Battersea Deficiencies of former mitted. plished in a few weeks, sometimes in a few days; and, with testimonials as to character, and the recommendation of the authorities of the school where he had "learned the system," he was ready to enter on his duties. The proposition to form a Government normal school could not but come upon the public mind by surprise, at a time when the idea as yet formed of such a school was satisfied by this type of it. How far the originators of that project were in advance of public opinion is sufficiently evident from the report in which, on the failure of the plan for a Government school, they stated the principles on which that established by them at Battersea was to be conducted. To students trained according to the standard of the Battersea school, the system adopted in National schools at the time of which I speak assigned no place. Wherever such teachers were called upon to take a part in that system, by their very skill and attainments, they protested against it. Between the years 1840 and 1814, many schools had, by the system ad- reception of public grants, been opened to your Lordships' inspection; and by the reports on those schools of Archdeacon Allen and Seymour Tremenheere, Esq., (then Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools,) published and largely circulated with your Minutes, but especially by the able reports and the official labours of Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, then your secretary, the public mind had been aroused to a sense of the deficiencies of Dr. Bell's system, and it had begun to be admitted by public men that, if those results were to be looked for from the education of the people which, in despair of any other solution of the social problems of the day, they were in the habit of turning over to it, it must be a better education than they were under that system receiving. St. Mark's College established by National Society. It is to be recorded to the honor of the National Society, that, representing the interests of the Church in the cause of education, it was not slow to acknowledge this fact, and that it established St. Mark's College to realise, as regards Church education, that higher conception of the mission of the teacher which had first been advocated by the founders of the Battersea school. This college was entrusted by the National Society to the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, and he is still its principal.* Its system, developed under his hands, is now, as it was then, A syllabus of the system of St. Mark's College, published about this time by Mr. Coleridge, had a large influence in inducing churchmen to aim at a higher standard of instruction in the teacher. I have always considered the remarkable report of the founders of the Battersea school, and this pamphlet of Mr. Coleridge's, among the most operative of the causes which then contributed to the progress of education. in advance of public opinion in the standard which it affixes to the qualifications of the teacher, and in its estimate of the importance of his mission. system Although the system of Dr. Bell was readily given up by Monitorial the more enlightened and active of the friends of education, to discredited. whom its defects had long been known, it did not so easily yield its place in the public mind. It was, indeed, associated with the very idea which had been formed of a school for the poor. That such a school should exist, and not be one in which children are arranged in squares, taught by monitors, and superintended, but not taught, by a master, was then not easy to be conceived. And, when the reports of the Inspectors came to show that those monitors, in whose hands the instruction of the poor of the country was placed, averaged in some extensive districts not more than eleven years of age, and that, as the result of teaching children by means of others of that age, it was probable that one half of them left school without being able to read in a book of ordinary instruction, this assertion was received by many as equivalent to an admission that henceforth the education of the poor was a thing to be despaired of, the only available means to that end having failed. replaced teachers. To supply the places of the discredited monitors, the Minutes Monitors of 1846 provided for the creation of Pupil-Teachers. That by pupilmeasure has awakened an emulation which was wanting in elementary schools, by offering the means of advancement in life to the best conducted and most diligent of the scholars. It has provided for the adequate instruction of the children, by substituting for the monitors apprentices of an age (from 13 to 21 years) at which they are capable of becoming efficient assistant teachers; and for such of them as, when their apprenticeship is completed, seek the office of the teacher and are suitable for it, it provides a maintenance in the training schools as Queen's scholars. of pupil training your Lord- schools. The provision which is thus made for a supply of suitable Influence candidates for admission to the training schools is practically teachers on among the most important of the measures by which ships have sought to promote the education of the people. Whatever legislative measure might have been adopted for It is necesthat object would have failed of accomplishing the results measure of otherwise to be expected from it, unless there had first been cation that provided a body of duly qualified teachers to carry it out. a body of Such a body of teachers could not be created at once. Being at that time Inspector of the schools in the Midland district, I addressed a circular to all the schools under inspection in that district, requesting to be informed of the ages of the monitors by whom the classes of those schools were taught. The result was that which I have stated in the text. sary to any public edu teachers should first be created. Method of ship best this end. Looking at the class of society from which the elementary apprentice- schoolmasters of the country must be taken, it is obvious adapted to that the method of apprenticeship by which other callings are entered upon in that class of society is the best calculated to form the character of the teacher. Taking early his first steps in that which is to be his occupation, the apprentice learns to associate that occupation with his idea of life; and, as no change is made in his pursuits when his apprenticeship is completed, so no interval of leisure is interposed at that period of life, between youth and manhood, when it is most to be dreaded. A great num ber of pupil not go to training schools on completion of their apprenticeships. The next stage to his apprenticeship is his admission to the teachers do training school. I wish that I was able to report to your Lordships that all the young persons who advance thus far in their education, for the office of the teacher, complete it. This is, however, far from being the case. Of the 820 male pupil-teachers who completed their apprenticeships in 1854, only 303 presented themselves at the training schools as candidates for Queen's scholarships. Of the remaining 517 some have probably obtained appointments as teachers or assistant teachers, immediately on the expiration of their apprenticeships, and some have obtained more lucrative appointments than they could hope for as