson should always be founded on the 
 actual object. 
 
 (5) Never tell the children anything they can find out for 
 themselves. 
 
 From 12 to 15 or 1 6, Professor Miall would hand over the 
 children, as far as science teaching is concerned, to the kind of 
 instruction involved in a good general course of elementary 
 experimental science as being the best possible teaching of 
 a formative character to follow on a suitable course of object 
 lessons on botany or natural history. 
 
 Where botany is taken systematically in schools as the main 
 science subject he would make great claims on the time-table. 
 He says : 
 
 " Here may I just make a remark upon the subject of time 
 in the teaching of botany, because, though many things are 
 denied to the teacher of botany, which are necessary to his 
 efficiency, I think the most cruel denial to which he is subject 
 is the denial of adequate time. The practice has sprung up of 
 considering that about an hour a week is a good allowance for 
 a particular branch of science, especially for botany, which is 
 not held, altogether, I think, in the highest esteem. An hour 
 or two a week in botany is not an unusual allowance. Now 
 any such allowance as that seems to me utterly nugatory. You 
 might just as well cross the subject out as allow an hour a week
 
 138 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 to it. It is part of a miserable system which pervades the 
 school course in general, and which results from our great 
 anxiety to bring in a number of subjects, and our unwillingness, 
 when a number of incompatible things are offered to us, to 
 make a selection among them ; and so the whole school course 
 
 is ruined That is one of the reforms which is most pressing, 
 
 and, to put my views of this subject in a practical form, if 
 I were a schoolmaster or were drawing up a time table for 
 a school, I should be inclined to take some such practical 
 step as this. Every important subject which is taught at all 
 should, as a rule, come round pretty nearly every day. One 
 does not want to be over-precise, and therefore I say pretty 
 nearly every day. But a lesson once or twice every week in an 
 important subject does not count. The results are not perma- 
 nent. Unless it comes pretty nearly every day, it does not very 
 much signify. And the course relating to a particular subject 
 should last, in my opinion, at least a year or two. If it does 
 not come round pretty nearly every day, and for a year or two, 
 the probability is that no permanent impression is made." 
 
 Here we are treading on very dangerous ground the time 
 to be given to rational science teaching ; but it is a difficulty 
 which will solve itself. During the past few years this kind of 
 teaching has been on its trial, and has come out of it splendidly. 
 It has steadily taken a more and more prominent position in 
 public favour. It has come to stay. Even now, however, the 
 enormous possibilities of associating with it instruction in other 
 subjects by the removal of some of those unnecessary and 
 baneful partitions, by which instruction in various branches of 
 study is separated into water-tight compartments, is only im- 
 perfectly grasped. But we must not hurry matters. Vast 
 progress has been made during these later years of the nine- 
 teenth century in this direction, and the old system is absolutely 
 irrevocably doomed : nothing can resuscitate it. The wonder is 
 that this new method was not introduced long years ago. But, 
 then, this tardy introduction of reforms, especially in educa-
 
 VII.] Science Teaching in Schools. 139 
 
 tional matters, is essentially English. We move very slowly, 
 but when we have moved there is no turning back. As a matter 
 of fact, the principles now advocated were those advanced by 
 Pestalozzi and his followers a century ago. There is nothing 
 really new. We are very insular as a people, and in nothing 
 more so than in our want of interest in, and ignorance of, the 
 history of educational movements on the Continent. 
 
 There is not time in a short lecture of this kind to more 
 than touch upon the subject of the "Training of Teachers." 
 Whatever difficulties there may be in the teaching of ordinary 
 class subjects by those who have not had adequate training, they 
 are increased tenfold when we have to deal with the rational 
 teaching of science. Where a dozen teachers can successfully 
 impart information, not one can command that necessary re- 
 straint and give that wise guidance which will enable children to 
 discover for themselves. In the great educational reforms, which 
 we shall see introduced in all probability during the next few 
 years, much attention will undoubtedly be given to an improve- 
 ment in the provision for the training of primary and secondary 
 teachers, and when this is done, there will be little to fear for 
 the future of rational science teaching. And I venture to think 
 that when the history of educational movements in England 
 during the nineteenth century is written, a very prominent place 
 will be allotted to the reforms instituted during the latter part 
 of the century in science teaching in schools.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN THE 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR PHILIP MAGNUS. 
 
 THE question of the kind of education best suited to 
 industrial and professional pursuits, and how to provide it, 
 has occupied a large share of public attention during the last 
 twenty years. The problem is not, however, by any means 
 a new one, and during the early years of the century it 
 was carefully and frequently considered by many competent 
 and zealous thinkers, and not a few attempts were made to 
 solve it. 
 
 In the present lecture I hope to be able to trace the 
 connection between those early endeavours and recent more 
 or less successful efforts, and to give, within the time at my 
 disposal, even a brief outline of the progress of industrial 
 teaching during the nineteenth century; I must necessarily pass 
 in very rapid review many important incidents, and must be 
 content if I am able to bring into prominence some only of the
 
 CH. VIII.] Industrial Education. 141 
 
 principal events which have left their influence on the history 
 of the movement, and have helped to shape our present 
 schemes and methods of instruction. 
 
 We cannot consider the problem of industrial education 
 altogether apart from that of education generally, nor without 
 reference to the relations between employer and employed, 
 and to many other matters affecting the life and work of the 
 labouring classes. 
 
 It is difficult for us to realise the social and intellectual 
 condition of the great mass of the population at the beginning 
 of the present century. Wages were low, commodities were 
 dear, the hours of labour were long, and the standard of living 
 was altogether different from what it is at present. The first 
 Factory Act passed in 1802 reduced the hours of labour to twelve 
 (exclusive of meal-time), and provided safeguards to mitigate 
 the hardships of apprenticeship. There was no provision for 
 the general education of the people, and the century was more 
 than two-thirds spent before the right of children to receive the 
 rudiments of education was recognised as an obligation on the 
 part of the State. The lot of young children who were sent to 
 work wholly untaught was aggravated by the growth of the 
 factory system, consequent on the introduction of machinery 
 into mills ; and the dislocation of labour and the crowding of 
 workpeople into the towns led to very deplorable conditions 
 of existence. The old laws of apprenticeship were still in 
 operation, but the relations of employer and employed were 
 undergoing a rapid change. This was particularly the case 
 in the Textile Trades, in which the inventions of Arkwright, 
 Crompton, Cartwright and others had produced a revolution 
 in the methods of production, and had destroyed the -quasi 
 family life which the apprentice formerly enjoyed under his 
 master. The unrestricted use of untrained child labour was 
 the crying evil of the first years of the century, and elicited 
 powerful protests from the great reformers of that time; but 
 it was not till some years later that their efforts bore fruit.
 
 142 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 Wordsworth in his Excursion, published 1814, pitifully describes 
 the condition of the factory employed child : 
 
 "The boy, where'er he turns, 
 Is still a prisoner;... 
 
 Behold him in the school 
 Of his attainments? No; but with the air 
 Fanning his temples under heaven's blue arch. 
 His raiment, whitened o'er with cotton flakes 
 Or locks of wool, announces whence he comes. 
 Creeping his gait and cowering, his lip pale, 
 And scarcely could you fancy that a gleam 
 Could break from out those languid eyes." 
 
 and so on ; and then he goes on to say : 
 
 " Can hope look forward to a manhood raised 
 On such foundations?" 
 
 The whole of the eighth book of the Excursion is in- 
 teresting as a description of the condition of factory children 
 of this time, and is a fervent protest against the neglect and 
 hardships to which they were then subjected. Elizabeth 
 Barrett Browning, a few years later, gave a still more pitiful 
 expression to the cry of the children : 
 
 "For oh!" say the children, "we are weary 
 
 And we cannot run or leap ; 
 If we cared for any meadows, it were merely 
 To drop down in them and sleep. 
 
 For all day we drag our burden tiring 
 
 Through the coal-dark underground : 
 Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron 
 
 In the factories, round and round." 
 
 It stands to the honour of Sir Robert Peel that he was the 
 first to bring Parliamentary legislation to the aid of the ap- 
 prentice. Under Peel's Act of 1802 the hours of apprenticeship 
 were shortened, night work was abolished, the instruction of 
 children employed in factories was made obligatory, and Inspec- 
 tors were appointed to see that the law was kept. This was 
 the first Factory Act, and under it the evils of apprenticeship
 
 VIIL] Industrial Education. 143 
 
 as affecting factory children, were, in some measure, alleviated. 
 At this time workpeople were still legally prevented from com- 
 bining with a view of improving their position. In 1799 a 
 Bill was passed to prevent "unlawful combination of workmen," 
 a law which practically placed the working classes at the mercy 
 of their employers. In 1806 journeymen compositors em- 
 ployed by time were prosecuted for taking part in a strike; 
 and it was not till 1824-5 that the Combination Laws, which 
 pressed so heavily upon the working classes, were repealed. 
 The only instruction available at this time for the bulk of the 
 people was that given in the Sunday Schools and the Parochial 
 Charity Schools, where the teaching was limited in quantity 
 and poor in quality. Two-thirds of the population grew up with- 
 out being able to write their own names. Moreover, the heavy 
 Paper Duty imposed in 1711 went a long way to counteract 
 the benefits conferred by printing ; and a tax on newspapers of 
 4</. per copy effectually prevented a wide circulation. 
 
 Very early in the century a twofold effort was made to 
 improve the condition of the working classes by providing 
 some kind of teaching for children and adults. These two 
 movements were closely connected, although they developed 
 on different lines. To the one may be ascribed the origin of 
 the present system of elementary education, and to the other 
 may be traced the beginning of our elaborate machinery for 
 evening technical education. 
 
 There was no lack at this time of earnest, enthusiastic men 
 who deplored the ignorance in which the mass of the population 
 was immersed, and who looked to education as the surest means 
 of increasing the happiness of the working classes, of lessening 
 crime, and of promoting the prosperity and well-being of the 
 nation. John Stuart Mill in his Autobiography tells us that 
 his father, James Mill, " felt as if all would be gained if the 
 whole population were taught to read, if all sorts of opinions 
 were allowed to be addressed to them by word and in writing, 
 and if by means of the suffrage they could nominate a legisla-
 
 144 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAT. 
 
 ture to give effect to the opinions they adopted 1 ." The younger 
 Mill lived to see some of his father's aspirations realised, but 
 he was less hopeful than his father as to the improving effect of 
 any change of circumstance on human nature. 
 
 Sir Joshua Fitch, in his little work entitled Educational 
 Aims and Methods, says, "The i8th century was not dis- 
 tinguished in our own country, at least, by any important 
 educational enterprise." No historian will be able to cast that 
 reproach on its successor. The two names which stand 
 prominently forward at the commencement of the century, 
 in connection with the history of popular education, are 
 Dr Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster. It was while in 
 India that Bell, owing to the want of a sufficient number of 
 teachers, was reduced to invent what has since been known as 
 the monitorial system, a device for utilising the older children 
 to instruct the younger, which was an important step in school 
 organisation. In the year 1797 he published a pamphlet 
 describing the Madras system of setting pupils to teach each 
 other. He himself was so satisfied with the results of his 
 experiment that he said, " I think I have made great progress 
 and almost wrought a complete change in the morals and 
 character of a generation of boys." This system, which would 
 seem now-a-days to have little to recommend it, was not then 
 regarded as a mere makeshift, but as a method of school 
 management of permanent and real value ; indeed, as the best 
 possible means of organising instruction in all schools. Al- 
 though Bell's pamphlet was published before the close of the 
 1 8th century, he himself did not become a public educator in 
 England till a later date. 
 
 Meanwhile Joseph Lancaster, the son of a Chelsea pen- 
 sioner, who had displayed from earliest youth great enthusiasm 
 in the cause of Education and Religion, was preparing the way 
 for the establishment of a system of schools for the people. 
 
 1 Autobiography, J. S. Mill, p. 106.
 
 viil.] Industrial Education. 145 
 
 In 1798 he hired a large room in the Borough Road, and 
 announced that all who would might send their children to 
 receive free instruction. The want came with the man, for 
 several circumstances combined at that time to create a de- 
 mand for education, and Lancaster's invitation met with a fuller 
 response than he had probably anticipated. The success of 
 his efforts aroused unexpected interest in the subject. In 
 1805 George III sent for him to explain his methods, and was 
 gratified to learn that the system Lancaster had adopted owed 
 its success to quasi military methods. Lancaster's efforts led 
 to the formation in 1808 of the Royal Lancastrian Association, 
 on the committee of which were James Mill, Henry Brougham 
 and Samuel Rogers. In 1813 the West London Lancastrian 
 Society was started. It took for its motto " Schools for All." 
 Francis Place, the Radical tailor, who was prominent in all the 
 liberalising efforts of the early part of the century, was a 
 member of this Society. It was in the same year, 1813, that 
 the parent Society developed into the British and Foreign 
 School Society, the well-known organisation for the establish- 
 ment of Elementary Schools. 
 
 About this time Bell returned from India and started 
 schools illustrating his Monitorial System as practised in 
 Madras. As so often happens when rival systems are simul- 
 taneously advocated, the differences are brought into undue 
 prominence, and vanish altogether when seen through the 
 perspective of later years. But between the two systems there 
 was a difference somewhat similar to that which distinguishes 
 our Board Schools from our Voluntary Schools. The teaching 
 of religion formed a more essential part of Bell's methods, and 
 his educational ambition was more limited. Froude has told 
 us that "the Ten Commandments and a handicraft make a good 
 and wholesome equipment to commence life with," and the 
 partisans of Bell felt that, whilst the teaching of religion was 
 essential to the elementary training of children, the dangers of 
 over-education had even then to be guarded against. Indeed, 
 s. M. L. 10
 
 146 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 he protected himself by saying, that "it is not proposed to 
 educate the poor in an expensive manner." In 1811. as the 
 result of Bell's efforts, the "National Society for the Education 
 of the Poor in the principles of the Established Church " was 
 founded, and we owe it to these two rival Societies, differing as 
 to their theories of education, that the possibilities of elementary 
 instruction have been brought within the reach of the children 
 of the poorest classes. It is interesting to note that whilst 
 Bell and his Monitorial System are now almost forgotten, and 
 Pestalozzi stands out as the father of modern pedagogy, it is 
 recorded of Bell that, after a visit to Pestalozzi at Yverdun, he 
 remarked : "In another twelve years mutual instruction will be 
 adopted by the whole world and Pestalozzi's method will be 
 forgotten 1 ." The schools established by these two Societies, 
 unassisted by State aid, but supplemented by Sunday Schools, 
 gave to the children of a large number of poor people the 
 rudiments of primary education. The instruction thus supplied 
 was necessarily of a most elementary kind, and even that did 
 not reach all classes. We learn, however, from the biographies 
 of many who subsequently rose to greatness, that they owed 
 their advancement and success to the advantages they derived 
 from the education provided in the National and Church 
 Schools. These men were amongst the most earnest advocates 
 of National Education, and the success they achieved induced 
 parents to realise the value of providing their children with 
 the rudiments of instruction. 
 
 Simultaneously with these efforts, on the part of philan- 
 thropic individuals and religious .bodies, to secure for the 
 rising generation some measure of elementary education, 
 endeavours were being made to provide adult workmen with a 
 knowledge of those facts and principles of science which under- 
 lay the work in which they were engaged. Already, in the 
 early part of the century, steam-power was being applied to 
 
 1 Educational Reformers, Quick, p. 352.
 
 VIIL] Industrial Education. 147 
 
 machinery and locomotion. The great revolution in productive 
 industry which is the distinguishing factor of the century 
 had commenced. The master minds of all countries were 
 occupied in advancing physical science, and new methods 
 were in process of discovery which were destined to multiply 
 the productiveness of Nature. It was a time when such im- 
 provements in production were much needed. The belief was 
 growing that population was increasing more rapidly than the 
 means of subsistence. Communication between distant lands 
 was slow, and each country depended almost entirely upon its 
 own resources for its food supply. England was not then 
 united by rapid steamships, as it now is, with the great pro- 
 ducing countries of the world, and the means had not then 
 been discovered of bringing the products of other lands within 
 reach of our own working classes. The population question, 
 which was then anxiously considered by our philosophers and 
 philanthropists as a matter of grave import, no longer troubles 
 us. In 1 80 1 the English language was spoken by about 20 
 million people, it is now spoken by over 100 million : but the 
 rapid increase of population, which roused the fears and 
 agitated so acutely the thoughts of Bentham and Malthus 
 gives us happily far less concern. In his Life of Francis Place, 
 Mr Graham Wallas truly says : " It is difficult at the present 
 time to appreciate with anything like justice the fears of those 
 who studied the population question at the beginning of the 
 century." That is so, but the discoveries of science have changed 
 the conditions of the problem. It is no longer national but 
 universal, and the question of provision is reduced to one 
 of distribution. There is no fear that the world's resources 
 will fail ; what we have to consider are the means of bringing 
 them within reach of those who want them. Francis Place 
 grasped the truth that man's inventive power properly applied 
 would add indefinitely to the earth's products. His phrase 
 was : " Machinery should be allowed to beat population in 
 the race." Happily it has done so, and the productiveness of
 
 148 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 science has dispelled the fears of Malthus and of Mill as to the 
 unproductiveness of Nature. 
 
 The possibilities of science in helping to restore equilibrium 
 between population and production were clearly foreseen by 
 many active workers in the early part of the century ; and 
 hence their keen desire to diffuse as widely as possible scientific 
 knowledge. They realised the fact that the changing con- 
 ditions of industry required that men should not be permitted 
 to degenerate into machines, that those who assisted in the 
 work of production should know something of its processes, 
 that the brain power of the community should be utilised for 
 the well-being of the nation, and that a knowledge of what 
 scientific discovery could effect should be made generally 
 accessible, and particularly among those who were daily 
 engaged in work that illustrated it. 
 
 Ideas such as these filled the minds of many practical 
 educationalists in the early part of our century. 
 
 Prominent among these was Dr George Birkbeck. Born in 
 1776 of well-to-do Quaker parents in the quiet market-town of 
 Settle, Yorkshire, George Birkbeck, after receiving a sound 
 general education, chose the medical profession as his career, 
 and studied successively under Dr Garnett and Mr Logan, and 
 afterwards at the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh. Later 
 on he became a student of the University, and after attending 
 the lectures of Steward, Rutherford and others, he graduated 
 in 1799 as Doctor of Medicine. Among his fellow-students 
 were Walter Scott, Francis Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Henry 
 Brougham. At the age of 23, Birkbeck was appointed 
 Professor of Physics at a new Institution at Glasgow, founded 
 under the will of Mr John Anderson, and still known as the 
 Andersonian College. It was in the year 1800 that Birkbeck, 
 wanting some apparatus made to illustrate his lectures, went 
 to a tinman's shop in Glasgow, where he was so much struck 
 with the intelligence and greed for knowledge shown by the 
 workmen, that he decided to admit them to his lectures, and
 
 VIIL] Industrial Education. 149 
 
 afterwards arranged a course on Physical Science expressly 
 adapted to meet the wants of mechanics. 
 
 In his Prospectus for the Session, carefully prepared at his 
 Yorkshire home, he says : " I shall deliver a series of Lectures 
 upon the mechanical properties of solid and fluid bodies, 
 abounding with experiments and conducted with the greatest 
 simplicity of expression and familiarity of illustration, solely for 
 persons engaged in the practical exercise of mechanical arts," 
 and he goes on to say " that greater satisfaction in the execu- 
 tion of machinery must be experienced when the uses to which 
 it may be applied, and the principles upon which it operates, 
 are well understood, than when the manual part alone is known, 
 the artist remaining entirely ignorant of everything besides 1 ." 
 The aim and method of Technical Education could not have 
 been more happily expressed. 
 
 The Lectures proved both attractive and useful, and Birk- 
 beck was thoroughly satisfied with the results of his experiment. 
 In the year 1804 he left Glasgow, and after lecturing in 
 Birmingham, Liverpool and Hull, settled in London, where he 
 began to practise as a physician. But his interest in education 
 was undiminished, and the Institute in London which still 
 bears his name, and with which for so many years he was 
 usefully associated, is typical of others, which largely through 
 his help and influence were established in different parts of 
 the country. 
 
 Birmingham claims the honour of being the birthplace of 
 the Mechanics Institute, but in 1817 a so-called "Mechanical 
 Institution " was established in London. It had but a short 
 life, but it prepared the way for the London Mechanics Insti- 
 tution, which in the year 1824 was formally opened in temporary 
 premises in Monkwell Street, London Wall. In his efforts to 
 provide elementary scientific instruction for the working classes 
 Birkbeck was supported by Brougham, Place, and Robertson, 
 
 1 George Kirkbeck, the Pioneer of Popular Education, by S. G. CJodard, 
 
 1884.
 
 150 Education in tits. Nineteenth Century, [CHAP. 
 
 and by other indefatigable workers in the cause of popular 
 education. Among those who contributed money towards the 
 erection of a suitable building for the accommodation of the 
 students who attended the lectures, we find the familiar names 
 of Wilberforce, Gilchrist, Mill, Richards, Grote, Bentham, 
 Hobhouse, and Burdett. Huskisson endeavoured to obtain 
 some assistance from the State for a work which, in one of his 
 speeches, he describes as " likely to be attended with beneficial 
 results both to artisans and to the public, provided it be directed 
 to the teaching of those branches of science as will be of use to 
 the mechanics and artisans in the exercise of their respective 
 trades'." His efforts were unsuccessful, but so great was the 
 success of the movement that between twelve and thirteen 
 hundred workmen, paying one pound each, entered their 
 names for the several courses of lectures, " crowding," we are 
 told, "from great distances in the worst weather, and after the 
 toils of the day were over, to slake their thirst of knowledge"; 
 and it was then predicted that this desire for knowledge would 
 "assuredly prove the source of improvements in the next age, 
 calculated to throw all that has yet been witnessed into the 
 shade 2 ." Some of the most enthusiastic supporters of popular 
 education still hesitated to give more than a guarded expression 
 to their belief in the advantages of bringing scientific knowledge 
 within reach of all classes of the community ; and this is scarcely 
 to be wondered at, when we read in the St James's Chronicle of 
 May 1825, with reference to Birkbeck's scheme, that suggestions 
 " more completely adapted to the destruction of this Empire 
 could not have been invented by the author of evil himself 3 ." 
 It is unnecessary that I should tell the story in all its details of 
 the growth and development of the School now known as the 
 London Birkbeck Institute. It has passed through many 
 
 1 Godard, p. 67. 
 
 2 On the Scientific Education of Operative Mechanics, by Lord Brougham, 
 Edinburgh, 1824, p. 20. 
 
 3 Godard, p. 75.
 
 VIII.] Industrial Education. 151 
 
 vicissitudes. It has been more than once on the point of 
 failure, but throughout its history of 75 years friends rallied 
 round it at critical moments. It now forms part of the City 
 Polytechnic. Its aims and objects are very similar to those of 
 its first founders, but the training it affords is far more liberal 
 than could have been anticipated by those who laboured to 
 create it. 
 
 About this time a very successful attempt was made to 
 establish in Edinburgh an institution on the basis of the 
 Andersonian School at Glasgow. The " Edinburgh School of 
 Arts" was founded in 1821, with the object of imparting to the 
 working classes a knowledge of scientific principles. The con- 
 stitution of the Edinburgh School was somewhat different from 
 that of the Mechanics Institution generally, the control and 
 direction being left to a greater extent in the hands of the 
 educated classes. Care was taken, however, that a certain 
 proportion of master mechanics should always be upon the 
 governing body so that no regulations might be made which 
 would be in any degree hostile to the habits or feelings of the 
 working classes. 
 
 The lectures were delivered by men of established ability. 
 Dr Fyfe lectured on Chemistry and Mr Galbraith on Mechanics : 
 and it may interest the Farriers' Company of London to know 
 that a course of lectures was organised on Farriery and the 
 Veterinary Art. Nasmyth, who was a student at the College 
 from 1821 to 1826, calls it "our first Technical College." 
 
 In the notice of the opening of the School of Arts of 
 Edinburgh, published in September 1821, occurs the following 
 statement : " The great object of this Institution is to supply, 
 at such an expense as a working tradesman can afford, instruc- 
 tion in the various branches of Science which are of practical 
 application to mechanics in their several trades, so that they 
 may the better comprehend the reason for each individual 
 operation that passes through their hands, and have more 
 certain rules to follow than the mere imitation of what they
 
 15- Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 have seen done by another. It is not intended to teach the 
 trade of the carpenter, the mason, the dyer, or any other 
 particular business; but there is no trade which does not 
 depend, more or less, upon scientific principles ; and to teach 
 what they are, and to point out their practical application, will 
 form the business of the establishment. He who unites a 
 thorough knowledge of his art with that dexterity which 
 practice and practice only can give, will be the most complete, 
 and probably the most successful tradesman 1 /' 
 
 It would be difficult to find a better definition of Technology 
 than this, or a clearer expression of the aims and objects of 
 technical instruction. Even our difficulties of to-day were 
 anticipated eighty years ago ; for we read in the article, from 
 which I have already quoted, contributed by Lord Brougham 
 to the Edinburgh Review, October 1824, that "The experience 
 of the first year" of the working of the School of Arts, 
 "and particularly the fact that the students were of no less 
 than 48 different trades, convinced the Directors that the best 
 plan was to limit the lectures to the general principles of those 
 sciences which are of universal application to the arts, and not 
 to attempt, as had at first been intended, teaching the principles 
 of the arts in detail." 
 
 The first quarter of the century and particularly the years 
 1815 1825 was marked by the foundation of Mechanics 
 Institutions in all parts of the country. There was scarcely a 
 large town in England in which efforts were not made, and 
 with singular success, to establish schools on the basis of the 
 London Institute. They were founded in all the chief manu- 
 facturing towns, and the movement extended to Dublin and 
 Cork, to Aberdeen, Hawick and Ayr. We read that Institutions 
 " sprang up as if by magic," and that in " a short time temples 
 of Science were reared in every corner of the land." In the 
 year 1841 the total number of such Institutions was 220, of 
 which about 36 were in the Metropolis and suburbs. 
 1 Brougham, p. 14.
 
 Mil.] Industrial Education. 153 
 
 It was an interesting movement, resulting from the first 
 general recognition of the interdependence of Industry and 
 Science, and was favoured by the sense of repose and satis- 
 faction that followed the termination of the Napoleonic wars. 
 The movement, although of undoubted service to the cause of 
 education, was somewhat premature, and looking back from 
 the vantage ground of our present experience, it is not difficult 
 to discern the reason why so many of these Institutions failed 
 to fulfil the objects for which they were originally established. 
 Writing of the Edinburgh School some years after its founda- 
 tion Mr Nasmyth says : " In these days when so many of our 
 so-called Mechanics Institutes are merely cheap reading clubs 
 for the middle classes, and lectures are delivered for the most 
 part merely for a pleasant evening's amusement, it seems to me 
 that we have greatly departed from the original design with 
 which Mechanics Institutions were founded." The history of 
 most of these Institutions is very similar. Some of them, such 
 as the Institutes of Manchester, Huddersfield and Leeds, kept 
 alive long enough to be converted into Technical Schools. 
 The Edinburgh School of Arts has developed into the Heriot 
 Watt College. Others, however, led a languishing existence and 
 degenerated into clubs, or changed the character of their work 
 or ceased to exist. Very few succeeded to the extent expected 
 by their founders, and yet their failure was in no way due to 
 any fault in their conception, nor in their objects. It was due 
 in the first place to the want of adequate funds, and secondly 
 and equally to the absence among the workmen, whom they 
 were intended to benefit, of the rudiments of primary education. 
 
 No public Institutions with such aims and objects could 
 succeed without State aid. They depended entirely on 
 voluntary support ; and when their means failed they were 
 compelled to sacrifice their ideals to their necessities. They 
 consequently degenerated, as Nasmyth has pointed out, into 
 cheap Reading Clubs for the middle classes, and places of 
 literary entertainment. But, even if they had been adequately
 
 154 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 endowed, or otherwise financially aided, their progress would 
 have been seriously retarded by the fact that there did not 
 exist at that time a body of artisans sufficiently educated to 
 profit by the instruction. They were destined, therefore, to 
 fall into the hands of the middle classes and of the more 
 intelligent foremen and managers connected with the Engineer- 
 ing and Building Trades. Mr J. H. Reynolds of Manchester, 
 in a letter he has kindly sent me on the origin of the Manchester 
 Mechanics Institution, says : " It was simply impossible, except 
 to a select few, to convey any knowledge of the principles of 
 Science as applied to industry, to a body of workers a very 
 great number of whom had never before been to school. I 
 have myself, when a young man, taught reading, writing and 
 arithmetic to working-class youths as a regular thing in the 
 Sunday School in Manchester. In 1879 I became the Secretary 
 of the Manchester Mechanics Institution, and I well remember 
 the feeling of despair which came over me when I realised the 
 real condition of affairs. There were a boys' and a girls' day 
 school, and a number of evening classes, all in a moribund 
 condition, the place heavily in debt, a governing body of 
 directors without money, elected by the members and students. 
 I could see no way open ; when one day I got the Programme 
 of the City and Guilds of London Institute establishing ex- 
 aminations of a distinctly industrial and technical character, 
 and I at once induced the directors to establish classes to meet 
 the demands of these examinations. I have a vivid recol- 
 lection of your visit to me, and of the hope with which you 
 inspired me, when you said that the City Guilds Institute would 
 grant immediate aid if certain things were done. This is 
 nearly 20 years ago and the fruit of it all is seen in the finest 
 building for a Technical School in England." I have ventured 
 to quote this extract from a long and interesting letter, for 
 although it anticipates to some extent our history, it shows 
 very clearly the causes that prevented the Mechanics Institu- 
 tions from fulfilling the expectations of their founders. But
 
 VIII.] Industrial Education. 155 
 
 subsequent experience points to other causes for their partial 
 failure. The methods of technological instruction were not 
 then understood. The intentions of the directors were sound, 
 but the teaching was faulty. Courses of lectures, even when 
 illustrated by experiments, and conducted with simple apparatus 
 hastily put together, failed to supply artisans with the teaching 
 they required. Lord Brougham and those who worked with him 
 had not recognised this fact. He tells us : " Many of the most 
 important experiments may be shown with very cheap and 
 simple machinery ; and a skilful lecturer may make great pro- 
 gress in teaching his pupils, and enabling them to overcome 
 the difficulties that stopt them in their private studies with 
 hardly any experiments at all 1 ." 
 
