Chapter CXII: Section 2 (15)

"The recognition by the English State of its paramount duty in
aiding the work of national education is scarcely more than a
generation old. The recognition of the further and far more
extensive work of supplementing by State aid, or by State
agency, all deficiencies in the supply of schools, dates only
thirteen years back [to 1870]; while the equally pressing duty
of enforcing, by a universal law, the use of the opportunities
of education thus supplied, is a matter almost of yesterday.
The State has only slowly stepped into its proper place; more
slowly in the case of England than in the case of any other of
the leading European nations. ... In 1699 the Society for the
Propagation of Christian Knowledge was founded, and by it
various schools were established throughout the country.
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In 1782 Robert Raikes established his first Sunday school, and
in a few years the Union, of which he was the founder, had
under its control schools scattered all over the country. But
the most extensive efforts made for popular education were
those of Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster towards the close of
the eighteenth century. ... They misconceived and misjudged
the extent of the work that had to be accomplished. They
became slaves to their system--that which was called the
Monitorial system ... and by elevating it to undue importance
they did much to discredit the very work in which they were
engaged. ... Amongst the Nonconformist followers of Lancaster
there arose the British and Foreign School Society; while by
those of Bell there was established, on the side representing
the Church, the National Society. The former became the
recognised agency of the Dissenters, the latter of the Church;
and through one or other of these channels State aid, when it
first began to flow, was obliged to take its course. ... In
1802 the first Sir Robert Peel passed a Bill which restricted
children's labour in factories, and required that reading,
writing, and arithmetic should be taught to them during a part
of each day. This was the beginning of the factory
legislation. ... In 1807 Mr. Whitebread introduced a Bill for
the establishment of parochial schools through the agency of
local vestries, who were empowered to draw on the rates for
the purpose. The House of Commons accepted the Bill, but it
was thrown out in the House of Lords. ... The movement for a
State recognition of education was pressed more vigorously
when the fears and troubles of European war were clearing
away. It was in 1816 that Brougham obtained his Select
Committee for Inquiring into the Education of the Poor in the
Metropolis. ... In 1820 Brougham introduced, on the basis of
his previous inquiries, an Education Bill. ... By this Bill
the issue between the contending parties in the State, which
was henceforward destined to be the chief stumbling-block in
the way of a State education, was placed on a clear and
well-defined basis. ... The Church was alarmed at anything
which seemed to trench upon what she naturally thought to be
her appointed task. The Dissenters dreaded what might add to
the impregnability of the Church's strongholds. ... When the
beginning was actually made it came ... as an almost unnoticed
proposal of the Executive. In 1832 the sum of £20,000 for
public education was placed in the estimates; it was passed by
the Committee of Supply; and the first step was taken on that
course from which the State has never since drawn back. No
legislation was necessary. ... The next great step was taken
in 1839, when the annual vote was increased from £20,000 to
£30,000, and when a special department was created to
supervise the work. Hitherto grants had been administered by
the Treasury to meet a certain amount of local exertion, and
in general reliance upon vague assurances as to maintenance of
the schools by local promoters. ... The conditions which were
soon found to be necessary as securities, either for
continuance or for efficiency, were not yet insisted upon. To
do this it was necessary to have a Department specially
devoted to this work; and the means adopted for creating such
a Department was one which had the advantage of requiring no
Act of Parliament. By an order in Council a Special Committee
of the Privy Council was established, and, in connection with
this Committee, a special staff of officers was engaged. The
same year saw the appointment of the first inspectors of
schools. It was thus that the Education Department was
constituted. The plan which the advisers of the Government in
this new attempt had most at heart was that of a Normal
Training College for teachers. ... But it was surrounded with
so much matter for dispute, gathered during a generation of
contention, that the proposal all but wrecked the Government
of Lord Melbourne. The Church objected to the scheme. ... In
the year 1844, after five years of the new administration, it
was possible to form some estimate, not only of the solid work
accomplished, but of the prospects of the immediate future.
... Between 1839 and 1844, under the action of the Committee
of Council, £170,000 of Imperial funds had been distributed to
meet £430,000 from local resources. In all, therefore, about
one million had been spent in little more than ten years. What
solid good had this accomplished? ... According to a careful
and elaborate report in the year 1845, only about one in six,
even of the children at school, was found able to read the
Scriptures with any ease. Even for these the power of reading
often left them when they tried a secular book. Of reading
with intelligence there was hardly any; and about one-half of
the children who came to school left, it was calculated,
unable to read. Only about one child in four had mastered,
even in the most mechanical way, the art of writing. As
regards arithmetic, not two per cent. of the children had
advanced as far as the rule of three. ... The teaching of the
schools was in the hands of men who had scarcely any training,
and who had often turned to the work because all other work
had turned away from them. Under them it was conducted upon
that monitorial system which was the inheritance from Dr.
Bell, the rival of Lancaster. The pupils were set to teach one
another. ... The inquiries of the Committee of Council thus
gave the death-blow, in public estimation, to the once
highly-vaunted monitorial system. But how was it to be
replaced? The model of a better state of things was found in
the Dutch schools. There a selected number of the older
pupils, who intended to enter upon the profession of teachers,
were apprenticed, when they had reached the age of thirteen,
to the teacher. ... After their apprenticeship they passed to
a Training College. ... Accordingly, a new and important start
was made by the Department on the 25th of August 1846. ... In
1851 twenty-five Training Colleges had been established; and
these had a sure supply of qualified recruits in the 6,000
pupil teachers who were by that time being trained to the
work. ... The ten years between 1842 and 1852 saw the
Parliamentary grant raised from £40,000 to £160,000 a year,
with the certainty of a still further increase as the
augmentation grants to teachers and the stipends to pupil
teachers grew in number. Nearly 3,800 schools had been built
with Parliamentary aid, providing accommodation for no less
than 540,000 children. The State had contributed towards this
more than £400,000; and a total expenditure had been incurred
in providing schools of more than £1,000,000. ... But the
system was as yet only tentative; and a mass of thorny
religious questions had to be faced before a really national
system could be established.
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... All parties became convinced that the first step was to
inquire into the merits and defects of the existing system,
and on the basis of sound information to plan some method of
advance. Under this impression it was that the Commission on
Public Education, of which the Duke of Newcastle was chairman,
was appointed in 1858." The result of the Commission of 1858
was a revision of the educational Code which the Committee of
the Privy Council had formulated. The New Code proved
unsatisfactory in its working, and every year showed more
plainly the necessity of a fully organized system of national
education. "Out of the discussions there arose two societies,
which fairly expressed two different views. ... The first of
these was the Education League, started at Birmingham in 1869.
... Its basis, shortly stated, was that of a compulsory system
of school provision, by local authorities through means of
local rates; the schools so provided to be at once free and
unsectarian. ... In this programme the point which raised most
opposition was the unsectarian teaching. It was chiefly to
counteract this part of the League's objects that there was
formed the Education Union, which urged a universal system
based upon the old lines. ... By common consent the time for a
settlement was now come. Some guarantee must be taken that the
whole edifice should not crumble to pieces; that for local
agencies there should be substituted local authorities; and
that the State should be supplied with some machinery whereby
the gaps in the work might be supplied. It was in this
position of opinion that Mr. Forster, as Vice-President,
introduced his Education Bill in 1870. ... The measure passed
the House of Lords without any material alteration; and
finally became Law on the 9th of August 1870."

