:printed from the Proceedings of the National Educational Association, 1901] 
 
 UNIVERSITY of ILLINOIS, 
 
 LlijliAKf 
 
 OP the 
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS IN ENGLAND 
 
 CLOUDESLEY S. H. BRERETON, MELTON CONSTABLE, ENGLAND 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 My first duty must be — and it is a very pleasant duty — to thank you 
 most heartily for the great honor you have conferred upon me in asking me 
 
 over to America to lecture to you on English education. I little thought a 
 
 year ago, when I had the privilege of studying and appraising your excel- 
 lent educational section at the Paris Exhibition, I should so soon have the 
 
 opportunity of seeing on the spot the actual working of your schools and 
 
 of meeting face to face the pick and flower of those whoiiave built up, or 
 are building up, this magnificent and unparalleled system of national 
 education. The most casual observer cannot fail to be struck by the 
 intense and fervent belief of American democracy in its schools, which is 
 only to be matched by the fervent belfef of the schools in American 
 
 democracy. Such a happy conjunction between the two seems fraught 
 with limitless possibilities. Every year the schools grow richer as more 
 money and thought are poured into them. Every year they turn out a 
 higher and more efficient type of citizens, ready, when their time of giving 
 comes, to give as freely as they themselves have received. Believe me, 
 deeply as I value the honor of being invited over here to speak on the 
 problems of English education, I am still more grateful to you for giving 
 me the chance of gaining some insight into your own. 
 
 No doubt, in part, some of this immense and rapid progress is due to 
 the fact that you were able to begin, so to say, at the beginning, untram- 
 meled by the excessive top hamper with which all countries of an older 
 civilization are encumbered. I do not know how often, in seeing the ease 
 and rapidity with which you have solved, or are solving, the various 
 educational problems which confront you, I have experienced a regret 
 that the age of miracles is past and that we, as a nation, cannot be 
 re-created and born again, so that we too might start with a blank sheet, 
 or tabula rasa so to say, on which we might erect a brand-new system of 
 national education. And yet a moment’s reflection has always convinced 
 me that even the worst and most antiquated of our traditions, by which 
 we are at times so sore let and hindered, are not without their uses. In 
 fact, the problem is to modify rather than to abolish them. The curious 
 habits and customs, the various modes of belief, the conception and ways 
 of looking at things which have impressed themselves so strorgly on 
 English education, are not mere scaffolding by which we have been able 
 to raise up, tier by tier, the mighty structure of national life, but are verily 
 and indeed part and parcel of ?/ that structure, reaching down and extend- 
 ing to its very foundation and base, so that their complete removal, if it 
 
 151 
 
1 5 2 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION ^ [General 
 
 x; ~ 
 
 were possible, would be a distinct loss of certain elemental things essen- 
 tially national, and their radical excision would be a mutilation of part 
 of those forces which make the English body politic what it is, and not 
 something else. 
 
 If you agree with this view, I think you will readily admit that national 
 education is not, as the mechanical-minded theorist! of the eighteenth 
 century imagined, a sort of machine you could clap on to this or that 
 nation, whether English or French, European or Asiatic, in the sure and 
 certain expectation of turning out exactly the same finished article, true 
 in every detail to pattern and specification, a kind of education made 
 automaton, a great monstrosity, if it really existed, like that other figment 
 of the eighteenth century, the economic man, so dear to early writers of 
 political economy. If the spirit of the nineteenth century, which has just 
 passed away, had one message for us, it was to substitute for this mechan- 
 ical theory that of evolution ; to dethrone the belief in cataclysms and 
 sudden changes, in favor of the view of sure but certain processes; to restate 
 the problem of progress in terms of living growth instead of artificial 
 manufacture. It denied that the child is a mere lump of clay to be puddled 
 and molded into some conventional type, as tho, forsooth, the Lord God 
 had not already breathed into it a soul and a personality. On the con- 
 trary, it asserted that it is the bounden duty of the teacher to respect the 
 child’s individuality — a practice which you, to your eternal honor, have 
 more than any other nation held to and maintained. It no less vigorously 
 affirmed that it is the bounden duty of the statesman, in whatever reform 
 he may undertake, to respect the genius and individuality of his nation. 
 
 For nations, as I consider them, are not mere undisciplined aggregates 
 of competing individuals, but organized social wholes, to whom national 
 education bears the same relationship as the flower to the parent plant. 
 If I had to give a definition of national education, I would define it as 
 the outcome, half conscious, half unconscious, of the desire of the more 
 thoughtful members of a nation to hand down to the rising generation 
 the experience, ethical, intellectual, and practical, of the race, in order that 
 they may continue to develop the nation on its own line, and realize more 
 fully and perfectly the ideals, whether existing or naissant, in their own hearts. 
 
