THE NATIONAL ASPECT OF THE EDUCATION BILL.
["From an occasional correspondent." London Times, October 3, 1902.]

There are abundant signs that a large number of moderate minded men in the country are anxious above all things to see our numerous educational agencies brought more or less under one common authority, in order to provide us with a more effective third line of defense for competing with the increased "brain output" of rival nations. Not only is our commerce vitally interested in the question, but the supreme need of greater efficiency pervades every calling and profession. It makes itself felt as much among the masses as the classes, as much among the rank and file as among the leaders. In fact, the absence of sufficient backing for those who are best qualified to lead the nation on the question is largely due to the defects in the education received by the average man of to-day.

Those who realize how dire is the country's need at the present moment of educational reform must view with alarm, the ever-rising tide of religious warfare, which threatens, with its manifold exaggerations and misrepresentations, to obscure the graver issues at stake. One would be very far from denying the immense value of the religious and ethical part in education, and yet it seems almost humiliating at the beginning of the twentieth century to find the whole future of national education trembling in the scales of sectarian differences. Does the theologian, then, as Mr. Waddington said in his speech to the National Union of Teachers, really block the way? Is the children's future a mere appendix; is the whole welfare and destiny of the nation a mere corollary to the solution of what is styled the religious difficulty? The enormous space occupied by this topic by those who have written for or against the bill must have struck the most superficial observer. It seems essential, therefore, from the patriotic and national point of view, that an attempt should be made to restate once more what the bill actually proposes to do for increasing the educational efficiency of the country, and to urge on these religious disputants that, if they can not, like that great Englishman, Lord Howard, of Effingham, put their country before their religious differences, they may at least realize the tremendous issues at stake, and for the sake of that country which they all delight to serve may attempt to compose their differences.

Let us first see what the bill, as it stands, will probably effect. It will give us, with certain exceptions, a single authority for education of all grades below the university. It will enable us to bring our elementary and secondary schools into closer contact and connection, and thereby allow the "lad of parts" to mount from the gutter to the university. It will give the local authority the chance of providing secondary education in many areas where it is now lacking; it will also enable it, from its knowledge of the district, to provide the right sort of education that the district requires. By "standardizing" our schools it will help to eliminate the charlatan, with his bogus academy, and, by thus rendering the function of every grade of edu cation intelligible, it will allow the people at large an opportunity of learning their exact value to the community and of appreciating thereby their work as keenly as the ordinary "man in the street" in autocratic Germany or democratic Switzerland. Of course, the bill is in certain points a compromise. But no practical statesman can ever dream of framing an ideal scheme. He must first study the problem and then prescribe to the best of his ability. Universal education boards have in the abstract a certain amount to recommend them. But it would be probably easier to pull down and rebuild London than to impose such a brand-new system of national education on the country where there are already so many educational agencies established.

Of the two main rival agencies, it is clear that one has had to go. When one authority was fairly popular with both sections of the community and the other only with one, the choice of the county councils was pretty clear. Many of the larger noncounty boroughs and urban districts have, however, already developed a vigorous political activity. There is a certain amount to be said in favor of their claim to the management of at least a part of their own education. The Government have compromised with them in a fashion that spoils the superficial symmetry of the one authority, but ways and means are provided for their working harmoniously with the larger body, as well as for allowing them to surrender their rights to it, if they please. Another subject for compromise is the taking over of the Church schools. What was the Government to do? Spoliation was out of the question. To spend £10,000,000 on building rival schools, while withdrawing, or not, State supplies from the religious schools, was equally impracticable. To buy up the buildings at an outlay of £26,000,000 depended not only on the taxpayer, but on the willingness of the religious bodies to sell. The only feasible course was to form a sort of national trust

ent.

and offer equitable, or at least acceptable, terms to those who were partially independBut the financial reason was not the only one behind the cabinet's proposal. No system of national education in England can succeed if based on ostracism. Suppose, for a moment, that secular education could possibly be established in England, it would mean that such a so-called national system would be largely a sham. An immense number of parents would still persist in sending their children to denominational schools, with the result that a large quota of the rising generation would remain outside the pale of national superintendence and supervision. Such "nationalism," one may feel certain, is repugnant to the great majority of Englishmen. Now it is estimated that the denominational schools, capitalized at 34 per cent, represent an income of over £700,000 a year. The principal terms on which the denominational bodies agreed to enter the trust were the nomination of their own teachers and of a majority of the school managers in return for the loan of their buildings to the State. The immense gain of bringing practically all our schools under one head is so great that the bargain would seem a satisfactory one from the national point of view.

THE CLERGY AND THE EDUCATION ACT.

By D. C. LATHBURY.

