Education.

Education. The word education, though etymologically distinguishable from instruction, is generally held to signify the teaching, training, and discipline by means of which the young are prepared for the business and the duties of life. The French word enseignement, and the German die Erziehung, are commonly used with a similarly comprehensive meaning, and are understood to extend to the entire school-system, and to include primary, secondary, technical, professional, and university education. Under the heads PUBLIC SCHOOLS (ENGLISH), TECHNICAL SCHOOLS, and UNIVERSITIES specific information will be found relating to several branches of this large subject.

To trace the history of education and of educational theories and ideas in past ages would be impossible in this article. The student who would do this would find in the Republic of Plato, and the Cyropædia and Memorabilia of Xenophon, and in the Socratic dialogues generally, a representation of the ideal of education which prevailed among the Greeks, of the importance attached to music and dialectic in the training of the æsthetic and the logical faculties, and to gymnastics and the exercises of the pæstra in the development of beauty and strength in the human body. The value of oratory as one of the means by which the Roman youth might be trained and become qualified to rule is insisted on by Cicero and Quintilian. The trivium and the quadrivium—the seven studies of the monastic schools in the middle ages: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy—are mainly interesting to a modern student as proofs that the Fathers of the church and the schoolmen of the Alexandrian and Latin schools were more concerned to secure intellectual gymnastic, and formative or disciplinary studies, than those arts and accomplish- ments which had a more obviously practical use. For the churchman the discipline of the seven liberal arts just enumerated constituted his main professional equipment. For the knight and the squire it was deemed necessary to add to some knowledge of these arts the discipline of hunting, riding, swimming, boxing, hawking, and shooting with the bow. But for both, the ideal education of the middle ages was rather that of a training which should develop the best powers and faculties of the individual, than of discipline consciously directed towards material ends, or towards industrial or professional success. The Revival of learning and the Reformation (see RENAISSANCE) had the effect of enlarging, though not of materially modifying, the conception of a liberal education which had prevailed from the 4th to the 15th century. A reference under their several titles to the great names which have been associated with speculation or with practical experiment in the domain of education will enable a reader to trace the growth of the ideas by which successive generations have been dominated, and out of which modern conceptions of the aim and work of the schoolmaster have been slowly formed. The names of Erasmus, Colet, Ascham, Luther, Melanchthon, De Feltre, Sturm, Ratich, Bauer, Comenius, Montaigne, Locke, Milton, the Port-Royalists, Rousseau, Jacotot, Basedow, Rosmini, J. P. Richter, Pestalozzi, and Fröbel furnish a catena of authorities, each of whom represents vividly some one phase of thought, or some one form of fruitful experiment in regard to the art or science of education. For historical and critical memoirs of this branch of the subject, and for careful discussions on the relative value of the principles with which these eminent names are severally identified, the reader must be referred to the list of books at the conclusion of this article.

UNITED STATES.—In modern times, those countries in both the Old and the New World which are governed by constitutions of comparatively recent date possess systems of public instruction more symmetrical and capable of easier description than the educational systems which prevail in Great Britain. In the United States of America there is no national system, no centralised control over public education; each state having its own system, making its own specific appropriation of money to schools and colleges, and appointing its own officers. Yet from the early colonisation in New England and in the southern states each state has recognised the duty of making public provision for the education of its youth. Except in seventeen of the older states the Federal law requires the appropriation of one-sixteenth part of the land for purposes of education. In the case of many of the new states the property thus provided has been sold to defray the cost of erecting school-buildings; and in none does the provision suffice to render taxation unnecessary. In all the states education in the primary schools (from six years to ten) and the 'grammar-schools' (from ten to fourteen) is gratuitous, and in some, though not in all, education in high schools, including a course adapted to scholars from fourteen to eighteen, is also gratuitously provided. Compulsory attendance is enjoined by the law in many of the states, but is not uniformly enforced. The great cities, and many of the counties or subdivisions of the states form district administrative units for educational purposes, make their own regulations and appropriations of money, and appoint their own officers independently of the state bureau. There is no general system of training or recognised national standard of qualification for teachers; each state, city, or educational body grants its own diplomas; and in some cases, though not in all, furnishes a normal school for the training of teachers. Such special training, however, is not generally regarded as indispensable, and whatever normal preparation is afforded is chiefly offered to women, who form the staple of the teaching staff in the primary and grammar schools. The head-masters of such schools, and the teachers and professors in high schools, have not generally been in normal seminaries, but have acquired their qualifications in colleges and universities. The lack of a complete normal system is partly supplied by teachers' 'institutes,' or special gatherings for the discussion of principles and methods, held under the supervision of the school superintendent or principal officials. The periods during which schools are required to be open vary in different states; but in many cases the state law is satisfied with the provision of instruction for six months, and even for three or four months, in the year. In all the great cities, school-houses, handsomely built and amply provided with educational appliances, are to be found; and a keen popular interest in the efficiency of the schools is everywhere exhibited. The course of instruction does not materially differ, age for age, from that prescribed in England, but it accentuates the importance of drawing, of what may be called 'oral composition' and other exercises in the free use of language, and of the history and constitution of the United States. Infant schools for children under seven are very rare. The 'kindergarten' system for the younger children in the primary schools, and manual instruction for older scholars, have recently been introduced into the general school-system of Boston, Philadelphia, and a few large towns, but form no necessary part of the course of instruction in the states generally, and are notably absent in the schools of New York city, Chicago, and many places of importance. The curriculum of instruction in the high schools, though not omitting the studies of Latin and Greek, gives greater prominence to modern languages and physical science than the course of study in corresponding schools in England.

CANADA.—The relation of the provinces of Canada to the Dominion parliament is very nearly analogous to that of the states of the American Union to the Federal government. Each province has its own educational laws and its own department of public instruction. The schools of Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Ontario are free; but in Quebec there is a school-tax levied on parents for all children of school age. Throughout the whole continent of North America there are many schools maintained by religious bodies or by private enterprise and receiving no aid from the state. There is no general law which affects the freedom of teaching, or requires any proof of educational qualification for persons who act as school-teachers.

AUSTRALASIA.—In each of the Australian colonies and in New Zealand, liberal provision is made for public education. The universities of Melbourne and Adelaide have received large private gifts as well as public subsidies; and colleges belonging to the various religious denominations have been affiliated to them. An effective system of public elementary schools has also been established. Dr R. W. Dale, who in 1888 visited those colonies, reports that in New South Wales regulations are in force providing that a public school may be established wherever a regular attendance of twenty children between the ages of six and fourteen can be guaranteed. Free railway passes are granted to children living in country districts to enable them to reach the school nearest to their homes. The administration of the public schools and training-colleges, and the appointment and dismissal of teachers, are in the hands of the Department of Education, presided over by a responsible minister.

Local Authorities, called in New South Wales Public School Boards, and in Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania, Boards of Advice share in the management of schools, but have considerably less influence than the school boards of Great Britain. No aid is given to private or denominational schools. Elementary education is free in Victoria; but fees are paid by parents for instruction in such 'extra subjects' as book-keeping, French, mensuration, drawing, and history. In New South Wales and in South Australia fees are generally paid. The colony of New Zealand is divided into educational districts, over each of which there is a presiding board, elected annually by the rate-payers, and possessing considerable powers both in regard to the establishment and the control of schools. The Colonial Treasury grants to each board £3, 15s. for each child in daily average attendance, and a further sum for scholarships. In the boards are also vested the rents and profits from property or endowments for education, all donations and subscriptions given for the same purpose, and all fees paid for higher education. Ordinary elementary education is free. In all the Australian colonies, with the exception of Western Australia, the teachers are employed by the state, not by local managers. In Victoria, and to a slight extent in South Australia, the principle of 'payment by results' is recognised, but generally the salaries of teachers are regulated by the grade in which they are placed. Very liberal provision is made by way of scholarships for encouraging scholars of promise to enter higher schools.

BRITISH INDIA.—Education in this great dependency is carried on by means of two classes of institutions—private and public. A public institution is defined to be 'a school or college in which the course of study conforms to the standard prescribed by the Department of Public Instruction or by the university, and which is either inspected by the department, or regularly presents pupils at the public examinations held by the department or by the university.' Schools or colleges not falling within this definition are called private. The returns for 1896 show that the educational institutions of all kinds numbered 152,841, and the pupils in them 4,303,109. Though these numbers represent a considerable increase on those of the previous decade, it is officially computed that only one child in ten of school age is actually under instruction. The explanation of this fact is to be found in the extreme backwardness of girls' education; for while less than two per cent. of female children of school age are to be found in the schools, nearly one-fifth of the whole number of boys of that age are under instruction in some form or other. The public provision consists of institutions of three classes—primary schools, which are designed to meet the wants of 94 per cent. of the population; secondary schools, in which advanced instruction is given in English as well as in the vernacular, and which are supposed to be suited for little more than 5 per cent. of the community; and colleges, which give a liberal or professional education, available for about $\backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}$ per cent. of the population. The attendance in the primary schools amounted in 1896 to 3,132,696. Of these, about one-seventh were in private schools, and scarcely one-twenty-fourth were girls. In attendance at the 4746 secondary schools were 493,226 boys and 40,255 girls. There are 154 colleges in India, attended by 19,454 students. The total expenditure on all these was 3,506,530 tens of rupees, of which nearly 950,000 tens of rupees came from provincial revenues, 1,050,000 from fees, and the rest from endowments, local rates, and municipal funds. All schools receiving aid are inspected by government officers. Hitherto these officers have been English- men of the same rank as the professors of colleges and the heads of secondary schools, but the government proposes for the future to avail itself more largely of native officers in the ordinary inspection of primary schools. Technical and manual training will, for the future, be more directly encouraged in these schools. The rule on which the Indian government has always been guided is to avoid entering into competition with private enterprise, to retire from the field of direct instruction wherever that field could otherwise be well occupied, and to help as far as possible, by reasonable subventions, the operations of independent institutions. It has been the avowed intention also of the government to restrict gradually its own direct official action to the maintenance of a few schools in which the system of instruction and discipline shall afford a standard for the emulation of private or aided schools in the neighbourhood. In a community such as India, untrained to self-help, it will probably be long ere this ideal policy is carried into full effect. There, even more than in Europe, state-aid, though stimulating local effort in certain favoured conditions, is accepted in too many places as a substitute for such effort, and serves to discourage private enterprise and initiative.

