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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

received special grants. But it had become clear enough that national education required drastic reorganization; that the efforts for higher education must not be blighted by a technical definition of elementary education; that secondary and elementary and technical education must be coördinated, and that while a new centralization at Whitehall was necessary a new decentralization was equally essential, and that the position of the teacher must be placed on a higher stage. So in 1899 the Education Department and the Science and Art Department were amalgamated in the Board of Education, to which new body was transferred the powers of the Charity Commissioners in relation to educational trusts. . . . But the creation of a real Board of Education . . . only achieved one aspect of reform. It was left to Mr. Balfour, in his great Act of 1902, to graft the educational system into the new (or rather revived) local government system, and create committees of the local authorities to take over not only the work of the School Boards, but also many duties, with more or less adequate rating powers, in relation to higher education. This Act was extended to London in 1903. In the 15 years since education once more passed into the hands of local authorities responsible for all the other social work of the district a new aspect has come over the whole subject. The great School Medical Service was introduced in 1907. A numerous class of skilled educational administrators with immense technical knowledge has grown up; a deep sense of educational responsibility in the local authorities has developed; the interrelation of education and public health has become obvious; the dependence of industry on education has become almost as obvious, and with this recognition the claims of higher education have advanced and have been recognized and especially in the regions of technical studies. In 1887 national education seemed at a standstill; real progress seemed impossible. Thirty years later we see, in the midst of the greatest war that Europe has known, progress with gigantic strides not only possible but indubitable.

During the progress of the Bill of 1902 the attention of the public was chiefly fixed on the clauses relating to religious teaching, and Mr. Balfour had to devise ways and means to meet the conflicting claims of the voluntary and the provided schools. Not only was attention riveted on this side of the case, but for ten years after, the Act suggesting legislation to amend these clauses occupied the attention of Parliament and roused the bitterest feeling among the leaders of various denominations. But all this while wider views were growing; the clauses in question in the vast majority of schools were seen in fact not to work unjustly, and the local authorities and educationists devoted themselves to the great difficulties of actual education standing in the way of a national system that should give to every child the means of freely developing his or her own peculiar gifts. The questions of child labor.

of child health, of adequate teaching, smaller classes, better schoolhouses, able and contented teachers, the coördination of grades of education, continuously occupied the attention of the Board of Education, of the local authorities, and of educationists at large. When the war came in 1914 it looked for a moment as if the labors of a decade were to be cast aside. But a trumpet call for an educational revolution came, and after more than two years of continuous effort a really great Minister of Education has been able to bring forward a measure of reform that crowns the efforts of men like Whitbread, Brougham, Macaulay, Russell, Forster, and certainly not least Mr. Balfour, who may claim to have created machinery that coördinated the ancient traditions of English education and made possible the revolution of to-day.

CHAPTER XXV

AWAKENING AN EDUCATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE UNITED STATES

THE Readings of this chapter have been selected to illustrate educational conditions and movements during the first halfcentury of American national existence, during the period of transition from colonial conditions, and before any clear educational consciousness on the part of the people had been awakened. The first group of selections describes early schools. The first of these (307) is a characterization of the schools of Boston during the period of about 1790 to 1815, by the celebrated teacher and textbook writer, Caleb Bingham. His description of the origin of the double elementary-school system of Boston is important, as is also that of the instruction and the textbooks used. In Rhode Island, the first and for long the only city to maintain schools was Providence, and selection 308 reproduces the first course of study (1800); selection 309 is a reprint of the early rules and regulations for the schools; and 310 is a memorial to the City Council from a very important society of the city praying for better schools, and giving facts as to attendance and costs.

Among the many charitable and philanthropic undertakings begun to found schools, the School Societies for day and infant schools, and the Lancastrian monitorial organizations, were the most important. Selection 311 is an appeal to the people of New York City by the newly founded Public School Society, and represents the beginnings of public education there. Selection 312 is from a Report made to the School Committee of Boston, stating the advantages of the monitorial plan of instruction over the older individual plan, and supplements the descriptions of the plan previously reproduced (297, 298). Selection 313 is the Report of the Boston School Committee which resulted in the creation of primary schools in that city. The selection which follows (314) describes the Boston elementary-school system of 1823, as reorganized early in the century and with the new infant schools added. This description is continued for the secondary schools

in 327.

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