Appendix to III: Suggestions on the Education Act

I. THE majority in Parliament in 1869-70 was Liberal and Nonconformist. The Act of 1870 was strictly a Liberal and Nonconformist measure.

II. The majority in the Parliament of 1885-6 is Conservative and Catholic. Many Liberals are opposed to the Act of 1870.

III. There is therefore at this moment the possibility of balancing the Act of 1870 by an Act which shall protect by permanent enactments the Voluntary and Christian schools of the country.

IV. This cannot be done by any repeal or substantial undoing of the Act of 1870 and the system of schools which has sprung from it, but it may be done by the extension of the principles of that Act with such modifications as will admit Voluntary and Christian schools within an educational law common to the whole people.

V. So long as the Conservatives and the Irish, or Catholic vote, are united this can be certainly accomplished, and even if the Irish vote should fall off from the Conservatives, and once more unite with a Liberal majority, we have reason to believe that the Irish mem bers would oppose any Education Act which should subject the million and a half of Catholics, predomin-

VOL. in. g antly Irish, resident in England to any anti-Catholic system of education. We cannot douht that the Irish Bishops would lend their fullest influence to the Bishops in England in protecting the Catholic and the Irish population in England from any such oppression.

VI. And it is here that we need to be especially on our guard, because leading politicians have declared themselves to be in favour of denominational education in Ireland, but of common education for England.

VII. There are two obvious dangers in the present system of Government grants from the Imperial funds on which our schools at this moment depend alto gether. The first danger is the great probability that they will be continually diminished, and some day altogether cease; the other, that the control of a central fund by Government may become the most powerful means of a central and despotic Government education like that of France.

VIII. As to the cessation of grants from the Imperial funds, it is to be borne in mind that the whole stream of legislation for many years has steadily set in the direction of throwing off all burdens from the Imperial funds upon the local rates throughout the country. The Home Office has already thrown off a portion of the maintenance of the industrial schools upon the county rates. There can be little doubt that enlarged county government will soon be established, and upon the county rates all that can be thrown will be thrown. If the Voluntary schools shall continue to depend upon Government grants only, and shall be permanently excluded from participation in the rates, they will hereafter be in manifest danger of extinction.

IX. On the other hand, the willingness of certain advanced Liberals to make primary schools free out of Government grants is proof enough that they see clearly how great a central power thereby exists ready to their hand.

X. It would seem, therefore, that the present condition of the Voluntary schools, taken at the best, is either precarious or perilous, aud prudence seems to dictate that we should use this unprecedented condition of Parliamentary balance, which may never return, to redress the inequalities created by the Act of 1870, and to place the Voluntary schools on the broad basis of a law common to the whole people of the country, which can never be assailed without assailing the inter ests of all schools alike.

XI. With this view, the following suggestions are made:

1. That the principle of the school rate, con tained in the Act of 1870, be extended to the whole of the country.

2. That the principles contained in the Reformatory Schools Act and in the Industrial Schools Act of 1886 shall be applied to primary schools.

XII. The principle of the school rate is so obvious as to need no comment. The principles of the Reformatory and Industrial Schools Acts are as follows:

1. The Secretary of State for the Home Department has power to certify any schools that fulfil the requisite conditions as schools authorised to receive children either convicted or committed by the magistrates.

2. The requisite conditions are that the school buildings and ground attached shall be sufficient for the uses and health of the children.

3. That the schools be open to the inspection and visitation of the Home Office in all matters-relating to education, to the sanitary state, and to the well-being of the children, together with an audit of its accounts.

4. The schools may be undertaken by any private managers, on whom falls altogether the cost of the sites, of the buildings, of the management, and of the religious and moral discipline of the school. XIII. These Acts have now worked for about thirty years with signal benefit in the reclaiming of children and in the diminution of crime in youth. There has been perfect harmony between the Government officials and the managers of the schools, who gladly acknow ledge the benefit they have derived from the inspection and visitation of the Home Office. The limits of the inspection and visitation are fixed in the statute, and a long experience proves that there is no disposition either on the part of the officials to interfere with the responsibility of the managers, nor on the part of the managers in any way to thwart or to interfere with tho inspection and visitation of the Government officials.