 They desire, it is true, to render their sons more efficient for the battle 
 of life, yet, knowing that man cannot live by bread alone, they are anxious 
 to see instilled into those that come after them those moral standards and 
 aims which they believe to be the most precious heritage they have 
 received from their forefathers; which form, so to say, the very bed rock 
 of national character and temperament, and enable a nation on the morrow 
 of some crushing reverse or defeat to pull itself together and go on. In 
 a word, the school should be the microcosm of all that is best in the 
 national life and ideals, and its further progress largely depends on its 
 becoming more and more the mirror of these high hopes and aspirations. 
 
 But perhaps someone will say : This theory may square very well with 
 
iA P‘ 02\\.. c * - .'-vw 'fe j^s-xXjCx. 
 
 SessionsJ 
 
 EDUCATIONAL CRISIS IN ENGLAND 
 
 1 53 
 
 European conditions, but our American schools are none the less one of 
 the most efficient machines the world has ever known for. converting into 
 American citizens the countless children of the strangers that are within 
 our gates. It is quite true that the American schools do literally help to 
 transform the child of the newcomer into an American citizen, and it is 
 indeed one of the chief glories of the American schools that they are able 
 to effect such a conversion as deep and thoro as any other conversion, 
 religious or otherwise. 
 
 But such a fact is not against my theory. On the contrary, it is a 
 striking proof of how a nation is really a social whole, which demands, in 
 the name of national unity, the assimilation of the individual of the 
 national type. It emphasizes the vigor and genius of the American 
 national character that it is able so thoroly to leaven, permeate, and trans- 
 form these foreign elements. It illustrates incidentally the fact that 
 American education must proceed along the lines of American ideals, 
 which is only what I have been urging in reference to England. 
 
 But I would not have you think for a moment that I wish to see a 
 Chinese wall thrown around a nation or a nation’s schools, in order to 
 shut out and exclude all foreign influences. On the contrary, I am most 
 anxious that in education, as in commerce, we should maintain the policy 
 of the open door. Never in the history of the world, as far as one can 
 judge, have the nations, and especially the English nation, been under a 
 deeper obligation than at present to learn and copy from one another what 
 is best. Besides, education in its highest sense is the raising and uplift- 
 ing, not only of each of the several nations, but of all humanity; as such 
 it cannot be shut up in water-tight compartments or separated by impass- 
 able boundaries. What I do contend for is this, that we cannot profit- 
 ably copy the methods of other countries till we have got a clear idea of 
 the condition and genesis of our own education. In other words, we 
 must first be able to state the problem and appreciate its main factors 
 before we can say whether this or that solution, however excellent it may 
 be on abstract lines, however well it has worked in other countries, is 
 really applicable in our case. 
 
 But this seems to me to be the place to mention another factor which 
 appears to me second in importance only to that of national character in 
 considering the problem of national education. Nations are not only 
 divided by what they have inherited from the past ; they are also differ- 
 entiated by the diversity of their destinies. To understand the problem 
 of national education we must not only ask from what the nation has 
 come, we must also inquire whither it is going. For the school is not 
 only the trustee of the past ; it must also take thought for the future. 
 Now, it seems to me that the problems with which every nation has 
 to deal tend to group themselves around some central problem, which, 
 in its turn, gives its own particular hue and color to the others. Let me 
 
 y 10^*5 
 
i54 
 
 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 [General 
 
 come at once to concrete instances to show what I mean. Anyone con- 
 versant with French life will, I believe, readily admit that the funda- 
 mental problem in France is the religious problem. In fact, you cannot 
 scratch, or even touch, the surface of any other problem without at once 
 coming in contact with some of its seemingly endless ramifications. In 
 Germany it will probably be readily admitted that the central problem 
 is the reconstruction of society. Here in America, if a passing visitor 
 » may venture on an opinion, the problem with which you have to deal is 
 that of the adjustment of the relation of capital and labor; while in Eng- 
 land, it seems to me, the coming problem, if it has not come already, is 
 that of imperialism. One might almost think it was a sort of divine dis- 
 pensation that each of the chief civilizing states of the world is set down, 
 as it were, to work out its own salvation on different lines, so that the 
 other nations, if it succeeds, may enter into its labors; for no nation 
 liveth unto itself alone, but to the benefit, in the end, of humanity. 
 
 The bottom problem, I repeat, in England is imperialism. To pre- 
 vent any possible misunderstanding, let me attempt to state what I mean 
 by the term. Of course, it has nothing to do with that militant spirit of 
 spread eagleism we call jingoism ; it is not mere flag-waving or any other 
 form of human cockadoodleism ; it is not land-grabbing ; it is not the 
 insane wish to paint as much as possible of the map of the world red, or 
 whatever the national color may be. On the other hand, it seems to me 
 stupid, if not criminal, to shut our eyes to the fact that our empire, even 
 if we do not add another rod to it for fifty years, is already enormous. 
 