 This is partly true in teaching children ; but the passage 
 quoted shows that the writer had not grasped the problem 
 of technical education, nor realized the appropriate method of 
 instruction in dealing with adult workmen, or trade apprentices. 
 It took nearly a century to discover the kind of lessons best 
 fitted for mechanics engaged in different trades ; and the 
 utmost that can be said for the Mechanics Institutions is 
 that they afforded, during many years of educational obscurity, 
 a glimmer of light which enabled a few of the more gifted of 
 the working classes to grope after the knowledge they required. 
 
 Even in this brief survey of the history of Industrial 
 Teaching, I must not omit to refer to the influence exercised 
 by the University and King's Colleges of London, now merged 
 into the London University, in meeting the demand for a 
 higher general and professional education which, some little 
 time before the accession of our Queen began to be realised. 
 Birkbeck took an active part in the foundation of University 
 College, which was opened in October 1828. "Unless some 
 advance," he said, " was made by those who were called the 
 superior classes, they would not much longer continue superior. 
 
 1 Brougham, p. 23.
 
 156 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 To find their Carpenters, their Bricklayers, and their Shoe- 
 makers with greater knowledge than they themselves possessed 
 would be a strange and dangerous solecism 1 ." This was said 
 when the future of Mechanics Institutions seemed assured. 
 The conditions of graduation in the old University of London, 
 with which the two Colleges were at first so closely and usefully 
 associated, indicated a new educational departure, emphasising 
 the importance to all students of some knowledge of physical 
 science. These Colleges, and later on the Owens College, 
 Manchester, founded in 1851, gave for many years the only 
 available professional education for Architects, Engineers and 
 Chemists. Their schemes of instruction were not very definitely 
 prepared with a view to technical pursuits ; but the influence 
 they exercised is a very potent factor in the subsequent de- 
 velopment of the higher technical education. 
 
 The establishment in 1826 of the Society for the Diffusion 
 of Useful Knowledge, of which Lord Brougham was President, 
 gave a further impulse to popular education, by providing at a 
 cheap rate a whole library of books on subjects of interest to 
 the industrial classes. A few years later the Penny Magazine 
 was started, and this was followed by the Cyclopedia edited by 
 Charles Knight. These publications helped to disseminate 
 some amount of knowledge among such of the working classes 
 as were able to read, who were still a comparatively small 
 proportion of the population. 
 
 In 1834, a very momentous event occurred in the history 
 of education in this country. A grant of ^20,000 was made 
 by Parliament to the National and British School Societies. 
 This was the first of the grants which have gone on continually 
 increasing, involving the State more and more in the direction 
 and control of the education of the people. It is interesting 
 to note that the relation of the State to education did not 
 grow out of any sense of obligation or duty to organise and 
 
 1 Godard, p. 90.
 
 VIII.] Industrial Education. 157 
 
 direct a system of general instruction for the people, but arose 
 rather from the necessity of safeguarding the public purse and 
 of satisfying Parliament that the annual grants had been use- 
 fully expended. It was only very gradually that the Government 
 was induced to take the initiative in suggesting courses of 
 instruction and in controlling education ; and even now, when 
 so much has been accomplished, the State lags far behind the 
 popular demand for guidance. At that time, however, and for 
 some years to come, education was left almost entirely to 
 voluntary effort both for its means and its methods. 
 
 The opening of the first Exhibition in 1851 is an event of 
 primary importance in the history of industrial teaching, and 
 cannot be dismissed without some comment. " It was," to 
 quote the words of Sir VVemyss Reid, "the starting point in the 
 modern history of English manufactures and arts'." It is not 
 quite clear to whom is due the first conception of this great 
 undertaking, which during the second half of the century has 
 exercised so beneficent an influence, not only in England but 
 throughout the whole civilised world, upon industrial progress. 
 The name of the Prince Consort stands prominently forward, and 
 with him will always be remembered Sir Henry Cole and Lord 
 Playfair. In many ways the Exhibition of 1851 gave an impulse 
 to the promotion of technical education. It afforded for the 
 first time an opportunity of comparing the products of our 
 shops and mills with those of other countries, and showed in 
 strong relief the bearing of Art on manufactures, and the 
 possibilities of improvements which might follow from the 
 alliance of Industry with Science. It was a great object lesson 
 from which we have never ceased to profit. But it was not so 
 much the Exhibition itself as its consequences, which affected 
 the progress of industrial education. The profit from the 
 Exhibition amounted to ; 186,436. After much consultation 
 this sum of money, supplemented by a Parliamentary grant of 
 
 1 Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord Play fair, by Wemyss Reid. 1899.
 
 158 Education in tlte Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 ,150,000 was invested in the purchase of the South Kensing- 
 ton estate, which has since been so closely associated with 
 every important movement in connection with Science and Art 
 instruction, and has now become the permanent home of the 
 Royal College of Science, the Central Technical College and 
 the University of London. In writing to Playfair in August 
 1851, the Prince Consort said: "I would buy that land and 
 place on it an Institution embracing the four great sections of 
 the Exhibition," and after going into considerable detail as to 
 his scheme, he pointed out that it was "founded upon the 
 presumed necessity of affording instruction to those engaged in 
 the prosecution of arts and manufactures'." In this memorable 
 document the late Prince Consort sounded the note of warning 
 as to the superiority and advantages of foreign systems of 
 education, which has not yet ceased to be heard. Very wisely, 
 and with great prophetic insight, he said : " The nations 
 most likely to afford a public recognition of this fact are those 
 whose fuel and raw materials are chiefly derived from other 
 lands, and who can therefore only carry on a successful com- 
 petition by continually economising and perfecting production 
 by the application of Science." He did not live to see the 
 extent to which Switzerland and Germany have succeeded in 
 becoming the commercial rivals of other countries enjoying 
 greater natural advantages. 
 
 Consequent on the efforts of the Prince and of those who 
 worked with him, and in accordance with his scheme to focus 
 at South Kensington Institutions for industrial teaching, the 
 Science and Art Department was formally constituted in March 
 1853. Cole was the first secretary for Art and Playfair the 
 first secretary for Science. It cannot be denied that the 
 Department which began work forty-seven years ago, and 
 ceased to have a separate existence in March 1900, has 
 fulfilled in many ways, and to a very great extent, the objects 
 
 1 Wemyss Reid, p. 131.
 
 VIII.] Industrial Education. 159 
 
 for which it was established. It has fostered the growth 
 of art teaching, and has spread some knowledge of science 
 among the children and adult population of every town 
 throughout the Kingdom. Although its methods may not 
 always have been the best from an educational stand-point, its 
 officers have endeavoured to profit by the criticism which has 
 been freely bestowed upon it, and the widespread system of 
 Technical Education, which is now so largely helping the 
 commercial interests of this country, may certainly be regarded 
 as the outcome of the early efforts of its founders. 
 
 After the close of the Exhibition of 1851 the Society of 
 Arts, in whose Council the idea of the Exhibition is said to 
 have originated, organised a series of lectures to draw attention 
 to the lessons which it taught. Playfair delivered two of these 
 lectures, and subsequently made a tour through Europe to 
 learn the system of Technical Education as then developed in 
 different countries. The results of his investigations formed 
 the subject of an interesting lecture to the students of the 
 School of Mines. To Lord Playfair is due our first authentic 
 knowledge of the work of foreign schools, and his speeches 
 and reports gave a great impulse to the study of foreign systems 
 of education. In his diary Playfair says : " Having great faith 
 in the education of public opinion, I began a crusade in favour 
 of Technical Education. It was weary and dreary work. My 
 voice sounded to myself as the voice of one preaching in the 
 wilderness." The experience of others, a quarter of a century- 
 later, has not been very different. Nevertheless, it is consolatory 
 to know that the vibrations of every voice, preaching in a good 
 cause, are never really lost. They penetrate the wilderness, 
 and by ways we cannot at the time discover produce some 
 permanent effect. In the Board of Education Act, and in 
 its consequences, which will be more fully realised ten years 
 hence, we see the results of the efforts, during the last few 
 decades, of many an eager worker in the field of Educational 
 Reform.
 
 160 Education in t/te Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 Although as early as 1836 a grant of ^1500 was made by 
 the Government towards the establishment of a School of 
 Design, it was not till after the Exhibition of 1851 that any 
 systematic aid was given to the teaching of Science and Art. 
 In a speech from the Throne at the opening of Parliament, 
 November 1852, reference was made to "The advancement of 
 the fine arts and of practical Science," and to a comprehensive 
 scheme for the promotion of those objects, which resulted, as 
 already stated, in the establishment in 1853 of the Department 
 of Science and Art under the control of the Board of Trade. 
 It remained under the Board of Trade till 1856, when it was 
 transferred to the newly formed Education Department. In 
 1859 a system of grants in aid of Science and Art classes 
 applicable to the whole country was approved : and, with 
 some important changes, the system has remained in force 
 until the present day. 
 
 The Department owed its existence to the early recog- 
 nition of the fact, that manufacturing industry was destined 
 to be more and more dependent upon the application of the 
 discoveries of science and of scientific method to the processes 
 of production. This fact was brought home to the minds 
 of intelligent observers by the variety of products of different 
 countries shown at the first Exhibition. What most struck 
 our manufacturers was the absence of beauty and design which 
 characterised the products of British industry, and from that 
 time arose the belief in the saving influence of science and 
 artistic skill. 
 
 If the Department, originally organised to assist industry, 
 had restricted its efforts to the establishment in different parts 
 of the country of schools for instruction in subjects cognate 
 to the trades of the district, the history of education during 
 the past half century would have been very different, and our 
 commerce might have suffered less from foreign competition. 
 It would seem, however, that the original purpose of the 
 Department was partially lost sight of in the endeavour to
 
 VIII.] Industrial Education. 161 
 
 encourage, without reference to any organised system of in- 
 struction, a general knowledge of elementary scientific facts. 
 A machinery was created, unknown in the educational system 
 of any other country, for catching here and there a stray 
 genius. It was described by Huxley as a "capacity-catching 
 machine." It was cumbrous in its operations, and whilst it 
 impeded the healthy growth of primary instruction, it helped 
 by the very grants it distributed to postpone the organisation 
 of a sound system of secondary education. Moreover, it left 
 to voluntary effort the building up of a national scheme of 
 distinctly technical instruction. There was, too, a detachment 
 about the work, which is shown in its failure to recognise 
 Literature and Language equally with Science and Art as a 
 part of a liberal education whether primary or secondary. 
 Through its Museums and its Art Schools the Department 
 has undoubtedly helped industry ; but looking back through 
 the last fifty years, and comparing educational progress here 
 and abroad, one cannot fail to be struck rather with what 
 might have been than with what has already been accom- 
 plished. During the forty-seven years of the Department's 
 existence, the outlook has never been so promising as now, 
 when the Unity of Education has come to be recognised, and 
 the organisation of its different branches under one Central 
 authority is likely to be effected. 
 
 The dependence of industrial upon elementary education is 
 so intimate that before referring to the causes which led to 
 the establishment of technical schools in all parts of the 
 country, some mention must be made of the great Educational 
 Act, which will be for ever associated with the name of 
 W. E. Forster. The year 1870 is a landmark in the history 
 of Education in this country. Prior to 1870 although State 
 Aid was given to a large number of elementary schools, primary 
 education was almost entirely dependent upon voluntary effort. 
 Forster's Act brought education within reach of every child 
 in the land. The most remarkable feature perhaps in the 
 s. M. L. ii
 
 1 62 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 history of primary education in this country is the parallel 
 development of our Board and Voluntary school systems. No 
 more striking instance can be adduced of the practical good 
 sense of the British people, and of the wisdom of the statesmen 
 who guide the policy of the nation, than the fact that these two 
 systems have continued to exist and to develop side by side, 
 a result which goes far to explain the absence in this country 
 of that acute phase of the religious difficulty, which has caused 
 so much political disturbance in other countries, where the one 
 system or the other has been wholly suppressed. 
 
 To the Act of 1870 the industrial progress of the Nation dur- 
 ing the last thirty years is largely due. Except on the founda- 
 tions of elementary education no system of technical instruction 
 can possibly be reared. The first generation of scholars had 
 scarcely left the newly organised Board schools before it was 
 discovered that the science classes of South Kensington failed 
 to give that specialised teaching which our young artisans 
 required. Something more, and something other than the 
 instruction so provided was needed. And not only among the 
 artisan population, but to an equal if not to a greater extent 
 among those who were to become the leaders of industrial 
 works, the want of a new kind of education was beginning to 
 be felt. During the early years of the last quarter of our 
 century a further advance was made in scientific discovery. 
 The possibilities of Electricity began to be realised, and the 
 influence of well-directed chemical research in the building up 
 of new industries abroad was recognised by some of the most 
 far-seeing of our scientific men. The agitation that precedes a 
 renascence had begun. There was a feeling of uneasiness as 
 to the value of the education given in our Board schools, in 
 our secondary schools and Universities, and doubts were 
 expressed as to whether it was as well adapted as it might be 
 to the changed and changing needs of industrial life. Huxley 
 and Arnold, both Government officers, realised the urgent 
 necessity of a change and an advance, and each in his own
 
 VIII.] Industrial Education. 163 
 
 way cried aloud and spared not. The examination system as 
 then conducted was not conducive to sound education. Whilst 
 pleading for scientific instruction Huxley saw that much of 
 what was called science teaching was practically useless. " If 
 scientific education is to be dealt with as mere book work, it 
 will be better not to attempt it." " If scientific training is to 
 yield its most eminent results it must I repeat be made 
 practical." " I want to see instruction in Elementary Science 
 and in Art more thoroughly incorporated in the educational 
 system." "At present it is being administered by driblets, as if 
 it were a patent medicine, 'a few drops to be taken occasionally 
 in a tea-spoon '." These are a few of the wailings of Huxley 
 scattered through his numerous speeches and addresses. In 
 one of his Essays he says : " I am strongly inclined to agree 
 with some learned schoolmasters who say that in their experi- 
 ence the teaching of Science is all waste of time. As they 
 teach it I have no doubt it is, but to teach it otherwise requires 
 an amount of personal labour and a development of means and 
 appliances which must strike horror and dismay into a man 
 accustomed to mere book work 1 ." Since these words were 
 written the teaching has improved, but further changes are 
 still needed to make the Science of our secondary schools a 
 fuller preparation for professional and industrial life. Arnold's 
 criticism of our methods was equally to the point. No one 
 realised more fully than he the radical defects of our educational 
 system. "The idea of Science," he tells us, "and scientific 
 knowledge is wanting to our whole instruction alike," and 
 Arnold used the term Science in its wider and more correct 
 sense, not as mere information about the laws and facts of 
 Nature. Huxley and Arnold approached the problem from 
 different points of view, but in each was found that energising 
 spirit of unrest to which we largely owe the educational ad- 
 vances of the last twenty years. 
 
 1 Science and Education. Essays by T. 11. Huxley. Macmillan, 1893. 
 
 II 2
 
 164 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 It was in the early seventies that the Society of Arts made 
 an endeavour to supplement the scrappy teaching of Science in 
 the Government-aided Classes by instruction in the applica- 
 tion of scientific principles to the practice of a few industries. 
 The teaching of Technology, which is the distinguishing mark 
 of Industrial Education, and has now established a firm footing 
 in our schools, had its beginning in a very unpretentious 
 scheme of the Society of Arts. Huxley as early as 1877 
 described it as "a system of instruction for persons employed 
 in factories and workshops, who desired to extend and improve 
 their knowledge of the theory and practice of their particular 
 avocations." It was knowledge of this kind that artisans 
 wanted and had hitherto been unable to obtain. The efforts of 
 the Society were not attended with any large measure of success. 
 There were no funds available for such teaching and the 
 practical side of the instruction received little or no encourage- 
 ment. Still the efforts of the Society gave the first stimulus to 
 the spread of technological teaching in our industrial centres. 
 
 Of such teaching adapted to some few branches of the 
 Building Trades, a practical example was found in the classes 
 conducted by a small society of workmen known as the 
 " Artisans Institute." I visited these classes early in the year 
 1880. They had their home in St Martin's Lane, not far from 
 the present Offices of the Technical Education Board of the 
 London County Council. The Rev. Henry Solly took an 
 active part in their organisation, and the Institute was fortunate 
 in securing, as one of its teachers, Mr C. T. Millis, the present 
 Principal of the Borough Polytechnic. The teachers of these 
 classes were trying to help their students, all of whom were 
 artisans, to understand the theory of their work by showing them 
 how a knowledge of the theory helped in the practice of their 
 trade. In the Report of the Institute for the year 1879 1880 
 occur these words : " When instruction in the details connected 
 with handicrafts is recommended, an off-hand reply is too 
 generally given that the ordinary workshop is the proper school
 
 VIII.] Indtistrial Education. 165 
 
 for practice, and that a ' Science and Art school ' affiliated to 
 South Kensington suffices for instruction in principles. This 
 view, however, is not borne out by the statements of skilled 
 artisans. They assert, on the one hand, that the industrial 
 education of apprentices in the workshop is, in these days, 
 altogether neglected; that no one takes the trouble to teach 
 them anything ; that they can only pick up a very superficial 
 knowledge of their trades; that they are often mere drudges, or 
 are employed in but one branch of the business, so that if that 
 branch ceases to be required as often happens they have 
 nothing to fall back upon. On the other hand, it is asserted 
 that a large proportion of imperfectly-educated lads or grown 
 men who join science and art classes find that they are unable 
 to apply in the workshop what is taught in the class-room, and 
 only half understand what is taught, for want of seeing prin- 
 ciples illustrated by their application to work." The concluding 
 words of this extract show very clearly the want that was then 
 felt, a want which the teaching of Technology has supplied. 
 It is the function of the technical teacher to show the connec- 
 tion between principles and practice. This can only be done 
 effectually when the teaching proceeds from the concrete to the 
 abstract, from the practice of the workshop to the theory of the 
 class-room. In the very humble efforts of the small band of 
 teachers attached to the Artisans Institute I saw what seemed 
 to me the special method of technological instruction the 
 method now adopted in the laboratories, workshops and lecture 
 rooms of our great Polytechnic Institutes. The Institute 
 had its recreative and educational sides, and, small as it was, 
 it may be regarded as the forerunner of the large London 
 Institutions, with which the name of Mr Quintin Hogg, as the 
 founder and liberal supporter of the Regent Street Polytechnic, 
 will always be associated. In 1883 the classes of the Artisans 
 Institute were transferred to the Finsbury Technical College, 
 of which I was then the acting Principal. 
 
 The partial success of the scheme of the Society of Arts to
 
 1 66 Education in tlte Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 encourage the teaching of technology as supplementary to that 
 of elementary science, was a factor to be noted when the City 
 Companies, about the year 1877, were considering the best 
 means of establishing, under the direction of a joint Committee 
 of representative members, a National System of Technical 
 Education. Prior to their united action the Clothworkers' 
 Company had sent abroad a few experts to enquire as to the 
 best means of assisting the Textile Industries, and the reports 
 which they received induced them to found, in connection with 
 the Yorkshire College at Leeds, a Textile Department, which 
 has proved of the greatest benefit to the manufacturers of Wool 
 and Worsted goods in this country. It was during the winter 
 of the same year, at the suggestion, I think, of Dr Wormell, that 
 classes for artisans were started in the basement of the Cowper 
 Street schools. Professor Armstrong, Dr Wormell and myself 
 were among the first teachers, and out of this humble effort 
 was developed, mainly by help of the Drapers' Company, the 
 Finsbury Technical College. 
 
 The City and Guilds of London Institute was formally 
 incorporated in 1880. What it has done for the advancement 
 of Technical Education is generally known. It established 
 the Finsbury Technical College and the Kennington School of 
 Applied Art, and subsequently the Central Technical College, 
 the first Institution of its kind in this country, comparable 
 with the Technical High Schools of Germany and Switzerland. 
 It took over from the Society of Arts its scheme of Techno- 
 logical Examinations, and developed them into a system of 
 technological instruction applicable to all our principal trades 
 and industries. This, very briefly, has been the work of the 
 City Guilds Institute. 
 
 About this time there was considerable agitation in 
 favour of Technical Education. Several of our industries were 
 depressed, and there was a general feeling that our commercial 
 interests were not being helped as it was hoped they might 
 have been by our system of education. The agitation was
 
 VIII.] Industrial Education. 167 
 
 not without effect on the methods of instruction in all grades 
 of schools from the Primary to the University. It was mainly 
 owing to the City Guilds cooperating with the School Board 
 for London that primary education was made more practical 
 and useful, and that the subjects of Manual Training and 
 Domestic Economy were introduced into the Government 
 Code. 
 
 With the events of the last twenty years I must deal very 
 briefly : they are within the memory of nearly all. Yet the 
 period is the most important in the history of Industrial 
 Education. 
 
 In 1 88 1 a Royal Commission, of which I was a member, 
 was appointed to enquire into the methods of Technical In- 
 struction adopted in foreign countries. We visited France, 
 Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, and 
 we obtained important information from the United States. Our 
 Report was published in 1 884, and its recommendations gave a 
 direction to subsequent legislation and voluntary effort. The 
 measure conferring rating powers on local authorities for the 
 purpose of Technical Instruction is the direct outcome of that 
 work. No great progress was possible, however, until the new 
 County and County Borough Councils had been created, and 
 these would have been powerless to assist education, except to 
 a very limited extent, if it had not been for the Local Taxation 
 Act of 1890, which placed about ^800,000 a year at their 
 disposal for educational purposes. 
 
 The years 1870, 1880, 1890, and 1900 are noteworthy dates 
 in the history of education in this country. They mark the 
 creation of School Boards, the incorporation of the City and 
 Guilds of London Institute, the passing of the Local Taxation 
 Act, and the establishment of one central authority for elemen- 
 tary, secondary, and, as we are promised, technological instruc- 
 tion under a Board of Education. 
 
 During the last twenty years technical schools have been 
 established in all our large towns, providing special instruction
 
 1 68 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 for artisans engaged in every important industry. The instruc- 
 tion is based generally on the syllabus prepared by the City and 
 Guilds of London Institute, which exercises some influence 
 over the teaching, and annually examines the majority of the 
 students. The Institute possesses a register of teachers in the 
 several trade subjects included in its programme, and may be 
 said to have at least partially succeeded in solving the difficult 
 problem of adapting the teaching of science to the wants of 
 artisans, and of differentiating practical trade teaching from the 
 teaching of the practice of a trade. When opening an Exhi- 
 bition of the Institute in 1899, the Lord President of the 
 Council said : " For a period of twenty years this Institute has 
 been working in connection with the Science and Art Depart- 
 ment. The division of labour is that the Science and Art 
 Department assists in providing certain branches of scientific 
 and artistic teaching, and the Institute supplements the work of 
 the Science and Art Department by its practical and technical 
 classes." These words best explain the present relation between 
 the City and Guilds of London Institute and the Board of 
 Education. 
 
 London has been fortunate in obtaining a large share of 
 funds, which have been mainly employed in establishing Poly- 
 technic Institutions. It has received considerable donations 
 and annual subsidies from the City Guilds, and by a scheme of 
 the Charity Commissioners a substantial portion of the City 
 Parochial Funds, amounting, in addition to capital grants, to 
 about ^50,000 a year, is devoted to education. London has 
 also received its proportionate share, nearly ^200,000 a year, 
 of the proceeds of the beer and spirit duties. This large sum is 
 expended with care and judgment by the Technical Education 
 Board of the County Council. 
 
 When one considers the advantages which are offered to 
 workmen and apprentices in any of our newest Technical 
 Schools, we recognise the immense progress that has been 
 made since Birkbeck first lectured to his artisan audience in
 
 VIII.] Industrial Education. 169 
 
 Glasgow. It is not only that the teaching embraces new sub- 
 jects never thought of as susceptible of educational treatment 
 a century ago ; it is not only that the instruction is given in 
 palatial buildings fitted with adequate machinery and with 
 every mechanical appliance for illustrating the lessons, but the 
 methods of instruction are altogether new, designed not only 
 to inform but to train, and to exhibit in a manner previously 
 not thought of, the connection between practice and theory. 
 Moreover, the exponents of technical instruction have exer- 
 cised an influence on education generally which cannot be over- 
 looked when its history during the last quarter of a century- 
 is fully written. 
 
 Comparing the condition of education now with what it 
 was in the beginning of the century, the contrast is most 
 marked. An advanced elementary education, in which Manual 
 Training largely enters, is afforded absolutely free to every 
 child in the realm. Facilities of secondary education by 
 means of scholarships are within reach of nearly all who are 
 fitted to profit by it. Technical and commercial instruction, 
 adapted to the requirements of industrial classes, and to the 
 different occupations in which they are engaged is provided by 
 local authorities under the general direction of a Centralised 
 Board ; and University Education, including Engineering in its 
 widest sense, is available for a large and increasing proportion 
 of the young men and women of the country. Our system is 
 not perfect, nor is it ever likely to be. There is no finality in 
 education. Improvements in organisation and in method are 
 still needed, and some are within reach. We are still far 
 behind Germany, Switzerland and the United States in the pro- 
 vision of specialised University education for those who are to 
 occupy the higher posts in professional and industrial pursuits, 
 and much of our education still fails in its formative influence, 
 in the building up of resourcefulness and useful aptitudes. But 
 what has been accomplished would exceed the most sanguine 
 hopes and expectations of those who laboured for reform in the
 
 170 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CH. VIII. 
 
 early years of our century. In the organisation of primary 
 education the contrast between the years 1800 and 1900 is 
 most marked. Nearly a hundred years ago, Wordsworth, from 
 whom I have already quoted, uttered what then seemed to 
 him a forlorn hope : 
 
 " O for the coming of that glorious time 
 When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth 
 And best protection, this Imperial Realm, 
 While she exacts allegiance, shall admit 
 An obligation, on her part, to teach 
 Them who are born to serve her and obey ; 
 Binding herself by statute to secure 
 For all the children whom her soil maintains 
 
 The rudiments of letters so that none, 
 
 However destitute, be left to droop 
 
 By timely culture unsustained ; or run 
 
 Into a wild disorder ; or be forced 
 
 To drudge through weary life without the aid 
 
 Of intellectual implements and tools." 
 
 Well ! this vision of the Poet has been realised, and the 
 allegiance this Imperial Realm exacts is paid more freely and 
 more cheerfully by the people of to-day, helped by "intellectual 
 implements and tools," than by the "tens of thousands un- 
 informed," who, " bred to little pleasure in themselves," were 
 " profitless to others." 
 
 NOTE. Definition of "Technical Instruction" given in the Technical 
 Instruction Act, 1889. 
 
 " The expression ' technical instruction ' shall mean instruction in the 
 principles of science and art applicable to industries, and in the application 
 of special branches of science and art to specific industries or employments. 
 It shall not include teaching the practice of any trade or industry or 
 employment, but, save as aforesaid, shall include instruction in the branches 
 of science and art with respect to which grants are for the time being made 
 by the Department of Science and Art, and any other form of instruction 
 (including modern languages and commercial and agricultural subjects), 
 which may for the time being be sanctioned by that Department by a 
 minute laid before Parliament and made on the representation of a local 
 authority that such a form of instruction is required by the circumstances of 
 its district."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 
 
 BY 
 
 Miss E. P. HUGHES. 
 
 THE subject on which I have been asked to lecture is the 
 training of teachers in England during the iQth century. An 
 intelligent secondary teacher thus described our subject to me 
 the other day. "The training of teachers is an ambiguous 
 term, an educational heresy, and historically a failure." I 
 grant at once it is an ambiguous term, therefore we must 
 define it. It is a little difficult to know when a heresy ceases 
 to be a heresy, but I think that we who believe profoundly in a 
 scientific and philosophical training for all teachers are just 
 ceasing to be regarded as heretics in England. There is 
 already some evidence to prove that the training of teachers is 
 not historically a failure. 
 
 It is necessary to define " training of teachers," because it 
 is used in at least three different senses in England. 
 
