MR. JOHN MORLEY ON EDUCATION.*
le does great credit to the complete sincerity and candour of the author of the intemperate book before us,—just republished by Mr. John Morley, the editor of the Fortnightly, from the pages of that magazine,—that he should have hastened to insert the very instruc- tive article which one of our former inspectors of schools, and one of the ablest of them, Mr. J. G. Fitch, contributed to the November number of the same periodical, in refutation of the utterly falla- cious statistics on which Mr. Morley's telling papers had been founded. But for that extraneous proof of his earnest wish to see the facts exactly as they are, we should certainly have judged from these pages,—and should, of course, have judged erroneously, —that Mr. Morley was writing in the temper in which, if anyone had proved to him that his views were not supported by the facts, he would simply have said, and felt, "so much the worse for the facts." Nothing is more remarkable in the volume than the degree to which Mr. Morley's thought is penetrated by unreasoned, naked assumptions of his own view of the points in dispute. He writes not unfrequently with intemperate ferocity of the clergy and of all who think that the denominational machinery of educa- tion cannot safely be dispensed with, but he does not deign even to attempt to prove his main thesis—of which there are by this time many tests open to him—that, in rural and semirural districts, School Boards elected by the ratepayers would bevastly superior educational instruments to the old denominational Boards of Managers. If he would take the trouble to make the investigation in detail—there are, we believe, not a few School Boards in Wales which are quite sufficiently rural to make it a fair one—we should be much surprised to find that his a priori views were fairly borne out by his facts. The fact is, if we may judge by this volume, that he has never really given a fair hearing to the hypothesis that, in the absence of any really good educational materials for efficient popular management in the rural districts, the voluntary agencies, which, whatever their defects, have at least had zeal of a sort and experience of a sort, are positively superior to any which a popular election, held with the sordid fear of an education-rate dangling before the eyes of the people, could produce, unless at least the old voluntary agencies are enlisted heartily on the side of the new method. Through- out his volume Mr. Morley simply rails at those who fear, in the interests of education alone, the violent substitution of Boards elected by an indifferent people,—with ignorant farmers, per- haps, in the ascendant,—for voluntary agencies which, with all their drawbacks, have at least given the people whatever education they have. He does not even try to prove that such persons are wrong. " Nothing would be more ignoble," says Mr. Morley on one page, in a moment of that candour which is evidently indigenous in him, though liable to laws of singularly enduring obscure. tion, " than any attempt to disparage the services of the clergy in the spread of instruction." But if that attempt is not very energetically and sometimes- even maliciously made in this book, we do not know what disparagement means. For ourselves, we heartily agree with Mr. Morley when he goes on to say, " Still it is rather hard that the fact of the clergy having done a little in the past, should prevent the nation from doing a great deal in the future." No one can recognise more clearly than we do the unfortunate and unworthy character of the jealousy felt by the clergy of the agency of School Boards. We believe that there are now hundreds, perhaps thousands, of suburban or quasi- suburban parishes where School Boards would reinvigorate the whole system of education, and where it is the jealousy felt by the clergy of them, and nothing else in the world, which has prevented their being established. Cordially do we concur with Mr. Fitch when he says :—" The curious unwisdom which led many of the clergy during past years to oppose the management clauses designed to secure a share in the management to laymen, and to resist the introduction of the conscience-clause, and thus to cast away much of the influence they might easily have retained,, now causes them in many places to discredit the School Boards, to oppose their establishment, and to denounce them as godless in- stitutions, which they certainly are not and need not be, but which they may easily become if the ministers of religion refrain from joining them." But while we hold this Very strongly, we
1 • 77e Struggle for Rational Education. By John Morley. London: Chapman and Hall.
2. Statietieal Fallacies respecting Public Inetruetton. ByI.G. FHA. Being Article IV. in the Fortnightly Review for November.
are quite as sure that a change for which urban and many suburban districts are ripe, is one which would ruin the imper- fect educational agencies of the properly rural districts. That is why we have advocated the extension of compulsion to the rural districts in a careful and tentative manner, which would not require or indirectly compel for the present the transference of the inspected elementary schools now existing there to any merely elected Board, since such a Board would be, probably, greatly inferior to the existing Boards of sectarian managers in breadth of view and efficiency. Again, what we wonder at in Mr. Morley's book is this :—that while he has to admit that Scotland owes its now centuries-old system of parochial schools to theological zeal, while Prussia owes her national schools in large measure to a like system of clerical inspection, and while it is simply matter of fact that England and Wales owe nearly all the education they have to religious agencies, and while he has little but the American education system, estab- lished under totally different conditions, and never a compulsory system in auy but the most experimental fashion, and then in the smallest areas,—so, at least, Americans assure us, contrary to Mr. Morley's evident impression,—to hold up to us as his type of what is good, he should yet absolutely assume, without a particle of proof, that all that is bad in our very rudimentary system is due to the theological or sectarian motive, and that the abandonment of that motive, and the abrupt substitution of a national representative system all over England, would result in a sudden and vast change for the better. We hold, on the contrary, that poor as our exist- ing system is,—and that it is not nearly so poor as Mr. Morley's argument virtually assumes Mr. Fitch's paper abundantly shows, —a system of uniform election in the rural districts would give a far worse result for a long time to come, and that the often narrow (if you will) religious motive which set on foot the eduCational movement, can, as yet, no more be dis- pensed with, or even be accepted only where it is transformed into a broad and generous faith in all true education as essentially reli- gious, than you can dispense with clannishness in an early stage of society, as a germinal form of patriotism, or with ambition in politics as a moving spring of public spirit. Mr. Morley has such a deep contempt for the ordinary forms of the religious and sec- tarian earnestness of this country, that he wholly neglects to verify the existence of any force which will take its place, if that is to be cavalierly snubbed by our legislation.