 Speaking roughly, we, a nation of bare forty million souls, are respon- 
 sible to Almighty God for the lives, fortunes, and happiness of some 
 four billions. Are we, like unworthy servants, unmindful of our high 
 responsibilities, going to hide our talents in a napkin and do nothing, 
 or are we going to attempt to take up as best we may the “white man’s 
 burden” ? To me it seems there is but one alternative. If we are not to 
 share in the fate of Tyre and Sidon, Macedonia and Rome, we must do 
 our duty toward this great empire, not running it for our own selfish 
 profit and pleasure, but for the welfare of all that are in it. Otherwise our 
 fate is certain, be it long or short in coming. I feel in this matter we 
 have your sympathy. To you, too, the call of empire has come, and, after 
 long counting the cost, you, too, have put your hand to the plow, and, 
 having put it, show little sign of turning back or of refusing to accept the 
 greatness thus thrust upon you. But we cannot do our duty to others 
 until we have done our duty to ourselves. If we are to run the empire 
 as we should, we must put things on a far more efficient basis at home, 
 not only in the way of social and economic reform (of political we have 
 had enough and to spare), but also in education. 
 
 Now, English education is at present in a chaotic state. In some 
 places there is overlapping and friction between competing schools and 
 
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 E D UCA T/ONA L CRISIS IN ENGLAND 
 
 155 
 
 conflicting local authorities ; in others the educational supply is miser- 
 ably deficient. What is wanted at the present time is organization and 
 co-ordination, not indeed uniformity, but unity, or at least harmonious 
 working, between the different educational agencies. This cry for unity 
 that is voiced by so many is, however, no new thing. It has been raised 
 again and again, yet hitherto has always met with failure. • The causes of 
 this failure lie deep. They can be disclosed only by an inquiry into the 
 reasons in the history of English education that have led to the present 
 complicated position. I shall, therefore, attempt to give you, in a rough 
 and ready fashion, some insight into historical causes, and, dividing the 
 problem into two parts, deal first with the local and then with the central 
 authorities. 
 
 The beginnings of English education were religious. The ethical 
 bias in English education must never be lost sight of when any estimate 
 of the problem is made. The Reformation only transferred the school 
 from the church to the king, not as the head of the state, but as the tem- 
 poral head of the church. This, of course, only applies to the secondary 
 schools. 
 
 The seventeenth century was a blank as far as education of the work- 
 ing classes was concerned. At the commencement of the eighteenth 
 century we find Sir Richard Steele pleading in the Tatler for the educa- 
 tion of the poor. His, cry did not fall on deaf ears, and produced a 
 movement within the established church which led to the foundation of 
 the so-called charity schools (under the auspices of the Society for Chris- 
 tian Knowledge). These schools at first grew, and increased, and at one 
 time contained as many as twenty-six thousand children. But opposi- 
 tion soon appeared; on one hand they were attacked by those who com- 
 plained of their superficiality; on the other, by those who asserted that 
 it made the poor discontented with their station in life. There was no 
 idea of seeking the help or assistance of the state. The great English 
 radical, Priestley, who had inherited the laissez-faire traditions of 1648, 
 was dead against the notion. It is not until we come to Adam Smith 
 that we find the idea of a state system of primary education mooted. 
 He had been influenced by the ideas of Turgot and the working of the 
 Scottish system ; unhappily for the future of secondary education, he was 
 utterly opposed to state aid or intervention in the sphere of higher 
 education, looking on it as likely to lead to intellectual tyranny. 
 
 So at the beginning of the nineteenth century there were two tend- 
 encies in education, one laying stress on the ethical, the other on the 
 intellectual side ; the former represented by the now languishing 
 charity schools, which were suffering frorsj the attacks of the obscurantist 
 faction in the church, who disbelieved in education for the working 
 classes ; the other, by the philosophical radicals, who were advocates of 
 the state system of primary education, but encountered opposition from 
 
156 
 
 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 [General 
 
 extremists of the Priestley school. The first attempt to establish a national 
 system of primary education was made as far back as 1806, by the cele- 
 brated Quaker, Mr. Whitehead. He attempted to conciliate the clerical 
 party, but failed to overcome the opposition of the obscurantists. But 
 the problem itself became more acute. -During the Napoleonic war we 
 were passing from being a rural to an urban people. The industrial 
 revolution was at its height, the slums were growing at an alarming rate, 
 our working classes were half-starved thru the high price of corn, and 
 the horrors of child labor grew and intensified. State aid having failed, 
 the philanthropist stepped into the breach. Robert Raikes in 1810 
 started the Sunday schools. The numbers in these schools rose rapidly 
 to half a million, but after 1810 they devoted themselves to the Sunday 
 side of the work. Then the Royal Lancastrian Society was founded to 
 extend the monitorial system of one Joseph Lancaster, a Quaker, and 
 became in due course the British and Foreign Bible Society. Its 
 methods were crude ; knowledge was looked on as a sort of liquid that 
 naturally found its own level in the pupil, who acted as a sort of tank or 
 receptacle thru the monitor, who was regarded as the pipe or conduit, 
 and therefore did not require to know more than the pupil, being what 
 we should call, in theological language, a sort of unconscious channel 
 of grace. These schools were, nevertheless, highly favored and supported 
 by Bentham, the elder Mill, Francis Plaice, and other radical reformers 
 of the time. 
 
