Four years ago we
called attention to the necessity of a reform in the parochial
school system of Scotland. The able and luminous reports of Mr.
Gibson, the Government inspector, had then been published,
establishing, beyond all doubt, that in school buildings and
apparatus, in the status and condition of the schoolmaster, in the
quality and quantity of the teaching, and in superintendence and
inspectorship, our much-lauded parochial system was lamentably and
grossly deficient. The Disruption of the Church had also occurred,
giving additional force and urgency to the argument for delivering
the parochial schools from the aristocratic and ecclesiastical
control which were proving so fatal to their efficiency. Since that
time the public mind, both in Scotland and England, has been deeply
occupied with the question of education; but it has to be regretted
by every sincere friend of popular enlightenment, that this
important and truly catholic cause should have been made the theatre
of ecclesiastical rivalry and contention. For this unhappy result,
the timid and equivocating policy of the Government is as much to
blame as the overweening sensitiveness of religious sects. What plan
could be more directly calculated to arouse sectarian jealousy, and
to give a sectarian direction to education, than to announce to
religious bodies that the public purse is open to as many of them as
choose to embark in the cause of public instruction, and that the
grants to each will be proportioned to the sums which they succeed
respectively in raising by voluntary efforts—a principle of
distribution, by the way, which must always give the endowed
religious establishments a decided advantage over the unprivileged
non-conforming denominations? By this weak and superficial scheme,
the Government literally renounces the idea that education is a
matter of common and civil concern, tamely resigns the functions of
the State into the hands of the clergy, and suggests while it gives
full rein to the strivings of ecclesiastical ambition. The result is
exactly what might have been expected. In attempting to evade the
difficulties which the jealousy of religious bodies threw in the way
of national education, the Government has aggravated and increased
them. The English Dissenters, wearied and disgusted with schemes
which are ever found to conceal, under the guise of impartiality,
some insidious leaning to the Establishment, have thrown to the
winds all hope of a national system of education in which they might
confidently co-operate, and have commenced with redoubled zeal to
organise schools entirely independent of Government support and
control. The same result has taken place in Scotland, where the Free
Church, justly incensed by the ejection from the parochial schools
of the teachers who adhered to her communion, is labouring to
establish a system of schools which is intended to surpass, and is
already represented as nearly equalling, the endowed parochial
system, both in the number of pupils and the qualifications of the
teachers, The other Dissenters in Scotland, though equally wronged
by the exclusive character of the parochial system, have not so
deeply committed themselves to a defensive movement; but if the
avowed intention of the Privy Council to give grants of public money
to the parochial schools under their present constitution be acted
upon, they will be forced to assume the attitude of their English
brethren, and the educational affairs of Scotland be plunged into a
vortex of sectarian strife from which they have hitherto been
exempt.
The scheme of the Privy Council seems to us to bo totally
incompatible with the institutions, laws, and usages of Scotland. In
England the held is open to the introduction of any system which may
be resolved upon ; but in Scotland a system has already been
established, and unless that system is to be entirely abolished, any
new measure must be so framed as to harmonise and amalgamate with
it. But wo are totally at a loss to conceive by what means the
scheme of the Privy Council can be engrafted upon the existing state
of educational affairs in Scotland. This scheme proceeds on the
avowed principle of treating the religious establishments and the
various bodies of Dissenters upon equal terms. All are to be helped
by the State in proportion to their ability to help themselves ; but
as the Establishments are rich, while the Dissenters are poor, the
ability of the former to contribute to the cause of education is
greater than the ability of the latter, and their receipts from the
Treasury will bo greater in proportion; so that, though nominally
fair and equal, the scheme is practically unjust. It is practically
unjust in England, where the Establishment enjoys no anterior
educational endowment, and where all religious denominations start
in the race at the same point and in the same moment of time. But
with what show of fairness can such a scheme be acted upon in
Scotland, where the Establishment is already invested with a
national system of schools ? The salaries of the parochial teachers
are as essentially an endowment of the Kirk as the stipends of her
ministers. The teachers must belong to her communion, and though not
elected to, they may be deprived of, their office by her
presbyteries, to whose jurisdiction they are amenable in all matters
affecting the management and discipline of the schools. The
parochial schools are, in every sense of the term, Establishment
schools, and yet they are endowed at the public expense. If the
Privy Council proceed, therefore, to give grants of public money to
the Scotch Establishment for educational purposes, irrespective of
the aid already extended to it in the parochial system, the
pretended equality of their scheme will be openly violated, and
every body of Dissenters will have just cause for the most
determined resistance. And if, on the contrary, the Scotch
Establishment is | exempted from the benefits of the scheme, the
Government will render itself justly chargeable with abandoning the
parochial schools to their imperfections and deficiencies, and with
depriving the parochial teachers of a long-promised addition to
their small ami inadequate salaries. In whatever way the scheme of
the Privy Council is sought to be applied in Scotland, it is
thoroughly unsuitable to the circumstances of the country, and lands
its projectors in contradictions and inconsistencies of the most
obvious character. It either inflicts injustice upon the Free Church
and Dissenters on the one hand, or it covers with neglect, upon the
other, a system of public instruction which has been an object of
legislative solicitude, and still more of national admiration, since
the days of Knox and the Reformation. Between this Scylla and
Charybeis there is only one safe and consistent course; and that is,
to place the parochial system on a broad and popular basis, without
partiality to any of the sects into which the representatives of the
Presbyterian Reformers are divided. But this implies, so far as
Scotland, is concerned, the abandonment of the Minutes of Council ;
because such a thorough reform would rally all classes of the people
round the parochial schools, and sectarian grants would be
unnecessary and unsought.