_R. Craik, The State in its Relation to Education._

The schools to which the provisions of the Act of 1870
extends, and the regulations under which such schools are to
be conducted, are defined in the Act as follows: "Every
elementary school which is conducted in accordance with the
following regulations shall be a public elementary school
within the meaning of this Act; and every public elementary
school shall be conducted in accordance with the following
regulations (a copy of which regulations shall be
conspicuously put up in every such school); namely

(1.) It shall not be required, as a condition of any child
being admitted into or continuing in the school, that he shall
attend or abstain from attending any Sunday school, or any
place of religious worship, or that he shall attend any
religious observance or any instruction in religious subjects
in the school or elsewhere, from which observance or
instruction he may be withdrawn by his parent, or that he
shall, if withdrawn by his parent, attend the school on any
day exclusively set apart for religious observance by the
religious body to which his parent belongs:

(2.) The time or times during which any religious observance
is practised or instruction in religious subjects is given at
any meeting of the school shall be either at the beginning or
at the end or at the beginning and the end of such meeting,
and shall be inserted in a time-table to be approved by the
Education Department, and to be kept permanently and
conspicuously affixed in every school-room; and any scholar
may be withdrawn by his parent from such observance or
instruction without forfeiting any of the other benefits of
the school:

(3.) The school shall be open at all times to the inspection
of any of Her Majesty's inspectors, so, however, that it shall
be no part of the duties of such inspector to inquire into any
instruction in religious subjects given at such school, or to
examine any scholar therein in religious knowledge or in any
religious subject or book:

(4.) The school shall be conducted in accordance with the
conditions required to be fulfilled by an elementary school in
order to obtain an annual parliamentary grant."