 I. It may mean acquiring that professional knowledge and 
 skill special to the work of teaching, and required only by 
 teachers. This seems a logical use of the term, but it is not 
 that which is most common in England. 
 
 II. It may mean, in addition, gaining what has been 
 called "the stock in trade of a teacher," sound and fairly 
 advanced knowledge of the subjects which he is going to 
 teach.
 
 172 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 III. It may also include gaining that liberal education 
 which gives the intellectual ability wide knowledge and culture, 
 which our English world is beginning to see must be owned by 
 every really effective teacher. In our English elementary 
 training colleges, and in American and other Normal colleges, 
 "training" is used in this widest sense as including a liberal 
 education, or at any rate something like it, knowledge of 
 subjects, and professional knowledge and skill. In secondary 
 training colleges in England, on the contrary, steps are usually 
 taken to ensure that the students possess the required liberal 
 education and subject knowledge before they enter a college, 
 and the training course is usually limited to acquiring pro- 
 fessional knowledge and skill. 
 
 Even with this narrower meaning there is still an ambiguity 
 in the term. All experienced and effective teachers possess 
 professional knowledge, i.e. know what other professional 
 workers do not and need not know, and possess professional 
 skill, i.e. can do what other professional workers can not do, 
 and are, therefore, in one sense all trained teachers. I re- 
 member hearing Dr Abbott claim rightly to be a "trained 
 teacher;" and he once said in public, "I gained my experience 
 as a teacher at the expense of my pupils for the first two 
 years." Some of us have probably required a far longer course 
 of training at the expense of our pupils ! Those of us who 
 have been working and fighting for the training of teachers in 
 England, mean by it, not only the possession of a certain 
 quantity and kind of professional knowledge, and a certain 
 amount of skill in teaching and governing, but that these 
 should be obtained before the teacher begins his regular work, 
 and under careful supervision and instruction. This is I think 
 the narrowest and most exact meaning of the word "training 
 of teachers," but I propose to use the term to-day in the wider 
 sense, which includes liberal education and subject knowledge, 
 and this for two reasons. First, this wider meaning is con- 
 stantly used in England. Secondly, no satisfactory training in
 
 IX.] The Training of Teachers. 173 
 
 the narrow sense can be given except on a solid substructure 
 of liberal education and sound subject-knowledge. Until the 
 nature of professional training is clearly understood, it is best 
 to include in it that foundation on which alone it can be safely 
 reared. 
 
 Our real problem is therefore, What has been done during 
 the last hundred years in England to prepare teachers, by 
 education and training, for the work of teaching? 
 
 May I comment for one moment on the importance of the 
 problem? I think we need to be reminded now-a-days that 
 educational legislation and governing bodies are after all only 
 arranging the conditions of education ; it is we teachers alone 
 who direct the process. Give us by all means good buildings, 
 excellent apparatus, wise educational laws, and judicious 
 governing bodies, but granted all these it is still of greater 
 importance what we teachers are, and what we can do. Upon 
 us rests the grave responsibility of being in some ways the 
 most important factor in educational progress ; and the most 
 rapid and most thorough way of improving the education of a 
 country is to improve us, its teachers. Let me emphasise this 
 point by a few quotations. In 1839 Lord John Russell said, 
 when discussing the improvement of education, " I say that 
 the measure which should be first adopted is the establishment 
 of a good normal school for teachers." In 1873 Professor 
 Payne said, "The teacher is the very soul of the whole 
 apparatus of means, and indeed the only positively indis- 
 pensable element in it. :) In 1897 the Bishop of Hereford 
 said, " Give me the training of teachers, and I count all other 
 matters of secondary importance." The Royal Commission on 
 secondary education, under the section " the professional edu- 
 cation of teachers," has these words, " Educational reformers 
 have long recognised that of all the improvements that can be 
 made in schools, none are more important, none perhaps so 
 important as those which tend to secure a supply of able 
 and skilful teachers." They further suggested three methods
 
 1/4 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 to obtain that supply adding to the status and dignity of 
 the profession, improving its prospects and conditions, and a 
 better education and training. Turning to Continental edu- 
 cationalists, we find many corroborative remarks. When the 
 education of Finland was organised, the great educational 
 genius, Cygnseus who undertook the work, is reported to 
 have said, " I will begin at the logical beginning, at the most 
 fundamental point, I will first start a training college for 
 teachers. If I have a supply of able and effective teachers, 
 that is the most important thing." 
 
 The very obvious moral of all this is that millionaires, 
 wishing to invest large sums of money in the excellent object 
 of helping education, can make that money most fertile for 
 good in the form of scholarships for embryo teachers. 
 
 And now let us go back a hundred years, and see what 
 chances the teachers of England had at that time of a liberal 
 education, sound knowledge, and a professional training. Un- 
 fortunately for England a most undesirable gulf has separated 
 the teachers in our secondary schools from the teachers in our 
 elementary schools. We can afford to speak of it now because 
 it is fast vanishing. Different ideals, different conditions, dif- 
 ferent methods, have existed on the two sides of that gulf, and 
 we are practically forced to consider the two sides separately. 
 I will take first secondary education for two important reasons. 
 
 Secondary education is first chronologically. Matthew Arnold 
 tells us that "the secondary school is the most ancient of 
 existing educational institutions. * * * By its side the primary 
 or elementary school, springing up as it does from needs and 
 ideas that are comparatively modern, seems but a creature of 
 yesterday." Dr Jessopp was nearly right, not quite, when he 
 said the other night that there was practically no elementary 
 education in the year 1800, there was at any rate very little, 
 and secondary education was far more advanced. 
 
 Secondary education under certain conditions is more impor- 
 tant than elementary education. In any country really democratic
 
 IX.] The Training of Teachers. 175 
 
 in government, secondary education ceases to be the education 
 only of a class but is also the education of the clearest thinkers, 
 the ablest brains, the real leaders of the nation, i.e. it becomes 
 primarily the education of the real aristocracy of the nation. 
 English education is obviously moving towards this democratic 
 goal, and when it is reached, secondary education is obviously 
 more important than elementary. 
 
 Alas ! even in secondary education we must again classify, 
 for there are deep trenches, almost gulfs, even in this educa- 
 tional field. We have, first, the famous Public Schools, and 
 those grammar schools which are profoundly affected by 
 them. Secondly, the mass of middle class schools for boys. 
 Thirdly, secondary schools for girls. The trenches between 
 these three divisions are not as wide in 1900 as they were in 
 1800, but they still exist. 
 
 The first class, the big Public Schools and grammar 
 schools, drew their teachers a hundred years ago as now 
 almost entirely from the two old Universities, and we must go 
 there to see what chances those teachers had in 1800. "The 
 curriculum at either university was narrow, and was neglected 
 with impunity, and distinctions were awarded under the most 
 arbitrary rules, when they were not a matter of pure favouritism. 
 Residence for four academic years was the one qualification 
 for a degree." The weight of antiquity rested heavily on both 
 universities; Oxford was governed by statutes accepted in 
 1636, and the Cambridge code dated from 1570. It is refresh- 
 ing to remember how things have changed for the better since 
 1800 in our two old Universities. Still the advantages they 
 offered at the beginning of the century were great and obvious, 
 and when in the middle of the century a Royal Commission 
 examined the class of schools which they most influenced there 
 were no great abuses such as were found in the middle class 
 schools. The masters of the big Public Schools and best 
 grammar schools were then as now the aristocracy of English 
 teachers, best educated, best paid, teaching under the best
 
 176 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 conditions, in many ways most typically English, and embody- 
 ing the best traditions of English education. These are the 
 only possible leaders of an united profession of teachers in 
 England. We still wait for that union, and we still wait for 
 our leaders. 
 
 It is of importance to remember that such advantages as 
 the two great English universities offered to teachers in 1800 
 excluded three bodies of teachers. First, all who could not 
 afford the expense of a somewhat expensive university life. 
 This would exclude practically all elementary teachers, and a 
 large number of middle class teachers. Secondly, all who did 
 not conform to the doctrines of the Church of England, i.e. 
 Nonconformists, Jews, and Roman Catholics. " At Oxford a 
 dissenter was not suffered to matriculate at all, or to enjoy the 
 instruction or any other privilege either of University, College, 
 or Hall. At Cambridge he might become a student, but in 
 other respects he was in nearly the same position then as the 
 3rd class of excluded teachers women are now. He then, 
 as they now, "could obtain no degree, hold no office, receive 
 no emolument, and take no part in the government of the 
 University." Thus poor teachers, all Nonconformist teachers, 
 and all women teachers were excluded from the advantages of 
 an university education in the year 1800. 
 
 There was a slow but steady improvement in middle class 
 teachers and women teachers from the beginning of the century 
 to the sixties, when important Royal Commissions give us a 
 very faithful picture of our lower secondary schools and 
 teachers, and a sad picture it is which Dr Scott painted for us 
 the other day. If we paint the shadows a little darker and put 
 in a few more gloomy colours, we have a fair representation of 
 the Secondary Teachers and Schools of 1800 for girls and for 
 middle class boys. 
 
 The first important date in this century for secondary 
 teachers in England is 1828, when two important events oc- 
 curred. Dr Arnold went to Rugby. The Master of Trinity
 
 IX.] The Training of Teachers. 177 
 
 has already told us how great was this effect on the masters of 
 our great Public Schools, and, later, his influence profoundly 
 affected the less fortunate middle class teachers and women 
 teachers. His appointment is worth considering, because it 
 throws much light on what English people considered to be 
 the necessary qualifications for a teacher, indeed for a Head- 
 master. A scholar he was undoubtedly, but he had had prac- 
 tically no experience in public school teaching. Still he was 
 regarded as "the right kind of man" and I have been much 
 struck by the frequency with what I have heard English Heads 
 of schools say with reference to the appointment of Assistants, 
 "Is he, or she, the right kind of person?" However indiffe- 
 rent we have been in the past to other necessary qualifications, 
 I think we have always valued highly character in teachers, and 
 have believed profoundly in the importance of personality in 
 teachers. This, combined with great freedom, has certainly, 
 I venture to think, enabled our great teachers to count for more 
 than the great teachers of some other countries. I would put 
 this as one of the advantages we have enjoyed even in the 
 midst of our educational chaos, an advantage which I hope we 
 may continue to retain in the educational cosmos towards which 
 we are trending. It is interesting to note Dr Arnold's own 
 views about the requirements of a teacher. "What I want is 
 a man who is a Christian and a gentleman, an active man, and 
 one who has common sense, and understands boys." He 
 would like scholarship, but if he had to choose he prefers 
 "activity of mind and an interest in his work to high scholar- 
 ship." 
 
 In 1828 there was also started in London the University 
 College. This was an event of great importance to teachers, 
 because it was the first of many colleges which offered Univer- 
 sity education for a comparatively small fee, irrespective of 
 creed, and, at a later period, irrespective of sex, thus enfran- 
 chising the three classes of teachers disfranchised in 1800. In 
 four cases, universities have arisen from university colleges, 
 s. M. L. 12
 
 1/8 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 namely, Victoria University, the University of Wales, London 
 University (I refer to the newest phase of it), and- finally our 
 newest university, that of Birmingham. This development of 
 university education has profoundly affected the great mass of 
 teachers who could not have entered the old universities. The 
 examining university of London has also been of considerable 
 advantage in giving a status to teachers debarred from Oxford 
 and Cambridge, although it has had the serious disadvantage 
 of severing to some extent an university degree and university 
 teaching. The year 1828 had thus great importance for all 
 classes of teachers in England. 
 
 The next important date was 1846, when the College of 
 Preceptors was opened. That quaint old-world name covers 
 an heroic, if not altogether successful, attempt at a reform of 
 education, especially interesting because it was made chiefly 
 through the improvement of teachers, the easiest of all 
 methods of educational reform. Believing as I do that not 
 only complete successes but also partial failures sometimes 
 count for much in real progress, I venture to say that the 
 College of Preceptors has been an important item in the history 
 of the training of teachers in the present century. The start 
 was typically English, and I will therefore describe it. A few 
 teachers in Brighton met, formed a committee, and began 
 more or less informally to help one another and to help other 
 teachers. The Association soon moved to London, and in 1849 
 obtained its charter. The function of the college was declared 
 to be "the advancement of education especially among the 
 middle classes," and "to give professional knowledge and pro- 
 fessional diplomas, especially to teachers of private schools." 
 Its mission therefore was to that large section of secondary 
 teachers outside the area of the big Public Schools and endowed 
 grammar schools, and I would remind you that fifty years ago 
 neither university help, nor State aid, nor enlightened public 
 opinion were at hand to stimulate, test, or criticise this large area 
 of schools. Even half a century ago the enlightened founders
 
 IX.] The Training' of Teachers. 179 
 
 of the College of Preceptors aimed at giving professional know- 
 ledge to teachers. From the beginning lectures on education 
 were delivered, and they continue to the present day. In 1873 
 the first English Professorship of Education was established at 
 this college, and not at the old universities as one would 
 perhaps have expected. The professorship lapsed after a few 
 years, but the lectures were continued. From 1849 examina- 
 tions for teachers have been held, including the theory and 
 practice of education. Since 1888 the college has provided four 
 annual scholarships for teachers, and a practical certificate for 
 teachers. Professional training has never been forgotten. Year 
 after year a certain sum of money has been saved and laid 
 aside for the purpose of starting a training college for secondary 
 teachers and in 1894 this was done. Money was freely ex- 
 pended (for the first time in the history of English education 
 for this purpose), every effort was made, but the scheme failed, 
 and in 1897 the experiment was given up for the time 
 being. I have dwelt in some detail with the history of this 
 college because it is very typical of sturdy private English 
 effort, and because, probably in the coming century, the State 
 and the municipality will do, and no doubt far more effectively, 
 much that private enterprise has had to do in the igth century, 
 if it were to be done at all. I am therefore describing a phase 
 in the evolution of education which is never likely to reoccur. 
 
 Going back to the forties, when the College of Preceptors 
 was started, between 1848 and 1854, two colleges and two 
 schools were established which have had a profound effect 
 upon women teachers, namely, Queen's College, Bedford 
 College, Cheltenham Ladies' College, and the North London 
 Collegiate School. These have both required and made pos- 
 sible a far higher standard for women teachers. Miss Gadesden 
 has already spoken eloquently of the valuable contribution to 
 secondary education for women which has been made by the 
 Girls' Public Day School Company, and to a lesser degree by 
 other companies and associations. 
 
 12 2
 
 180 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 The middle of this century was a time of considerable 
 unrest, educational as well as political. Two important Com- 
 missions investigated Secondary Education. By the foresight, 
 tact and energy of a little band of women, the second and 
 more important commission included in their research a few 
 secondary schools for girls. The incalculable benefit of uni- 
 versity education was gradually opened to women, and even 
 before this women teachers found great stimulation and valu- 
 able guidance in their teaching work through the testing and 
 criticism of university examinations. The young teacher of 
 to-day is perhaps apt to forget the great advantage to girls' edu- 
 cation, especially in the beginning, of the Local Examinations. 
 
 From the sixties the education of women teachers has 
 made very rapid progress. In 1869, Girton College was 
 opened, and two years later, Newnham College. Eight years 
 later two women's Halls were opened at Oxford, followed 
 quickly by others elsewhere. From the seventies, a substruc- 
 ture of university education has been possible for an increasing 
 number of women teachers, and each decade has increased the 
 number of graduate women teachers. 
 
 The time seemed ripe in the seventies for the further 
 development of a special professional training for teachers. 
 Short courses for women secondary teachers had been given 
 by the Home and Colonial Elementary Training College, and 
 elsewhere, and informal training had been possible at the 
 Ladies' College, Cheltenham, and no doubt at other good 
 schools. The first serious attempt at secondary training was 
 in 1878 by the establishment of the Maria Grey Training 
 College, on whom fell the honour and also the special diffi- 
 culties of starting the movement as regards women. I find 
 that between 400 and 500 students have been trained at this 
 college, of whom about 50 have been graduates. 
 
 During the next year, 1879, the University of Cambridge 
 made a remarkable departure. From 1871 to 1876 resolutions 
 were passed by the Head Masters' Conference in favour of the
 
 IX.] The Training of Teachers. 181 
 
 training of teachers. A committee was formed, and memorials 
 were forwarded in 1877 and 1878 to the Universities of 
 Oxford and Cambridge. It really seemed as if those who 
 were historically our natural educational leaders were going 
 to initiate the training of secondary teachers. Schemes were 
 framed by both universities in 1878. In 1879 the committee 
 sent questions to all the members of the Conference to see 
 how far they were willing to adopt the schemes of the uni- 
 versities, but the amount of support was very small. The 
 University of Cambridge, however, started courses of lectures 
 on the history, practice, and theory of education, and these 
 continue to the present time. In the following year this 
 university also started an examination for teachers. Nearly 
 1500 candidates have successfully passed this examination, 
 about 60 men and the rest women. The University of 
 London soon followed with a teacher's diploma for its own 
 graduates and nearly 80 candidates have obtained this diploma. 
 
 In 1 88 1 the question of training was again discussed at the 
 Head Masters' Conference, and a further series of questions 
 was sent round to the members in 1882. The answers were so 
 discouraging that the question was dropped. Meanwhile in 
 1882 the Finsbury Training College for men was decided on, 
 and was opened in Jan. 1883. There was an excellent Council, 
 including Dr Butler, Dr Percival, Mr Bell of Marlborough, 
 Mr Thring, Dr Ridding, late Headmaster of Winchester, etc., 
 but the scheme was either premature or not what was required, 
 for we find the first entry consisted of three students, all of 
 whom had scholarships, and the entry for the second year 
 consisted only of three university men, and in October 1886 
 the college was closed, partly for want of funds, and partly no 
 doubt because of insufficient support from the Headmasters of 
 the great Public Schools and the best grammar schools. Thus 
 in the history of secondary training in England we are obliged 
 to enumerate the wreck of several hopeful schemes. 
 
 In 1885 two more training colleges for women were estab-
 
 1 82 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 lished, which fortunately still survive. Each had certain 
 elements of novelty. The training department in connection 
 with the Ladies' College, Cheltenham, was the first attempt to 
 connect the secondary training of women with a famous school 
 already in existence. About 120 students have been trained 
 in Cheltenham, about one in nine have been graduates. 
 
 In the same year, under the beneficent shadow of this 
 university was started another training college, which probably 
 many of you have visited. It was the first residential secondary 
 training college, and also the first I think to utilise lectures on 
 education given at an university. It has had some 600 students, 
 about 1 80 of whom are graduates. 
 
 Several other training colleges have been started for women, 
 but as yet the numbers attending them are small. 
 
 In 1890 Day Training Colleges for elementary teachers were 
 established in connection with universities and university col- 
 leges, and most of them have now made provision for the 
 training of secondary teachers as well as elementary. As yet 
 few secondary teachers have taken advantage of these ar- 
 rangements. 
 
 One of the disputed points in training at present is whether 
 it is advisable to train together teachers preparing to teach in 
 secondary and in elementary schools. In the presence of 
 conflicting opinions I may be allowed perhaps to give a 
 personal one. I believe that training is affected to a small 
 degree by the kind of educational work students are going to 
 undertake (and this necessary differentiation is I think quite 
 possible in one college), but it is affected to a considerable 
 degree by the kind of education which students have received. 
 It appears to me therefore undesirable to attempt to train 
 together a pupil teacher educated in an elementary school, 
 whose qualification is a Queen's Scholarship, with another 
 student educated in a good grammar school or high school, 
 and who has a degree obtained at Oxford or Cambridge. On 
 the other hand I see no reason why two university graduates
 
 IX.] The Training of Teachers. 183 
 
 should not with advantage be trained together, although one 
 intends teaching in a secondary school, and the other in an 
 elementary school. 
 
 In 1891 an important Select Committee was appointed in 
 connection with Teachers' Registration. The 16 members 
 included Mr Arthur Acland, and their report contained these 
 words, " Your committee regard as one of the most important 
 objects of a registration bill the training of teachers in secondary 
 schools." This report contains a mass of information about 
 secondary training as it existed in 1891, and the opinions of 
 many of those concerned in training. 
 
 In 1893 an important conference was held at Oxford on 
 secondary education. The report of that conference gives a 
 very fair idea of the opinion of English secondary teachers at 
 that time on the question of training. Three years later a 
 similar conference was held at Cambridge, and it is easy to 
 detect that public opinion on training had grown between those 
 dates. 
 
 In 1894 occurred that gallant but unsuccessful attempt to 
 start a training college by the College of Preceptors, to which I 
 have already referred. 
 
 In 1894 95 we have a very important Royal Commission 
 on Secondary Education, and its opinion on training is of course 
 of great value. In the report occur these words, "We are 
 disposed to think it is generally desirable that those who 
 intend to adopt teaching as a profession should pass through a 
 course of special preparation for it." Future generations of 
 teachers will no doubt wonder at the term "generally." 
 
 In 1896 an important and fairly representative committee 
 of secondary teachers was established to consider the question 
 of training, and their pamphlet at present represents the high- 
 water mark of English opinion on this question, and deserves 
 careful study. 
 
 During the last five years the universities of Oxford and 
 Cambridge have both initiated schemes of secondary training,
 
 184 Education in tJte Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 Cambridge for men only, as a training college for women 
 already existed, Oxford for men and women. Professors of 
 Education have also been appointed in Wales, Liverpool, and 
 Manchester. 
 
 During the last twenty years English public opinion on 
 training has steadily grown, and the places where secondary 
 training can be obtained have steadily increased in number. 
 Still we in England know we are but at the beginning of things. 
 Let me remind you for one moment what a serious draw- 
 back it has been to us in England, right through this century, 
 that the first class of teachers to be trained were elementary 
 teachers, and the second class were women secondary teachers. 
 Until the aristocracy of our profession seriously grapple with 
 this problem of training, we must wait I think for a satisfactory 
 solution as far as England is concerned. Meanwhile the 
 registration of teachers lies ahead, and legislation may force 
 the masters of our great Public Schools into this struggle, 
 where they, with their greater advantages and privileges, should 
 always have been in command. 
 
 Meanwhile there are apparently four dangers in the im- 
 mediate future of secondary training which we should avoid : 
 
 1. So to multiply the centres for secondary training, that 
 instead of a few admirably equipped centres, we shall have a 
 large number inadequately equipped with a few students in 
 each. I confess I have been startled to find lately the number 
 of present centres that have no students or very few. It is 
 obvious that this is financially possible only when secondary 
 training is but one of several functions performed by a given 
 staff, and this arrangement may easily tend to give a very 
 inadequate idea of the profound educational importance of 
 secondary training. On the other hand the work of training 
 is so difficult and requires so much individual attention, that 
 it is plain that a training college can easily be too large to 
 carry on its work very effectively. 
 
 2. To attempt to carry out at the same time two such
 
 IX.] The Training of Teachers. 185 
 
 different processes as a general education and a professional 
 training. 
 
 3. Instead of thinking out the great problem of secondary 
 training for ourselves in England, aided by the experience of 
 training in other countries, to attempt to graft a foreign system 
 of training on to our English education. 
 
 4. To attempt to limit experiment and differentiation in 
 methods and conditions of training. 
 
 If we avoid these four mistakes, and if the aristocracy of 
 English teachers devote their attention to the question of 
 training, we shall probably in the coming century have a 
 satisfactory system of secondary training in England. 
 
 Let us now turn briefly to the training of teachers for 
 elementary schools. Sir Joshua Fitch has already described to 
 us the schools and teachers of a hundred years ago. I came 
 across a statement the other day which I think reflects public 
 opinion on elementary education a century ago. The state- 
 ment was made by an educational authority so high that I dare 
 not give it, and referred to school buildings. "A barn is a 
 very good model for an elementary school, and a good barn 
 can be easily converted into a satisfactory school building." 
 Such statements no doubt explain the simple but not beautiful 
 style of rural schools that one still occasionally meets with. 
 
 The evangelical revival at the end of last century had 
 produced a large number of Sunday Schools. It has been 
 truly said, " The idea of education for the poor sprang in 
 England from a religious impulse, it was fostered by intense 
 religious zeal. * * * Thus the Sunday School came to be the 
 type of the daily school, which at first only gave instruction to 
 read the Bible." As Mr Graham Balfour points out, "The 
 germ of the religious difficulty has lain in the English ele- 
 mentary system from the beginning." "The services of the 
 Churches to elementary education have been many and splendid 
 and the Church of England has been pre-eminent in its self- 
 sacrifice and devotion as in its privileges." This historical fact,
 
 1 86 Education in tJte Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 the ecclesiastical foundation of our elementary education 
 explains our sectarian training colleges and our public grants 
 to them, as well as the comparative ease with which three 
 times in this century we have suddenly increased our supply of 
 elementary teachers when the need arose, because in each case 
 the Churches made a special effort. It explains also some of 
 the special difficulties under which we surfer at present in the 
 training of elementary teachers. 
 
 Two educational societies referred to by previous lecturers 
 (the National Society and the British and Foreign School 
 Society), both of which still remain with us, were started early in 
 the century to develop elementary education. A large number 
 of teachers were required, and both societies were forced to train 
 a considerable number. Sir Joshua Fitch described to us the 
 other day the Monitorial System, adopted by both Societies, in 
 which a Head Master has a staff of children the monitors. 
 He teaches them, and they teach the school. The training 
 required for this system was described by one of the founders 
 of the system in these words : " Give me 24 pupils to-day and 
 I will give you 24 teachers to-morrow." Surely the shortest 
 course of training ever suggested, 24 hours ! It is hard for us 
 to realise the gratitude felt at the time for this primitive system 
 of teaching, the training for which was of course quite me- 
 chanical and mere imitation. I quote from a contemporary 
 writer, which quotation shows vividly the folly of prophecy : 
 " Thousands upon thousands will bless him (the founder of the 
 system) while he yet lives, and a perpetual series of millions 
 will revere his memory." Both the educational societies esta- 
 blished model schools where teachers were trained for a few 
 months in the system. 
 
 From about 1810, public interest in elementary education 
 grew steadily, politicians began to pay attention to it, and in 
 1838 came the first Treasury grant for elementary education. 
 That remarkable man, Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth, the real founder 
 of our primary education saw, as most of us now see, that the
 
 IX.] The Training of Teachers. 187 
 
 only possible compromise was to give public money for educa- 
 tion to the two religious societies already occupying the educa- 
 tional field. Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth and his friends saw, how- 
 ever, also clearly that the training of teachers was not really a 
 denominational concern at all, but a national concern. May 
 I be allowed to add also that it is not a municipal concern ? 
 They earnestly desired a State training college, and two 
 attempts were made in that direction, Kneller Hall, and the 
 college at Battersea founded privately by them. Both 
 attempts failed, largely because of the religious difficulty, 
 and we have still no State Normal college. Meanwhile public 
 money was pouring in for elementary education in an ever- 
 growing stream, and a considerable amount of it went to 
 the training of teachers for model schools, the building of 
 training colleges, and for their equipment. Meanwhile the 
 Monitorial system had failed. In 1842, Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth 
 said : " Elementary Schools generally are in a most deplorable 
 
 condition The Monitorial System has not only utterly 
 
 failed, but for the time being has ruined the confidence of the 
 poor in elementary schools and exhausted the charity of the 
 middle classes." Something had to be found to take its place, 
 and Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth and his friends imported from 
 Holland what we know by the name of the Pupil Teacher System. 
 This was in 1846, but we did not carry it out in England exactly 
 in Dutch style. In Holland, elementary scholars from 13 to 18 
 helped the Head Master, and were themselves taught in the 
 evening by an association of masters in each town (correspond- 
 ing to some of our present pupil teacher centres, which is 
 a comparatively new development in England). Also all Dutch 
 pupil teachers went to a central training college to complete 
 their general education, and their knowledge of the principles 
 and methods of teaching. Even now all our pupil teachers do 
 not pass to a training college. Slowly and gradually we have 
 improved our English pupil teacher system, but even to-day 
 many consider it a totally inadequate plan for educating and
 
 1 88 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 training efficient teachers. Further information on this subject 
 can be obtained from the report of a Departmental Committee 
 in 1896, which considered the question of pupil teachers. 
 
 I will describe in detail the best pupil teacher arrangement 
 that I know at present in England. I give it because I believe 
 we are slowly tending towards some arrangement of the kind all 
 over England. The pupil teachers are chosen by competitive 
 examination at the age of 15. Only those are admitted to the 
 examination who have been for at least two years in a secondary 
 school. The successful candidates are sent back to a secondary 
 school for two years, and the School Board pays all their school 
 expenses. They spend one afternoon a week in an elementary 
 school, helping and being helped. At the end of two years 
 they become half-timers, spending half their time in the same 
 secondary school to continue their own education, and half the 
 time as an ordinary pupil teacher in an elementary school. 
 They receive the ordinary pupil teacher's pay. At 19 they can 
 pass to a day training college in connection with an university 
 college, and the majority will be able to take their degree 
 during their training course. This is by no means an ideal 
 arrangement, but superior to anything we have had in the past 
 in England. 
 
 Going back to the forties, when the pupil teacher system 
 was established, it is very sad to read a description of the 
 teachers of the day. 
 