It has been the practice of the parliamentary defenders of the
scheme of the Privy Council to admit very freely its defects, and to
lay the blame upon the jealousies of religious sects, which rendered
a more perfect and comprehensive system impracticable. In Scotland
the sincerity of this reasoning will be put to the test. It cannot
be pretended that here there are any religious jealousies to prevent
the establishment of a completely national education. It has never
been denied by any party that the parochial schools, if popularised
in their constitution, and raised to a condition commensurate with
the wants and intelligence of the country, would form an arena of
instruction in which the children of all sects and classes would be
found to unite. We wish we could impress upon the English people and
representatives how desirable a field is presented in Scotland for a
grand educational experiment. The parochial system was established
before disunion had arisen among the professors of the national
religion, Its seeds were sown with the Reformation, and it grew with
its growth, watered by the tears of martyrs, and guarded and
preserved by the labours and the prayers of Fathers, whose names are
claimed and venerated alike by every section of Presbyterians. Even
when Dissent arose, it arose in a form which interfered but little
with the popularity of the parochial schools; for Churchmen and
Dissenters still used the same Catechism, and owned the same
standards of doctrine. In the bitterest days of religious animosity,
the strife which agitated the Churches was never permitted to rend
and separate the schools. It was only when the parochial system fell
behind the wants and the spirit of the country, that the people
sought instruction for their youth in other quarters, and even then
the secession was as largely shared by Churchmen as by Dissenters.
It has been the custom of the people of Scotland, while paying the
most devout attention to the religious training of tho young in the
church, the Sabbath class, and the family, to look for secular
instruction in the public school; and where secular instruction of a
superior character could be obtained, minor differences of opinion
between parent and teacher on ecclesiastical affairs have seldom
operated as a barrier to its reception, The parochial system has
been tried by this standard. When its secular education was
superior, pupils of all denominations freely flocked to it; when it
was inferior, they as freely withdrew ; but it was only when its
sectarian character appeared in overt acts of persecution— such as
the ejection of the Free Church teachers that this was added to the
other causes of popular dissatisfaction. These circumstances in the
history and habits of the population have acquired for the parochial
system, even in its decay, a breadth of interest and attachment,
which is poorly represented by the narrowness of its constitution.
Let it only be liberalised, reformed and raised to a state of;
excellence worthy of the country and the times, and! you will revive
towards it all the latent admiration | of the people, gather into
its schools the youth of all denominations, and exhibit in Scotland
an example of educational union which will fall like oil upon the
troubled waters of religious strife in other parts of the country.
One would suppose that so rare an opportunity of advancing their
professed objects would be eagerly seized by those parliamentary
educationists who so bitterly lament the obstacles which religions
divisions have raised to a comprehensive system of national
instruction; and certainly to introduce into a country, situated
like Scotland, the dividing and exasperating system developed in the
minutes of Council, would be one of the maddest acts of misgovemment
ever perpetrated by either Cabinet or Parliament.
Opposition to the requisite reforms in the parochial system can only
proceed from the heritors or the established clergy; and it must
sorely be but a small proportion even of these classes who can have
the folly and selfishness to resist a change so essential to the
public good. In the present state of the law, the right of electing
the teachers is vested in the proprietors of £100 Scots of valued
rent. To these is added the vote of the minister of every parish but
substantially the right of appointment rests with the large
proprietors. With the view of preserving this source of patronage,
and of preventing the additional expense which a reform of the
parochial schools may be expected to entail, it is possible that
some of the Scottish lairdocracy may take it into their foolish
heads to oppose any material change upon the present system. And the
Established clergy, to whom is entrusted the power of examining,
superintending, and deposing teachers, may possibly feel it to be
their duty to throw their influence into the same unpopular scale.