 The activity of the non-sectarian British and Foreign School Society 
 naturally awoke the slumbering energies of the other party, and a rival 
 society, called the National Society, was started by churchmen. People 
 looked complacently on the rivalry of the two societies as a kind of 
 sporting affair, hoping that the better would win — a spirit, I fancy, not 
 altogether unknown in America. Unfortunately the two societies did 
 not cover anything like the whole ground. In 1820 Brougham pointed 
 out that out of twelve thousand parishes only five thousand had any 
 sort of school at all, and many of those were little better than dame 
 schools. He himself tackled the problem of state education, but failed, 
 thru the impossibility of finding a via media between the church, the 
 church people, and the laissez-faire nonconformists. Meanwhile the 
 British and Foreign Schools were not fulfilling the expectations they 
 had raised. As we have seen, their conception of the child was all 
 wrong, and they confounded education with instruction, in thinking they 
 could solve the social problem by teaching a little spelling and the 
 multiplication table. 
 
 From the passing of the Reform Bill till 1870 the middle classes were 
 having a good time in England, as good as the middle classes in 
 America today. Trade was going up by leaps and bounds. Everyone 
 was feeling yearly a little richer. It was an epoch of intellectual output. 
 
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 EDUCATIONAL CRISIS IN ENGLAND 
 
 J 57 
 
 Tennyson, Dickens, and George Eliot were in their prime. There was 
 very little dwelling on difficult or ultimate questions. A superficial 
 optimism, of which Macaulay was often the mouthpiece, was the fashion. 
 There was a general feeling that things would work themselves out all 
 right. It was the golden age of laissez faire. So much for the articulate 
 classes, but the actual life of the inarticulate classes was far different, and 
 we were really sowing the seeds of the numerous social and economic 
 problems that of late have sprung up around us like magic, and are 
 clamoring simultaneously for solution. 
 
 The year 1832 is memorable as the first instance of state aid in the 
 history of national education, when a building grant of ^20,000 was 
 given to the two societies. In 1835 a royal commission was appointed, 
 which revealed the educational nakedness of the land. Once more an 
 attempt was made to establish a national .'system of education ; this time 
 on undenominational lines. It failed before the opposition of the church. 
 A further attempt to secure education for factory children was unsuccess- 
 ful, this time the opposition coming from the party opposed to state 
 intervention, John Bright and Baines. At last a via media was found. 
 In 1846 the government adopted the system of subsidizing the denomi- 
 national schools. During the fifties we see the beginnings of the ideas of 
 local control in the schools, and the birth of two great questions — one, 
 whether education should be a branch of municipal and local govern- 
 ment, or intrusted to a special ad hoc body; and the other, the still 
 thornier one of aiding denominational schools out of the rates. Mean- 
 * while the reforms introduced by Arnold at Rugby had extended to other 
 schools, and made our public schools what they are today, the nurseries 
 of public spirit and esprit de corps. 
 
 The electoral reform of 1868, and the sweeping Liberal majorities 
 that followed, tended much to weaken the dislike of the laissez faire 
 radicals to the state, with which they began to identify themselves more 
 and more. This reduced the four opposing currents of thought to three, 
 and opened the way for Mr. John Forster and his celebrated education 
 bill of 1870. Three points require to be very strongly noted as regards 
 this act. One, that the elected school boards were avowedly only to be 
 created in districts where the educational supply was lacking; they were 
 merely intended to fill up the gaps in the then existing system of volun- 
 tary education. While, to afford the voluntary schools a last chance of 
 covering the ground, a year’s grace was given under the bill, during 
 which they were to be allowed to attempt to build as many schools as 
 possible. They made such good use of the opportunity that they raised 
 some three million pounds for school buildings. When the year was up, 
 and the competition began, they had_ already received an immense start, 
 and tho the school boards have since made enormous progress, the majority 
 of elementary children are still in denominational schools. The second 
 
58 
 
 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 [General 
 
 point to’ note is that the government grant to these schools has steadily 
 increased, so that today these so-called voluntary schools receive the 
 equivalent of four-fifths of their expenditure, and in some cases still 
 more, out of the public fund ; yet, except as regards examination and 
 inspection, they are quite outside the sphere of popular control. The 
 third point to note is that the first draft of Mr. Forster’s bill proposed 
 to make the existing municipal councils the local school authorities for 
 the towns. But, as some of the radicals objected to indirect election, 
 and the various denominational bodies insisted on a representation of all 
 parties and all religions, we had the establishment of school boards in 
 the town, which, apart from the religious wrangling, have generally done 
 very good work, and the establishment of the little district boards in the 
 country, which have worked, as a rule, very indifferently. As there is 
 no great popular feeling in favor of education in country districts com- 
 parable to that in America, the country school boards have been mainly 
 manned by persons who have got themselves elected for the purpose of 
 keeping down rates. 
 
