teachers to an extent which cannot be equalled in schools of which TABLE of the Schools in which Pupil Teachers are apprenticed, with the average attendance of Children, and the Number of Pupil Teachers. SCHOLARS AND PUPIL TEACHERS. CLASS OF SCHOOLS. British Schools Wesleyan Schools Total No. of separate Schools in which contained Average of children) and Pupil Teachers in each school No. P. T. 89 7,989 188 4,479 71 1,359 12 2,834 54 16,661 325 (53)|(48) (47) |(35) (12) | (5)| (31) |(31)| 143) (119) 91 Under every disadvantage, therefore, arising from mistrust, the actual operation of the present provisions for annual aid to the schools presents the very reverse of all the evils which were anticipated by their opponents; and when it comes to be seen that, so far from entailing any moral canker, the influences bearing upon the tone of the aided schools are certainly not less wholesome than those bearing upon the unaided, while all other advantages are so greatly multiplied to the former, with the best effect, those who are yet doubtful will probably lend their aid to give the best effect, and the most healthful bias possible, to the additional means that are offered to them. their Lord Indeed, a large proportion of the schools which I have Neglect of classed as fit to receive though not receiving aid under the ships' proviMinutes of 1846, are such as should properly have applied, stipendiary U 2 sions for monitors. though they have held back from applying, or have applied fruitlessly, for assistance under that portion of them which, contemplating that there will be cases in which improving teachers are not yet able to conduct an apprentice through the course of instruction required for pupil-teachers, states that your Lordships are "disposed for a few years to encourage the managers to retain their monitors by small stipends to the age of seventeen, without apprenticeship, but under a form of agreement with the parents, on condition that the master give each monitor extra daily instruction." But this provision, when it comes to be applied, is practically nugatory, because there is no place, either in the schools or in society, for a class so nearly resembling that of the pupil-teachers as the stipendiary monitors become, when the regulations respecting them are carried out in the manner which I had occasion to describe to your Lordships' secretary, in a letter from Devonshire, on the 11th of December, 1847 : "The case of the South Zeal village school is a type of a large class of schools situated in districts either too remote and thinly inhabited, or too poor, however populous, to support them on a very liberal scale, whatever may be the sacrifices made by the few more devoted individuals who call them into existence. Such schools can scarcely ever afford to employ teachers capable of challenging their Lordships' certificates of merit, nor therefore such as are eminently fitted for bringing up pupil-teachers through a regular apprenticeship to the business of teaching, with that superior range of acquirements which appears to be their Lordships' desire to render universal amongst these young people. Neither are their promoters generally prepared, any more than in the present instance, to take upon themselves the responsibilities attached to apprenticeships of five years under their Lordships' Regulations. While, therefore, the necessities of their several little institutions prompt them to seek aid under their Lordships' Minutes of August and December, 1846, schools like this are manifestly placed beyond the scope of it, unless under the provisions which relate to stipendiary monitors. it "The idea which the promoters of schools have attached to this term is, that the young people thus designated are to be employed without apprenticehip, merely to give strength to the school and promote a general advancement in the scope of its labours, while the young people themselves are sufficiently rewarded by the small allowance made to them, and the opportunities afforded to them for the extension of their own acquirements, without being expressly introduced into a business for life which their employment in the lower grade of "stipendiary monitors" is an avowal that they are not in the most favourable circumstances for acquiring. They assume, therefore, that the stipendiary monitors will be employed only on some quarterly, half-yearly, or at most yearly undertaking, terminable at the expiration of such periods at the will either of the parents, the Committee, or their Lordships, if on the report of their Inspector the school does not appear to be conducted in a manner still to merit their assistance. Regarded in this light, there is undoubtedly a very wide opening for the employment of stipendiary monitors with great benefit to the several localities, and to the general elevation of the status of the school in the districts where such elevation is most wanted, i. e., in the most exclusively agricultural and the most exclusively manufacturing. Some of the young people employed as stipendiary monitors under such arrangements would likewise, I doubt not, ultimately be found in the rank of efficient teachers. "But when I explain to the local friends of the schools that the engage ments, in regard to stipendiary monitors (except for the lowered rate of attainment), are precisely the same as in respect to pupil-teachers, except that the term is one year shorter and the remuneration less, they universally withdraw their expression of a desire to avail themselves of the provisions for such assistance in the alternative of their schools not being of sufficient vigour to justify the employment of pupil-teachers. The result is, that all the provisions in the recent Minutes regarding stipendiary monitors will remain, so far as my experience yet testifies, entirely a dead letter, to the daily mortification of the promoters of the schools which have most difficulties to contend against in the places most needing their exertions, and therefore under circumstances calling most loudly for assistance." The length of the term, and the rigid nature of the engagement, which is, in fact, an apprenticeship for four years instead of five, would appear to have been demanded in the conviction that the stipend paid in the first two years would scarcely procure for the school services of any value, and that those of the last two years alone would repay the school and the country. But the opinion expressed by your Lordships in the Circular of Instruction to Inspectors, dated the 25th of November, 1848, accords, I am sure, with the experience of all these gentlemen, that "the faithful discharge of the duties of the apprentices should be proved by the steady progress of the classes which have been intrusted to their care," even in the very first year of their indentures, to which that letter refers; "their claims to stipends from the public funds resting upon the discharge of those duties rather than upon the cultivation of their own powers; for the latter is of itself almost, if not quite, a sufficient reward for any labour that may have been bestowed upon it." In accordance