Correspondence.

[The Committee of the National Society are thankful for any communication likely to assist SchoolManagers and Teachers, or otherwise promote the work of Church Education; but they do not necessarily hold themselves responsible for the opinions of the Editor's correspondents.]

To the Editor of the National Society's Monthly Paper.

CAN BOOK-LEARNING AND INDUSTRIAL TRAINING BE COMBINED GENERALLY IN SCHOOLS FOR THE POOR?

No. II.

So subtle, gentle reader, is the mental constitution of man, so hidden are its springs of action, and profound its inmost recesses, that you may wisely adopt this as an axiom: He who makes frequent incursions into the region of mind is apt to bring back very fabulous news of the interior. The face is no trustworthy index to the thoughts; neither is language. The motives, intentions, and fancies of the most intimate friends are often concealed from each other. Like subterranean rivulets, they are far beneath the surface, and may be taking diverse directions notwithstanding the identity which words and professions would in many cases seem to imply. The process which a man's mind is undergoing is almost always occult in its nature; and it has the power of using language for much the same purpose as that for which the cuttle-fish employs the fluid contained in its body when closely pressed by enemies. Naturalists tell us that when it wishes to escape, and yet conceal its operations towards this end, it discharges a thick, cloudy, colouring matter, which darkens the surrounding water, and for a time effectually hides it from the keen sight of its pursuers. In a similar manner, language may be thrown up as a hazy cloudy medium, when a man finds himself too narrowly watched and analysed. It must, however, be confessed that there is indeed a point beyond which the workings of the mind may be revealed, often by the most commonplace questions, which in a moment divide, as it were, the marrow of thought or probe the secret seat and principle of its very existence. So Juvenis discovered; but the discovery was made when it was too late for him to profit thereby. He had lost his portmanteau, containing notes and coins. Senex found it, and not knowing its proper name, called it a roll of leather. He was an illiterate man; but his wife having reverence for learning, induced him to do what in him lay to remedy the defects of a bad education; accordingly he spent somewhat in learning to read at a night-school. Now it doth appear that Juvenis had suspicion of Senex, and questioned him respecting the missing article. "Old man," said he," hast thou found my portmanteau?" But the son of Senex, an intelligent youth, and withal of a subtle mind, came to the old man's aid. "Father," he said, "the gentleman means the roll of leather which you picked up before you went to school." "O!" exclaimed Juvenis, quitting the house in great trepidation, "if he found any thing before he went to school, say no more about it, for that was long before I was born." And thus you perceive, good reader, how the fair Juvenis was deceived by the crafty speech of the son of Senex. But might he not have done well to ask two more questions ere he left the house, to have led Senex very tenderly and adroitly over that nice point beyond which the keenest subtlest intellect is often thrown off its guard? What if he had said, " And what school dost thou attend, old man; and tell me, I pray thee, at what period of thy life thou didst enter it?" Reader, do you not think these further inquiries would have been opportune? And now for the moral of the tale, which is sufficiently patent. Men often deceive each other intentionally, even as the son of Senex deceived Juvenis; but I am constrained to add, that they as frequently deceive themselves, because, like Juvenis, they will not ask a few more questions. For a certain distance, nay, the whole distance of their mental wanderings, they are in a mist and a cloud; but their way would be clear and bright if they would pursue their fancies to their legitimate bounds. They are deluded by the dim shadows of things which their own sanguine intensive hopes magnify into substantial and beautiful realities. The mind makes for itself a mirage, and every thing assumes a false aspect. Reason, the strong man, slumbers on the lap of Imagination, and rises shorn of his locks. When one gets up at a public meeting and delivers the oracular verdict that our schools are not practical, that the children are not learning what is of real advantage to them, and above all, that while attending our ordinary schools they may be taught cooking, washing, household-work, gardening, farming, and divers trades,-when, I say, you hear this verdict delivered dogmatically by the speaker, you have grave reason, good reader, for comparing him with the aforesaid Juvenis, who in a hurricane of haste lost his presence of mind, and with it a firm standing-ground, and so failed to ask a few more questions. The questions