[From the Nineteenth Century and After, January, 1903.]

The education bill of 1902 has contained many surprises, but the greatest of them has been reserved for the clergy of the Church of England. With few exceptions they saw nothing in the bill but an end to a financial burden. Their schools were to be maintained out of the rates, and if the obligation to keep the buildings in repair caused some of them a passing anxiety it was slight in comparison with the relief afforded in other directions. That the bill would make a radical change in their own relation to their schools never occurred to them. Nor, indeed, did it occur to their opponents. A measure which embodies the greatest ecclesiastical revolution that the Church of England has seen since the Reformation is still regarded by Nonconformists as a formal confirmation of the clergy in all their traditional privileges, A measure which makes the vicar of each parish in which there is a church school the removable deputy of a lay committee is still commonly described as a fresh riveting of sacerdotal chains. The clergy may be pardoned for not being wise before the fact when as yet their adversaries have not become wise after it.

The explanation of this inability to realize what the bill would do must be sought in a remote past. Before the act of 1870 the elementary education of the country was practically in the hands of the clergy. They had taken it up when there was no one else to do it. For a generation, indeed, the State had contributed largely to the support and to a less extent to the building of voluntary schools. But the initiative in the vast majority of cases had lain with the clergy. As the Government grants were increased to meet new and larger conceptions of the meaning of education the burdens thrown on the clergy grew in at least an equal degree. Nominally, indeed, they were borne by the body of subscribers to the schools. But these subscribers had to be obtained by the importunity, stimulated by the example, and not infrequently replaced by the self-sacrifice of the clergy. It was only natural, therefore, that in the clerical scheme of the universe the parish school should hold a place only second to that of the parish church. Indeed, as the parish school had often to be kept going out of the vicar's own pocket, while the parish church kept itself, there was some excuse for his thinking it the more important of the two. The act of 1870 altered all this. The elementary education of the country became the concern of the State. The clergy were no longer the sole providers of schools. They had indeed provided those which the State found in existence, and they were encouraged to provide more. But their default no longer left their parishes schoolless; it only insured the setting up of a State school. As we look back thirty years it seems strange that the significance of this change was not better understood. giving voluntary schools a formidable rival in the shape of board schools the act took away one of the most effective inducements to the continuance of voluntary subscriptions. This was the origin of the "intolerable strain" of which so much has been heard, and of the desire of the clergy to gain access to the inexhaustible fund out of which the board schools were able to make good their deficiencies.

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For a long time, as the late Archbishop of Canterbury told us not long ago, this desire was kept in cheek by the fear that aid from the rates meant control by the ratepayers. In an evil hour some ingenious person bethought him of the plan which

has been adopted in the new aćt. Representation the ratepayers must have, but so long as a perpetual majority was assured to the denominational managers no great harm need come of this. The representative managers would grow weary of being perpetually outvoted, and in time they would cease to attend. But the contribution from the rates would survive their departure and place the church schools on the secure financial level enjoyed by the board schools. How far this expectation would have been borne out by the event we shall never know, because the introduction of the Kenyon-Slaney clause has imported into the bill a new and graver mischief than any necessarily associated with rate aid. But even without this addition the new education act would in the end have been fatal to the value if not to the existence of church schools. If, indeed, the act had in express words given the clergy the control of the religious teaching and the managers the control of the secular education-which was what in the first instance was supposed to be intended-the best of the church schools would not have been injured. There would often have been friction, there would sometimes have been ill will, but in the end the parson, if he were a resolute man, would have got his way. But he would have got it at the cost of a severe struggle; and how many of the clergy would have had the strength of purpose t› carry on such a struggle? The object of the representative managers would have been to water down the religious teaching so as to make it suitable for all the children attending the school. This wish would certainly have been shared by some, very often by all, the denominational managers, and thus a united board would have been able to represent to the clergyman that he was imperiling the peace of the parish, and perhaps depriving Nonconformist children of the benefit of the religious lesson, for the sake of teaching the church children dogmas which might equally well be imparted to them when they had left school and were preparing for confirmation. So put, the appeal would, I believe, have made a very strong impression on large numbers of the clergy, and in this way the religious teaching in church schools would gradually have been assimilated to that of a good board school. The clergy, however, as a body either refused to admit the existence of any such danger, or accepted it as at all events a less evil than the sale of their schools to the State.

They forgot when they did so that the exclusive attention paid to voluntary schools had by this time become positively detrimental to the object for which those schools had been founded. That object was the religious education of the people. In the first instance, indeed, the church had given secular instruction as well, but this was only because at that time there was no one else to do it. Down to 1870 all went smoothly. When pretty well every school was a church school, there was no need to inquire whether religious teaching and secular teaching were separable or inseparable. After 1870, however, the face of things was altered. In spite of all the efforts of the supporters of voluntary schools, the board schools first overtook and then passed them. Wherever a church school was given up, a school board got possession of

it.