XIV. The source of such inspection and visitation would, as things now exist, be in the Government, but it would appear certain that when county government has been established, some part of these functions might be delegated to the authority of the county. It is even conceivable that some participation in these functions might be extended to the localities on which the rate is levied.

XV. As to the officials of Government, no objection ought to be raised. As to the officials of counties, it •can hardly be supposed that any danger would arise, inasmuch as the limits of inspection and visitation would be laid down in the statute law, and could not be exceeded without legal redress. As to any local inspection and visitation, under the same limitations by statute, no difficulties ought to arise, and a sufficient provision for the right exercise of such inspection and visitation might be easily obtained by the appointment of an official inspector of the Government, with out whom no local visitation could take place.

XVI. An experience of nearly twenty years has proved that the most extensive local visitation can be •carried on not only with perfect safety, but with great •advantage. Thirty Boards of Guardians of the metropolitan district, year by year, visit some twenty boys' schools and girls' schools in London. The maintenance of the children is derived from the rates. The schools &nd their administration belong to the managers. The guardians visit in any numbers, at any time, and with out notice. They have free access to all that relates to their legal power of visitation, and they record their opinions, objections, or approval in books kept for that purpose. It does not appear why a system which has been so long tried with perfect peace, goodwill, and contentment should not be applied to our primary schools — above all, when it is remembered that the schools visited by the guardians are boarding-schools, with all the manifold circumstances of management, often very complicated. The primary schools are open and used only for four hours a day, and have comparatively little matter for visitation.

XVII. But, it may be asked, what is to become of the 4000 Board schools which in the last fourteen years have been established on rates and Government grants without an effort or a sacrifice on the part of their pro moters? Their whole cost in creation and in maintenance depends on public money. If they were to be thrown in any measure upon voluntary contribution, they would be certainly reduced to straits. Let it for a moment be supposed that they are left to continue as they are. Two beneficial effects at least would still be obtained — their needless multiplication would be arrested, and freedom with power would be restored to the Voluntary schools to multiply themselves, according to the needs of the people, and the self-denial of those who are willing to found and to maintain them.

XVIII. But in the manifold needs and the future extension of national education some uses for the existing Board schools may be found which shall even extend the benefits of which they are capable, without obstructing the liberty of conscience and the freedom of action of those who are in conscience opposed to the condition which has been created by the Act of 1870, believing it to be fraught with consequences and with influences dangerous to the national character and the Christianity of the people of this country.

SUGGESTIONS FOR A COMMON SYSTEM OF NATIONAL EDUCATION.

(August 1887.)

I. THE Education Act of 1870 has rooted itself far too deeply in the last seventeen years, and has endowed itself far too abundantly by the outlay of millions of money, to make it prudent, even if it were possible, to propose either to rescind or substantially to modify it. It must be taken, therefore, as an accomplished fact.

II. A distinction may be drawn between the Act of 1870 and its subsequent administration. The latter may be modified without touching the principles of the Act itself.

III. The principles of the Act are three:

1. That elementary education shall be made universal.

2. That an education rate shall be imposed and collected for that purpose.

3. That the expenditure of the rate and the management of schools maintained by it shall be administered by local authorities.

IV. The authors and friends of the Act of 1870 can desire nothing more than that these three principles should be carried out to the fullest extent over the face of the whole country.

V. The managers and friends of Voluntary schools would make no opposition to such an extension of these three principles, provided that the principle of Voluntary schools and freedom of conscience in religion he recognised and incorporated in one common system of national education.

VI. With a view to describe such a system of national education, the following suggestions are offered:

In the Report of the Royal Commissioners on Education in 1860, it was recommended: " That all assistance given to the annual maintenance of schools shall be simplified and reduced to grants of two kinds. > " The first of these grants should be paid out of the general taxation of the country, in consideration of the fulfilment of certain conditions by the managers of the schools. Compliance with these conditions is to be ascertained by the inspectors.

" The second should be paid out of the county rates, in consideration of a certain degree of knowledge by the children of the school during the year preceding the payment. The existence of this degree of knowledge shall be ascertained by examiners appointed by county and borough Boards of Education hereinafter described."

