SCHOOL BOARDS
“Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks.”
_Richard II._
The object of the Education Act of 1870 was to supply all England with
efficient schools. If voluntary effort failed, special machinery was
devised “not to supplant, but to supplement.” Purists objected that
“supplement” was a vile misuse of a noun as a verb. On the analogy
of “complete,” “complement,” it should be “supplete”; but the nation
shrugged its shoulders.
This machinery was summed up in the phrase “School Board”; and for
thirty-two years the School Board was the idol of one party and the
bugbear of another. It had the same strange effect on the morals of
men that is attributed to horses. It is said that men, who in the
ordinary affairs of life are honest, truthful, and temperate, lose all
control over these qualities when they are concerned in the sale or
purchase of a horse. And so it was with these Boards. When a question
arose of the formation of a School Board, the parties on each side
lapsed into heathenism; heathenism of a low type. Distorted figures
and facts poured in at Whitehall, and were eventually forwarded to the
Inspector “for report, and observations”; and if it had not been an
unofficial act, H.M.I. would have blushed as he read them. “And then I
saw what I had never seen before, Thrasymachus blushing,” says Plato
in his _Republic_. There was one particular combatant, a buttress and
eke a pillar of his denomination, a philanthropist, and an educational
missionary, who, when any question of School Boards arose, exhibited so
much of what a certain Lord Justice called “the inaccuracy of Ananias”
that I had to warn the Education Department to allow him a special
discount. He was happy in the opportuneness of his death; for he did
not live to see the Act of 1902, which destroyed School Boards and thus
took away the occupation alike of iconolaters and iconoclasts.
“Ower bad for blessing, and ower gude for banning like Rob Roy” was
Andrew Fairservice’s immortal phrase, and it may be the epitaph of
School Boards. “I watched by their cradle, and I followed their hearse”
I may add in Grattan’s no less renowned phrase: for I rocked the
cradle of many Boards in 1871, and mine were two of the dry eyes that
noted the interment of the Manchester Board in 1903. But happily my
connection with the institution did not end there; in the Isle of Man
School Boards still exist; a population of 50,000 has twenty-one Boards
to superintend its education, and not less than 110 devoted men and
women struggle to keep down the rates.
The advantage of the School Board system was that it provided a body
of men who had an opportunity of being acquainted with the wants of
the place; usually qualified by residence to attend meetings; and with
large powers of raising money to carry on the work.
The disadvantage was that it put technical, skilled labour into the
hands of men from whom no proof of skill was required; and in very
many places into the hands of men who were manifestly skill-less. In
the large towns the Board might become a Debating Society, but if it
escaped this snare, it often did well. In small villages sometimes it
was a farce, sometimes a tragedy. In most places, whether large or
small, the real power fell into the hands of one man, either the clerk
or the chairman, who managed both School Board and Board School.
Do you ask for an instance? At a Board School inspection, noticing that
there were not enough desks for the children, I asked the chairman,
who was present, to see that the deficiency was made good at once. He
assured me that it would be done without delay.
“When does the Board meet?” I asked.
“Oh, we don’t meet: I get what is wanted and then on market-day I go
down to the town, where I am sure to find the members; they are all
farmers. I say to Brown, ‘The Inspector was here last week; wants some
more desks; always asking for something; suppose you agree?’ And he
says, ‘Whatever you think is right, Mr. Chairman.’ Then I go on to
Jones, and Robinson, and Snooks, and they all agree. We don’t bother
about a meeting, except once a year to make up Form IX. for your
inspection.”
What admirable discipline!
The absolute unfitness for any educational work of some Boards led
to strange results. Somewhere in Wales I had sent notice to a Board
that I proposed to meet them at a certain place on a certain day. They
sent no answer, but I kept my own appointment, and found the Board
duly assembled. I began by suggesting that it was usual to answer
official letters. They declared inteet they did not know where I lived,
and how could they send a letter? I pointed out that the official
notepaper, upon which I wrote, had the address printed at the top. This
embarrassed them: but the true explanation was given to me afterwards.
There was not a man on the Board who could read and write, and they had
to take all their correspondence to the market-town to get the advice
of the Clerk to the Guardians before they could reply. They were in too
small a way of educational business to have a clerk of their own.