_J. R. Rigg, National Education, appendix A._

"The new Act retained existing inspected schools, ... it also
did away with all denominational classifications of schools
and with denominational inspection, treating all inspected
schools as equally belonging to a national system of schools
and under national inspection, the distinctions as to
inspectors and their provinces being henceforth purely
geographical. But the new Act no longer required that public
elementary schools established by voluntary agency and under
voluntary management should have in them any religious
character or element whatever, whether as belonging to a
Christian Church or denomination, or as connected with a
Christian philanthropic society, or as providing for the
reading of the Scriptures in the school. It was left open to
any party or any person to establish purely voluntary schools
if they thought fit. But, furthermore, the Act made provision
for an entirely new class of schools, to be established and
(in part) supported out of local rates, to be governed by
locally-elected School Boards, and to have just such and so
much religious instruction given in them as the governing
boards might think proper, at times preceding or following the
prescribed secular school hours, and under the protection of a
time-table Conscience Clause, as in the case of voluntary
schools, with this restriction only, that in these schools no
catechism or denominational religious formulary of any sort
was to be taught. The mode of electing members to the School
Boards was to be by what is called the cumulative vote--that
is, each elector was to have as many votes as there were
candidates, and these votes he could give all to one, or else
distribute among the candidates as he liked; and all
ratepayers were to be electors. ... The new law ... made a
clear separation, in one respect, between voluntary and Board
schools. Both were to stand equally in relation to the
National Education Department, under the Privy Council; but
the voluntary schools were to have nothing to do with local
rates or rate aid, nor Local Boards to have any control over
voluntary schools."

_J. H. Rigg, National Education, chapter 10._

"To sum up ... in few words what may be set down as the chief
characteristics of our English system of Elementary Education,
I should say

(1) first, that whilst about 30 per cent. of our school
accommodation is under the control of school boards, the cost
of maintenance being borne in part by local rates as well as
by the Parliamentary grant, fully 70 per cent. is still in the
hands of voluntary school-managers, whose subscriptions take
the place of the rates levied by school boards.

(2) In case a deficiency in school accommodation is reported
in any school district, the Education Department have the
power to require that due provision shall be made for the same
within a limited time; the 'screw' to be applied to wilful
defaulters in a voluntary school district being the threat of
a board, and in a school board district the supercession of
the existing board by a new board, nominated by the
Department, and remunerated out of the local rates.

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(3) Attendance is enforced everywhere by bye-laws, worked
either by the school board or by the School Attendance
Committee: and although these local authorities are often very
remiss in discharging their duties, and the magistrates not
seldom culpably lenient in dealing with cases brought before
them, there are plenty of districts in which regularity of
school attendance has been improved fully 10 per cent. in the
past two or three years. ...

(4) The present provision for teachers, and the means in
existence for keeping up the supply, are eminently
satisfactory. Besides a large but somewhat diminishing body of
apprenticed pupil teachers, there is a very considerable and
rapidly increasing number of duly qualified assistants, and at
their head a large array of certificated teachers, whose ranks
are being replenished, chiefly from the Training Colleges, at
the rate of about 2,000 a year.

(5) The whole of the work done is examined and judged every
year by inspectors and inspectors' assistants organised in
districts each superintended by a senior inspector--the total
cost of this inspection for the present year being estimated
at about £150,000."

_Reverend H. Roe, The English System of Elementary
Education (International Health Exhibition, London,
1884: Conference on Education, section A)._

"The result of the work of the Education Department is causing
a social revolution in England. If the character of the
teaching is too mechanical, if the chief aim of the teacher is
to earn as much money as possible for his managers, it must be
remembered that this cannot be done without at least giving
the pupil the ability to read and write. Of course the schools
are not nearly so good as the friends of true education wish.
Much remains to be done. ... Free education will shortly be an
accomplished fact; the partial absorption of the voluntary
schools by the School Boards will necessarily follow, and
further facilitate the abolition of what have been the cause
of so much evil--result examinations, and 'grant payments.'
'Write "Grant factory" on three-fourths of our schools,' said
an educator to me. ... The schools are known as

(1) Voluntary Schools, which have been built, and are partly
supported by voluntary subscriptions. These are under
denominational control.

(2) Board Schools: viz., schools built and supported by money
raised by local taxation, and controlled by elected School
Boards.

Out of 4,688,000 pupils in the elementary schools, 2,154,000
are in the schools known as Voluntary, provided by, and under
the control of the Church of England; 1,780,000 are in Board
Schools; 330,000 attend schools under the British School
Society, or other undenominational control; 248,000 are in
Roman Catholic schools; and 174,000 belong to Wesleyan
schools. The schools here spoken of correspond more nearly
than any other in England to the Public School of the United
States and Australia; but are in many respects very different,
chiefly from the fact that they are provided expressly for the
poor, and in many cases are attended by no other class."

_W. C. Grasby, Teaching in Three Continents, chapter 2._

EDUCATION: England: A. D. 1891.
Attainment of Free Education.