In fact, this book is more of a clever diatribe than an argument. Its evidence that our schools are still extremely inefficient is con- vincing, but what is the use or fairness of comparing a system which is only just beginning to work on any scale at all commen- surate with the national need, with systems like the Prussian and the Scotch, which have now long been deeply rooted throughout both countries ? What Mr. Morley has to show, is that if we get rid suddenly of the denominational system in rural England, we shall get something better, and not something worse ; and he not only does not show it, but he does not attempt to do so. The only particle of comparative evidence on the subject which he brings in this book, is an infinitesimal morsel in relation to denominational and undenomivational training schools for teachers (see note on page 55), and this morsel of evidence he himself, with his usual candour where a fact is too distinctly outlined to be misrepresented by pre- judice, admits to be quite indequate, though he calls it " a striking comment on the relative efficiency of the two systems." But even there he is comparing not what he himself wants,--the efficiency of a secular motive with the efficiency of a religious motive, but the efficiency of a broad (unsectarian) religious motive, with a narrow or sectarian one ; and he ought to know that those many friends of the religious system whom he insists on ignoring, sincerely regard the former as the higher and more efficient motive of the two. In point of fact, the British or unsectarian training schools have always been religious and even theological in a high degree, so much so, that the Unitarians have bitterly complained of them as not truly unsectarian. The only morsel of evidence, then, which Mr. Morley gives that the religions arrilre pens& to which be attributes such pernicious educational results, is more injurious to secular knowledge than it is beneficial to religious knowledge, tells rather on the side of the value of religious zeal in educational work. It is, of course, a truism that the time spent on Scriptural edu- cation must be, in fact, deducted from secular education. But the question which Mr. Morley never puts, is, whether the religious motive does not carry with it enough educational zeal to result in more and better attention to secular teaching, than the merely philanthropic and self-interested motives would ensure without it. All the most experienced authorities tell us that, at least in the purely rural districts, this still is so ; that the clergy- man and the Dissenting minister are far more competent and far more anxious to promote the education of the people than the nominees of the ratepayers generally would be ; nay, that the religious teaching which takes so prominent a place in denomina- tional schools, is not unfrequently of a kind to awaken more interest in the children than the teaching of the three It's itself. Such- religious teaching is generally no doubt inexact, narrow, sometimes" vulgar teaching, but nevertheless being inspired by a keen motive, it will awaken a moral interest which is of the first importance to the intelligence of the child. Mr. Morley says the teachers of our primary schools are utterly bad, and that they have been made so by the denominational agency, which would not allow them to- come " fresh " to secular lessons. What does Mr. Fitch, an ex- inspector, say ?— " It has fallen to my lot to investigate the condition of many grammar- schools, of private and other secondary schools of great pretensions; and I can safely assert, that relatively to the work which has to be done, I know of no such skilful, vigorous, and successful teaching as is to be found in our inspected elementary schools. In the power of adapting- means to ends, of presenting knowledge in an interesting and telling way to a learner's mind, of managing large numbers, and of obtaining the maximum of intellectual result with the minimum of time and mechanism, the trained schoolmasters and mistresses are far superior not only to the teachers of private-adventure schools, but even to those of most public institutions. They form in fact the only class of teachers. in England who have received systematic professional training. They have been instructed not only in the subjects bearing on their school work, but in the art of teaching and of school management. And the- difference between those who have and those who have not received such training is enormous, and became more manifest to me every day- as my acquaintance with the higher class of schools increased. So far from its being true that mechanical methods,' mere cram and drill," are the characteristic features of the primary schools, it has seemed to- me that whereas in the majority of private, endowed, and other schools' for higher instruction, far too much of the discipline consisted of rote lessons, written exercises, and 'telling to learn,' there was a tendency to the opposite faults among the trained teachers, many of whom are- disposed to rely too ranch upon oral teaching, and, in their zeal to appeal to a child's reason, and to stimulate his active powers, are apt to neglect• the due cultivation of memory and exactness."
