The Education Egg.

Evening Star, Issue 7309, 6 September 1887, Page 3

The Education Egg.

The Education Commissioners have now been sitting for some considerable time on their egg. Whether anything will come of it is another matter. They have examined very nearly every prig in the country. The great probability, therefore, is that the egg will turn out to be addled. While, however, the matter still remains in doubt, and the possibility that there may be a chick of some sort is not altogether hopeless, I take the liberty of putting forward a bantam of my own, as a specimen of what the report of a Common Sense Commission might be. According to my view, the first thing which a sane Commission would recommend is that the school age (the age, that is to say, at which the unfortunate British youth becomes liable to he taken from his parents and exploited by the “meritorious official”) should be raised from five—the present preposterous age—to coven, which seems a comparatively rational time for beginning the miseries of life. I cannot conceive, and I never met anyone having even a “ bowing acquaintance” with ehildhood who could conceive, what is gained by putting a child into harness so early as five ; and all doctors tell me that a great deal is lost, because a child can’t carry a mind with impunity until he has been allowed to grow some sort of a body to carry it in. Moreover, when I reflect that the poor of this country have no leisure in youth, no leisure In manhood t and (according to the opinion of the best theologians) bu*: doubtful rest In the grave, I think—that is to say if it be worth while being born at all—that a little peace and quiet in very early childhood may fairly be allowed them. Therefore, I say, let the school age begin at seven instead of five._ A certain number of “meritorious officials” will, no doubt, be out of pocket by the change, but the sum of human happiness will be greater. My next recommendation is that the halftime system be made universal. I would have each natural day consist of two school days—the first from 9 a.m. till 12 a.m. ; the second from 2 p.m, till 5 p.m. ; and I would have different sets of children attending each, according to their parents’ convenience. In this way, the cause both of overpressure to the children and of hardship to the parents would be at once got rid of. The sole reason why children break down, and parents are summoned before ihe magistrates and fined, is that the school at present locks up the children all day long, so that the children get no relaxation from their studies, and the parents no help or comfort from their children. Under my plan, if Mrs Smith, the charwoman, has two girls of a school age, Molly and Sally, and a baby, Molly will go to school in the morning and mind the baby in the afternoon, and Sally, having minded the baby in the morning, will go to school in the afternoon. Meantime Mrs Smith, good woman, will be free to go out to work and earn something to buy supper with. This, I think, will be an improvement on the present arrangement, under which Molly and Sally spend their whole day in school, while Mrs Smith sits at home And minds the baby and the family go to bed supperless. It may, perhaps, be said that with the introduction of these short hours recommended by me there will be a falling off in educational results. Possibly; though I very much doubt it, holding that since the minds of children very soon tire, one hour for educational purposes is always better than two. But let there be a falling off—what then ? My contention is that we are not entitled to provide, compulsorily and at the expense of the community, anything more than mere necessaries of intellectual life—viz., the three R’s ; and if any schoolmaster tells me that he can’t teach a sane boy or girl to read, write, and count in three hours a-day, between the ages of seven and thirteen, then, in my opinion, that schoolmaster has mistaken his vocation, and (if he fears a jump from Waterloo Bridge, which is the cause I should prefer to see him adopt) he should lay himself out to be a Royal Commissioner, or go in for some other dilatory occupation. But the truth is, no one does seriously contend that three hours a-day are not long enough to teach the three R’s. The people who insist on more time, clamor also for more subjects. Our educational enthusiasts (amiable dunces for the most part, who think that learning nilist be a grand thing, because they never got any when they were young) have been tiding the school hobby beyond all reason. They have insisted that every child, from John o’ Groats to the Land’s End, shall be taught everything, and all day long, irrespective of his probable or possible wants, his prospects in life, or his circumstances, and whether his h ß alth or his parents can afford it or not. They have worked the principle of compulsion until they have turned it into an absolute and patent absurdity. They have allowed no exception (though Nature abounds in exceptions ; they have insisted on an impossible and unnatural symmetry. —Mr Labouchere in ‘Truth.’

Dunedin Horticultural Society meet toihorrow.