RESOLUTION. (Hansard, 27 May 1862)

§ COLONEL SYKES

said, he rose to submit the following Resolution: — That, in any system of Education by Government aid, provision should be made for teaching in Industrial Schools; and that, with a view to encourage evening study by adult operatives, provision, be made for supplying a Teacher in such Mechanics' Institutes as may apply for one. The results obtained from the system of education in the schools assisted by the Government grant were admitted to be very imperfect and unsatisfactory. Even the elements of reading and writing tolerably well were limited to a minority of the pupils, and it was not usual to find a child able to master the multiplication table. But supposing these things learned, they no more constituted education than plates and knives and forks made a dinner; they were merely means to an end. By far the greater number (at least 86 per cent) of children in Government schools, who entered at or after six, were compelled to leave the schools before or at ten years of age, their parents needing the profit of their labour. Those who remained beyond that age were not the children of the labouring poor, but of the middle class, who were able to pay for their education elsewhere. The returns indicated that the maximum attendance of children at school was at eight years of age, and that after that age the attendance rapidly declined. If Members compared the results of the system pursued in these schools with the benefits actually conferred on the poorer class of children by the training of the Industrial Schools supported by private efforts, they would agree with him in urging them on the Government for assistance. The Industrial Schools, by the combination of mental and physical labours, reconciled children to the restraints of school. While, in addition to literary culture, the girls were taught washing, cooking, housework, and needlework, the boys learned trades, gardening, agriculture, household work, baking, &c. In Scotland these schools had been eminently successful. In Aberdeen-shire, Sheriff Watson's Industrial Schools had greatly diminished juvenile offences and vagrancy; and Dr. Guthrie, who had greatly interested himself in this class of schools, bore strong testimony to the advantages society derived from them; and the Inspector of Reformatories reported— 58 I think the value of these industrial certified schools in Scotland can scarcely be exaggerated. And the Commissioners, in their Report on the State of Popular Education in England, at page 402, used these words— It appears to us that the object which Industrial Schools are intended to promote is one which should not be left to private individuals, but should be accomplished at the public expense and by public authority. Nevertheless, such serviceable schools were left without aid from the education grant; though, with singular incongruity, if the children educated by philanthropic individuals at such schools had committed offences against the laws, and had been passed to a reformatory, an allowance of five shillings per head per week would be granted for them! In consequence of this state of things, Dr. Guthrie addressed a memorial to the Committee of Privy Council on Education, asking for aid for Industrial Schools, and was refused. he then called public attention to the subject in a letter, dated Edinburgh, 17th May, 1862, from which he (Colonel Sykes) would quote a few words— I pray you to observe that we do not ask one penny from the public funds to feed these hungry, to cloth these naked, or, when it is necessary, to house these homeless children; but we complain of it as a monstrous wrong, that the Committee of Council, to whom are intrusted the monies voted for education, should deny us all help to educate them ! They refuse to aid us in educating those whose circumstances are so desperate, that unless we burthened ourselves to a greater or less extent with their maintenance, they must go altogether uneducated, having no choice but to beg, steal, or starve. Although this language was strong, it was not too strong for the occasion; for social economists were quite aware that ignorance and want of occupation in nine cases out of ten were the causes of juvenile crime; and it must be patent to Members, that the "Blacking Brigades" of poor boys in London had done more to diminish juvenile offences than all the legislative Acts ever passed. He therefore trusted that in any grant for educational purposes regard should be had for that class of children to whose case he now called the attention of the House.

§ MR. LOWE

said, that the hon. and gallant Gentleman had with much force pointed out the early age at which children left the schools under the system of the Privy Council, and also that many of the children left the schools without having acquired the rudiments of education. Agreeing with the hon. and gallant Member on these matters, he could not, however, join in the inference, that because children left the schools at an early age, without having acquired, in many instances, the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and of religion, therefore the remedy was to be sought in teaching them something else. He should have thought that the inference ought to be quite the opposite. It was unnecessary for him to go at any length into the subject, which had been thoroughly investigated by the Royal Commissioners, who reported against continuing the aid to the schools adverted to by the hon. and gallant Member. Last year a Committee of that House also investigated the subject, and reported against the grant of aid. The opinion of the Select Committee of the House of Commons was, that if the children in these schools were children who had committed offences of a minor description, there were reformatories in which they might be retained and reformed; and that if they were only poor and destitute, their case was then one for the intervention of the Poor Law by district workhouse schools. If, however, they were of a nondescript class, not comprisable in either one or other of the categories just mentioned, then the recommendation of the Select Committee was, that they should he left to the voluntary attention and kindness of persons actuated by charitable feelings; and the Select Committee most expressly reported against the proposition of the hon. and gallant Member. Such were the views of the Select Committee of last year, and they appeared to be founded in justice and good sense. The House would understand how difficult, or, indeed, how impossible, it would be to devise conditions on which public money should be granted to these schools, the very essence of them being that they were missionary efforts, trying to pick up the waifs and strays of society not amenable to discipline. Were he to put them under the discipline of the Privy Council and exact from them something definite in the shape of intellectual progress in exchange for money given, he should be injuring in the most vital man- 60 ner the object of these Industrial Schools, which was not so much intellectual as moral. It had been said of the ragged schools of London, presided over so admirably by the Earl of Shaftesbury, that they would be seriously injured by interference of any Government department. In like manner he was convinced that by interfering with Industrial Schools they would be doing harm instead of good. The hon. and gallant Member might, nevertheless, have made out an excellent case for private charity. Dr. Guthrie, it was true, had applied to the Privy Council for £700 in aid of similar schools, and was refused. Dr. Guthrie then appealed to the benevolence of the public, and the consequence was that he got £2,000; and that result Dr. Guthrie thought a great reflection on the Privy Council, but the matter ought to be regarded in quite a different light, not only as showing the extent of Dr. Guthrie's influence, but as pointing out a legitimate field for the exercise of private benevolence. He was perfectly convinced, that the duty of sustaining these Industrial Schools did not fall within his department, circumscribed within the limits in which it was restrained at present, and he was neither disposed to trench on the business of the Home Office with respect to the imprisonment of young criminals, nor upon that of the Poor Law Department in respect to feeding and supporting destitute children.