 In 1839 we read: "There is a great lack of teachers; 
 almost the only teachers are untrained men who for some 
 defect of body or health had been driven from the rougher 
 struggles of life and muscular toil, or self-taught Sunday School 
 teachers trained for three or six months in some central model 
 school." 
 
 In 1849, Macaulay thus describes the schoolmasters of the 
 poor : " How many of these men are now the refuse of other 
 callings discarded servants or ruined tradesmen, who do not 
 know whether the earth is a cube or a sphere, whom no gentle-
 
 IX.] The Training of Teachers. 189 
 
 man would trust with the key of his cellar, and no tradesman 
 would entrust with a message." The condition of the dame 
 schools can be realised by a statement from one of the dames : 
 " It's little they pays us, and it's little we teaches them." 
 
 Even as late as 1858 we read the following description of a 
 school, giving the conditions under which some of the teachers of 
 that day taught: " The closeness of the room made animal heat 
 save artificial fuel, and though the foul air may for a time make 
 the children restless, it soon acts as a narcotic." I am not 
 describing a prison, but a school, not in a remote rural district, 
 but in the heart of London. The Assistant-Commissioner, 
 who gives the account, says it is a very usual kind of London 
 school. The teachers were, some of them, discharged bar- 
 maids, consumptives in the last stages, vendors of toys, outdoor 
 paupers, men and women 70 and 80 years of age, and all this 
 only 42 years ago ! The Assistant-Commissioner remarked, 
 " None are too old, too ignorant, too feeble, too sickly, to 
 regard themselves and to be regarded by others as unfit for 
 school keeping. ' Bodily infirmity is a special reason for be- 
 coming a teacher.' " 
 
 Meanwhile, in the middle of the century, select committees 
 and Royal Commissions were collecting information and arousing 
 public opinion, and public money was contributing funds for 
 the instruction of pupil teachers, for training colleges, for their 
 staffs and for their pupils. In 1847 the Education Department 
 arranged for an examination for elementary teachers, and pro- 
 vided an augmentation grant for all those who passed it. 
 Matters were steadily improving, a better class of teachers were 
 gradually appearing, better educational advantages were opening 
 before them, denominational training colleges were springing 
 up more and more, and the work of teachers was being in- 
 spected, when suddenly a very serious step was taken in 1861. 
 A Royal Commission had considered that the junior forms in 
 school and the less intelligent pupils were being neglected, and 
 had suggested that part of the Government grants should be given
 
 190 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 on individual examination by inspection. Mr Robert Lowe gave 
 us that incubus, payment by results, where practically the whole 
 of the grant depends on individual examination. Only in the 
 last decade has this terrible weight been removed, and it still 
 seriously affects us because so many of our elementary teachers 
 have been trained and have taught under these bad conditions. 
 The remedy suggested by the Royal Commission has been 
 frequently attacked, and Matthew Arnold, with far clearer 
 insight than the Commissioners, thought "that what was really 
 needed was to deal with the irregular attendance and premature 
 withdrawal of scholars." 
 
 The effect of the Revised Code of 1861 was very fatal to 
 elementary teachers. It made the conditions of teaching less 
 advantageous to those already in the profession, and it made 
 the profession unpopular, reducing the number and the quality 
 of the teachers. 
 
 In 1870 came a third sudden increase in the demand for 
 teachers. The first increase in this century was in its first 
 decade, when for religious motives the nation began to take a 
 greater interest in the education of the people. The second 
 increase came in the 3rd and 4th decades, when factory Acts 
 for half-timers tended to make education compulsory in the 
 manufacturing districts ; and now again in 1870 Forster's great 
 Act caused a sudden increase in the number of schools and a 
 greater demand for teachers. Elementary training colleges were 
 enlarged and increased in number, new and improved regula- 
 tions were made for pupil teachers, the burden of payment 
 by results was gradually lessened, and finally disappeared, and in 
 1890 Day Training Colleges were established in connection 
 with most of our universities and university colleges. The gulf 
 between secondary and elementary teacher is rapidly tending 
 to disappear, the advantage of a cheap university education is 
 being utilised largely by elementary teachers, and university 
 extension has been a great boon to many of them. 
 
 The development of the training of elementary teachers in
 
 IX.] The Training of Teachers. 191 
 
 England during this century has been remarkable, and our 
 training colleges now can be compared safely with those of 
 other countries. Indeed the development has been so rapid, 
 it is not uncommon still to hear even English teachers attack 
 faults in English elementary training colleges which no longer 
 exist. 
 
 Meanwhile there are still some serious defects. We have 
 no State normal colleges, and in so far as the majority of exist- 
 ing training colleges are still sectarian, Nonconformists are at 
 a disadvantage. We have not nearly enough room in our 
 training colleges for our teachers. We still employ as teachers 
 children and uncertificated men and women. It is still difficult 
 for secondary teachers to enter elementary work. Elementary 
 teachers are still too isolated in education, training, and teaching. 
 But as we look back through the century and remember how 
 it began and how it finishes we have some reason I think for 
 satisfaction. 
 
 I have no time to refer, as I had hoped to do, to training in 
 Scotland, Ireland, and our Colonies, to say nothing of training 
 in foreign countries. I have no time even to refer to the train- 
 ing of Kindergarten and other specialist teachers. Let me end 
 by briefly enumerating what seems to be at present the most 
 advanced view in England on the three functions of an ideal 
 Training College, 
 
 first, it must be a sieve to keep out from the profession 
 certain classes of persons, 
 
 (a) Those who are physically, mentally, and morally unfit 
 to educate. 
 
 () Those who are intellectually not above the average, 
 because it is only from the intellectual aristocracy of a com- 
 munity that we can hope to obtain those who can carry on 
 effectively the difficult and important work of teaching. 
 
 (c) Those who have not the necessary knowledge. 
 
 (d] Those who have not the necessary education, which is 
 by no means the same as class c.
 
 192 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. IX. 
 
 (e) It must be a still finer sieve to keep out also those 
 who during the course of training show clearly that they will 
 never make good teachers. 
 
 Secondly, it must give the conditions for a scientific and 
 philosophical professional training for teaching as it is carried 
 on to-day. Any discussion or even enumeration of these 
 conditions is obviously impossible in a lecture of one hour, but 
 I need not remind an audience largely English, that the con- 
 ditions of an ideal Training College should respect and foster 
 individuality, not repress it ; and that the conditions should 
 make it unlikely that the students should even be tempted to 
 forget that a teacher who is only a teacher can never be a good 
 teacher, because in our schools we are preparing human beings 
 for a many-sided life, and consequently teachers must have a 
 many-sided life themselves. 
 
 Thirdly, it must be a centre of educational experiment, and 
 it should initiate educational reform, i.e. it must take a leading 
 part in the evolution of education in the country. 
 
 The task of education grows more difficult not less as 
 civilisation becomes more complex and the centuries roll on. 
 As our ideal of education rises we demand better teaching and 
 better prepared teachers. As history and science and philo- 
 sophy develop we shall demand more and more that all these 
 shall contribute to the professional training of our teachers. 
 
 Thus we dream to-day ! A hundred years hence another 
 lecturer will doubtless give to successors far higher and clearer 
 dreams of training, and unroll a far more successful history of 
 a century's progress in the training of teachers.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 
 MOVEMENT. 
 
 BY 
 
 PROFESSOR SIR RICHARD JEBB. 
 
 IT is now rather more than forty years since the old 
 Universities of England began to take a definite part in the 
 education of persons other than their own matriculated 
 students, by instituting the Local Examinations of Schools. 
 It is twenty-seven years since the system of local teaching known 
 as University Extension took its rise ; and the circumstances 
 of its origin are noteworthy. In the year 1872 the University 
 of Cambridge received memorials from a number of public 
 bodies and educational organisations. Among these bodies 
 were some large municipalities, such as those of Birmingham, 
 Leeds, and Nottingham ; the Educational Committees of some 
 Industrial Societies and Mechanics' Institutes ; and the North 
 of England Council for the Education of Women. 
 
 These memorialists said, in effect : " We know that in 
 many great towns and rural districts there are large numbers of 
 persons who desire the benefits of higher education. These 
 persons have passed the age of attendance at school. But 
 they have not the means, or the leisure, to spend three or four 
 years at a University. Many of them are young men of the 
 
 S. M. L. 13
 
 194 Education in the Nineteenth Century, [CHAP. 
 
 middle classes, employed during the day as clerks or shop- 
 assistants. Many others are artisans. How are we to provide 
 for the higher educational needs of such persons, who can 
 study only in the evening? We turn, in this difficulty, to the 
 old Universities of England. They are the national centres of 
 the higher education. Why should not the Universities come 
 to us, since those for whom we plead cannot go to them? 
 Why should they not send us teachers, men of high attainment 
 in various branches of knowledge ? Such men could render a 
 new and great service to the nation, if as missionaries of the 
 Universities, as interpreters of the liberal spirit in education, 
 they would conduct evening classes in our towns for men who 
 have no leisure during the day." 
 
 At the same time the memorialists pointed out that such 
 teachers might render another service of a somewhat different 
 kind. In the great towns there are always large numbers of 
 persons, more especially ladies, who have more or less leisure 
 in the daytime persons of good education, who desire to 
 enlarge their knowledge and to improve their minds. Such 
 persons would welcome regular instruction in literature, history, 
 or science by able lecturers from the Universities. Arrange- 
 ments might be made with the various towns desiring such 
 instruction, so that each University teacher should have a 
 circuit assigned to him. His time would be sufficiently oc- 
 cupied with evening classes, as well as lectures in the day- 
 time; and he would receive adequate remuneration. 
 
 Such was the substance of the memorials. The University 
 of Cambridge, in 1872, appointed a Committee to consider the 
 matter. The Committee reported in 1873, recommending that 
 the University should begin with an experiment on a small 
 scale, by organising courses of lectures in two or three towns. 
 This recommendation was accepted. In the winter of 1873 
 the University of Cambridge inaugurated the Extension Move- 
 ment by establishing courses of lectures at three towns in the 
 Midlands, viz., Leicester, Derby, and Nottingham.
 
 X.] The University Extension Movement. 195 
 
 The method of teaching adopted was, in its principal traits, 
 the same which has been pursued ever since. That method 
 has four characteristic features, the lecture, the class, the 
 weekly paper-work, and the examination. The lecture presents 
 the subject in broad outline. For each lecture a printed 
 syllabus is prepared. This syllabus gives an analysis, a logical 
 abstract, of the lecture, with such quotations or statistics as the 
 lecturer thinks it expedient to print, and a list of text-books or 
 other authorities on the subject. After the lecture the class is 
 held, when the lecturer goes more into detail. Students are 
 invited to ask questions, and the lecturer explains difficulties. 
 The class enables the lecturer to become personally acquainted 
 with some, at least, of the students, and to help them in- 
 dividually. At the class questions are given out by the 
 lecturer, on which the students write short essays. These 
 weekly exercises form an important part of the system. The 
 lecturer revises the essays, and returns them with his comments 
 at the next class. Lastly there is the examination. This is 
 held at a short interval after the close of the course. The 
 examiner is a different person from the lecturer, and is specially 
 appointed for the purpose by the University. He issues a list 
 of those who have passed the examination, arranged in alpha- 
 betical order. Those, however, who have gained distinction 
 are indicated by an asterisk. 
 
 The experiment made by Cambridge in 1873 proved highly 
 successful, and applications for courses of lectures poured in 
 upon the University from other towns. Three years later, in 
 1876, a Society for the Extension of University Teaching was 
 established in London, to carry on similar work in the metro- 
 polis. In 1878 the University of Oxford established similar 
 lectures. After a year or two, the Oxford work was interrupted 
 for a time; but in 1885 it was resumed, and has since been 
 carried on with marked success. Other British Universities 
 have also borne their part in the movement. Durham has 
 been associated with Cambridge in the work. The Victoria 
 
 132
 
 196 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 University has organised lectures in Lancashire and Yorkshire. 
 The four Scottish Universities have united in forming a similar 
 plan for Scotland. A Society for the Extension of University 
 Teaching has been formed in the North of Ireland. In 1898 a 
 Conference was held at Cambridge to celebrate the completion 
 of twenty-five years' work. The statistics drawn up for that 
 Conference showed that in the previous winter, under the 
 auspices of Cambridge, London, Oxford, and the Victoria 
 University, 488 courses of lectures had been given in different 
 parts of the country, and had been attended by nearly 50,000 
 persons. Meanwhile the movement has spread to the British 
 Colonies. Similar movements have been successful in the 
 United States of America and in several countries of Europe. 
 
 In a general survey of English University Extension, the 
 central fact is that the growth of the movement has been 
 natural and spontaneous. It did not originate in an abstract 
 theory of the 'duties incumbent on national Universities. It 
 was a response by the Universities to a desire which actually 
 existed in the country. It was their mode of complying with a 
 demand which was urgently pressed upon them from various 
 quarters. And the demand itself has been increased by the 
 success of their missionary work. 
 
 Subsequent papers will deal in detail with special aspects of 
 that work, and with the steps in its progress. The scope of the 
 present paper is more general. And, in the first place, we may 
 ask this question : Why did the University Extension move- 
 ment begin just at that time, in 1873? What were the 
 educational and social conditions in England at that moment, 
 which caused the new need to be felt, and which disposed the 
 Universities to recognise it ? The fundamental idea was not a 
 new one. Three centuries earlier Sir Thomas Gresham, the 
 founder of the Gresham College in London, had the same 
 idea. He wished to provide lectures of the University type for 
 persons engaged in business in the City of London. A similar 
 scheme was propounded in 1650 by William Dell, Master of
 
 X.] The University Extension Movement. 197 
 
 Caius College, Cambridge, who wished to see a University or a 
 College established in every large town of England, a wish 
 which has been largely fulfilled in our own days. But such 
 men were in advance of their age. Before the higher education 
 could be more widely diffused it was necessary that the lower 
 grades of instruction should be efficiently organised. It was 
 only in 1870 that, after long efforts, England obtained a 
 national system of Primary Education. Meanwhile the efforts 
 and discussions which led up to that result had familiarised the 
 minds of the people with the importance of the subject. The 
 country was prosperous, and the working-classes had more 
 leisure than formerly. The facilities for rapid locomotion had 
 made it possible to have a system of itinerant teaching. These 
 were some of the conditions which favoured the spread of a 
 desire for higher teaching. 
 
 Meanwhile the old Universities had been passing through 
 changes which rendered them more sympathetic with that 
 desire. Between 1850 and 1873 a series of reforms had 
 greatly widened the range of studies at Oxford and Cambridge, 
 and had also opened them to large classes of the community 
 which had formerly been excluded from them. The term 
 " University Extension " first came into use at the beginning of 
 that period, but was employed in a different sense from that 
 which it now bears. A letter entitled "Suggestions for Uni- 
 versity Extension" was addressed in 1850 to the Vice-Chancellor 
 of Oxford by Mr William Sewell, of Exeter College. His 
 proposal was, in fact, to establish Local Colleges which should 
 be directly associated with the old Universities. This pro- 
 posal met with no acceptance at the time. The more elastic 
 and more comprehensive system now known as University 
 Extension dates, as we have seen, from the action taken by 
 Cambridge in 1873. But since that time the growing desire 
 for higher education has led to the establishment of Local 
 Colleges in many large towns. It has also led to the founda- 
 tion of new Universities, viz., the Victoria University, the
 
 igS Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 University of Wales, and, more recently, the University of 
 Birmingham ; while the University of London has just received 
 a new constitution, under which, instead of merely examining, 
 it will also teach. 
 
 This growth of Local Colleges and new Universities may 
 naturally suggest a further question: Has the University 
 Extension movement finished its mission in our country, or is 
 there still useful work for it to do ? It commenced, as we have 
 seen, in a time of transition, when the need for higher instruc- 
 tion was beginning to be more strongly felt. It filled a gap in 
 our educational system. It was a pioneering movement, which 
 prepared the way for permanent local institutions. Can we 
 now say that its task is accomplished ; or can we point to 
 valuable functions which it still performs? 
 
 Two such functions may be named. In the first place, the 
 agency of University Extension has still a distinctive value as 
 supplementing our system of Technical Education. Within 
 the last ten years the movement for Technical Education in 
 England has become vigorous. The Councils of Counties and 
 Boroughs, aided by funds which the State has placed at their 
 disposal, have covered the country with a network of classes 
 for the teaching of technical and scientific subjects. Technical 
 Institutes have arisen in the larger towns. The danger which 
 besets this form of instruction is that of narrowness. There is 
 a tendency to make the training too exclusively scientific or 
 technical, and to bestow too little attention on the study of 
 History, Literature and Languages. The most enlightened 
 friends of Technical Education in England are alive to this 
 danger, and are anxious to guard against it. Now, the Uni- 
 versity Extension movement has always rested upon a large 
 and liberal idea of education. At the present day it is one of 
 the most vigorous organs of that idea. Thus it supplies a 
 corrective to the narrowing tendency. Through the agency of 
 University Extension, Technical Institutes can obtain teaching
 
 X.] The University Extension Movement. 199 
 
 in non-technical subjects. This, then, is one of the valuable 
 functions which the Extension system still performs. 
 
 The second function to which I refer is of a different 
 nature. In many an English town there are educational 
 agencies of various kinds which arose quite independently of 
 each other. But in several places the desire has been felt to 
 co-ordinate such agencies, and to weld them together, so as to 
 form a single institution. Thus in three towns Reading, 
 Exeter, and Colchester a new type of Local College has 
 arisen. In each of these cases the initiative has been taken 
 by the representatives of University Extension. The process 
 of co-ordinating the various local resources for education has 
 been conducted under the direction of the Universities, acting 
 through the Extension machinery. There are signs that such a 
 result, so successfully obtained in the three towns above-named, 
 will ere long be accomplished in other towns also. In this 
 field, then, a most valuable work remains to be done by the 
 University Extension system. 
 
 In conclusion, I would venture to say that the service 
 rendered to England by the missionary enterprise of the 
 Universities has been both intellectual and social. A new 
 educational stimulus has been given to the country. Different 
 classes of the community have been brought into sympathetic 
 relations by fellowship in the elevating pleasures of study. 
 And while the Universities have conferred benefits, they have 
 also received benefits. This is strongly felt by many of our 
 best University men who have been leaders and workers in the 
 movement. At the centres of University Extension they have 
 learned lessons not less valuable than those which they have 
 imparted. The Universities themselves have acquired a new 
 hold on the esteem, we might even say on the affection, of the 
 nation at large. Nor are the Universities mere abstract names 
 to the students in various towns where their lecturers teach. 
 Their ancient buildings and their gardens are now familiar to 
 thousands who, in former days, would never have seen them
 
 2OO Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. X. 
 
 Every year since 1888, when the first Summer Meeting was 
 held at Oxford, large numbers of students are invited from all 
 parts of the country to pass three or four weeks at one or other 
 of the old Universities, where their time is divided between 
 study and recreation. Coming from the busy centres of in- 
 dustry and commerce, they are brought under the subtle 
 influences of that genius loci which haunts our venerable seats 
 of learning, and thus form definite local associations with the 
 Alma Mater already known to them in the persons of her 
 emissaries. The large attendance at these Summer Meetings, 
 the interest which they excite, and the pleasures which they 
 give, are among the signs that our Universities were well 
 inspired in entering upon a movement which has already had 
 such good results, and which, as we believe, has still a work of 
 great usefulness to do.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF 
 WOMEN. 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS HENRY SIDGWICK. 
 
 [The lecture on the development of the Higher Education of Women in 
 England during the century, which I was unable to give at the Summer 
 Meeting in August, was not only never written, but I had not got so far even 
 as to collect all the material I hoped to obtain for the purpose. Moreover 
 for various reasons I am unable to develop the subject as I should like 
 now. All I can do is to put down a few facts and considerations which 
 may help to fill the gap there would otherwise be in the account of the 
 educational work of the century. E. M. S.] 
 
 IT would not of course be true to say that in the earlier part 
 of the century there was no secondary or higher education 
 possible for women. There were some private schools with 
 high ideals well carried out, there were some girls who were 
 well educated at home by their fathers, and there were some 
 women, Mrs Somerville, for instance, who contrived notwith- 
 standing difficulties to obtain higher education. Moreover we 
 find Mrs Barbauld and others encouraging girls to devote 
 themselves to more advanced studies such as Hebrew after 
 their schoolroom days were over. The general level of educa-
 
 2O2 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 tion was nevertheless deplorable, and those who really wished 
 their girls to have a good secondary education found it ex- 
 tremely difficult to provide it on account of the scarcity of 
 teachers of their own sex who had any intellectual training 
 whatever. It was this professional demand for educated 
 governesses which led to the founding of Queen's College, 
 Harley Street, under the auspices of the Governesses' Benevo- 
 lent Institution in 1848, and of Bedford College in 1849. 
 These were the beginnings of any systematic provision of 
 Higher Education for women. The popular view at that time 
 of women's intellectual incapacity for receiving it, which long 
 neglect had rendered plausible, may be gauged by the often- 
 quoted remark of Professor F. D. Maurice, in an inaugural 
 lecture respecting Queen's College : 
 
 " We have set down mathematics in our course of studies, 
 knowing that we might thereby encounter the charge of giving 
 a little learning, which is dangerous, but being ready to meet 
 that charge in this case as in others. We are aware that our 
 pupils are not likely to advance far in mathematics, but we 
 believe that if they learn really what they do learn they will not 
 have got what is dangerous, but what is safe." 
 
 The next step attempted was due to the desire of women to 
 equip themselves for another profession. In 1856, Miss J. M. 
 White endeavoured to obtain admission to the medical ex- 
 aminations of the University of London, an attempt which was 
 repeated by Mrs Garrett Anderson in 1862. These efforts 
 failed, and it was not till 1878 that the University of London 
 admitted women to its degree examinations and degrees. 
 Now at the end of the century in the newly-constituted 
 teaching University for London, women are on an equality 
 with men, and the University includes two colleges for women, 
 Bedford College and the Royal Holloway College (founded in 
 1887), as schools of the University, besides the London School 
 of Medicine for Women (founded in 1875), an( ^ besides Uni- 
 versity College, which admits women to its classes.
 
 XI.] The Higher Education of Women. 203 
 
 The movement for the provision of better secondary and 
 higher education for women was part of a general educational 
 awakening in the country, and a powerful stimulus was given to 
 it by the Schools Inquiry Commission, which sat from 1864 to 
 the end of 1867, and reported in Dec. 1867. The Assistant Com- 
 missioners, who had examined and reported on the condition 
 of secondary education in various districts, gave a deplorable 
 account of the insufficiency of the girls' schools and of the 
 immense difficulty of finding any adequately-educated female 
 teachers for them, and this was confirmed by the evidence of 
 Miss Beale, Miss Buss, Miss Davies, Miss Clough and others. 
 
 The Commission recommended the establishment of further 
 colleges for women, and in particular supported the proposal 
 then recently promulgated by the founders of Girton College 
 for the establishment of a new college, " designed to hold in 
 relation to Girls' schools and home training a position analo- 
 gous to that occupied by the Universities towards the public 
 schools for boys." This College began its existence at Hitchin 
 in 1869 and worked from the first for the examinations of the 
 University of Cambridge, as also did Newnham College, of 
 which we may take either the establishment of lectures for 
 women in Cambridge in 1870, or the opening by Miss Clough 
 of a house for students in Regent Street in 1871, as the be- 
 ginning. The Honour degree examinations of the University 
 were formally opened to students of Girton and Newnham 
 Colleges in 1881. In the meanwhile Somerville College and 
 Lady Margaret Hall were founded at Oxford in 1879; and 
 some of the examinations of Oxford University were first 
 opened in 1884, and others from time to time afterwards as 
 required. The Victoria University was opened in 1880 ; the 
 Scottish Universities admitted women in 1892, and the Uni- 
 versity of Durham in 1895. The new University of Wales has 
 from the first admitted women on equal terms with men ; and 
 the Royal University of Ireland, which is an examining body, 
 is, with its affiliated Colleges, similarly open to them.
 
 204 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 There are now in the United Kingdom hundreds of women 
 reading for degree examinations and a few engaged in study 
 of a more advanced character. At Cambridge alone there are 
 at Newnham and Girton Colleges at this moment 284 students. 
 
 Progress as rapid as this would not of course have taken 
 place unless it had been accompanied by the growing approval 
 of public opinion. It seems now to be generally admitted that 
 University education for women is needed. Almost all, I 
 think, who took part on either side in the controversy of 1897 
 about admitting women to degrees at Cambridge were concerned 
 to make it understood that they did not dispute the desirability 
 of women at least some women receiving the higher educa- 
 tion which Universities give. The discussion turned in the main 
 on questions quite different from those which would have been 
 raised thirty years ago. Then we should have been expected to 
 consider whether women were intellectually capable of profiting 
 by a University education. Examinations and the subsequent 
 work of examinees have now convinced the world that they are. 
 Then we should have been expected to prove that physically 
 they were equal to the strain, or supposed strain, and that their 
 healfh need not suffer, at the time or afterwards. Now, 
 statistics collected on both sides of the Atlantic, not to speak 
 of common experience and observation, have for most of us 
 placed beyond question the conclusion that the danger is not 
 materially greater in the case of women than of men. Then we 
 should have had to meet the objection that University educa- 
 tion would unfit women for the functions and duties of wives 
 and mothers. Now that the daughters of the first generation 
 of University women are entering our colleges, this question too 
 can be put aside. 
 
 Those of us who have from the first believed that oppor- 
 tunities of receiving University education ought to be open to 
 women, have, of course, the gratification of finding their own 
 prognostications fulfilled. But it is upon far more than this 
 that we have to congratulate ourselves. For these questions
 
 XI.] Tlie Higher Education of Women. 205 
 
 were fundamental. Had experience answered them differently, 
 University education would really have been impossible for 
 women, as those who opposed it said ; or at any rate, impossible 
 for all but a few exceptionally constituted ones. We should 
 have had to acquiesce in the melancholy conclusion that nature 
 had given women aspirations after intellectual development, 
 while furnishing them with bodies and minds unfitting them to 
 receive it. As it is, the clearing away of these doubts has 
 practically decided the main question in the affirmative and 
 put it beyond doubt that women are to have opportunities of 
 receiving University education. I do not, of course, mean that 
 every one is convinced that this is desirable ; but I do not 
 think its desirability is any longer seriously doubted by any one 
 who has looked into the facts, and whose opinion on the 
 question is worth considering. 
 
 And it is not only in this country that the question is thus 
 decided. It is similarly decided in our Colonies and in India, 
 in the United States of America, and in most European 
 countries. 
 
 The flowing tide in favour of women's education is shown 
 in another important way namely, in the amount of pecuniary 
 support in gifts, bequests and endowments, which it has 
 received. The following quotation from the Report of the 
 Charity Commissioners in 1895 W 'H illustrate this. "As to 
 one particular branch of Educational Endowments," they say, 
 " namely, that for the advancement of the secondary and 
 superior Education of girls and women, it may be anticipated 
 that future generations will look back to the period immediately 
 following upon the Schools Inquiry Commission and the con- 
 sequent passing of the Endowed Schools Act, as marking an 
 epoch in the creation and application of Endowments for that 
 branch of Education similar to that which is marked, for the 
 education of boys and men, by the Reformation." (Forty- 
 second Report of the Charity Commissioners in England and 
 Wales, p. 17.)
 
 206 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 From what I have already said it is clear that women now 
 have, so far as Universities are concerned, almost the same 
 advantages educationally as men. It is true that at Oxford and 
 Cambridge their non-recognition as members of the University 
 may give a certain precariousness to their enjoyment of these 
 advantages, but I do not think they will lose them; and so 
 long as they are allowed to retain them the absence of degrees 
 is not an educational disadvantage at least directly though 
 it may be one in seeking professional work. 
 
 The question still remains, however, whether in addition to 
 this abundant provision of educational opportunities there is a 
 need for new courses of University study specially devised to 
 suit the requirements of women. It has been thought by some 
 that this would be desirable, but I cannot say that my own 
 experience leads to this view; the options offered in these days 
 by Universities are so numerous that it is difficult to imagine 
 in what the novelty of the new course would consist, if it did 
 not go beyond the limits of properly academic work. 
 
 Intellectual tastes and abilities may no doubt be differently 
 distributed among men and women, and this, in addition to 
 professional aims, may lead to a somewhat different distribution 
 among the various options offered; but this distribution maybe 
 trusted to arrange itself. That the dividing lines between 
 different subjects will not be one of sex, and that there is as 
 great diversity of intellectual tastes among women as among 
 men, the highly specialised courses for a degree in honours at 
 Cambridge give us an excellent opportunity of judging. Look- 
 ing at the Tripos lists of my own College since the examinations 
 were formally opened to women in 1881, I find that, omitting 
 second parts of Triposes, 124 women have taken honours in 
 Mathematics, 91 in Classics, 43 in Moral Sciences, 122 in 
 Natural Sciences, 109 in History, 86 in Mediaeval and Modern 
 Languages the smaller number in this latter Tripos arising 
 from its having only been established in 1886. The University 
 in no way points students to any one of these diverse honour
 
 XI.] Tlie Higher Education of Women. 207 
 
 courses rather than to another; nor does the College exercise 
 any pressure. Demand in schools does no doubt affect the 
 choice of future teachers somewhat, as is shown by the smaller 
 number who take Moral Sciences ; but among subjects that 
 are taught in schools there is no reason to suppose that a 
 woman selects one course rather than another, except because 
 she prefers it and feels herself likely to succeed in it. 
 