 Not a few persons in England consider it unfortunate for the cause of 
 popular education that its destinies should have been linked at the start 
 to a form of local government which was rapidly falling into discredit 
 thru the rendering the life of the English ratepayer a burden, and 
 hindering the growth of local patriotism. It was estimated by Mr. (after 
 Justice) Smith in 1876 that some unfortunate householders in London 
 were living under the government of something like fifteen distinct ad 
 hoc authorities, being in one area for the school, another for water, 
 another for gas, another for health, another for registration of birth, 
 another for burial purposes, etc. The reform of English local government 
 was taken in hand in 1888, when the old county area was chosen as the 
 unit, and the functions of the majority of these ad hoc bodies were merged 
 in the new authority. Towns of over sixty thousand inhabitants, together 
 with a few whose population was under this figure, were eliminated from 
 the county and made co-equal independent bodies under the title of 
 county boroughs. This is a most important point. Had the present 
 county unit existed in a democratic shape in 1870, we should probably 
 not have had an ad hoc body chosen to supplement merely primary 
 education, but the county unit would most probably have been adopted 
 to look after all forms of education in its area. The proof of this asser- 
 tion lies in the fact that the county council and county borough council 
 were made the authority for technical instruction in 1889, an( 3 not the 
 school board, for the simple reason that their areas were co-extensive 
 with the whole country. 
 
 There being little or no technical instruction at the time, the county 
 council and county borough council soon found it necessary to expend a 
 large portion of the grant they received from the government for technical 
 
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 EDUCATIONAL CRISIS IN ENGLAND 
 
 159 
 
 education in aiding hundreds of secondary schools in order that the 
 pupils might be better prepared to enter tbe technical schools and classes. 
 They have, therefore, become de facto in England in many localities, the 
 local authority for secondary education. Their position has further been 
 strengthened thru the government grant for science and art being in many 
 places also paid thru their hands. 
 
 Meanwhile, especially in the towns, school boards throve and 
 expanded ; extra standard classes were soon added to the ordinary classes 
 in the three R’s ; and the regular superstructure of higher grade educa- 
 tion evolved. In this forward policy the school boards were, up to a 
 recent date, encouraged by the two departments intrusted with the over- 
 sight of elementary and of science and art education. Certain of the 
 London ratepayers, however, took alarm at the growing expenditure of 
 the London board. The matter was brought into the law courts, and the 
 whole of this new top story has been declared illegal. For anyone but 
 an obscurantist in education the question is whether these classes should 
 be recognized as higher primary, as in France, or as frankly secondary. 
 If the latter alternative is adopted, they will at once be authorized to 
 enter into competition with the existing secondary schools, many of which 
 are under the tutelage of the county councils, and the skirmishes which 
 have hitherto taken place between the two rival authorities will degenerate 
 into a battle royal. In fact, recognition of two rival authorities, each 
 possessing equal rights to give the same grade of education, can only 
 lend itself to an intolerable amount of friction and overlapping, and 
 unnecessary expense ; so that the British ratepayer is not unlikely to strike. 
 Unable to discriminate between the two, he will cry “a plague on both 
 your houses,” and the cause of education is bound to suffer in the end 
 when people see how these educationists love one another. Furthermore, 
 the present muddle is intensified by the overlapping which has been 
 going on in the evening classes for adults; between the classes run by 
 the county councils and the school boards in the town when they have 
 not been regulated by voluntary concordats. And, finally, we have before 
 us the grave question of whether we mean to crush out the private schools. 
 There should, indeed, be short shrift for the inefficient ; but the private 
 school which is doing its work seems worthy at least of recognition, if 
 not of encouragement. Both in France and Germany there are distinct 
 signs of regret that the private school, which, if efficient, is always a 
 center of emulation and experiment, has become such a quantite negli- 
 geable . 
 
 The act of 1870 was a statesmanlike compromise between the denomi- 
 national and the undenominational parties in the sphere of primary 
 education. What we need today is a second compromise between the 
 two schools of thought in the sphere of secondary education. In 1896 
 an attempt was made to make the county the chief local authority. It 
 
i6o 
 
 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 [General 
 
 failed ; this time largely thru the carelessness with which the bill was 
 conducted in Parliament, and also from the jealousy shown by the small 
 non-county boroughs toward the counties in which they were situated. 
 This year again a bill has been presented which proposed once more to 
 make the county the paramount authority. I understand it has been 
 withdrawn owing to the exigencies of the parliamentary session. 
 