In 1891, a bill passed Parliament which aims at making the
elementary schools of the country free from the payment of
fees. The bill as explained in the House of Commons, "proposed
to give a grant of 10s. per head to each scholar in average
attendance between five and fourteen years of age, and as
regarded such children schools would either become wholly
free, or would continue to charge a fee reduced by the amount
of the grant, according as the fee at present charged did or
did not exceed 10s. When a school had become free it would
remain free, or when a fee was charged, the fee would remain
unaltered unless a change was required for the educational
benefit of the locality; and under this arrangement he
believed that two-thirds of the elementary schools in England
and Wales would become free. There would be no standard
limitations, but the grant would be restricted to schools
where the compulsory power came in, and as to the younger
children, it was proposed that in no case should the fee
charged exceed 2d." In a speech made at Birmingham on the free
education bill, Mr. Chamberlain discussed the opposition to it
made by those who wished to destroy the denominational
schools, and who objected to their participation in the
proposed extension of public support. "To destroy
denominational schools," he said, "was now an impossibility,
and nothing was more astonishing than the progress they had
made since the Education Act of 1870. He had thought, he said,
they would die out with the establishment of Board schools,
but he had been mistaken, for in the last twenty-three years
they had doubled their accommodation, and more than doubled
their subscription list. At the present time they supplied
accommodation for two-thirds of the children of England and
Wales. That being the case, to destroy voluntary schools--to
supply their places with Board schools, as the Daily News
cheerfully suggested--would be to involve a capital
expenditure of £50,000,000, and £5,000,000 extra yearly in
rates, But whether voluntary or denominational schools were
good or bad, their continued existence had nothing to do with
the question of free education, and ought to be kept quite
distinct from it. To make schools free was not to give one
penny extra to any denominational endowment. At the present
time the fee was a tax, and if the parents did not pay fees
they were brought before the magistrates, and if they still
did not pay they might be sent to gaol. The only thing the
Government proposed to do was not to alter the tax but to
alter the incidence. The same amount would be collected; it
would be paid by the same people, but it would be collected
from the whole nation out of the general taxation." The bill
was passed by the Commons July 8, and by the Lords on the 24th
of the same month. The free education proposals of the
Government are said to have been generally accepted throughout
the country by both Board and Voluntary schools.

_Annual Register, 1891, pages 128 and 97, and part 2, page 51._

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EDUCATION: France: A. D. 1565-1802.
The Jesuits.
Port Royal.
The Revolution.
Napoleon.

"The Jesuits invaded the province long ruled by the University
alone. By that adroit management of men for which they have
always been eminent, and by the more liberal spirit of their
methods, they outdid in popularity their superannuated rival.
Their first school at Paris was established in 1565, and in
1762, two years before their dissolution, they had eighty-six
colleges in France. They were followed by the Port Royalists,
the Benedictines, the Oratorians. The Port Royal schools [see
PORT ROYAL], from which perhaps a powerful influence upon
education might have been looked for, restricted this
influence by limiting very closely the number of their pupils.
Meanwhile the main funds and endowments for public education
in France were in the University's hands, and its
administration of these was as ineffective as its teaching.
... The University had originally, as sources of revenue, the
Post Office and the Messageries, or Office of Public
Conveyance; it had long since been obliged to abandon the Post
Office to Government, when in 1719 it gave up to the same
authority the privilege of the Messageries, receiving in
return from the State a yearly revenue of 150,000 livres. For
this payment, moreover, it undertook the obligation of making
the instruction in all its principal colleges gratuitous. Paid
or gratuitous, however, its instruction was quite inadequate
to the wants of the time, and when the Jesuits were expelled
from France in 1764, their establishments closed, and their
services as teachers lost, the void that was left was
strikingly apparent, and public attention began to be drawn to
it. It is well known how Rousseau among writers, and Turgot
among statesmen, busied themselves with schemes of education;
but the interest in the subject must have reached the whole
body of the community, for the instructions of all three
orders of the States General in 1789 are unanimous in
demanding the reform of education, and its establishment on a
proper footing. Then came the Revolution, and the work of
reform soon went swimmingly enough, so far as the abolition of
the old schools was concerned. In 1791 the colleges were all
placed under the control of the administrative authorities; in
1792 the jurisdiction of the University was abolished; in 1793
the property of the colleges was ordered to be sold, the
proceeds to be taken by the State; in September of the same
year the suppression of all the great public schools and of
all the University faculties was pronounced. For the work of
reconstruction Condorcet's memorable plan had in 1792 been
submitted to the Committee of Public Instruction appointed by
the Legislative Assembly. This plan proposed a secondary
school for every 4,000 inhabitants; for each department, a
departmental institute, or higher school; nine lycées, schools
carrying their studies yet higher than the departmental
institute, for the whole of France; and to crown the edifice,
a National Society of Sciences and Arts, corresponding in the
main with the present institute of France. The whole expense
of national instruction was to be borne by the State, and this
expense was estimated at 29,000,000 of francs. But 1792 and
1793 were years of furious agitation, when it was easier to
destroy than to build. Condorcet perished with the Girondists,
and the reconstruction of public education did not begin till
after the fall of Robespierre. The decrees of the Convention
for establishing the Normal School, the Polytechnic, the
School of Mines, and the écoles centrales, and then Daunou's
law in 1795, bore, however, many traces of Condorcet's design.
Daunou's law established primary schools, central schools,
special schools, and at the head of all the Institute of
France, this last a memorable and enduring creation, with
which the old French Academy became incorporated. By Daunou's
law, also, freedom was given to private persons to open
schools. The new legislation had many defects. ... The
country, too, was not yet settled enough for its education to
organise itself successfully. The Normal School speedily broke
down; the central schools were established slowly and with
difficulty; in the course of the four years of the Directory
there were nominally instituted ninety·one of these schools,
but they never really worked. More was accomplished by private
schools, to which full freedom was given by the new
legislation, at the same time that an ample and open field lay
before them. They could not, however, suffice for the work,
and education was one of the matters for which Napoleon, when
he became Consul, had to provide. Foureroy's law, in 1802,
took as the basis of its school-system secondary schools,
whether established by the communes or by private individuals;
the Government undertook to aid these schools by grants for
buildings, for scholarships, and for gratuities to the
masters; it prescribed Latin, French, geography, history, and
mathematics as the instruction to be given in them. They were
placed under the superintendence of the prefects. To continue
and complete the secondary schools were instituted the
lyceums; here the instruction was to be Greek and Latin,
rhetoric, logic, literature, moral philosophy, and the
elements of the mathematical and physical sciences. The pupils
were to be of four kinds: boursiers nationaux, scholars
nominated to scholarships by the State; pupils from the
secondary schools, admitted as free scholars by competition;
paying boarders, and paying day-scholars."