FRANCE.—In France there is now a very completely organised system of instruction, supérieure, secondaire, et primaire, under the supervision of the Minister of Public Instruction, the schools being all visited and examined by state officers. The professors in the universities are remunerated by the state. The Lycées or secondary schools also receive large subventions from the state, those of Paris and Versailles being considered rather higher in rank, and having a better paid staff of professors and teachers, than those of the provinces. Collèges are establishments for intermediate education, maintained at the charge of the local municipalities, but without any aid from the central government, except the occasional endowment of special chairs and the partial payment of a few professors. Primary instruction is everywhere throughout France gratuitous. The provision consists of écoles normales, écoles primaires, supérieures et élémentaires, classes enfantine, and écoles maternelles. Except the normal schools, which are mainly supported by the central government, all the primary schools are dependent for the principal part of their support on local bodies. By the law of 1881 each commune is bound to furnish (1) one-fifth part of the net revenue; (2) the sum derived from a special school-tax. In case of the insufficiency of the amount, the department in which the commune is situated adds to its resources a further sum derived from a departmental tax of four centimes; and when, as it often happens, these resources prove to be inadequate, the state adds a subvention complémentaire in the form of augmentation to the salaries of teachers, proportioned partly to the rank of the diplomas of qualification which they severally hold. In 1886 there were in France 3,453,071 children in public schools thus supported, and 1,067,857 in schools under the private management of religious bodies or voluntary teachers and societies. It was the opinion of Mr Matthew Arnold (see his report on 'Schools and Universities on the Continent') that the superiority of France over England was in regard to secondary instruction very marked; but that the primary schools were not so good, and the scholars, age for age, not so advanced as in Great Britain.

GERMANY.—The organisation of German elementary education in its present form may be said to have commenced with the Prussian Code of Regulations of October 1854. Mr C. C. Perry, who made a report to the English Education Department and to the Royal Commission in 1887, is one of the best English authorities on this subject, and he points out in detail the manner in which this code has been subsequently modified and enlarged by the Falk Laws of 1872. He explains further that the elementary schools are divided into (1) those with three or more classes; (2) schools with two teachers; and (3) schools with one teacher, either with one class or half-day schools. Eighty is recognised as the maximum number of scholars under one teacher, even under the most unfavourable conditions. In Prussia, Württemberg, and Oldenburg the classification of the scholars is mainly by age. The hours of instruction are in the lowest division 22 per week, in the middle division 28, and in the upper from 30 to 32. The middle school, which was created by Falk's regulations, is specially adapted to commercial requirements. Its syllabus of instruction includes the elements of science and at least one modern language, and its course of instruction may extend to agriculture, manufactures, mining, or navigation, to suit the industrial requirements of different districts. Teachers in such schools must have received a diploma of special qualification for this higher work. All the schools are under the supervision of the thirty-six government districts of Prussia. In Saxony, elementary schools are divided into primary, middle, and higher. They also include Fortbildungsschulen, which are held in the evenings or on Sundays, and are designed to take up and carry forward the work of the elementary school. Throughout Germany these 'continuation schools,' the need of which is so seriously felt in England, form an important element in the national provision for instruction. The compulsory laws as to ordinary school attendance are enforced from the age of six to that of fourteen, but generally, if a child at fourteen fails to reach the proper standard, he may be compelled to attend either another year at the day-school, or at a supplementary school in the evening or on Sunday. Among so disciplinable a people as the Germans, who have now been for several generations accustomed to regard the legal obligation of school attendance as a settled principle, the enforcement of the law creates little or no difficulty. Fines, however, are imposed, and the agency of the police is called into requisition to force the child of a negligent parent to attend school. In Prussia, Saxony, and Bavaria the payment of school-fees is the rule; free schools are the exception. The popular school in these countries is a municipal affair; it is maintained, so far as it is not self-supporting, out of municipal resources and municipal taxes. The proportion of scholars in schools of different classes may be judged of from the fact that of 158,412 scholars in the public schools of Berlin, 8627 were in gymnasien or classical schools; 5552 in real-gymnasien, or first-class modern schools; about 10,000 in other middle schools of various kinds; and 132,889 in gemeindeschulen, or communal schools. In the kingdom of Saxony 5481 were in attendance at gymnasien, 2788 in real-gymnasien, and 3057 in real-schulen; about 600,000 in the popular schools, and 1892 in continuation schools. Mr M. Arnold, in his interesting parliamentary paper 'On Certain Points connected with Elementary Education in Germany, Switzerland, and France' (1886), speaks strongly in favour of the German schools, and contrasts them and their work favourably with those of England. Training schools and colleges are more numerous than in Great Britain. The course lasts either two or three years; but students are received at seventeen in Prussia, and at sixteen in Bavaria, Baden, and Hesse-Darmstadt. Although the necessary examination for professional certificates is not always limited in Germany to those who have been students in training-colleges, there is probably no country in Europe, except Switzerland, in which so large a proportion of the public teachers have been trained with a view to their special employment.

HOLLAND AND BELGIUM.—In both Holland and Belgium there is also a generous state provision for primary education, although there is no enforced attendance; but in the former country, out of half a million of scholars, 134,172, or rather less than one-fourth, are in schools under private management which receive no aid from public funds. In Belgium the communal schools provided by law are attended by 429,724 scholars, while in other schools—chiefly those maintained by the church, and instructed by the members of religious orders—no less than 170,725 are to be found. The communes are empowered under certain regulations to recognise and to aid the Catholic schools.

Throughout Germany, Italy, and Switzerland the proportion of scholars in the public schools is much larger since religious instruction is in different degrees recognised, and the co-operation of the clergy, both Catholic and Protestant, is under certain conditions invited in the management of the schools.

Fees and Gratuitous Education in Europe.—The Royal Commissioners of Education, whose Report (1888) contains a large number of details respecting the systems and educational resources of foreign countries, thus summarise the general evidence respecting fees and gratuitous education: 'In France, Norway, Sweden, Geneva, Neuchâtel, Vaud, Ticino, and Zurich education is free. In Austria it is free, except in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. In Italy it is free, but in some communes an entrance-fee is charged of from 2s. 8d. to 8s. 4d. In Bavaria education is generally free; some communes charge 2s. 6d. per head per year. In Belgium, 499,699 scholars are free; 89,105 pay fees. In Hungary, parents pay 3s. 8d. a year. In Prussia, by the constitution the schools should be free, but the practice varies. When fees are charged they cover 12 per cent. of the cost. In Berne the schools are generally free, but 1s. 8d. a year may be charged. In Holland there is a mixed system; some schools are free, in some fees are charged. In Württemberg the schools are rarely free. In the country the fees are 2s. a year; in the larger towns they go up to 3s. 6d. a year. In Saxony there are fees ranging in the country districts from $\backslash frac\{3\}\{4\}$d. to 1$\backslash frac\{3\}\{4\}$d. per week; in towns from 12s. to 25s. or 36s. a year, according to place or grade of school. In Dresden the elementary school-fees are 2$\backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}$d. to 3$\backslash frac\{3\}\{4\}$d. a week.'

ENGLAND AND WALES.—In marked contrast to the symmetrical and comparatively recent and complete schemes of public instruction in force in other countries, is the system—if so it may be called—by which provision is made for education in England. It is very characteristic of the country, of its genius, its traditions, its history, and the idiosyncracies of its people, that many of its most cherished institutions are the result of growth rather than of manufacture, have not been consciously predetermined by legislators or by theorists, but have shaped themselves by a process of slow evolution to suit the changed circumstances and needs of successive generations. This fact renders a summary description of English primary and secondary education difficult, if not impossible, and obliges the student of the subject to make a further glance backward into history than would be necessary in the pursuit of similar researches in any other country in Europe.

Before the Reformation, there were, with the exception of the universities, very few institutions which could be called public, for the advancement of learning. The monasteries had been for centuries the only seminaries in which the sons of gentlemen were able to obtain instruction. But here and there, grammar-schools had been founded as chantries or choristers' schools, or were otherwise connected with ecclesiastical establishments. Before the time of Henry VII., sixteen such schools had been founded, the most notable of which were Carlisle (temp. William II.), Salisbury (1319), Winchester (1387), Sevenoaks (1432), Eton (1441), Magdalen School, Oxford (1480), and Rotherham (temp. Edward IV.). The Tudor period witnessed a very large increase in the number. The revival of learning, and the increased mental activity of which the Reformation was the expression, produced a widely spread demand for the means of instruction; and the dissolution of the monasteries furnished in many cases the resources by which the new grammar-schools were erected and permanently endowed. During Henry VII.'s reign, sixteen new foundations were added to the list, including Hull, Reading, Lancaster, Macclesfield, Enfield, and Plymouth; but all of these were rather slenderly endowed. His successor's reign (1509-1547) witnessed the establishment of no less than sixty-three new foundation schools, of which Winborne (1509), St Paul's, London (1510), Pocklington (1514), Burton (1519), Taunton (1522), Manchester (1525), Bosworth (1539), Gloucester (1540), Canterbury (1541), Durham (1541), Warwick (1545), Hemsworth and York (1546), and Ipswich are among the most important. In the short six years' reign of Edward VI., fifty new schools were added to the list, and among them the well-known foundations of Norwich (1547), Skipton (1548), Ilminster (1549), Sherborne (1550), Shrewsbury (1551), Louth (1551), Sedbergh (1551), King Edward's School at Birmingham (1552), Leeds (1552), Stratford (1553), Giggleswick (1553), Christ's Hospital (1553), and Tonbridge in the same year. Even in Mary's time nineteen new grammar-schools were founded, including Boston (1555), Ripon (1555), Hampton (1556), Repton (1556), Oundle (1556), St Peter's, York (1557), and Brentwood (1558). During the long reign of Elizabeth, one hundred and thirty-eight further additions were made to the number, and among them are comprised Westminster (1560), Bristol (1561), Merchant Taylors, London (1561), Felstead (1564), Highgate (1565), Harpur's great foundation at Bedford (1566), Richmond, Yorkshire (1567), Rugby (1567), Harrow (1571), Faversham (1576), St Bees (1583), Colchester (1584), Halifax (1585), Cheltenham (1586), Uppingham (1587), Wakefield (1592), and Aldenham (1599). Eighty-three other endowed schools were founded in the reign of James I., and fifty-nine in the time of Charles I. A few of these, such as Sheffield (1604), the Charterhouse (1611), Monmouth (1615), Dulwich (1619), Chigwell (1629), Exeter (1629), and Tavistock (1649), are still prominent; but otherwise it may be said that in the 17th century, the grammar-schools were poorly endowed and historically insignificant. One uniform purpose, however, is manifest in the testaments, the deeds of gift, the statutes and ordinances by which the character and subsequent career of these schools were intended by their founders to be fashioned. It is to encourage the pursuit of a liberal education, founded on the ancient languages of Greece and Rome—then the only studies which had been so far formulated and systematised as to possess a disciplinary character. It is generally stipulated in the instrument of foundation that the master shall be a learned man, apt and godly, qualified to instruct in good letters and good manners, and that he shall receive as his pupils children of all ranks.