 And yet it seems to me, if we are to have educational unity in 
 England, the county council is the only possible authority we can have 
 for local purposes. 
 
 But before stating the case for the county council, let us first consider 
 the other alternative. At first sight, in order to do away with the exist- 
 ing rivalry, it might seem expedient to disfranchise the county councils 
 of their educational rights, disestablish the school boards, and hand over 
 the educational duties of the two bodies to an entirely brand-new 
 authority. But this suggestion, tho possessing all the special attrac- 
 tions of symmetry and completeness, would arouse the most prodigious 
 opposition. The two interested parties would fight it tooth and nail. 
 Localities would be up in arms, and local M. P.s would voice their oppo- 
 sition in Parliament. All officials under the existing bodies would be 
 dead against any proposal that jeopardized their positions and salaries. 
 It would be actively fought by that small but growing body of social 
 reformers who, as partisans of the municipal idea, believe that politics can 
 be made real to the man in the street only by consolidating the various 
 functions of local government in one body and doing away with the 
 bewildering multiplicity of elections. And, lastly, such a body would be 
 certain to inherit from the old school boards the spirit of religious 
 wrangling that has proved such a fruitful source of hindrance to the 
 cause of popular education in England. The objections to the school 
 boards being made the one authority for education are scarcely less for- 
 midable. They are an ad hoc body ; they are at present only a makeshift 
 form of organization existing in only two-thirds of the country, and 
 catering for less than half of the children, the majority of whom are in 
 voluntary schools which have been avowedly built and maintained to 
 keep out the school board on religious and economic grounds. The 
 attempt to make the school boards the authority for such a neutral subject 
 as technical education failed in 1889. Their chance, therefore, of being 
 made the secondary authority, now that the technical-education commit- 
 tees of the county councils are in full swing, is still more remote. They 
 have but few friends among the Tory party, and even supposing the Lib- 
 eral party came back to power with a thumping majority, it would have 
 the whole of the Irish vote cast solid against it, on the question of mak- 
 ing school boards the chief authority, as the Irish desire rate aid for 
 Catholic schools in the north of England. 
 
 There remain, therefore, only the county councils and the county 
 
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 EDUCATIONAL CRISIS IN ENGLAND 
 
 161 
 
 boroughs, and this is fortunately no Hobson’s choice. They have, indeed, 
 much to recommend them. Their areas are co-terminous with the whole 
 country ; they are also sufficiently big to exclude the election of the crank 
 and faddist, and secure a certain amount of ability and large-mindedness 
 in their representatives. They have already acquired administrative 
 educational experience in dealing with secondary and technical education. 
 
 In the counties it would probably be advisable to abolish at once the 
 small boards which have little to recommend them. The evicted mem- 
 bers ’might be reinstated as managers in order that what administrative 
 experience they have might be preserved. But the advent of county- 
 council administration would probably mean a rise in the standard of 
 the schools and greater security of tenure for teachers. The principle 
 of popular control would be maintained by the proviso that the educa- 
 tional committee of the county council should consist of a majority of 
 members of the council, while the educational side would be safeguarded 
 by the election or co-operation of educational experts to represent the 
 various types of schools. 
 
 The county councils would be allowed to levy an educational rate over 
 the whole country, or rather merge the education rate in the county rate. 
 Being the authority for all forms of education, they would naturally have a 
 right to inspect, not only the board schools, but also those of the voluntary 
 schools which wished to come under their regime to qualify for efficiency. 
 This idea of subsidizing the voluntary school seems a bitter pill to some 
 people. But it appears to me just one of those cases where the stern 
 logic of fact is superior to the reasoning on mere abstract principles. 
 Assuming that the voluntary schools are, as their adversaries allege, 
 inefficient, have we a moral right, looking at the question from the 
 national point of view, to allow more than half our children to suffer 
 under permanent educational disadvantages until the voluntary schools 
 are starved out in the dim and distant future? Are not the rights of 
 conscience of the sectarian equally respectable as those of the secularist 
 in the eyes of the state ? We have spent thirty years in trying to ignore 
 the religious question. The effect has been, so far, such a qualified suc- 
 cess that we have not as yet attracted half the children of the nation 
 into our state schools. We have given state aid to the extent of four- 
 fifths of the expenditure in the denominational schools, and have received 
 in return nothing but the right to inspect these schools. Why should 
 we haggle over the remaining fifth, if we can purchase with it a certain 
 measure of popular control over these schools, save and excepting in the 
 presence of religious teaching ? Are we not far more likely to raise and 
 widen the outlook of these schools by inducing them to come under 
 county-council control than by any measures that smack or savor of per- 
 secution ? We want to find points of contact between the different ideals 
 that divide England ; we do not want to set them in harsh opposition. 
 
