General Report, for the Year 1852, by Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, J. D. MORELL, Esq., on the British and Wesleyan and other Denominational Schools inspected by him in the Northern Counties of England and Wales.

MY LORDS,

SINCE I had the honor of laying before you my last report, a year has elapsed, marked, in those portions of the country to which my labours have been mainly directed, by a state of almost unexampled commercial prosperity. Such a state of things has naturally exerted considerable influence on the state and the prospects of popular education; the more so, as such education is dependent for its support chiefly on voluntary efforts and the payment of school fees.

tages.

First of all, there is some amount of influence arising from Disadvanthis source to be put down on the disadvantageous side of the question. Where labour is abundant and wages high, there is a constant temptation held out to parents to remove the children from school as soon as possible, in order to reap their share in the harvest of material prosperity. So much has this been the case in some portions of the northern district, that it has been found extremely difficult in many schools to select a scholar old enough to stand as a candidate for apprenticeship (thirteen years). In more than one instance, indeed, children have been taken from the factory, (much to the credit of the parents,) when they were earning as much as eight or ten shillings a week, to commence their duties as pupil-teachers for less than the half of that sum.

Whilst disadvantages of this kind, however, undoubtedly exist, they have been far more than counterbalanced by very decided advantages on the other side.

tage.

First of all, most of the labouring class (where the good- First advan will exists) have been at least able to send their children to school somewhere. When this is not the case, it betokens a degree of apathy and a want of culture in the whole neighbourhood, which, as far as my observation extends, is happily, if deeply to be lamented, at the same time rarely to be found. Secondly, material prosperity, we find, always tends to Second adincrease the demand for a better kind of education. The children themselves are better fed and better clothed; their physical powers are more vigorous, and the feeling of selfrespect begins to be awakened. When they lay aside their rags, they lay aside with them very much of that crushed

vantage.

Third advantage.

state of feeling and total listlessness towards the future, of which those rags are, more commonly than not, the outward symbol both in the child and in the man. The parent, more over, begins in better times to feel more ambition for his family; he demands an instruction for them which goes beyond the bare elements; and if he cannot get it in one school, he feels no hesitation in paying twice as much to get it in another. These remarks on the effect of "good times," as they are called, are not mere speculations, they are the result of observations, which any one who is able to contrast the former state of things with the present may most easily verify.

Again, thirdly, the existence of a general state of prosperity has had a considerable effect upon the schools themselves, both educationally and financially. I think I am not exceeding the truth when I say that, during the last two years, there has been a general tendency towards an increase of school fees. This, indeed, although it is rendered possible only by the cause we have already assigned, has, in fact, arisen from a considerable combination of circumstances. The operation of your Lordships' Minutes is acknowledged, on all hands, to have raised the general idea of popular education throughout the country; it has spread abroad new and improved plans, called forth a fresh and increasing pedagogical literature, and held out hitherto unknown inducement for men to enter into the labours of a primary teacher; it has presented, moreover, a standard of qualification to which every teacher now feels himself bound to aspire, and has furnished assistance in the schools themselves, by means of which these more advanced ideas and improved plans of operation may be carried into practical effect.

The instruction given in a primary school that is brought into the current of this system of influences becomes of necessity much more vigorous and more complete. A large number of persons standing on the verge of the middle classes find it accordingly to be the best and most valuable medium through which they can educate their own families; added to which, it supplies the want that is felt by the thrifty mechanic to give his child a better education than that which he himself enjoyed, and one more suited to the improved state of his department of labour. The natural effect is that the promoters of such schools, becoming conscious of their greater value, and having constant applications from persons to whom a few pence a week is comparatively of little moment, are naturally induced to raise the school fee to something like double its former amount. They see, as a matter of fact, that the school is improved by it; the parents take more interest

in that for which they give a reasonable value; the children attend more regularly and punctually; the master works with more life and spirit; and, last, though not least, the pockets of the subscribers are relieved of a very unwelcome and annually recurring demand upon them.

this on the

Now, these are very pleasing and very happy results. At Results of the same time, however, there has been one other and different lowest result, imperceptibly though surely mingling with these classes. advantages, upon which it is not so easy to feel the same amount of self-gratulation. It is this,-that, while an improved and improving class of children slip into the school at one end, the poor, ill-clothed, ill-taught offspring of the lowest. grades of society slip out at the other. I speak from the knowledge of many cases which have come under my attention, when I say that this is one positive effect, though I should hesitate to say that it is the inevitable effect, of the present improvement in the primary school. That it should be the case arises from no fault on the part of school managers, but from the natural working of the circumstances. The children who pay the most, usually learn the most and stay the longest. An efficient school, therefore, in time gets filled with this class; the poorer children, who cannot stay so long, are one by one eliminated from the numbers; and the whole institution becomes thus adapted rather for those who are in the next grade of society.

effort in

These remarks bear very closely upon the important ques- Voluntary tion, as to how far the operations now in force are likely to sufficient. overtake the educational wants of the country. That voluntary efforts alone could not wholly do so is, I believe, pretty generally conceded by all who are not blinded by bigotry against the use of any other means. For, even if we could look forward to the bare possibility of sufficient school accommodation being thus provided, yet the character of that education could not possibly increase in the same ratio without the entailment of expenses, for which no voluntary efforts have as yet shown themselves competent. An efficient school requires not merely a master, it requires a complete staff of teachers; and if, as a matter of fact, the majority of purely voluntary schools exist from year to year on the very brink of insolvency with one teacher, what would they do when they are obliged to furnish three or four?

