ON INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AS AN ADJUNCT TO A PAPER READ AT THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EDUCATION AT LONDON, O judge how far it is requisite that schools for the working classes And here, on the threshold, I would venture to remark that it seems to me a hasty and harsh conclusion, that the poor do not value education, because they do not value the schooling to which we give that name. First, I have to show how very large is the non-attendance at schools, and consequently how great the ignorance of the working class children in this country. There are, according to the census of 1851, no less than 4,908,696 children, between the ages of 3 and 15, a period which, as regards the working classes, comprises the whole span of the school age. Mr. Mann, in his elaborate report on the Education Census, makes several natural deductions from this gross total, in order to arrive at the number who ought to be at school. Without, however, taking advantage of this large deduction, and assuming that the whole number of children of a school age may at some time and for some period attend school, and giving the census the benefit of the whole 4,908,696, it is yet demonstrable that it largely overstates the number who can possibly be at school at any given time, in returning them as 2,046,848. Mr. Mann says that he deduces "from the experience of able writers and instructors," that "whilst among the middle and upper classes the average time expended on their children's school education is about six years, the average amongst the labouring classes cannot much exceed four years," meaning, doubtless, to include the stay at dame and infant schools.* He also supposes, with probable accuracy, "that the children of the middle and upper classes form a fourth part of the whole number of children between three and fifteen ;" and the working classes, consequently, three-fourths. Applying this division of classes to the whole of the 4,908,696 children between those ages, there would thus be 1,227,174 upper class, and 3,681,522 working class children. The whole span of the school age being twelve years, it follows that as the upper class children stay but six years, one-half of their number alone (or 613,587) can, on the average, be at school at once; and similarly, as the working class children stay only four years out of the twelve, only a third of their number (or 1,227,174) can be at school at once. But these two figures give us only 1,840,761, as the largest number which, according to Mr. Mann's statements, can by any possibility be at school at the same time. * P. xxiv and v of the 8vo. Edition. But is it true that every working class child does stay on an average four years at school? Mr. Mann appends to the same page of his report some strong testimony from the Rev. Mr. Burgess and from the Rev. Mr. Watkins, H. M. Inspector of Schools, to the effect that the average stay is considerably less than four years; and I believe that no single school teacher in populous districts could be found who would state the average as high as three years. If so, the number at school is still less. For the shorter the duration of stay, the smaller the number of children at any given time at school. For example, suppose there were 30 children, each of whom went to school on an average two days in the month of June, there would be an average attendance of two children: reduce the stay of each child to one day, and there would be an average attendance only of one child at once. It may indeed be said, "increase the total number of children, and then the actual attendance need not be thus lessened." True, but the population presents a limit, and I have given it its utmost tether, and in fact have gone beyond it, for there are, as Mr. Mann observes, at least 50,000 children who never go to school, as being educated at home; and to these must be added the much larger number who are wholly uneducated, and never go to any school. Assuming these at only 50,000 more, we have thus a total of 1,740,000 children, in round numbers, who alone can, on the most liberal assumption, be present at the same time, instead of 2,046,000, as the census incorrectly states, being an excess of 306,000, or 17.5 per cent. And now what shall be said of the kind of instruction given? Can it be held that a child not taught to write at all, is being educated for any of the ordinary purposes of education? But the teachers of the schools themselves return only 56 per cent. as even "learning to write," and 46 per cent. only as learning arithmetic: so that it may, on the showing of the census itself, be said, that not only are nearly two-thirds always absent at once from school, but that only one-half of those that are there-namely, onesixth of the whole-are receiving at any one time even the rudiments of the most meagre scale of education! There were, in 1855, but 506,000 children in all schools inspected under the Committee of Council, and certainly it would be a liberal estimate to assume that one-fifth of these children were being well educated. For ought education, even for the poor, to be limited to the mere instruments of mental faculty? Is not the mind itself to be informed, intelligence enlarged, and the application of these abstract powers taught? And above all, are not the moral principles and feelings to be evoked, nurtured, chastened, and Christianised? Putting aside for the nonce all mention of the development of industrial aptitude, how dare we call that an EDUCATION of beings endowed with soul and mind, which falls short in one of these essential requirements? And how many of our schools fulfil them? The evidence abounds of their defects