ta ^ :";-v^-^;'' j''ylr\ :'^''' , ^y^ mM^^i'^r f^'-^ '' i: _}V'j\vj>^; T t W^'Mi &-r-^^^k m^:% iP^fvU t^m k- ••>- 'i.'-i Bm^^ '^jIiHBmBKB »S I^Sk^ 1^^ A- •r^^C^^:.- U m- \; ';*>■' '^^'^^W'-^^ ■ m "^"^'W:!-' ^ ^, ^^<%;jft t^'M ^K^':: 1 %5* « v^ iy^.'^ teS. ^^ THE COUNTY COLLEaE. AN EDUCATIONAL PEOPOSAL ADDRE&SED TO TEE TOWN OF CAMBRIDGE, WITH TEE SURROUNDING COUNTIES, AND TO MEMBERS OF TEE UNIVERSITY, BY THE REY. J. L. BKERETON, PREBENDARY OF EXETER, CHAIRMAN OF THE DEVON AND OF THE NORFOLK COUNTY SCHOOLS. Eontion anti atambribge : MACMILLAN AND CO. 1872. J. PALMER, PRINTER, CAMBRIDGE. THE COUNTY COLLEGE. The object of the following proposal is to combine various efforts recently made to promote Middle-class Education, es- pecially those connected with the Universities and the endowed and proprietary Schools in the Counties : — to increase the value of the Local examinations by connecting them with collegiate residence; to give facilities for obtaining an early and inex- pensive degree ; to raise the standard and increase the supply of masters ; to give special preparation for various branches of professional and practical life ; and especially to provide one or more institutions through which many wasted and worthless endowments may be made available for modern requirements, and combined into an effective system. With these ends in view it is proposed that ''the County College" shall be an Association of Shareholders, registered under the Joint-stock Companies' Acts with a capital of £24,000 in £10 shares ; that the management be through a body of Trustees and Directors, to be elected under such conditions as would make them representatives not only directly of the Shareholders, but also of the University and associated Counties ; that in the first instance a temporary College be opened in Cambridge on a moderate scale in hired premises, pending the erection of a permanent one for (say) 300 students ; that a con- nection be formed between this College and the middle-class Schools in the various counties so that residence in them should be reckoned as part of the County College course ; and that the University be requested to allow such combined residence in a public School and College to entitle those who pass the Senior Local Examinations to be considered members of the University as " County Graduates," " County Bachelors," or under any other equivalent title. Thus any youth who had passed the Junior Local Examina- tion would be qualified to become a member of the " County College ;" and, on condition of residing two full years in one of the connected County Schools (endowed or proprietary) and one year in the College or elsewhere at Cambridge, would, on passing the Senior Local Examination, become a County Graduate of Cambridge. If he should then desire to obtain a full B.A. degree, the year passed at Cambridge might be reckoned to him, as an unattached student, for part of the residence required. There need be no addition to the ordinary school charge (beyond a registration fee) during the two years residence in the county; and the cost of the best middle schools may be assumed to average a guinea per week. In the College at Cambridge the cost need not exceed two pounds per week. A deposit of £30 ought probably to be required upon com- mencing residence at Cambridge. This on his quitting the College without discredit should be returned to the student. It would be desirable for these County Students that the year's residence in Cambridge should more correspond with School periods than with the shorter terms of the usual Uni- versity course. Assuming the residence to extend to 40 weeks, the following calculation would represent the cost and ex- penditure of the College when full : 300 Students for 40 weeks' Board at 20*. = £12,000 Tuition at 11*. = £6,600 " " Interest on Capital at 4^. = £2,400 " " University Fees at 5*. = £3,000 " College charge per week ,.. ... £2 £24,000 It may be expected that donations and endowments would enable the College in all deserving cases to reduce the charge considerably. And as it should be an understanding from the outset that strict economy would be the wish of all parents and students availing themselves of the County College, all un- necessary expenses should be discountenanced. Nevertheless the standard of Tuition, Board, and Service, should be such as to satisfy the best educated families. In the estimate of 10 per cent, for interest on capital it is considered that 5 per cent, would be appropriated to dividend, and that the remainder would be sufficient for repairs, as- surances, rates, and taxes, etc. It will be evident that arrangements may be made to extend the operation of the County College to female education, and there can be no doubt that no public effort for the extension of education ought to be made without recognising the great need of improved instruction and training for girls. One of the principal objects aimed at in this proposal is to raise the standard of middle-class teaching by providing a closer con- nection between the middle-class Schools and the University, and by offering there facilities which do not now exist for the •training and certificates of Teachers. And as it seems probable that an institution which should effect this object would possess the strongest claim to become a channel for the useful employ- ment of wasted endowments as well as for donations, it may be desirable at the outset to propose that an equal proportion of any such endowments or voluntary donations should be assigned to Female Education in connection with the University. The foregoing proposal is not hastily put forth : nor are the convictions on which it rests entirely untested by experiment. They are briefly these : 1. That the County is the best local area on which to base a public system of education in England. 