A letter to N.W. Senior, Esq., one of Her Majesty's Commissioners for inquiring into the state of public education, explanatory of communications and of evidence on half school time teaching; on the military drill, and physical training; and on the administration of funds applicable to popular education / by Edwin Chadwick.

  • Chadwick, Edwin, 1800-1890.
Date:
1861?]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to N.W. Senior, Esq., one of Her Majesty's Commissioners for inquiring into the state of public education, explanatory of communications and of evidence on half school time teaching; on the military drill, and physical training; and on the administration of funds applicable to popular education / by Edwin Chadwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    High elementary instruction obtained in half-time. founded on the same principles, beats, as might be ex- pected, all small schools which have only single masters, however competent; and it beats all the common elemen- tary instruction for the middle class, or, indeed, the instruction in the older schools for the higher classes. No such proportion of the boy pupils who have gone through the course of instruction in a half-time district pauper school could be plucked for bad spelling and bad cyphering as have been plucked of young gentlemen can- didates for direct commissions in the army. I have had the pauper children in these schools tried with the ques- tions proposed to candidates for clerkships in the War Office, and as large a proportion of clever answers were got from these boys under 13, as would probably be obtained from the older actual candidates for clerkships. The younger Eton scholars could not stand an exami- nation in the lower elements of instruction with the pauper children who have gone through the course of education in these half-time district schools. No place has been met with where the shopkeeper or a person of middle class rank can obtain for his son as good elementary instruction as is imparted under the subdivision of labour of trained teachers. Yet the amount of elementary instruction im- parted to the pauper children is absolutely necessary to ensure the change of their condition into permanently self- supporting labourers. I shall only stay to state that, in my opinion, any mea- sure of legislation for the improvement of popular educa- cation will be wholly inadequate which shall consider and provide for one class exclusively, which shall only retrieve the condition of that one class by purchasing a dead level of elementary education at the expense of the middle and higher classes, and which shall make no provision to ensure any gradations of schools such as the lower middle classes are unable to obtain for their children. Against such one-sided legislation and administration loud and just i^clamation may be anticipated. You will see it proved by the testimony I am prepared to adduce, that next to the gain in time by the division of educational labour in the system exemplified in the district school, is the gain in pecuniary economy. As by means of a staif of qualified permanent paid offi- cers and a division of labour, with gradations of adminis- trative superintendence in each Poor Law union, there has been effected an average yearly economy of upwards of two millions,—and if the principles which we kid down