 In the preceding paragraph I have given the numbers for 
 Newnham College only because I am naturally more able to 
 speak with knowledge as to the absence of pressure there in 
 favour of any special line of study ; but it will be interesting to 
 record here the whole number of women students of Newnham 
 and Girton Colleges, who have taken Honours in the various 
 Triposes (Honour Degree Examinations) at Cambridge, since 
 they were opened to women in 1881. They are distributed as 
 follows : 
 
 Mathematical Tripos ... ... ... ... ... 250 
 
 Classical ... ... ... ... ... 227 
 
 Moral Sciences 
 Natural Sciences 
 Theological 
 Law 
 Historical 
 
 65 
 1 80 
 
 i 
 
 176 
 
 Oriental Languages Tripos ... ... ... ... i 
 
 Mediaeval and Modern Languages ... ... ... 132 
 
 1036 
 
 (These numbers take account of first parts of Triposes only, 
 except in the case of the New Historical Tripos in 1900, for 
 which, on account of the special conditions of the Tripos, the 
 numbers taking the second part are included, and not those 
 who previously took the first part in 1899.) 
 
 Apart from subjects of study it might be thought that the 
 standard required for a degree in honours was too high for 
 women, or that the work to be done in the limited time allowed 
 at Cambridge might be too much for them. The following 
 analysis of classes obtained by men and women for the five
 
 208 Education in ttte Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 years, 1896 1900 inclusive, affords a satisfactory answer to 
 these questions : 
 
 
 Men. 
 
 Women. 
 
 No. of women to 
 100 men under 
 each head. 
 
 Class I. 
 
 496 
 
 58 
 
 n-6 
 
 Class II 
 
 6 7 I 
 
 161 
 
 2 3'9 
 
 Class III 
 
 570 
 
 142 
 
 24-9 
 
 Total classed 
 
 '737 
 
 361 
 
 20-7 
 
 /Egrotant in Honours 
 
 12) 
 
 3] 
 
 -> 
 
 Attained standard of Ordi- ) 
 
 M33 
 
 r 
 
 I Q 
 
 nary Degree ... J 
 
 124] 2 
 
 9j 
 
 ) 
 
 Excused the General Exam- ) 
 
 
 1 
 
 1 MO-I 
 
 ination ... ... } 
 
 44 
 
 6 
 
 kr6 
 
 Failed completely 
 
 No. of men 
 
 f 
 
 ) 
 
 
 unknown to 
 
 
 / 
 
 
 me 
 
 
 
 It will be seen that the ratio of women to men is less in the 
 first class and very much less among the failures than it is in 
 the whole number classed, the deficiency being made up in the 
 second and third classes. 
 
 It should be noted that the true proportion of women 
 among the failures is considerably less than appears in the last 
 column, as all the women who failed completely are included 
 and none of the men. 
 
 Of course among the women who come up a considerable 
 proportion do not take Tripos examinations. The reasons for 
 this are various. Some come up knowing that 'they cannot 
 stay for the necessary length of time ; some are called away by 
 family and other circumstances before their course is finished ; 
 some take courses of study other than Honour courses. In 
 some cases there is failure of health, or it is discovered that the 
 student has not the ability necessary to complete advantageously 
 the course she has embarked on. The number of women who 
 entered at Newnham and Girton Colleges in the five years
 
 XL] The Higher Education of Women. 209 
 
 1893 1897 inclusive, and would therefore, had they completed 
 an Honours Degree course, have taken Tripos examinations in 
 the years 1896 1900 inclusive, was 487. Of these, 355*, or 
 7 2 - 8 per cent., actually did take Tripos examinations and 
 obtain Honours in them. Of the 4631 men who entered in 
 the same years, 2012, or 43*4 per cent, took Honours in Tripos 
 examinations. 
 
 The number of women receiving academic education is, as 
 will be seen from these figures, small compared with the number 
 of men at Cambridge, and the same is true almost every- 
 where. I think that this inequality is likely to continue, because 
 the demand for such education by both sexes is mainly due to 
 its importance as a preparation for, or avenue to, professional 
 work, and there does not seem to be any likelihood that as 
 many women as men will enter professions for which University 
 work prepares. But the number who already avail themselves 
 of the opportunities of obtaining higher education open to them 
 more than justifies the view of those who first began to provide 
 such opportunities by the foundation of Queen's College half 
 a century ago ; and the progress made since and the capacity 
 shown by women to make good use of the opportunities, as 
 shown by the figures I have given, would certainly have sur- 
 prised most of the advocates of Higher Education for Women 
 in the middle of the century. 
 
 * This is the total number of women who obtained Honours. A few 
 of them did so in two Triposes, so that this total is smaller than the total 
 number classed 361 (as given in the table above), the latter total being 
 the number of names in the class-lists. 
 
 S. M. L. 14
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 NATIONAL EDUCATION AND 
 SOCIAL IDEALS. 
 
 BY 
 
 MR M. E. SADLER. 
 
 " The English are a people so naturally inclined to freedom that they 
 can hardly be induced to embrace any discipline that may abridge it." 
 
 HENDERSON, Death-bed Declaration, 1646. 
 
 " Liberty, which is the very genius of our civil constitution, and runs 
 through every branch of it, extends its influence to the ecclesiastical part 
 of it. A religious establishment, without a toleration of such as think they 
 cannot in conscience conform to it, is itself a general tyranny: because it 
 claims absolute authority over the conscience ; and would soon beget 
 particular kinds of tyranny of the worst sort, tyranny over the mind, and 
 various superstitions; after the way should be paved for them, as it soon 
 must, by ignorance. On the other hand, a constitution of civil government 
 without any religious establishment is a chimerical project, of which there 
 is no example; and which, leaving the generality without guide or in- 
 struction, must leave religion to be sunk and forgotten amongst them ; and 
 at the same time give full scope to superstition and the gloom of enthusiasm ; 
 which last especially ought surely to be diverted, and checked as far as it 
 can be done without force. Now a reasonable establishment provides 
 instruction for the ignorant, withdraws them not in the way of force but of 
 guidance, from running after those kinds of conceits. It doubtless has a 
 tendency likewise to keep up a sense of real religion and real Christianity 
 in a nation : and is moreover necessary for the encouragement of learning." 
 BISHOP BUTLER, Sermon preached before the House of 
 Lords, June n, 1747.
 
 CHAP. XII.] National Education and Social Ideals. 211 
 
 " Is it not universally considered as an advantage to England that it 
 contains so great a variety of original characters? If it may have been 
 necessary to establish something by law concerning education, that neces- 
 sity grows less every day and encourages us to relax the bonds of authority 
 rather than bind them faster." 
 
 Dr JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, Remarks on a Code of Education, 1765. 
 
 I. 
 
 IT has often been urged by persons anxious for our social 
 welfare that national education ought to be so planned, directed 
 and enforced, as to establish and maintain throughout the whole 
 body of the people one high national purpose, and to blend all 
 individual wills in one common aim, so that by the gentle but 
 unceasing pressure of a common education any fresh growth 
 of conflicting ideals, whether of private interest or of public 
 welfare, should be restrained. Thus (they think), as the younger 
 generation came to manhood and womanhood, the old and 
 impenetrable tangle of prejudices would be slowly but surely 
 swept aside by the freely flowing, irresistible current of an 
 unobstructed national will. " Every society, every Polity," said 
 Carlyle in 1831', "has a spiritual principle, is the embodiment, 
 tentative and more or less complete, of an Idea : all its ten- 
 dencies of endeavour are prescribed by an Idea and flow 
 naturally from it, as movements from the living source of 
 motion." Remove therefore, the argument runs, the intellectual 
 and moral obstructions which hinder the free passage of this 
 national aim. Impregnate your whole education with it. In 
 this manner and in this sense apply Fichte's maxim that the 
 citizen must be gradually interpenetrated by the State 2 . You 
 may not be able to do much with older people, though even 
 there something is possible ; but if you will only work on the 
 children, the battle is won. Or, as it was bluntly put in a recent 
 
 1 Carlyle, Characteristics , 1831, p. 12. 
 
 2 Characteristics of the Present Age, 1806. Lecture XIV. 
 
 142
 
 212 Education in tJie Nineteenth Century. [CHAF. 
 
 leading article, " The power which controls the schools in this 
 generation, will control public opinion in the next." 
 
 This view of the nature and possibilities of national educa- 
 tion is of no recent growth. It would indeed be strange if it 
 were so. Supposing there to exist such a reservoir of moral 
 and other influences, what is more likely than that longing eyes 
 should have been turned towards it and that plans should have 
 been skilfully devised for its effective use ? And obviously it is 
 not one school of opinion only which would like to find the jet 
 of such influence firmly in its hand. But into the history and 
 earlier fortunes of the theory I do not propose to enter in this 
 lecture. It must suffice to say, omitting all detailed reference 
 to what has happened or been proposed elsewhere, that all 
 through the history of English education since the Reformation 
 this idea may I call it the proselytising theory of national educa- 
 tion ? has constantly made its appearance, now in one camp, now 
 in another : that more than once it has inspired attempts at legis- 
 lation : that it has been put forward generally as a novelty 
 under the authority of some august, and many worthy, names ; 
 that it has been the avowed object of several organised move- 
 ments, and the suppressed premise, or unconscious principle, of 
 many more : that it has been laboured for with great devotion 
 by men poles asunder in their conceptions of the Universe and 
 of human society, though inspired alike by an intense longing 
 for the true welfare of their fellow-men ; that, whenever English 
 opinion has begun to flush again with revolutionary heat, there 
 has always rung out in clear and unmistakeable tones, whether 
 from the party of defence or from the party of attack, at least 
 one earnest cry for some penetrating system of National 
 Education which may "form and train up the people of the 
 country to obedient, free, useful and organisable subjects, 
 citizens and patriots, living to the benefit of the State and 
 prepared to die in its defence 1 ." But I will not occupy 
 
 1 Constitution of Church and State, S. T. Coleridge, 1830, p. 65.
 
 XII.] National Education and Social Ideals. 213 
 
 your time with a chain of extracts, as I am anxious, not so 
 much to dwell on the details of the history of the idea, as to 
 ask the question why is it that, in spite of the authority of its 
 sponsors, in spite of the unflinching courage and unfaltering 
 principle of many men who gave themselves to its advocacy, in 
 spite of the sore need of many destitute districts squatted in by 
 the unkempt and leaderless levies of the Industrial Revolution, 
 in spite of the nation's extreme and admitted peril, moral and 
 political alike, this plan of setting up a unifying, formative and 
 intellectually systematised education has in no shape or form 
 managed to get itself realised in this country, although through- 
 out the whole period during which the matter has been in 
 debate the plan has hardly ever lacked able, lucid and dis- 
 interested advocates ? What has been the disintegrating 
 influence which, time and again, has broken the force of the 
 idea even when it has seemed to come almost within hazard of 
 success ? 
 
 II. 
 
 But before attempting to suggest an answer to this question, 
 I will ask leave to consider what a truly regulative system of 
 national education (assuming such a thing to be possible) 
 would practically imply ; what would be the necessary range of 
 its operations, if the formation of the mind and habits of the 
 millions of citizens is to be the test of its success ; and if its 
 aim is to produce, in life and practice, conformity to a pre- 
 conceived ideal? In the first place, national education will 
 clearly have to concern itself not with boys only, but with girls 
 as well, and that is a point which, though nowadays universally 
 admitted, was evidently not fully taken into account by some of 
 those who conceived a school as if it should be a sort of combi- 
 nation of dyehouse, pottery and drill-hall, to be managed, and 
 very strictly managed, as a legal monopoly, in its own predeter- 
 mined interest, by the State. It is easy to say that schools
 
 214 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 should prepare children for life. A much more difficult matter 
 is to say how that is to be done. But the thorniest problem of all 
 is to decide what the life is to be. And on hardly any question 
 are there signs of more uncertainty of opinion than as to the 
 kind of life for which girls should ordinarily be trained. It is 
 generally prudent to wait a generation before pronouncing an 
 opinion on the success of any particular kind of instruction. 
 Courses of study are inflicted by one generation, not on itself 
 but on its successors, and it is only fair to wait till the victims 
 have come to their turn to speak. They have a disagreeable 
 way of siding with their grand-parents. In Pride and Prejudice, 
 you will remember, Miss Austen pokes a good deal of gently 
 savage fun at Miss Mary Bennet and her literary extracts, but 
 fifty years later the tables were turned and we were invited to 
 smile at Miss Celia Brooke. Who shall be rash enough to say 
 what is now in the air ? 
 
 Nor, again, is national education a matter of primary 
 schools alone, though Adam Smith did this country the bad 
 turn of making at least two generations of English statesmen 
 think that the State ought to keep its hand, as well apparently 
 as its thoughts and its money, from any other grade of teaching 
 except the elementary ; and this too limited idea, which has 
 helped to stunt our higher technological training and much of 
 our modern secondary education, is preserved for us in the 
 names of so large a number of our parish schools, as well as in 
 the Argument of the last Book of the Excursion^. Clearly, if 
 
 1 ' Earnest wish expressed for a system of National Education estab- 
 lished universally by Government. Glorious effects of this foretold,' 
 ' Binding herself by Statute to secure 
 For all the children whom her soil maintains 
 The rudiments of Letters, and inform 
 The mind with moral and religious truth.' 
 
 This passage has been a good deal spoiled for our generation by Matthew 
 Arnold's chaff, in his essay on Wordsworth, about the bald heads in the 
 dusty air and the jaded afternoon daylight, at the Congress on Social Science.
 
 XII.] National Education and Social Ideals. 215 
 
 National Education means anything, it necessarily includes not 
 only primary education, but secondary, university, technological 
 and professional education also. It involves a thinking out of 
 the aims and types of each and all of these, of their place in the 
 system of which severally they are parts, and of the responsi- 
 bility which should be borne in regard to each of them by 
 nation, province, and municipality alike. All kinds of national 
 education, if any, will need to be brought into subjection to 
 the one influence, assuming that it is desirable that one influ- 
 ence should animate the whole. Supposing that a State really 
 wished to control opinion and economic welfare, there is a 
 good deal to be said for the view that the Universities are, of 
 all educational institutions, those which it could least afford to 
 allow to be free, and higher technical institutions those which 
 it would feel it most risky to leave to haphazard growth. 
 
 Nor again, in order to keep a grip on the real life of a 
 place of education, is it enough to control the examinations, 
 even if salaried offices for life are attached as prizes to the 
 successful passing of them ; nor is it enough to keep a watch 
 by a system of inspection on the methods and drift of the 
 teaching. For, is not educational influence (as distinct from 
 merely temporary thought-transference and from more or less 
 acrobatic performances of skill and memory) usually much less 
 a matter of set lessons, or even of cogent argument, than the 
 outcome of personal example, and of the infection of intellectual 
 interests, or of a sort of riveting power of the will, or, conversely, 
 of repulsion or of contrariness on the pupil's part, or of a gener- 
 ally healthy reaction against views too zealously championed or 
 unfairly expressed ? And do we always allow quite enough for 
 the impervious shell which a boy's mind is able to present to 
 anything of the nature of a lesson ? Some of our modern 
 educational theories seem to imply that children never miss a 
 lesson, or sleep while it is going on, or forget it when it is over. 
 If these things were so, the human race would seem to be chang- 
 ing more rapidly than scientific reformers have dared to hope.
 
 216 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 Yet even if we were to suppose the State capable of really 
 controlling what is taught, and what is implied, and what is 
 learnt (or forgotten) in all schools and colleges, how is its 
 authority going to touch public opinion as it exists among the 
 boys or undergraduates themselves? It would be a difficult 
 matter to interfere with that. It would be hard even to get an 
 exact idea of it. And yet in English boarding schools it is 
 perhaps the most potent influence of all. I remember 
 hearing of some parents who gave an immense amount 
 of trouble to themselves (and other people) in choosing the 
 right preparatory school for their little boy. Finally they 
 selected one, on the ground that, while all were excellent, this 
 was preeminently distinguished by the quality and quantity of 
 the food supplied to the boys. " They were quite right about 
 there being lots of food and good food too," the boy himself 
 told me years afterwards, "but what they didn't know, and 
 couldn't ever have found out, was that there was a fixed idea 
 among the boys themselves that the food was bad and therefore 
 that it wasn't to be eaten. We thought it bad form to touch 
 more than we could possibly help, and we used to wrap up our 
 sausage at breakfast in a bit of paper and bury it afterwards." 
 I believe that it would be comparatively easy for the State to 
 get English boys to echo the sentiments, say, of Captain 
 Mahan or Sir John Seeley or any other equally engaging writer 
 on practical political philosophy, but extremely difficult to 
 induce them to turn up their trousers a term before school 
 etiquette permitted that symbolic performance. 
 
 Then besides the educational regulations which may be 
 laid down by the State, besides the work of the masters and 
 mistresses in the schools, and besides the mutual influence of 
 the pupils whom they are engaged in teaching, there is a third 
 thing to be considered, namely, the power which upholds the 
 system, and insists on its being rightly and thoroughly carried 
 out I mean the standard which the parents and the nation 
 expect the schools and all connected with them to maintain.
 
 'XII.] National Education and Social Ideals. 217 
 
 It is on this that the real working of the system chiefly 
 depends, and the causes for its flourishing in one country, for 
 its flagging in another, and for its presenting a nipped and 
 discouraged appearance in a third, seem to deserve somewhat 
 closer analysis than they generally get. This attitude of the 
 nation towards its schools, the kind of thing it expects schools 
 to do for it, the degree of respect which it unconsciously 
 displays for them these are evidently the outcome of long 
 years of experience, of training and of habit, and the state of 
 mind which they imply is partly conscious and rational, but 
 largely unconscious and traditional. 
 
 However, even when things are at their best, and perhaps 
 especially when they do seem at their best and most mechanic- 
 ally complete, are we not sometimes in danger of ascribing to 
 schools and places of instruction a larger share than they 
 deserve in the work of national education ? A school even at 
 its worst is not quite a closed chamber, shut against all outside 
 things. Even when it is drowsy and inefficient, the boys have 
 time to talk. And if a schoolmaster were to set himself, or to 
 be set by the State, to withstand the spirit of the age, how 
 elusive of his efforts, how perversely penetrating, he would find 
 the spirit of the age to be. Currents of outside opinion pass 
 through schools as the wind blows through the wires of a bird- 
 cage, or as the tide drifts through a net at sea. So many 
 influences meet and fluctuate and recur as they weave round each 
 group or generation of us the invisible meshes of the net which 
 holds us together. How little of it is conscious or formulated 
 or prescribed : how much traditional, intangible, impersonal. 
 There is such a repercussion of influence, such a stir of 
 suggestions, so much that falls upon the mind unsought and un- 
 observed and colours the disposition and affects the sympathies. 
 Early influences of home training ; reactions against old half- 
 avowed ambitions ; drawings towards new points of view ; 
 cold currents or hot from this speculative interest or that ; 
 some long remembered criticism or harassing doubt ; slow
 
 218 Education in tlte Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 changes in the standard of judging right and wrong in public 
 affairs ; the push upon the mind of some strong current in 
 national feeling ; some great crisis in national history ; an 
 almost paralysing sense of the complexity and intermixture 
 of things ; the sense of an invisible conflict being waged all 
 around us, silent, unceasing and for infinitely important issues ; 
 deepening gratitude and loyalty to the living tradition of ancient 
 institutions ; some new and deeper sense, perhaps, of the 
 meaning of what had been rather read than felt before ; 
 surely, if we mean by national education that which shapes the 
 judgment and forms the habits of life, we must take into 
 account all these imponderable and permeating influences 
 which, far more than any school lessons, touch the imagination 
 and the conscience, and so affect conduct. But I would beg not 
 to be taken to imply a belief that education consists solely or 
 chiefly in a fine web of searching but impalpable influences 
 under which the growing, changing mind and character lie 
 passive and inert. On the contrary, I am only pleading that 
 these subtler forces should not be forgotten or ignored. Direct 
 teaching, the skilful development of interest, the winnowing 
 discipline of exact and pointed criticism, the unfolding of 
 new fields of study these must ever be the dominant things 
 in school life. But should we not agree that even more 
 important than these, though (under right conditions) helped 
 by these, is the play of the learner's will, its strengthening 
 exercise, the informing of it with the necessary knowledge, its 
 gaining power to use its surroundings, but also to rise above 
 these, and if needful to change and reform them ? 
 
 These things being so, how could we ever think of National 
 Education as a mechanical thing, or a mere affair of codes and 
 buildings and subsidies ? 
 
 National education, then, I would urge, though it necessarily 
 comprises many material things such as buildings, equipments, 
 books, laboratories, and works of art, and much systematic 
 organisation such as rules for the order of studies, for the
 
 XII.] National Education and Social Ideals. 219 
 
 licensing of teachers, for the conduct of inspection and the 
 apportioning of money grants, is, in itself, not a mechanical fabric 
 of codes and subsidies. On the contrary, national education, 
 in the true sense, is a spirit of living influence, a spiritual and 
 intellectual atmosphere. It may, or it may not, partly exert 
 its influence through some mechanism, new or old, either 
 expressly set up for the purpose or by traditional convenience 
 employed for it. When Monsieur Cousin in his report on 
 German education in 1831 incidentally referred to England as 
 " all bristling with prejudices, Gothic institutions . and semi- 
 barbarous customs, over which there is awkwardly thrown the 
 mantle of a wholly material civilization," he showed, as one 
 might expect, a real insight into the queer jumble of things 
 through which partly, though only partly, English education in 
 those days made itself felt. But when thirteen years later 
 Mr Horace Mann remarked in the Report of his Educational 
 Tour in Europe that "England is the only one among the 
 nations of Europe, conspicuous for its civilization and resources, 
 which has not and never has had any system for the education 
 of its people," he showed, not only that he was unfamiliar with 
 the history of our social institutions, but that the habit of 
 identifying national education with an organised system of 
 publicly inspected and publicly managed primary schools, 
 mainly for the working classes, and with that alone, had led 
 him to ignore the lineaments of the very important educational 
 fabric which did exist and which as England was admittedly 
 conspicuous for its civilization and resources must, if higher 
 education has any bearing on such matters, have been not 
 altogether destitute of influence and success. 
 
 III. 
 
 But, though I have laid stress on the fact that some of the 
 most penetrating and subtle influences in education are spiritual
 
 22O Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 and atmospheric, and therefore for the most part unorganisable, 
 and in their operation very little subject to our control, I am very 
 far from meaning that one and the same spirit and atmosphere 
 are to be found in all parts of our English education as it exists 
 to-day. Due allowance, of course, would in any case have to 
 be made for differences in the grade, in the subject-matter of 
 the studies, and in the intensive power, of the different types of 
 schools and colleges. But this being granted, there might 
 nevertheless be (as doubtless in some countries there is) a 
 predominant and recognisable tone in all the educational 
 institutions of a given grade, and to some extent a certain 
 community of ideal and sentiment throughout the whole range 
 of the national education. But it is this which seems to me to 
 be lacking in English education, and indeed always to have 
 been lacking, whether we go back one hundred years, or two. 
 And this discord in our ideals of life does not seem to 
 be the outcome of isolated individualism nor yet of any 
 slackness or of want of supervision on the part of the State. 
 On the contrary, the absence of minute State control and of 
 all-embracing State subsidy and inspection appears itself to be 
 the direct result of this pre-existing and ineradicable conflict of 
 ideals, a conflict which takes, naturally enough, different 
 shapes in different generations, which periodically dies down 
 and to a casual observer might sometimes seem extinct, but 
 which blazes out, often very suddenly, at all great crises in 
 national life, and then divides a large proportion of the people 
 into two parts, so that you might almost think of them as two 
 nations rather than one. 
 
 It is told of the great Bishop Butler that Dean Tucker, 
 as he walked by his side one day in his garden, observed him 
 to be unusually abstracted. At length the Dean ventured to 
 ask the Bishop's thoughts. "I have been thinking," he replied, 
 "what would be the effect if, instead of madness being confined 
 to individual cases, it should be permitted, for the execution of 
 some design of Providence, that a whole nation should go mad
 
 XII.] National Education and Social Ideals, 221 
 
 at once 1 ." Our severest critics would, I think, agree that it is 
 at any rate true that the whole English people has never gone 
 mad at once. Ours is a country of stubborn minorities, now 
 on one side and now on another. And hardly any services 
 that have been rendered to England are so precious as those 
 which have been the result of tenacity to principle bristling 
 though it may have been with prejudices displayed on more 
 than one occasion, and against almost overwhelming odds, by 
 each of the two great sections into which the English nation is 
 apt to be divided. To avoid misconception, I would explain 
 that the two sections which I have in my mind are by no 
 means identical with existing political parties, and indeed that 
 they have rarely been (except temporarily and partially) so 
 conveniently divided. Nor again do the sections in any way 
 strictly follow lines of class distinction. Nor is the division 
 territorial, though parts of the North and of the East of 
 England have more of one type than have most of the South 
 and of the West. But it is a difference, often unconscious till 
 laid bare by some explosion of feeling, -a difference in ideals of 
 life, in attitude of mind, in ways of looking at things, in in- 
 stinctive sympathy with different types of institutions, in the 
 degree of emphasis laid on particular groups of virtues. And, 
 like some inherited and almost ineradicable tendency, the differ- 
 ence persists from generation to generation of our national life. 
 
 Now it is not unnatural that this has been looked upon as 
 insecure ground on which to build up an ambitious fabric of 
 education under State control. On the other hand it seems 
 from another point of view to have promoted what Coleridge 3 
 called the " balance of the two great correspondent interests of 
 the State, at once supporting and counterpoising, permanence 
 and progression." 
 
 A further, and serious, difficulty is that the individuals 
 which compose these two sections of the people are so much 
 
 1 Churton, Life of Joshua Watson, Vol. I., p. 235. 
 - Church and State, p. 31.
 
 222 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 intermixed in point of residence and local concern that it 
 would be impracticable to substitute for the highly organised 
 State system, found convenient in some other countries, a 
 purely decentralised system homogeneous within the limits of 
 each of a carefully chosen number of provincial areas. 
 
 And great as is the difficulty when England alone is taken 
 into account, how much is it increased if one regards Great 
 Britain, or Great Britain and Ireland, as the unit, and tries to 
 think of Irish, Welsh, Scotch and English individualities com- 
 fortably assimilating themselves to one national system of 
 education. Then, if we cast our eyes still further afield, and 
 try to reach the conception of an Imperial system of education, 
 how greatly is the problem complicated by the needs and prefer- 
 ences of the chief self-governing colonies Canada, Australasia, 
 New Zealand, the Cape ; and how incongruous again are the 
 further elements in the problem India, the West Indies, and 
 the needs of the natives in different parts of Africa. 
 
 The fact is that experience and the accurate observations of 
 men of science have all gone towards showing the immense 
 difficulties in the way of satisfactorily organising national life on 
 the basis of the assumptions which were in many people's minds 
 two or three generations ago. The idea of the advocates of 
 education at the beginning of the century, on the utilitarian 
 side, was that children in the raw were uniform, and if uni- 
 formly treated (that is to say, at a day school) would come out 
 at a similar point of view, and similar in attainment, aptitude 
 and character. "Wakefield," wrote Francis Place 1 to James 
 Mill in 1816, "is a believer in innate propensities... and expects 
 to see your John's innate propensities break out presently and 
 form his character The position I take against him is that 
 the generality of children are organised so nearly alike that 
 they may by proper management be made pretty nearly equally 
 wise and virtuous." Just as the English economists of the 
 
 1 Graham Wallas' Life of Place, p. 71.
 
 XII.] National Education and Social Ideals. 223 
 
 same period had their idea of the economic man a notion 
 which implied a certain uniformity among men irrespective of 
 race, background and endowment ; and just as political 
 writers of the school of Tom Paine had in their mind what one 
 may call a political man, who was similarly interchangeable with 
 every other political man and conveniently uniform in respon- 
 siveness to appeals to his enlightened self-interest ; so there 
 haunts the educational speculations of the same school a 
 phantom which we may style the educational man, from which 
 individual differences seem almost to have been peeled away, 
 leaving a sort of quivering core of faculties behind. 
 