When the aid derived from your Lordships' Minutes comes in, the state of things becomes materially altered. The staff of teachers being increased without any additional burden to the managers, the school soon begins to assume a higher tone; it gives a better education, and takes a higher fee; it thus

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the present plans are sufficient.

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becomes gradually established as a permanent institution, raised wholly above the fluctuating nature of human charity.

On this ground it appears to me that, should prosperous times last, the present mode of operation will be able in time to secure a good practical education to the children of all the industrious working classes; to secure it, too, in the most unobjectionable manner. The encouragement given to the parent to take an interest in the education of his family, and the actual ability, in a pecuniary point of view, which he now possesses, to give an equivalent for the instruction afforded to them, are calculated at once to contravene the necessity of a burdensome charity on the part of school promoters, and also to foster parental care, and a sense of responsibility towards their children, amongst the people at large. The more the necessity for mere charity in supplying popular education is done away with, exactly so much the better. A matter of social justice is not one which can either rightly or safely be left to chance benevolence; the less so when the whole prosperity of the country is seen to depend upon that benevolence being regularly and dispassionately supplied. On the other hand those educational institutions always have been and always will be at once the most useful and vigorous, which are based upon the actual wants of the people, and are chiefly maintained by the just payments of those who reap the benefit.

If this be true, then, the way, as we have said, for the future education of the mass of the working classes now lies clearly open before us. We need but to go forward with our present efforts; to encourage the idea of self-supporting schools whereever it is practicable; and thus, while we are making sound primary instruction a virtual necessity for the success of the labourer and artisan, to put the supply of it more and more into the hands of the people themselves, aided by the checks and the supplies furnished by a central inspection and government support,

In the meantime, however, what is to become of the class above referred to, who, so far from being benefited (except indirectly) by the improved state of our popular education, are, strictly speaking, losers by it; to whom the schools before opened for them become virtually closed; and who are thus left to prey upon society, under the title of "the dangerous classes"?

This is the one difficult point in the education question; the point to which the promoters of the ragged schools alone have hitherto addressed themselves in a general form, and for the full solution of which little has yet been accomplished. The education of these classes is in every way the most diffi

cult of accomplishment. The schools they require are the most expensive in their structure and working; they are of such a nature as to repel personal interest, in place of attracting it; and yet, even if funds be supplied from some distant resource, little can be done to apply them usefully, unless we have the co-operation of local labour and local influence. These classes belong in fact to no party; they are the overflowing of a national disease, and require a national cure.

This is the one point, as it appears to me, to which direct legislation in some form or another, either local or central, will have ultimately to be applied. It may be argued, perhaps, that, in proportion as the classes above them become more enlightened, they will also have to press upwards in selfdefence. But, if what we have said be true, namely, that the improvement of popular education has been virtually a bane to them, this bare possibility must lie too far in the distance for us to watch patiently the issue. In the meantime vice, and ignorance, and brutality abound, and call upon all our better instincts for remedy, without calculating the mere chances of a distant futurity. What is really wanted for meeting this evil is the co-operation of local influence with legislation. The one must be used to reject and discourage the employment of untaught children in our shops, warehouses, factories, and fields; the other must be employed to provide a useful and, if possible, an industrial education for those who will thus be compelled to press forward to the school as a qualification for earning their very bread. The plans by which this result should be accomplished it is not for me to discuss; my duty, as I understand it, is simply to give the results of observation and experience in regard to the present effect and future probabilities of the plans now in actual operation; to show what they cannot do as well as what they can.

It is no uncommon occurrence, in insisting upon these views, to be met with the serious and, perhaps, well meant objection, that, by pushing popular education so vigorously forward, we are tending to thrust the "lower classes" out of their sphere; to give them tastes and longings beyond the possibility of fulfilment; and by increasing their knowledge to increase their sorrow also. I freely confess that on some social hypotheses this objection will necessarily have its weight. If we must have the degraded, let us not try to make them any more conscious than possible of their degradation. I must, however, distinctly state that, in entering with some amount of zeal into the question of popular education, I have done so on the full belief that we are totally wrong in sitting down patiently under the idea that we either must or ought to have any "lower classes," such as I have referred to,