2. That the Universities are the best centres towards which the local education can gravitate. 3. That the independence and diffusion of learning will be best secured by combining the commercial principle with that of endowments. 1. The " County" has its own associations ancient and honourable. In itself it is free of political or religious prejudice. All parties, sects, and classes are included in it, and as much merged in its unity as in that of the State. It offers, therefore, to Education (short of compulsion) all that the State can offer with the great advantage of variety. A State system must tend to monotony, a County system to emulation. Where the resources endowed or voluntary of a County are not in pro- portion to its population, they might with some slight grouping and modification be made so. If, therefore, it is desirable that public education should rest at all on local associations and interests, and not be altogether centralised, the County seems to offer the greatest advantages of local distribution with the least danger of pettiness, and narrow exclusiveness or malver- sation. 2. It is not, however, expected that the " County" alone can find in itself all the requirements for Education, or be more than the satellite in a system. By what centre should its educational life be sustained and regulated ? There are three alternatives. The system round which County schools may group themselves may have (a) an ecclesiastical, (6) a political, or (c) an educational centre. (a) The connection betvv^een learning and religion, Educa- tion and the Church, is too deep seated to be lightly disre- garded. But while it is practically impossible to take an ecclesiastical basis without giving or withholding a preference and thereby causing offence and sacrificing comprehension, it seems better to choose a basis which shall be secular in an inoffensive sense, that is one that shall by no means be hostile, extrusive, or derogatory to Religion. It does not seem neces- sary to connect a new institution exclusively either with the established Church or with any of the religious denominations in order to insure that religious knowledge shall be imparted or religious influences diffused. So far as the National Church is the most comprehensive of all the religious bodies, so far its services and ministers would be expected to give a general religious harmony to the new Institution. But so far as the other religious bodies by their influence with the individual parents and students, and by their public claims to respect can desire to be represented in the tuition and administration, a free and equal share in the honors and offices of the institution should not be debarred or grudged to them. (b) While many are anxious to maintain and extend the connection of education with our religious organizations, others are no less anxious to identify it with our political institutions and to concentrate its administration in one government office. There is much to make it probable that this will be before long effected. It is certain however that such a result would be injurious in many respects to education, and perhaps also to the freedom and originality of the English character. If any thing can delay this consummation, or modify its mischievous effects when it comes, it will be the independent organization of the existing resources and institutions, professors and prac- tioners of education. Whatever the State can then give in the way of uniformity and continuity will perhaps prove a regulating without becoming an all-inspiring or all-absorbing influence. (c) To those who see difficulties both practical and specu- lative in looking either to the Church or to the State for a system of public education, but who are still convinced that without a system combining schools with colleges, tuition with examination, studies with certificates and honors, and especially isolated places with larger districts, there can be no effective education of the people ; there seems to remain only the hope that the Universities may be willing to place themselves in more direct contact with Local Education. This in the matter of Examinations they are liberally doing. But in Cambridge and Oxford Education has always meant something more than certified knowledge; and the advantages of educational re- sidence implied in their degrees have been