are obvious: 1. How can girls who are not boarded and lodged at the school be taught to cook? 2. Whence is to be obtained the raw material for cooking? 3. Who is to teach the cooking, and when may it be taught; and if it be said that the mistress should teach it, how can she attend to the kitchen and the school too? Then as to washing: 1. Where is it to be taught; and, supposing a laundry to be provided, when can the mistress find time to teach it; and how can she teach it and attend to her school as well? 2. Whose clothes are to be subjected to the tender mercies of learners? 3. And if fine linen cannot be obtained to be experimented on, will the washing of mere towels and other coarse articles deserve the name of washing, or be of any considerable benefit to the learners? Then, again, with reference to boys' schools: 1. Can the mere literary schoolmaster teach gardening in a better way than life-long labourers can instruct their sons in it? 2. Is it worth while to make a fuss about gardening in the country, where the boys who really require to know any thing at all about it do contrive somehow to pick up such knowledge incidentally? the solitary fact that their children are cultivating a small piece of garden-ground near the school induce the poor to keep them at school to an advanced age, when they know that they can gain daily experience in industrial pursuits, and, concurrently with such experience, earn good solid wages? Does not the reader perceive that all these points must be settled before school-managers can be expected to incur new expenses in commencing what bids fair to be a rash experiment-a delusion and a snare?

3. Will

Let me say something respecting the teachers by whom the experiment is to be carried on. Some few years ago our schools were taught by persons, the majority of whom at certain periods of their lives had been engaged in trades and mechanical occupations. Speaking generally, they became teachers at the suggestion of their clergy, who, perceiving in them a fair share of aptitude for the teacher's office, fostered their tastes for the same, and in the end sent them to be trained. Like the Apostles of old, in a subordinate sense, they left their trades and callings for a higher work. Nobly they performed their parts in the educational struggle. Their task was commenced in the morning of this day of educational brightness,—a day in which they bore a heavy share of the burden. They broke up new and rugged ground, and sowed the seed; it was left for their successors to reap the fruits. But they had been engaged in other less noble employments; and this was their crime, "the head and front of their offending." The world began to treat them with scorn; they were not sufficiently polished and intellectual. As a climax to this strange eventful history, every term of supposed indignity, borrowed (mark this, good reader) from the nomenclature of industry, was applied to them. "Another king arose which knew not Joseph." Hard words were cruelly bandied about in newspapers, in clap-trap speeches, and educational periodicals. They were branded and stigmatised by terms welling forth freely from unfeeling hearts. It was ruthlessly cast in their teeth that they were nothing better than broken-down tailors, linen-drapers, shoemakers, cooks, housemaids, nurses, and the like. There was a loud call for a new and more intellectual race, and all sorts of minutes and regulations were made for it in prospective; very little was or has been done for the old deserving hard-working staff. Well, observe now the sequel. The new race (and it deserves our respect) has at length been created, and still matters are unsatisfactory. The new staff is too intellectual, or something else we are told is wrong. All that can be said is, that the very party who were the most clamorous for a more literary and intellectual body of teachers, are now doing all they can to destroy the work of their own hands. Coifi, seized with remorse, hurries to Godmundham and hurls his lance at the favourite idol. Strange to say, whereas formerly tailors, linen-drapers, shoemakers, cooks, housemaids, and the rest, were turned into teachers, so now teachers are to be turned into tailors, drapers, gardeners, cooks, housemaids, washerwomen, and the like. It is an historical reaction. But are the teachers themselves prepared for it? Are they, I ask, prepared to subject themselves to conditions which did not form a part of the original terms on which they became teachers of youth? But, indeed, if they are so prepared, industrial work stands a poor chance of being taught by so literary a class; for, while it is true that among persons engaged in menial occupations a sufficient amount of holy zeal and intelligence may be found to justify you, good reader, in making these instructors of the poor, you cannot, on the contrary, venture to predicate that a literary body of persons can be turned into teachers of shoemaking, carpenter's work, cooking, washing, household-work, and the like. The more literary you make them, the more unfitted they become for such employments; at all events, the more disinclined they become to engage in them.