162 
 
 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 [General 
 
 In the towns, the school boards have done yeoman service in the cause 
 of popular education. Yet it is obvious we cannot allow two public 
 bodies, each professing to do the same kind of educational work, to 
 remain in perpetual competition with one another. From the national 
 point of view there is no gain whatever from such a clumsy and expensive 
 duplication. It can mean only the perpetuation of the educational 
 schism which has hitherto divided the nation. To leave the county coun- 
 cils with only the control of the present grammar school is to narrow 
 their conception of what secondary education really means, and another 
 ten years of the present regime may make them into partisans despite 
 themselves. At present, both in theory and practice, they are really far 
 more democratic than the existing school board. They are elected on 
 the ordinary and not the cumulative franchise, while the number of votes 
 cast at the borough-council election in the towns is always much larger 
 than that cast at the school-board election. Thus in London at the last 
 county-council election about 70 per cent, went to the hall, while the last 
 school-board election barely interested 20 per cent, of the electorate. 
 
 Yet, if the county councils are to absorb the school boards in the 
 town, the transference must be very carefully and gradually made. These 
 latter bodies have acquired a wealth of administrative and educational 
 experience which it would be hard, if not impossible, to replace imme- 
 diately. There must be no forced liquidation, but they must be taken 
 over as going concerns, their best members being co-opted at once on 
 the borough council education committee, in order that the break in con- 
 tinuity may be as little as possible. 
 
 The following advantages, from the national point of view, which 
 would result from the adoption of the county council as the one local 
 authority, should also be noted : 
 
 With a single authority in each area, controlling all forms of educa- 
 tion, it will be at once possible to detect and correct overlapping, and 
 supplement any deficiencies in educational supply. Again, the needs of 
 each locality necessarily vary. The single authority, more or less supreme 
 in its own area, will be able readily to see at a glance the needs of its 
 district and to call for them accordingly. There is plenty of work and 
 more than enough for the existing type of schools. What is wanted is 
 to regulate and define more carefully the function of each so they may 
 be as readily understood by t,he people as they are in France or Switzer- 
 land. Half the want of interest in the schools which exist today in Eng- 
 land is due to the impossibility for the ordinary man to make out what 
 they severally stand for. People cannot be enthusiastic about their 
 schools till they comprehend their exact aims. If we cannot harness 
 the Niagara of national interest in education to our schools, as you have 
 done in America, we can yet do a great deal in the way of deriving power 
 by hitching the school on to the latent forces that lie at the back of local 
 patriotism in England. 
 
Sessions] 
 
 EDUCATIONAL CRISIS IN ENGLAND 
 
 163 
 
 Coming now to the question of the central authority, it is enough to 
 say that primary education was originally under the education depart- 
 ment, which, like many other departments of state, was at first an appanage 
 of the privy council. The latter is the real source of an unexhausted 
 executive power in England, and may be compared to the sun in its 
 potentiality to throw off some new department of state when a new 
 administrative want makes itself felt. 
 
 Science and art teaching, which dates back to the great exhibition of 
 1851, was under the science and art department, which was later on made 
 the authority for technical education. The endowed schools were con- 
 trolled by the charity commission, whose oversight, however, was mainly 
 financial. The present board of education was evolved out of the two 
 above-named departments, with power to take over certain functions from 
 the charity commission. The new office was divided up into two sec- 
 tions, primary and secondary, and technological. The latter section 
 shows sign of splitting up into two parts, so that there will probably in 
 the end be three sections in the office. Hitherto, owing to the miser- 
 able system of payment by results, the office has been overwhelmed by 
 questions of detail and audit. The establishment of the block grant may 
 perhaps set it free to study the admirable collection of reports which 
 have been amassed by its special inquiries section, in order to enable it 
 to frame general principles of control. It has also been furnished with a 
 consultative committee of experts; these no doubt should serve as an 
 admirable go-between in their dealings with the schools on their peda- 
 gogical side ; but what they really most require at the present time is an 
 efficient secondary inspectorate that shall serve, not only as the mouth- 
 piece, but the eyes and ears, of the board. Otherwise they will be like 
 those lay figures that have eyes, but see not; ears have they, but they hear 
 not. Much, again, of their routine work should be delegated to the 
 local authorities. 
 