But the claims of these parties, as in the case of many other
monopolists in these modern times, must be brought to the test of
reason and experience, and either stand or fall by the result.
What possible title, we presume to ask, can the large landholders
possess to the exclusive privilege of appointing the teachers of the
youth of Scotland? The fast that the teachers salaries are paid out
of the produce of their lands does not constitute a valid title;
because, in the first place, the law gives them recourse upon their
tenants for part of the tax ; and, in the second place, though it
could still be proved that the burden lies exclusively upon them,
yet it is a burden which forms part of the Reformation Settlement,
agreed to by their predecessors, who, instead of surrendering the
entire patrimony of the Church, as the Reformers of the day
demanded, preferred to take upon them and their heirs for ever the
payment of the ministers’ stipends and schoolmasters’ salaries, as
an arrangement more suitable to their interests, and one, therefore,
which cannot now, with any honour, be repudiated; and, in tho third
place, because the salaries of the teachers are only a park— not
more, in some instances, than a third of their remuneration—the
remainder being paid by the parents of the pupils, who, if payment
is to be the qualification, have a better title to the power of
electing parochial teachers than the heritors. On the score of
fitness for exercising tho privilege beneficially, the title of the
heritors is equally weak and unsolid. They do not send their own
children to be educated at the parish schools; and, therefore,
cannot feel that interest in the appointment of properly-qualified
teachers, which is the most essential requisite in any body of men
invested with be important a trust. As the matter stands, they are
literally guilty of having committed the education of “the
youth-head” of the country to men whom they consider disqualified to
impart the first elements of instruction to their own children.
Fully two-thirds, or perhaps three-fourths of them, moreover, are
absentees—a circumstance which still farther increases their
disqualification. As absentees they can neither have that interest
in the educational business of their parishes, nor that knowledge of
local wants and the fitness of candidates, which are indispensably
necessary to a proper discharge of the weighty duties devolved upon
them. When a vacancy has to be filled up, they must either vote upon
hearsay, or hand over the exercise of their privilege to agents,
who, in nine eases oat of ten, are equally disqualified by non
residence, and still more liable to yield to private and interested
motives. It may also be said, without any undue disparagement, that
the heritors of Scotland are not intellectually qualified to be the
sole or prime movers of the educational affairs of the kingdom. You
may find in their ranks individuals whose literary and scientific
attainments are an honour to their order; but, as a body, they have
neither that monopoly of learning which would justify the exclusion
of all other classes, nor that superlative pre-eminence of learning
which would mark them out as the best qualified to direct the
instruction of the young. To invest them with powers, as if they had
one or ether of these excellencies, is to pay a deference to rank
which does not belong to it, and which can only lead to the most
injurious practical consequences. Turn it over, and examine it as
you may, the claim of the heritors to their exclusive powers under
the parochial school system is essentially weak and unsound. Not
only can no satisfactory reason be alleged why they should have the
sole power of appointing teachers, but, in some points of view, it
appears that this power could scarcely be placed in more improper
and disqualified hands. Has the claim of the established clergy to
their share of the monopoly any letter foundation? We can imagine
the few fiery and immoderate spirits among this quiet, discreet, and
really moderate order of men, patting forth something like the
following pro tensions:—“The parochial schools are the property of
the Church of Scotland; they were founded by the Church, built by
the Church, extended by the Church, and by the Church’s labours and
contendings they are what they are. To the Church, there-fore, they
belong by a right, which every sound lawyer will tell you is the
best of all rights—the right of conquest. To take them out of the
control of the Church would be downright sacrilege.” This is all
very well, right reverend friends; but here beside you stands the
Free Church, with no bad title to be called the Church of Scotland;
and here, also, are the United Presbyterians and the Reformed
Presbyterians, equally ready and equally able to make good their
claim to the same appellation; all of them, undoubtedly,holding the
principles, faith, and worship of the ancient Kirk; and each of them
founded by Divines who stand, and will stand to all ages, at the
head of the list of worthies to whom the parochial system owes its
existence, as well as any measure of strength it may possess. Upon
what grounds, short of sacrilege, can you exclude these bodies from
a share in the control and advantages of the parochial schools? It
was, assuredly, the intention of the founders of the parochial
system of education, that it should embrace the whole “youth-head”
of the nation ; so that it would be imperative to make such changes
as the revolutions of time have rendered necessary to secure the
same object, even upon the admission that the original intention of
the founders should form, for all time, the ne plus ultra of the
system. The established clergy are the clergy of a third or a
fourth, or some other fractional proportion of the people of
Scotland; but the thing wanted is a system of schools which will
command the confidence of the whole people, and which will be worthy
of the whole people in its extent, its excellence, and in the care
and ability with which it is managed, inspected, and
improved—desiderata which cannot be attained by, the parochial
system so long as it is chained to the narrow frame of the
Establishment, and left to the superintendence of Presbyteries which
have never had time or inclination, as the records of the General
Assembly abundantly testify, to accomplish so much as an annual
visitation of the schools under their charge. The claim of the
Church to a monopoly of the parochial schools is bad on the ground
both of right and expediency.
