HL Deb 16 July 1883 vol 281 cc1465-73
LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY

, in rising to call the attention of the House to the increase of insanity; and to ask the Lord President, If the Education Office has inquired into the effects of overwork in elementary schools, alleged to have occurred by various letters in the daily press; and to ask him, if be will reconsider the letter of the Education Office of the 19th January 1882, sanctioning compulsion by Board schools in the matter of home lessons? said, that for some time those who watched over lunacy had endeavoured to cherish the hope that its increase was only apparent, and due to the removal of lunatics from workhouses to the asylums; but now, at last, the Lunacy Commissioners admitted that lunacy had increased, and this same admission was made last Thursday by Mr. Hibbert, when speaking on behalf of the Government on the Vote for the Lunacy Commission. The recent increase of lunacy must be principally attributed to intemperance; but it was nothing as compared with the increase of brain disease, which might shortly be expected, unless the warnings given by some of the highest authorities in the Medical Profession were to be disregarded. Those warnings pointed to overwork at schools as producing fatal effects. Dr. Hack Tuke said, in his address at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association in August, 1879— It is in schools and colleges that we must sometimes seek for the causes of mental disturbance. Brain-fag and epilepsy often proceed from educational strain, and Dr. Andrew Clarke writes to me in these words—'I am witness to the irreparable mischief sometimes done at school.' At a certain high school in a large town, I know of two of the same family who died of brain fever, the physicians certifying that it was caused by educational over-pressure. Dr. Crichton Browne, Visitor of Chancery lunatics, said, at the Annual Medical Meeting, in August, 1880— Of the many conditions tending to the increase of mental disease I would specially direct your attention to education.…. Injudicious haste or ill-considered zeal may work serious mischief among fragile or badly nourished children, by inducing exhaustion of the brain. It is a curious fact that, since the recent spread of education, the increase of deaths from hydro-cephalous has not been among infants, but among children over five years of age. Much other testimony might be produced of the bad effects on children of overwork; but it could not be necessary to multiply instances, after all the correspondence which had been so recently published in the daily Press. There could be no doubt that this overwork, and the complaints against it that had arisen on all sides, were due to the increased severity of the Revised Code, and the difficulty of satisfying the School Inspectors so as to obtain the grant. In one of the schools, in which some children had died of brain fever, and where several of the teachers had broken down from overwork and anxiety, the hours of work all the year round had been seven and three-quarters, and for three months before the examinations, the dunces, or less forward children, had an additional hour, from 8.15 to 9.15, making eight and three-quarter hours. Those hours of overwork did not appear in the time table of the school. The teachers worked exactly by the time table as far as it went, and then worked overtime. This overtime work was not peculiar to one district, for, lately, an address was delivered in the South of England to schoolmasters against this very thing. This overtime was also ex-acted from children in Board schools. An ex-Chairman of the Wolverhampton School Board wrote— I was Chairman of the Wolverhampton School Board. We were obliged to issue a circular to the masters and mistresses of our Board schools forbidding this being done, as we found that for some weeks previous to the examination it was the common practice to keep the whole children at work overtime with a view to preparing them for the examination, and we found their play hours unduly curtailed, and too great a strain put upon some of them by this practice. The Education Department would, of course, say that the school boards and managers of elementary schools ought not to allow this overtime work. That was true; but the teachers said it was the only way in which they could get "excellent" for their schools, and earn the grant. Why should the Education Department dangle "excellent" before every master and mistress, and, having, with every new edition of the Revised Code, raised the standard of learning, make it really wrong for those teachers to attempt to get "excellent" and to secure the grant? One of the set of schools from which complaints had arisen had received "excellent" for all the schools, yet the Department had deducted £57 from those schools, under Article 114 of the New Code. Some years ago, the Standard for examination in Arithmetic used to be lower in girls' than in boys' schools, because the girls had to spend a considerable time in learning sewing and knitting. This was altered now, and boys and girls had to pass the same examination. With regard to the letter of the Education Office of January 19, 1882, intimating that the School Board would be justified in refusing admission of a boy into the Board school— Until his parent undertook that he should do home lessons, and otherwise conform to the rules and discipline of the school. This letter arose out of the objections of a father at Todmorden, in Lancashire, who considered five or six hours a-day as much work as his children were physically well able to bear. The schoolmaster claimed that parents were bound to see that their children performed all the tasks that he ordered them out of school hours, and this was enforced by flogging and otherwise punishing the children on their return to school, if the schoomaster's requirements were not complied with. As to flogging and other punishments, when a father selected a school for his son, it was but natural that the schoolmaster should be in loco parentis, and exercise discretion as to the school children; but in these cases of compulsory education, where the father could exercise no selection, it seemed to follow that the discretion of the schoolmaster as to flogging ought to be limited. Now, apart from the bad effects mental and physical of this overwork, this action of the Todmorden School Board and the support given to it by the Education Office appeared to be illegal, and ultra vires, and contrary to the Education Act of 1870, Section 74, Sub-section 2, according to which the compulsory powers under which the bye-laws were framed were not intended to go further than to "determine the time during which children were to attend 'school.'" If that was so, until the Act of 1870 was amended, the Education Office would be bound to withdraw the sanction which it had given to overwork and home lessons. The noble Lord concluded by asking the Question of which he had given Notice.

