| | | | | Here, happily, we see supplied with such abundant materials, by | the reports recently published, that we shall have little to do but | systematize a few extracts, leaving the reader to draw his own | conclusions, with as little interruption of comment on our part as | possible. Our extracts, for the purpose we have in view, may | most conveniently be arranged under the following heads: ~~ | The school buildings. | The school apparatus and machinery. | The status and condition of the schoolmaster. | The quality and the quantity, the matter and the manner of | the teaching. | The superintendence and inspectorship of the schools. | It is necessary, however, before making these extracts, strictly | relating to the parochial schools, to observe that the parochial | system, excellent as it was, had it been carried out with spirit and | consistency, did from the beginning make no provision for the | education of that portion of the community that are in the | greatest want of education, and from whose wild and lawless | state society has long suffered, and is daily suffering the greatest | part of the evils under which it labours. We need scarcely say, | we mean the poor inhabitants of large towns, and those swarms | of their ignorant lawless progeny, that are to be seen roving | about every considerable town in the kingdom, educated in | hundreds by the tossings and squeezings of blind circumstance, | only to become thieves and prostitutes. For these unfortunates, | the parochial system made no provision: and so they grew up | plentifully, like weeds in a neglected garden, till some twenty or | thirty years ago, in Glasgow, GOD moved the hearts of a | Chalmers and a Stow, to take some brotherly charge of their | destitution. Since that time much has been done in Glasgow, and | elsewhere, to fill up this woeful chasm in our educational | organization; witness only the Heriot Schools in Edinburgh, at | which 2000 poor children are taught gratis, not by broken down | tailors, and weavers, as used to be the case in some of our parish | schools, but by well educated men, receiving a salary of £140 | a-year. This is an improvement indeed: the most decided advance | that education has made in Scotland during the last fifty years; | but it is no part of the parochial system. | It is not the parochial system, in fact, that the great | improvements, lately made in Scottish education are principally | due; nor were the parochial schools at any time entitled to the | exclusive meed of the praise which educated Scotland was | always forward to claim from her less happily situated sisters. | We now proceed to the extracts. As to the first head, by the act | of parliament, sect. 8, the heritors were required to provide | . This sounds very well. But who was to determine what | sort of a house was

"commodious"