But there is a test to which all public institutions and public
officers, however old and valuable their privileges, must yield, and
from which there is no appeal. The claims of the heritors and
established clergy to the future government of the parochial schools
may be decided by the results of their past rule. What has been the
practical working of the system under their management ? Has it
served the ends of a truly national system of education? Has it so
much as attained the model proposed by its original founders? or has
it even accomplished the good which has been so long and
flatteringly attributed to it? The want of school accommodation, the
miserable status of the teachers, and the dark and deplorable
ignorance which prevails alike in our large cities and our rural
parishes, give a too palpable negative to these inquiries, Scotland,
once at the head of European nations in point of education, is
rapidly sinking to the bottom of the list. It is unnecessary to
enter formally upon a proof which has been so often and so clearly
established. One or two facts, however, will repay consideration. In
1846, 4069 persons were committed for trial, or bailed, for criminal
offences in the various counties of Scotland ; and of these 903
could neither read nor write, and 2424 could only read or read and
write imperfectly 2 To be able only to read imperfectly is almost as
bad as not to be able to read at all; and it is to be feared that
much of the education of Scotland partakes of this equivocal and
useless character. No person can pass as “educated,” in the simplest
sense of that term, who leaves school without a desire for acquiring
knowledge, and without the mechanical and mental accomplishments
necessary to enable him to gratify that desire with facility and
pleasure. Practically, therefore, the two classes above-mentioned
may be placed in the same category ; whence it will follow that of
the 4069 criminals in Scotland in 1846, 3327, or more than
four-fifths of the whole, were uneducated and illiterate persons.
Here we have popular ignorance issuing in its natural
denouement—crime; and affording unanswerable evidence of the defects
of the parochial system. There are not fewer, we should suppose,
than 300,000 youths in Scotland, who either are or ought to be at
school; yet, the highest number of pupils in attendance at His
parochial schools of Scotland, between Michaelmas 1833 and Ladyday
1834, was only 68,293. If the people of Scotland are an educated
people, its certainly not the parochial system to which they are
indebted for their instruction. The pupils attending the parochial
schools have probably decreased since 1834, as the44,036 children
reported by the Education Committee of the Free Church as being
under instruction in the schools of that body must have been drafted
to a considerable extent from them. Indeed, it is well known to all
that the parochial system forms but a fragment of the educational
institutions of Scotland ; and that it is to the voluntary and
private schools that we are chiefly indebted both for our supply of
the means of instruction and for improving and elevating its
character. It is consequently in the rural and thinly-populated
districts where voluntary schools have not been established, that
the inadequacy of the parochial system is most correctly exhibited.
In 1833, in a Highland district, embracing the islands and 24
mainland parishes, and containing an aggregate population of
151,053, the immense number of 55,718 persons, above the age of six
years, were unable to read in any language. So far from the
parochial system making inroads upon this dense mass of ignorance,
it was found in 1837, four years later, that in the same district,
with the population increased to 154,763, the number of schools had
fallen from 328 to 266, and the number of scholars from 16,891 to
13,586 !J We are convinced that matters have not much improved since
1837. Population is rapidly increasing, while the means of education
are stationary, in some instances retrogressive; and if an
investigation were made at the present moment, an amount of
educational destitution would be exhibited, which would sadly ruffle
the national self-complacency, and show how grossly the heritors and
the established clergy have neglected the invaluable trust committed
to them.
A reform of the parochial system of education is a matter of
paramount necessity. The parish schools cannot long remain under
their present management with safety to the moral and social
wellbeing of Scotland; and tho only part of the question on which
there is likely to be any difference of opinion is that which
relates to the new machinery by which the old should he replaced.
