and apprentices. There is an advantage also in the same Inspector, where it is possible, continuing to see the same school year after year; he acquires in this way a knowledge of it which he can never gain from a single visit, and he becomes acquainted not with the instruction and discipline only of the school, but also with its local circumstances and difficulties. of the local stances of far should These local circumstances and difficulties, it is of advantage, Knowledge no doubt, that the Inspector should know them: it is a most circumimportant question, and one the necessity of a clear resolution schools, how of which becomes daily more and more apparent to me, in what such knowmanner and to what extent this knowledge should affect his ledge affect an Inspecreport on a school to your Lordships. I constantly hear it tor's report? urged that consideration for local difficulties and peculiar circumstances should induce him to withhold the notice in his report of shortcomings and failures, because these may have been caused by circumstances for which neither managers nor teacher were to blame, and because the statement of them may unfavourably affect a struggling school. There is some plausibility in this plea for silence; but it is based, I feel sure, on a misconception of what the peculiar province and duty of an Inspector is. His first duty is that of a simple and faithful reporter to your Lordships; the knowledge that imperfections in a school have been occasioned, wholly or in part, by peculiar local difficulties, may very properly restrain him from recommending the refusal of grants to that school; but it ought not to restrain him from recording the imperfections. It is for your Lordships to decide how far such imperfections shall subsequently be made public; but that they should be plainly stated to you by the Inspector whom you employ there can be, I think, no doubt at all. It is said that the Inspector is sent into his district to encourage and promote education in it; that often, if he blames a school, he discourages what may be, from local difficulties, a struggling effort, and an effort whose inferiority is owing to no fault of its promoters. I answer, that it is true that the Inspector is sent into his district to encourage education in it: but in what manner to encourage education? By promoting the efficiency, through the offer of advice and of pecuniary and other helps, to the individual schools which he visits in it; not by seeking to maintain by undeserved praise, or to shelter by the suppression of blame, the system, the state of things under which it is in the power of this or that local hindrance to render a school inefficient, and under which many schools are found inefficient accordingly. rable that under which A certain system may exist, and your Lordships may offer is desit assistance to schools established under it; but you have not, the system surely, on that account committed yourselves to a faith in its schools at perfect excellence; you have not pledged yourselves to its should be present exist together results, in order that it judged of. fully known, ultimate success. The business of your Inspector is not to with all its make out a case for that system, but to report on the condition of public education as it evolves itself under it, and to may be fairly supply your Lordships and the nation at large with data for determining how far the system is successful. If, for fear of discouraging voluntary efforts, Inspectors are silent respecting the deficiencies of schools-respecting the feeble support given to this school, the imperfect accommodations in another, the faulty discipline or instruction in a third, and the failure of all alike to embrace the poorest class of children—if everything is represented as hopeful and prosperous, lest a manager should be disappointed or a subscriber estranged-then a delusion is prolonged in the public mind as to the real character of the present state of things, a delusion which it is the very object of a system of public inspection, exercised by agents of the Government on behalf of the country at large, to dispel and remove. Inspection exists for the sake of finding out and reporting the truth, and for this above all. All Inspectors should follow the ciple in making their reports on schools. ensuring this at present. But it is most important that all Inspectors should proceed on the same principle in this respect that one should not same prin- conceal defects as an advocate for the schools, while another exposes them as an agent for the Government. If this happens, besides that the general picture of the state of education will be unfaithful, there is also a positive hardship inflicted on the schools which are frankly reported on; they will appear at a disadvantage compared with other schools, not because these are really in a better state, but because the statement of their defects is softened down or altogether suppressed. Difficulty of It is an ungrateful task to seem to deprecate, under any circumstances, consideration and indulgence. But consideration and indulgence, the virtues of the private man, may easily become the vices of the public servant; and I have ventured to submit the foregoing remarks to your Lordships because I think that in the inspection of schools there is a peculiar temptation to exercise these qualities unduly. A factory or a workhouse is, to most people, a less interesting and attaching object than a school; it has less power of making a friend of its visitor, and of leading him, often half insensibly, to become its advocate rather than its reporting Inspector. The character considered of school inspection, too, is, it appears to me, at present such as to render difficult the adoption of a uniform principle in