THE REAL ISSUES OF THE EDUCATION DEBATE. T HE real issues
in the Education debate have not been very candidly raised. One, no doubt, has been this, —whether the Government are honest in wishing to improve the character of the secular education given in the primary schools, or whether they care a good deal more about diminishing its cost than they do about increasing its efficiency. Lord Salisbury's celebrated remark as to its expensiveness has rankled in the minds of the Gladstonians, and they have absurdly attributed to Mr. Balfour the wish which they not very wisely sup- posed to be in Lord Salisbury's mind, to make the secular education rough and cheap rather than to make it sound and practical. For instance, the Westminster Gazette, which is always shrewd, though its bias is anything but impartial, devoted an article on Wednesday to showing that Mr. Balfour last summer more than once cheered an unfavourable estimate of School Boards as the Education Authority, which is quite true, but which has no bearing at all on the present debate, unless it can be shown that he sides with those who think that the education they give is too good for the children, and not merely out of relation to their wants. No one who knows anything of Mr.Balfour's whole turn of mind,—or, indeed, of Lord Salisbury's,— would think of attributing to either of them so wholly un- characteristic a view. We believe that Mr. Balfour cares more about the type of the education given to the children of this country, its thoroughness, its honesty, its power over the character, its accuracy, its effect in fitting children for technical schools where they may learn at least enough of the practical side of science to fit them to become skilled and expert labourers or artisans, than Sir William Harcourt or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and fully as much as Mr. Acland. But he thought last year, and as we think, rightly thought, that a local Council, which would have had the duty of considering the pressure of local rates as a whole, and not merely of the Education rate individually, is a far better machinery for determining how large the Education rate should be, and how it should be most effectively expended, than a School Board elected for only a single purpose, and that too by the peculiar machinery which enables all the ratepayers of a single denomination to vote together for a single candidate. We heartily agree with that view, though we also believe that the Bill of last year attempted a great deal too much in the present highly inflamed attitude of the political mind on the subject of Education. The Westminster Gazette proved, no doubt, that Mr. Balfour's cheers were directed last Session against those who think School Boards the ideal machinery for improving the practi- cal education of the country,—a fact which Mr. Balfour, with his usual indifference to the mere formal issue before the House, had forgotten. But the sting of that evidence is in the implied inference that Mr. Balfour dislikes School Boards because the education they give is too good. He is really a great deal more of an education enthusiast than most of his opponents,—if we except perhaps Mr. Acland so far as secular education goes,— but he does appreciate the great danger of piling up the rates till the ratepayers get irritable and impatient and disposed to rebel, and he did wish last year to make the local authorities look at the rates as a whole, and so> calculate their resources as to make the Education rate go as far as it can go, without alienating the ratepayers. This year he knows perfectly well that he must lay aside that hope, and therefore he has no wish at all just now to reconsider the School Board machinery, clumsy and in- elastic for its purpose as it undoubtedly is. Naturally, therefore, he had forgotten the exact drift of his cheers of last year, and has not taken the pains to investigate that important subject with the rather virulent minuteness of the Westminster Gazette. That indifference to petty formalities is what we like best in him. But of this we are confident, that there is no ex-Minister on the Gladstonian side who cares more earnestly to make the education of the country thorough, both for the strengthening of the character and for the training of the intelligence, than Mr. Balfour, and that there are very few of them who care half as much. These elaborate investigations as to the cheers he happened to give, when a totally different issue was under discussion, are no doubt very painstaking. and accurate, but they are ridiculously misleading if they point, as we suppose they do point, to the inference that Mr. Balfour is unfriendly to School Boards because they raise the efficiency of education, and not because they do not husband the educational resources of the country as successfully as the local governments of other countriea husband them for the general purpose of getting the highest efficiency out of very limited means.
Another great issue of the debate which was not brought into full light as adequately as we should have liked to see, was the supposed disloyalty of the Vice- President of the Council, Sir John Gorst, to the present Bill for improving the education given in necessitous voluntary schools. No doubt Sir John Gorst has been somewhat superseded as Education Minister by Mr. Balfour, and no doubt he is a little sore on that point, and enjoyed the chance of playing a somewhat dramatic part in the debate, and posing as the Minister who would not quite venture to speak for his "right honourable friend the First Lord. of the Treasury," though he might humbly explain the views of the Council of Education in relation to their Bill. Sir John Gorst was one of that minute "Fourth party" which did so much to popularise the Conservatism of the Tory party fourteen years ago, and to spur the late Lord Iddesleigh into a larger policy than that which he would, of his own political impulse, have pursued. No doubt Sir John Gorst has reaped a less reward than any of his then colleagues from the efforts of that Fourth party. He has seen first Lord Randolph Churchill and then Mr. Balfour leading the House of Commons, and Sir Drummond Wolff raised high in the diplomatic service, while he himself remains a Minister indeed, but not a Cabinet Minister, and without the lead even in his own Department of the State. Not unnaturally he is a little restless, and has made various speeches both on Labour questions and on Education, which imply that be still wishes to render the action of the Conservative party more democratic, if not even more tinged with a somewhat Socialistic bias. In relation to the present Bill he has taken care to indicate that he is more disposed to favour the machinery of School Boards than most of his col- leagues ; and consequently he is taken up by the Oppo- sition, and all his references to his humble position as the spokesman of the Privy Council of Education, and his- inability to speak for the Leader of the House, are cheered to the echo. Every one knows the character of the situation. In a dull debate every Member of the House of Commons enjoys the back-handers which a, somewhat alienated member of the Government delivers at the colleagues amongst whom he sits. But for the general public there is no importance at all in this little comedy. We do not believe that Sir John Gorst cares- more, if he does not even care less, for the efficiency of education than his leader, and though he no doubt is more minutely acquainted with the shortcomings of the necessitous School Board schools like those of Walthamstow and other poor districts, we strongly suspect that he knows very well that it would have been fatal to attempt to introduce the machinery for helping them to a greater efficiency by the same Bill as that which deals with the voluntary schools. He must know quite well that the tests to prove the overburdening of the ratepayers are quite different from the testa to prove the inadequacy of the resources of the voluntary schools, as Mr. Jebb,. the Member for Cambridge University, showed in his admirable and most practical speech on Tuesday night. The public may depend upon it that Sir John Gorst's attitude of half-and-half loyalty towards the Education Bill is at least half-and-half theatrical, and that they may trust Mr. Balfour's hearty zeal for the soundness of education, whether in School Board or in voluntary schools, quite as safely, to say the very least, as that of the somewhat histrionic Vice-President of the Council.
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