few energetic men, education had been shelved, as a musty useless topic, for an indefinite period.
Now, however, in this forty-eighth year of the nineteenth century, it is viewed in a far different light. The middle classes have begun to take up the matter as they had never done before, – "purging and unsealing their long abused sight" to the manifold advantages involved in it for themselves; while the upper classes look more to how it fares in this respect with the very poor or the profligate. And so much pressed on this subject, from many quarters, is the government, that neither Lord John Russell, as long as he remains on the Treasury Bench, nor any body else, who may get there, can ever hope to avoid doing something for the education of the people.
There has been a growing sense of the importance of this subject on the part of the nation at large, which has acted on the nervous sensibilities of all occupants of office in later years; and the very force of events themselves, apart from all theoretic reasoning as to expediency or the contrary, has compelled each successive government to look after the schoolmaster, and even to send him abroad in the world, though at the risk of making him the laughing-stock of his scholars for want of due preparation.
We do not purpose to write the history of the educational movement of this realm since the middle of the eighteenth century – volumes might be compiled on the topic, and it would still remain unexhausted.
There are, however, two things which we would point out to the attention of our readers. The first is, that the constituted authorities of this country and the legislature, ever since the time of the Reformation, have acted too much upon the principle that the ecclesiastical establishments of the nation, aided by the Foundation schools of the land, not only were sufficient to attend to the moral and religious welfare of the community, but that they actually did effect this end, and that they did bring up the people in the right way; whereas we now know, that not only has the constitution of the ecclesiastical revenues and administration been lamentably unequal and ineffective, but that provisions for teaching, upon a general and effective plan, could hardly be said to exist. At all events, when the population began to increase rapidly – when the great movement of the Methodists took place in England – and later, when religious dissent not only reared its hydra head, but became encouraged in high places – the nation seemed all at once to start from its lethargy, and to inquire into what means it possessed for enlightening and civilising the humblest classes of its children; and, when it did so inquire, those means were found wanting.
Again, in these our own days, when crime is shown to be increasing in a much faster ratio than either the enormous wealth or the already great population of the country; and when legal inquirers have traced back adult crime to puerile and even infantine neglect and ignorance; when the brutality of the people shows itself at every man's door and homestead, in the burning of farming-stock or the destruction of machinery and dwelling-houses, and makes itself to be paid for in the form of constantly increasing poor-rates, – in times such as these, it behoves every man, who has any thing to dread from the insurrectionary rising of the lower classes, to look sharply around him, and to see how best the sources of the evil torrent may be dried up; where the strongest dam may be thrown across its impetuous course, and into what side-channels its blind strength may be diverted. It behoves every thoughtful lover of his country to consider well how the innate national energies of his fellow countrymen may be improved, humanised, and directed to proper objects; and how the mass of the people, instead of being dreaded as a mob of hungry, savage levellers, may come to be looked on as the broad basis and support of the whole national edifice. And this is to be effected by attending, not merely to the physical and material well-being of the people, but by giving well directed and unceasing diligence to the promotion of "true religion and sound knowledge" among them. We maintain that hitherto, and even at the present time, the public constituted means for attaining this important end have been, and are, altogether insufficient; and we further maintain, that the necessity of making some adequate provision is increasing every day, and cannot long be postponed without imminent danger to the community.
We would also beg our readers to observe that, in the case of these commissions of inquiry into the existing state of education in any given district, but especially in Wales, the commissioners had not got to look into what the existing government, or previous governments, had done, nor into how their systems acted – those governments had done nothing, and they had no system; but they rather went to see what the people, abandoned to their own resources by the state, which ought to have aided them, had been able to effect out of their own means and goodwill, and to witness the results of the voluntary and fortuitous systems which were then in full and unaided operation. Whatever causes of blame and offence the commissioners might meet with – whatever imperfections, and shortcomings, and ill doings, they might perceive – these could not so much be laid to the blame of the people, as they might in fairness be attributed to the neglect and apathy of the nation at large. It was entirely owing to the private efforts of the people in their various localities, unconnected with each other – to their desultory and varying efforts – that any thing had been done at all. It was obviously better that something should have been done rather than nothing; but the debt of gratitude for the "something" was due to the people – the blame of the "nothing" lay with the legislature and the nation at large.
It would, therefore, be highly unbecoming in such commissioners, to show any flippant petulancy in their animadversions on the generally defective results which the isolated operations of the several parishes and districts might evince. It would behove them to look on with rather a benevolent eye, and to speak with a guarded tongue concerning the evils they might witness. We think they have not altogether shown these qualifications in the Reports now before us; and after perusing them, we rise with the feeling that the commissioners seem to have thought themselves authorised to find out how far the various teachers, &c., had neglected duties imposed on them by the public, and that they had expected to find perfection pervading the country; whereas they should have anticipated that imperfection and neglect would prove to be the rule – perfection and care the few and distant exceptions.
It is by no means so easy to inspect a school, or to find out the knowledge and the modes of thinking of young people, as might be supposed. It is not to be done by any one stalking stiffly into a school-room, giving himself the airs of a Dr Busby, and putting questions with the consequence of an examiner in the schools at Oxford. The very idea of a stranger being in the room, and much more of one authorised to examine, is enough to dislocate the thoughts of children, older and riper than village boys and girls commonly are; and the mere interruption of the usual formalities of class arrangement and class work is sufficient to break up the discipline which, in all parochial schools at least, rests upon a very precarious and doubtful basis. Much less is it possible, by a flying visit of one, or two, or three hours, to get at a true perception of what the average knowledge of children may be fairly rated at: it is only by repeated and patient inspection that the ordinary amount of work done, and knowledge gained, can be discovered. The young mind, too, does not commonly retain facts – it rather receives general impressions, and, though this is not produceable knowledge, it is, nevertheless, information, and cultivation of the mental powers, and formation of the character, not without great value. But because a child cannot answer certain questions at a certain time and place, it does not therefore follow that it is ignorant of the subject. The thoughts cannot be concentrated, the powers of the memory and of expression have not been sufficiently cultivated; the faculty of reproduction, and the method of arrangement and classification of ideas, do not exist. It is impossible for such a child to pass through the ordeal. And yet the common expression of young people, when the question they could not answer is explained for them – "Oh yes! I knew that – only I could not remember it," tells the whole truth, and reveals at once the constitution and the weakness of their minds. Examinations, unless they immediately follow the subject learnt, are not suited to young children, and may tend to give a false idea of their real acquirements. But, if to this dread of answering questions be added the awe arising from an examiner's – a strange examiner's presence, the physical impossibility of obtaining satisfactory replies is thereby confirmed. We remember it in our own case at school; in the presence of the university examiner, who periodically visited us, it was and even in the schools of adolescent life, the