with these views, the whole tenor of this report, and I doubt not that of all the others furnished to your Lordships, will testify that the agency of stipendiary monitors from thirteen to fifteen years of age is of a value infinitely beyond its cost, when in the hands of teachers of even moderate attainments, who both understand and practice good methods of instruction, and especially when combined with extended inspection and vivified responsibility, so long as the economical condition of the schools for the poorer classes generally compels the instruction of so many children by only one adult teacher and the economical or moral condition of the parents is such that they commonly withdraw their children two or three years short of the lowest age above specified, long before they have come within the reach of any active and systematic application whatever of the teacher's own powers. Notwithstanding the practical difficulties, I have nevertheless provisions for made every effort to introduce this class of assistants, wherever monitors the circumstances appeared to be at all favourable; but it will may be em be seen that they appear in only six schools, and I cannot elevation of express great satisfaction with their position, for it is only schools; Mode in which the stipendiary ployed to the second-rate to the advantage of the districts aid and least affected by needing the those offering pupilteachers. teachers that are able to advance themselves and their assistants through the pupil-teacher course that are really possessed of the capacities to bring the young people up to the standard required in the latter years of the course for stipendiary monitors; and it would be of great advantage, therefore, to abandon this altogether, unless it were sustained for two years' engagements only, with an express view to the elevation of the schools, and with only a secondary regard to the training of teachers, as the local promoters of the schools have generally contemplated that it would be; those few only who showed peculiar aptitude and inclination being permanently retained for the service, perhaps in some more vigorous school, to which the stipendiary monitors would thus become a probationary class. Some few even, although they passed several years at trades, (by no means unprofitably for their industrial and moral education, if a blessing shone upon their paths,) would ultimately return to the work aided by the Normal schools, through difficulties which their previously protracted elementary education might enable them to surmount, and which would contribute to mould them to the arduous task for which a hardy race is required in our coal-fields, our manufacturing districts, and the moral wastes of the remoter agricultural regions, especially those with domestic manufactures. Without some such adaptation of the stipendiary monitor provisions, the good effects of your Lordships' Minutes upon these regions of slowest improvement and most rapid growth in population, will be but tardily felt; for in the midst of their myriads of labourers, especially where they are most highly paid, instruction is at as low an ebb as in the remotest localities of Devonshire or Wales; and I would venture to suggest, now that the full and successful operation of the pupil-teacher system is secured, that it is advisable to do something towards preparing the school for teacher, as well as the teacher for the school. In other words, the temptation to abandon the labour of instruction in a highly paid and brutally ignorant district is in direct proportion to the moral want of a faithful adherence to it. The disesteem of the office of teacher, the disregard of all schools but the Sunday-school, the rude fondness and indulgence of parents, almost proud of their own illiterate condition, and therefore exercising little beneficial restraint in favour of the schoolmaster, and the early pecuniary independence of the children themselves, all tend to produce a deep disgust of his task in the mind of the teacher, which the great want of a kindred association of minds leaves unsoothed, while the high price set upon the attainments which he possesses, if he can apply them to the material service of industry, constantly tempts him to the abandonment of his post, which he at length too frequently surrenders. In fact, I am employing no effort of the imagination, but merely describing the present experience of those connected with with schools in every mining and manufacturing district; and the new teaching power which we pour into them will take the same unfaithful course, unless something be done forthwith to elevate the day-school in popular estimation; and nothing that I can conceive would do it so effectively and completely as a slight modification of their Lordships' provisions with regard to stipendiary monitors, in accordance with the ideas which the very term suggests. This, accompanied by grants for books and apparatus, on the existing plan, and seconded by the periodical visits of an Inspector, able to point out the direction in which the additional force could most advantageously be applied in accordance with the teacher's previous training, would rapidly give a new life to the dayschooling of these moral and intellectual deserts, soften their gloomy rudeness, and make them habitable to the teachers who are now being reared, and who will otherwise, in many instances, be heart-broken at the outset, and abandon the work for other occupations, which they will be able readily to obtain. These observations apply to the greater number of existing public schools for the poorer classes throughout the kingdom; and the adoption of the slight alteration proposed would have the effect (with the co-operative agency of the great voluntary main-spring of the whole system, which would not be wanting to a scheme so considerate of its peculiar wants) of greatly changing the aspect of popular education at once, by encouraging and strengthening all that is good, and tacitly ignoring, and hereby extinguishing, all that was pretentious, empty, and bad in it. It would at once bring the junior classes in the unaided schools really within the scope of instruction, which at present they are not, and encourage a sounder and commonly less showy progress throughout the whole of them; thus producing a valuable effect among the parents, especially of the "little ones," who really get so little for their successive years' contributions to the schools of the remoter manufacturing and mining districts, that I do not wonder at their putting a low value on a schooling in mere bodily indolence in lieu of mental activity. The circumstances which surround the respectable schools of Stockport, Tintwistle, Tunstall, and West Bromwich, afford lamentable evidences of this insensibility of the parents, which has next to be attacked. And though the present plan would require, I am aware, an agency subordinate to that of the Inspector, and less costly than his own, yet if he were held responsible for the use of its little brief authority, which should be but a fraction of his own, which is limited merely to report |