1874, shown a disposition to advance in the right direction, it cannot be out of place here to express a hope, that this influential Association will at an early day represent to the Government the propriety of incorporating into all juvenile Labour Acts the principle of an educational test as an indispensable condition to the beneficial employment of children in all kinds of labour.

If this be done, a wiser or more beneficent law will never have been written in the Statute Book. The incalculable waste of the school-life of children destined to labour will be arrested, and the desolating fate of the improvident, who consume the early seed-corn, will be averted from our land; labour will be exalted to a higher level, as its value will consist in its intelligence, and school and work' being brought into harmonious relations, the only true foundation will be laid of national prosperity-' a wise and understanding people.'

DISCUSSION.

The Rev. Dr. RIGG (London) said the three papers were full of interest, and of practical value. Two fields of educational need had been brought before them-the agricultural, and the manufacturing. Mr. Bremner had strongly hit the fallacy of the supposed superiority of the condition of manufacturing districts, which were far more illiterate than the agricultural. The degree of illiteracy bore an accurate proportion to the labouremployment for children and women. One might gauge the degrees of gross illiteracy by taking into account the extent to which the labour market interfered with the great work of education. A good comparative test was the number of those who signed the marriage register with a cross. Judged by this test, South Staffordshire and Monmouthshire were the most grossly illiterate counties, coal and iron generally leading to the most lamentable, educational results. The textile districts also ranked very low; one-third of the women of Lancashire were not able to write their names at marriage; Rutland and Westmoreland were the best instructed counties, apart from the Metropolitan. Education hinged entirely upon the relations between it and labour; the same principles applied to manufacturing as to agricultural districts, though in the latter there was less of gross illiteracy in proportion to the population, yet there was far more need of a high education, in order to raise the peasantry to a condition of independence. A man or woman in the manufacturing districts might have a great deal of knowledge of the world, and shrewdness; but an agricultural population without education would be destitute of the one instrument to force their way upward in life. No child ought to go to work until it had attained a certain age, and passed a certain educational test. There must be a combination of an age test, and an attainment test. It was desirable to

have the same for both agricultural and manufacturing districts. If the age were ten and the standard two, and it were allowed to a child of nine to go to labour if it had passed that standard, that would be a greater inducement to parents to send their children to school regularly. That standard was easy of attainment by regular attendance. It should be a sine quâ non that a child should be fourteen years of age before going to the full-time system, unless at thirteen it had passed the fifth standard. The great resistance to the adoption of the system in England came from the manufacturing districts, which was the reason why it had been omitted in legislation. He despaired of seeing its adoption which was demanded by every economical and social interest, unless the enormous interests of the manufacturing districts could be countervailed by public opinion. The labour of agricultural children was weeded in summer; supposing a child to be ten years of age, and to have passed a certain standard, not less than two, then winter classes should fill up the interval between the middle of October and the first of March, when children should be prohibited from going to labour, and required to attend school 200 times at the least. It was fallacious, however, to place the whole reliance upon the number of attendances; it had been mischievous throughout educational legislation, and a temptation to teachers to tamper with registers. One should look to the amount of work to be accomplished. If the Government were to provide a certain special examination for agricultural children year by year, the trouble would be great, but the advantage would be equal to the trouble. The Americans had solved the problem by the establishment of winter schools in rural districts, where a good education was obtained; but the children had the advantage of belonging to a more educated and intelligent class to begin with. There should be yearly examinations at the close of the school seasons, and final examinations before the children went to work. A year's advantage should be given to any child who passed the highest examination. Indirect compulsion had much to do with the attainment of the Prussians. Those youths who had passed a certain examination and attained a certain class, had two out of three years of military service remitted. Could anyone imagine a higher inducement? Touch self-interest and solve the problem. The labour market competes and conflicts with education; make education the necessary channel or avenue into the labour market. If half-timers be well prepared, halftime will be a good plan; if they go unprepared, the system must be, as it has been, a failure.

