WHAT INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS CAN EFFECT.

REPORT on the boys school at the Holywell Workhouse, has just been made by H.M. Inspector of the district, and printed by the Committee of Council. It is a useful proof of what Teachers can do if they choose to try, especially with field labor.

"This School contains 61 Boys, of whom 36 are above 9 years old; 19 between 9 and 6; and 7 boys under 6 years of age. It

is taught by a single Schoolmaster, Mr. Roberts, without any Assistant or Pupil Teacher; and he also superintends the cultivation, by the boys, of 4 or 5 acres of land, working with them; in which wheat, roots, and all kinds of household vegetables are grown. There are also pigs kept and attended to by the boys. The ground is well cultivated, yielding about £15 an acre net profit. At my visit on the 29th ult., about 20 boys turned to and dug admirably; so that I can avouch that real work is done, and that spade labor and useful gardening are thoroughly taught.

"In the busy out-door working months, the in-door School time does not average much above the minimum of three hours daily, prescribed by the Poor Law.

"The boys are healthy, hearty, and cheerful.

"I examined the School on the same day and I found the instruction of the first three classes as follows; the lower classes being fairly instructed in primary learning.

"1. Religious knowledge. The examination was conducted chiefly by the Rev. Mr. Jones, Chaplain to the Union, and Vicar of Holywell, and the Rev. Mr. Davies, his Curate. As the latter had offered a prize to the boy best up in the Liturgy, the examination was a very tough one; and so good were the answers, that the award was not very easily made. In a practical knowledge how to apply the commandments, parables, precepts, and examples of our Lord's life, and also in the doctrinal principles of Christianity, I found both the first and second class thoroughly proficient; answering questions readily which thought alone could enable them to answer; and not collectively, so that the class might repeat the answers of the top boy; but individually, holding out their hands. The lower classes were less proficient, but evinced a fair knowledge of Scripture and of moral duties.

"2. In Arithmetic, I set the first class this sum-' Reduce five-eighths of a shilling to the decimal of a pound,' which was worked correctly and quickly by ten out of eleven boys. To the second class, of eleven boys, I gave this rule of three sum-'If three horses cost £27, what will 27 horses cost?" a sum which, proving much too easy, was worked correctly by the whole class. The third class took a compound addition sum, testing their power of numeration, and of course written by them from my dictation. It was worked correctly by 13 out of 15. Mental Arithmetic is well taught. They added one-half and one-third readily, and all easier questions, such as 21 lbs. at 14d. per oz. &c.

"3. Spelling. I then gave this sentence from dictation, to test their spelling and punctuation in all the classes-Patience is a precious virtue. Were our neighbours guilty of deceiving and cheating us because we knew

little of Arithmetic ?' It was written without a single error in spelling by 23; with one error only by each of six others; with two errors by one; and with four errors by another; the rest did not attempt it.

"4. The Penmanship of about 40 of the boys is not only as good, but better than the usual copper plate copy heads; for the strokes are thicker, the letters rounder, and the style more manly.

"5. In English and industrial Geography it was difficult to find a reasonable question which the two first classes could not answer: and they know a good deal of foreign Geography.

"6. Of Grammar, the two first classes have acquired a fair knowledge. I misworded a sentence, making some common grammatical errors, and they detected them all, without an exception.

"7. They can explain most things appertaining to their work in the ground, and the common arts of life.

These children are mostly Welsh; and some of them accustomed to the Welsh as their mother tongue; they are not above the ordinary standard in intellect; and like all pauper children, are of a race more or less diseased, and debilitated in the body. I subjoin their ages and stay in the school. The master is not a trained man; nor particularly learned; but in addition to the knack of imparting knowledge, he keeps his shoulder to the collar, and does his work; not showily, but steadily. I have seen the same operation going on in this School for eight or nine years. The results are, I think, solid successes. The boys do well when they go reaping benefits of the most practical and permanent kind; taught that will not tell in labor life.

out; and are for nothing is

"This School thus affords a good practical proof of what a diligent, plain Schoolmaster may effect, combined with out-door work, when neither mind nor body is neglected or overtasked. I am so often beset, and so many School Managers are so often deceived, by the plausible excuses of incompetency and idleness on the part of Teachers, that I am sure it will do good to extend beyond the Holywell Board of Guardians, the knowledge of what is so well and creditably done in their Industrial School. With this view I have requested permission of the Committee of Council to have a few copies of this Report printed for private circulation.

Privy Council Office, October 8th, 1857.

APPENDIX.

J. S

In the first class, eight boys have been 7 years in the School; one 6 years; and two between 5 and 6. Their ages vary from 11 to 14.