hitherto thoroughly recognised by the upper classes of the Country. A certificate of passing an examination is confessedly not the same thing as a degree ; and at Cambridge even the appearance of so regard- ing the local examination has been avoided by refusing any title to the examinee. The question arises whether the con- nection of the Universities with the middle-classes might not be made at once more extensive and more real if some modified system of residence, partly local and partly at the University, could be combined with the existing examinations. The fore- going proposal is intended as a practical suggestion for doing this. It represents what, if not yet felt to be a want in Middle- class education, all must acknowledge to be a deficiency. It is proposed primarily for the sake of the County Schools by one who is officially connected with two of them. But it is also proposed in a very loyal spirit to the Universities by one who can never forget how much he owes to Oxford. There seems to the writer some reason to believe that the Universities, by adopting and fostering a County system, could rapidly cover the whole ground of education without overstraining their force or succumbing to the pressure of national or imperial demands. They would obtain a clientele wide as the nation and reaching through the middle to the lower class, and they would remain the honored and independent chiefs of the Education of the Country : whereas, in a National system centering in the Government the Universities would be in danger of becoming mere employes of the Government, and required to do the drudgery without enjoying the freedom of learning and teach- 3. That the commercial principle is applicable to education, and worthy to be combined with that of endowments in public schools, is not sufficiently recognised in principle, though abund- antly acted upon in practice. The Universities and the great public schools are happily driving a good trade ; that is, they are receiving very large sums from the parents of the upper classes in payment for the education they give. But as they possess, independent of the trade, large realised property : and as in this country a certain social honor attaches to real pro- perty, which does not to commercial capital ; the endowed institutions are apt to think that there is some dignity reflected upon education and learning through their property. So far as this property consists in ancient buildings long associated with learning and adorned with its monuments, equipped with ample apparatus, and adapted for all the purposes of study, there is a true dignity attached to it ; and, indeed, this dignity it is that gives to this portion of their property the highest commercial value. It is doubtful, hoAvever, whether real property apart from the actual educational institutions adds any peculiar honor to 8 learning, — and there is much reason to think that the objections so often urged against endowments, that they tend to stagnation and dronishness, may be partly accounted for by the simple fact that real property suggests a privilege to its owner of some rest from labour. Though therefore it is to be expected that some Fellows and Bursars may look with contempt upon a Proprietary College in Cambridge, is it not possible that such a College might introduce a healthy, nay, desirable element among the older institutions ? May it not even come to be a question in the common rooms, whether farms or estates, now yielding 3 or 4 per cent, might not be well converted into commercial capital embarked directly in the honourable trade of education ; com- pensating its greater insecurity not so much by a higher average dividend, as by the fuller discharge of congenial functions and by the public confidence resulting from extended services which would then take the place of some public envy now threatening the Universities ? The appointed end of prospectuses is the waste paper basket. A promoter of schemes is looked upon as a dreamer and a mendicant. That this contribution to Education, to the spread of Truth in knowledge and life, is an offering of a very humble character and must take its place among the least esteemed publications, is known w^ell to the w^riter. But he issues it on the chance that at least though cast from the basket to the hearth, it may serve with other kindling to revive some smould- ering ashes, and attracting better material, lead to light and warmth for those who are still outside in the darkness and cold. If, however, it should suggest to any persons interested at once in Cambridge and in public education that there is room for trying some such experiment, the writer will be thankful to receive, through Messrs. Macmillan, any intimation of a wish to cooperate ; and he is authorised by Messrs. Foster to say that they will receive either Subscriptions towards a preliminary Fund or applications for Shares, at their Bank. Cambridge, Dec, 1872. •T. PALMER, PR]>'TER, CAMBRIDGE, -^*^-r^^^ ,*-:-.^i^l M fe::t jr:^ i ^y^^-^%^ ^tJ^ :;>a>^ ■r :^-: E^ft*., ^3'.': 'r MX ■Kg: ^-f ^/^•^L W^ >-£ ^' m '^it:^x W^Tl^M