Page:Hints for the improvement of village schools and the introduction of industrial work.djvu/10

6 and truth, order and cleanliness, is one that occurs to very few parents in this class of life.

Now, let us mark the result of children being withdrawn from school at this early age. I shall hardly express myself too strongly, if I say that it in a great measure stultifies all our efforts to ameliorate the social condition of the poor. It is acknowledged, I believe, by every one acquainted with the subject, that the great majority of the lower classes, if examined at the age of twenty-five, are found grossly ignorant of the most elementary knowledge.

The clergy who examine for Confirmation, and those who teach in adult evening schools, are often struck with surprise at the small amount of instruction which is possessed by the young persons who come under their notice. Many of these young people, when children of nine or ten years old, were intelligent and well instructed for their age; but children of such tender years on leaving school very quickly forget all they have learnt, and in a few years their minds relapse into the state of an uncultivated waste. It is indeed sad and disheartening to see so little abiding fruit of our labours, and to find that our instruction is of so transient a nature, that before it is available for the business of life, it is in many cases altogether blotted out. And all this arises, I firmly believe, not from any fault in the teachers, who are far better educated than formerly, and have a deeper sense of their responsibility; nor does it arise from any erroneous method in imparting instruction, but simply and entirely from the children having been removed from school before the plants of knowledge had time to get firmly rooted. A child of ten years old, though able to read, will seldom do so with sufficient ease to make reading a pleasure, especially after a hard day's work. Hence, on leaving school, their books (if they possess any) are usually thrown aside: the power to read diminishes daily, and that it ever could read, becomes to the child a dream and a myth. So long as children are removed from school at ten years old, education can be little more than a name, for it is morally impossible that a child can be trained for the duties and responsibilities of a Christian life at so early an age. We find also from the government reports, that in many parishes where handsome and suitable school buildings have been erected, these buildings are not half filled. From some cause or other the children are not at school, and this is another strong argument that there is something faulty and unattractive in the ordinary system of education. The great problem of the present day is not so much how to build schools as how to fill them, and to retain the children, the boys till at least thirteen years of age, the girls until fit for service at fourteen or fifteen years of age.