Wherever a new parish was formed, the chances were that to provide school as well as church was more than the parishioners could compass, and the work was left to a school board. Every year, therefore, the number of children who ought to have been in church schools grew larger and the impossibility of ever bringing them into church schools plainer. The utmost that was to be hoped from rate aid was the continuance of existing church schools, yet every year the existing church schools became more inadequate to the work they were designed to do. The children belonging to the Church of England had insensibly distributed themselves into a declining minority which still attended church schools, and a growing majority which attended board schools. Hereafter I believe the clergy will look back with wonder at the indifference with which they had come to regard this latter class. It was simply an accident that the children included in it were not in a church school, and that accident did not lessen in the least degree the responsibility of the clergy in regard to them. But it was a responsibility which the law forbade them to discharge in the most natural and convenient way. They could not follow the children into the board schools and teach them their religion in the hour set apart for the religious lesson.

It is fair to say that some time before the introduction of the present act the bishops had made an effort to get the right of entry secured by law. In certain resolutions adopted by the joint committee of the convocations of Canterbury and York, there is one asking that facilities may be granted to the clergy to give religious instruction to any of the children in board schools whose parents may wish them to receive it, and offering similar opportunities for the entry of Nonconformist teachers into church schools. The value attached to this proposal by its authors may be judged from the fact that it was not pressed upon the Government in the course of the negotiations which we must suppose to have been going on while the bill was on the stocks. There must have been a time when the bishops were consulted or

sounded as to the terms which would satisfy the church, and if the spiritual welfare of the vast army of children in board schools had been very much in their thoughts, it is inconceivable that the bill when it came should have contained no provision for their instruction. It has even been said-I do not know with what amount of truth-that there was a time when the Government were not indisposed to give the right of entry a prominent place in their measure, and only abandoned the idea in deference to episcopal opposition. Anyhow, the church, so far as her mind could be gathered from the bishops, the convocations, and the diocesan conferences, was willing to let those of her children who were in board schools go untaught, provided that she was allowed to throw the maintenance of her own schools on the rates. It was certain that the denominational right of entry to all schools could not be carried through Parliament unless the church was prepared to give the representatives of the ratepayers a majority of places on the boards of management, and rather than make this concession she left the children in board schools to the chances of the Cowper-Temple clause.

Two reasons-two presentable reasons, that is to say-may be assigned for this choice. A theory had been set up, having no known origin and applied to no other system of education, that religious and secular instruction must be given by the same teacher. No doubt this combination of functions had its advantages. It set the clergy free for other work, and it secured some knowledge of the art of teaching in the teacher. It is to be feared that by the side of the schoolmaster the vicar of the parish often showed to disadvantage. He had never learned how to give a lesson, and he, and the children, soon discovered that to do so is seldom a matter of intuition. On the other hand, the effective teaching of religion demands something more than mere technical aptitude and the power of keeping order in a class. It requires a strong sense of the importance of the work the teacher has taken upon himself and of the part that religion plays in the formation of character. In theory the schoolmaster in a church school had been chosen for his religious quite as much as for his secular qualifications. But the secular qualifications were far more easily tested and the absence of them entailed the loss of the Government grant. In many cases, therefore, the fact that a teacher had been a student at a church training college was held sufficient as a religious test, and it is difficult to say what other could have been sug gested for general adoption. But when two years' residence at a church training college became a regular mode of entry into the teaching profession it necessarily ceased to have any religious significance. I once asked the principal of a great training college what the religious standard among the students was. "Very much," he said, "what it is among the young men from whom they are taken." With most of them the professional side of their work was more absorbing than the religious side. They got up a certain minimum of religious knowledge, but there their interest in the subject ended. It is evident that teachers of this quality were not likely to do much toward the creation of that special atmosphere which is often described as the glory of a church school. That the existence of such an atmosphere is a very great advantage from the point of view of religion, I should be the last to deny. But I contend, first, that it is not created by the mere fact that the teachers come from St. Mark's or Whitelands, and, next, that where it exists it must necessarily constitute a very serious grievance to nonconformists. It is an awkward fact that in some 8,000 parishes there is only one school and that a church school. In the great majority of cases nonconformist parents have not, so far as appears, objected to this. The religious character of the school has not been marked enough to exercise any real influence on their children. If any appreciable number of these schools were what a church school ought to be-if, that is, the purpose of all concerned in them were to present the church in the most favorable light possible, and if that purpose were carried out with the deliberate enthusiasm which befits men to whom religion is the great end of life--what might not be the effect on nonconformist children? Proselytism, in the strict sense of the word, there would be none. Men who value their own creeds are not the men to treat lightly the creeds of others. But it is a commonplace that the surest of all methods of conversion is to make a religion attractive, to create in those who are outside a desire to be like those whom it animates. If every church school in England were what a very few are, nonconformist parents would have real cause for alarm. As it is, they have next to none, but that is because such church schools as I have described are only to be found here and there. The atmosphere argument either proves nothing or proves a great deal too much. Either the atmosphere is not to be found, or it is an atmosphere which ought not to exist except where there are more schools than one.