The period of the Civil War was unfavourable to educational enterprise; and when that period ended, new facts, thoughts, and experiences had come into prominence, and new views as to the purpose of education, and as to the mode by which that object was to be attained. The Act of Uniformity and the secession of the Nonconformist clergy brought home to men's minds the conviction that all attempts to incorporate Puritanism into the organic life of the English Church must be abandoned as hopeless, and the Toleration Act which followed soon after compelled English churchmen to recognise for the first time the unwelcome truth that dissent must be reckoned with as a fact. To the earnest churchmen of the beginning of the 18th century, to men like Edward Colston, the founder of the great hospital school at Bristol, and Robert Nelson, the author of the Fasts and Festivals, it seemed that the true remedy for the social and moral evils which they dreaded, was to be found in the multiplication of schools of a new type for the poor, schools in which the instruction should be specially designed both to fit them for the humbler duties of life and to attach them to the Church of England. It was feared that the prevalence of dissent would imperil the social order. A dread lest the poor should be encouraged by it to forget the duties of their station, and to encroach upon the privileges of the rich, is very manifest in much of the literature and some of the legislation of the age. There is a very significant passage in the sermon of Bishop Butler which he delivered at one of the earliest of the annual festivals of the charity children at St Paul's:

'The design' of these institutions, the bishop said, 'was not in any sort to remove poor children out of the rank in which they were born, but keeping them in it, to give them the assistance which their circumstances plainly called for, by educating them in the principles of religion as well as of civil life; and likewise making some sort of provision for their maintenance, under which last I include clothing them, giving them such learning—if it is to be called by that name—as may qualify them for some common employment, and placing them out to it as they grow up.'

There is indeed no more striking token of the changed feeling with which the rich had come to regard the problem of education, and its relation to the needs of the poor, than the simple fact that whereas in the 16th century men founded Grammar-schools, in the 18th they ceased to add to the number of such schools, and founded Charity schools instead. These institutions rapidly multiplied during the whole of the 18th century and in the beginning of the 19th. They are founded on a conception of education partly religious and partly feudal, but almost wholly ignoble and humiliating, and many of them have lasted down to our own day in striking contrast to the grammar-school foundations of earlier generations. The charity-school children were to be taught the church catechism, reading and writing, and in a few cases arithmetic, but were to be sedulously discouraged from attempting to learn more. They were to be clothed in a distinctive dress, so as to show that they were objects of public benevolence, and to 'remind them of their rank.' But the scholars in the grammar-schools were, whether the sons of gentlemen or not, to be treated as if they were. They were to be brought within reach of the highest educational advantages which the nation could afford; they were to be encouraged to proceed from school to the universities; and special provision was always made to tempt into this higher region of learning and of 'gentilesse' the child of the yeoman and the peasant, in order that, if diligent and apt in learning, he too might be so trained as to 'serve God in church and state.'

It is to be observed that while schools of the charity class were open to girls, the whole of the grammar-school education was provided for boys only. There is scarcely a record in all the voluminous reports of later charity commissions, of any school whose founder deliberately contemplated a liberal education for girls; certainly not one which fulfilled such a purpose, whether it was contemplated by the founder or not. A girl was not expected to 'serve God in church or state,' and was therefore not invited to the university or the grammar-school; but she might, if poor, be needed to contribute to the comfort of her 'betters,' as an apprentice or a servant, and therefore the charity schools were open to her.

Elementary Education.—Such were the only educational resources of a public or quasi-public kind which existed in England at the end of the 18th century. They were at best available for only a very small section of the community. All other teaching was in private hands. A statute in 1779 relieved schoolmasters from the obligation which had been imposed on them by the Toleration Act, of signing the Thirty-nine Articles, and thus gave greater freedom, especially to Non-conformists, in regard to the establishment and conduct of private adventure schools. In 1781 Robert Raikes of Gloucester established the first Sunday school, and was thus the pioneer of the long succession of philanthropists who, during the next fifty years, sought by their own voluntary exertions to supply to some extent the lack of all public or legislative provision for the instruction of the poor. In these Sunday schools secular as well as religious teaching was at first often given. In 1802 Joseph Lancaster, a young Quaker, the son of a Chelsea pensioner, published his first pamphlet. In it he describes the wretched character of the only schools which were then frequented by the children of artisans. They were kept by persons of the lowest qualifications and of the lowest character, the refuse of mechanical trades. He told with simple pathos the story of his first experiment made four years before. He had hired a large room in the Borough Road, Southwark, and had gathered round him nearly a thousand children. Having no adult assistants or money to pay them, he organised a corps of the elder boys, to take charge of the rest and instruct them under his supervision. He possessed a gift for organisation, and a remarkable power of securing the loyalty and affection of his scholars. The school was divided into classes under monitors and superintending monitors, and was a very striking spectacle of order and mental activity; the pride, not to say the self-confidence of the elder scholars, as they exercised their monitorial functions, being very remarkable.

Meanwhile, Dr Andrew Bell, who was at first a military chaplain in India, had been trying experiments at the asylum for boys in Madras, and had been led by the difficulty of procuring adult assistance to the adoption of the same device of employing the pupils to instruct one another. His first pamphlet was published three or four years before Lancaster's, and Lancaster always acknowledged his obligations to it. Both men were enthusiasts, and both believed that a wonderful discovery had been made, which would have the effect of extending, at a small cost, the blessings of education to large numbers who had hitherto been without the means of instruction. And they were not wholly wrong. They overestimated, no doubt, the value of the teaching which children who were themselves little older than their scholars could give; but it cannot be denied that under the system some humble rudiments of learning were really imparted, and the method of 'mutual instruction' was found to be not without its moral value in encouraging scholars to put forth their best powers and to find a pleasure in helping each other. Educationally, there was little or no difference between the 'systems' of Lancaster and Bell. But the connection of the one with Nonconformists and of the other with the Church of England, had the effect of separating the friends of popular education into two camps, and provoking much acrimonious controversy. The church catechism and liturgy formed a substantial part of the education given in the schools provided under Bell's method, and while the Lancasterian schools were essentially religious institutions, the Bible being from the first a staple subject of instruction, no doctrinal teaching distinctive of any particular section of the Christian church was permitted to be introduced. Bishops, clergy, and churchmen generally, constituted themselves into a society for the patronage and perfection of Bell's system. The main supporters of the efforts of Lancaster were Liberal churchmen, Non-conformists, and the powerful body of Whig noblemen, statesmen, and littérateurs who founded the Edinburgh Review, the Penny Magazine, and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

In 1808 the Royal Lancasterian Society, afterwards better known as the British and Foreign School Society, was founded; and in 1811 the National Society for the Education of the Poor in the principles of the Established Church. It may be added that neither of the two great societies had much reason to be proud of its founder. Lancaster's enthusiasm was little controlled by prudence. He was thrifty, unmethodical, headstrong, and fatally incapable of working well under the advice even of his most generous friends. He quitted in anger the Society which for a time bore his name, and died in poverty in America. Bell was vain, self-seeking, not very scrupulous, and filled with an extravagant sense of the value of his own invention, and of the worthlessness of all learning of other kinds. He received several valuable pieces of ecclesiastical preferment, and died rich. (See Professor Meiklejohn's Life of Bell, 1881.) Not till they were comparatively free from some of the personal associations connected with the founders of the 'monitorial system,' did the National and the British and Foreign School Societies enter fairly upon that long career of honour and of public usefulness which they have pursued to this day. The former society was far the more powerful. It received larger support, and 'National' schools were to be found in remote and thinly peopled districts, where no 'British' school would have had any chance of success. In all the great towns, however, and in many small ones, the unsectarian schools were large and flourishing, and shared with the church schools the task of supplying the educational needs of the labouring classes. The schools of both classes were mainly taught by young monitors. Fees were charged varying with the industrial and social condition of the places in which the schools were situated. A useful though humble standard of elementary instruction was reached, and in 'British' more often than in 'National' schools a successful effort was made to raise the standard by the introduction of geography and history, and by lessons on objects and on common things.

Public Measures for Elementary Education.—Practically, it may be said that the first sign of interest in public instruction evinced by parliament was the appointment in 1816 of a select committee of the House of Commons on the education of the lower classes of the metropolis. It was presided over by Henry Brougham, and it reported 'there was reason to conclude that a very large number of poor children are wholly without the means of instruction, although their parents appeared to be very desirous of obtaining that advantage for them.' The committee enforced strongly the necessity for some measures whereby the deficiency in the means of instruction might be supplied. But no immediate action was taken on this report. In 1832 Lord Althorp procured the assent of the House of Commons to a vote of £20,000 for the erection of school-buildings in England, and this sum was distributed through the hands of the National Society and the British and Foreign School Society. But the grant did not contemplate the maintenance of schools, or any provision for instruction or inspection. The administration of this sum was intrusted to the Treasury. In 1835 Lord Brougham brought before the House of Lords his celebrated series of resolutions, declaring that it was incumbent upon parliament further to encourage the establishment of schools, and to provide seminaries for the training of teachers. A more effective step was taken in 1838, when another committee of the House of Commons, under the chairmanship of Mr Slaney, reported still more strongly to the same effect, and appended to its report ample statistics and testimony respecting the educational destitution, especially in large towns. The establishment in 1839 of a committee of Council on Education, at the instance of the Marquis of Lansdowne and Lord John Russell, was the first step towards the foundation of the present system of public elementary education, and the administration of a parliamentary grant in aid. The committee was to be composed of the Lord President of the Council and four other of Her Majesty's ministers; and to the board thus constituted was intrusted the application of any sums which might be voted by parliament for the purpose of education in England and Wales. The first secretary and chief adviser of the committee was Dr J. Philips Kay (afterwards Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth), a man of singular energy, who entered on his work in a spirit of hopeful enthusiasm, which had been largely stimulated and guided by his study of the state of education in foreign lands, particularly in Switzerland, Prussia, and Holland. To his mind the first task to be performed was the establishment of a normal school for the training of teachers, and pending the realisation of this project, one of the earliest grants made by the new committee of Council was one of £10,000, in equal proportions to the two great societies, each of which, however, had before this time been accustomed to receive intending teachers for three months' attendance at its model schools at Westminster and at the Borough Road, to 'learn the system.'