The Report proceeds to recommend, " That in every county, or division of a county, having a separate county rate, there shall be a county Board of Education appointed in the following manner: the Court of Quarter Sessions to elect not more than six, who again shall not elect more than six; the ministers of religion not exceeding one-third of the number."

" That in corporate towns of more than 40,000 inhabitants, the Town Council may appoint a borough Board of Education of not more than six persons, of whom not more than two shall be ministers of religion " (Report of the Commissioners, pp. 544-5.)

VII. These passages are quoted only to give in out line what may still be recommended in the year 1887, eliminating all details as to the mode of election of county or borough Boards, and the number of persons to be elected.

VIII. Let it be supposed that the Committee of Privy Council and the Department shall remain unchanged, and its functions continue as they are; all legislation by Codes and Minutes, and all inspection-in-chief, and all ultimate appeals would remain as before.

IX. The county inspectors would be sub-inspectors, responsible ultimately to the Department.

X. The functions of all inspectors, and the limits of their inspection, would be laid down in the statute law, as in the case of reformatory and industrial schools.

XI. In the first draft of the Bill of 1870, the principle that all who pay should share was fully and fairly carried out. The enactment of the 14th clause was inconsistent with the first draft of the Bill and with the intention of its authors. Its effect has been to create an inequality which is unjust in the treatment of the Voluntary schools. By that clause they are absolutely excluded from all participation in the education rate, which they are, nevertheless, compelled to pay. The 14th clause ought to be abolished.

XII. All schools, therefore, whether Voluntary or Board schools, would receive from the two sources of public revenue according to the recommendation of the Commission of 1860, though not in equal proportions. The Voluntary schools purchase their independence and protect their liberty of conscience in religion by voluntary contributions, and must always do so. Their participation in the rate would therefore be diminished in that proportion.

XIII. The multiplication of unnecessary schools could be guarded against hereafter as now, the ultimate appeal being, as now, from the local boards to the Department.

XIV. The unity of education and inspection could not be maintained if the framing of Codes and Minutes should reside anywhere but in the central Department; but no Code ought to have force until it has lain on the table of the House in print for three months, and has been published to the heads of all those bodies with whom, by the Minutes of 1847, the Government is in contract.

XV. The Act of 1870 will need interpretation in four primary points: namely, the meaning and limits of the word elementary as applied to education; the meaning and extent of the word suitable, and the meaning of the word shall, in clauses giving power to School Boards to supply additional schools. Finally, the meaning of the term unnecessary, as applied to Denominational schools.

(The Month.)

The future of the primary schools is really the future of the people of England. Such as is the education of the children, such will he the men of the next generation. I confine what I say to England, for the state both of Ireland and of Scotland is widely different from the state of the English people.

We hear much of our national character. What ia it? Is it a fixed intellectual and moral type, which reproduces itself by a natural law, or is it a result of certain conditions, such as the influence of homes, the training of childhood, the controlling force of public opinion, of political institutions, and of religious teaching? If it depends on all these things, and in truth it does; and if all these have been and are continually changing, then their result must have proportionably changed, and the national character of to-day is not the national character of fifty years ago. One proof is enough. For six hundred years Parliament, which is the chief index of our national character, has known how to govern itself without closures and surgical appliances for keeping order. The national character was calm, grave, and deliberate. Order waa its normal state; disorder abnormal. Our national character has been steadily though imperceptibly changing, and the House of Commons has lost the gravity of self-control which made it the wonder of foreign Chambers and Parliaments. What has this to do with our primary schools? Everything. It is Parliament that frames our Education Acts and fashions our primary schools at its will.

Till 1870 the primary education of England was voluntary and Christian. Since 1870 one half of the population of England is under a system which is neither Christian nor voluntary, but secular and compulsory.

Can two systems so diametrically opposite in kind and efficacy produce one and the same result? The national character was chiefly formed in its Christian schools. What character will be formed in schools without Christianity?