 Now the economists, by putting out of account disturbing 
 factors in the problem, led many different kinds of people to 
 attach relatively undue importance to the purely economic 
 factors in problems of industry and commerce. Few things 
 are more striking in the earlier years of the century than 
 the degree of insensibility, or rather the want of vigorous, 
 heart-searching attention, towards the horrors and squalid 
 mischief of the unregulated Factory system, on the part 
 of men and women who, if they had only realised what was 
 going on, would have felt every impulse of their nature going 
 out in search of some moral remedy and State control. There 
 were exceptions of course; but, speaking broadly, the awful 
 significance of the problem was not realised for years by the 
 very men whose sympathies were all against unrestrained in- 
 dustrial development. To some extent, but only to some 
 extent, this is explained by their mostly living far away from 
 the newly developed districts: in large measure those who were 
 capable of effort were preoccupied by other cares ; but a 
 deeper reason may have been that Adam Smith had fixed upon 
 them a sort of semi-fatalistic idea that the division of labour 
 is an inevitable accompaniment of all industrial progress, and 
 that as an inevitable accompaniment of the division of labour 
 the man concerned has ' no occasion to exert his understand- 
 ing,' and so 'generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as
 
 224 Education in ttte Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of 
 his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing 
 a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any 
 generous, noble or tender sentiment concerning many even of 
 the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive 
 interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging. 
 ...His dexterity at his own particular trade seems to be 
 acquired at the expense of his intellectual, solid and martial 
 virtues.' These evils were to be palliated, though not removed, 
 by the provision, 'at a very small expense, of the most essential 
 parts of education, namely to read, write and account.' And 
 this would be accompanied by the further advantage that the 
 more the masses of the people were ' thus instructed, the less 
 liable they would be to the delusions of enthusiasm and 
 superstition 1 .' 
 
 Remembeiing what reverence is due to Adam Smith's 
 character, and how vast the service which in other directions 
 he rendered to economic thought, do we not feel that there is 
 much to regret in the tone and tacit assumptions of this 
 passage? It had a mischievous influence. Comparatively few 
 people there were, all through those early days of the Industrial 
 Revolution, who spared a thought for the needs of the new 
 populations, rising then in such startling numbers and with such 
 unanswerable claims on national care. The very people whose 
 hearts would have been, under present conditions, most sensi- 
 tive to their distress, had been somehow or other brought under 
 the spell of thinking the whole black business ' inevitable,' and 
 to be mitigated, if at all, by the spelling-book and the multipli- 
 cation table. Yet then was the time when institutions should 
 have put forth unexampled efforts to grapple with social 
 problems. For more than twenty years, at the end of last 
 century and at the beginning of this, England was at war on 
 two fronts, and not the least perilous to her real civilisa- 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations, Book v. chapter I.
 
 XII.] National Education and Social Ideals. 225 
 
 tion was the struggle, so long neglected, with barbarism and 
 ignorance and social degeneracy in the industrial districts of 
 the North, and the rapid increase in the poor quarters of great 
 cities. This national failure in timely sensitiveness to an 
 urgent social danger has borne evil fruit for us ever since. 
 Had not the opportunity been missed, the spiritual and in- 
 tellectual movements at the beginning of the century might 
 have found a common ground of effort and thus of better 
 mutual understanding, while the new social conditions were 
 still plastic enough to mould into fitting shape, and in time to 
 avert the inconceivable waste of resources which has marked 
 English life throughout the whole century. 
 
 But just as the economical writers brought about a partial 
 view of social problems, so did many of the political writers 
 by leaving out all but the more mechanical aspects of govern- 
 ment lead many people unconsciously to attach undue im- 
 portance to the administrative and mechanical, as distinguished 
 from the ethical and institutional, elements in plans for political 
 reform. And similarly the educational writers on both sides 
 (though more on one side than on the other), by leaving out 
 of account many elements necessary to the character-forming 
 side of education, and by their frequent lack of insight into 
 the true needs of child-life, led many people to attach an 
 undue importance to mere mechanical routine in elemen- 
 tary education. When the real significance of the omission 
 began to be perceived, it dismayed those who understood that 
 education is necessarily concerned with duty and conduct, and 
 that in order to measure the difference between varying types 
 of liberal, as distinct from technical, education, one must 
 ascertain the attitude of each towards that point in human 
 character which has been called the focus of 'thought, affection 
 and endeavour.' 
 
 One of the first to realise the danger of the new movement 
 and to define what was really needed and what were the 
 special difficulties which would be met with in England in 
 
 s. M. L. 15
 
 226 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 providing the right kind of popular education, was Wordsworth. 
 To him we owe an incalculable debt. And in the earlier years 
 of the century we find in this matter of education, Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, and what one may call the Burke tradition, ranged 
 against Brougham, Jeremy Bentham and James Mill. These 
 are the two sections, as then divided, to which I referred before. 
 It is true that within each section there were then and after- 
 wards inner divisions and sharp conflicts too. But, speaking 
 broadly, the best minds and hearts in England ranged them- 
 selves under one banner or the other according to their 
 instinctive sympathies and their sense of dominant need. 
 
 If we steep ourselves in the literature and memoirs of a 
 great movement, such as were the Utilitarian or the Tractarian 
 movements, do we not come to feel that what really was 
 guiding the judgment of the leaders of it and colouring their 
 aims was not so much the formulated expression of their 
 doctrines (that comes later and gradually, and the more precise 
 it is the more certain a signal is it of approaching rupture), as 
 the larger and deeper, though unformulated and only instinc- 
 tively felt, notions and tendencies behind it? Great bodies of 
 doctrine like that of laissezfaire proceed from deep-seated and 
 long-standing social causes, and the formulated, codified ex- 
 pression of those opinions always fails in some measure to 
 reflect the indefiniteness of the governing impulse or to expose 
 its underlying assumptions, while at the same time it tends to 
 exaggerate the lucidity of the dominant aim. 
 
 This may be said to be true of those who represented the 
 two conflicting ideals about national education at the beginning 
 of the century and at that most critical time when, if ever, some 
 kind of unification might have been possible. Each section 
 lived in a world, in an atmosphere, of its own. A striking proof 
 of this is found in the lives of the two men who were respec- 
 tively, and during the same term of years, the chief organisers, 
 behind the scenes, of the new Anglican developments and of 
 English political democracy Joshua Watson and Francis
 
 XII.] National Education and Social Ideals, 227 
 
 Place. Both were Londoners, born in the same year, 1771 ; 
 both left school before they were 16 ; both were early engaged 
 in trade; the one, a wine-merchant, the other, a tailor; both 
 were men of extraordinary abilities and tact in organization, 
 conducting negotiations, and working for great national objects, 
 through committees and without self advertisement ; both were 
 indefatigable, both sincerely devoted to ideal aims, both 
 preferred to work behind a curtain ; both had very much 
 indeed to do with the educational developments of the time 
 Watson with the foundation of the National Society, Place with 
 the early conduct of the British and Foreign School Society ; 
 both lived to ripe old age, and the two died within a year of 
 one another. During many critical years of anxious and 
 extremely important work the two must have been constantly 
 within a mile of one another in Westminster. Yet they might 
 have lived and worked in entirely different hemispheres. The 
 outlook of the two men was wholly different. Not once, I 
 believe, is Place's name mentioned in Watson's Memoirs, or 
 Watson's in Mr Wallas' admirable life of Place. Had Place 
 had reason to think or speak of Watson, or Watson to refer to 
 Place, I fear that in each case it would have been with some 
 horror at the other's proceedings and without much sympathy 
 for what was present in the other's work and lacking in his 
 own. These two men are really typical of the two sections 
 in the then active English life. Neither section seems in the 
 least to have realised that the other was anything more than, 
 as the case might be, a repulsive temporary phenomenon or 
 the lingering survival of an obsolete superstition. Neither 
 perceived that the other derived from a line of spiritual and in- 
 tellectual ancestors extending back over two centuries ; neither 
 imagined that the other would have, in one form or another, 
 developers of its tradition without break in the succession. 
 
 On both sides of the controversy were men of the highest 
 ability and noblest aims. Yet the one side exaggerated the 
 importance of purely intellectual training and the other side 
 
 152
 
 228 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 underestimated the extreme urgency of doing quickly whatever 
 could be done to meet the startling dangers of the new social 
 developments. One idealised book knowledge, the other 
 (under the influence of Coleridge's idea of clerisy) idealised 
 the actual performances of the existing Establishment. There 
 was some bitterness and contempt on both sides and much 
 needless, as well as much inevitable, misunderstanding. Both, 
 in the early years at any rate, had a mechanical idea of educa- 
 tion, and, as Wordsworth said in 1828, "from not understanding 
 the composition of our nature and the composition of society 
 were misled and hurried on by zeal into a course which could 
 but lead to disappointment." Slowly each side began to per- 
 ceive the failure of its efforts and the mistaken limitation of its 
 aims. A succession of mediators began to appear Sarah Austin 
 on the one side, Dr Arnold and Dr Hook on the other all 
 these, with Frederick Denison Maurice later, carried on in effect 
 the tradition of Burke, Wordsworth and Coleridge. At every 
 point throughout the century when a revolutionary stir has 
 come into the air and when after periods of slumber or fatigue 
 sudden progress has begun to be made in the development 
 of social ideas, the same controversy has begun to quicken. 
 All education really involves the question of conduct and of 
 moral aims. At bottom there is a conflict among us in regard 
 to moral and social ideals. It is this, far more than any differ- 
 ence of opinion on the purely intellectual instruments of 
 education, that has been in this country the secret cause of 
 educational deadlock. The governing fact of the history of 
 the educational struggle in England during the whole of this 
 century has been this instinctive divergence of moral and 
 social ideals a divergence the depth and significance of which 
 have only slowly been realised, if indeed they have ever been 
 fully realised at all. In former days each party hoped to super- 
 sede the other and to foil as the case might be its revolutionary 
 or reactionary plans. And whenever the true nature of the 
 disagreement is suspected, a new danger arises in a disposition
 
 XII.] National Education and Social Ideals. 229 
 
 to avoid controversy by leaving out what gives tone and savour 
 to the whole. It will be remembered that De Tocqueville 
 feared that one result of democracy might be 'respectable 
 materialism.' 
 
 All through the century, though people have gone on 
 ranging themselves in the main under one or the other banner, 
 the points of view have been slowly changing, revolving almost, 
 so that in some regards the one group has come to stand 
 where the other stood before. And, all the time, the two sides 
 have been carried down stream together in the suck of the 
 current on which both are borne. 
 
 For the creation of a national system of education in any 
 true sense of the words there seems to be required either a 
 stable order of society on which to build, or such a moment of 
 ardent spiritual unity as sometimes, though not always, follows 
 a collapse of the outer fabric of national life. Neither of these 
 conditions has been fulfilled at any point in English history 
 during the present century. One struggle has followed another 
 on the most fundamental issue of national life the struggle 
 between the doctrine of laissez faire and the rival theory (so ill 
 represented in modern English thought) of the highly organ- 
 ised, carefully balanced, strongly governed modern State. The 
 victory, such as it was, which laissez faire won in England was 
 over the stupidity of ill-deserved and ill-used privileges, not over 
 any serious attempt to organise English society on a scientific 
 basis. It is not improbable that the next and most serious 
 struggle will be between some kind of laissez faire on the one 
 hand, and, on the other, the conception of national life which 
 showed itself in one form in the thunder and lightning of 
 Carlyle, and later, in another form, in the too romantic 
 prophesyings of Mr Ruskin, but which is not unlikely to come 
 nearest to success when put forward under the guise of a 
 scientifically organised, firmly controlled commercial State, rest- 
 ing (though under carefully preserved democratic forms) on an 
 oligarchic basis of capitalism, commanding great military and
 
 230 Education in tlte Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 naval force, buttressed by a system of commercial and technical 
 education appropriate to itself, and kept buoyant by sharing a 
 fraction of its financial interests with large numbers of small 
 shareholders or insurers. In such a struggle, educational re- 
 form in a most sweeping and comprehensive sense would be the 
 fundamental issue at stake. 
 
 But, though there have been times when that struggle has 
 seemed very near it was near in 1848 and near again between 
 1882 and 1885 other controversies have had more direct 
 effect in producing instability of educational aims during the 
 last half century. Among these has been the struggle (which 
 produced the Tractarian movement) between two, or rather 
 three conceptions of the relation of authority to private 
 judgment. This has been accompanied and followed by very 
 serious controversy between the scientific and traditional 
 ideals of life. Commerce, again, one of the most disintegrating 
 of all factors in its influence on social organization, has 
 struggled with the traditional order of English society. Later 
 still there has been the conflict between the forces concerned in 
 Imperial development and those behind English political de- 
 mocracy. Again, partly as a result of missionary and colonial 
 experience, partly as an outcome of the historical and com- 
 parative methods applied to social and psychological studies, 
 there has been a noteworthy faltering of conviction as to the 
 principles which really underlay (so far as theorising had any- 
 thing to do with it) the ideas of democratic suffrage, popular 
 control, majority voting, largely decentralised local government, 
 etc. Child study and man study have emphasised a great many 
 differences and difficulties which were not wholly unperceived 
 by experienced and far-seeing persons at an earlier stage. But 
 it is easy to overrate the part played by conscious theorising in 
 English social developments. So far as the masses of the 
 people have been concerned, practical dissatisfaction (after 
 long patience) with an existing regime has been the chief cause 
 of changes, which were desired and approved rather because
 
 XII.] National Education and Social Ideals. 231 
 
 they promised hope of relief from practical inconvenience, than 
 because of their conformity with philosophical theories about 
 the citizen and the State. 
 
 It would appear therefore that, at any point throughout the 
 century, the idea of setting up a unified and effectively unifying 
 system of national education, though constantly renewed and 
 though put forward by three of the greatest English writers of 
 the century Coleridge, Carlyle and Ruskin has never been 
 anything but a chimera. But it by no means necessarily 
 follows that a chimera it will always remain. Nor would it, 
 I think, be possible to defend the position that, on the whole, 
 English education has fared as well during the century as we 
 have any reason to desire. It is true that unnumbered in- 
 dividuals have given up their best years of labour in its service. 
 And we have had Dr Arnold, to speak of perhaps the greatest 
 of our schoolmasters during the present century. The cause 
 of education has called forth an extraordinary amount of 
 personal self-sacrifice. In certain ways it has made remark- 
 able progress. Much has been done for the education of 
 girls and women : the preparatory stages of secondary educa- 
 tion have never been so well cared for as they are to-day : 
 wonderful strides, especially during the last ten years, have 
 been made in primary education. And other departments have 
 made great advance. In some parts of the teaching profession 
 there has been a striking growth of interest in such questions 
 as methods of teaching and choice of studies. Institutions no 
 less than individuals have shown that they can adapt themselves 
 to new conditions and anticipate new needs. We have indeed 
 much to be thankful for, and have been mercifully delivered 
 from many imminent dangers. Things are not as bad as they 
 well might have been. To adapt some words of Prof. Huxley's : 
 " If Ormuzd has not had his way with England, neither has 
 Ahriman." At the worst, a very free system has a fairly good 
 side. On the other hand, what an unhappy thing it is that we, the 
 pioneers of the Industrial Revolution, we who therefore, at that
 
 232 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 critical time, most needed the bond and discipline and guidance 
 which a national system of education really gives, have had, of 
 all western nations, the least of what such a system could have 
 furnished and that in many ways we have so wastefully 
 blundered and muddled through this long and critical century, 
 wasting much that we had not foresight or self-control properly 
 to use. And, again, who will not feel the justice of these 
 remarks of Mrs Austin's written so long ago as 1834? "It seems 
 to me," she says, "that we are guilty of great inconsistency as to 
 the ends and objects of education. How industriously have not 
 its most able and zealous champions been continually instilling 
 into the mind of the people that 'education is the way to 
 advancement,' that 'knowledge is power,' that 'a man cannot 
 better himself without some learning.' And then we complain 
 or we fear that education will set them above their station, 
 disgust them with labour, make them ambitious, envious, 
 dissatisfied. We must reap as we sow.... The same motives, 
 wearing different forms, are presented to all classes. ' Learn 
 that you may get on,' is the motto of English education." "The 
 result," she concludes by saying, "the result is answerable." 
 
 IV. 
 
 But in saying that I do not believe that at any point in 
 the century England was really ready for, or would have been 
 improved by, the kind of concentrating and unifying system of 
 National Education to which I referred at the beginning of this 
 lecture, I am far from meaning to deny that such a system 
 has not in itself great advantages as well as great drawbacks. 
 There is, of course, no country in which the extreme type of 
 educational unity has been seriously attempted, but there are 
 approximations to such a system, which is indeed, in itself, 
 an economical arrangement and permits effective use of a 
 minimum expenditure of money, knowledge and effort. It 
 slowly but certainly produces a really learned profession of
 
 XII.] National Education and Social Ideals. 233 
 
 teachers. Its organization holds up and holds together a great 
 deal of literary and intellectual interest which would otherwise 
 tend to lose itself in other pursuits, and thus, under certain 
 conditions of thought, the system consolidates a sort of in- 
 tellectual barrier against various kinds of eruptive disorder 
 from above and below. And in its general operation it tends 
 to be an equalising movement, to lessen the gap between 
 extremes, to do more for the average, than for the exceptional, 
 individual. Perhaps in the process it squeezes out minor 
 originalities, but it is doubtful whether, in association with other 
 related forms of national discipline, such as compulsory military 
 service, it does not produce other compensatory virtues. 
 
 On the other hand, if I may venture to express a tentative 
 opinion, is not this, like all big machines, liable to produce 
 too much of a given commodity and to be in danger of 
 flooding Europe with people whose education has been in 
 too literary a groove, and who without being specially fitted 
 for intellectual pursuits have been a little spoiled for other 
 things? By means of an elaborately organised system of 
 higher education, it seems possible to overstimulate the in- 
 tellectual susceptibility of large numbers of people of mediocre 
 talent, without adding much to the sound stock of critical or 
 practical judgment possessed by the nation. Granted to the 
 full that in all callings there is a growing need for intellectual 
 efficiency and alertness, it nevertheless remains true that there 
 is also more need than ever for sturdiness and independence 
 of individual judgment, and for power to resist whatever be 
 the extravagant intellectual fashion of the hour, especially 
 during a period of momentous change in our knowledge of 
 nature and in our conceptions of the significance and possibilities 
 of human life. A system of education is hurtful if it makes 
 people intellectually impressionable without increasing at the 
 same time their reserve of moral strength. Furthermore rules 
 which shut out from professional careers all who have not 
 passed through a prescribed course of secondary education
 
 234 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 tend to attach undue importance to the intellectual achieve- 
 ments of a youth's early years. Again, are we sure that a 
 tendency is wholly good which is in the direction of creating 
 such a well-organised professional society of teachers as to 
 immerse them in a world of similar interests and standards, 
 and somewhat to detach them from opportunities of mixing 
 freely and constantly, and as a matter of course, with all 
 sorts and conditions of other people? The school is only too 
 apt to get a standpoint and standard of its own. It is not an 
 end in itself, but an organ of the incessantly changing national 
 life. And is there not special reason therefore for teachers to 
 keep in touch with men and women of all sorts and of very 
 different kinds of experience and occupation ? 
 
 I have urged that national education in its true sense is not 
 a matter of schools alone but partly the organised provision of 
 good and tested teaching in all subjects necessary to be learnt, 
 partly the attempt to furnish opportunities for the effective 
 development and training of individual wills, and partly the 
 pressure of a sort of envelope of varied influences acting on the 
 sympathies, the imagination, the judgment and the will, stimu- 
 lating all alike into activity but, so far as may be, imparting, 
 not identity of belief, or of ideal, or of prejudice, but a certain 
 uniformity of tone to the complexion of the mind, a certain 
 predisposition to conform to a general type. And I have tried 
 to show that, by reason of very deep and ancient fissures in 
 our national life, England has been peculiarly ill-disposed 
 towards the idea of anything tending to give the advantage, 
 either in propaganda or in social opportunity or in prestige, to 
 one or other of certain broadly differing views of life and of 
 national duty. Montesquieu said of the English people that, 
 of all others, it " has best known how to enlist in its service 
 these three great things religion, commerce and liberty." 
 Whatever be the truth of this observation, it will be agreed 
 that these three things are apt to be disintegrating elements 
 in any form of spiritual or intellectual monopoly.
 
 XII.] National Education and Social Ideals. 235 
 
 It is still frequently said that every nation stands for an 
 idea, but it is not easy to define ^the idea for which England 
 (not to speak of the British Empire) stands to-day unless 
 indeed it is for the conviction that no single idea is adequate 
 to the consciousness of a modern nation and that what is most 
 needed is protection against outward assault (and in less 
 measure against internal bullying), so as to permit the growth, 
 the interplay, the fusion or reaction of varying ideas and ideals 
 within the compass of the national life. One indeed we are 
 for defence ; but divided still, profoundly divided, in regard to 
 schemes of inner unifying organisation in so far as they might 
 threaten to override with violence, or attempt to obliterate, 
 conscientious differences of faith or opinion. And, therefore, 
 I would venture to maintain that what Emerson called the 
 English duality is, in its truer manifestations and when rightly 
 understood, the essential characteristic of the national mind, 
 and that, though perhaps it is the source of temporary weak- 
 ness, and, under existing circumstances, of some national 
 peril, our mixture of ideals is the fount of much lasting 
 strength and freshness of mind and sympathy. For is it not 
 characteristic of our most trusted leaders to shrink from ex- 
 tremes, however tempting and effective, and rather to stumble 
 on, at the cost of being misunderstood, often at the cost of 
 much slipshod and unsatisfactory compromise, and at the cost 
 of seeming to attempt to combine incompatible opposites yet 
 nevertheless to maintain that in the logic of life the middle 
 way is nearest to the truth ; that out of all the opposite and 
 apparently conflicting tendencies freedom and authority, 
 inquiry and obedience, individual liberty and State control, 
 private effort and corporate life comes the resultant force 
 which best helps us forward to better things; and that, as 
 Aristotle said, "tact and perception, not reasoning, must decide 
 the mean"? 
 
 There are some, indeed, to whom this view is repugnant, 
 and whose minds can find no rest except under the fixed
 
 236 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 authority of some established rule. Others again are so con- 
 stituted as to fret against, any interference with individual 
 liberty in the sphere of thought, or with communal or sectional 
 independence in the sphere of political action. But I am 
 speaking of the central mass of the English people, and of 
 them it seems true that they instinctively incline to institutions 
 which attempt, in Pascal's words, " the union and harmony of 
 two seemingly opposite truths." Our political instinct leads us 
 to feel that, even in the case of the conflicting tendencies of 
 authority and freedom, balance and combination are not 
 unattainable. How to accomplish such a combination may 
 baffle our powers of constructive statesmanship ; but even 
 failure to achieve it leaves us none the less unwilling to regard 
 either extreme tendency as in itself a sufficient principle of 
 wise action. And of no part of our political task is this so 
 true as of that which appertains to national education. Yet 
 the balance, even when attained, is unstable and soon dis- 
 turbed by the natural growth of new needs. Each generation, 
 in its attempt to restore the balance, has to lay special stress 
 on the one principle or on the other, according to the needs 
 of this or that part of the body politic. In education, for 
 example, it was necessary early in the century to fight against 
 the false claims to authority put forward by some who spoke 
 on behalf of the Established Church. In our own time it is 
 rather on the value of a strong central authority that stress 
 needs to be laid. Yet neither in complete freedom from 
 central control, nor in any extreme form of State or municipal 
 monopoly, are we likely to find the right balance of educa- 
 tional policy. Both elements, skilfully adjusted and ever in 
 course of readjustment, are necessary, if we are to secure 
 educational progress according to modern standards and yet 
 retain educational freedom. But there is no ready-made 
 formula, by help of which our statesmen can fix the balance. 
 They have to find it as best they can, cautiously feeling their 
 way with such help as is given by the lessons of history by
 
 XII.] National Education and Social Ideals. 237 
 
 administrative tradition, by foreign experience, and by their 
 own practical knowledge of the character and predilections of 
 the nation which they serve. Rules and precedents help up to 
 a certain point, but at every great crisis in national history 
 (and the present is a crisis in the history of national educa- 
 tion) we reach the limit beyond which the help of old rules 
 cannot go. 
 
 Yet I am far from intending to argue that a mush of 
 muddle-headed compromise and of unprincipled concession 
 has any claim to be regarded as the golden mean. Nor again 
 is the true via media to be marked out by any mechanical 
 calculation of the half-way point between two conflicting 
 extremes. On the contrary, any such intermediate measure 
 may miss gaining that part of the truth which lies with each of 
 the two extremes. It may sometimes be necessary to combine 
 two apparently opposite and conflicting tendencies, and to 
 hold them together in order to gain an expression of the 
 whole truth. But, in the main, Richard Baxter's words hold 
 true, ''Greater light and stronger judgment are usually with 
 the reconcilers than with either of the contending parties." 
 Yet nowhere is a surer purpose needed than on the via media, 
 along which the traveller feels his way, exerting every intel- 
 lectual gift in judging the changing indications of safety and 
 danger, but always conscious that, indispensable as is the 
 utmost intellectual exertion, it rarely suffices as a guide through 
 the perplexities and shifting perils among which he has to 
 pass. Something of deeper origin and of more subtle power 
 than conscious reasoning is needed by him as a guide. New 
 problems arise before him not contemplated by the writers 
 who have summarised for him the experience of the past. 
 Just as the moral genius pushes his way through the new 
 conditions which confront him, and by means of this ex- 
 ploration furnishes the experience out of which philosophers 
 may revise old rules of conduct or formulate new ones : so the 
 political genius of a great statesman, interpreting (and m turn
 
 238 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century, [CHAP. 
 
 supported by) the political instinct of his nation, has to feel its 
 way through problems which are so embryonic and involved 
 that no man may with confidence predict their final issue. 
 
 In conclusion I would submit that, under modern con- 
 ditions and in the case of such a country as our own, the 
 part of the State in national education is not to stand aloof 
 altogether, as some extreme individualists would hold : nor, as 
 Adam Smith contended, to provide primary schools and ignore 
 everything else: nor, as John Stuart Mill suggested, to main- 
 tain a system of schools of its own as one among several com- 
 peting systems ; but rather to draw toward itself, to inspire, to 
 stimulate, and (when needful) to aid, each and every type and 
 instance of efficient and needed school, while absorbing, con- 
 trolling, crushing none ; aiming, that is, not at monopoly, but 
 at comprehensive federation of schools and colleges ; at 
 strengthening educational freedom, not at any restriction of it ; 
 at self-criticism, not at the discouragement of criticism ; at the 
 planning, and record of careful and systematic experiments ; 
 at the very liberal encouragement of educational, psychological 
 and hygienic research of all kinds, in all types of schools, 
 and those not in England alone ; and at the wide diffusion, 
 among all concerned, of the accurate but varied and out- 
 spoken observations thus secured, with a view to the develop- 
 ment and guidance of a well-informed and skilfully observant 
 public and professional opinion. 
 
 But still more earnestly would I plead that in all plans for 
 education, because education is one of the spiritual aspects of 
 the national life, there is need for the utmost circumspection in 
 adjusting the claims of humane studies and of physical science, 
 as well as those of liberal culture and of professional training. 
 We need constantly to remind ourselves that the rising genera- 
 tion has not to be prepared merely to pass examinations, or for 
 an imaginary life of ideal ease and intellectual recreation, nor 
 yet on the other hand merely to play a boisterous part in 
 struggles for private gain ; but that the chief object of education
 
 XII.] National Education and Social Ideals. 239 
 
 should be, while fitting boys and girls for the tasks and duties 
 of practical life, to preserve intact for them, amid the repeated 
 assaults of claims and cares which arise from the fret of daily 
 work and from the results of philosophical inquiry and from the 
 play of competition far beyond individual or national control, 
 as much as may be of childlike faith, of intellectual reverence 
 and courage, and of gaiety and truthfulness of mind. And may 
 the enlightenment afforded by our national education be 
 
 luce intellettual piena d'amore, 
 amor di vero ben pien di letizia, 
 letizia che trascende ogni dolzore.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 OUTLINES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 EDUCATIONAL IDEAS DURING 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 BY 
 
 PROFESSOR W. REIN, Jena. 
 
 A CONSCIENTIOUS man will from time to time survey his 
 past work critically, in order to satisfy himself whether he has 
 made progress or not. Similarly should a nation criticise itself, 
 and inquire if it has increased the goods which it inherited from 
 its ancestors ; if it has strengthened the factors, which are of value 
 for its existence, and if it has in consequence thereof advanced 
 a step. If a nation is sound and healthy, it will not lack in 
 critical insight. Only a degenerate community refuses to give 
 an account of itself, because it fears that it may have to face a 
 deficit. A sound and progressive people will welcome the 
 admonisher, because it wishes to learn how to overcome its 
 weakness ; but a dying nation destroys the unwelcome prophet. 
 The example of Socrates will illustrate this. He might have 
 escaped death, if he had promised to be silent. But he met 
 this possibility with the proud words: "My love for you, oh 
 Athenians! is great; but more than you do I obey God." And 
 a similar word echoes from the Gospels : " We ought to obey 
 God rather than man." The death of Socrates and the death
 
 CHAP. XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 241 
 
 of Jesus are points in human history whose very value consists 
 in the fact that they are not mere epochs of history. 
 
 Such points as these put mere external points like the 
 beginning of a new century in the shade. The beginning of a 
 new century need therefore, however, not be regarded as being 
 unimportant. And for this reason, that it gives the individual 
 just as much as the nation an opportunity to turn their attention 
 inward, and so to speak make up the accounts of the period 
 gone by philosophically, fairly and truthfully. 
 
 Looking backward in this way, the question arises in- 
 voluntarily : What will the new century bring us? Full of 
 presentiment we try to look into futurity. We endeavour to 
 throw light upon the dark future by means of our knowledge of 
 the intellectual tendencies of the past decades. We even see 
 those things realised in the future, which the present has not 
 yet fulfilled. The value we place upon the past and the 
 present determines our considerations of the future. 
 