Second only in importance to the training of teachers was, in the judgment of the first committee of Council and its secretary, the inspection of all aided schools by a skilled agency. In the Minutes of Council presented to parliament in 1840, it was expressly provided that the right of inspection would be insisted on in all cases in which a grant was made. Nevertheless, with a view to conciliate the religious bodies with whom from the first the committee proposed to work, it was agreed that all schools connected with the Church of England should be visited by clergymen approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that the British and Foreign School Society, which did not invite inspection in religious knowledge, should have its work examined by laymen whose names had been previously approved by the committee of that body. The project of establishing a state training-school was most distasteful to the bishops and other authorities of the English Church, and was owing to their opposition most reluctantly abandoned. But the energy of Dr Kay, seconded by that of his friend Mr E. Carleton Tufnell, was not to be daunted, and by their joint personal efforts a training-school was established at Battersea, in which some of the earliest experiments were tried in England to systematise the professional training of teachers. Two years afterwards, in 1842, the government consented to make grants to the institution, both for maintenance and for the extension of the buildings. In the following year the National Society took over the whole establishment, which has existed ever since as one of the most successful of the training institutions for schoolmasters in connection with the Church of England. Nearly at the same time the British and Foreign School Society enlarged and adapted Joseph Lancaster's old premises in the Borough Road, and established in connection with the well-known model school a residential institution for training teachers, both male and female. In 1842, under the administration of Sir Robert Peel, Sir James Graham made proposals in the educational clauses of the Factory Regulation Act, which, had they been carried out, would have had the effect of providing schools for the poor at the cost of local rates, and enforcing in them the attendance of all children partially employed. But the incidental provision in this bill, that the religious instruction in the proposed factory schools should be in accordance with the principles of the Church of England, although dissenting parents were to be allowed to claim exemption for their children from such instruction, alarmed the Non-conformists throughout the kingdom. It gave them an opportunity to hinder this new step in advance, fearing it might give an unfair advantage to the Establishment, even as the ecclesiastical dignitaries had already objected to the provision of national and unsectarian training-colleges through a fear lest the interests of the church and of religion should suffer.

Experience of this kind of failure served to narrow the field of possible useful action on the part of the government, and in 1846 new Minutes of Council were issued, which proceeded frankly on the principle that the existing religious agencies should be utilised and aided, and that no independent state system should be attempted. The parliamentary grant for school building and inspection had already risen to £100,000; and it was now proposed to make further grants in aid, with a view to render existing schools efficient. The primary object of these proposals was to improve the qualifications of teachers. This object was to be attained (1) by granting certificates of merit to schoolmasters and mistresses who, after examination, proved to be fit for the work; (2) by aiding training institutions (nine of which had by this time been reared by the two great societies), and supplying students in them with scholarships to defray the cost of their training; (3) by creating a body of pupil-teachers, who at the age of thirteen should be regularly apprenticed, and afterwards should take part in the instruction of scholars, and be themselves annually examined, with a view to their systematic preparation for ultimate employment in charge of schools. This was in fact the main feature of Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth's scheme. He had been much impressed with the successful working of school apprenticeship in Holland, and he had been equally impressed with the failure of the monitorial system of Bell and Lancaster, which still provided the staple of the teaching power in the schools of the National and the British and Foreign School Societies. The Minutes of 1846 provided that graduated personal payments of from £10 to £20 should be made to each pupil-teacher during the years of his apprenticeship, on condition of his passing an examination suitable to his age. At the end of his or her term of service, the way was open to further training by means of a scholarship in a normal college, and thus provision was made for recruiting the ranks of the teacher's profession with suitable candidates. By the same minutes head-teachers possessing certificates were entitled to receive grants of from £15 to £30 a year from the Treasury in augmentation of their salaries.

It is very characteristic of the spirit in which the whole enterprise originated, that Shuttleworth tried at this time several experiments which it soon became necessary to abandon, but which were not without their value in determining the future course of the department, and of guarding his successors against mistakes. He formed, very naturally and honourably, a conception of his office as one for the direction and control of methods of education, as well as for the aid of local and denominational effort. Accordingly the committee of Council invited various teachers and professors, of whom Mr Hullah and Mr Butler Williams were the most distinguished, to give public lectures, first at Exeter Hall, and afterwards in various provincial centres, on the best methods of teaching singing, drawing, phonic reading, writing, arithmetic, and the like. Text-books on these subjects were published under the express sanction of the committee of Council; and subsequently official lists of approved school-books and manuals were issued under the same authority. Experience, however, soon rendered it necessary to retreat from the position thus tentatively occupied. Not only the interests of publishers, but the larger educational interests of the ablest school-managers and the most original and earnest of the teachers, were found to be inconsistent with the prescription by authority of particular books, machinery, and methods. Soon it became apparent that in administering grants in aid; it was the duty of the central government to recognise every form of good work, and to leave the largest possible freedom to the producers of books, the inventors of methods, and the managers and teachers of schools. Herein the action of the state in England and Scotland has always differed materially, alike from the bureaucratic systems of national education which prevail on the continent of Europe, and from the organisation of public instruction in the various states of the American Union; for in all of these public authority extends to methods, text-books, organisation, machinery, time-tables, and the like, and leaves less liberty of choice to teachers. The principle which, by gradual evolution since 1846, has established itself in England, and is not now likely to be departed from, is one essentially suited to the genius and traditions of the English race. The department of the state intrusted with the duty of administering the parliamentary grant does not exist for the purposes of imposing on the nation its own educational theories, or of prescribing in all cases what shall be learned and how it shall be taught. It simply distributes a sum of public money in aid of local effort, leaving to the managers the fullest freedom of administration and initiative in the choice of teachers and of processes of teaching. At the same time it reserves to itself the power to lay down the conditions under which the grant shall be obtained, and to proportion the amount of that grant to the number of the scholars and to the actual efficiency of the school.

How effectual was the stimulus given to local effort by the Minutes of 1846 may be judged from the simple fact that by 1849 there were in England 681 certificated teachers and 3580 pupil-teachers. In two years more there were 1100 certificated teachers and 6000 pupil-teachers, and twenty-five training-colleges; and by 1859 the number of certificated teachers had risen to 6878, and the number of pupil-teachers to 15,224. The state had contributed upwards of £1,000,000 towards the erection of new schoolrooms, and the annual grant had risen to £836,920. Two important steps in advance had meanwhile been taken. Under the name of capitation grants, additional sums had been granted to school-managers in aid of the general expenses of the school over and above the special grants already made to teachers and pupil-teachers in augmentation of their salaries. An act of parliament in 1856 had established the office of Vice-president of the Privy-council on Education, and thus provided that a minister should be responsible to the House of Commons for dispensing the grant hitherto distributed on the responsibility of a departmental committee.

In 1858 a Royal Commission, under the presidency of the Duke of Newcastle, was appointed to inquire into the present state of popular education. The public reasons assigned for instituting such an investigation were the rapid increase in the annual grant demanded from parliament—from £100,000 in 1846 to £663,435 in 1858—and the misgivings entertained by many persons as to the worth of the results attained by the nation in return for its outlay. The Commission reported in 1861. Among the general conclusions arrived at, the most important were that the existing system had already reached one-eighth part of the population, but that the attendance of even this number was often irregular; that the aided schools were far more efficient than the unaided and private adventure schools; but that even in the best schools only a small proportion of the scholars, not exceeding one-fourth, were successfully educated; and that the system provided no check on the tendency of many teachers to neglect the rudimentary subjects and the younger classes. The commissioners pointed out that some evils had arisen, and were likely to increase, owing to the practice of making direct personal payments to teachers and pupil-teachers; and they recommended that all grants should in future be paid directly to the managers, who should be left to make their own contracts with teachers. They further recommended that one part of the grant paid to a school should be made by the committee of Council out of funds annually provided by parliament, and that another part should be furnished by means of a county rate. But the principle on which public subsidies were to be made in aid of schools was insisted on with great distinctness—the one way of securing the efficiency of a school was declared to be ‘to institute a searching examination of every child in all the schools to which grants were to be paid, and to make the prospects and position of the teacher dependent on the results of this examination.’

The Revised Code of 1862.—Mr Lowe (afterwards Lord Sherbrooke) was in 1861 the Vice-president of the Council, and Mr Lingen (afterwards Lord Lingen) was the permanent secretary, and it fell to them to devise means for giving effect to the recommendations of the Commission. Both were greatly impressed with the growing inconvenience to the state of the system of personal payment to teachers whom the government had no power to appoint or to dismiss. They saw with alarm the creation of a body of vested interests which it would every year become more difficult to deal with or to destroy. The Revised Code of 1862 supplied a very drastic and summary remedy for the evils to which the commissioners had directed attention. It abolished once for all the personal relation between the department and the teachers, and proposed to make the grant to each school, in one sum, to the local managers. It did not adopt the suggestion of the commissioners so far as the aid to schools by means of a county rate was concerned; but it proposed that the whole of the grant should come from the Consolidated Fund, and that in determining its amount the results of examination in reading, writing, and arithmetic should alone be considered. It is very characteristic of the spirit in which this measure was adopted, that Mr Lowe, in recommending it to the House of Commons, said in effect: 'I do not promise that the system shall be economical, or that it will prove efficient. But if it is not efficient it will be economical; and if it is not economical it will certainly be efficient.'

The measure became law, but not without experiencing vehement opposition. Part of this opposition arose from what was felt by many as a breach of faith on the part of the government towards the large army of teachers whose stipends had been directly augmented by grants, and part of it was based on educational considerations. The government, it was said, was abandoning a position of much usefulness in ceasing to make grants of books, and to encourage by means of higher allowances the attainment of superior qualifications by teachers. The new code recognised no other results than proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic. It provided only a meagre course of instruction up to the age of twelve, and it was thus certain to lead teachers to take a narrow and mechanical view of their work. One effect of the new arrangement was that during the first five years after 1862 the amount of the grant steadily declined from £813,441 to £649,307. Another was that increased attention was certainly paid to the accurate teaching of elementary subjects, and that any temptation which may heretofore have led teachers to neglect the rank and file of their scholars, especially in the lower classes, was effectually removed. In 1867 the Vice-president, Mr Corry, so far modified the rigidity and narrowness of the code of 1862, as to provide additional grants on condition that there should be a larger staff than the minimum heretofore required, and that some one additional subject—grammar, history, or geography—should be taught.