_M. Arnold, Schools and Universities on the
Continent, chapter 1._

EDUCATION: France: A. D. 1833-1889.
The present System of Public Instruction.

"The question of the education of youth is one of those in
which the struggle between the Catholic Church and the civil
power has been, and still is, hottest. It is also one of those
in which France, which for a long time had remained far in the
rear, has made most efforts, and achieved most progress in
these latter years. ... Napoleon I. conceived education as a
means of disciplining minds and wills and moulding them into
conformity with the political system which he had put in
force; accordingly he gave the University the monopoly of
public education. Apart from the official system of teaching,
no competition was allowed except that specially authorised,
regulated, and controlled by the State itself. Religious
instruction found a place in the official programmes, and
members of the clergy were even called on to supply it, but
this instruction itself, and these priests themselves, were
under the authority of the State. Hence two results: on the
one hand the speedy impoverishment of University education,
... on the other hand, the incessant agitation of all those
who were prevented by the special organisation given to the
University from expounding their ideas or the faith that was
in them from the professorial chair. This agitation was begun
and carried on by the Catholic Church itself, as soon as it
felt more at liberty to let its ambitions be discerned.
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On this point the Church met with the support of a good number
of Liberals, and it is in a great measure to its initiative
that are due the three important laws of 1833, 1850, and 1875,
which have respectively given to France freedom of primary
education, of secondary education, and finally that of higher
education; which have given, that is to say, the right to
everyone, under certain conditions of capacity and character,
to open private schools in competition with the three orders
of public schools. But the Church did not stop there. Hardly
had it insured liberty to its educational institutions--a
liberty by which all citizens might profit alike, but of which
its own strong organisation and powerful resources enabled it
more easily to take advantage--hardly was this result obtained
than the Church tried to lay hands on the University itself,
and to make its doctrines paramount there. ... Thence arose a
movement hostile to the enterprises of the Church, which has
found expression since 1880 in a series of laws which Excluded
her little by little from the positions she had won, and only
left to her, as to all other citizens, the liberty to teach
apart from, and concurrently with, the State. The right to
confer degrees has been given back to the State alone; the
privilege of the 'letter of obedience' has been abolished;
religious teaching has been excluded from the primary schools;
and after having 'laicized,' as the French phrase is, the
curriculum, the effort was persistently made to 'laicize' the
staff. .... From the University point of view, the territory
of France is divided into seventeen academies, the chief towns
of which are Paris, Douai, Caen, Rennes, Poitiers, Bordeaux,
Toulouse, Montpellier, Aix, Grenoble, Chambéry, Lyons,
Besançon, Nancy, Dijon, Clermont, and Algiers. Each academy
has a rector at its head, who, under the authority of the
Minister of Public Instruction, is charged with the material
administration of higher and secondary education, and with the
methods of primary instruction in his district. The
administration of this last belongs to the prefect of each
department, assisted by an academy-inspector. In each of these
three successive stages--department, academy, and central
administration--is placed a council, possessing administrative
and disciplinary powers. The Departmental Council of Public
Instruction, which comprises six officials ... forms a
disciplinary council for primary education, either public or
free (i. e., State or private). This council sees to the
application of programmes, lays down rules, and appoints one
or more delegates in each canton to superintend primary
schools. The Academic Council ... performs similar functions
with regard to secondary and higher education. The Higher
Council of Public Instruction sits at Paris. It comprises
forty-four elected representatives of the three educational
orders, nine University officials, and four 'free'
schoolmasters appointed by the Minister, and is the
disciplinary court of appeal for the two preceding councils.
... Such is the framework, administrative as well as judicial,
in which education, whether public or free, lives and moves.
... Since 1882 Primary Education has been compulsory for all
children of both sexes, from the age of six to the end of the
thirteenth year, unless before reaching the latter age they
have been able to pass an examination, and to gain the
certificate of primary studies. To satisfy the law, the
child's name must be entered at a public or private school; he
may, however, continue to receive instruction at home, but in
this case, after he has reached the age of eight, he must be
examined every year before a State board. ... At the age of
thirteen the child is set free from further teaching, whatever
may be the results of the education he has received. ... In
public schools the course of instruction does not include, as
we have said, religious teaching; but one day in the week the
school must take a holiday, to allow parents to provide such
teaching for their children, if they wish to do so. The school
building cannot be used for that purpose. In private schools
religious instruction may be given, but this is optional. The