 A hundred years ! A long interval of time, if we count 
 each single step. But if we consider the chief tendencies and 
 turning-points, the long distance is traversed very rapidly. We 
 can master the past by omitting all the inessentials. Penetrating 
 deeper and deeper into the connection of things, our mind 
 looks for the chief points which form the contents of the 
 century. And these also may be unified, reduced to a formula, 
 so to speak, for the purpose of seizing hold of the characteristic 
 feature of the century. This was done with the eighteenth 
 century, which has generally been called the Century of Ration- 
 alism, sometimes also that of Pedagogy. Attempts have already 
 been made to find a formula for our century. Schopenhauer 
 called it a philosophical century, because he considered that it 
 was ripe for philosophy, and therefore needed it. Heinr. von 
 Treitschke indicated it as the richest century of modern history, 
 because it reaped the crop of the Reformation. Kuno Fisher 
 sees in it the century of criticism, because it destroyed myths, 
 though it also created some. To some it is the century of the 
 s. M. L. 1 6
 
 242 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 natural sciences and technology ; to others again, it appears as 
 the national era, which has witnessed the resurrection of a 
 series of national states, both great and small, which have not 
 only changed the political map, but have produced a peculiar 
 shifting about in the life of nations. 
 
 All these formulae contain a certain amount of truth ; but 
 it may well be questioned if they have struck the fundamental 
 note of the whole. It is very doubtful if we can at the present 
 time sum up in a formula the infinite variety and wealth of the 
 mental life of three generations. And for this reason, because 
 a feeling prevails, negative in kind but common to all, which 
 owes its origin to the struggle of conflicting views the feeling 
 that we live in a period of transition. Certain indications point 
 to it : a want of completeness and adjustment. We feel that 
 we are in the midst of a development not far from its beginning, 
 and presumably far from its end. 
 
 Our time is neither fish nor flesh. It wavers between em- 
 piricism and spiritualism, between the liberalism "vulgaris" 
 and the weak attempts of senile reactionary movements, 
 between autocracy and anarchism, between declarations of 
 infallibility and desolate materialism, between the adoration 
 of the Jews and Anti-Semitism, between artistic idealism and 
 naturalism, between the cultivation of exquisite operatic music 
 and naive popular melody, between the political economy of 
 millionaires and the politics of the proletariat. 
 
 Our time is consequently incomplete and immature. It 
 were certain of condemnation, if it were at all permitted to 
 separate a period of time from its historical connection. Who- 
 ever wishes to understand the essence of the nineteenth century 
 must endeavour to understand it from the intellectual develop- 
 ment of the past. 
 
 A period of transition is not an epoch of truth, but rather 
 one of dark striving. It is in connection with this fact that 
 our age has also been called a time of great yearning, the 
 yearning for something new. But no one knows what this new
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 243 
 
 is to be. And whoever undertakes to describe it, learns, as 
 soon as he tries to fill in the details of his description, that his 
 outlines become confused, and his colours faint. The picture of 
 the future, shrouded in mist, vanishes, as soon as one imagines 
 oneself near enough to touch it. Let us therefore endeavour 
 to grasp the chief features of the i gth century with reference to 
 its educational ideas. 
 
 The life of a nation is a connected whole, made up of 
 forces developing from within itself and ripening organically. 
 These forces support and at the same time oppose one another. 
 Progress arises out of this support and opposition. 
 
 Nowhere does this appear more clearly than in the realm of 
 education and instruction which forms an essential part of the 
 whole life of a nation. For we find the vital ideas of an age 
 focussed in this realm, namely the practical-scientific ideas, the 
 scientific, the moral, and the religious ideas. All these ideas 
 desire to help, to promote, and to advance education. But as 
 they neither agree nor harmonise with one another, a struggle 
 arises, and education, standing right in the midst of life, is 
 drawn into this struggle which arises from the contest of 
 conflicting opinions. 
 
 We may both welcome and regret this ; welcome it, because 
 educational matters are a part of the mental development of 
 the people ; regret it, because they are dragged into religious, 
 political and economic controversies. 
 
 Education and instruction require a certain calmness for 
 their work. The waves of life come up to the threshold of the 
 school, but they must not pass the threshold lest the work of 
 the school be disturbed and injured. How are we to escape 
 from this dilemma ? Education and instruction forming an 
 important part of the life of our people and sharing in all that 
 agitates the world, and yet demanding peace apart from the 
 turmoil of the world so that it may thrive. 
 
 A solution may be found in this formula: Whatever 
 agitates the adult world, penetrates the realm of education and 
 
 16 2
 
 244 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 instruction, nay, must penetrate it, or education becomes anti- 
 quated and fossilised. But it must not penetrate directly and 
 immediately, but at a certain interval of time, and by means 
 of the various school-organisations. This will give protection 
 
 n;ainst undue haste. Education and instruction will partake 
 F progress without surrendering themselves immediately to 
 every impression which fashion or a transitory mood drives 
 like a bubble to the surface. The ideas of the adult world 
 must become clarified before they may be allowed to influence 
 the education of the young ; the truth of the vital ideas must 
 become recognised, before these may be allowed to determine 
 the younger generation. Thus calmness and continuity of 
 development will be secured ; development will not take place 
 by fits and starts, but will proceed quietly and steadily ; the 
 threads connecting us with the past will not wantonly be 
 torn, but will be woven into a web containing no useless 
 I material. 
 
 \ Such are the thoughts that occur to us as we survey the 
 
 \ development of education and instruction in Germany during 
 the nineteenth century. We do not survey this development, 
 however, merely for the purpose of understanding it and of 
 enriching our store of knowledge, but sub specie aeferni, that is 
 to say, so that we may learn and obtain permanent principles 
 from it. History is the instructor of mankind, and education 
 also can learn valuable lessons from it, if it endeavours to 
 penetrate into the spirit of the development. And though the 
 latter is chiefly determined by factors not controlled by man, 
 there can yet be no doubt that the resolute and persistent will 
 of man can influence the destiny of a people. 
 
 We will therefore to-day survey the development of those 
 intellectual tendencies that have swayed the German nation 
 during the nineteenth century in order to obtain from this 
 retrospect a guide for the future organisation of educational 
 work and systems. Other countries besides Germany may 
 also, from a comparative consideration of native develop-
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 245 
 
 ment, see questions arise, the study of which might prove 
 fruitful. 
 
 i. No State shows greater differences between the begin- 
 ning and the end of the century than Germany. Japan might 
 perhaps bear the comparison, since it also has experienced 
 profound changes during the last decades. At the beginning 
 of the century we see Germany dismembered and subjected by 
 France after the unfortunate battle of Jena in 1806. Napoleon 
 the First had broken the system of Frederic the Great. Prussia 
 had gone to sleep on the laurels of its great king ; the Corsican 
 Conqueror gave it a rude awakening but one that was beneficial 
 in its effects. At the beginning of the century people said that 
 the Germans had no fatherland ; theirs was in the clouds, in 
 philosophy and in poetry. But through the struggle for inde- 
 pendence the Germans came suddenly into contact with hard 
 reality. The Napoleonic wars for freedom saved Germany, and 
 from these wars it gained the imperishable ideal of the unity of 
 the German principalities, the re-establishment of the German 
 Empire in new forms. Decades, however, were to pass before 
 the realisation of this aim. The aim arose during the wars 
 with Napoleon I. ; it was realised through the struggle with 
 Napoleon III. At Versailles in 1871 Germany once more 
 obtained a central government, the German Emperor. Division, 
 the misfortune of Germany, was forgotten. With united strength 
 the nation was able to take its share in the work of civilisation. 
 A great change has come about. The nation, awakened from 
 philosophic speculations and mystic dreams, began to feel its 
 strength grow from year to year. Patriotism was revived and 
 became embodied in the person of the German Emperor. 
 
 In this way does the national political picture at the end of 
 the century differ from that at the beginning. At the begin- 
 ning we behold division, impotence, feebleness ; at the end an 
 awakened spirit of unity, pleasure in and strength for work, for 
 progress and for friendly rivalry with other nations. All this, 
 however, was made possible only through quiet and unobtrusive
 
 246 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 work in the schools, work going on throughout the century 
 far away from political life. The forces which the nation 
 required were nourished in the schools ; in them the ground 
 was prepared for the success which led up to the realisation of 
 the aim ; in them the weapons were forged with which the 
 battle for progress was fought. The activity continues even at 
 the present time ; and since the re-establishment of the German 
 Empire it bears a national imprint. 
 
 2. In social relations also do we find a remarkable differ- 
 ence between the beginning and the end of the century. At 
 the beginning we find German society still bearing the stamp 
 of the Middle Ages. The majority of the inhabitants of 
 Germany are engaged in agriculture. The great landowners, 
 the nobility, take the lead. They are nearest to the throne, 
 they are free, and they take the highest positions in the State 
 and in the army. The citizens in the towns also are free, but 
 not having any political power, they follow the lead of the 
 aristocracy. The lower peasants are not free. It was only in 
 1809 that "villanage" was abolished, which bound the peasant 
 to the land and the landlord. At the end of the century we 
 behold an entirely different picture. An agricultural state is 
 changed to one engaged in industrial occupations. Thirty 
 millions are maintained by industrial pursuits, while agriculture 
 supports only twenty-five millions. Germany has enrolled 
 itself among the industrial nations, and has thereby taken upon 
 itself new tasks. A new estate, the fourth, the working class, 
 has grown up in Germany, and it also has tried to obtain a 
 position in society. The State has recognised its claims and 
 has improved the material wants of the working classes by 
 means of social legislation. Government gives about ,50,000 
 per diem towards the alleviation of the misery and the im- 
 provement of the lower classes. At the same time the State 
 does not neglect their education. They also are to partake 
 of the ideal goods of the nation, the arts and sciences, though 
 within the limits imposed upon the mass of the people by
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 247 
 
 capacity and occupation. Much trouble and labour has been 
 expended upon the development of the elementary school 
 system. Great tasks are, however, still before us, and the new 
 social grades supply us ever with stimulus for new tasks. 
 
 3. Science and Philosophy also show sharp contrasts at 
 the beginning and end of the century. The first half of the 
 century stands under the banner of philosophy, the second half 
 under that of the sciences and technology The philosopher 
 Kant ushered in a philosophical era, which, with the aid of 
 Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, produced a movement extending 
 far beyond the borders of Germany. The movement reached 
 its culminating point in Hegel. He wished to prove that the 
 psychological development of consciousness and the intellectual 
 development of humanity were identical. In Hegel's philo- 
 sophy mind becomes the master of nature, and history the 
 master of the individual. Hegel's philosophy, however, aroused 
 the ever-increasing opposition of the advocates of the natural 
 sciences. The sober and cautious thinker Joh. Fr. Herbart, 
 and Schopenhauer, the philosopher of pessimism, had opposed 
 the " fashionable philosophy " of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, 
 unsuccessfully, however. But what they had been unable to 
 achieve, the second half of the century accomplished. Philo- 
 sophy lost its predominant position, and Science with methods 
 of exact investigation celebrates its triumphs, so that the 
 nineteenth century has been proclaimed as the age of the 
 natural sciences. 
 
 The schools also became involved in this process. The 
 elements of culture, which owed their origin to a classical age, 
 were steadily losing their renown and splendour, while the 
 science subjects increasingly gained in charm and attraction. 
 The humanistic subjects maintained their preeminence over 
 the realistic subjects only with the greatest of difficulty. 
 
 4. Closely connected with this is the fact that at the end 
 of the century realism of deed finds preference over idealism of 
 thought. As long as Germany was not a State, it could not
 
 248 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 develop a political and national conscience. Culture and 
 attitude of mind were individualistic. Man and not the 
 citizen, not the nation, was the centre of interest. Men 
 strove to obtain the praise of a " citizen of the world " rather 
 than that of a zealous patriot. And yet poets and artists were 
 occupied in building up a great German fatherland, the great 
 intellectual empire of the German nation. Weimar was the 
 capital, Schiller and Goethe the chancellors. It was due to 
 them that Germany, intellectually at least, became a nation. 
 Then came the great realist, Bismarck, who welded the various 
 German principalities into a political empire. He added iron 
 to the German blood and thereby raised the worth of the 
 people. And now other work besides that of art and poetry 
 was taken in hand, industrial work, problems of the real world 
 were attacked, that is to say, those of commerce, industry and 
 technology, which are so necessary for the existence of a State. 
 In consequence of this the State proceeded to develop and 
 perfect the technical schools as an organic part of the general 
 school-system. 
 
 5. Love of music and interest in religious questions con- 
 tinued throughout the century as expressions of emotional life. 
 But in this field also far-reaching struggles and mighty changes 
 took place. We need only remind ourselves of the names of 
 Richard Wagner and David Fried. Strauss. These struggles, 
 however, do not affect the core of German life, that is to say, 
 their devotion to the realm of sound, and their faith in a 
 spiritual realm of love and justice, such as was given to the 
 world by Jesus of Nazareth. Richard Wagner's musical dramas 
 infused new life into German antiquity, but added to it a view 
 of life rooted in Christian soil. 
 
 It has been said that the fate of Christianity will be decided 
 on German soil, soil which produced Luther, the reformer of 
 the Church. Ever since his time the battle between the 
 catholic and the reformed conception of Christianity has been 
 raging. The former fights under the authority of the Church,
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 249 
 
 and its strength lies in the fact that it is a close organisation. 
 It holds out a strong hand to the vacillating soul and offers a 
 shelter to those who surrender themselves to her. Subject 
 yourself to her authority and you will find salvation ; you will 
 rest in God. On the other hand we have the example of 
 Luther. The Church does not and cannot give peace of mind 
 to man ; for it is the work of man. The Gospel together with 
 man's freedom of conscience is the sheet-anchor of existence. 
 But how are we to conceive the Gospel ? In this question the 
 whole subjectivity of the German soul is to be found. Every 
 one does and must conceive it in his own way. But, how is 
 the religious community to exist, if that is so ? That is where 
 the struggle comes in. The Protestant Church also has need of 
 a formulary. But how is this to be reconciled with the religious 
 conviction of the individual who lays claim to the freedom of a 
 Christian, and constructs his own religious world ? The struggle 
 rages hither and thither. The Protestant Church from Schleier- 
 macher to Ritschl loses in power and influence the more it 
 insists on a formulary. But Christianity makes itself felt as an 
 ethicising power in political life, creating great social legislation 
 as a proof that the spirit of neighbourly love is not bound up 
 with ecclesiastical forms and empty dogma. 
 
 Instruction also has participated in these movements. 
 Music has been zealously cultivated in German schools since 
 the time of Luther, who was himself a lover and promoter of 
 music. But the question of religious instruction has affected 
 the German schools even more. According to tradition, going 
 back to Luther, religious instruction has been assigned to the 
 school ; only confirmation belongs to the Church, although the 
 supervision of the religious instruction is allowed her. This 
 accounts for the fact that the method of religious instruction 
 has been worked out far more by laymen, the teachers, than by 
 clergymen. The teachers, with their knowledge of the general 
 laws of didactics, have attempted to adapt the religious instruc- 
 tion to the development of the child's mind, and to make it an
 
 250 Education in ttie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 effective means for mental development. They maintain that 
 instruction in religion is an important element in the education 
 of the young and that it must therefore be assigned to the 
 teacher, who is responsible for the development of the young. 
 
 6. The educational movement has also been very active 
 during the nineteenth century. Herder, Schiller, Goethe, 
 Fichte and Kant may be counted as belonging partly to this 
 century, and they are important not only from a literary- 
 philosophical point of view, but especially from an educational. 
 Human nature loves to cling to personalities which embody 
 ideas. Names signify eras ; and the nineteenth century, from 
 an educational point of view, is dominated by the names of 
 Pestalozzi and of Herbart. Both are to be found at the 
 beginning, and both dominate the end of the century. Of 
 Herbart we can say, that his works and his disciples obtained 
 for him, after his death, an increasing amount of influence in 
 moulding the educational world, an influence which was denied 
 him in his lifetime. In this he shares the fate of Schopenhauer, 
 whose chief work appeared in 1818, but whom the spirit of the 
 times only permitted to become a force fifty years later. It 
 was otherwise with Hegel, who fully enjoyed his fame during 
 his lifetime, but whose influence we may consider practically 
 ended in the second half of the century. It is again otherwise 
 with Pestalozzi. His life is full of vicissitudes ; yet in spite of 
 many a shipwreck he enjoyed during his lifetime the worship 
 of all classes of society, high and low, worship such as mortals 
 rarely receive. The noble Queen of Prussia, Louise, longed for 
 nothing more than to hasten to him and thank him in the 
 name of humanity. Only Napoleon the First turned away 
 from him bored ; there were more important things to be done, 
 he said, than the learning of the a, b, c. But Napoleon and his 
 race have gone ; on the other hand, the i2th of January, 1896, 
 the isoth anniversary of the birth of the noble Swiss education- 
 alist, showed clearly what influence Pestalozzi still exercises. 
 
 Herbart and Pestalozzi supplement one another in a happy
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 251 
 
 way. Pestalozzi is the man of intuition, of enthusiasm for 
 education and for the improvement of the people. Herbart is 
 the calm inquirer and exact worker, well equipped with the 
 instrument of scientific method, the first man to sketch a 
 system of education founded upon ethics and psychology. 
 Both are profoundly religious men, akin to Kant in their deep 
 ethical conviction, men of a free and wide view of life. The 
 one devotes his compassionate love to the education of the 
 poor and oppressed ; the other is destined by education and 
 surrounding to influence the youth of the upper classes. This 
 difference equalised itself considerably in the course of time in 
 this way : Herbart's ideas became more and more applied to 
 elementary education and helped to realise Pestalozzi's views ; 
 the secondary schools, however, would not admit the pedagogy 
 of Herbart, did not appreciate Pestalozzi, and relied entirely 
 upon the leadership of the school-bureaucracy. In this latter, 
 educational tendencies no longer assert themselves, especially 
 since the immediate influence of Pestalozzi (which was very 
 great in the time of Baron von Stein and Wilh. von Humboldt) 
 has decreased ; instead of them we find partly theological, 
 partly philological and humanistic tendencies. Thus the 
 Pestalozzian-Herbartian spirit wanders through the century, 
 at first rather lonely and confining itself to small fields, but 
 gradually extending its field of operation and advancing vic- 
 toriously. And this is due to the fact that it was bound to 
 come into touch with the chief tendencies of the century, and 
 come to an understanding with them. How this was done we 
 can see if we survey rapidly the chief intellectual tendencies of 
 this century, with special reference to the principles of both 
 Pestalozzi and Herbart. 
 
 The eighteenth century left its successor a rich inheritance ; 
 that is, three great views of life : rationalism, classicism, and 
 romanticism. These three dominate the first half of our 
 century. What has become of them ? How do their educa- 
 tional representatives regard them ?
 
 252 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 1. Rationalism dies on account of its mediocrity, its shal- 
 lowness, its insipidity and its want of historic perception. It 
 believed it had discovered the principles and rules of religion, 
 the State, law, art and poetry, and with these it presumed to be 
 able to become the master of everything, of history and of 
 morals. But just when it had thought it had reached its goal, 
 it was conquered, and not by an outside foe, but by the 
 greatest of its sons, by Lessing and by Kant. The philosopher 
 of Konigsberg overcame it by destroying its metaphysical 
 sophisms ; and Fichte, in his witty but blunt essay " The life 
 and peculiar opinions of Fr. Nicolai," overcame the last repre- 
 sentative of rationalism. In 1811, when Nicolai died, the 
 leading world of thought had passed through this phase, which 
 he had defended with more courage than judgment. But it 
 was by no means dead ; since the whole crowd of mediocrity, 
 who found the philosophy of Kant too difficult, and the 
 theology of Schleiermacher too profound, paid homage to a 
 vulgar rationalism which flourished on the soil of politics in the 
 form of a vulgar liberalism. 
 
 Pestalozzi and Herbart also belonged to the period of ration- 
 alism ; but under the leadership of Kant they passed beyond it. 
 Both are related to Kant in a similar manner; for both obtained 
 from him that which had the greatest attraction to them as 
 educationalists, namely, the ethical foundations, and especially 
 that ethics which makes a determined stand against egoism, 
 eudaemonism, and utilitarianism. 
 
 2. The most successful opponents of rationalism, at the 
 beginning of this century, however, were Schiller and Goethe. 
 They, in conjunction with Fr. A. Wolf, the philologist, and 
 Wilhelm von Humboldt, the statesman and a lover both of 
 philology and of poetry, introduced a new movement, classicism, 
 a new renaissance of German intellectual life, also called the 
 new humanism. They believed they had found the ideal of 
 aesthetic culture in its most perfect form in Hellenism. It is 
 difficult for us to-day to realise what Greece and especially
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 253 
 
 Homer meant to these men. About the year 1800 this 
 classicism was the privilege of a few highly cultured people. 
 It was thoroughly aristocratic. It was only after W. von 
 Humboldt undertook the direction of the Prussian Education 
 Department, that classicism became a part of German in- 
 tellectual life, by becoming incorporated, first of all with the 
 University of Berlin, and then in principle with the "Gymnasien." 
 Humanity was the watchword of Herder ; and education for 
 humanity the aim of the New Humanism. Artists and poets 
 were to be the instructors of mankind, were to effect that each 
 human being should develop into a lovely individuality, into a 
 beautiful soul. In the second half of this century there arose a 
 formidable opponent of this classical idealism, an opponent 
 who tried to thrust it from our secondary schools, that is to 
 say, a REALISM, sprang up, growing stronger and stronger with 
 the development of the natural sciences, and the resurrection 
 of national life. The quarrel between the " Gymnasien " and 
 the " Realschulen " became at times very fierce. 
 
 What position do Herbart and Pestalozzi occupy with 
 regard to this movement ? Both are closely connected with it, 
 but each in a different way. Pestalozzi considers the aim of 
 education to be "the development and education of humanity 
 from its own centre." But he did not wish to limit this 
 development of the inner forces of human nature to individual 
 classes of society, but he wanted that even the poorest and 
 lowest should have a share in it. And so he becomes the 
 creator of the elementary schools. Herbart was not hostile to 
 this creation ; but his own education and his entire bringing 
 up drew him nearer to the education and instruction as it was 
 given in the humanistic Gymnasium. He was convinced of the 
 importance of Homer ; he wished, indeed, to place the Odyssey 
 at the beginning of the synthetic instruction of the Gymnasium. 
 His theory and practice belong to secondary education ; but 
 they are inspired by the same spirit that moved Pestalozzi. 
 
 It is for this reason that I said that both men supplement
 
 254 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 one another. It is to be regretted that the influence of Herbart 
 upon the organisation and the instruction of secondary schools 
 has been very small, while Pestalozzi's influence upon the lower 
 and middle schools has been very great. But the importance 
 of Herbart has become greater in the course of this century, 
 inasmuch as the Pestalozzian spirit protected the educational 
 movement against sterility and forced the educational institu- 
 tions to place themselves upon a scientific basis, that is to say, 
 to go back to ethical, psychological, and physiological pre- 
 suppositions. 
 
 3. Both men take up totally opposite positions with regard 
 to the third view of life, romanticism, which sprang up at the 
 beginning of this century, side by side with classicism. In the 
 year 1800 romanticism was the most modern of views, and 
 together with Kant and Goethe ruled over the intellectual 
 world for a very long time. Romanticism was dangerous to 
 mental life, partly on account of licentiousness of thought and 
 life, partly because it indicated an ominous step backwards. 
 Neither Pestalozzi nor Herbart was likely to be involved in 
 such dangers, especially as the romantic movement emphasised 
 the individualistic feature. 
 
 Rationalism also, it is true, endeavoured to free the in- 
 dividual from the bondage of faith, authority and morals, and 
 to direct him to his own judgment. The classical ideal of the 
 New Humanists was also individualistic, especially as this ideal 
 was at the same time aristocratic. In romanticism, however, 
 the right of individuality became extravagant and distorted. 
 The power of the individual, uncontrolled by custom and by 
 moral law, was to exhaust itself in the unrestrained freedom of 
 its own emotions and enjoyment, in a frivolous game with 
 everything that was great, noble and immovable in life. In 
 romanticism, people became cynical and aristocratic at the 
 same time. Here was a spirit, far removed from the earnest 
 and deep conception of life, in which Pestalozzi and Her- 
 bart found satisfaction. Both were filled with a feeling of
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 255 
 
 responsibility, such as the educator of a people has and must 
 have, and without which the educator easily b'ecomes a traitor 
 to the welfare of a people. 
 
 It is surely not unnecessary to dwell upon this at the end of 
 the century, especially if one notices that the commercial spirit 
 begins to invade the domain of education. We can still fight 
 against it, as the. spirit of Pestalozzi and of Herbart is still 
 alive ; and we shall be able to fight this enemy as long as the 
 memory of these men is kept green, and as long as their works 
 will be read. 
 
 Their vitality is proved by the fact that they were able to 
 maintain themselves throughout the century, while so many 
 others were transitory and fluctuating , it also speaks for the 
 susceptibility of those who devote themselves to the ideal 
 career of an educator. The pursuit and development of their 
 ideas is, without doubt, a happy omen for the coming century. 
 
 Men worked zealously to perfect the theory and practice of 
 education on the lines laid down by Herbart and Pestalozzi, 
 by specialising on special topics such as the psychology of 
 child life, physiology and hygiene, the religious and ethical 
 development, . the method of teaching the natural sciences, 
 without losing sight, however, of the great comprehensive 
 ideas. Everywhere we behold ardent and promising work. 
 
 More striking even than the advance made on the theoretical 
 and scientific territory of education, is the progress made in 
 those matters which belong to the external side of education. 
 If we compare the end of the century with the beginning we 
 notice a striking difference. What a contrast there is between 
 the school-buildings and the school-furniture of our own time, 
 and the plain and even unsuitable accommodations of the 
 earlier decades ! How much has the material and social 
 position of the teacher improved since the beginning of the 
 century ! What achievements have been made in the practice 
 of education, and how actively the work is being carried on ! 
 And yet, even here, in spite of all that has been achieved, there
 
 256 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 is no rest, no satisfaction. Here also we feel that we live in a 
 period of transition, that the best is still before us. The 
 educational movement takes great aims with it into the new 
 century, aims which have grown out of the various spheres of 
 popular instruction. Let us begin with the general principles, 
 and gradually ascend from them to the highest forms of the 
 organisation of instruction. 
 
 If we survey the educational activity of the nineteenth 
 century, we observe that the work is twofold, internal and 
 external. The internal work consists in perfecting the method 
 of education and instruction, to endeavour to make the results 
 correspond with the aim. The external work consists in per- 
 fecting the framework of education and instruction. The first 
 is the work of the educationalists and the teachers ; the second 
 that of the statesmen and the clergy. Upon the latter devolves 
 the care of the external organisation of the entire educational 
 system, while the former take care of the internal work of the 
 schools. But both, the external forms and the inner activity, 
 are closely related. Not that the spirit is dependent upon the 
 outer form. A great teacher can do good work even in a 
 poorly equipped school. But there can be no doubt that a 
 good school system, well provided with all that didactics and 
 hygiene require, assists the work of the teacher, so that it 
 removes difficulties and obstacles for the mass of the average 
 teachers, and creates normal conditions for their work. 
 
 On this account we meet with constant endeavours to solve 
 the problem of the organisation, the administration, the super- 
 vision and the equipment of schools. These problems concern, 
 of course, the statesmen in so far as they are questions of 
 public administration. And we find therefore that the political 
 parties concern themselves with them, without, however, con- 
 tributing much towards illuminating and solving these problems. 
 And "confusion becomes worse confounded," because the 
 quarrel between Church and State, which became so fierce in 
 the year 1870, has also affected educational questions.
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 257 
 
 The central point of the dispute is : To whom does the 
 school belong? To the family, to the community, to the 
 Church, or to the State ? All these are interested in the school. 
 The problem is : Can their various interests be united by a just 
 consideration of their various rights and duties ? 
 
 In Germany the problem was solved by adjudging the 
 schools to the State. The school is a " politicum " ; it must 
 educate citizens of the State. Therefore it must have com- 
 pulsory education, which goes back to the time of the 
 Reformation, but which, in Prussia for example, became 
 effective only in the year 1717. Compulsory education is 
 closely connected with compulsory military service and man- 
 hood suffrage. 
 