The Education Act of 1870.—The memorable parliament of 1868, under the administration of Mr Gladstone, was in many respects the most important parliament, from an educational point of view, which ever sat in England. It not only saw the enactment of the great measure for the reform of endowed schools, for which see the section infra on secondary education, but Mr Forster, the Vice-president of the Council, succeeded in 1870 and 1871 in carrying through parliament the Education Acts for England and Scotland, which will always be associated with his name. Before preparing his great measure, he caused a special inquiry to be made by two parliamentary commissioners into the condition of elementary education in the four largest towns next to the metropolis; and the revelations of those commissioners, corroborated by testimony from all parts of England, proved that there was large educational destitution, which the voluntary system had not met and was not likely to meet. Hitherto the only initiative had been taken by voluntary bodies chiefly connected with the churches; the government had simply aided existing schools, but had taken no steps to provide new ones. The Act of 1870 provided that whenever the voluntary supply was insufficient, school boards should be created with power to levy rates for the establishment and maintenance of schools, and at the same time to exercise by means of local bylaws the power to compel the attendance of children at school. The main provisions of this important act, which may be regarded as forming the corner-stone of the English system of primary education, are as follows:

(1) That either by voluntary effort, or failing that, by the compulsory establishment of school boards, there should be a sufficient supply of public elementary schools for every district in the kingdom.

The basis of the calculation was that accommodation was to be provided for one-sixth of the population.

(2) That every such public elementary school should be taught by a properly qualified teacher, should be open to the inspection of Her Majesty's inspectors, and should conform to regulations to be prescribed from time to time in the code.

(3) That in all public elementary schools, whatever religious instruction was given should be imparted at the beginning or end of the school meeting, and that an unbroken period of two hours in each meeting should be devoted to secular instruction.

(4) That a time-table setting forth in detail the hours to be devoted to religious and secular instruction should be publicly displayed in each schoolroom; and that parents should have the right to withdraw their children from any religious instruction or observance which they disapproved.

(5) That in schools provided or managed by school boards, no catechism or religious formulary distinctive of any particular denomination should be taught.

(6) That the understanding hitherto existing between the department and the religious bodies with regard to inspection should cease. No cognisance was to be taken by the department of the religious instruction in any elementary school; and the inspector, whether lay or clerical, was to visit and report on all schools receiving government aid in his district. Since the passing of the act no clergyman has been appointed to the office of inspector.

Advantage was taken of this period of change to enlarge in the departmental regulations of the code the scope of instruction in the schools. By making the first of the six standards appropriate to children of seven instead of six, and raising the requirements, the scheme of elementary instruction was so altered as to contemplate the age of thirteen instead of twelve as the limit of school-life; and by permitting two additional subjects instead of one, encouragement was offered to greater variety and intelligence in the teaching. Subsequent modifications of the code in 1873, 1874, and 1875 still further helped to enlarge the curriculum by the introduction of a list of specific or additional subjects beyond the class subjects, and by allowing grants on behalf of older children who were examined and passed in them. Lord Sandon's Act in 1876 gave to school attendance committees in places where no school boards existed the power to enforce attendance; and reciting and embodying former factory acts, made clearer the duty of parents to provide education for their children from six to fourteen, unless before that age they should have succeeded in passing the standard for exemption prescribed by the local authority.

The period of Mr Mundella's administration of the department, during the parliament of 1880, witnessed several significant changes. The act passed in that year superseded the optional compulsion provided by Mr Forster's Act and the indirect compulsion of Lord Sandon's Act, by a new enactment enforcing on the school authority in every district the obligation to make bylaws to compel attendance. More important were the educational changes made in the code which was sanctioned by parliament in 1882. One of its chief provisions affected the infant schools. Hitherto almost the only test applied to the efficiency of these departments was the ability of the little scholars to read, write, and count. Now, for the first time, the code required that besides a knowledge of these elements provision should be made for a regular course of object lessons on the phenomena of nature and of common life, and also for those manual and other employments which are commonly known as the kindergarten games and occupations. The effect of this first official recognition of the principles of Fröbel and Pestalozzi in their application to infant training has been very marked. The best English infant schools are now almost unrivalled for their excellence. The change effected by the code of 1882 has not only increased the cheerfulness and attractiveness of the infant schools to the little ones, but has had the incidental result of securing more effective, because more intelligent progress in the rudiments of ordinary instruction.

One of the most substantial changes in the code was to substitute graduated grants for the fixed sums which had heretofore been paid for instruction in such subjects as English grammar and composition, geography, history, and elementary science, and thus to recognise differences in the quality of the teaching. Another change of importance was embodied in the provision that scholars who were deficient in health or mental power might be exempted from examination without entailing on the managers any loss of grant. And with a view to avoid too mechanical an estimate of the results of instruction, by mere counting of passes, a substantial portion of the sum awarded to each school was to take the form of a 'merit grant' to be awarded on the inspector's general estimate of the intelligence of the teaching, the tone and discipline, and the value and public usefulness of the school as a whole. Another object secured at the time of the reconstruction of the code in 1882 was the more complete organisation of the inspectorate. Powers of supervision over the work of district inspectors were for the first time intrusted to the eight divisional chiefs, and arrangements were made for annual conferences in each division, and for an annual conference of the chiefs with the heads of the department in London, with a view to the attainment of greater uniformity of judgment and of practice in the work of inspector. At the same time a new class of officers was created under the name of sub-inspectors, to be recruited from the ranks of the assistants, all of whom had been distinguished elementary teachers.

The Royal Commission of 1886.—The Conservative government of 1885 being much pressed by many of its own supporters to reconsider the position in which the voluntary schools were placed by the rapid multiplication of board schools, and by the steady increase in the local rates, nominated in the next year a new Royal Commission to inquire into the working of the Education Acts. It was urged that some changes in the mode of distributing the parliamentary grant were yet to be desired, and in particular, that the managers of voluntary schools experienced increasing difficulty in maintaining them, owing to the unwillingness of many of the supporters of those schools to continue making voluntary subscriptions in addition to their enforced contributions as ratepayers. A very strong Commission, including in itself representatives of all shades of educational opinion and all the leading sections in religion and politics, was constituted under the presidency of Lord Cross, and devoted two years to a laborious investigation, and to the hearing of multitudinous evidence on the whole subject.

The final Report of this Commission, published in 1888, was not unanimous. The majority desired and strongly recommended that school boards should be empowered to subsidise voluntary schools at the cost of the local rates; but an influential minority presented an alternative report earnestly deprecating such a course. In regard to the more distinctly educational problems, the majority and minority were practically agreed on some weighty recommendations. They were unable to advise any departure from the principle first insisted on by

Mr Lowe, of assessing the share of the public grant to managers in proportion to the efficiency of the schools as determined by examination; but they suggested several modifications in the application of that principle; and in particular they desired to substitute a more general qualitative test of the results of instruction, for the method of computing any part of the grant by the percentage of passes; and thus to advance a step further in the direction already indicated by Mr Mundella's reforms of 1882. The commissioners say on this point: 'After weighing carefully all the evidence laid before us, we are convinced that the distribution of the parliamentary grant cannot be wholly freed from its present dependence on the results of examination, without the risk of incurring greater evils than those which it is sought to cure. Nor can we believe that parliament will long continue to make so large an annual grant as that which now appears in the education estimates without in some way satisfying itself that the quality of the education given justifies the expenditure.' Other recommendations on many points of detail—e.g. on moral training and discipline, on inspection, on drawing and manual exercises, and on the exceptional help required in small rural schools—were made by the commissioners, and in the code of 1889 some of those recommendations were practically embodied; but the government of the day promptly disavowed any intention of introducing such measures of relief to voluntary schools as would legalise the appropriation of money from the local rates for their maintenance.

It is fitting to close this narrative of legislative and administrative measures by placing on record the figures representing the present statistics of educational provision, as compared with those of the year 1870, before the passing of the Education Act. At that time the number of schools in England and Wales receiving government aid and inspection was 9563, the number of scholars 1,152,389, the staff of certificated teachers was 12,467, and the amount of the government grant was £464,943. The report of the Education Department for 1894 shows the number of schools to be 19,756, containing 30,169 separate departments under head-teachers. The number of scholars was 5,235,827, and of certificated teachers 50,689, while the annual vote for education submitted to parliament in 1894 amounted to £3,926,641. The progress made in the metropolis alone places the influence of the Education Act in a yet more striking light. In 1870 the sole provision for elementary education made by National, British, Wesleyan, Catholic, and other voluntary schools extended to a quarter of a million scholars. During the twenty-five years following, the School Board for London erected some 450 new schools, each in three departments, for boys, girls, and infants, and with accommodation for 470,000 additional children, while the accommodation in the voluntary schools amounts to 270,000, and remains substantially unchanged since 1870. Thus the total school attendance in the metropolis has risen to 740,000.

Evening-schools.—During the year 1895, 3318 evening-schools in England and Wales received aid from the parliamentary grant, and were attended by 266,683 scholars. The number and relative importance of night-schools considered as factors in the system of elementary education have necessarily diminished, and are likely still further to diminish as day-school attendance becomes more universal and more effective. Hitherto public aid has been offered only in respect to those scholars who desired to supply the deficiencies in their early education, and to pass the examination in one of the seven standards. But the friends of night-schools urge that aid should also be given to those who aim at higher instruction, and to employment of a more recreative kind. At present this desired concession has not been made. Whether young men who have passed successfully through the ordinary elementary course, and are presumably getting their own living, and are engaged in efforts after self-improvement, are the proper objects of aid from the education grant, is a question of public policy on which parliament has not yet decided.

It may thus be seen that the history of elementary education in England presents a somewhat incoherent record of experiments and failures, of compromises, of measures adopted to meet the varying necessities and experience of different periods, and often of a lack of clear purpose or appreciation of the ultimate ends to be attained. Nevertheless the nation has undoubtedly arrived, by paths however circuitous, at a system which has covered the country with good elementary schools, which has provided adequate accommodation for the children of school age throughout the kingdom, and which has brought the influence of the central government, and the ideal of public education which has been sanctioned by parliament, to bear upon the remotest village in the land. Under the provisions of the Acts of 1870 and 1876, no child need be excluded from school on the ground of poverty. The fees paid by parents of the scholars amounted in 1888 to £1,774,626, and the fees paid on behalf of indigent children by the poor-law guardians reached a total of £59,358. But since 1891, education is free; of all the schools in England and Wales in 1895, 16,289 were free schools, and on the registers of all the schools there were 4,377,741 free scholars.

