The History Of Education - Ellwood P. Cubberley (classic novels for teens .TXT) 📗

LORD MACAULAY (1800-59)]

 

DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED. In the meantime liberal leaders, Schools Inquiry Commissions, official reports, and educational propagandists continued to pile up evidence as to the inadequacy of the old voluntary system. A few examples, out of hundreds that might be cited, will be mentioned here.

Lord Macaulay, in an address made in Parliament, in 1847 (R. 300), defending a “Minute” of the “Committee of Privy Council on Education”

(created in 1839) proposing the nationalization of education, held it to be “the right and duty of the State to provide for the education of the common people,” as an exercise of self-protection, and warned the Commons of dangers to come if the progressive tendencies of the time were not listened to. The Census Returns of 1851, as well as the abundance of data published by the Schools Inquiry Commissions, were effectively used to reveal the inadequate provisions for the education of the masses. The Reports of the school inspectors, too, revealed conditions in need of being remedied in all phases of educational effort. The Report on the Apprenticing of Pauper Children (R. 301) is selected as typical of many similar reports.

 

FACTS REVEALED BY THE CENSUS OF 1851

 

Items 1833 1851

 

(1) Population of England and Wales 14,400,000 17,927,609

(2) Middle and upper classes population 2,000,000 2,489,945

(3) Laboring class populations 12,400,000 15,437,664

(4) Population 3-12 years of age of (2) 420,000 522,888

(5) Population 3-12 years of age of (3) 2,604,000 3,241,919

(6) Number of schools for children of (2) 14,807 16,324

(7) Number of schools for children of (3) 24,074 29,718

(8) Pupils of class (2) in schools 481,728 546,396

(9) Pupils of class (3) in schools 705,219 1,597,982

(10) Percentage of children of class (2) at school 114.6 104.4

(11) Percentage of children of class (3) at school 30.5 49.2

 

So deeply ingrained, though, was the English conception of education as a private and voluntary and religious affair and no business of the State; so self-contained were the English as a people; and so little did they know or heed the progress made in other lands, that the arguments for national action encountered tremendous opposition from the Conservative elements, and often were opposed even by Liberals. The reasoning of Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth (R. 302), Secretary of the Committee of Council on Education and one of the clearest heads in England in his day, who held that a fee for instruction had a moral value and vindicated personal freedom, and who resented the interference of the State in the matter of a parent’s relation to his child, was typical of thousands of others. Edward Baines (1774-1848), proprietor of the Leeds Mercury, the chief Liberal organ in northern England, bitterly opposed any action looking toward nationalizing education. He expressed the feeling of many when he wrote: Civil government is no fit agency for the training of families or of souls…. Throw the people on their own resources in education, as you did in industry; and be assured, that, in a nation so full of intelligence and spirit, Freedom and Competition will give the same stimulus to improvement in our schools, as they have done in our manufactures, our husbandry, our shipping, and our commerce.

 

THE BEGINNINGS OF NATIONAL ORGANIZATION. By 1865 it had become evident to a majority that the voluntary system, whatever its merits, would never succeed in educating the nation, and from this time forth the demand for some acceptable scheme for the organization of national education became a part of a still more general movement for political and social reform.

Once more, as in 1832-33, an education law was enacted following the passage of a bill for electoral reform and the extension of the suffrage.

 

Though the Liberal Party was in power, it was well satisfied with the Reform Act of 1832 because through it the middle classes of the population, which the Liberal Party represented, had gained control of the government. The country, though, was not—the working-classes in particular demanding a share in the government. Finally the demand became too strong to be resisted, and the Second Reform Act, of 1867, became a law. This abolished a number of the remaining smaller boroughs, and greatly extended the right to vote. In the country the amount of property to be owned to vote was reduced from �10 to �5, and the leasehold value from �50 to �12. In the cities and towns the vote was now given to all householders, and to all lodgers who paid a yearly rental of �10. This legislation gave the vote to a vastly increased number of people, particularly city workers, [30] and was a political revolution for England of great magnitude.

 

From the passage of this new Reform Act to 1870, the organization of national education only awaited the formulation of some acceptable scheme.

“We must educate our new masters,” now became a common expression. The main question was how to create schools to do what the voluntary schools had shown themselves able to do for a part, but were unable to do for all, without at the same time destroying the vast denominational system [31]

that, in spite of its defects, had “done the great service of rearing a race of teachers, spreading schools, setting up a standard of education, and generally making the introduction of a national system possible.” The way in which these “vested interests” were cared for was typically English, and characteristic of the strong sense of obligation of the English people. In 1870 a compromise law was proposed and carried. Mr.

