305. The Abolition of Religious Tests for Degrees at the (The Universities Tests Act of 1871; 34 and 35 Victoria, chap. 26) Queen Elizabeth did much to foster and advance learning in the English universities, but she felt the necessity of keeping these institutions free from popery. Accordingly, in 1558, she imposed on all graduates the oath of supremacy, in all temporal and spiritual matters, to prevent non-conformists from receiving university degrees. Under the requirements every student, fellow, and lecturer was compelled to take certain oaths, and to conform in religious matters in a way that none but members of the Church of England could possibly do. In time this came to be a heavy burden on the English nation, in that it prevented many bright minds from attendance on the universities. Finally, as part of the educational and political awakening of the nation which took place after 1850, Parliament, in 1871, repealed this burdensome statute of 1558, and opened the universities to dissenters as well as churchmen. The chief points in this law, abolishing religious tests for degrees, are contained in the following extract. Whereas, it is expedient that the benefits of the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, and of the colleges and halls now subsisting therein, as places of religion and learning, should be rendered freely accessible to the nation: And whereas, by means of divers restrictions, tests, and disabilities, many of Her Majesty's subjects are debarred from the full enjoyment of the same: And whereas, it is expedient that such restrictions, tests, and disabilities should be removed, under proper safeguards for the maintenance of religious instruction and worship in the said universities and the colleges and halls now subsisting within the same. . . . No person shall be required, upon taking or to enable him to take any degree (other than a degree in divinity) within the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, or any of them, or upon exercising or to enable him to exercise any of the rights and privileges which may heretofore have been or may hereafter be exercised by graduates in the said universities or any of them, or in any college subsisting at the time of the passing of this act in any of the said universities, or upon taking or holding, or to enable him to take or hold any office in any of the said universities or any such college as aforesaid, or upon teaching or to enable him to teach within any of the said universities or any such colleges as aforesaid, or upon opening or to enable him to open a private hall or hostel in any of the said universities for the reception of students, to subscribe any article or formulary of faith, or to make any declaration or take any oath respecting his religious belief or profession, or to conform to any religious observance, or to attend or abstain from attending any form of public worship, or to belong to any specified church, sect, or denomination; nor shall any person be compelled, in any of the said universities or any such college as aforesaid, to attend the public worship of any church, sect, or denomination to which he does not belong. 306. The Educational Traditions of England (London Times, Educational Supplement, September, 1917) The following is reproduced as an excellent summary of a century of English educational history. Mr. Fisher's Education Bill, which was read for the first time on Friday last, is the legitimate successor of a series of educational impulses dating from the very end of the eighteenth century, when Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell realized, almost simultaneously, the straits to which the introduction of machinery into labor had reduced the children of the land. At that moment the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were stirring in their eighteenth-century sleep, but in all other directions a profound coma lay upon national education. The Charity-Schools had definitely failed; the endowment schools were for the most part out of action; the children of a Christian land had no facilities for the simplest form of education despite the efforts of the leaders of the new Sunday-school movement that had reached London in 1780. The monitorial movement initiated by Bell and Lancaster revived similar expedients necessitated by the lack of teachers in the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries. It was at once crowned with an embarrassing success, and it was clear in the dawn of the nineteenth century that the tradition of education was but asleep, that the people of the land were as hungry for education as in any past age. . . . From 1802 to 1832 many stalwart efforts were made to secure a universal system of education. Mr. Whitbread in 1807 introduced a bill for the establishment of schools throughout the land to supply machinery by which all children were to be entitled to two years' schooling between the ages of seven and fourteen years. Public opinion has been or was being stimulated by the keenest minds: Blackstone, Adam Smith, Bentham demanded in no uncertain tones education for all. In 1816 a Select Committee of the Commons was directed to report on the subject of the education of the lower orders. In 1818 it proclaimed "the anxiety of the poor for education," and dwelt on their meager opportunities. The committee recommended a universal conscience clause, the establishment of rate-supported free parochial schools in very poor districts the goal which was achieved in 1870 and Parliamentary building grants in richer districts the principle adopted in 1833. A full century ago, the true principles of advance were advocated by Parliament, but nothing was done. In 1820 Brougham took up that subject of national education which he was destined ceaselessly to pursue until his last speech of July, 1864. The persistence of his efforts gave a certain continuity to the whole struggle for progress. He was often wrong in his dogmatism, but never in his optimism and in his determination to secure educational justice for the people of England. Mr. Fisher's measure of 1917 is a direct descendant of Brougham's measure of 1820, when he recommended the universal establishment of undenominational parochial schools with efficient teachers supported out of local rates supplemented by the old endowments. In 1828 Brougham passionately declared in the house that "the schoolmaster was abroad, and he trusted more to the schoolmaster armed with his primer than he did to the soldier in full military array for upholding and extending the liberties of his country." In 1825 he published his pamphlet, "Observations on the Education of the People," which within a year ran through twenty editions. The desire for a national system had spread through England, and in 1833 there were already over a million children in the schools of the education societies. On Saturday, August 17, 1833, in a house as empty as that addressed by Mr. Fisher on Friday, August 10, 1917, the House of Commons voted the sum of £20,000 "in aid of private subscriptions for the erection of schoolhouses for the education of the children of the poorer classes." State intervention in English education had begun at last, and this little grant was the first rivulet of