Secondary Education in England.—The history of secondary education in England is no less confused and difficult to trace, while it cannot be said to have yet arrived at so definite a conclusion. It has been shown that the main provision for such education has for centuries been supplied by endowed grammar-schools. Each of these has, however, been controlled exclusively by its own body of trustees; it has been regarded as a purely local and separate institution rather than as part of any general system of public education, and has been absolutely free from any central control. The elaborate inquiry into endowed charities, begun in 1818 and concluded in 1837, resulted in the accumulation of a mass of facts respecting the history, origin, constitution, and resources of endowed schools; but it did not attempt to furnish any information respecting the educational character and present public usefulness of those schools. The first step towards the acquirement of such information was, in accordance with many precedents, the establishment of a special Royal Commission of Inquiry in 1865. Already the state of the universities had been investigated by royal commissions, and legislation had followed the recommendations of the commissioners. In 1858, as we have seen, the Duke of Newcastle's Commission had been appointed to report on the condition and resources of the education of the labouring classes, and in 1862 Lord Clarendon's Commission had investigated the state of the nine great public schools—Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, Westminster, Shrewsbury, Charterhouse, St Paul's, and Merchant Taylors. Legislation, except so far as the two last-named schools were concerned, had followed the recommendations of both Commissions.

The Schools Inquiry Commission.—But between the elementary schools for the poor and the public schools, which stood in the closest relations to the universities, there was a large and comparatively unexplored field, and the task of inquiring into the endowed grammar-schools, and into secondary education generally, was intrusted in 1865 to the Schools Inquiry Commission, under the presidency of Lord Taunton, who had for his colleagues an unusually powerful body of public authorities, academic and political. Their inquiry covered the whole of the endowed grammar-schools; but by means of specimen districts, very full investigations were also made into the condition and resources of secondary instruction generally. The commissioners reported in 1867. They showed that of the 3000 endowed schools in the country 782 had been designated by the instruments of their foundation 'grammar'-schools, while the rest belonged mainly to the second class, which has already been described, of 'non-classical' or charity schools. Beside these there were many proprietary or joint-stock schools, established voluntarily either by religious bodies or to meet special local wants. The rest of the secondary instruction was in the hands of private teachers.

On each of these three classes the commissioners reported fully. So far as the ancient grammar-schools were concerned the results of the inquiry were lamentable. A small number were found to be vigorous, well attended, and useful; but in the enormous majority of cases the schools were languishing and inefficient. The present writer, as one of the assistant-commissioners, visited and examined nearly one hundred of them in the north of England, and reported that about five or six were flourishing and doing excellent work; some twenty were, though small and comparatively feeble, very fairly taught; and the remaining three-fourths less efficient than ordinary elementary schools under inspection. Similar testimony came in great abundance from other parts of the country, and the conclusions of the Commission, in reference to the decadence of the ancient grammar-school system, and its failure either to fulfil its original purpose or to meet modern needs, were very emphatic. They attributed this failure partly (1) to the constitution of the governing bodies, many of which were exclusive cliques renewed by perpetual co-optation, and completely out of sympathy with the communities for whose benefit the schools had been designed; (2) to the obsolete and unworkable character of the ancient statutes, and to the difficulty experienced by trustees either in carrying them out or in disregarding them; (3) to the fixed or freehold tenure of the head-masters, and to the conditions under which other teachers were appointed; (4) to the general unsuitableness of the instruction given; (5) to the absence of all publicity and supervision; and (6) to the capricious distribution of the endowments, the richest often being situated in places in which there was least need, and large and important centres of industry and population being often wholly without endowments.

Of proprietary schools, which were of a more modern type, and which had come into existence to meet actual needs, the Commission was able to give a somewhat better account, but few of them were financially stable or prosperous; the supply of such schools was reported to be very small, and was often practically available only for scholars of particular denominations. The largest number of scholars receiving instruction not purely elementary were in private establishments; and the assistant-commissioners visited and examined a great number of these, but were unable, except in a small number of cases, to give a satisfactory report. The teachers were generally very ill qualified for their work, the methods in use were unskilful and ineffective, the scholars were subject to no external test, and there was in the routine of the schools a remarkable monotony and an absence of intellectual life. On the whole, the voluminous Reports of the Schools Inquiry Commission contain some of the most disheartening chapters in English educational history; and the commissioners recommended some drastic and comprehensive remedies. They concluded that improved secondary instruction might be largely secured by the adoption of public measures which should be partly obligatory and partly permissive. They proposed to begin with endowed schools, which should be suitably graded, to modernise the schemes of instruction, to repeal obsolete and useless statutes, to abolish the freehold tenure of masterships, to impose fees corresponding to the character of the education imparted, and to reserve a substantial part of each endowment for encouraging special merit by means of exhibitions or free places tenable in the school, and scholarships to enable the best pupils to proceed to the university or other place of higher education.

At the same time the Commission proposed to abolish many of the local privileges and rights of founder's kin, and in particular to take out of the hands of the trustees all personal patronage. The governing bodies were to be re-constituted on a more popular basis, and provision was to be made for the periodical inspection and examination of the schools. With a view to the attainment of these objects, the commissioners devised and recommended a highly elaborate machinery, consisting of (1) a provincial authority to prepare schemes for the reorganisation of the endowed schools, and to bring into the educational fund other charities, such as apprenticeship premiums, doles, and other charities which had become obsolete or useless; (2) a central authority to receive and revise all such schemes and to submit them to parliament; (3) a second central authority, to be composed partly of representatives of the universities, and to be charged with the duty of awarding certificates of competency to teachers, preparing an official list of persons so qualified, examining schools both endowed and private, and making periodical public reports as to their numbers and efficiency.

The Endowed Schools Act.—This Report, and especially that portion of it which disclosed the pitiable condition of the endowed schools, and the mischief of attempting a half-hearted and imperfect compliance with ordinances unsuited to modern educational needs, made a great impression on the public. Fortunately its appearance happened to coincide with the accession to power of one of the strongest governments of modern times—the administration of Mr Gladstone in 1868. The Vice-president of the Council was Mr W. E. Forster, who had himself served on the Schools Inquiry Commission, and to whose bold and vigorous initiative the nation owed, two years later, the Elementary Education Act. Feeling the need of preventing without delay the creation of new vested interests, he carried through the parliament of 1868 a short 'act for annexing conditions to the appointment of persons to offices in certain schools;' and in accordance with the provisions of this statute every schoolmaster who accepted office was bound to do so subject to any future scheme which might be made for the regulation of the school. In 1869 Mr Forster brought forward his Endowed Schools Bill in two parts. The first part proposed the erection of a special executive commission, with power to frame schemes for the reorganisation of all endowed educational charities, and also, with the consent of the local trustees, to apply certain non-educational endowments to educational purposes. The second proposed the formation of an educational council, to be composed of representatives of the three universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and London, and of six persons to be nominated by the crown, with power (1) to examine persons deserving recognition as teachers, and to confer upon them professional diplomas; (2) to examine and report on the condition of all endowed schools; (3) to keep a register of all private schools under qualified teachers; (4) to admit such schools as might apply for recognition to the same examination as that provided for endowed schools; and (5) to allow the scholars of such private or unendowed schools to compete for exhibitions.

It will be observed that the bill contemplated a somewhat simpler machinery than that devised by the Schools Inquiry Commission, and in particular, that the proposal for provincial councils disappeared from Mr Forster's scheme. But of the two portions of this bold measure Mr Forster was able to carry the first only, which served to reform the schemes of endowed schools. The second, which would have taken a substantial step towards the general reorganisation of secondary education in England, was reluctantly dropped. Nevertheless, the Endowed Schools Act, though confessedly an imperfect measure, effected great results. Considerable friction arose in connection with the earliest efforts of the commissioners to administer the act, and it was found, especially by some of the older and richer corporations and trustees, to touch the traditions and local interests connected with many schools more rudely than had been expected. In particular, all proposals for amalgamating neighbouring charities, and for removing a grammar-school to another place in which it might be more needed, were found to be so distasteful, and to encounter such strong local opposition, that they were necessarily abandoned. But under the provisions of the act nearly every educational foundation in England has in time been subjected to a beneficent, though in some respects a drastic reform, has been placed on a more popular basis, and has largely extended its usefulness.

In connection with the general reorganisation of secondary education, of which the reform of the endowed schools forms only a part, though a conspicuous part, it is to be observed that both in the new schemes framed by commissioners and those adopted by private and proprietary bodies, there is a fuller recognition than existed before of the claims of modern languages, and especially of modern science, as integral parts of a liberal education. Latin and Greek and literary culture alone are found to afford but a one-sided intellectual training. Having regard to the present state of knowledge, and to the essentially disciplinary character of physical science when rightly taught, the best of modern educational authorities seek to broaden the curriculum of secondary and higher schools, and while including in it Latin and a critical knowledge of English, to make the systematic study of one branch of inductive and experimental science at least an indispensable element in that curriculum.

A select committee of the House of Commons in 1866, under the chairmanship of Sir Lyon Playfair, inquired into the operation of the Endowed Schools Act, and reported strongly in favour of the policy which had been pursued in administering it, at first by the Endowed Schools Commission, and afterwards by the Charity Commissioners (q.v.), to whom the duty had in 1874 been transferred. The committee made some minor suggestions in detail as to the conditions which should be observed in the framing of future schemes, and they pointed out the need of some authority by which, after schemes had once been legalised, the efficient working of those schemes should be periodically tested and reported on. The committee also expressed an opinion favourable to the appointment of a responsible minister of education, who, besides the supervision of the elementary schools which are aided by the parliamentary grant, should also be charged with a general supervision of all endowed schools.

Sir Lyon Playfair in 1879, and Sir John Lubbock in 1880, drafted and introduced, without result, measures which provided for the due registration of teachers, and for the establishment of an educational council. Meanwhile, since this article was written, public elementary education in Great Britain has been made free. The devotion of part of the Probate Duties to the remission of fees gave Scotland free education in 1890; England secured the same privilege under the provisions of the budget of 1891.

