THE DEBATE ON EDUCATIONAL COMPULSION.
THE result of the debate of Wednesday, on the subject of educational compulsion, is to our minds much less satisfactory than it appears to the Times. The division- list is discreditable to the Liberal party, and shows a lan- guor and apathy on the most critical of all political sub- jects amongst the Liberals which augurs ill for the future. No -doubt it is true that the issue was confused by the introduction into Mr. Dixon's Bill of an elaborate machinery for establishing School Boards all over the country, whether there be School-Board Schools to manage or not, and this made the Bill look like one for enforcing compulsion in 'a particu- lar manner to which there are many serious objections, and not simply for establishing compulsion and nothing more. But Mr. Dixon expressly announced that he did not regard the machinery of School Boards as of the essence of his Bill. Mr. . Fawcett, in a very able speech, entreated all those who were in favour of compulsion of any kind to vote for the Bill, pointing out that, so long as the children were well educated, it was a, matter of wholly secondary importance whether they were educated in denominational or in undenominational schools; and Mr. Forster, in one of his best speeches, gave the Bill his cor- dial support, in spite of his objection to the universal extension of the School-Board machinery, on the express ground that the extension of the compulsory principle was the leading object of the Bilk and that the machinery was a matter for ad- ministrative deliberation. In spite of all this encouragement to all Liberals who approve of compulsion in any form, to vote for the Bill, the division-list showed only 156 votes in its -favour, almost one-half of the Liberal party absenting them, selves, or else, like Mr. Leathern, Mr. Locke, Mr. Thomson- Hankey, Mr. Cowper-Temple, and others, voting against the Bill. And amongst the absentees who did not even pair, are to be numbered, we deeply regret to observe, Mr. Geed, en and Mr, Lowe. We must say that this division seems to us a bad augury for the party and its prospects. That the Conservatives should have opposed the Bill is not unnatural. Lord Saaidon and his chief are pledged, it is true, to devise some mode of enforcing attendance at school ; but they have not committed themselves as to the when, and they are perfectly aware that they will have much difficulty in overcoming the reluctance of many of their own followers when they make the attempt. Speakers like Mr. J. G. Talbot and Mr. Scourfield express with sufficient candour the real dread which many of the party feel of the universal spread of education. The tenant- farmeis thoroughly dislike the notion of an educated peasantry. The country squires are not in love with it. Even men like Lord George Cavendish voted against the Bill, though both his nephews gave it their support. The Tory Ministry are, there- fore, perfectly aware that their followers need a good deal ef compulsion applied to their own education, and this probably for some time, before they will be at all willing to give a compulsory education to the rural close. Mr. Scourfield and Mr. Talbot spoke for a great battalion of silent Members, who could hardly endure to hear of compulsory education in the rural districts under any form or shape. If, then, the Liberals are lukewarm or apathetic on this subject, as the division-list, and the absence of two of their leaders, seem to show, what is the prospect of educational progress ? We can only hope that there may have been a good many Liberals who, in their ex- pectation that Mr. Dixon, instead of making the excellent and very moderate speech he did, would have put forth a passionate manifesto on behalf of the Birmingham League-and its policy, stayed away from a debate in which they could neither have cordially supported nor honestly opposed the motion. That there were a few such, we do not doubt. But we fear that languor and apathy had as much to do with the matter as misapprehension of Mr. Dixon. We hope the feeling of the House may be tested next Session by some resolution whit:4h shall emanate neither from a Birmingham Leaguer, nor from an adherent of any particular plan of local machinery, and which, therefore, would make it quite clear to us who were the friends and who the foes of a thorough Educational system.
As regards the debate itself, it is certainly satisfactory to find that but three avowed opponents of compulsion, Mr. J. G. Talbot, Mr. Harde,astle, and Mr. Seourfield, ventured to open their mouths in debate. Mr. Scourfield was worse than ob- structive, he was anxious to be retrograde. He was fierce against the Act of 1870 for even attempting to provide the physical opportunities of instruction for all the children in England. He declared that the cry for compulsion was simply the logical corollary of that superfluity of provision ; that it was brought in "to prop up the credit of false prophets," who after finding accommodation for too many children, now wished to find the children for the accommodation. Mr. Scourfield himself thought it a mark of the truest wiadem to be contented "with mediocrity of success." Indeed he probably meant that it was true wisdom to be centent with perfect failure, and many are'wise in that way ;- Mr. Soourfield himself amongst the number, when at least, as in this case, the failure happens to be failure in an enterprise which he does not at all wish to succeed. When we are assured officially that there are near a million children in the country,-900,000 is the exact number,— who have not received six months' education, and when Mr. Scourfield entreats us to show our wisdom in being contented with this "mediocrity of success," what he really means is, that we should be content not to make 4ny effort at all to educate our children ; that the Act of 1870, and all which has resulted from it, has been a blunder. Mr. Scourfield thinks " education " should be understood to include all attainments which might be " useful" to the child ; and ap- parently holds that it is better to teach a child a handicraft from its earliest infancy, than to teach it anything by which it may subsequently gain access to the stores of knowledge. "To his mind, the ignorant man was the man who could not perform the work he undertook to perform,"—a peculiar definition of ignorance which we recommend to The compilers of future dictionaries, who will much astonish their readersif they accept it. If the ignorant mania the man who cannot per- form the work which he undertakes to perform, then some of the most accomplished men who ever lived,--like Coleridge, for instance,—are the most ignorant; while the little shoeblack who undertakes to polish your boots, and does it, is full of knowledge. Indeed, under that definition, Mr. Scourfield himself must be one of the most ignorant of men, since he undertook to give us a clearer notion than is usually entertained of the meaning of the word "ignorant," and performed his task in a way that would carry confusion into every department of English speech. What Mr. Scourfield really wanted to say was, that ignorance for certain classes is rather desirable than not ; but not having the full courage of his opinions, he covered his heresy by a new definition of the word, at once ludicrous and uncandid. Fortunately for the aspect of the debate, there were very few speakers who were as little ashamed to depreciate education openly as Mr. Scourfield ; and Lord Sandon's own official declarations were couched in a very different tone indeed. We cannot but fear, however, that the profound inertia of the bulk of the country party on this head will interpose a very serious obstacle in the path of official action, however little influence the Education Department may choose to concede to that inertia in qualification of its mere wishes, hopes, and anticipations.
