§ MR. CLAUDE HAY (Shoreditch, Hoxton),in rising to move—"That the Board of Education should require arrangements to be made by the local education authorities whereby every child compelled by law to attend a public elementary school shall have received proper nourishment before being subjected to mental or physical instruction, and that in cases in which proper food has not been provided for the child by its parents. it should be first supplied by the local education authority, and subsequently suitable action taken to recover the cost, "said that practically everyone who cared for education was agreed about two things: first. that 782 when the body was half-starved the mind could not work well; and, secondly, that the supply of the, necessary food at school by the State impinged upon the great principle of parental responsibility. He did not deny that the difficulties were considerable, but that was no reason why they should leave this vital question alone or permit it to be tinkered by private charity, involving the uncertainty which attached to voluntary effort and the pauperising effect of doles. It was necessary to face the widespread disappointment resulting from thirty years compulsory education. That disappointment was shared both by the opponents and by the supporters of compulsory education, and it led to the conclusion, not that 783 compulsory education should be abandoned, but that it should be made effective.
What was the cause of failure? Was it found that the men and women of to-day who had passed through the schools were so much superior to their fathers and mothers as the authors of compulsory education believed they would be? In reality the gain in intelligence was, to say the least of it, equivocal, while the physical degeneration of the people was obvious. The reason was largely that we had taken education as an isolated factor, whereas it was part of an absolutely indivisible unit. We had compelled children to receive a certain amount of daily intellectual instruction. But we had assumed that which all science rejected, viz., that the intellect could act independently of all other parts of the total human being. We had ignored the body, the soul, and the will, and the result had been a fiasco. We had conceived the children of the poor as being of diametrically opposite constitution to the children of the rich, for at the public schools prominence— perhaps undue prominence—was given to the care and culture of the body and the discipline of manners; but until recently no such consideration formed part of the compulsory education of the workman's child. The hour being late, instead of going into the historical question of the factory laws, which had protected the lives and bodies of our adult workers, he would content himself by saying that if compulsory education had been inaugurated by a Tory Government. the Disraelian principle of mens Sana in corpore sano would not have been ignored as it was by the middle class commercialists. who regarded it as a sin that the State should nourish the bodies of the children whose brains they compelled to work, just as they held it to be monstrous for the State to protect the mill-hand and the miner. By this Motion he was not taking a leaf out of the book of the Party opposite, but was following the principles which governed the action and the creed of the Party to which he was proud to belong.
Passing to the commercial view—that of profit and loss—he asked, Could it pay the State to spend colossal sums on the in- 784 tellectual instruction of children who were bodily unable to receive it? In his opinion, all money so spent was shear waste. The laws insisted upon three necessaries being provided at school, viz., fresh air, pure water, and adequate warmth. In addition there were three other necessaries of the condition in which the children came to school, viz., food, clothes, and cleanliness. The local authority was now responsible for the education of the children. The local authority had to provide fresh air, pure water, and warmth, but the local authority was not allowed to make inquiries first and provide these necessaries for education afterwards. It was forbidden to inquire whether a parent was poor, or lazy, or drunken, or whether the education it compelled the child to undergo weakened parental responsibility. The local authority was charged by Parliament to secure to every child that was born a share in the common heritage of education. He held, therefore, that the feeding at school of the necessitous child was a corollary of compulsory education.