A parallel but more amusing case occurred in England. There was a
fierce contention among the members of a Board about the site of the
proposed new school, and the knot seemed worthy of the intervention of
My Lords. After some correspondence I was sent down with instructions
to report. It was arranged that I should meet the Board at the
chairman’s house (he was a farmer), and thither I went, and found
him alone. And let me here remark, that a Norfolk farmer is not like
a farmer in the shires. He might farm from 3,000 to 4,000 acres. He
explained the arguments for and against each site, and went on to
express his regret that I was not likely to meet some members of the
Board.
“Where is the Rector?” I asked.
“Very ill, and confined to the house.”
“I see in the correspondence file that Mr. A. is strongly in favour of
the north site. Will he be here?”
“Well, I fear not: the fact is that there is an affiliation summons out
against him, and, as he is an elder of the ---- chapel, he is rather
ashamed to show his face.”
“Mr. B., the treasurer, is on the same side?”
“Yes, and I expect him here every minute: but, if you will excuse me,
I would rather you saw him in the other room: I have had to serve him
with a writ for slander in consequence of some remarks he made at the
last Board meeting, and we don’t speak.”
“Then there is only Mr. C?”
“Yes: and he promised to be here. Perhaps you could call at his house
on your way to the sites? And here comes the treasurer.”
I met the First Lord of the Treasury in the dining-room. “Morning, Mr.
B. About that site: here is the ordnance map: you want the school to be
built just there, don’t you?”
“Well, sir,” said he, “I’m no scholar. But whatever you think right, I
am agreeable to.”
I bowed him out, and returned to the chairman: “Says he is no scholar,
Mr. Chairman?”
“What, John B.? No, he can’t read or write.”
I roared. A cricket team would have been more particular in choosing a
scorer. Would I mind calling on the erring elder, and on William C.?
Not at all. We sallied forth and sought them. The affiliated elder was
not at home. William C. was haymaking: he was old and deaf, and the
chairman reproached him in stentorian tones:
“Why, William, you did promise me to come down to mine[22] to meet the
Inspector, if you never came again.”
The old man grinned, and shook hands, and excused himself: “Yu see,
sir, I’ve a dale of hay out, and I’m a bit hard of hearin, and they du
all talk at once.”
I gave him plenary absolution, and asked his consent to the better
site. Whatever I thought right, _he_ was agreeable to. And we parted
the best of friends. I had tea at the farm, and went back home. I
laughed all the way to the station, and in the train, and I laughed in
the small hours of the night. And I recalled how I once went with a
colleague to see “The Tempest.” At the end of the first Act he turned
in his stall and said:
“Did you ever consider what admirable materials for a School Board
they had on that island? Look here:” and he showed me his annotated
programme.
“Prospero, Tory Landlord, expert in Elementary Science, and
Language, which he taught to Caliban.
Miranda, qualified by entire ignorance to superintend the
Girls’ sewing.
Antonio, Liberal, Leader of the Opposition.
Stephano, a drunken butler, representing the Trade.
Caliban, Agricultural Labourers’ Union, Primitive Methodist
interest. There you are; five members complete.”
“And Ariel?” I asked, much interested.
“The tricksy spirit shall be Clerk to the Board, and shall bamboozle
the lot, and My Lords too.”
There are some Educationists who never get free of the shop.
Another Board annually stirred me to mirthful compassion, because
I knew, and none other knew, that it owed its birth to defective
arithmetic. The parish had a population of several thousands; when
the school accommodation and requirements were compared in the early
’seventies, a nought got wrong, as noughts will do at times, and a
deficit of 130 places was announced. The real deficit was 13, but it
was no one’s business to check the figures, and 130 prevailed. The
parish declined to build, and a School Board was duly elected. It
spent the next ten years in pointing out to the Department in London
that no new school was wanted; and My Lords unwillingly agreed: but no
one found out about the nought. And it was a very useful Board, and,
like the young man, Godfrey Bertram Hewitt, in _Guy Mannering_, was
“in a fair way of doing well in the world, although he came somewhat
irregularly into it.”
