The Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1885.

Evening Star, Issue 6701, 8 September 1885, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1885.

In the House of Commons recently Mr Samuel Smith, one of tho members for Liverpool, moved for tho institution of the compulsory industrial training of children, and a debate ensued in which tho question of technical education in the elementary State schools was discussed from various points of view. As the subject is one of very general interest now in this Colony, it may prove instructive as well as interesting to note the line taken and the arguments used by certain well known educationists among the principal speakers. Mr Smith started with the broad proposition that the pauperised classes would not avail themselves of emigration, being to a great extent utterly unfitted for work either at Home or abroad. Was not the time eome, then, he asked, for extending to all the immense advantage of an industrial training? He would propose that the State, which now had control over the education of children until they were thirteen, should not let go its hold until they were sixteen. He did not suggest that they should be forced to attend dayschools until that age, but that they should attend night-schools from seven to nine o’clock, at which they might learn carpentering, tailoring, printing, and the rudiments} of other trades. Attendance at these

classes should be made compulsory, because otherwise the very children that were required would not attend, their parents being too careless and ignorant to send them, and they themselves being too wild to come. The want of training of the girls, the honorable gentleman said, “was at the root of our sad social system.” Girls must be trained in useful domestic work if the homes of the poor were to be made more comfortable. He would have classes for girls, in which they might be taught sowing and laundry work and cooking, and, perhaps, the rudiments of some of the lighter trades for which women were well qualified. He did not propose, he explained, that this attendance at the night-schools should be made compulsory on the children of the whole working class population, but only on those children as to whom the inspector was not satisfied that they were properly employed by their parents. “He thought our educational “system paid too little regard to manual “ training. It had been constructed exclu- “ sively on the basis of mere mental training, “ What he wished was to give that amount of “industrial training to our poor children “ which would enable them to fight more ad- “ vantageously the battle of life.” Professor Stuart, member for Hackney, in seconding themotion, referred toa successful experiment made at Cambridge with regard to the industrial education of boys. It was, he declared, the duty of the State to endeavor to render its population capable and efficient. “He accepted so much of Socialism as “would produce a population efficient, “enterprising, and self-reliant. By doing “ what was proposed for the working classes “ we should only be paying them part of the “ debt we owed them in respect of advantages of which they had been deprived by “ being left too much to the natural evolu- “ tion of things. They had been deprived “ of their naturally fair share of the advau “tages produced for the nation by the “nation because of their incapacity, and in “ this they were too largely the the “ victims of our imperfect institutions.” The Home Secretary, Sir Richard Cross, said he should like to see the system of industrial training carried out in more schools. If the education given in the ele. mentary schools of the country were more mixed in its character, ho thought it would be very advantageous. A great deal might be done with regard to the education of girls. He agreed that cookery was one of the most valuable arts that girls ought to know. Needlework, he was glad to see, had now entered largely into their education, and altogether the training they now received was much better than that which they formerly had. However, he did not approve of the compulsory part of the motion, nor the proposal relating to inspection. In his opinion the time had not come for extending the age up to which the State should have a hold on a child. The scheme propounded was one which would release the parent from his obligations to a great extent. It was proposed that the inspectors should not only inspect schools and the children in them, in order to ascertain whether they were being properly but should also inspect families, in order to judge whether their children should be taken from home or not. “That would be a step which the people of England would hardly tolerate.” Then the parents would lose the services of their children in the evening, when children of poor parents were especially useful. Ho thought it would be well to make arrangements for the opening of day industrial schools in tho evening, in order that those who wished to frequent them might enjoy the advantages of particular training. “ There was no reason why they should not “endeavor by voluntary contributions and “ voluntary efforts to promote evening educa“tion in day industrial schools.” Mr Mun" della, vice-president of the Committee of Council on Education in the Gladstone Ministry, expressed himself as anxious that the House should not think it was possible, by the intervention of legislation, to train up the neglected classes of the population to useful handicrafts. He could not conceive anything more dangerous than to select 500,000 children from the rest of tho community for the purpose of training them to industries at the expense of the ratepayer and taxpayer. The real way to deal with tho whole question was to influence children at an early age. More encouragement ought to be given to day industrial schools. The system, ho said, was not at present officially recognised in the code, for sufficient experience had not yet been gained to justify the Education Department in making a grant in support of such instruction. As to the idea of compulsorily training from the age of thirteen to sixteen, he would be the last to propose it, because he did not think the country was ready for it. Unhappily they did not even get children up to thirteen. Large numbers in the rural districts passed out of school at ten years of age. If it were settled that no child should begin to work half-time until he had passed the third standard, and should not work full time until he had passed the fifth standard, the educational system would be much more complete and effectual. As to the industrial school system, he had always been of opinion that the right way to begin was to begin with a truant school. Up to the age of ten or eleven years a child could earn no wages, and therefore when a child could be at school, and was not at school, then was the time for compulsion. “ English children were most remarkable “ for the rapidity with which they worked ; “in fact, there were not their equals in all “ Europe. All that was wanted was to save “these children from their own parents.” In the course of tho discussion, special attention was called to the great distress existing among unskilled laborers in great cities. Population is increasing faster than work ; and emigration on an adequate scale is out of the question, because the great mass of the town population is unfit to emigrate. Mr S. Smith, as we have seen, looks for a remedy to a better system of industrial education, Mr Ecroyd (Preston) argued that it was of no use to teach children how to work unless work could be found for them to do. Mr Jesse Collings, another leading Radical, expressed the same opinion; only he would look for the work in the country and not in the towns. The opinion seemed to bo general that the State elementary education was of too literary a character for the majority of children for whom it is intended. A London contemporary, a high authority on educational subjects, in commenting on the debate, remarks : “The rudiments must, “ of course, be literary ; children must leaui “to read, to write, and to cipher. But after “that it would be well if their education “ could be made more distinctly technical. “Thespecial subjects, for instance, might, “to some extent, be industrial, and be “ suited to the wants of the district in which “ the school is placed.”