programme of primary education includes: moral and civic
instruction; reading, writing, French, geography and history
(particularly those of France); general notions of law and
science; the elements of drawing, modelling, and music; and
gymnastics. No person of either sex can become a teacher,
either public or private, unless he possesses the 'certificate
of capacity for primary instruction' given by a State board.
For the future--putting aside certain temporary
arrangements--no member of a religious community will be
eligible for the post of master in a public school. ... As a
general rule, every commune is compelled to maintain a public
school, and, if it has more than 500 inhabitants, a second
school for girls only. ... The sum total of the State's
expenses for primary education in 1887 is as high as
eighty-five million francs (£3,400,000), and that without
mentioning grants for school buildings, whereas in 1877 the
sum total was only twelve millions (£480,000). ... From 1877
to 1886, the number of public schools rose from 61,000 to
66,500; that of the pupils from 4,200,000 to 4,500,000, with
96,600 masters and mistresses; that of training schools for
male teachers from 79 to 89, of training schools for female
teachers from 18 to 77, with 5,400 pupils (3,500 of them
women), and 1,200 masters. As to the results a single fact
will suffice. In these ten years, before the generations newly
called to military service have been able to profit fully by
the new state of things, the proportion of illiterate recruits
(which is annually made out directly after the lots are drawn)
has already fallen from 15 to 11 per cent."

_A. Lebon and P. Pelet, France as it is, chapter 5._

"In 1872, after the dreadful disaster of the war, Monsieur
Thiers, President of the Gouvernement de la Défense Nationale,
and Monsieur Jules Simon, Minister of Public Instruction, felt
that what was most important for the nation was a new system
of public instruction, and they set themselves the task of
determining the basis on which this new system was to be
established. In September, 1882, Monsieur Jules Simon issued a
memorable circular calling the attention of all the most
distinguished leaders of thought to some proposed plans. He
did not long remain in power, but in his retirement he wrote a
book entitled: 'Réforme de l'Enseignement Secondaire.'
Monsieur Bréal, who was commissioned to visit the schools of
Germany, soon after published another book which aroused new
enthusiasm in France. ... From that day a complete educational
reform was decided on.
{718}
In 1872 we had at the Ministeré de l'Instruction Publique
three distinguished men: Monsieur Dumont for the Enseignement
Supérieur, one from whom we hoped much and whose early death
we had to mourn in 1884; Monsieur Zévort for the Enseignement
Secondaire, who also died ere the good seed which he had sown
had sprung up and borne fruit (1887); and Monsieur Buisson to
whose wisdom, zeal, and energy we owe most of the work of the
Enseignement Primaire. At their side, of maturer years than
they, stood Monsieur Gréard, Recteur de l'Académie de Paris.
... All the educationists of the first French Revolution had
insisted on the solidarity of the three orders of education;
maintaining that it was not possible to separate one from
another, and that there ought to be a close correspondence
between them. This principle lies at the root of the whole
system of French national instruction. Having established this
principle, the four leaders called upon all classes of
teachers to work with them, and professors who had devoted
their life to the promotion of superior instruction brought
their experience and their powers of organization to bear upon
schools for all classes, from the richest to the poorest. ...
But to reform and to reconstruct a system of instruction is
not a small task. It is not easy to change at once the old
methods, to give a new spirit to the masters, to teach those
who think that what had been sufficient for them need not be
altered and is sufficient forever. However, we must say that
as soon as the French teachers heard of the great changes
which were about to take place, they were all anxious to rise
to the demands made on them, and were eager for advice and
help. Lectures on pedagogy and psychology were given to them
by the highest professors of philosophy, and these lessons
were so much appreciated that the attention of the University
of France was called to the necessity for creating at the
Sorbonne a special course of lectures on pedagogy. Eleven
hundred masters and mistresses attended them the first year
that they were inaugurated; from that time till now their
number has always been increasing. Now we have at the Sorbonne
a Chaire Magistrale and Conférences for the training of
masters and professors; and the faculties at Lyons, Bordeaux,
Nancy, and Montpellier have followed the example given at the
Sorbonne, Paris. ... In 1878, the Musée Pedagogique was
founded; in 1882, began the publication of the Revue
Pedagogique and the Revue Internationale de l'Enseignement.
Four large volumes of the Dictionnaire de Pédagogie, each
containing about 3,000 closely printed pages, have also come
out under the editorship of Monsieur Buisson, all the work of
zealous teachers and educationists. In 1879 normal schools
were opened. Then in 1880 primary schools, and in 1882 we may
say that the Ecoles Maternelles and the Ecoles Enfantines were
created, so different are they from the infant schools or the
Salles d'Asile; in 1883 a new examination was established for
the Professorat and the Direction des Ecoles Normales, as well
as for the inspectors of primary instruction; and in July,
1889, the law about public and private teaching was
promulgated, perhaps one of the most important that has ever
been passed by the Republic."