We often laughed, or groaned--according to our stand-point--at the
niggardliness of country School Boards; but the shoe did not pinch us.
Both in North Wales and in Norfolk we had to deal with many parishes
where a penny rate brought in less than £10. Every third year there
might be a contested election, and the cost varied from ¹⁄₂_d._ to
1¹⁄₂_d._ in the pound. Add to this the cost to each candidate, and the
intolerable worry of a storm in a tea-cup, and it is not surprising
that parishes thus afflicted were held up as awful warnings to
unwilling subscribers elsewhere. An experienced observer in Cheshire
once remarked, “If the average farmer had to choose between the
Colorado beetle and a School Board, he wouldn’t know which way to go.”
In all these small parish Boards there was a clerk, who charged from
£10 to £20 a year for carrying on the correspondence which the rector
had hitherto undertaken gratuitously. An Anglesey incumbent told me
that he had offered to do the clerk’s work for nothing; but the chapel
leader said that nothing should induce him to entrust the work to a
churchman. One Norfolk Board School had an average attendance of five
children; they cost £26 apiece, and it took a 3_d._ rate to pay the
clerk: the total rate was 13_d._ in the pound. A Norfolk farmer rated
on his thousand acres might be pardoned for an economic zeal that was
not always well directed. It was proposed in one parish to raise the
salary (£40 a year) of the head mistress. “Why,” said one member, “thet
there young woman is gettin a matter of saxteen shellin a week: look
what thet is for a young woman as hesn’t only harself tu keep.”
“Don’t shoot them: they are doing their best,” might have been
inscribed on the council chambers of many Boards. It was unfamiliar
and uninteresting work for most of them; and they must have spent many
weary days on it. In the early days of the institution it was usual for
two or three members to attend the school inspection. I think the clerk
would tell them it might soften “than which what’s harder? the (Jewish)
heart” of the Inspector. They touched their foreheads like ploughboys,
when H.M.I. arrived, and huddled together like their own ewes in
nervous apprehension--near the gate. Where would this questioning end?
Were the Board immune? “If yow were tu ast me some of them questions
yow ast the childer,” said one bucolic bulwark of education, “I’d be
tarrible put about. Same time, if I had yow on my farm----”
I admitted my limitations.
Latterly they ceased to attend. In one parish I saw no member of the
Board for ten years, and when it happened that the school got a lower
grant than usual, the Board of the adjacent parish reproached the
absentees: “Yo shuld ha loonched th’ inspector: our chairman did, and
us did well.”
“Most people have their price,” said Walpole, usually misquoted: but
mine is not so moderate.
In the ’nineties, as I have said, visits without notice took the place
of the field-day inspections, and we lost sight of the country Boards.
Then came the great Act of 1902, which abolished all the Boards and
made the county or county borough the unit, instead of the civil
parish. “These our actors are melted into air, into thin air,” and the
name of School Board remains only to the School Attendance Officers,
the paidagogoi,[23] who, though they now represent the Education
Committees, still keep their old titles among the populace.
Before I close the history, let me append a story in connection with
the old triennial elections mentioned above. I read it in a Norfolk
paper more than thirty years ago.
There were not fewer than five members in the smallest School Board,
and, as the vote was cumulative, there were often ten or twelve
candidates for the five, or seven seats. As these elections were
frequent, and elections to Boards of Guardians were annual, voters and
onlookers were accustomed to a long list of office seekers; and when
there was a Parliamentary by-election in a Norfolk division, and the
result was posted on the walls, the rustic mind was a little perplexed
to find so small a field. There it was in black and white:
Brown 3,456
Jones 2,978
----
Majority 478
Two yokels gazed at it and wondered.
“I ’xpact thet’s about thet there elaction.”
“Ya-as: there was only tew of un got in, though.”
“Ya-as: only they tew a’ the top.”
And the other added with an indescribable air of cunning:
“Ole Majority di’nt get many, did ’a?”
FOOTNOTES:
[22] “Mine” and “yours” in E. Anglia stand for “my house” and “your
house.”
[23] Paidagogoi (see Galatians iii) were “not schoolmasters but slaves
who led children to the house of the schoolmaster.”