The subject must be dealt with from the point of view of the children. The first duty to the child whose guardianship for educational purposes the State had now assumed was to see that it had a fair chance in its equipment for life. They could not leave the child unfed or underfed whilst they were discussing parental responsibility, for the child would neither grow up healthy nor do justice to the education they forced upon it at great public expense. What would be thought of a manufacturer who provided machinery at great cost and then fed it with raw material utterly unfit to produce the article intended? To say that it was better for the moral character of the parent to let the child starve—-for that was what the ultimate assertion of the lessening of parental responsibility amounted to—was to urge that by the gradual general improvement, moral and material, of the community, unfed or underfed children would disappear. It was obvious that to prevent underfeeding of children now was an effective instrument for promoting general improvement, and in any case many school children would come and go before the underfed child disappeared, if they relied 785 upon the gradual general improvement of the community of adults as their only remedy. If they relied upon the general improvement of the community for the solution they must at once consider the conditions under which they asked the parents of today to feed their children suitably. Had they the accommodation, and had they the time and the knowledge? Two-thirds of the population was now urban. They were crammed into cramped dwellings in drab streets. A house originally intended for one family was often inhabited by six families, and they had insufficient, if any, appliances. To parents who were employed away from home all day, appliances in their homes for a midday meal were almost useless, and they would prefer to pay for a good meal provided at school rather than provide money for the child to spend at the fried fish shop. Everybody complained of bad cooking in England and deplored the lack of interest in the home and housewifery which was characteristic of the men and women of to-day. The fact was that the bulk of the people did not know what was suitable food for their children. Not long ago he asked an eleven-year-old girl what she had had for dinner, and she replied: "I had some cheese and pickles." A physician told a friend of his that when examining children at a hospital, he found the most effective manner of ascertaining the diet of his child patient was to accuse the fond parent of starving the child, whereupon he invariably received the indignant reply, "'E 'as all we get, "which generally meant hunks of ill-cooked meat and other heavy food late in the evening, and little if nothing during the day. Was there no experience whereby to test this bogey? The Report of the Royal College on Physical Training, 1903 (Scotland), on page 30, paragraph 167, declared that—
The preparation and cooking of meals (at school) where it is found necessary to provide for them should be regarded as one of the charges incident to school management.Paragraph 170—In a country district where the children of the ploughman and farm labourers were the poorest, a system of providing broth, etc., at school during the five winter months was carried out with the approval of the parents. A small charge was made to cover the cost. Similar attempts have been made elsewhere, 786 and we do not see why they should not generally prevail.The London School Board Committee's investigations proved that 35,579 children under sixteen years of age were receiving outdoor relief in the 3rd week of February, 1895; and farther investigations in 18)8 showed that 55,050 underfed children attended school; 31,280 children at Board schools, and 23,770 children at voluntary schools. The Report of the School Board Joint Committee on underfed children, issued dune, 1902, recorded that a weekly average number of 20,085 children received a weekly average of 46,619 meals. The Report issued June. 1903, showed that 22.208 children received a weekly average of 54,572 meals during twenty weeks in winter. Daring that period the average school attendance at Board schools was 475,000 children, and at voluntary schools 178,000 children. Assuming the percentage of underfed children at Board and voluntary schools to be the same, there would be 9,000 underfed children at voluntary schools, or a total of 31,000 underfed children for Board and voluntary schools, which was equal to 5 per cent. of the total attendance. But a number escaped the net, therefore the total of underfed children in London might be fairly put at 35,000. To provide 35,000 children with dinner for 120 days at a penny per meal would cost £17,250. Add a halfpenny breakfast, and the total cost would be £26,280, or considerably less than a rate of a farthing in the £. To provide every child at school (taking the average attendance) would cost London in dinners and breakfasts £489,800, or a rate of 3½d. Did London experience, extending over an average attendance daily of nearly 750,000 children at school, point to school feeding, paid or gratis, pauperising the family and destroying parental responsibility? He would give one or two examples on this