for a school? The | heritor, who might care nothing, and the minister who might | know | | little about the matter. The consequence has been what might | have been anticipated. The heritors, in most cases, have | considered rather what was commodious for their own pockets, | than commodious for a school. We do not say, they did this | purposely; they did it by instinct if you please, and ignorantly: | but still they did it. | , says Mr. Gibson . | Here are important educational truths truly: but during the long | century and a half that has ran its course from the year 1696, | when the "act for settling schools was passed," heritors and | presbyteries have either not perceived at all, or have been very | backward to perceive these things. | But there is something worse than mere narrowness of room, and | want of play-ground, to be said of the Scottish parochial schools. | Witness the following extract, which includes also the | Assembly's schools in the presbytery of Tongue, in | Sutherlandshire; but it must be borne in mind, with regard to | these latter, that though they are not part of the regular parochial | system, their deficiencies, whatever they are, are also the | deficiencies of the parochial system. For had the landed | aristocracy in the Highlands shown any practical zeal to give that | system in these districts fair play, schools supported by the | imperfect means at the disposal of the General Assembly would | never have been heard of. What indeed is every Assembly | school, and every adventure school, in a Scottish parish, but a | standing proof that the landed aristocracy, on whom was laid the | honourable charge of providing schools for the parish have not | done their duty? | | So much for the mere stone and lime of our parochial machinery. | We would not wish it to be understood, of course, that things are | everywhere as bad as in the | presbytery of Tongue; as little would we suppress the fact, that | when clamant evils of this kind were intimated to parties, having | both the power and the will to do good, they were, to a certain | extent, remedied; but the evils existed, nevertheless, and existed | ~~ God knows how long ~~ as a part of the system. | With regard to the second head, of SCHOOL APPARATUS, the | following extract from the same Report may be sufficient, ~~ | | | | Here are eight parishes, out of thirteen, possessed of no school | apparatus ~~ not even a black board! But the Duke of | Sutherland was not obliged, by the letter of the law, to provide a | black board; and the presbyteries of Tongue and Tain ~~ very | likely also the starveling pedagogue himself ~~ did not know the | use of such a thing. Upon such barren beginnings, who shall | dare to propose a museum, a library, a gymnastic apparatus, and | an apparatus for an industrial school, as a farther burden upon the | munificence of Scottish heritors? But to proceed. | With regard to the status and condition of the schoolmaster, there | are three things to be considered. First, The Provision made of | his independence, comfort, and dignity. Second, His state of | subordination to the Established Church. Third, His personal | fitness for his professional situation. Now, in all these respects, | the real state of the so-much-belauded parochial schools of | Scotland, has been either lamentably bad, or, at least, below par. | As for the first matter, the miserably small salary of our | parochial schoolmasters is at once a proof of how low an idea the | landholders entertained of the degree of comfort and dignity | belonging to a public educator, and an index to the beggarly | meagreness with which the whole system has been organized. | By the act of 1803, as we already showed, the highest salary for a | parochial schoolmaster is £22 a-year, which, with the fees, in | many parishes, did not produce an actual income of above £35 or | £40 a-year! There is, however, a provision in that act, subjecting | the salary to a periodical revision and increase every twenty-five | years; and, by virtue of this clause, the lowest salary is now, we | believe, £25, and the highest . This sum, with the fees, may | make an average of £50 or £60 a-year, all over the country, | besides a small house, and a quarter of an acre of ground. Does | any person imagine, that a paltry pittance of this kind, can be any | inducement to young men of talents and mettle, to devote | themselves to the laborious, and often fretful, work of education? | Plainly not; and the consequence has been practically, that the | whole body of educators in Scotland has sunk in public | estimation, by being associated with that starved and stunted race | of public instructors, who, on one occasion, making an energetic | but unsuccessful attempt to raise their social status, thus sadly | and truly depicted their degraded condition. . This | complaint was made about an hundred years ago, in the year | 1748; and though some little improvement has been made since, | can any person say that these meritorious public servants, are not | comparatively in the same lame and crippled position still? The | meagreness of the schoolmaster's salary is the source of a great | part of our present educational powerlessness. A great majority | of our teachers are intelligent and educated men; and if they only | had the means, do not want the will to advance both themselves, | and the noble cause of which they are the representatives. But | with a palsied arm, the most heroic will can never learn to strike | hard blows; and we must not, therefore, be surprised to find, that | the parish schoolmaster, finding his profession in such small | estimation with an unthinking and ungenerous public, is forced, | in self-defence, to regard it in the same light himself, and view | the desk as only a stepping-stone to the pulpit. He accordingly | thinks more on sermons than on primers; and is more anxious to | secure the heritors' suffrage in helping him to a kirk, than | forward to make himself prominent in preaching the odious | mission of pedagogic emancipation. This brings us to the second | practical evil of our parochial system ~~ the complete | subordination of the school to the church; on which we shall | content ourselves with the single remark, that, while it is | undoubtedly necessary that the person who is to superintend the | general training of youth in schools, should be both pious and | orthodox, this Christian piety and Calvinistic orthodoxy, can | readily be secured in a thousand obvious ways, without that total | subjection and subordination of the school to a section of the | Presbyterian clergy, which is so prominent a characteristic of the | present system. This subjection and subordination is such as, in | the estimation of the present writer, to amount to a complete | degradation and branding of the whole pedagogic class. Let the | words of the act of parliament, already cited, be soberly | considered, and it will appear as if the framers of that act had one | selfish object continually in view, to keep the | parochial schoolmaster in a state of slavish dependence on the | parish minister. Now, the testimony of the distributors of | the Dick Bequest money chimes in here with the cry of nature | and liberty, to the effect, that a schoolmaster | must be a schoolmaster standing on his own legs, and attending | to his own business; not a mongrel creature, half a teacher and | half a preacher at any time; at no time either the one or the other, | with vigorous concentration of purpose, and a healthy totality of | view. On the 21st February, 1839, the trustees of the Dick | Bequest adopted a resolution, that it was their duty | | . This sensible resolution was, as might have been expected, | stoutly opposed by a large body of those northern clergy, whose | one idea on the subject of schools is, that the more power | churchmen have over them the better. But the trustees, with a | breadth of healthy and unprejudiced view, very different from | the common educational notions current in church courts, | referred emphatically to . So far the trustees. It is, in | truth, a sad thing to think, that the scurviness of our Scottish | aristocrats will not allow a teacher of youth any convenient | standing-room within the bounds of his own profession, but he | must even be content to eke out his scanty income, with the small | fees of a session or an heritor's clerkship; and be eager to supply | his lack of personal dignity by grasping greedily, at every | turning, after assistant-preacherships, and other ecclesiastical | expectancies. There is but one way to remedy this evil, and it | must be had recourse to; make the teacher's status as respectable | as the preacher's. Let every parochial teacher have £150 a-year | of salary, besides his fees; and let the common courts of justice | be open to him equally with any other citizen. Nothing less will | do it. | There is but one more matter to be touched on with reference to | the personal condition of the schoolmaster; and that is his | professional fitness. On this head, the Report of the trustees of | the Dick Bequest furnishes the most unquestionable evidence of | the faultiness of the present system of election and trial. | , say these gentlemen, . Now it was presently | found, that the trustees could not with certainty look to the | accomplishment of this object through the medium of the | electors; representations made to them, in | some instances, having apparently failed of any effect; since | teachers of immature age, incomplete education, and without | experience, were appointed to supply the vacancies in the cases | referred to. A statutory requirement of preparatory study, | or professional training, might have afforded some check to | elections, which could not but be regarded as unfortunate; no | such legal requirement, however, exists. Nor | was an adequate remedy found in the presbyter's power of trial. | That power did not prevent admission in the cases referred | to; nor is it supposed that it could have done so. The presbyter's | trial is statutory, strictly defined and limited to certain express | objects, which do not embrace any branches but such as the | heritors may have prescribed, and do not include the essentially | important inquiry of aptitude to teach. Besides, that admission | by the presbytery, which must take place where the presentee | possesses the minimum of needful | acquirement, could afford no guidance to a trust which, in the | distribution of its funds, makes the quantum | of acquirement an express