In the second class two only have been 7 years, three 5 years, and the remainder from 2 to 44. Their ages the same as the first class.

In the third class, consisting of 16 boys, three only have been above four years in the school, of whom two have been 5 years. The remainder have been from 12 months to 3 years. Two only are 12 years old, the rest varying from 8 to 11 years old.

NEWSPAPERS are evanescent, and are too rapidly recurrent, and people see nothing great in what is familiar, nor can ever be trained to read the silent and the shadowy in what, for the moment, is covered with the babbling garrulity of daylight.-De Quincey.

ESSAYS ON EDUCATIONAL SUBJECTS.*

the truth must be spoken, we think these rather feeble essays, and not quite worthy of the occasion. Nine tenths of them fail to probe "the extent of the evil" of inadequate attendance at school: and though each essayist has his remedy to propound, the nostrums proposed are obviously abortive, and often conflicting. If the conference designed to show what a rope of sand are our great school promoters and national educationists, it has certainly answered that object, but scarcely any other. Partly the jejune character of the papers was a necessary result of cramping every one to a limit of twenty minutes. The usual error was made of admitting papers ad libitum, and thus making anything like full discussion an impossibility. The preface states there was full latitude for discussion! Inasmuch as there was an average of eight papers in each department, and about six hours at the outside for reading and discussing them all, there was no such latitude at all: and, of the two, the discussions were worse and more fruitless than the papers.

Here is a running summary of the chief papers and a fair general view of the opinions and remedies they propound.

The first section was opened by the Rev. Mr. Mitchell, H. M. Inspector of Schools, who prefaces his remarks with the following premises :

The result obtained from the summaries of H.M. Inspectors of Schools is as nearly as possible a true fact [sic] that in every hundred children of the poorer classes at present attending school, there are about 33 or one-third who are 10 years of age, while only one fiftieth remain at school to 14 years. Thus if we take 12 years to be the period of school life from the age of two to 14, the apprentice age, we shall find there are 66 children who remain in every hundred beyond their 10th year, and about six who stop the whole period up to 14. And this remarkably agrees with the report of the census of 1851, as quoted by Mr. Moseley, viz. that boys of all classes attending school between 10 and 15 equal 36 per cent, i e. more than two-thirds; [of what? certainly not of every hundred boys: and I think it develops another fact, viz. that contrary to general idea-the school age is not on the decline, as most of the elder children are sons of small shopkeepers, gentlemen's servants, clerks, and mechanics of better class, such as engineers, carpenters, &c.

What Mr. Mitchell means by his premises, and in what conceivable way his conclusions flow from them, we confess beat our comprehension: and we will not therefore attempt to criticise either. His next position is at least intelligible and quite incontrovertible. He says-"You will find that if a child be well taught at ten years of age, he may be able to write fairly from dictation out of an ordinary reading book, be decently acquainted with the first four simple and compound rules, have a sort of idea of grammar, &c." No doubt of it: but how many children thus "well taught" exist, Mr. Mitchell does not inform us. We infer but few; for he afterwards says that when he looks at "the actual instruction too frequently offered in the schools for the working-classes, I can only rejoice that parents are so sensible [for being indifferent to education], for more complete waste of time than one too frequently grieves over in these schools it is hardly possible to imagine." As regards remedies, Mr. Mitchell objects to any child being compelled to work before he is ten years old, "unless by parental

Read at the Educational Conference of June, 1857. Edited by Alfred Hill, Barrister at Law, &c. Longmans, London, 1857.

authority:" a measure of which there is little danger. He would, very properly, compel other manufacturers besides mill owners to send to school, for three hours daily, all children under that age whom they employ. He is for an educational franchise. He would have all people employed in posts affecting the safety of others educated as a necessary qualification. Of prize schemes he confesses an entire and absolute disapproval. Believing the system false, he conceives it cannot be permanent. He denounces them as paltry rewards and factitious sorts of aids, instead of enlarging the pleasures of education, and showing its practical uses. He would establish good libraries in every village. In order to give the children time for instruction after they begin work, Mr. Mitchell has a plan of his own. He would instruct school boys from 6 till 9 a.m. from 10 to 14, and youths of 14 to 18 in the evening from 6 to 9; the mistress holding her school in the same rooms during the day.

Then follows a rather long paper from Mr. John Flint, who labors through a multiplicity of statistical details, arriving at the conclusion that barely one-fourth of the children under instruction continue their school life up to the age of 12. We imagined that this notorious fact was the very reason the conference was held, and that not a soul there had any doubt of it. Mr. Flint's remedy is, that "distinguished persons should keep a register, in which employers should enter their names who engage to employ no child, say under 13, who could not produce certificate of attendance at some school for two days in the preceding week!!