Still, admitting fully the unsatisfactory element in Wednes- day's debate, it is eminently satisfactory to find the whole moral authority of the House of Commons committed to the principle that the period of that purely tentative anomaly, "permissive compulsion," has almost expired ; and that the indirect compulsion of the Factory Acts and the Agricultural Children's Act must shortly be supplemented by some more general and universally applicable law. It is true that Lord Bandon did not go quite so far as this. He seemed rather to contemplate—in the first instance, at all events—the utterly inadequate course of enacting "indirect compulsion," i.e., a legislative veto on the employment of children under a given age, for all possible spheres of labour, whether in town or country. The effect of that would simply be, as Mr. Forster very tersely put it, that you would interfere peremptorily with child- ren's work, without interfering at all with children's idleness, —and a less allowable course it would be hard to conceive. But Lord Bandon only seems to have thrown out a suggestion in this direction, and not to have in any way committed him- self to so unwise and unworkmanlike a plan. Mr. Forster, -on the contrary, advocated very strongly the extension of direct compulsion to the whole kingdom; and for so doing he is taunted, rather ignorantly, by the Pall Mall Gazette with being 'willing to accept in Opposition a responsibility he would not take -when in office,—our contemporary having apparently forgotten that, on the 17th July of last year, Mr. Forster frankly told the • House of Commons that he personally had been anxious and quite prepared to impose a compulsory law on the whole of England and Wales, but that he had not succeeded in gaining the assent of his colleagues to that step. Such a measure is what is really wanted; and though it would have to be worked out with great care, and we quite admit that a School Board, elected solely for the purpose of enforcing compulsion, would -often be the worst means, because, as Mr. Forster says, the most reluctant of all agencies, for putting it in force, we do not believe at all that the difficulties on which some of our con- temporaries dilate with so much gusto are in any degree over- -whelming. Of course there would have still to be, as there already are, provisions excepting the cases of children who live too far from any school for constant attendance. Of course, too, the requisite number of days' attendance in the year would have to be made up in the rural districts with reference to the seasons at which children's work was least needed in the fields ; indeed, the whole system in the country would have to be more elastic than in the towns. But it is absurd to say that the difficulties connected with low wages and distance from schools cannot be as easily overcome in England as in Switzer- land or Germany, where these difficulties practically exist in precisely the same force, and are overcome. No doubt, at first, parents would suffer considerably, by losing a large portion of the wages now earned for them by children under ten years old, — the highest limit of age suggested by Mr. Forster as that of absolute and unconditional compulsion. But if the education is to be really good, the parents would soon recover in the intel- ligence of their elder children what they had lost in the labour of their younger children ; and besides, it is not the parents for whom the law is made, but the children them- selves. If it is right for the children to be sacrificed to their parents, the whole course of our educational legislation is really, as Mr. Scourfield no doubt believes, a blunder and a wrong. The principle maintained, however, throughout, is that parents have no such right to starve the minds of their children, any more than their bodies ; and this being admitted, educational compulsion in the rural districts, though it ought at first to be very mildly enforced, might soon become as real and substantial a thing as it already is in the towns. This, however, will never be the case, if the sympathies of our News- paper Press are to be so active with the rural dislike for edu- cation, and so lukewarm with the demand for it, that even Conservative statesmen like Lord Sandon seem to speak like sanguine reformers, by contrast with the cold depreciation of further movement which such papers contain. It seems to us, we confess, a humiliating office for the ablest organs of a so- called Liberal Press to assume, that they should hold up as an example of the dangerous stimulus of Opposition a statesman who has shown himself so consistent in office and in Opposition, and so bent on moving cautiously and tentatively, as Mr. Forster, —and that they should support in his timid deference to the prepossessions of a retrograde party, one so highly susceptible to the retarding influences of rural opinion as Lord Sandon.
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