"element of consideration." |

| The school, and the schoolmaster, having been thus so miserably | provided, we shall not be surprised to find farther, that neither in | quantity nor in quality is the teaching in our parochial schools | generally what it should be; and, as for methods of teaching, that | even where they have both arms and weapons, the masters in | many cases, do not know how to use them. The returns from the | Haddington district, for instance, under the heads of Music and | Drawing, two of the most essential elements of popular | education, present, with one exception, an utter blank; indeed, | beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic, and even these taught in | a very imperfect way, many of our parochial schools exhibit a | barrenness equalled only by the vegetation of the bleak moors | where they are situated. In the Report on the Presbyteries of | Tongue and Tain, Mr. Gibson, under a separate head, remarks on | . And to the same purpose the Dick Bequest examiners, | in one of their reports, state that in . , they | add, . So much for the subjects taught. With regard to | the method of teaching, Mr. Gibson, in his Report on the | Presbyteries of Aberdeen and Fordyce, bears the following sad | testimony: | | | | One point of our review of facts remains; the superintendence | and inspectorship of the parochial schools. After what has been | stated, we need not prove formally what is evident on the face of | the whole narrative, that this superintendence and inspectorship, | on the part both of the heritors and of the church, has been most | weak and inefficient, in some respects altogether nugatory. We | need not repeat here what we said already, when talking of the | principles on which our parochial system is founded, that to | expect efficient educational superintendence and inspectorship | from men who were sufficiently occupied otherwise, was from | the beginning a futility. While we, therefore, give all due credit | to Professor Robertson of Edinburgh for his candid admission, | that implies a great deal more than | anything that the Scottish presbyteries have | hitherto done in the matter; we can by no means go along with | him in thinking that

"our national church"

is the only | proper body by which that superintendence can be effectively | exercised. The idea, that unprofessional churchmen may be | made to act efficiently as a permanent board of educational | inspectors, is the natural conception of an active doctor of | divinity, and nothing more. The experience of one hundred and | fifty years is against it. | We have only one further remark with regard to the inspectorship | of schools in Scotland; and it is a remark which we submit to our | practical men as worthy of the most serious consideration. Mr. | Gibson has, in his Reports, arranged the teachers of the different | parishes into three classes, according to their merits, ~~ | first, those who did their business altogether | in a thorough and efficient style; second, | those who did not want talents, but did seem to know, or in | some cases even to be anxious about knowing, how to use them; | third, those who were utterly incapable | and inefficient. Now, what we have to suggest is, that, when the | salaries are raised, as they must immediately be, they be raised, | not uniformly, but according to a scale of efficiency drawn up | from the reports of official inspectors. The practicability, as well | as the beneficial effects, of this have been proved by the trustees | of the Dick Bequest; and it were well, indeed, not merely for | parochial schoolmasters, but for all public servants, if a regular | system were adopted of paying them, in some measure, | according to the zeal and energy they display in the execution of | their duties. What a strange turning of the tables with some men, | would the introduction of this plain principle of justice effect! a | Dick Bequest trusteeship, for instance, suspended over the heads | of the Court of Session, or some sinecure sheriffdom, with power | to add or to take away hundreds, according to the number of | cases on the roll! | We conclude with the following little history, from a Highland | glen in Sutherlandshire. It is worth a volume of pleadings. | | | . |