THE EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE IN ENGLAND.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 821, 18 April 1868, Page 4

THE EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE IN ENGLAND.

The Educational Conference which met on Wednesday, the 15th January, at Manchester, and was presided over by the Right Hon. Austin Brnce, M.P., and Mr. W.E.Foster, M.P., declared itself decidedly, though with moderation, in favour of compulsion. On the question of compulsory rating, we cannot make out whether any express resolution was passed or not, bnt the course of the disenssion was strongly and clearly in its favour, Professor Jack, of Owens College, made an admirable speech on both the compulsory rate and the indirect compulsion to be applied to children. He observed on the former poiut that it would be absurd for the State to say to any locality, "We have passed over our responsibility for these children to you ; you have neglected the responsibility, and we are satisfied ;" — and on the latter point, — the pressure to be applied to individual children or their employers to induce them to attend, he exposed very ably the evasions of the present Factory law, and demanded its more efficient application. He quoted a case in which the schoolmaster had said he was compelled to give a certificate of ability to read and write as soon as a boy could write his own name, and spell p-o-t, pot, — a process involving just six weeks' cram (we should have thought six days almost enough. On the whole, the Congress was clear for compulsion both on the ratepayers and the scholars, though in the latter case compulsion meant only refusing to allow children under a certain age to Avork for wages without a certificate of attendance in school. As to the mode of raising Educational rates, the opinion of the Conference seemed to be decidedly in favour- of subscriptions whore possible, then of rates, to be raised, Mr. Foster advises, by an Educational Board, composed, advises Mr. Auboron Herbert, of Magistrates and Guardians, that is of nominees and elected members. It was suggested that the richer districts -jWight aid the poorer, and that'landowuers might be allowed to place rent-charges on their estates for schools — a thoronghly unwise idea. PJndowed schools are bad schools, and the ratepayers are wanted to take an interest in education. Little or nothing was said as to the proportion of aid to be rendered by the State, but Mr. Foster, we are glad to see, spoke strongly on the expediency of raising the school age from thirteen to fourteen. He recognized the difficulty of alteration, but thought, as an employer, it might be done. On the queston of secular denominational schools, the feeling of the Conference was strongly favourable to the permission, at at least, of ptin'hj secular schools. And with regard to denominational schools, the prevalent was that, where a school received any State aid, the religious teaching should bo confined to specified and well known hours, so that any child absent under the Conscience Clause should always know exactly what tho hours of attendance for secular teaching should be. • Even the strongest Churchman admitted that secular schools had a right to demnnd State aid, . and that much of the specifically denominational teaching was very worthless as education. — London Spectator.