SCOTLAND.—The history of public education in Scotland, though extending over three centuries, is simpler and less eventful. Two or three conditions exist in North Britain which have largely differentiated its educational annals from those of England. A stronger and more general appreciation of the value of learning, and especially of the 'humanities' or Latin literature, has generally been found to exist than in the south of the island. There are no sharp lines of theological division analogous to that of church and dissent in England. The social distinction which practically preserves the English universities as the heritage of the rich, and makes the difference between primary and secondary instruction correspond very nearly to the division between the wage-earning and the middle classes, does not exist. The educational problem, too, has not been encumbered, as in England, by the claims of wealthy grammar-schools, enriched by the spoils and preserving the traditions of ancient monasteries, nor by the unmanageable ordinances and mismanaged estates of 'pious founders.' And most important of all, the duty of providing the means of instruction has been recognised as a national obligation, or rather as an obligation on the church, even from the time of John Knox. The Church Assembly of 1560 promulgated a decree that every parish kirk in a town should have a Latin school, and that in the country districts provision should be made for elementary teaching, while in large towns colleges should be established for 'logic, rhetoric, and the tongues.' Legislative effect was given to these intentions by an Act of 1633, and still more definitely by the Statute of 1696, which put the parochial schools on a secure footing, charged the heritors or landowners with a tax for their support, and placed the supervision in the hands of the presbyteries or church courts of each district. These enactments, though carried out in the Lowlands, did not effectually supply the wants of Highland parishes in remote districts, and a further act in 1803 made the provision of a small stipend and of a house and garden for the schoolmaster a duty incumbent upon every parish. Besides the parochial schools, burgh schools or academies had been established in most of the towns, and were controlled by the municipal authorities. These occupy an intermediate position between the parish school and the universities, although they are often so constituted as to encroach on the province of both.

But even these public provisions left room for much voluntary effort. In 1816 David Stow, the Scottish Joseph Lancaster, but a man of finer insight into the nature of true teaching than his English prototype, had been struck with the mass of neglected ignorance and vice among the poorer inhabitants of Glasgow, had gathered many of the children together in a Sunday school; and after ten years of experiment, established in 1826 his Normal Seminary in Glasgow. This was the first systematic attempt in Great Britain to train teachers in the art of communicating knowledge, and of conducting a school. Stow did not rely on monitors. He believed strongly in what he called the sympathy of numbers, and was prepared to intrust very large classes to teachers who were rightly trained in the art of simultaneous instruction and in the true principles of moral discipline. The first public grant made by the central government in aid of Scotch education in 1833 took the form of subsidies to the training-schools. Six years later, the system of inspection and of annual grants to schools was established both in England and Scotland, and the Minutes of Council of 1846 extended to both countries.

The disruption of the church in 1843 had somewhat altered the conditions of the problem. To the new Free churches schools were for the most part attached. Both in Edinburgh and in Glasgow a Free Church training-college existed side by side with the training-college of the Established Church. An act of parliament in 1861 withdrew from the presbyteries the duty of examining teachers, and transferred it to the universities, and substituted for the Confession of Faith a simple declaration on the part of a schoolmaster that he was a member of a Presbyterian church. All subsequent legislation has in like manner recognised the practical equality of the various denominations, although, since no serious theological differences divide the Presbyterian churches, the difficulties which in England have attended the enforcement of a conscience clause have been absent in Scotland. The revised code of Mr Lowe in 1862 was made in many of its essential features applicable to Scotland, although it encountered serious opposition. The narrow view of the aims of an elementary school which sought to restrict the examinations to reading, writing, and arithmetic was essentially out of harmony with all the traditions of a liberal education which prevailed in Scotland. And the attempt to restrict the grants to the children of the labouring class was especially resented in a country whose pride it had long been to see on the same humble benches in the parish school the children of the tradesman and the heritor side by side with those of the shepherd and the artisan. Accordingly, the revised code, in the form in which its author presented it to parliament, was never imposed absolutely upon Scotland, although its two main principles—that the scholars should be individually examined, and that the grants should be proportioned to the proved efficiency of the schools—were accepted with little question.

When, after Mr Forster's English Education Act of 1870, the government of the day undertook in 1872 to supplement that act by one for Scotland, it became necessary to recognise the social and historical differentiae of the two peoples, and to introduce into that act some special provisions. The first of these is indicated by the title of the act. It was not for elementary education only, but included within its scope the parish school and the burgh school. It contemplated a wider range of instruction, and in particular gave encouragement to the study of Latin and of those subjects by means of which a scholar might be helped to proceed to the university. It did not, like the English Act of 1870, leave the establishment of school boards to the voluntary initiative of the inhabitants, but made the provision of such boards universal, and vested in those bodies the property and the control of the existing burgh and parish schools, and of all endowments belonging to them. And whereas in England the enactment of local bylaws for the enforcement of children's attendance was not rendered obligatory until ten years later, the Scottish Act of 1872 (the Lord Advocate Young's) laid down once for all the obligation of every parent to send his child to school from the age of five to thirteen, and gave to the school boards authority to enforce this obligation. Even this provision required the aid of subsequent legislation in 1878 and 1883 to make it effective. In 1885 a separation was made of the administrative functions of the Scotch and the English Education Departments; and the former has since had its own committee of Council and its own secretary. The educational effects of this series of public measures will be understood by the reader who consults Mr Fearon's Report on the Burgh Schools of Scotland presented to the Schools Inquiry Commission of 1867; James Grant's History of the Burgh Schools of Scotland (1876); Matthew Arnold's chapter on 'Scottish Education' in Ward's Reign of Queen Victoria; and Mr H. Craik's admirable summary, Education and the State (1883). It should be added that the Local Government Act for Scotland (1889) allotted the sum of £201,000 per annum derived from the Probate Duties, so that £30,000 should go to the relief of local taxation in the Highlands (including the education rate), and the remainder, £171,000, to the reduction of school-fees in state-aided schools throughout the rest of Scotland. The result will be to make elementary education in Scotland free.

In 1867 a Commission of Inquiry reported that of 500,000 children about 400,000 were in attendance at school, of whom about half were to be found in schools under government inspection. In the report for 1895 it appears that the number of scholars on the rolls of the 3054 inspected schools was 686,335, that the average attendance was 567,442, and that of this number 190,485 were examined in the higher standards (III. to VI.). On the total number examined, the 'good' teaching grant was earned by 58.43 per cent., the 'excellent' grant by 36.81 per cent. In a population scarcely reaching four millions, these figures represent a standard both of attendance and attainment which compares favourably with that of the best instructed nations of Europe. Recent measures of the Scotch Education Department for the more systematic inspection of higher schools, and for awarding 'leaving certificates' to their pupils, have greatly enlarged the influence of that department, and are giving to the whole system of primary, secondary, and university education in Scotland a unity and comprehensiveness which are still lacking in the south.

IRELAND.—Up to 1831, when Lord Derby (then Mr Stanley) established the national system, parliamentary grants for education had been made through the agency of private societies. In that year a Board of Commissioners was established, with very large powers of administration, including the power to aid in the erection of schools, to appoint inspectors and other officers, to award gratuities to teachers, to establish a model and training school, and to edit and publish suitable school-books. It will thus be seen that the powers intrusted to the Irish commissioners were greatly in excess of those ever exercised by the committee of Council in England or in Scotland. From the first it was determined that the rights of the Catholic population should be duly regarded, and when, in 1861, the whole system was consolidated by the grant of a royal charter to the commissioners, it was specially provided that of the twenty members of the board, one-half should be Catholics and one-half Protestants. There is a Catholic secretary as well as a Protestant secretary, and one-half of the inspectors are Catholic. In 1887 the number of schools under the supervision of the board was 8024, the number of scholars 1,071,797, and the annual grant £852,000. In the same year, the total income from all local sources was £190,000, of which £106,000 was derived from the school-fees. The commissioners proposed to defray two-thirds of the cost of erecting new schools. They pay the teachers partly by fixed salaries and partly on a scale determined by the results of examination. Each subject of instruction is separately assessed, and the 'results fees' are not, as in England and Scotland, paid to managers, but direct to the teachers. The inspectors are appointed by the board after competitive examination, one important part of such examination being in school management and organisation. Uniformity of judgment is largely secured by frequent conferences, central or in districts, of inspectors under the direction of the board. Hygiene and manual training have of late been introduced as subjects of instruction, on which 'results grants' may be claimed. The monitorial system still prevails to a much larger extent in the schools of Ireland than in those of Great Britain. The provision for training teachers consists of one normal college maintained and controlled by the board, two Roman Catholic training-colleges, and one under the supervision of the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin. Grants are made to these institutions, and their pupils are subject to the government examination for certificates of competency to take charge of schools. Religious instruction is provided in all the schools, but a stringent conscience clause protects the interests of parents who do not approve of that given in the school. The general principle on which the whole state system is founded has been described as 'united literary and separate religious teaching;' but in practice, not more than half the schools illustrate this theory. In 1895 there were 8505 schools at work, with 832,821 pupils on the register, and an average daily attendance of 525,547. Of those attending, 75.3 per cent. were Roman Catholics, 11.7 per cent. Episcopalian, and 11.2 per cent. Presbyterians. Of the schools, 2471 vested in trustees, and 1029 in the education board; and there were 5465 non-vested schools. There were 8280 teachers, and 3513 assistants.

Local Examinations and Recent Development.—In England, meanwhile, subsidiary efforts, for the most part tentative, voluntary, and unsystematic, have been made towards a fuller development of our educational resources. In this connection, the place of honour is due to the ancient universities, which have of late put forth considerable energy in fields outside the recognised domain of academic work. The Local examinations of the universities, instituted in 1858, have had enormous influence in elevating and defining the aims, and in encouraging the efforts of teachers in secondary schools, both private and public; and by the operations of the joint board of the two universities, a large number of the foremost classical and other schools have been subjected to annual inspection and examination, and a rapport between those schools and the universities has been established, by the award to the best scholars of a leaving certificate—abiturienten examen—which is accepted as equivalent to matriculation in nearly every college in Oxford and Cambridge. In 1867 the first steps were taken by Cambridge towards the establishment in provincial towns of courses of lectures of a higher and more systematic character than the miscellaneous lectures familiar to the members of literary and mechanics' institutes. The authorities of Oxford soon took a share in this missionary enterprise, and, under the name of 'University Extension Lectures,' teaching by highly qualified professors is now being largely appreciated in many local centres, and is followed up in many cases by regular reading and examination. Proposals for the formation of reading circles for home-study, on a plan which has since 1879 proved very successful in America (cf. CHAUTAUQUA), have been formulated by the universities, and are probably destined to exercise considerable influence on the home-reading and the intellectual life of large classes of the community who have had few opportunities of higher instruction, and are engaged in efforts after self-improvement.

