The lamentable deficiency of the commonest rudiments of education, which
still exists among the humbler classes of this nation, is never so
darkly apparent as when we compare their condition with that of people
of similar rank in other countries. When we do so, we find that England
stands the lowest in the scale of what truly must be looked upon as
_Civilisation_; for she provides fewer means for promoting it than any
of her neighbours. With us, education is a commodity to be trafficked
in: abroad, it is a duty. Here, schoolmasters are perfectly
irresponsible except to their paymasters: in other countries, teachers
are appointed by the state, and a rigid supervision is maintained over
the trainers of youth, both as regards competency and moral conduct. In
England, whoever is too poor to buy the article education, can get none
of it for himself or his offspring: in other parts of Europe, either the
government (as in Germany), or public opinion (as in America), enforces
it upon the youthful population.
What are the consequences? One is revealed by a comparison between the
proportion of scholars in elementary schools to the entire population of
other countries, and that in our own. Taking the whole of northern
Europe—including Scotland—and France and Belgium (where education is at
a low ebb), we find that to every 2¼ of the population, there is one
child acquiring the rudiments of knowledge; while in England there is
only one such pupil to every _fourteen_ inhabitants.
It has been calculated that there are, at the present day in England and
Wales, nearly 8,000,000 persons who can neither read nor write—that is
to say, nearly one quarter of the population. Also, that of all the
children between five and fourteen, more than one half attend no place
of instruction. These statements—compiled by Mr. Kay, from official and
other authentic sources, for his work on the Social Condition and
Education of the Poor in England and Europe, would be hard to believe,
if we had not to encounter in our every-day life degrees of illiteracy
which would be startling, if we were not thoroughly used to it. Wherever
we turn, ignorance, not always allied to poverty, stares us in the face.
If we look in the Gazette, at the list of partnerships dissolved, not a
month passes but some unhappy man, rolling perhaps in wealth, but
wallowing in ignorance, is put to the _experimentum crucis_ of ‘his
mark.’ The number of petty jurors—in rural districts especially—who can
only sign with a cross is enormous. It is not unusual to see parish
documents of great local importance defaced with the same humiliating
symbol by persons whose office shows them to be not only ‘men of mark,’
but men of substance. We have printed already specimens of the partial
ignorance which passes under the ken of the Post Office authorities, and
we may venture to assert, that such specimens of penmanship and
orthography are not to be matched in any other country in Europe. A
housewife in humble life need only turn to the file of her tradesmen’s
bills to discover hieroglyphics which render them so many arithmetical
puzzles. In short, the practical evidences of the low ebb to which the
plainest rudiments of education in this country has fallen, are too
common to bear repetition. We cannot pass through the streets, we cannot
enter a place of public assembly, or ramble in the fields, without the
gloomy shadow of Ignorance sweeping over us. The rural population is
indeed in a worse plight than the other classes. We quote—with the
attestation of our own experience—the following passage from one of a
series of articles which have recently appeared in a morning
newspaper:—‘Taking the adult class of agricultural labourers, it is
almost impossible to exaggerate the ignorance in which they live and
move and have their being. As they work in the fields, the external
world has some hold upon them through the medium of their senses; but to
all the higher exercises of intellect, they are perfect strangers. You
cannot address one of them without being at once painfully struck with
the intellectual darkness which enshrouds him. There is in general
neither speculation in his eyes, nor intelligence in his countenance.
The whole expression is more that of an animal than of a man. He is
wanting, too, in the erect and independent bearing of a man. When you
accost him, if he is not insolent—which he seldom is—he is timid and
shrinking, his whole manner showing that he feels himself at a distance
from you, greater than should separate any two classes of men. He is
often doubtful when you address, and suspicious when you question him;
he is seemingly oppressed with the interview, while it lasts, and
obviously relieved when it is over. These are the traits which I can
affirm them to possess as a class, after having come in contact with
many hundreds of farm labourers. They belong to a generation for whose
intellectual culture little or nothing was done. As a class, they have
no amusements beyond the indulgence of sense. In nine cases out of ten,
recreation is associated in their minds with nothing higher than
sensuality. I have frequently asked clergymen and others, if they often
find the adult peasant reading for his own or others’ amusement? The
invariable answer is, that such a sight is seldom or never witnessed. In
the first place, _the great bulk of them cannot read_. In the next, a
large proportion of those who can, do so with too much difficulty to
admit of the exercise being an amusement to them. Again, few of those
who can read with comparative ease, have the taste for doing so. It is
but justice to them to say, that many of those who cannot read, have
bitterly regretted, in my hearing, their inability to do so. I shall
never forget the tone in which an old woman in Cornwall intimated to me
what a comfort it would now be to her, could she only read her Bible in
her lonely hours.’