 Though educational matters have an individual foundation, 
 they are a part of the social whole ; and this becomes better, 
 the further and the deeper education extends. It is for this 
 reason that, according to German views, the State, which 
 embraces politically the social whole, is and must be master of 
 the schools. Educational matters, just like all other public 
 affairs, must have a central head, if they are to be carried on 
 systematically and if they are to flourish. The State is the 
 master of the schools, but not the tyrant ; wherever it is the 
 latter, it will do great harm to education. For the educational 
 work needs freedom for its life and for its activity, elbow-room 
 to give legitimate individual tendencies an opportunity to exist. 
 There is a danger that the master of the schools may try to get 
 too much power, may desire to become omnipotent, not because 
 he desires power for its own sake, but because he believes that, 
 by having it, he can give the children the best there is. In 
 order to meet this danger, that is, the danger lest bureaucracy 
 may become the controlling and the determining power, all the 
 others who are interested in the schools, that is, the family, the 
 community, the Church, must participate in the rights and 
 duties of the school. Wise decentralisation will moderate the 
 rigour of the central authority. The latter may organise, 
 s. M. L. 17
 
 258 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 supervise, see that the institutions fit into one another and 
 arouse and nurse forces ; but it cannot create these. That is 
 where its limits lie. It needs cooperation, and the organisation 
 of this has already been taken in hand. Thus, not the Empire, 
 but the individual states must have the care of the education 
 
 
 
 and instruction. This is the case in Switzerland and in the 
 United States of America. And in this way we shall obtain 
 individuality and rivalry which are a guarantee for progress. 
 But in the separate states, which may be considered as centres 
 of the inner organisation and as such justify their existence, 
 centralisation and decentralisation may be united in the right 
 manner. 
 
 1. The family has the first claim upon education and 
 instruction. The children are its dearest possession. Its 
 highest and noblest task is their education. The success or 
 failure of the education affects the family before all others. 
 The family, therefore, has the first claim to pronounce what the 
 organisation of the education and instruction of its children is 
 to be. But the children gradually pass beyond the family ; 
 they become independent and take part in the public work of 
 the community and the State. The community and the State, 
 therefore, also have definite claims. For the work of civilisation 
 flourishes only when the new generation obtains a suitable pre- 
 paration for the various branches of the work. In this way 
 education and instruction owe their origin to the necessities of 
 the family, and yet, at the same time, are matters of public 
 concern. In order that the family may have its share in the 
 organisation, it must have representatives on the local authorities, 
 which are the lowest of the educational bodies, and take charge 
 of the affairs of the schools in the separate communities, villages 
 and towns. 
 
 2. The communities, considered as a collection of families, 
 organise the school-boards. Their jurisdiction extends over the 
 school-buildings and their equipment, the selection and payment 
 of the teachers, the supervision and care of the children, &c.
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 259 
 
 3. To the State belongs the superintendence of the schools. 
 For this purpose it appoints various authorities : 
 
 1. The district authority. 
 
 2. The provincial board of instruction. 
 
 3. The department of public instruction. 
 
 Besides these there are the various school-synods, the corporate 
 representation of the families and laymen who are especially 
 interested in education. In conjunction with these the State 
 regulates the exact cooperation of all the various factors 
 concerned in the school-system, and thereby secures unity. 
 Similarly the State regulates the finances and sees that each 
 community raises a proportionate amount of the necessary 
 means. 
 
 4. The Church gives up all special claims to the super- 
 intendence of the schools, except the supervision of the 
 religious instruction. But even in this the independence of 
 the school system of the State does not permit a direct inter- 
 ference ; the Church must act indirectly through the school 
 authority. The Church can have its share in the administration 
 of the schools through the local authorities, to which clergymen 
 can be elected. 
 
 I have given here the chief outlines to show how centralisa- 
 tion and decentralisation must go on jointly, if anything effective 
 is to be achieved. On the one hand we find freedom of move- 
 ment and independent cooperation on the part of families and 
 communities ; on the other hand, the organisation of the State 
 necessary for holding the various forces together, and for seeing 
 that these are exercised properly. 
 
 In Germany we have not yet reached such a just adjust- 
 ment ; for although education has been freed from the trammels 
 of the Church, it has, on the other hand, been enslaved by the 
 State. The latter regulates school affairs solely by its own 
 authority. In the case of elementary education Prussia has 
 done this twice in the course of the century : in 1854 by 
 the "Prussian Regulations," and in 1872 by the "General 
 
 172
 
 260 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 Provisions." Here it is remarkable to observe how the school 
 becomes dependent upon political tendencies. The " Regula- 
 tions" of 1854 breathe a reactionary conservative spirit, which 
 gained the upper hand after the Napoleonic wars, when the 
 Government feared independent thought, and was especially 
 afraid of the German universities. After the assassination of 
 Kotzebue by a student, after the revolutions of 1830 and of 
 1848, it was thought that the safety of the State could only be 
 maintained by repressing the desire for education in the lower 
 classes of society. These " Regulations " were abolished in 
 1872 by a Liberal administration, which, in its struggle with 
 the Catholic Church, wished to set free the forces of culture. 
 The "General Provisions" of 1872 are still in force; they have 
 been the cause of much progress in the system of elementary 
 education and in the training of teachers, and also in the better 
 equipment of the schools and by a freer conception of educa- 
 tional questions. They have cleared the way for progressive 
 popular education, and have enabled even the lowest in the 
 nation to have a modest share in the achievements of science 
 and art. 
 
 The secondary schools of Germany, though further removed 
 from the influence of politics than the elementary schools, were 
 on the other hand influenced by theology and philology, the 
 scientific tendencies at the time in being. As the teachers 
 came chiefly from the universities, it is natural that they 
 introduced in the higher schools those conceptions which they 
 had gained at the universities. Now our universities during 
 the first half of the century were entirely under the influence of 
 the New Humanism. Lessing, Winckelmann, Schiller, Goethe, 
 Fr. A. Wolff and Wilh. von Humboldt had rejuvenated the 
 ancient world. The study of Greek spread, and Greek became 
 of equal value with Latin. Greek and Latin formed the centre 
 of the instruction given in the Gymnasium. German, mathe- 
 matics and the natural sciences were thrust in the background. 
 The Gymnasium was the highest and the most aristocratic of
 
 XIIL] Development of Educational Ideas. 261 
 
 the schools. Whoever obtained the leaving certificate of this 
 school found admission to the universities, and thereby to all 
 the highest professions. This condition of affairs could only 
 last while science on the one hand and industry and commerce 
 on the other were still undeveloped. As these gained in 
 strength it became noticeable that there was no school in 
 which preparation for these branches of work could be found. 
 The Gymnasium with its classical curriculum was a stranger to 
 practical life : and its course of instruction, extending over 
 12 years, was too long and loaded with a freight which was 
 bound to be considered useless ballast by the future merchant. 
 In the course of the nineteenth century therefore a new kind 
 of school (whose beginning dates back to the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century) asserts itself side by side with the Gym- 
 nasium, that is the Realschule. It contains a modern course of 
 instruction : English, French, the natural sciences, mathematics, 
 geography, drawing, and emphasises especially the mother- 
 tongue. Latin was added to it, so that the school might count 
 as a preparatory school for the second class of the civil service. 
 This was the origin of the Realschulen in 1859, which received 
 the name Realgymnasium in 1882. They also received the 
 right of preparing their students for the universities in modern 
 languages, in mathematics, and in natural science. And so 
 they became competitors of the Gymnasium, which hitherto 
 had the sole right of preparing for the university. A third kind 
 of secondary school arose in 1882, the Upper Realschule with 
 a course of instruction extending over nine years ; and this 
 school also strove to obtain the right, not only of preparing its 
 pupils for the technical colleges, but also for the universities. 
 A long and fierce struggle ensued, lasting until the present 
 time, the struggle between the Humanists and the Realists, the 
 Gymnasium and the Realschule. A school conference which 
 met in the Prussian " Ministerium " in December 1892 was to 
 end this struggle. But no agreement could be arrived at, 
 although the German Emperor took part in the discussion with
 
 262 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 characteristic impetuosity. Last May a new conference was 
 held in Berlin, and it is believed that the solution of the difficulty 
 is imminent. The solution has become easier, because the 
 technical colleges have obtained the right of conferring the 
 doctor's degree and thus have become the equals of the 
 universities. 
 
 Thus we find the lower, middle, and upper schools very 
 active during the nineteenth century. New kinds of schools 
 sprang up, partly owing to the influence of the middle classes, 
 partly through the organising activity of the State which pro- 
 vided for the requirements of the military authorities as well as 
 the wishes of the Church. This zeal to provide the children 
 with all sorts of knowledge soon raised tjie question : Will the 
 mental health of the children not be impaired? A German 
 doctor raised this question as early as 1836, and even at the 
 present time we are still troubled by it. It was right that such a 
 question should have been raised in Germany; for the Germans 
 have always paid too much attention to the development of the 
 mental forces, and have paid too little consideration to the 
 physical training. Games of various kinds have been known in 
 Germany, but they had not entered the national spirit as much 
 as in England, for example. The schools were satisfied with 
 two hours' gymnastic exercise per week. This was thought 
 sufficient to' counterbalance the mental exertions ; but as a 
 matter of fact was not nearly enough. The Gymnasium 
 especially earned the reproach of overtaxing the children 
 mentally. The old Gymnasium was satisfied with Latin and 
 Greek ; the new tried to satisfy modern requirements by 
 emphasising the teaching of the mother-tongue, and adding 
 French, English, and natural science. That is to say, the 
 child was expected to learn four foreign languages between its 
 tenth and its eighteenth year, in addition to learning its own 
 native tongue. Further, all the other branches of knowledge 
 increased their demands, especially the natural sciences and 
 mathematics, and the school inspectors took good care that
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 263 
 
 these claims were not neglected. It is therefore not astonishing 
 that over and over again men, especially medical men, have 
 called attention to the fact that it was useless to overstrain the 
 mental forces at the expense of the bodily. Two kinds of 
 efforts have been made to remedy this defect: (i) home-work 
 has been cut down as much as possible ; (2) more physical 
 exercise has been introduced, such as games, rowing, excur- 
 sions, &c. : without however engendering the danger of sport, 
 which consists in withdrawing the mind from all higher aims 
 and interests. The principle has not been lost sight of, that 
 though the body must be made a capable instrument, ready 
 for use at any time, nevertheless its training must never 
 become -the dominating point of view for education, lest the 
 intellectual interests shall be sacrificed. 
 
 What has been said so far refers chiefly to boys' schools. 
 The girls' schools show many differences. They followed their 
 own course ; they developed out of their own strength ; they 
 have been protected by the State, though not directly assisted 
 by it. The State requires officials ; therefore it concerns itself 
 with the education of the boys and not with that of the girls. 
 The world of woman seemed to lie quite beyond the sphere of 
 its activity ; it concerned itself with it only with regard to 
 elementary education. Everything besides that was left to 
 private enterprise. All girls come within the Act of compulsory 
 education ; that is, they must go to school for eight years ; but 
 nothing more. Since the elementary education did not appear 
 sufficient for the educated families, private schools for girls had 
 to be started. The necessity for this is shewn by the remark of 
 a German educator, who wrote thus in 1786 : " If an inhabitant 
 of the moon should visit our planet, the result of his observa- 
 tions would be something like this : ' As to the feminine sex, 
 especially that of the better classes, it seems as if the State 
 cared little, whether they grew up into human beings or into 
 monkeys.' " 
 
 The beginning of the nineteenth century, the period of deep
 
 264 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 national decline, brought about a change in this respect also. 
 The death of the noble Queen Louise in 1810 was felt as a 
 deep national misfortune. The sorrow that was felt called 
 forth the idea of providing for the better education of the girls 
 of the upper classes, as a memorial to her. After the wars the 
 towns began to found High Schools for girls, beginning in the 
 east of North Germany, and gradually extending to the west 
 and the south. Some private schools arose in addition to 
 these and became the property of the towns in the course of 
 time. In 1872 the first conference of men and women teachers 
 at High Schools for Girls met at Weimar. The conclusions of 
 this conference determined the future development of the 
 Girls' High Schools, and Prussia regulated it in 1894 by an 
 Act. 
 
 A further development of the system of girls' education 
 came about in 1870, when a new kind of school was started, 
 the middle school for girls, an intermediate school between the 
 elementary and the High School. Up to that time the middle 
 classes had no opportunity of giving their girls a suitable 
 education, and this school therefore filled a vacant space. 
 
 Finally a fourth institution was added, the Girls' Gymnasium, 
 an institution parallel to that of the boys. Its task is to 
 prepare girls for the universities. The first Girls' Gymnasium 
 was opened in 1893, and others soon followed. This kind of 
 school owes its origin to the progressive woman's movement. 
 In this respect also Germany has lagged behind ; but much 
 has been achieved in the last decades of the nineteenth 
 century. All German universities, except one, admit women 
 to their lectures; all confer the doctor's degree upon them, 
 provided they fulfil the regular conditions. One of these con- 
 ditions is the pursuance of a course of studies at a university 
 lasting at least three years, and this involves the leaving certi- 
 ficate from a gymnasium. Since the regular Gymnasium did 
 not admit girls, there was nothing left, except to found similar 
 schools for girls, in order to open the university to them. This
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 265 
 
 was accomplished by adding to the Girls' High Schools a four 
 years' course, which included Latin, Greek and mathematics. 
 
 Then also the idea of co-education took root, probably 
 from the example of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland 
 and the United States. Co-education had proved a success in 
 the elementary schools and a few of the Realschulen in 
 Oldenburg and in Baden. Why then should this system not 
 be transferred to the higher schools and continued in the 
 universities ? We are now eagerly investigating the reasons for 
 and against this, and are consulting the experience of other 
 countries which have tried the experiment. 
 
 Thus we see there is great activity in all branches of 
 education. The labour of the nineteenth century has produced 
 much progress and has even set the milestones marking out 
 the road of future development. In Germany we firmly believe 
 that the whole educational system requires the systematising 
 help of the State, in order that the best may be produced. If it 
 is true that the work of civilisation is determined by the educa- 
 tion and instruction given in a nation, then the nation must 
 not leave the education of the forthcoming generation to 
 accidents, nor to free competition, in which commercial con- 
 siderations play only too frequently too large a part. No ! the 
 State must remove it from economic competition, and place it 
 upon a higher level. The State, free from external cares and 
 anxieties, alone can devote itself to the care of the intellectual 
 interests of the rising generation. Our children have a right to 
 demand nothing less than the best schools ; and since the State 
 exists to promote the intellectual welfare of the nation, it must 
 see that the best schools possible shall be provided, no matter 
 by whom ; be it by the State itself or by the community or by 
 private enterprise. Its institutions must be models in every 
 respect, patterns for others. Otherwise there is no reason for 
 their existence. It is on this account that the German State 
 has made laws, which forbid anyone to teach, unless he has 
 proved by an examination, held by the State, that he is
 
 266 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 qualified to teach. On this account also, it has left exact 
 instructions for the building, equipment, &c. of schools, with- 
 out however restricting individual endeavours. 
 
 Thus our educational work presents a complete system in 
 three sections, preceded by the Kindergarten : (i) for the lower, 
 (2) for the middle, (3) for the upper classes. 
 
 The Kindergarten gives the first intellectual and physical 
 instruction, especially the popular Kindergarten, which assists 
 those parents whose work in the factories prevents them from 
 educating their children. At the age of six the children enter 
 school. Those of the lower classes remain eight years, those 
 of the middle classes ten years, and those of the upper classes 
 twelve years, before they proceed to a technical or a pro- 
 fessional school. 
 
 1. The children of the working classes leave school at the 
 age of 14, after they have been confirmed. After leaving the 
 elementary school they receive instruction for at least four 
 hours a week in an evening continuation school or a technical 
 school ; after that the army takes charge of them for two or 
 three years and puts the finishing touch upon their mental and 
 physical formation. 
 
 2. The children of the middle classes, especially those of 
 the towns, go to the elementary schools for three or four years, 
 then to a Realschule for six or seven years, and thence into the 
 intermediate technical institutions, such as the polytechnics, the 
 agricultural colleges, schools of mines and forestry, commercial 
 schools, &c. After that they enter the army for one year. 
 
 3. The children of the upper classes also attend the ele- 
 mentary schools for three or four years, and after that one of 
 the higher schools for nine years, that is, the Gymnasium, or 
 the Real-Gymnasium, or the Ober-Realschule. At the com- 
 pletion of the instruction given in one of these they enter the 
 army for one year, and at the same time one of the higher 
 professional institutions, either the higher technical colleges or 
 the university.
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 267 
 
 The German children receive a continuous education from 
 their sixth year until they enter a trade or a profession. In a 
 few States this course is not quite complete for the children 
 of the lower classes ; but the remedy for this is only a question 
 of time. This course of continuous education has its origin in 
 the idea that the work of civilisation must have workers well 
 trained for whatever part of the work they take up : science, 
 art, commerce, industry or agriculture. The training for these 
 branches is obtained in the technical or professional institutions. 
 But these latter presuppose a sound liberal education, an edu- 
 cation which shows the interdependence of human work, 
 teaches a clear understanding of the manifold branches of 
 human activity, and explains the homogeneousness of the 
 national work. This fundamental work is done in the educa- 
 tive schools which precede the technical schools. The former 
 are the lower, the latter the upper floors of a building. The 
 value of the German system lies in the fact that it insists that 
 the foundation of the entire education shall not be too narrow, 
 and that the specialisation for the practical studies shall not be 
 begun too soon. This latter kind of education may at times 
 produce a virtuoso, but it only too frequently produces dull, 
 narrow-minded men, who are not able to see further than the 
 limits of their own special work. There is a danger in tech- 
 nical education as such. This danger is met by a thorough 
 liberal education, which points out connections, and emphasises 
 the purely human elements, so that the individual does not 
 become engrossed in the narrow sphere of his calling. And the 
 more the commercial rivalry of the nations favours the technical 
 schools, the greater is the necessity of seeing that the " educa- 
 tive " school maintains its position, especially for the sake of 
 the technical schools. The "educative" schools give a general 
 education ; the technical schools prepare only for a profession, 
 or perhaps only for one branch of one. The core of the 
 curriculum of every " educative " school is : Religion, the 
 Mother-Tongue and History. To these are added foreign
 
 268 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 tongues, Geography, Natural Science, and Mathematics ac- 
 cording to the necessity of each kind of school. 
 
 The question as to the value of Latin and Greek becomes 
 more and more prominent as we approach the end of the 
 nineteenth century. Earlier in the century people had no 
 doubts about the value of the classical languages. But as the 
 feeling of nationality becomes stronger and as the influence of 
 the natural sciences increases, their superiority becomes more 
 and more a question of dispute. Some say they are dead ; 
 others, that they have no place in the curriculum of the schools ; 
 others again, that they contain unperishable ideals of culture, 
 which we cannot do without. Who is to decide? There is 
 really no necessity of deciding peremptorily ; we need merely 
 recognise the fact that our modern world contains two ideals of 
 culture. The one is based upon the modern conception of 
 culture, the other has its roots in the ancient world. Both 
 ideals still flourish, though the latter is a little faded as com- 
 pared with former times. Each has its own school, the 
 Gymnasium and the Upper Realschule, and between the two 
 the Realgymnasium stands as a sort of compromise. The 
 course of instruction in each extends exactly over the same 
 number of years ; all three have exactly the same privileges, 
 and the three are therefore equal in value. The parents have 
 the choice ; they can send their children to whichever school 
 they think best for the future career of the child. The 
 Gymnasium will keep alive as long as the education it gives 
 has sufficient power of attraction. It will die when it loses this 
 power, and no one will be able to revive it. At the present 
 time more than a thousand threads link us to the ancient 
 world, and it would be presumptuous to cut these at once. 
 One section of our people must carefully preserve the great 
 historical continuity of our culture. But only one part of the 
 strength of the nation is required for this task. Another section 
 may be steeped in modern ideas, and gain strength and skill 
 for the duties of modern life from them. In this way the old
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 269 
 
 quarrel between Humanism and Realism will become a friendly 
 rivalry, since both enjoy the same freedom, the same light and 
 the same air. Let the higher schools show what strength they 
 can give to the leading section of the nation ! That will finally 
 decide where we shall find the greatest vitality, which of the 
 three kinds of schools will triumph. Again and again we find 
 investigations carried on, which are to prove how well Greek 
 and Latin are suited for formal education and for the develop- 
 ment of character. But the very fact that the greatest amount 
 of scholarship and ingenuity is needed to show it, is a proof 
 that the faith in classical antiquity as an educational instru- 
 ment is not as strong as formerly, and that the authority of 
 the German universities is the main support of these studies. 
 This authority has not been shaken. The 21 universities of 
 the German Empire with their 35,000 students form the summit 
 of the national educational system. They are (to change the 
 metaphor) the heart of scholarship, of intellectual life and of 
 free progress. 
 
 They owe their origin to the Church, and yet they were the 
 first of all educational institutions to free themselves from the 
 tutelage of the Church, and to recognise as highest criterion, 
 not an outside authority, but the striving after scientific truth. 
 Neither the Church nor the State must interfere with this 
 endeavour. It is this that makes them the bulwark of in- 
 tellectual liberty, and the sanctuaries of freedom of speech. 
 Even the State, to whom the universities belong, does not 
 interfere with them. Though the State directs and regulates 
 the administration and the finances of the universities, it yet 
 leaves them a large measure of freedom in external matters, 
 and takes good care not to interfere with the internal manage- 
 ment of science, art and philosophy. With the solicitude of 
 the State, which takes the greatest pride in its care of its 
 universities, and its guarantee of freedom of teaching and of 
 learning, the universities have steadily developed. Freedom of 
 learning applies, of course, to the students and is as important
 
 270 Education in tlie Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 as freedom of teaching. The freedom of learning corresponds 
 to that of teaching. The student chooses his subjects of study 
 and his teachers, and he follows them just as much as he 
 wishes and thinks good. The university is to train him in 
 intellectual independence. He therefore selects his course of 
 study, changes it perhaps with more experience and riper 
 judgment ; but it is always he who decides and who follows his 
 studies as he feels inclined. Such a procedure does not 
 exclude the possibility of making mistakes ; but this is a lesser 
 danger than the restriction of intellectual dependence. As a 
 German professor says : " We cannot estimate highly enough 
 the advantage accruing from the tendency of our universities, 
 in their innermost nature, toward the complete emartfcipation of 
 a man's spirit. In the preliminary school authority rules the 
 entire man, as it must of necessity do ; and later the practice 
 of a profession and with it authority again, claims considerable 
 portions of our life. But every cultured man on German soil 
 must and shall have at least one period in his life when the 
 organs of authority, when even nation, State and teacher 
 demand of him as the highest of all commandments, that he 
 shall be spiritually free." The German universities have thus 
 obtained a firmer and securer position in the educational 
 system in the course of the nineteenth century. They have 
 also extended their work with the progress of knowledge, and 
 have differentiated the separate branches of knowledge more 
 and more. 
 
 Only one branch of knowledge has been neglected and is 
 still waiting to receive attention, namely Education. 
 
 Though at most of the German universities either professors 
 of Philosophy or professors of Theology give lectures on the 
 subject of Education, and especially the historical part of it, it 
 is done only irregularly and is without influence upon the 
 practice in schools. Only a very few universities have a special 
 chair for Education, and only one a " pedagogic seminary " 
 together with a practising school for its students.
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 271 
 
 This is a remarkable fact. For there can be no doubt that 
 a nation cannot afford to be indifferent as to the education of 
 the rising generation. The nation's destiny depends upon it, 
 its intelligence and its capacity. The future of the rising 
 generation must therefore not be left to accident ; a plan for 
 their education must be drawn up. This plan must rest upon 
 principles, that is, must have a scientific basis, if it is to be 
 carried out uniformly and resolutely, and if it is to produce 
 res'ults. The thoughts about education and instruction must 
 be worked out and elucidated, and their conclusions must be 
 carefully considered. 
 
 Education, as much as anything else, must therefore receive 
 careful and scientific attention, if it is to succeed. Where else 
 are they to receive this attention except at the universities? 
 There where Ethics, where Psychology, Sociology and Hygiene 
 are studied in every detail, that is the place where the science 
 of education must be elaborated. 
 
 This presupposes, of course, that the arrangements at the 
 university for the study of education are not merely for theoretic 
 work but also for practical work. For it is impossible to speak 
 of a theory independent of its practice. That would be of 
 little value for education. Only that theory is valuable to it, 
 which has found its way into practice and still finds it every 
 day. Only the science which can influence life possesses 
 vitality. Only that education is valuable and important, which 
 can penetrate into the practice of our schools. And in order 
 to be able to do this it must not get too far away from the 
 schools. It loses in strength and effectiveness just in the 
 proportion in which it withdraws itself from practice. In this 
 respect it is exactly in the position of Political Economy. 
 The theories of this science will be useless if they do not 
 embrace the present economic life of the nation and unless it 
 has an exact knowledge of all its details. Even the educational 
 theory that tries to get into touch with practice is insufficient. 
 It must be in constant co-operation with it, if it is to effect
 
 272 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. 
 
 anything, and if it is to improve the practice. Therefore the 
 university must not only provide for the theoretic study of 
 education, but also for the practical, so that there may be a 
 constant interchange between theory and practice, without 
 which there can be no living science of education. 
 
 We therefore demand for the completion of our universities, 
 chairs for education together with "pedagogic seminars" and 
 practising schools. 
 
 That will be the one head of our educational institutions. 
 It will take charge of the development of the science of educa- 
 tion. It will be the driving power of mental progress, such as 
 can only come from our universities. 
 
 The other head is the department for public instruction. 
 It sums up all the organisations which look after the adminis- 
 tration of educational matters. At the university we have the 
 central place for scientific educational progress, in the " de- 
 partment " an epitome of all the educational institutions that 
 convey educational progress into the life and work of our 
 schools. 
 
 It is, of course, self-evident that the two heads do not 
 oppose, but rather support one another. The department for 
 public instruction, of which even the university is a part, takes 
 the lead in external matters. But it takes its intellectual equip- 
 ment from the educational works of the universities. And it is 
 bound to take it from thence, because it concerns itself only 
 with acts and minutes, and not with the science. The latter is 
 the business of the university, since it concerns itself with 
 research. The universities should also train the men whom 
 the administrative department of education and our schools 
 require. In this way the university undertakes great and 
 important tasks ; the organisation of them, however, is carried 
 out by the department, since that is not a matter of research 
 but one of performance. 
 
 Such co-operation between the educational section of the 
 university and the department for public instruction would be
 
 XIII.] Development of Educational Ideas. 273 
 
 the best means of securing a sound foundation for the educa- 
 tional work of the nation. In Germany the development of 
 things points to this solution. The universities have made a 
 beginning in taking up educational tasks as part of their work, 
 and the idea of separating the department of public instruction 
 and of making the section for instruction independent is gaining 
 more and more ground. Thus we have hopes of obtaining in 
 this branch of knowledge also an organisation which shall be 
 adequate to the essence of the matter and shall stand for 
 progress. 
 
 Freedom is a great and a good thing ; but it must not end 
 in chaos. Where several forces are active in the same field, 
 the interest of the work and progress as a whole requires that 
 there should be some restrictions as to freedom of motion. This 
 will in no wise damage the inner independence. The German 
 workman, for example, is subjected to social legislation which 
 he helps to construct. But this has in no wise restrained his 
 political and religious thought. He is as free as any other 
 inhabitant of the world. But in respect of old age, sickness 
 and accident he .possesses organisations which keep off misery, 
 and in this he has the advantage over all those who have no 
 such State organisations. The educational system of Germany 
 is organised similarly without touching the inner freedom of 
 the individual. He is only compelled to subject himself to 
 definite forms with respect to external movement, which is 
 required by the interest of all. The problem of inner freedom 
 and external constraint is therefore solved by an organisation 
 which is able to combine the necessary constraint of centralisa- 
 tion with the necessary freedom of decentralisation. 
 
 The department for public instruction sums up the best 
 means of transmitting the intellectual goods to the rising 
 generation without interruption, and of increasing the strength 
 of a people. The highest endeavours for increasing and 
 perfecting the intellectual treasures of a nation meet in the 
 university. 
 
 s. M. i.. 18
 
 274 Education in the Nineteenth Century. [CHAP. XIII. 
 
 These are the two great points on which the intellectual 
 progress and mental culture in Germany hinge. Other countries 
 try other ways of doing justice to their ideals of culture. But 
 this is not a separating but a connecting element in the work 
 of civilisation. The separating element lies in politics and 
 in economics. That is where the interests of the nations 
 collide, and whence conflicts threaten to arise. The con- 
 necting element is to be found in the intellectual interests, the 
 purely human, which are common to all nations. Here also 
 rivalry is to be found, but a friendly one. Each one tries to 
 learn from the other ; each tries to understand and to appreciate 
 the work of the other. And this is the way in which I have 
 endeavoured to interpret our aspirations and our attainments 
 in education during the nineteenth century ; that is to say, in 
 order that I might challenge a comparison. Such a comparison 
 will show considerable agreement, especially in the educational 
 work. Naturally ; because ethics, psychology and hygiene are 
 not confined by political boundaries, but step beyond them. 
 But we shall find profound differences in the organisation of 
 the educational work, in the outer frame within which this 
 work is contained. For these differences are closely connected 
 with the historical development of a nation, the peculiarities of 
 a country, and the financial means which are at its disposal. 
 
 Education has a cosmopolitan character in this way : Its 
 roots go deep into the peculiar soil of its native land ; but it 
 tries to keep within its view the educational work of all the 
 civilised countries, in order to preserve the width and height of 
 its point of view, and so that it shall not sink into narrow- 
 mindedness and into exaggeration. 
 
 That is where the best of all nations meet. This is a 
 consolation in the midst of political discord and economic 
 struggles, and a hopeful prospect for the future. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: I'RINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
 
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