The words, "industrial work for the poor," form a very captivating phrase.

'Industry' and 'poor' seem to owe their proximity to each other to a natural law; and, indeed, the sentence, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," was second only to that more awful one, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." To labour for the bread which perisheth is therefore the Almighty's decree; and we obey it whenever we go forth to "our work and to our labour until the evening." But the wisest of men has observed that to every thing under the sun there is a time and a season, and this is as true of manual labour as of any other. For the poor, childhood is the allotted and proper season for Christian and mental training. It is the season, too, when the warm imagination and the glowing fancy and the poetry of life, all which are God's good gifts, begin to put forth their strength; too soon, alas, among the children of the poor, to be crushed and dwarfed by cankering cares and hard struggles for the commonest food and raiment. Manhood and womanhood, with all their responsibilities and stern labours, will come quite soon enough; why, then, are children to be defrauded of their childhood to please the whims of doctrinaires? The school was never intended for special training; this belongs to the after-life of our scholars, just as the preparation for the legal or the medical profession follows, not accompanies, the more general education in our public schools and universities.

A few more words ere the reader and writer part company. The world is every day becoming a more excited, restless, changeful chaos; and it requires severe discipline and a calm unruffled mind to escape the contagion generated by the state of society around us. The cautious habits of our forefathers have departed; principles which with them were settled are now made the subjects of rash speculation. Change is esteemed as necessarily a sign of improvement; and we have scarcely become accustomed to a certain idea or practice, when it is snatched from us, and something is offered in its stead, soon to share the fate of its predecessor. We are continually admonished nowadays to embrace, with all that ardour of affection which only long and well-tried familiarity can confer, some bold experiment or mere tentative measure. A man in these times need not be old to be able to take a retrospect of abortive schemes, effete theories, and insolvent devices. Like the gourd of Jonah, they "come up in a night and perish in a night." Industrial training, as afforded to poor children, who for the most part leave school at the age of ten, is one of these; it is the fashionable panacea, and it has the charm of being new. It is a thousand times more fashionable than practicable, except where the owner of a whole parish, with abundant funds at his disposal, is determined to carry it out with almost superhuman energy, and in the face of a close phalanx of obstacles. I have no doubt persons will be found who delude themselves into the idea that they are teaching industrial work, and teaching it well, and making their system a self-supporting one, nay, even profitable. I can only say, I should like to get into their parishes for half an hour, and be allowed to look about and ask questions in my own way. I have visited these so-called industrial schools; and it is because of the hollowness of what I have witnessed, or rather learnt, that I open this discussion. "I could a round unvarnished tale unfold;" but I forbear. I only hope the readers of the Monthly Paper may tell us what they have done towards teaching industrial work, how much their plans cost them, and how they answer. In all their discussions, I would suggest the propriety of their limiting their observations, as I do mine, to ordinary National schools. AUTHOR OF THE "HISTORY OF A CHURCH-TEACHER," &c.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING IN NATIONAL SCHOOLS.

SIR, The thanks of your readers are due to your correspondent, whose letter on the "Possibility of introducing Industrial Training into our National Schools" appeared in your last Paper; and the necessity of a friendly discussion of the subject is proved by a notice of the meeting of a Diocesan Board of Education, which appeared in another part of the same Paper, at which one of the speakers is reported to have said," that you may now meet a girl coming out of a school who may be able to state the weight (query, height?) of every mountain in Europe, and the specific gravity of every material, and yet be unable to boil a leg of mutton or hem a pocket-handkerchief."

Now here it is implied that our National schools ought to teach cookery and sewing; and this idea is growing very common. About the last of these subjects there can be no question; plain sewing (not crochet) ought to be, and can be, thoroughly taught in every National school, but cookery is not so easy: we could not have a better point to join issue upon than this very leg of mutton.