We are now in a position to review the nature of the choice which the clergy have made. The control of elementary education had passed from them in 1870. For a time they hoped that board schools would only have to be provided in a few excep

tional districts, and that voluntary schools would remain the rule. By degrees it became evident that, instead of this, board schools were everywhere beating the voluntary schools, in virtue of the automatic method of their creation and of the fact that they were maintained out of the rates. The lesson that the clergy ought to have learned from this was that the days of voluntary schools were over, that an effort which had been heroic at a time when but for the clergy the people would have gone uneducated was an anachronism when the state had taken the duty of education upon itself. The lesson that the clergy did learn was that they must capture a share of the rates for their own schools. They forgot, that is to say, the object for which those schools had been founded. They forgot that a church school exists, or ought to exist, for the one purpose of teaching religion, and that in so far as it serves any other it is only to enable it to teach religion to more children. They forgot that in practice the secular interests of their schools had often trespassed upon the religious interests, and that church schools had often become famous as places of education at the sacrifice to a great extent of their distinctive character. And most of all, they forgot that every year more and more children were passing altogether out of their hands and that every year the comparative number of children in board schools and in church schools was changing to the disadvantage of the latter. In other words, they forgot that schools which existed solely for the sake of church teaching ought to be abandoned without hesitation whenever church teaching could be better served in other ways. What they should have proposed to the Government as the only solution that would satisfy them was the taking over by the local authorities at a fair price of all church schools which stood in need of aid from the rates, and the recognition of a right of entry in the vicar of the parish or his deputies into every school provided or taken over by the local authority for the purpose of giving religious instruction during school hours to all children entered in the school register as belonging to the Church of England. This would have secured them the substance of church teaching, though at the sacrifice of the machinery by which this substance had hitherto been secured. And even the sacrifice would have been only apparent, since the money paid for the school buildings might have been spent in training a distinct class of teachers for the express purpose of giving the religious lesson in state schools.

So far, therefore, as the wishes of the clergy went, the Government were left in no doubt. In this respect Mr. Balfour has been blamed without reason. He is accused of accepting an amendment which converted a measure designed to secure the clergy in the possession of their schools into a possible instrument of expulsion. But the mistake was not Mr. Balfour's. He only took the clergy at their word and gave them neither more nor less than they had asked for. It was they who took no account of the change in the position of school managers, which the mere fact of a church school having a right to rate aid would be certain to effect in it. The Bishop of Rochester put this quite rightly in the Lords on the 15th of December. "It is," he said, "a matter of public notoriety that the management clause in which the sting of the Kenyon-Slaney amendment lay hid is the work of the whole representative body of the church." From every place where the clergy met together had gone up the demand for rate aid, coupled with the concession of two places on the managing board to the representatives of the ratepayers. It is quite true that the majority of those from whom the request came did not realize what was involved in it. Indeed, I am not at all sure that Mr. Balfour himself fully realized it until, alarmed by the Sevenoaks election, he set to work to discover how far the bill could be modified to meet nonconformist and anticlerical objectors.

His search in this direction was soon rewarded. The management clause said nothing about the clergyman of the parish. It spoke only of the four foundation or denominational managers and of the two managers appointed by the local authority. To these, therefore, belonged all the rights of management, except such as were reserved for the local authority. With the consent of that authority they could appoint the teachers, and, as this consent might not be withheld except on educational grounds, their choice, so far as it was made on religious grounds, was quite unfettered. Indeed, the Kenyon-Slaney clause, as amended in the House of Lords at the instance of the Government, operated rather in restraint than in amplification of the managers' powers. The reference to the trust deed and the appeal to the bishop, limited and worthless as they are, were not in the seventh clause. That contained no restriction on the powers of the managers. What the Kenyon-Slaney amendment really did was to bring out the true meaning of the clause--to say in words what the managers might do instead of leaving it to be slowly discovered by experi ment. But for this the clergy would have gone on believing their position secure until some managers, bolder than the rest, had closed the school door against the vicar. I can not see, therefore, that they have any case against the Government. They said by their representatives, official and other, "Give us a two-thirds