and shortcomings. I cannot enlarge upon this great subject, and must therefore state tersely the results only which I gather, first, from the widely spread evidence of them, and, secondly, from personal examinations of every kind of school for the working classes during twelve years, both at home and abroad. I believe that the first classes are in the best of the common schools, now receiving sound and useful instruction in all elementary school attainments. I believe it to be in many instances superior to that which a large number of our own children in the higher classes are obtaining in the same subjects; for such subjects are, in our rank of life, often sacrificed to the early study of the classics, mathematics, languages and accomplishments. In the next generation it may chance to come to pass that the more favoured of our bourgeoisie will far excel the gentry in those branches of instruction which are the sinews of success in life: and the tendency of this change will, I believe, in a country where wealth and cleverness always obtain ascendancy, be to further plebeian aggrandisement, and narrow the dynasty of old families. This elevation of the lower classes is fragmentary and exclusive. It is an uplifting of thousands at the expence of millions, with little regard to moral merit, but chiefly on the strength of scholastic attainments. The lower classes in our common schools are still, with few exceptions, obtaining a very inferior instruction: little in short but a smattering of the same instruction given to the forward children, and of which the lower classes receive a meagre modicum, of which (regarding the short period of their average attendance) they will retain next to nothing. I refer for proof of this statement to the experience of every one who has thoroughly examined such classes, and to the statements, though worded with due caution, in several of the reports of Government and Diocesan Inspectors. Their instruction is not defective in amount, but it is of a wrong kind. It usually partakes, however ignorant the children are, of the same advanced range which alone befits the forward scholar, and it is administered, not by the intelligent master, but mostly by monitors or pupil teachers, in whose hands its fruitfulness is not likely to be enhanced. It is not uncommon to find such children wading through formidable columns of long division, or entangled in the rule of three, who cannot tell you the price of a pound of butter at three farthings an ounce, or what change they must have after spending 174d, out of half a crown. In fact, mental arithmetic, as it requires mental exertion in the teacher, is very often neglected. It is much easier to point to a sum in the Irish Arithmetic Book, and say, "work that on the slate." In Scripture I find nothing commoner than a knowledge of such facts as the weight of Goliath's spear, the length of Noah's ark, the dimensions of Solomon's temple, what Gad said to David, or what Samuel did to Agag, by children who can neither explain the atonement, the sacraments, or the parables with moderate intelligence, or tell you the practical teaching of Christ's life. Their spelling and English are often equally bad. Such instruction of the lower classes is pretentious, superficial, and abortive. It dabbles in high things, and leaves common things untaught. It aspires to rear a showy capital without base or shaft. Unhappily, however, the classes thus dealt with, added to the number who are avowedly learning nothing, form the bulk of the future generation of our labourers and servants. They are the broad substratum of society. And such (subject of course to some cheering exceptions) is the sterile character of the instruction we mainly give to them, even in the routine and prescriptive studies of the school room. Is it probable that the parents of such children will value an instruction thus intrinsically worthless, and of which the pretentiousness entails on it the ready sarcasm of the very class just above them, who most of all influence their judgments and inspire their prejudices? Diverging from these studies, let the examiner next inquire how much instruction directly bearing on the future labour life of these children, supplements and compensates for the sterility of their school attainments? In nearly ninety cases out of a hundred the inquirer will find that not a vestige of it is even attempted. Ask the child who has been gabbling over a lesson on the geography of the globe, or in one of the rival systems which perplex grammar, to give you a truce of zones and predicates, and describe the chief agricultural or mineral features of his own county-to explain what determines rates of wages-how to plant potatoes, feed pigs, or to make a pudding-or to describe the special duties of each kind of domestic service, and the character required for each when hired—and I greatly fear that not one out of fifty school children will give you a good answer. And yet these and ten thousand more things of the same practical use to the after life of the child, are the things it requires to know: and are moreover the things which its parents, who are themselves hard pressed by the stern practical question how to live, require that it should be taught, & if they be not taught, & you are not advancing the child one stepeither by instruction in the school or by actual labour done out of it-towards that aptitude for industry on which his future livelihood depends, how can you expect that the parents will sacrifice both their means and the child's time for the sake of that barren and contorted culture you prescribe for him as a fine thing, under the prostituted name of education? I am well aware of the practical