A more difficult enterprise has been attempted at Cambridge by the establishment of a special syndicate for the training of teachers. In the sphere of elementary education, experience has conclusively shown the enormous importance of special preparation for the teacher's work, and the marked superiority of trained over untrained teachers. In England and Scotland there are no less than fifty training or normal colleges receiving large subsidies from the parliamentary grant, and providing for the systematic professional instruction of nearly 4000 students, male and female, who remain in them for a period of two years, with a view to become masters and mistresses in elementary schools. But for the technical training of secondary and higher teachers in their craft no similar provision has been made. In the universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews, professorships of Education have been established; but the value of a theoretical acquaintance with the art, science, and history of teaching is at present very imperfectly recognised in the higher schools of either England or Scotland. The Cambridge syndicate sought to supply this deficiency (1) by providing various courses of lectures on these subjects under the sanction of the university, and (2) by the establishment of a special examination, and the award of a teacher's diploma to successful candidates. Of the other agencies at work in England with the same object, the most important is that of the College of Preceptors, a body which, having been incorporated in 1849, and having during many years limited its action mainly to the promotion of the professional interests of private teachers, has of late years exhibited much honourable activity, and by means of courses of lectures on professional topics, and by awarding the degrees of associate and licentiate after examination, has done much to raise the standard of qualification among the teachers of intermediate schools. Two training-institutions for secondary teachers, the Maria Grey College in Fitzroy Street, London, and an institution with a similar object in Cambridge, have been started with excellent prospects of success. They are for women students only, and already the demand for teachers who have undergone due probation in these institutions is considerable, and is constantly increasing.

The creation of the Girls' Public Day School Company in 1874 was one of the most memorable facts in the recent history of education in England. It offered to parents for the first time schools with a high standard of instruction, with qualified teachers, and with the supervision of a responsible public body. By the end of 1888 thirty-three schools had been established by the company in different towns in England and Wales, and with scarcely an exception had achieved considerable educational success. The number of pupils amounted to 6618, but these figures furnish a very imperfect measure of the influence of this enterprise, since, in many cases, local bodies not actually associated with the company have established schools on a similar basis, and have thus helped to create among parents the demand for education of a high and liberal type for their daughters, and at the same time to satisfy that demand. See the article WOMEN.

One other factor of educational improvement, none the less potent because it has operated indirectly, deserves to be noticed. The great experiment tried at the instance of Lord Macaulay in opening to intellectual competition the principal offices of the Indian civil service, was found after trial to have succeeded in three important respects.

It relieved statesmen and persons in authority of a very onerous responsibility, and of much solicitation for personal patronage; it has given to the nation a highly capable body of public servants; and it has greatly stimulated higher education by offering lucrative posts as the rewards of intellectual merit. The success of this experiment led to the promulgation in 1870 of an order in council, throwing open a large number of clerkships and other honourable employments in the civil service to competition. The purification of the permanent service of the country from all taint of favouritism and of political or family influence, is of itself an object of high national concern; but incidentally, the effect of such a measure in raising the standard of intelligence among civil servants, and in encouraging and rewarding intellectual merit, is sufficiently important to deserve special notice in any estimate of our present educational condition and prospects. See CIVIL SERVICE.

Educational Literature.—Lastly, one of the most hopeful auguries for the education of the future is to be found in the recent and steady growth of a valuable educational literature. Teaching is no longer regarded as an empirical profession, but as a practical science based on laws and principles, on a right knowledge of the constitution of human nature, on a true psychology and physiology, on philosophy, history, and experience. The difference between the skilled and the unskilled practitioner in the art of teaching depends partly on personal gifts and natural aptitudes, but also largely on a knowledge of the best methods of disciplining the scholar and communicating knowledge. Other things being equal, the best teachers are those who have studied with most care the speculations, the doings, the failures, and successes of the past, and the reasons by which they may be explained. At present this truth, though sufficiently obvious to Englishmen in regard to every other profession, is very imperfectly recognised by them in regard to teaching. But it has long been recognised in other countries, notably in Switzerland, in Germany, in France, in Belgium, and in the states of the American Union.

For the general history of education, and for criticisms upon the various systems, the reader will do well to consult Professor Mahaffy's Old Greek Education, Professor Laurie's Life of Comenius, Compyré's History of Pedagogy, Oscar Browning's Educational Theories, R. H. Quick's Educational Reformers, Henry Barnard's English Pedagogy, and German Teachers and Educators, Leitch's Practical Educationists, Kiddle and Schem's (American) Cyclopædia of Education, and Sonnenschein's Cyclopædia of Education.

Those who desire to trace the history of English popular education in fuller detail will find materials for doing so in Sir James Shuttleworth's Four Periods of Public Education, in Dr J. H. Rigg's National Education and Public Elementary Schools, in Henry Craik's Education and the State, in the introductory chapter of the Report of the Royal Commission (1888), and in the chapter on 'Schools,' contributed by Matthew Arnold to Humphrey Ward's volumes on The Reign of Queen Victoria.

In order to trace the history both of the facts relating to secondary instruction in England, and of the controversies and projects which have arisen on the subject, it will be well to refer (1) to the voluminous Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission of 1867; (2) to Matthew Arnold's Report on Secondary Instruction in France, Germany, and Switzerland, and to his Essays passim; (3) to the papers and discussions recorded in the second volume of the Report of the International Educational Conference in connection with the Health Exhibition of 1884; and (4) to the Report of the select committee presented to the House of Commons, April 1887.

In the German language, the Lcvana of Jean Paul Richter, the Geschichte der Pädagogik of Schmidt, the Pädagogische Schriften and other writings of Herbart, and the works of Diesterweg, Dettes, Sturm, Fichte, Herder, Wiese, Grube, and Rosencranz, the accounts of the life and system of Pestalozzi by Von Raumer and De Guimps, the Baroness Bülow's exposition of the Fröbelian principles, and the Encyclopaedia of Schmid, are among the principal authorities. In the French language, some of the most notable contributions to pedagogic science and history, besides those already named, are Buisson's Dictionnaire de Pédagogie, Jacotot's Enseignement Universel, Rousseau's Emile, Michel Breal's Words on Public Instruction, Charbonneau's Cours Théorique, Forneron's Guide des Instituteurs, and Th. Braun's Manuel de Pédagogie. Of the American writers on education, the foremost are Henry Barnard, Professor W. H. Payne, Horace Mann, Miss Peabody, Miss Youmans, Miss Anna Brackett, D. P. Page, and Colonel Parker; while in England, Stanley's biography of Dr Arnold, and Biber's Life of Pestalozzi, have been followed by many books expository in various ways of the history and philosophy of education, among which the most valuable are the works of Herbert Spencer, Alexander Bain, Professor S. Laurie, Professor Meiklejohn, Joseph Payne, Matthew Arnold, Dr E. A. Abbott, Edward Thring, R. H. Quick, Professor Sully, and the series of books and monographs published by the Cambridge Press, and containing lectures given before the University (the first series by the present writer in 1880). See also President Stanley Hall's Bibliography of Education; the Catalogue of Educational Literature published (1892 et seq.) by the U.S. Bureau of Education, being an analytical index to Dr Barnard's American Journal of Education; Rein's Pedagogics (trans. 1893); De Garno's Herbart and the Herbartians (1895); and Herbart's Science of Education (trans. 1895).

Unsolved Problems.—This general review of some of the more salient features of our educational history and present condition may be fitly concluded with a brief reference to some problems which yet remain unsolved, and which in the near future will challenge the serious attention of statesmen, of parents, and of teachers. Of these, the political problem is not the least complex and difficult. There is a general agreement that a minister of public instruction is needed in England, but there is far less of clear understanding respecting the right status of the proposed minister, and the functions he should discharge. The questions are often asked—What should be the rank of such a minister? How can the necessary rapport with the government of the day be made compatible with the need for ripe special knowledge, with the maintenance of definite principles, and with a steady pursuance of an organised system? Can these ends, e.g., be best attained by following the precedent of the India Office, and establishing a small permanent council to advise the minister of the day, and under his responsible supervision, to divide between them different departments of administrative work? And when a ministry of public instruction shall have been constituted, what should be the precise scope of its work, its relations to the universities, the nature of its authority over endowed schools, and of its less direct influence over other schools, and over their teachers?

Other questions—e.g. How far is the action of the central government, in a community of free men, to be desired in such a matter as education? and how can such action be reconciled with the freedom of teachers, the variety of methods, the scope for philanthropic initiative, and the due encouragement of new educational ideals and experiments?—are of special interest to Englishmen, and have not yet been satisfactorily answered. The due provision of a suitable supply, both of intermediate and higher education, so that parents who desire such instruction shall have no greater difficulty in finding it than the labouring-man now has in obtaining access to a good elementary school, is not free from difficulty. Experience has shown that the capricious distribution of endowed foundations cannot be remedied by legislation, and that the nation cannot rely on endowments for an efficient supply of secondary schools. In these circumstances, should municipalities and county councils be compelled, or if not compelled, at least permitted to tax their constituents for the due provision of public secondary schools where they are wanting? And if such schools are once supplied, how are they to be maintained and governed? With regard to the improved status and qualification of teachers, the question arises whether these objects are most likely to be attained through those voluntary efforts which will result spontaneously from the growth of a healthier and more intelligent demand on the part of the public; or is it on the other hand needful that legal restraints shall be put in the scholastic, as in the medical profession, upon the incompetent and unauthorised practitioner? And what after all is the truest and highest kind of qualification for the public teacher? Should it be sought in special seminaries, or in the ordinary places of liberal education? In what proportions should the technique of school-management on the one hand, and speculative discussion on the philosophy of teaching and with the nature of mind on the other, be combined in a true system of professional training with practical work and general mental cultivation?

Finally, most of our present methods and ideals are survivals from a time when the range of knowledge was narrower and the duties of life were less complex. In view of the new intellectual and social conditions of our time, and of the experience we have gained, this age has now to inquire what kind of knowledge is best worth having, and what sort of formative and moral discipline is best fitted to equip a man for the duties of citizenship and the work of active life. What is the relative value of classical study and of more modern studies? What share of effort of teachers should be given to the training of the hand and of the senses? What better means of communicating knowledge, and of making it attractive, can yet be devised? On none of these topics has the last word yet been said.

See also the articles UNIVERSITIES, RENAISSANCE, WOMEN'S RIGHTS; those on OXFORD, CAMBRIDGE, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN, HARVARD, and other universities at home and abroad; NEWNHAM, GIRTON, QUEEN'S COLLEGE; on the greater colleges and schools (ETON, HARROW, &c.); those on the great educationists named above (COLET, COMENIUS, PESTALOZZI, FRÖBEL, &c.); also ARMY SCHOOLS, ART EDUCATION, CONSERVATOIRE, GYMNASTICS, KINDERGARTEN, SLOYD, &c.