reporting by all the Inspectors. The inspection of a school is now, upon a plan founded when a far smaller number of schools were under your Lordships' supervision than at present, carried out into such detail as to afford every facility to an Inspector, desirous to give a favourable report upon a school, for doing so, by enabling him to call attention to special points Variety of details to be in reporting. of detail in which the school may be strong, rather than to others where it may be weak, or to its general efficiency, which may be small. At present, for instance, an Inspector finding an advanced upper class in a school, a class working sums in fractions, decimals, and higher rules, and answering well in grammar and history, constructs, half insensibly whether so inclined or not, but with the greatest ease if so inclined, a most favourable report on a school, whatever may be the character of the other classes which help to compose it. But it is evident that the attention of your Lordships is especially concentrated on those other classes, and that an elementary school excites your interest principally as it deals with these; as it deals with the mass of children who, remaining but a short time at school, and having few or no advantages at home, can acquire little but rudimentary instruction; not as it deals with the much smaller number, whose parents can enable them to remain long at school, to pursue their studies at home, to carry on their education, in short, under favourable circumstances, and who therefore less need the care and assistance of your Lordships. tion of the The difficulty of obtaining an exact report on a school is still Considerafurther complicated, if the Inspector is to think himself bound moral tone to ascertain (in a single morning) what is called the moral tone of a school. of a school, and to make the condition in which he imagines himself to have found this tell considerably upon the character of his report. simplifica of inspection system of education. Should a state of things ever arise which placed a very Probable greatly increased number of schools under your Lordships' tion of the supervision; should your Inspectors ever have to work under present plan a really national system of education; the range of details to under a which their attention in inspecting each particular school is now national addressed would no doubt be necessarily narrowed. Variety of judgment would then be less probable, when that which had to be judged of was less various. They would then, perhaps, have to look only to certain broad and ascertainable things: on the one hand, the commodiousness of the school buildings, the convenience of the school fittings, the fulfilment of the necessary sanitary conditions; on the other, the competence of the teacher, the efficiency of the discipline, the soundness of the elementary secular, and in certain cases) of the elementary religious instruction. But they would not occupy themselves in inquiring with what success the three or four head boys (sons, probably, of tradesmen in good circumstances) out of a school of 100 or 150 children, could work an equation, or refer words to their Greek or Latin constituents. Until this time arrives (if it ever should arrive) the true duty of an Inspector towards your Lordships, the truest kind R R cipally to be kept in view Things prin in inspecting at present. Teachers of schools gainers by an exact method of reporting. ness towards the managers and teachers of schools, seems to me to be this-that the Inspector, keeping his eye above all upon the most tangible and cognizable among those details into which he is directed to inquire, and omitting, as much as possible, the consideration of what is not positive and palpable, should construct a plain matter-of-fact report upon each school which he visits, and should place it, without suppression, before your Lordships. But, although I thus press for the most unvarnished and literal report on their schools, I can assure the teachers of them, that it is from no harshness or want of sympathy towards them that I do so. No one feels more than I do how laborious is their work, how trying at times to the health and spirits, how full of difficulty even for the best how much fuller for those, whom I too often see attempting the work of a schoolmaster-men of weak health and purely studious habits, who betake themselves to this profession, as affording the means to continue their favourite pursuits; not knowing, alas, that for all but men of the most singular and exceptional vigour and energy, there are no pursuits more irreconcilable than those of the student and of the schoolmaster. Still, the quantity of work actually done at present by teachers, is immense: the sincerity and devotedness of much of it is even affecting. They themselves will be the greatest gainers by a system of reporting which clearly states what they do and what they fail to do; not one which drowns alike success and failure, the able and the inefficient, in a common flood of vague approbation. To the Right Honorable I have the honor to be, &c. The Lords of the Committee of Council on Education. 110 SUMMARIES OF TABULATED REPORTS FOR 1853-4, ON SCHOOLS INSPECTED BY M. ARNOLD, ESQ. On Slates. 30 13 0:45 1.01 0 2 21 09 14:05 38 28 62 76 77 18 6:21 9.91 20 12 25 21 28 61 Books of General Information. 73.91 Easy Narratives. 32.13 Letters and Mo- The amount of accommodation in square feet, divided by 8, will give the number of children who can be properly accommodated. Calculations of area in school-rooms, as compared with the average attendance of scholars, should be made upon this basis. + At the date of closing this return. These per-centages are confined to boys' and girls' schools, and do not include infants. |