point. The National Food Supply Association state—We are not aware of a single instance of a man earning 30s. per week abusing the system by coming to us for a ½d. dinner.Mr. Libby, of the Lambeth Teachers Association, writes—In many cases when the parent has obtained work the children go at once and, inform the teacher, and some of the parents as an act of gratitude for food supplied free to 787 their children when they were out of work, have sent contributions for those still in need of help.and Mr. Burgwin says—I do not think free meals tend to pauperise a district; in fact, tickets for free meals are often returned by parents directly they find work.He would not describe the experience of Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Bristol, and Newcastle, beyond saying that in these cities voluntary effort, combined with School Board committees, fed necessitous children with results similar to those of London.In Paris in February, 1881 Le Conseil Municipal determined to assist in providing poor children with a free meal upon the following lines. (1) Free meals to children known to be in want, whether their parents were paupers or not. (2) Establishment of canteens at the various schools under the control of the Mayor and School Fund Committee. (3) No meal to be served except on presentation of a check which could be bought, or was given gratuitously to the children. (4) Secrecy as to whether the check was bought or received free. The Caisse des Ecoles provided a free meal daily for those who could not afford to pay. This meal was provided in the school playroom. No degradation attached to those who partook of a free meal because the children who paid for their meal ate alongside the children who received a free dinner. On this point he wishes to quote the following statistics—
In Paris the teachers practically selected the needy scholars, and at the beginning of each day's school the teachers distributed copper counters, having already received from their parents in the 788 case of some children the requisite payment. When the dinner hour arrived the children presented these counters and received food in exchange. It would thus be seen that the work was based upon the following principles:—The work was primarily municipal, private gifts and grants from the rates being pooled to help the children. The first intention was to facilitate the use of education. The child was not fed two or three days each week, but every school day. There was no feeling of pauperising. The combining of those who were aided by public gifts and those who could pay for themselves did not cause unsatisfactory feeling. Paris says, "We compel the children to go to school. We must then see that they can learn with advantage, so that they may really benefit." In Berlin the city corporation granted a considerable sum annually to give free breakfasts to poor children at the public schools, with the happiest results. In Rome the Minister of Public Instruction made a large grant for feeding school children gratis; and in Christiana (Norway) the municipal authorities distributed food amongst poor school children. In the case of Berne, which was the last one he would quote, the system of providing free meals for underfed children was a fair specimen of that existing in the rest of Switzerland. The expenses were covered by-State and Communal subsidies, as well as by bequests and voluntary contributions. The teachers testified to the consequent increased school attendance, as well as to the improved application and acquisitive powers of the children. His plan was to begin by the State providing free meals at school for necessitous children, and, if found desirable thereafter, to provide school meals for all children on payment. Local authorities now had the care of the children for educational purposes and it was their duty to see that underfeeding ceased. There could obviously be no system of school meals without proper home visiting. Thus the parent who could pay would be forced to pay by process of law, and the parent unable to pay would be assisted by a loan under Poor Law, as was the case with school fees before compulsory education became free. There would be no pauperising-Experience at home and abroad showed 789 that since 1888, parents, with rare exceptions, gladly paid when they could. The people who now neglected the children ought to be punished, but it had never been possible to get a conviction for underfeeding. If the State provided food, those who neglected their children would be punished. There would be a much more effective machinery for ascertaining the means of the parent, and it would be the business of a powerful public authority with complete local knowledge to bring delinquents to justice, whereas now it was nobody's business, therefore prosecutions were few and usually failed. They would not require a large and expensive staff, because four-fifths of the child population of the United Kingdom was under the daily observation of the local authority. Accurate information was easily obtainable by the teachers, as they were persons trained in the observation of children, and this could be supplemented by the school attendance officer's investigations. The conclusion of the whole matter was that either they must drop compulsory education, or they must see that the children were properly fed, for they could not educate unfed or underfed children; therefore, if they were determined to educate them, feed them they must. Why did the State educate them? Because it considered that a healthy educated man or woman was the most valuable asset the State could possess. Expansion and vitality of industry depended directly upon the calibre of the individual. They were all agreed that individual calibre was not now all that they desired. To make it so. were they going to stop at the penny, having paid the pound? They could go on acquiescing in a state of things which allowed too many of the poorer parents of to-day to say with old John of Gaunt—