teachers, but a much larger proportion, not probably possessing the means of paying their travelling expenses to the training college, or of providing themselves with clothes whilst resident in it, have been unable to resist the offers made to them of immediate, though less honorable and lucrative, occupation in commercial or manufacturing employments. Salaries paid to apprentices become teachers are not thrown away. It is not to be assumed that the salaries paid by the state to these apprentices, who have now given up the office of who do not teacher, but who during the whole time of their apprenticeships have been employed in it, and to whom the increased efficiency of our elementary schools is principally due, have been thrown away; nor is it to be assumed that their religious and moral training, and superior education, bave been without use to them, since they have been fitted for stations of trust and responsibility, which could not otherwise have been so well filled, in the trade and manufactures of the country. The friends of education will not, however, fail to regret their withdrawal from what they will consider a more useful function, and a higher and more important station. Course of instruction schools. The course of instruction on which the pupil-teachers enter, in training when admitted to the training schools, has not been prescribed by your Lordships. Those schools have been erected and are supported by voluntary contributions, aided by your Lordships' grants, and the control of them is in every case vested in a committee of the contributors. The subjects of instruction are, in the first place, those taught in elementary schools over which your Lordships are also without any control. They are these 1. Religious Knowledge. 2. Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. 3. English Grammar. 4. English History. 5. Geography. Under that form of compilations of facts, or of rules, in which such subjects as arithmetic, English grammar, geography, and history, appear in school books, and are usually taught in schools, it is evident that they tend but little to the development of the reasoning powers, or the exercise of the intelligence of children, and are but poor expedients of general education. These subjects are, nevertheless, the only ones placed at the disposal of the elementary teacher. He has, therefore, to make the best use of them; and, with this view, it is necessary to place them under forms better adapted to his use; to familiarize him with them under these forms; and, in addition to this professional instruction, to accomplish in regard to himself those higher results of religious and moral training, and intellectual culture, which it is his mission to accomplish ultimately in respect to the poor. This was the function assigned to the training colleges. The first difficulty lay in the imperfect adaptation of the subjects of elementary instruction to the end to be accomplished of educating intelligently the minds of the students. elementary ill adapted Whether these subjects alone, developed under other and Subjects of higher forms, might serve the purpose of educating the mind instruction of the schoolmaster himself was a question which presented to educa itself from the first, and was not easy of solution. tion of men. Officers of schools instructed subjects. It supposed, on the part of the officers of training schools, training a course of study which had formed no part of their previous themselves education, and for which, even had they been disposed to imperfectly undertake it, no leisure was permitted to them. They were in these few in number, with reference to the duties with which they were charged. The demand upon them was immediate and urgent, and they were compelled to teach what they Preference knew, and not what they had to learn. From such subjects as given by history and geography, and English grammar, which were felt them to to be under their ordinary forms, and in an educational sense, jects as unrealities, they turned therefore to those other subjects whose educating educative power has been tested by experience, and which, dents. having formed the staple of their own instruction from child hood, had to them the recommendation of truth and reality. It was thus that, whilst the course of instruction in every training school included the subjects which elementary school other sub means of their stu augmenta masters have to teach, these did not constitute its really operative and influential elements, but rather its accessories. It was not difficult to see what was the dominant subject in each training school. Classical literature prevailed in one, higher mathematics had the ascendancy in another, and in a third Church history; but I do not remember one that was remarkable for the profound study of any one of the branches of elementary instruction. To teach children to reason and to understand with such implements as geography and history, the teacher must nevertheless be able to present them to their minds, not under the form of isolated facts, loading the memory and left there to dissipate themselves, but, with a certain relation of cause and effect, and with a selection, over a large surface of knowledge, of things in other countries of a like kind with those familiar to a child's observation in his own country, and things in other times of a like kind with those familiar to a child's observation in his own time; and generally with a selection of objects within the compass of a child's intelligence, as distinguished from objects beyond. Government It is to encourage the higher study of the subjects of elementary instruction on the part of the teacher, not only for lecturers in the better discipline of his own mind, but, for the better instruc tion of salaries of training schools. Present subjects of tion of the children of his school, that your Lordships have provided for a liberal augmentation of the salaries of lecturers. in training schools, consequent on their affording evidence of a high standard of attainment in the subjects of elementary instruction, and of skill in adapting them to the purposes of that instruction. So long as English grammar, history, and geography are the elementary only secular implements of the work of the teacher, it is clearly instruction, the function of the training schools to accustom him to handle the best. them to the best advantage, and to draw from them all that probably such subjects are capable of yielding to the profit of poor children. I am far, however, from considering that these are the only subjects adapted to the purposes of elementary educaElementary cation. From the time when I first became an Inspector of in practical schools, I have not ceased to declare an opinion that there bepreferred. are other things about which the poor might be taught to instruction science to reason and understand better, and which, as a means of their education, would have this to recommend them, that, they would thereby be furnished with resources, which they do not now possess, for that hand-to-hand struggle for the means of existence and material well-being to which they are destined. This kind of knowledge has since been dignified by the name of the "science of common things." It has won for itself powerful advocates, and is likely to exercise a considerable influence on the future of education. I wish I could report to |