The writer of the able and useful letter which we have taken as the
text of our remarks suggests that the power of electing the
schoolmasters should be vested in those who enjoy at present the
Parliamentary elective franchise, subject, however, to these
restrictions: first, that the elector shall have resided in the
parish .three years previous to the vacancy to be filled up; and,
secondly, that the qualified electors shall appoint three
individuals, who, on their acceptance of the trust, shall be
empowered, by trials or testimonials, to select a qualified
individual for the school. We opine that this constituency would be
much too narrow to secure popular confidence in the schools ; and
there seems to us to be no reason for placing any arbitrary
limitation upon the voice of the people, since the election is to
take place through an intermediate body. The appointment of the
electoral committee of three, or whatever number may be fixed upon,
should be vested in the whole body of householders, or heads of
families, resident in the parish. The labourer, with a family of
children, has as deep a stake in the education of his parish as the
Parliamentary elector; and if his interest and confidence in the
schools are to be secured, you must recognise his right to a voice
in the appointment of the teachers. Nor is there anything extreme or
unprecedented in this proposition. The General Assemblies of the
Church have repeatedly asserted the same doctrine; and some of the
statutes, even in the iron days of the Stuarts and Episcopacy, speak
of the consent of most part of the parishioners” as a necessary
element in the settlement and ordering of the parochial schools. To
retreat from the broad basis of popular control, recoghised by
presbyters and bishops in the sixteenth century, to the narrow and
restricted constituency of the Reform Bill, would be a retrogression
for which we cannot perceive the smallest necessity. With respect to
the question of religious tests, the same writer would dispense with
signing the Formula, but sees nothing unreasonable in requiring from
the teachers a subscription to the Confession of Faith, as a
standard of doctrine. To this we do not suppose there can be any
objection; but the duty of proving the religious qualifications of
teachers should be mainly devolved upon the Board appointed to grant
diplomas, whose inquiries into the life, character, and profession
of candidates, would be more effectual in securing a body of sound
Christian teachers than the subscription of fifty confessions.
This Board should be so constituted as to secure the confidence of
the religious denominations, and should embrace all who are most
distinguished for learning, and for zeal in the cause of education,
in Scotland. Upon it would also devolve the supervision of the
schools; and to aid them in this work, there should he an ample
staff of active and enlightened inspectors. The system of education
should also embrace, especially in the Highlands, an industrial
department both for boys and girls; and the old principle of
requiring the schoolmaster to teach gratuitously “such poor children
of the parish as shall be recommended at any parochial meeting,’’
should be carried out till “ragged schools,” depending upon
voluntary subscription, are entirely superseded. It is obvious that
an extensive measure of this kind would entail considerable
additional expense ; and the source from which the necessary funds
should be derived forms not the least important branch of the
question. There are 436 parishes in Scotland in which there are
unexhausted teinds, that is, commuted tithes which are not applied
to “the better providing of kirks and ministers' stipends, and the
establishing of schools and other pious uses,” for which they were
originally designed, and are still chargeable. *The gross amount of
these unappropriated teinds is £153,928 9s. lid. The Crown itself is
a holder of Scotch teinds to the extent of £15,741 12s. 5d., of
which only £5,559 7s. 9d. is applied to public purposes in Scotland,
the remaining surplus of £10,182 4s. 8d. being leased out to private
individuals, on terms which yield to the Crown a merely fractional
part of its value, and on terms which, easy as they are, have never
been fulfilled! No branch of the public revenue in the worst days of
misgovernment was ever more deplorably mismanaged than the Crown
teinds of Scotland. It is high time that the objectionable system of
farming these public funds should be abolished, as has long since
been done with respect to other revenues, and that their full
proceeds should be applied to purposes of public good. An allocation
of the unexhausted teinds, supplemented whenever or wherever
necessary by an equitable tax upon the owners and occupiers of
property, seems to us the simplest, test, and most satisfactory mode
of providing for a new and extended system of parochial education in
Scotland. It would impose no new* burden upon the imperial revenue,
but raise the necessary fund entirely in that part of the kingdom
which is to reap the benefits of its expenditure. So that in
appealing to the people and representatives of England to assist in
carrying out these necessary reforms, we do not ask them to confer
upon Scotland, at the public expense, a boon from which other parts
of the country are exempted, but simply to aid us in accommodating
one of our old institutions to the altered circumstances of society,
and in. carrying out, upon our own charges, an experiment of
national education which may prove of ls^ting service to every
branch of the Empire. |