Year. Proportion of Municipal Subvention to total receipts per cent. Number of meals distributed. School population. 1892 Cost £27,000 6,971,340 62.80 1894 165,977 1897 Cost £36,000 8,229,870 169,832 67.84
§ SIR JOHN GORST (Cambridge University)said that in rising to second this Motion he did not mean to go through again the very cogent facts which 790 his hon. friend had so forcibly brought before the House in support of his Motion, but he would content himself by saying that he doubted at the present day whether anybody would deny the proposition that children ought to be fed before they were taught. That there were in elementary schools a considerable number of underfed children who were not fit to profit by the education which was supplied by the taxpayer and the ratepayer at so very high a cost, no one would deny, and he thought that the time had now come for deciding that there had been enough talk about this matter, and that what was wanted was not so much a debate and a Resolution as some definite and distinct action on the part of the Government and the local authorities, who had already considerable powers, and who would require additional powers after they had put those they already possessed into force-The great obstacle in the way of the adoption of the plan sketched out by his hon. friend was the reluctance which far-seeing people entertained to weakening parental responsibility for the feeding of the children. In this country he was happy to say that the vast bulk of the poorest class were very fond of their children, and were prepared to make great sacrifices for their benefit. Anyone who had mixed with the poor could supply examples of the most pathetic devotion, principally of mothers and largely of fathers who denied themselves many things in order to benefit their children and give them a fair chance in life. Those people were perfectly ready to come in and assist under any scheme for the better feeding of children in schools, and they would gladly pay enough to defray the cost of wholesome meals for the children. It would only be for a small section of the community that the full cost of feeding the school children would have to be paid. But there was also in this country a. section of people who did not care for their children and did not do their duty by them. They looked upon them as a 791 valuable asset to be put into money by hiring them out for their own profit. They were only careful to see how much they could make out of the children. They required that a sense of responsibility should be brought home to them. He objected to bringing home parental responsibility to the minority by letting the children starve; first, because a child was too valuable an instrument to be used for such a purpose, and. secondly, because such a course would be absolutely ineffective. Under such a system as that sketched out by the hon. Member they could not only put a stop to the hunger of the children, but would have an efficient instrument for bringing the parents to see what their real parental responsibility was. At present it was impossible to convict a parent of family neglect. If it were part of the duty of teachers to provide children from day to day with tickets for meals and to report the children so provided, there would be most conclusive evidence that the parent had neglected to feed his children.
§ * MR. BOND (Nottingham, E.)How does the teacher know?
§ SIR JOHN GORSTsaid the teacher was the one person who did know, and if he were mistaken one day he would not be another. If, on application, the parent refused to refund the money for the meals provided there would be the most conclusive possible evidence of neglect of family on which any police magistrate could convict and punish the parent in a bad case. The child must be fed or else they could not teach him. Of course, there were a number of cases in which parents could not feed their children, and such cases would have to be reported to the Poor Law authority.
792 Motion made, and Question proposed,. "That the Board of Education should require arrangements to be made by the local education authorities whereby every child compelled by law to attend a public elementary school shall have received proper nourishment before being subjected to mental or physical instruction, and that in cases in which proper food has not been provided for the child by its parents, it should be first supplied by the local education authority, and subsequently suitable action taken to recover the cost."—(Mr. Claude Hay.)