Gladstone, then Prime Minister, stated the attitude of the Government in framing the new law, when he said: [32]

 

It was with us an absolute necessity—a necessity of honour and a necessity of policy—to respect and to favour the educational establishments and machinery we found existing in the country. It was impossible for us to join in the language or to adopt the tone which was conscientiously and consistently taken up by some members of the House, who look upon these voluntary schools, having generally a denominational character, as admirable passing expedients, fit, indeed, to be tolerated for a time, deserving all credit on account of the motives which led to their foundation, but wholly unsatisfactory as to their main purpose, and therefore to be supplanted by something they think better…. That has never been the theory of the Government…. When we are approaching this great work, which we desire to make complete, we ought to have a sentiment of thankfulness that so much has been done for us.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 194. WORK OF THE SCHOOL BOARDS IN PROVIDING SCHOOL

ACCOMMODATIONS

London taken as a type. Note the deficiency in school accommodation in 1838, that the voluntary schools made no appreciable gain on this deficiency up to 1870, the attempt to cope with the situation between 1871

and 1874, and the long pull of the new Board schools necessary to provide sufficient schools and seats.]

 

Accordingly the Elementary Education Bill of 1870 (R. 304) preserved the existing Voluntary Schools; divided the country up into school districts; gave the denominations a short period in which to provide schools, with aid for buildings; [33] and thereafter, in any place where a deficiency in school accommodations could be shown to exist; School Boards were to be elected, and they should have power to levy taxes and maintain elementary schools. Existing Voluntary Schools might be transferred to the School Boards, whose schools were to be known as Board Schools. The schools were not ordered made free, but the fees of necessitous children were to be provided for by the School Boards, and they might compel the attendance of all children between the ages of five and twelve. Inspection and grants were limited to secular subjects, though religious teaching was not forbidden. The central government was to be secular and neutral; the local boards might decide as they saw fit. Such were the beginnings of national education in England. That the new Board Schools met a real need, especially in the cities, is shown by the chart on the preceding page, giving the results in London.

 

IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NATIONAL SYSTEM

 

PROGRESS UNDER THE LAW OF 1870. Beginning in 1871 the Board Schools had, by 1893, come to enroll 41 per cent of the pupils in elementary schools in England, as against 44 per cent in Voluntary Schools, and by 1903 the proportions were 49 per cent to 39 per cent. By 1902 the government grants for maintenance had reached, for all schools, �8,000,000 a year, and the Board Schools were rapidly outrunning the Voluntary Schools both in numbers and in per-capita expenditures. The Board Schools had made their greatest headway in the cities. In 1895 there were still some 11,000 small parishes which had no Board Schools, and in consequence paid no direct taxes for schools. Of these, 8000 had only Church-of-England Voluntary Schools.

 

In 1880 elementary education had been made fully compulsory, and in 1891

largely free. In 1893 the age for exemption from attendance was fixed at eleven, and in 1899 this was raised to twelve. In 1888 county and borough councils had been created, better to enforce the Act and to extend supervision. The Annual Codes, from 1870 to 1902, gradually extended governmental control through more and more detailed instructions as to inspection, the addition of new subjects, and better compulsion to attend.

In 1899 a Central Board of Education, under a President and a Parliamentary Secretary, was created, to consolidate in one body the work formerly done by:

 

a. The Committee of Council on Education (established 1839), which administered the grants for elementary education.

 

b. The Department of Science and Art (established 1853), which administered the grants for special and evening instruction in science and art.

 

c. The Charity Commissioners, to which had been given (1874) supervision of the old educational trusts and endowments for education.

 

d. The educational functions of the Board of Agriculture.

 

This new Board unified the administration of elementary and secondary education for the first time in English history.

 

By about 1895 the strain on the Voluntary Schools had become hard to bear.

The Church resented the encroachments of the State on its ancient privilege of training the young, and the larger resources which the Board Schools could command. In 1895 the Conservative party won the parliamentary elections, and remained in power for some years. This was the opportunity of the Voluntary Schools, and in 1897 a special national-aid grant of five shillings per pupil in average daily attendance was made to the Voluntary Schools. This simply increased the general dissatisfaction, and there was soon a general demand for new legislation that would reconcile the whole question of national education. The Law of 1902 was the ultimate result.

 

THE ANNEXATION LAW OF 1902. The Balfour Education Act of 1902 marks the beginning of a new period in English education. For the first time in English history education of all grades—elementary, secondary, and higher; voluntary and state—was brought under the control of one single local authority, and Voluntary Schools were taken over and made a charge on the “rates” equally with the Board Schools. New local Educational Committees and Councils replaced the old School Boards, and all secular instruction in state-aided schools of all types was now placed under their control. Religious instruction could continue where desired. In addition, one third of the property of England, which had heretofore escaped all direct taxation for education, was now compelled to pay its proper share.

The foundation principle that “the wealth of the. State must educate the children of the State” was now applied, for the first time.

 

The State now abandoned the old policy of merely supervising and assisting voluntary associations to maintain schools, in competition with state-provided schools, and assumed the whole responsibility for the