LORD CARLINGFORD (LORD PRESIDENT of the COUNCIL)

, in reply, said, that, with regard to the alleged fact as to the increase of insanity, he was unable to give any information, and must leave that question to be dealt with by others, for it was not part of the duty of the Education Department to deal with the subject of insanity. He regretted his noble Friend (Lord Stanley of Alderley) had mixed up that matter with the other Question addressed to him, because it only had the effect of imparting an air of gross exaggeration to the statement relative to the effect of overwork in elementary schools. That question was a very reasonable one to raise as regarded some schools; and he should be happy to give the best answer he could to it. His noble Friend had asked him whether the Education Department had inquired into the truth of the statements that had appeared in letters in the newspapers, and so on. He could assure his noble Friend that the Education Department were making very careful inquiries into the matter. The Education Department had also consulted the most experienced of their Inspectors upon the subject—gentlemen not only of the greatest experience, but who had the greatest sympathy with the children, and who would, therefore, not be likely to sanction any regulation from the Education Department which might result in causing overwork. The result of the inquiries made showed that while there were here and there cases of such a thing as overwork on the part of children, and more so on the part of ardent pupil teachers, who were anxious to distinguish themselves, and attain the object of their ambition, upon the whole, there was very little ground for the wide and highly-coloured statements that had appeared in some of the newspapers. His noble Friend had given a very positive opinion as to the cause of the overwork, saying that it arose entirely from the increased requirements of the Code. That, however, could not be the source of the overwork, if there were any. Whatever overwork there might be, he was confident it in no way proceeded from the requirements of the Code, which, so far from having been increased, had been relaxed. The Code of this year, just come into operation, was distinctly more easy in its requirements than before. The truth was, that overwork did not take place in consequence of the requirements of the Code, which was anything but a cast-iron rule, applicable to all schools alike, but arose from mistakes—very often made with the best intentions—and from over-zeal on the part of the managers of schools. His noble Friend had mentioned a case in which the children had been kept under instruction for seven or eight hours a-day. But that was entirely beyond the requirements of the Code, which required a school time of 25 hours a-week, or an average of five hours a-day—four hours for secular instruction, and one hour for religious instruction and other matters, which filled up the time. That was the maximum required by the Education Department; and any instruction to the children beyond those hours was entirely the doing of the local managers, and not under the authority of the Code. He had recently read an able and interesting discussion that took place at a meeting of the Society of Clerks of School Boards; and it was evident, from that discussion, that the real cause of overwork was to be found in the requirements of local educational authorities. The main cause of the excessive pressure from which children and pupil teachers sometimes suffered arose, he thought, from the want of regularity of attendance, from the want of regular instruction from the beginning of the school year to the end, and from too great and ambitious an endeavour as regarded the teaching of subjects which were not compulsory, and which were often beyond the strength of the school staff to teach properly. To attend to this, however, was the work of the school managers; but there was no reason why they should go beyond their powers. Any school might earn a very fair grant by confining itself to the ordinary subjects of instruction; and it was, undoubtedly, a mistake for the managers of a school to attempt more than their staff enabled them to accomplish. His noble Friend, who had referred to a correspondence on the subject of home lessons, was mistaken in thinking that the Education Department intended to lay down any compulsory rule with regard to home lessons; neither had it done anything to stimulate the practice of enforcing such lessons. It was the opinion of the Inspectors, and of the best of the teachers, that while, in many cases, these lessons were extremely useful and desirable, they were by no means desirable in all cases. In the case at Todmorden, to which the noble Lord had specially drawn attention, the reasons for the refusal of the Department to interfere with the discretion of the School Board were to be found in the particular circumstances of that case, and were in no way connected with a desire to lay down any general rule of a compulsory kind. The father of the boy gave no reasons for refusing to allow his son to learn home lessons. He simply refused to allow his boy to learn them, without alleging one single excuse. In the correspondence which had taken place on the subject the Department had done no more than decline to interfere with the discretion of the school managers. He would assure his noble Friend that the Education Department generally would impress on the managers of schools the absolute necessity of guarding against overwork on the part of pupil teachers and children.

THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY

said, that if the noble Lord (Lord Stanley of Alderley), in calling the attention of the House to the increase of insanity, meant to assert that insanity in general was on the increase, he was much in error. He (the Earl of Shaftesbury) questioned very much whether recent cases of insanity were out of proportion to the normal increase of the population. If the figures appeared larger than formerly, he should suspect that it was owing to the searching out of numbers of old chronic cases who were now brought into asylums and workhouses throughout the country, and which had hitherto been left out of the reckoning. In his opinion, there was considerable ground for entertaining the belief that insanity would rather diminish than increase. The Temperance movement and Bands of Hope were beginning to produce great effect, and the Blue Ribbon movement would, perhaps, produce the greatest of all. But if the noble Lord alluded to a special kind of insanity, arising from nervous disorders and brain disease, produced by overstraining of the intellectual powers, especially among those just rising into adult life, he would be right; but the number of persons so afflicted was not large enough to affect the statistical Table of Insanity in general. The noble Lord, however, had done well in bringing this subject before the House, for the matter was really serious. In 1871 there were, according to the Census of that year, 32,901 males, and 94,239 females employed in this country as teachers, schoolmasters, schoolmistresses, governesses, professors, and lecturers. In 1882, there were admitted into the asylums of England and Wales 183 persons belonging to the teaching class, 38 males, and 145 females. They had not as yet the aggregate number of that class existing in 1882; but, supposing that it had risen to 200,000. the proportion of lunatics would be very large; and it should be remembered that there were much larger numbers who were more or less affected, but who fell short of actual insanity. The same might be observed of the children who might be intellectually weakened for life, but who, perhaps, might never actually enter the doors of an asylum. Many people had begun to see that the forcing system in schools, and the burning competition for place and position among teachers, were producing much mental injury. He considered that the state of things which existed was well worthy of the consideration of Her Majesty's Government.

LORD NORTON

said, that nobody asserted that there was anything in the Code itself which necessitated overstraining. The insanity referred to by his noble Friend (Lord Stanley of Alderley) was owing to the fact that the pupils' brains were overtaxed, not so much by the requirements of the Code, as by the manner in which effect was given to the demands of our present system. The letters of the Inspectors which he (Lord Norton) had seen stated that what was stipulated for in the Code was not real, but merely nominal—the whole thing was a sham. In a town like Birmingham, there was hardly a child in any elementary school over 13 years old, and it was a mere farce to attempt to teach science to children of that age; yet there were attached to the School Board of Birmingham two officers called "Demonstrators of Science," who lectured on science experimentally, asked questions of the children, and answered them themselves. It was abundantly proved that overwork, with all its attendant evils, resulted from the system now in force of giving grants for a show of such instruction under the Code, the tendency of which was to make the children the slaves of the teachers, who were, to a great extent, paid by such results, and had, therefore, the strongest motives for preparing exceptionally clever children to exhibit feats of learning, a process which necessarily did the children far more harm than good. The Treasury had to lavish public money for results not merely useless, but actually injurious to body and mind. That being notoriously the case, the Lord President might, perhaps, have regarded in a more serious light the facts that had been adduced. The Code, of course, ought to be reduced to the actual practice of the schools; there should be no parade and empty show of knowledge, and no stimulus should be given to the teachers in the shape of prizes for extra work. Let them give children of all kinds a solid elementary education they could after wards take advantage of, and not make only a show of education to obtain an income for themselves out of Treasury grants.

After a few words from Lord ELLEN-BOROUGH,

[Subject dropped.]