§ * DR. MACNAMARA (Camberwell, N.)said he was very glad the opportunity had arisen for discussing this question. He reminded the House that he was for many years a Board school teacher in a very poor school, and that the sufferings of hungry children came before him day by day. Out of the 300 boys in the school in which he taught twenty-five or thirty did not go home in the dinner hour because there was nothing to go home to. Thirty or forty others would also stay and have nothing to eat but a crust of bread or an onion. He had seen two brothers, in cold, frosty weather, sitting against a wall making a meal off a cold turnip, and he had known boys many times become sick directly cold, frosty weather came, because their stomachs were empty. The first thing he did as a member of the London School Board was to ask for a committee on the subject. There had been a committee in 1889, and that committee found that 48,000 children came to school daily hungry, and that benevolent efforts could only reach the needs of half of them. The third committee which was got together in 1898 came to the definite conclusion 793 that private and charitable agencies could never cope with this problem properly. He personally had come to the following conclusions: That it was absolute cruelty to endeavour to teach a hungry child; that to try to do so was to waste money; that it was nationally a policy of reckless profligacy to let these unfortunate slum children go on in the condition in which they now were; that we must feed the child before we attempted to teach it; that charitable agencies could not cope with this work; and that, if private benevolent agencies could not deal with this problem. the matter must become a public obligation. Parental responsibility, he fully admitted, must not be lessened. Parents who could not make provision for their children must be assisted as a public obligation and without any suggestion of pauperisation. But those who could and would not feed their children must be severely punished. Reference had been made to the neglectful working class parent, but "working class" was not the right term, for in many cases they did not work. The great bulk of the working classes made enormous sacrifices for their children. But there was a small minority of thoroughly thriftless, self-indulgent, and drunken parents, who brought children into the world for their own pleasure, and handed them over on the first opportunity to the care of others. Why punish a child by allowing him to go hungry because of the shaking off of parental responsibility? He would therefore say that they must punish those parents who could and would not do their duty.
§ THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Sir WILLIAM ANSON,) Oxford University794 said he was sorry that this interesting and important debate had to be curtailed into so small a compass. Hon. Members were aware, from a communication he addressed to the House before Easter, that a Committee which was sitting was collecting a quantity of very important and valuable evidence on this subject, but he felt that the matter was ripe for discussion, and that the discussion should not be delayed until the Committee reported. The difficulties which beset the matter were, he thought, obvious from the fact that the Member for Cambridge University when in office did not feel able to make any proposal for dealing with the question. The evil was a mere episode in the life of poverty, a local symptom of a widespread evil. They had not merely to deal with the individual child which went hungry to school; they had to deal with children ill-fed; ill-managed, ill-nurtured from birth, who were themselves behind the rest of the children and hindered their education. From evidence submitted to the Committee. it appeared that about 90 per cent. of the children in whatever class started with an average chance of a healthy life; but in the case of slum children by the time they reached school age 60 per cent. were below the normal standard. The regularity of school life so far benefited the children that midway in that life the percentage below the normal diminished to 40 per cent., and at the conclusion it fell to about 15 per cent. This showed that they had to deal with two classes of children, and with a very wide-reaching evil. The parents of these children did not know how to feed them. Some of the remedies were attainable without legislation, such as the gradual teaching of the laws of 795 health. The Board of Education migh do something by communicating with local authorities. through its intelligence department, what was being done in the matter by other local authorities. But there were some things which could only be dealt with by the State. The case of retarded children in particular could only be dealt with by an extension of the system of truant and industrial schools in which the children would get their meals, a smaller amount of intel lectual teaching and a considerable amount of manual exercise and work-about the house. The case of children brought to school occasionally underfed he would like to see dealt with by voluntary effort, organised and conducted under the local authority. He thought they might work out a scheme to meet the difficulties and evils discussed that night. He could not vote for the Resolution as it stood, because he did not think it was right that the House should impose on a Department of the Government an obligation to require a local authority to do a certain thing which involved very careful consideration in the working out, and which could not be worked out except with full information and careful consideration. He might say that whether the Resolution were carried or not, he would continue to devote his attention to the subject. If the Resolution should be rejected he would work on patiently in the endeavour to solve the question. If it were accepted he should not be hurried into submitting any crude or ill-considered scheme. Having said this, he hoped the House would understand that his attention was seriously directed to the question, and in the circumstances they might be disposed to leave it in his hands.
§ * MR. BONDsaid the question now before the House was really part of the greater question of the poverty of the people and of the means of meeting the distresses which poverty brought with it. It involved also the question of how far it was incumbent on the State to aid parents to discharge one of their primary responsibilities-, namely, to provide food for the children they brought into the world.
And, it being Midnight, Mr. SPEAKER proceeded to interrupt the business.
Whereupon Mr. CLAUDE HAY rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put;" but Mr. SPEAKER withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question, and the debate stood adjourned.
§ Debate to be resumed upon Wednesday next.