_Mme. Th. Armagnac, The Educational
Renaissance of France (Education, September, 1890)._

EDUCATION: France: A. D. 1890-1891.
Statistics.

The whole number of pupils registered in the primary,
elementary and superior schools, public and private, of France
and Algiers (excluding the "écoles maternelles") for the
school-year 1890-91, was 5,593,883; of which 4,384,905 were in
public schools (3,760,601, "laïque," and 624,304
"congréganiste"), and 1,208,978 in private schools (151,412
"laïques," and 1,057,566 "congréganiste"). Of 36,484
communes, 35,503 possessed a public school, and 875 were
joined for school purposes with another commune. The male
teachers employed in the elementary and superior public
schools numbered 28,657; female teachers, 24,273; total
52,930.

_Ministère de l'Instruction publique, Résumé des
états de situation de l'enseignement primaire pour
l'année scolaire 1890-1891._

EDUCATION:
Ireland.

"The present system of National Education in Ireland was
founded in 1831. In this year grants of public money for the
education of the poor were entrusted to the lord-lieutenant in
order that they might be applied to the education of the
people. This education was to be given to children of every
religious belief, and to be superintended by commissioners
appointed for the purpose. The great principle on which the
system was founded was that of 'united secular and separate
religious instruction.' No child should be required to attend
any religious instruction which should be contrary to the
wishes of his or her parents or guardians. Times were to be
set apart during which children were to have such religious
instruction as their parents might think proper. It was to be
the duty of the Commissioners to see that these principles
were carried out and not infringed on in any way. They had
also power to give or refuse money to those who applied for
aid to build schools. Schools are 'vested' and 'non-vested.'
Vested schools are those built by the Board of National
Education; non-vested schools are the ordinary schools, and
are managed by those who built them. If a committee of persons
build a school, it is looked on by the Board as the 'patron.'
If a landowner or private person builds a school, he is
regarded as the patron if he has no committee. The patron,
whether landlord or committee, has power to appoint or dismiss
a manager, who corresponds with the Board. The manager is also
responsible for the due or thorough observance of the laws and
rules. Teachers are paid by him after he certifies that the
laws have been kept, and gives the attendance for each
quarter. When an individual is patron, he may appoint himself
manager and thus fill both offices. ... The teachers are paid
by salaries and by results fees. The Boards of Guardians have
power to contribute to these results fees. Some unions do so
and are called 'contributory.' School managers in Ireland are
nearly always clerics of some denomination. There are
sometimes, but very rarely, lay managers. ... From the census
returns of 1881 it appears that but fifty-nine per cent. of
the people of Ireland are able to read and write, The greater
number of national schools through Ireland are what are
called 'unmixed,' that is, attended by children of one
denomination only. The rest of the schools are called 'mixed,'
that is, attended by children of different forms of religion.
The percentage of schools that show a 'mixed' attendance tends
to become smaller each year. ... There are also twenty-nine
'model' schools in different parts of Ireland. These schools
are managed directly by the Board of National Education. ...
{719}
According to the report of the Commissioners of National
Education for 1890, the 'percentage of average attendance to
the average number of children on the rolls of the schools was
but 59.0,' and the percentage of school attendance to the
estimated population of school age in Ireland would be less
than 50. Different reasons might be given for this small
percentage of attendance. The chief reasons are, first,
attendance at school not being compulsory, and next, education
not being free. ... The pence paid for school fees in Ireland
may seem, to many people, a small matter. But in a country
like Ireland, where little money circulates, and a number of
the people are very poor, school pence are often not easily
found every week. In 1890, £104,550 4s. and 8d. was paid in
school fees, being an average of 4s. 32¾d. per unit of average
attendance."