66

Mr. Hyett next takes up the cudgels with his usual vigor, first in defence of the census returns of education, and lays very proper stress on the paucity of schooling it establishes, which Mr. Symons, we observe, in a subsequent paper again reduces by 17 per cent. Mr. Hyett denies that poverty is the cause of the parent's indifference to education. He cites the half filled free school at Painswick as a proof. The cause is the unsuitableness of the education we give. It is vain to offer broad cloth to the navvy, and satins to his wife." The remedy is, to make schools more industrial and practically useful to the poor. We may here dismiss Mr. Symons's paper on "Industrial Training as an Adjunct to School Teaching," (published in this Journal for July last,) by saying that Mr. Hyett and he take the same line of argument, Mr. S. prefacing his remarks and remedies by still more strongly denouncing the unsuitableness of the instruction now given to the lower classes in the common schools. These gentlemen, in telling us to make education subserve the labor-wants of the people (which it assuredly does not now), are no doubt right in saying that that is the way to make the people value and desire education. Rem acu tetigisti! Our education doctors, however, widely differ.

Next comes Mr. Edward Baines, exercising in the first page of his essay his peculiar gift of perverting statistics. Mr. Mann says that the average school time of ALL the children in England and Wales between their third and fifteenth years, is as nearly as possible five years." Mr. Mann, of course, meant of all those, rich and poor, who go to school. Mr. Baines, however, prints this word ALL in small capitals, to make it appear that every child gets that amount of education! Then we have the often exploded fallacy of contrasting the last redundant census with the avowedly defective one of 1818. Taking the entire difference as the measure of our progress in education! These are but short legged tricks. Mr. Baines gives a wide berth to the question of what is the quality of the education given, but

advocates visits to the parents, tracts, sermons, practical addresses, local associations, as means of exhorting them to keep their children longer at school and lastly, honorary certificates and other advantages on leaving school.

Mr. Goodman follows with the result of an elaborate and minute inquiry among 1043 families, fairly chosen as types of the working class of Birmingham, who appear to possess among them only 1373 children between seven and thirteen years of age. Poor Mr. Baines's couleur de rose statement is subjected to a rude shock by Mr. Goodman's test of these children's schooling: which results thus-At day schools 42 per cent. only! 33 employed, and 25 unemployed. The only substitute for the day school seems to be the 19 per cent. who attend a Sunday school; 23 per cent. to Sunday and evening school: and half per cent. only to evening schools alone. Considering that while the number of those who are admitted to go to no school, is liable to no deduction, the statement of those who do, is certain to include all irregularities of attendance, plus the most worthless instruction, this census may be said to settle the question as to the all but nothingness of the education given. One-fourth, moreover, were found to leave school at nine years of age! Mr. Goodman goes at length into the kind of employment the children have; and jumps to the conclusion rather suddenly, that because much of the work is done at home, no legislative measure could check the evil of youthful labor without schooling.

There is an able paper by Mr. Akroyd, M.P. holding the exact reverse. The Rev. J. Earnshaw gives a still worse account of sparse schooling and early working at Sheffield. The majority leave at nine, and about six months is the average stay at the same school. "The lessons learned are presently forgotten, and learning is remembered only in connection with tasks and restraints." "Great numbers begin work in manufactories under seven years of age e!" The remedy proposed is to make "apprenticeship" illegal until a certificate of school attendance of say 500 whole days after the age of six years! Can any thing be devised more utterly feeble and useless!

Part II. follows with good papers by J. Kay, Esq. who shows how, abroad, in all continental countries, the education of his child being compulsory on the parent, all children between five and fourteen are at school—aye, and at good schools. They may not work, even in the manufacturing districts of Germany, till nine, and then must attend the evening classes still, until they are fifteen. In Switzerland they may not go into the factories till they are thirteen. Nobles and peasants attend the same schools. Mr. Kay tells us also how the schools are established by local committees and supported by a school rate. He dilates ably and justly on the rapid growth of our great manufacturing hives, and the consequent necessity for fresh appliances to purge our lanes and streets of the dirt and ignorance which swarm there.

M. Rendu's and Dr. Matter's Essays (in French) follow, and they are among the best in the book, giving full information on Continental Schools. M. Rendu says—

In France, more than 3,500,000 children from 7 to 13 years of age, without counting the very young children admitted into the Infant Schools, attend the Elementary Schools. Notwithstanding the constant efforts of the Communes and of the State, the number is still very considerable of those who do not attend any school, or receive any instruction at home; it averages at least 400,000 young boys, and about 450,000 young girls.