We now turn to the high lights of the picture as presented abroad, and
which, from their very brightness, throw our own intellectual gloom into
deeper shade. Mr. Kay observes in the work we have already cited—
‘It is a great fact, however much we may be inclined to doubt it, that
throughout Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Wirtemberg, Baden, Hesse
Darmstadt, Hesse Cassel, Gotha, Nassau, Hanover, Denmark, Switzerland,
Norway, and the Austrian Empire, all the children are actually at this
present time attending school, and are receiving a careful, religious,
moral, and intellectual education, from highly educated and efficient
teachers. Over the vast tract of country which I have mentioned, as well
as in Holland, and the greater part of France, _all_ the children above
six years of age are daily acquiring useful knowledge and good habits
under the _influence_ of moral, religious, and learned teachers. ALL the
youth of the greater part of these countries, below the age of
twenty-one years, can read, write, and cypher, and know the Bible
History, and the history of their own country. No children are left idle
and dirty in the streets of the towns—there is no class of children to
be compared in any respect to the children who frequent our “ragged
schools”——all the children, even of the poorest parents, are, in a great
part of these countries, in dress, appearance, cleanliness, and manners,
as polished and civilised as the children of our middle classes; the
children of the poor in Germany are so civilised that the rich often
send their children to the schools intended for the poor; and, lastly,
in a great part of Germany and Switzerland, the children of the poor are
receiving a _better_ education than that given in England to the
children of the greater part of our middle classes.’
‘I remember one day,’ says Mr. Kay in another page, ‘when walking near
Berlin in the company of Herr Hintz, a professor in Dr. Diesterweg’s
Normal College, and of another teacher, we saw a poor woman cutting up,
in the road, logs of wood for winter use. My companions pointed her out
to me and said, “Perhaps you will scarcely believe it, but in the
neighbourhood of Berlin, poor women, like that one, read translations of
Sir Walter Scott’s Novels, and many of the interesting works of your
language, besides those of the principal writers of Germany.” This
account was afterwards confirmed by the testimony of several other
persons. Often and often have I seen the poor cab-drivers of Berlin,
while waiting for a fare, amusing themselves by reading German books,
which they had brought with them in the morning, expressly for the
purpose of supplying amusement and occupation for their leisure hours.
In many parts of these countries, the peasants and the workmen of the
towns attend regular weekly lectures or weekly classes, where they
practise singing or chanting, or learn mechanical drawing, history, or
science. The intelligence of the poorer classes of these countries is
shown by their manners. The whole appearance of a German peasant who has
been brought up under this system, _i. e._ of any of the poor who have
not attained the age of thirty-five years, is very different to that of
our own peasantry. The German, Swiss, or Dutch peasant, who has grown up
to manhood under the new system, and since the old feudal system was
overthrown, is not nearly so often, as with us, distinguished by an
uncouth dialect. On the contrary, they speak as their teachers speak,
clearly, without hesitation, and grammatically. They answer questions
politely, readily, and with the ease which shows they have been
accustomed to mingle with men of greater wealth and of better education
than themselves. They do not appear embarrassed, still less do they
appear gawkish or stupid, when addressed. If, in asking a peasant a
question, a stranger, according to the polite custom of the country,
raises his hat, the first words of reply are the quietly uttered ones,
“I pray you, Sir, be covered.” A Prussian peasant is always polite and
respectful to a stranger, but quite as much at his ease as when speaking
to one of his own fellows.’
Surely the contrast presented between the efforts of the schoolmaster
abroad and his inactivity at home—refuting, as it does, our hourly
boastings of ‘intellectual progress,’—should arouse us, energetically
and practically, to the work of Educational extension.