Already this is proved in the United States. The Common School system is bearing its fruits. And it will be even more perceptible among us in England, because the education of our Voluntary schools was, until 1870, chiefly religious. Its secular teaching was less precisely and sedulously cared for than its Christian teaching and discipline. This was turned to our reproach. Our condition at present is this. The Board schools instruct a million of children in secular matter, but exclude all distinctive Christian doctrine. The Voluntary schools are reduced during the school day to secular schools. No Christian doctrine can be taught in them except out of hours. They are subject to the fierce competition of Board schools supported out of inexhaustible rates; taught by teachers receiving salaries double in amount compared with those of Voluntary schools; armed with the attractions of costly buildings and ample playgrounds, and all that public money can provide. In ten years they have drawn to themselves a million of children — nearly half the number gathered by the Voluntary schools in fifty years. Can it be-doubted that, in this unequal race, the system which is promoted by public law, paid for by public money, will not only check and outstrip, but starve and crush the system which lives only by private zeal and private self-denial; or, in other words, that the primary education of Christian England will, in a generation or two, be no longer in Christian schools but in secular schools? We cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. A Christian people can never spring from secular schools, and neither private zeal nor home education will suffice to supply the Christian teaching and formation which is excluded from the secular schools of the State.

The advocates of the secular schools were chiefly Nonconformists, who asserted that religion would be sufficiently taught at home and in Sunday-schools. Already we hear some of themselves declaring that Sunday-schools reach only the few that voluntarily attend, but do not reach the majority. Already we are told that the sons of Nonconformist homes are depart ing from the religion of their forefathers. But the poor of England are not Nonconformists. The Noncon formists are for the most part above the poor. They are the middle class. The Nonconformists are hardly to be found in poor schools. And the Board schools are therefore being managed especially under their influence. The primary schools of England are chiefly filled by the children of the Established Church, of the Catholic Church, and of the Wesleyans. These three bodies are the religious educators of the English people, and it is especially their Voluntary schools that are now oppressed by the unequal favour shown by the Act of 1870 to the schools of the minority.

Let us never lose sight of the inheritance which is now at stake. Two systems are at this time in conflict.

On one side is the system of secular education, which as yet is only partially developed in England. It contains, nevertheless, in itself the principles fully developed in France, namely:

1. That education primarily and properly belongs to the State.

2. That the schools belong to the State.

3. That the children belong to the State.

4. That the State has no religion.

5. That the formation of the national character belongs to the State.

6. That the formation of the teachers of the people belongs to the State.

7. That no one shall teach the people except by patent of the State.

In a word, we are being stealthily drawn into a pass where these principles are foregone conclusions already embodied in the law of the land; and irresistible in their future application.

On the other side is the traditional Christian education of the English people, which rests upon the following principles:

1. That the children of a Christian people have a right by Divine law to Christian education.

2. That Christian parents have a twofold right aud duty, both natural and supernatural, to guard this in heritance of their children.

3. That Christian children are in no sense the children of a State that has no religion.

4. That their teaching and training, or formation as Christians, is of higher moment than all secular instruction, and may not be postponed to it, or risked to obtain it.

5. That in the selection of teachers to whom their children shall be intrusted, Christian parents have a right and a duty which excludes all other human authority.

6. That to deprive the poor of this right and liberty, which is claimed by and yielded to the rich, is a flagrant injustice.

Let no one be deceived by thinking that these two systems can be reconciled or mingled with each other. They are mutually exclusive. We have to choose between them. The sooner we make up our mind the safer for us. Every year we are losing ground. Every year the antagonist system, fraught with antagonistic principles, is penetrating the legislation and structure of the commonwealth, and tainting the brain and blood of the governing classes. It has already reduced the national Universities to schools of secular science and secular literature. It is throwing off Christianity from the public life of the State, and relegating it to the private life of men. If the primary schools of England shall cease to be Christian schools, there may still be Christians in England, but the traditions of the English people will exist no longer. It will be Christian England only as it is Catholic France, by accident of numbers, or rather, by the compassion of God upon individuals, and not by its public law, or faith, or fidelity to God.

It is in this crisis of our country that God has once more restored to the Catholic Church both liberty and power. We are debtors above all men and to all men, to preserve inviolate, at all costs and at all privations, the unbroken and unimpaired tradition of Christian education in the whole circle of our colleges and schools, from the majestic and venerable Colleges of Stonyhurst and Ushaw to the primary schools of our humble missions in the green villages and in the busy towns of England.