Now as Mr. Morley is well aware that the teachers in our grammar- schools are not generally diverted from preparation for their- secular lessons by any denominational zeal, this testimony of Mr.
Fitch's on the comparative efficiency of the two classes of teachers,. strikes us as exceedingly significant.
The truth is that Mr. Morley's brilliant diatribe is penetrated' with misleading and often passionate assumptions. He is working with men who believe in the educating power of religious in- fluences, but it is perfectly plain that his own deepest belief is that these things ought to have no place in popular education, or, as he in- one place incidentally and so allusively expresses it that we only get a hint of his meaning, " a Chesterfield's religion " is " that of all wise men," but one " which no wise man ever told." We venture to say that if a profound contempt for the ordinary religious teach- ing did not run through every page of Mr. Morley's book, we- should not be scolded so fiercely as we are for not being quite content with the League's kind permission to let priests, clergy- men, Dissenting ministers, Sunday-school teachers, and so forth, teach voluntary classes in the school buildings out of schools hours :— "If the religious difficulty arose from sincere religions conviction, it would be completely met by this simple change in school administra- tion. Candidates for Parliament tell us they are against any scheme- that will separate religious from secular instruction. They really talk nonsense. The separation has already been definitely settled by the Conscience Clause, which insists on the religious instruction being strictly confined to a certain time at the beginning or end of the days work, and punishes any attempt to evade this separation by with- drawal of the grant. All we ask is that for the avoiding everlasting feud, in the first place, and fcr the sake of leaving the teacher free far his own proper business in the second, this separation should be extended from the time at which it is given to the person who gives itt. Whoever after this accuses us of driving the Bible out of the schools, of hindering religion, of forcing godless knowledge on the people, Must either be too stupid to understand the meaning of the existing Conscience- Clause, or else he is a deliberate calumniator, willing to use any word that serves his tarn. And whoever declines to accept this compromise- must do so, because he is thinking of other ends than the religious. nurture and admonition of the children."
Now our reply to that is that if teachers are"good at all, they gain the moral respect of their scholars, as Dr. Arnold and a hundred other schoolmasters of the higher class-schools, gained the moral respect of their scholars ; that this moral relation is of the very essence of the proper condition for true religious influence ; that strangers can. no more exercise it in full than strangers can exercise the influence- of a father in his own family ; and that you cripple the teacher of his true power as much as you mulct the scholar of one of the truest of all educational, influences, when you forbid him to speak out on the higher life of man. And that is the feeling of the parents. Mr. Morley has no difficulty in showing, what everyone knows, that, in large cities at least, poor people care a great deal more about the distance of a school, or even the number of dangerous " crossings " between it and the home, than they do about the shade of religious opinion imparted. But he does not and cannot show—the fact is well known to be otherwise—that the parent is indifferent to some kind of religious teaching, and some kind of religious teaching which the children really respect. It is curious enough to see Mr. Morley quoting the Bishop of Manchester as not unfavourable to that League plan for voluntary religious classes out of school-hours, which Mr. Fitch, with, we believe, every layman who is not influenced by the political motives of the League, regards as absurdly and childishly unsatisfactory. If clerical evidence were adduced in favour of a method which would cripple the influence of lay-teachers ou any other subject, no one would be so sure as Mr. Morley to declare such evidence worthless. But as the subject of religion is one for which he has a supreme contempt, he is more than ready, eager, to acceptepiscopal evidence that this plan would be quite adequate. We ourselves respect Dr. Fraser almost more than any other bishop. But on this point we would decline to be guided by any clerical authority. It is the League which wishes us to throw moral and religious teaching into purely professional hands.
We hold with Mr. Morley that the present results of our edu- cational system are utterly unsatisfactory, though by no means that they are so unsatisfactory, considered in relation to the progress we have been making and the rawness of our instruments, as he believes. We hold with him that in all urban and suburban dis- tricts, School Boards,—if not crippled by the League's mis- chievous secularism,—would be of the greatest advantage iu
• improving that system and those instruments. But we hold that in the rural districts proper, other and much more practical means may be adopted to secure progress. Mr. Fitch hints at one of the most important, which Mr. Abbott,—the able head master of the City School,—expounded in a very striking letter to the Times of Monday week, namely, the adoption by the Privy Council of the Scotch system of allowing a less money grant for passes in the mere mechanical results of secular teaching, and a considerable increase for evidence of intelligence on the part of the pupils. There is more to be got, and more immediately, out of practical educators like Mr. Fitch and Mr. Abbott, towards the improvement of our very low standard of educational results, than out of all our political educators, the League, and Mr. Morley included. Indeed we believe that one sentence of Mr. Morley's book,—the remark, namely, on page 104, that " more time is an indispensable condition of anything like a solid educa- tion, and children must be made to stay later as well as come in earlier, for in this more than anything else it is the ending that crowns the work,"—is worth in an educational point of view, all the brilliant sneers and eloquent invectives in this book put together.
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