Mr. CHATFEILD CLARKE (London) moved-' That it be recommended to the Council of the Social Science Association to consider, and if approved, to press upon the Committee of the Privy Council on Education, an educational test, prior to any employment on the half-time system.' There were, he said, great difficulties at present in laying down a precise standard of efficiency and age, and that resolution should go as a recommendation for the consideration of the Council before it was brought before the Privy Council. The half-time system was a very pressing difficulty. Parents were waking up to know that at the age of ten there was a possibility of getting their children away from school for the half-time system, which consisted generally of two hours in the

afternoon. Was it likely that children so imperfectly brought up, as English children had been in past years, would gain anything like an adequate education between ten and thirteen in two hours of the afternoon-five days a week? Poor parents were applying most earnestly to have their children exempted after ten, and it was difficult for humane men to resist the pressure, especially in the case of large families, where the small earnings of the children were of vital importance. It was not a controversial, but a really practical question.

Mr. ROWLAND HAMILTON (London) seconded the resolution. He said that papers of such a practical tendency ought to result in a definite resolution, upon which action might be taken in London in the coming year. Mr. Bremner had shown that the great difficulty had been caused, not by the restrictions of the Half-time Acts, but by lamentable neglect in that valuable period from three to five until eight or nine years old, for which nothing could compensate. It was not a new question; for years past that slip between two Acts of Parliament had been regretted as a grave evil. At the British Association Meeting at Bradford the action of school boards in taking charge of children from the earliest age at which they were sent to school until they came under the provisions of the Half-time Act, was admitted to be of very great value; and last year at a meeting of school board representatives and others, the same idea formed the subject of a specific resolution, that attendance at school from five to ten years of age should be enforced throughout the country. It was a point sufficiently definite to be pressed with effect, and could not fail to be beneficial. There had been an edict rather declaratory than practical at present, that after a certain age, examination would not be granted under the second standard. The principle had been extended from year to year, and no doubt it would be very much the basis of any action by the Government, who would require at least the :standard laid down by the code.

Mrs. W. GREY (London) said that in all three papers very great stress had been laid upon the irregular attendance of children as being the main cause of the unsatisfactory results shown by the report of the Committee of Privy Council on Education. Irregularity was not responsible for the whole of those results, but the quality of the teaching given in schools was to a much larger degree. If the teaching were made interesting children would come. Where teachers knew how to reach the minds of their scholars they made teaching so pleasant that children would rather come than stay away. Teachers must be better trained. A great part of the teaching in elementary schools was in the hands of pupil teachers from thirteen to eighteen, themselves very imperfectly taught, and perfectly incapable of entering into the difficulties of their scholars, in the way that made teaching successful. Until people were persuaded teaching was worth all the money it cost, we should never solve the difficulty. If 'half-time' meant two hours a day, it was a 'quartertime' system; two hours was a ridiculously short time. If the halftime system meant four hours on a really good system, it would be better than six hours on a dawdling system. Children should come into school better prepared; compulsion should begin at four years of age; they should be accustomed to use their knowledge, their

eyes, their ears, their hands, and their whole being should be developed as far as possible at that age. Thus the labour of the School Board would be diminished nine-tenths. We had an example in our own homes; any child of a gentleman's family could pass the first standard at eight years of age, because it had lived with people whose lives and habits had tended to develop its intelligence. If children were trained from the age of two in the Kinder-Garten schools, the first standard would be ridiculously low for them to pass before being admitted to the half-time system.

Mr. EDWIN CHADWICK, C.B. (London) said the capacity and receptivity of children were exhausted in less than three hours with good continuous teaching. All confinement of children for elementary teaching beyond three hours was a barbarism and a violation of the laws of psychology, and six hours a day was a violation of the laws of childrens' physiology. They learnt more and better in a short time when the teaching was good. One could almost judge of a school by looking at the master. Sometimes it was in the hands of a drunken sailor, and the children turned out badly. There were bad half-time schools as well as good ones, and the good ones had sustained teaching by a disciplined body of teachers. A half-time school of three hours a day had beaten the national schools; it got through what was required in four years better than the national schools did in seven years. The head master had a salary of 250%., and the second master 1201.; the cost was 17. a head against 21. in the National School. The science of education was not widely known, and certainly not at the Privy Council Office.