Now, as far as I can hear from my female acquaintances, cookery cannot be taught

by theory; it is essentially a matter of practice. If a girl is to know how to boil a leg of mutton, it is plain she must have legs of mutton to practise upon. Here lies the difficulty: who is to find the legs of mutton? who is to eat them after they are cooked? Legs of mutton are expensive things; it cannot be expected that the committee of the school can afford to provide them out of the school-funds. Will the advocates of this branch of industrial training send their own legs of mutton to be practised upon? I asked this question of a most excellent person a short time since, but he declined at once.

In saying this, I do not wish to intimate that the subject is unimportant; I would rather turn to a more practical point, and inquire, with a view to draw discussion upon the subject, what industrial work can be taught, and how far a girl may be fitted for domestic service by the education which is given in an ordinary National school.

In the first place, I may perhaps be expected to state my own ideas on the subject. When a girl leaves a National school, she ought to have a thorough knowledge of plain sewing (the mistress who teaches the weight of minerals and leaves this most important subject untaught deserves to lose her certificate). In addition to this, she ought to have acquired habits of truthfulness, honesty, obedience, neatness, cleanliness: not a bad foundation on which to build that after-knowledge of domestic duties which can only be learnt by practice. In ordinary schools you can expect nothing more than this. Here and there a taste for cookery (not knowledge of it) may be imparted, by now and then providing materials for the children (as a treat) to cook. their own dinners, and by encouraging them to do it; but to teach cookery or household work, as a part of the system of an ordinary National school, seems to me impossible. It can only be done effectually in district schools, where the children are lodged and fed.

The same remarks will apply in a great measure to boys. Even if it were possible to teach trades in an ordinary National school, before attempting to do so, it must first be proved that this plan would be an improvement on the existing system of apprenticeship. But there is one point on which I would venture to differ from your correspondent: he says of gardening, that if boys go to trades they neither require nor desire to understand it. Now there is nothing more humanising than gardening; nothing which is more useful or more improving to a man, whatever his trade may be. It promotes health and cheerfulness; and where land is to be had at a reasonable rate, it is a very profitable way of spending his leisure hours; and more than this, it often proves a successful rival to the attractions of the public-house. I do not say that we can teach gardening as part of the regular work of a school; but I think we may instil a taste for it in many ways, more especially by letting small allotmentgardens to some of the elder boys, when it is possible to obtain the land. Hoping that this letter will promote the discussion of the subject,-I am, &c. A COUNTRY CLERGYMAN.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

SIR,-In reply to a letter in your Paper of this month by the author of the "History of a Church-Teacher," on the impossibility of combining in ordinary National schools industrial training with book-learning, permit me as one who has tried the experiment in a country village of 440 people, and without any peculiar advantages, to offer a few remarks. If left unanswered, the effect of such a letter might be to discourage a class of schools which I believe will succeed not only in attracting scholars, but in retaining them until fourteen or fifteen years of age.

It is indeed true that "industrial work, to be taught at all, must be taught practically" as well as theoretically. Let us see how this can be done. One branch of the industrial work will of course be cooking; "but then," says the writer," the raw material must be provided." Surely so; but why not cook and sell. Meat-pies, Irish stews, broth, puddings, &c., may be made and sold. This can be done without loss, especially if, as in my case, the boys cultivate a good large garden which provides apples and all kinds of vegetables.

Any thing required for the sick in the parish should also be cooked at the school, and paid for out of the offertory alms. Six or eight girls might also (as they are at school) be provided with a hot meat-dinner twice in the week, as a payment for the work they have performed. Another part of the work will of course be washing; "but who," says the writer of that letter, "will send his things to be experimented upon by raw girls?" At first there will be some difficulty; but probably the clergyman or the manager of the school will be patriotic enough to do so; and provided that the industrial mistress is (as she ought to be) a thoroughly good laundress, and that she gets up the shirts and fine things herself until the girls are competent to do them properly,