the great river of to-day on which so many national argosies are floating. Lord Althorp's government placed the administration of the grant in the hands of the Treasury. The response to the grant showed that the country was hungering for education, and applications for grants poured in with ample voluntary funds. A great scheme was then possible, but the Treasury refused to recommend any increase in the grant. The first "fine careless rapture" of the reformers died away, and though Parliament made a grant of £10,000 for training colleges in 1834, it remained unused until 1839. Parliament in 1837 refused leave to introduce a bill to establish a national system, and Brougham had to abandon his educational charities bills in the same year, while a proposal to form a board to distribute the grant was flatly defeated in the house in 1838. But three successive Select Committees produced the gloomiest reports as to national educational conditions, and as to the dreadful state of child labor. The committee of 1837-38 was forced by Gladstone and others to reject a proposal for a Board of Education. In 1839 Queen Victoria personally intervened with a protest at a lack of education "not in accordance with the character of a civilized and Christian nation." This brought a new figure into the field, Lord John Russell, and suddenly the formation of a Committee of Council on Education gathered to a head slumbering political excitement. Gladstone, Disraeli and Peel all attacked the new departure, which by a bare majority in a crowded house was confirmed, and became the basis of all subsequent developments. From 1839 to 1870 the Education Committee (which by statute in 1856 was combined with the Department of Science and Art into the Education Department) carried on the heavy work of administering a rapidly growing grant under the Regulations, first issued in 1839, that later became the well-known Code. The work of inspection was carried out with great thoroughness, and the reports of the inspectors are some of the most valuable documents extant for the social history of the mid-nineteenth century. Macaulay, Brougham and Russell fought with herculean energy to destroy the "empire of ignorance." On April 19, 1847, grants were extended from school buildings to education itself, and then the long struggle for compulsory education began. Russell proposed in 1842 that rates should be made available for education. The proposal was part of a great scheme dealing with all grades of education. Bill after bill followed; bill after bill disappeared, while the conditions of childhood grew rapidly worse. It seemed as if the state itself could never enfranchise the slave-children of the people. Gladstone was bitterly opposed even to the increase of the grant, which in 1856 was nearly half a million. Two years later a Royal Commission was appointed. Robert Lowe came upon the scene, and in 1859 introduced education estimates approaching one million. The report of the commission in 1861 proposed the introduction of rate grants as well as state grants, and hoped to secure local administration by county and borough boards. But nothing came of the report, and Mr. Lowe introduced his famous Revised Code to meet a position which was rapidly getting worse. The average of attendance was lower than ten years earlier. His remedy was a single grant dependent on examinations, coupled with attendance, efficient buildings and efficient teaching. It was only to apply to children up to the age of twelve. A tremendous Parliamentary struggle followed, the Code was accepted, and it seemed successful, since the numbers inspected increased with lower estimates. But the system left half the children of the country without education, and the end of efforts that now seem to us puerile was at hand. Bills were introduced in 1867 and 1868 intended to strengthen the voluntary system, but they were clearly inadequate. It is true that in 1869 a million children were at school, and a million and a half on the registers, but of these 400,000 were under six and only 640,000 were examined; while there were a million children between six and ten and half a million between ten and twelve not on the registers at all. Compulsory attendance and com pulsory rating were beyond all doubt essential, and with the Act of 1870 the new system was inaugurated. When we gaze into the perspective of the history before 1870 we are able to see more signs of hope than the generation actually engaged in the struggle could detect. In seventy years the school-going habit of English childhood had been reëstablished. Parents throughout the country had come to recognize that school was the place for children, and though compulsion involved loss of wages it was gladly accepted by the industrial classes. We do not realize to-day what a wonderful achievement this was. . . . That was one gain. Another was the religious training of the schools, which was excellent throughout the period and kept alive one of the most important of the English educational traditions. A third gain was the deep basis of voluntary effort that had been laid. It was prophesied that when compulsion came voluntary effort would cease. Instead it multiplied, and it flourishes to-day in every grade of education. But the pre-compulsion period did more than all this. It laid the basis for reform in all other grades of education. Organized state effort in respect to science and art began in 1836; a long struggle for the re-creation of our secondary system of endowed schools reached its goal in 1868 and 1869 and restored to English education the full current of medieval and Elizabethan humanism, and this was supplemented by the brilliant awakening of the old universities, the birth of many new places of higher education, and the creation of a living relation from 1856 onwards (when Oxford started the local examinations) between the universities and the people. By 1870 the threefold tradition of English education - religion, humanism, and science was again in full operation. The period from 1870 to 1917 was occupied with one long struggle, the effort to give this tradition full operative value in the life of the people as a whole. In order to do this it was essential to correlate once again our educational and our local government systems. The weakness of the school-board system was that it did not adequately fit into a system of local government. . . . Until the two were related real progress was scarcely possible, though the great school boards in the teeth of the law did much to press forward the claims of democracy to full educational facilities. The evils of child labor, of exemptions from school, of lack of facilities for higher education, of lack of health through evil social conditions, could not be grasped while local government itself was invertebrate. That ceased to be the case in 1888, when the county councils and borough councils were formed. From that moment educational reform became possible once more. The demand for reform began at once. Compulsory fees for schooling ceased in 1891, though in fact the system of fees with alternative free schools is only now to be abolished. The abolition of fees was followed by growing demands for efficiency, and from 1897 necessitous schools |