Imatges de pàgina
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is a sound security. It will be objected not only that this foreign doctrine is at variance with Mr. Lowe's high authority, but also that it is un-English to regard the mass of the public, the parents of school-children, instead of regarding influential managers, because in England we have reversed Sieyes's famous rule, and say: 'Nothing for the people, everything by the people.' And against such an objection I do not presume to contend; only I urge that we may as well know, in all its nakedness, the foreign practice and the foreign theory in this matter.

As to compulsory education, again, denominational education, secular education, the continental precedents are, I maintain, to be studied for the sake of seeing what they really mean, and not merely for the sake of furnishing ourselves with help from them for some thesis which we uphold. Most English liberals seem persuaded that our elementary schools should be undenominational, and their teaching secular; and that with a public elementary school it cannot well be otherwise. Let them clearly understand, however, that on the Continent generally, everywhere except in Holland, the public elementary school is denominational,* and its teaching religious as well as secular. Then as to compulsory education. It may be broadly said, that in all the civilised states of Continental Europe education is compulsory except in France and Holland. The opponents of compulsory education quote Mr. Pattison, to show that in North Germany compulsory attendance is a matter which produces comparatively little practical result.' They quote a report of mine, to show that in French Switzerland the making popular education compulsory by law has not added one iota to its prosperity.' But yet the example of the Continent proves, and nothing which Mr. Pattison or I have said disproves, that in general, where popular education is most prosperous, there it is also compulsory. The compulsoriness is, in general, found to go along with the prosperity, though it * Of course with what we should call a conscience clause.

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cannot be said to cause it; but the same high value among a people for education which leads to its prospering among them, leads also in general to its being made compulsory. Where the value for it is not ardent enough to make it, as it is in Prussia and Zurich, compulsory, it is not, for the most part, ardent enough to give it the prosperity it has in Prussia and Zurich. After seeing the schools of North Germany and of German Switzerland, I am strongly of this opinion. It is the same thing as in religion. The vitality of a man's religion does not lie in his imposing on himself certain absolute rules as to conduct; but, in general, if his religion is vital, it will make him lay on himself absolute rules as to conduct. Above all, it will make a newly awakened sinner do this; and England, in spite of what the secretary to the National Society says, I must take leave to regard, in educational matters, as a newly awakened sinner.

Therefore I do not think the example of Prussia and Switzerland will serve to show that compulsoriness of education is an insignificant thing; and I believe that if ever our zeal for the cause mounts high enough in England to make our popular education 'bear favourable comparison,' except in the imagination of popular speakers, with the popular education of Prussia and Switzerland, this same zeal will also make it compulsory.

But the English friends of compulsory education, in their turn, will do well to inform themselves how far on the Continent compulsory education extends, and the conditions under which alone the working classes, if they respect themselves, can submit to its application. In the view of the English friends of compulsory education, the educated and intelligent middle and upper classes amongst us are to confer the boon of compulsory education upon the ignorant lower class, which needs it while they do not. But, on the Continent, instruction is obligatory for lower, middle, and upper class alike. I doubt whether our educated and intelligent classes are at all pre

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pared for this. I have an acquaintance in easy circumstances, of distinguished connections, living in a fashionable part of London, who, like many other people, deals rather easily with his son's schooling. Sometimes the boy is at school, then for months together he is away from school, and taught, so far as he is taught, by his father and mother at home. He is not the least an invalid, but it pleases his father and mother to bring him up in this manner. Now I imagine no English friends of compulsory education dream of dealing with such a defaulter as this, and certainly his father, who perhaps is himself a friend of compulsory education for the working classes, would be astounded to find his education of his own son interfered with. But if my worthy acquaintance lived in Switzerland or Germany, he would be dealt with as follows. I speak with the school-law of Canton Neufchâtel immediately under my eyes, but the regulations on this matter are substantially the same in all the states of Germany and of German Switzerland. The Municipal Education Committee of the district where my acquaintance lived would address a summons to him, informing him that a comparison of the school-rolls of their district with the municipal list of children of school-age showed his son not to be at school; and requiring him, in consequence, to appear before the Municipal Committee at a place and time named, and there to satisfy them either that his son did attend some public school, or that, if privately taught, he was taught by duly trained and certificated teachers. On the back of the summons my acquaintance would find printed the penal articles of the school-law, sentencing him to a fine if he failed to satisfy the Municipal Committee; and, if he failed to pay the fine, or was found a second time offending, to imprisonment. In some continental states he would be liable, in case of repeated infraction of the school-law, to be deprived of his parental rights, and to have the care of his son transferred to guardians named by the State. It is

indeed terrible to think of the consternation and wrath of our educated and intelligent classes under a discipline like this; and I should not like to be the man to try and impose it on them. But I assure them most emphatically,and if they study the experience of the Continent they will convince themselves of the truth of what I say, that only on these conditions of its equal and universal application is any law of compulsory education possible.

Of the education of the middle and upper classes, however, I have no need to speak at length here, for almost the whole of the following pages is devoted to that subject. It is not, like popular education, a subject which very keenly interests at present our educated and intelligent classes. It concerns their own education, and with their own education they are, it seems, tolerably well satisfied. Yet I hope that here again these classes,-above all I hope that the great middle class which has much the widest and the gravest interests concerned in the matter,-will not refuse their attention to the experience afforded by the Continent. Before concluding that they can have nothing to learn from it, let them at any rate know and weigh it.

To three points particularly let me invite their consideration. In the first place, let them consider in its length and breadth the facts, established in the following pages, that on the Continent the middle class in general may be said to be brought up on the first plane, while in England it is brought up on the second plane. In the public higher schools of Prussia or France 65,000 of the youth of the middle and upper classes are brought up; in the public higher schools of England,-even when we reckon as such many institutions which would not be entitled to such a rank on the Continent,-only some 15,000. Has this state of things no bad effect upon us? If the training of our working class, as compared with the working classes

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elsewhere, inspires apprehension, has the training of their employers, as compared with employers elsewhere, no matter of apprehension for us? There are people who say that the labour questions which embarrass us owe their gravity and danger at least as much to the inadequacy of our middle class for dealing with such questions, as to the inadequacy of our working class. English employers of labour,' these people say, 'are just now full of complaints of the ignorance and unreasonableness of the class they employ, and of suggestions, among other things, for its better instruction. never occurs to them that their own bad instruction has much to do with the matter. Brought up in schools of inferior standing, they have no governing qualities, no aptitude, like that of the aristocratic class, for the ruling of men; brought up with hollow and unsound teaching, they have no science, no aptitude for finding their way out of a difficulty by thought and reason, and creating new relations between themselves and the working class when the old relations fail.' I do not say that this is certainly so, but I say that the bearings of our education on the matter,-our education both in itself and in comparison with that of the Continent,-are at least worth studying.

The second point is this. The study of continental education will show our educated and intelligent classes that many things which they wish for cannot be done as isolated operations, but must, if they are to be done at all, come in as parts of a regularly designed whole. Mr. Grant Duff, who directed his attention to educational matters long before they were in everybody's talk as at present, has pointed this out with great truth and clearness. Our educated and intelligent classes, in their solicitude for our backward working class, and their alarm for our industrial preëminence, are beginning to cry out for technical schools for our artisans. Well-informed and distinguished people seem to think it is only necessary to have special schools of arts and trades, as

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