difficulty we encounter in establishing washhouses, kitchens, or dairy, as an adjunct to the girls' school room. I am conscious how many are the impediments, even to the best of all boy employments-spade husbandry: and though in most cases these difficulties vanish before perseverence and decision, there are cases in which these glorious helpmates of our work are impracticable. But I deny that a single case exists in which it is not perfectly easy to teach as a primary school study such industrial knowledge as is admirably given in books like Longman's Domestic Economy, Groombridge's Village Lesson Book, the Irish Society's Agricultural Class Book, Baker's Circle of Knowledge, and many of the Finchley Manuals of Industry. I am quite aware that this does not harmonise with the aspirations of highly educated school teachers. But it is by no means on that account the less needful for the poor children who are to be taught. It ought to be insisted upon by every manager of every common school, whether the teacher likes it or not. I am also, after ten years experience in the constant inspection of Union Schools-most of which annex active industrial training in household work for girls, or spade husbandry for boys-able to attest, in the most unqualified terms, the increasing success of real industrial schools. I can point to the district school at Quatt as an eminent and enduring instance of this success. At that school farm 130 children, with the mere assistance of one labourer and a female servant, not only cultivate ten acres of land most productively, so as to yield from £125 to £140 net profit per annum, but all the work of the establishment, including dairy, washhouse, cooking, baking, needlework, & every description of house work is done by the children. Both girls and boys will accurately describe the best modes of doing the kinds of work to which they are thus practically inured, and which in a very short time they learn to perform in the most creditable manner. Even boys of eight or nine years are made useful in the lighter employments of the ground, and many at this age can fork and even dig with great ease. But this is not all. I have carefully inspected and watched this school for many years, and although half the day is usually spent in labour, so far is this from injuring the school work, that I can confidently assert that very few National or British schools can produce a larger proportion of thoroughly well educated children in every single branch of really useful learning for their rank in life. The school has the benefit of two admirable teachers-one, Mr.Garland, who nearly confines himself to industrial superintendence, and the other, Mr. Roach, to the school teaching. There are two schools, one upper and one lower, but both are mixed schools, the latter instructed by a school mistress. I am persuaded, after many experiments in workhouse schools, that this plan answers best. It is seldom possible to unite all the requisite qualifications for the outdoor and indoor work in the same man. It would often overtask him, even if he did unite them. The school masters whose boys are thus industrially trained, are universally of opinion that their mental powers are greatly improved and sharpened by their outdoor work, and I do not know of a single instance out of 30 or 40 such schools, where the master would, if he had the power, drop the industrial training. I think it needs no process of reasoning to show that the practical application of much that is or ought to be taught in the school room, must powerfully tend to give it a reality, and impress it with tenfold more effect on the child's mind. It is also an invaluable opportunity of watching the character of the children, and exercising moral culture. In fact, moral and industrial training go hand in hand. The necessary restraints of a school room prevent any thing approaching to complete moral training within its walls; and yet how important is this as an element in the great work of education, if its object be to improve the character of the mass of the people! I am far from depreciating the value of mental culture as an agent of moral elevation, but we must remember the power of this agent is greatly limited, while that of moral and industrial training is equally extended, by the proportion between intellectual faculties and bodily powers. So long as the abilities of the hand vastly outnumber the abilities of the head among our Anglo-Saxon folk, I submit that no schooling for them deserves the name of education which stimulates the intellects and neglects the physical agencies of moral welfare. The experience of industrial training as productive of these priceless results has been amply proved-not in one class of schools or one phase of children alone-but alike among schools for the children of independent labourers, for paupers, and for criminals. I cite the National Schools at Hagley and Painswick, Glasnevin, Parkhurst, Red Hill, Mettray, and a large number of workhouse schools in this country as well as Ireland, as proofs that I am advocating no doubtful experiment, that I am eulogising no tentative theory, but a well tested and established success. I could multiply evidence from persons who have witnessed both systems successively tried under their own eyes, almost ad infinitum, and bearing universal witness that alike in moral improvement, mental vigour, facility of scholastic attainment, bodily health, and actual increasing industrial power, there is no question as to the superiority of a system which divides the day between bodily labour and literary learning, over the exclusive routine of book schooling. I will confine myself to the mention only of the convincing |