Mr. REGINALD WALPOLE (Stoney Stratford), in reply, said the Legislature should take some positive step with reference to the question of compulsion. It had been properly begun by placing a permissive power in the hands of school boards, which in some places had come up to the mark, in others had miserably failed. He regretted the voluntary system had not been touched upon, as it should not be lost sight of. In former days it was doing a good work. If the Legislature passed an Act insisting upon compulsory education, from which there should be no escape up to a certain time, the effect would be to relieve school boards from the odium of enforcing compulsory laws, and to elevate the voluntary schools, which could not compel the attendance of pupils. The country made an unfortunate comparison between them and board schools. Dr. Rigg's suggestion of winter schools for agricultural districts was most valuable, and worth considering in regard to the bylaws of those districts. With respect to Mrs. Grey's observation as to the quality of the teaching, the fault lay more with men than women. The quality of teaching given to infants by ladies exclusively was more thorough and complete than in other schools, except with remarkably good masters, requiring large salaries. The Kinder-Garten system would be of great advantage in our system of compulsory education. It had been carefully considered by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, but the expense of its introduction would be considerable. He would not cram,' but, so far as consistent with the age of the child, would force as much knowledge as possible into the infant. The child was the foundation of the man, and could be got at until it went to work. The

inference that 27. a head was the cost of a child in the national schools should not go forth without verification.

Mr. BREMNER (Manchester), in reply, did not blame the manufacturers of Lancashire for the sad condition disclosed by his paper, nor for the failure of the half-time system. The law itself was to blame. It required a child to go to school, and did not provide the schools. Many of his own neighbours in Lancashire had themselves provided half-time schools, several of them the best of their kind. They were failures, because the children for the most part had not entered a school before the factory age: they went in a state of ignorance. His statements were authentic; some of them were derived from the best teachers of the half-time schools in the locality; others from the Report of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education. Irregular attendance would not be sensibly affected by improved quality of teaching, as those parents who could appreciate it were not the sinners.

Mrs. GREY explained that she meant a better quality of teaching would be a great help until we had a better system.

Mr. BREMNER (resuming) wholly dissented from Mr. Chadwick's view, that children were suffering from too long teaching of inferior quality, and that with better teaching much less quantity would suffice. Until we had a number of children over-educated, it was premature to consider giving them less in quantity. Compared with full-timers half-timers were wholly ignorant of history, &c. Those children were doing a great deal to enrich the manufacturers and traders. The original aim of the legislature was to give them education. To think else would be to accuse the legislature of uncertainty. They had not received what the Law intended, and we were bound to take care that they received at least the rudiments of education.

Mr. R. W. COOKE TAYLOR (Preston), in reply, was deliberately prepared to contest the statement that the half-time system had been a lamentable failure. It was capable of improvement, and he trusted practical action would follow the resolution. There was much to be said on both sides, and it might turn out that the difference between Mr. Bremner and himself was rather one of words than facts.

The Rev. Dr. RIGG (who now occupied the chair) said the KinderGarten system could not be simply transferred from Swiss or German soil, as it was to this country. It was the luxury of the few, and was intended for children of eight years and upwards. It required to be modified for children of tender age. Our national system was different from all others; therefore the Kinder-Garten system required to be adapted to the necessities of English children. Intense teaching was what children could not bear, it would kill them. School, with three hours a day of close concentrated attention would not be so pleasant a place as home. Childrens' observative powers were very quick, but did not last long. He thought compulsion, direct or indirect, or both, would be universally extended throughout the kingdom; but if we could secure that, as a matter of course and necessity, a child must pass a certain standard before going to labour, that would do away with the necessity, and solve the problem in another way.

Mrs. GREY stated the Kinder-Garten system was in force in Ger