_The Irish Peasant;
by a Guardian of the Poor, chapter 8._

EDUCATION:
Norway.

"In 1739 the schools throughout the country were regulated by
a royal ordinance, but this paid so little regard to the
economical and physical condition of Norway that it had to be
altered and modified as early as 1741. Compulsory instruction,
however, had thus been adopted, securing to every child in the
country instruction in the Christian doctrine and in reading,
and this coercion was retained in all later laws. ... Many
portions of the country are intersected by high mountains and
deep fiords, so that a small population is scattered over a
surface of several miles. In such localities the law has
established 'ambulatory schools,' whose teachers travel from
one farm to another, living with the different peasants.
Although this kind of instruction has often been most
incomplete and the teachers very mediocre, still educational
coercion has everywhere been in force, and Christian
instruction everywhere provided for the children. These
'ambulatory schools' formerly existed in large numbers, but
with the increase of wealth and population, and the growing
interest taken in education, their number has gradually
diminished, and that of fixed circle-schools augmented in the
same proportion."

_G. Gade, Report on the Educational System of Norway
(U. S. Bureau of Education, Circulars of Information,
July, 1871)._

"School attendance is compulsory for at least 12 weeks each
year for all children in the country districts from 8 years of
age to confirmation, and from 7 years to confirmation in the
towns. According to the law of 1889, which in a measure only
emphasizes preceding laws, each school is to have the
necessary furnishings and all indispensable school material.
The Norwegians are so intent upon giving instruction to all
children that in case of poverty of the parents the
authorities furnish text-books and the necessary clothing, so
that school privileges may be accorded to all of school age."

_U. S. Commissioner of Education,
Report, 1889-90, page 513._

EDUCATION: Prussia: A. D. 1809.
Education and the liberation movement.

"The most important era in the history of public instruction
in Prussia, as well as in other parts of Germany, opens with
the efforts put forth by the king and people, to rescue the
kingdom from the yoke of Napoleon in 1809. In that year the
army was remodeled and every citizen converted into a soldier;
landed property was declared free of feudal service;
restrictions on freedom of trade were abolished, and the whole
state was reorganized. Great reliance was placed on infusing a
German spirit into the people by giving them freer access to
improved institutions of education from the common school to
the university. Under the councils of Hardenberg, Humboldt,
Stein, Altenstein, these reforms and improvements were
projected, carried on, and perfected in less than a single
generation. The movement in behalf of popular schools
commenced by inviting C. A. Zeller, of Wirtemberg, to Prussia.
Zeller was a young theologian, who had studied under
Pestalozzi in Switzerland, and was thoroughly imbued with the
method and spirit of his master. On his return he had convened
the school teachers of Wirtemberg in barns, for want of better
accommodations being allowed him, and inspired them with a
zeal for Pestalozzi's methods, and for a better education of
the whole people. On removing to Prussia he first took charge
of the seminary at Koenigsberg, soon after founded the
seminary at Karalene, and went about into different provinces
meeting with teachers, holding conferences, visiting schools,
and inspiring school officers with the right spirit. The next
step taken was to send a number of young men, mostly
theologians, to Pestalozzi's institution at Ifferten, to
acquire his method, and on their return to place them in new,
or reorganized teachers' seminaries. To these new agents in
school improvement were joined a large body of zealous
teachers, and patriotic and enlightened citizens, who, in ways
and methods of their own, labored incessantly to confirm the
Prussian state, by forming new organs for its internal life,
and new means of protection from foreign foes. They proved
themselves truly educators of the people. Although the
government thus not only encouraged, but directly aided in the
introduction of the methods of Pestalozzi into the public
schools of Prussia, still the school board in the different
provinces sustained and encouraged those who approved and
taught on different systems. ... Music, which was one of
Pestalozzi's great instruments of culture, was made the
vehicle of patriotic songs, and through them the heart of all
Germany was moved to bitter hatred of the conqueror who had
desolated her fields and homes, and humbled the pride of her
monarchy. All these efforts for the improvement of elementary
education, accompanied by expensive modifications in the
establishments of secondary and superior education, were made
when the treasury was impoverished, and taxes the most
exorbitant in amount were levied on every province and commune
of the kingdom."

_H. Barnard, National Education in Europe, pages 83-84._