 The true function of the board of education seems to be something 
 of a mean between your bureau of education and the strong centralized 
 ministry of public instruction in France. I cannot define this function? 
 in better words than those of our greatest writer on education, Mr. 
 Michael Sadler. He is speaking of the part of the state in national 
 education, and, after dismissing the individualist idea that the state 
 should have no part in national education, and rejecting Adam Smith’s 
 opinion that it should provide only primary schools, and Mills’ view 
 that it should establish a system of schools of its own among other com- 
 peting systems, he goes on to lay down that the state should rather draw 
 toward itself, inspire, stimulate, and (when needful) aid each and every 
 type and instance of efficient and needed schools, while absorbing, con- 
 trolling, crushing none; aiming, not at monopoly, but at a compre- 
 hensive federation of schools and colleges ; at strengthening educational 
 
164 
 
 NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 [General 
 
 freedom, not at any restriction of it; at self-criticism, not at the dis- 
 couragement of criticism ; at the planning and record of careful and 
 systematic experiments ; at the very liberal encouragement of educa- 
 tional, psychological, and hygienic research of all kinds, in all types of 
 schools, and those not in England alone; at the wide diffusion among all 
 concerned of the accurate, but varied and outspoken, observations thus 
 secured, with a view to the development and guidance of a well-informed 
 and skillfully observant public and professional opinion. 
 
 Such seems to me to be the present position of English education 
 and its principal shortcomings ; and, in speaking so plainly of our failings, 
 I do not. wish you to imagine for a moment there is little to be said in 
 praise of English education. My abstention was rather intentional, 
 because it seemed to me scarcely the place to say it; and yet, as one 
 reared in the traditions of our English public schools, who has breathed 
 their subtle atmosphere, as strong and ' life-giving in its way as that of 
 your American schools ; who later on, as a teacher, has attempted to 
 maintain and spread their high-soaring and deep-rooted traditions, I feel 
 it is only fair tonight to express in public my eternal gratitude toward 
 those public institutions which instilled into me, unforward scholar that 
 I was, some scanty sense of the high ideals of patriotism ; of esprit de corps 
 and of serving the state, of noblesse oblige and the non-existence of rights 
 unaccompanied by duties ; of the virtue of self-control ; of the spirit of 
 never-say-die ; of the belief in fair play and other national qualities 
 which belong pre-eminently to the Anglo-Saxon race. And if I also look 
 on France as a sort of foster-mother who, taking me late in life, deepened 
 my ideas of culture and philosophy, it is because she gave rite thereby a 
 sort of intellectuelle Anschauung into the r)6os of English public-school life, 
 and helped me better to understand myself and my great debt to these 
 ancient and religious foundations. I might also point with pride to the 
 work of the great school boards, like those of Leeds and London, to show 
 what thirty years of popular effort have done for the working classes, or 
 extol the energy of the technical-education board for London, which in 
 ten years has literally created the present network of technical educa- 
 tion out of nothing. 
 
 But my object is not to praise or blame our national education, but to 
 render it intelligible. I greatly fear, however, I have not infrequently 
 been obscure, owing to the lack of time to set forth each proposition and 
 idea in its due light and proportion. If I have failed, I shall at least have 
 had the melancholy satisfaction of making you realize the extraordinary 
 complexity of the problem by explaining the obscureness per obscureness. 
 
 There are, however, two ideas which I would wish you to carry away 
 with you. One, that a trim and geometrical system of education is 
 probably impossible in England, not because of the stupidity or indif- 
 ference of the English people, but because of the diversity that exists in 
 
Sessions] 
 
 EDUCATIONAL CRISIS IN ENGLAND 
 
 165 
 
 the national character, and the extraordinary sensitiveness of the English 
 people to fundamentals, about which they rarely argue, but which, as the 
 suppressed premise, give weight and direction to their arguments. I 
 think no nation feels more deeply, or experiences greater difficulty in 
 putting its feelings into words. I fancy at times it even half-consciously 
 shrinks from doing so. 
 
 The second is that any satisfactory settlement of the education ques- 
 tion, or even temporary modus vivendi , must recognize this diversity in 
 the national character and give fair play to the various sets of opposing 
 tendencies which are not always symmetrically ranged under one banner 
 or party, yet are ever carrying on a perpetual duel in England, as pre- 
 figured by the battle between freedom and authority, between the spirit 
 of inquiry and that of obedience, between individual liberty and state 
 control, between private effort and corporate life, between the ethical and 
 - the intellectual conceptions of education. 
 
 This English duality, which Emerson himself has remarked upon, 
 makes us appear at times strangely undecided, irresolute, illogical, and 
 cross-grained ; but there are moments when, as Pascal says, the heart has 
 reasons, the head knows not. 
 
 Yet I do not wish to imply that we should be forever halting between 
 two opinions, and that there are not occasions when we must make up 
 our minds to take a decided step. No one is more convinced than 
 myself at the present time that we have need of overhauling the ship of 
 state and putting her into a better state 'of repair, making jettison of 
 certain of the laissez-faire notions with which we are encumbered and 
 taking in a fresh consignment of state control. I only ask you to judge 
 us gently. Our responsibilities are indeed great, yet I have no doubt 
 whatever, once we have truly realized them, we shall prove fully equal to 
 the task. For my part I cannot entertain the idea that the Anglo-Saxon 
 race, whether on this side of the Atlantic or the other, can ever go under.