Page:Hints for the improvement of village schools and the introduction of industrial work.djvu/31

23 of apprenticeship, and to insufficient care in the selection of candidates, we frequently meet with ex-pupil-teachers and Queen scholars, who have no natural turn for their profession, and who, whatever their mental attainments may be, will never make efficient teachers. When such young persons take to some other employment I consider it a great public gain. We want as teachers none but those who love teaching, and in my humble opinion the combined influence of earnest, hard-working clergy, and of well-educated teachers of a cheerful and loving disposition will always fill a school, provided that the education offered is of such a character, that the parents can see the benefit, which their children derive from it. It was a saying of the great Dr. Chalmers, that "a house-going parson will make a church-going people." It is equally true, that a house-going parson will make school-going children.

When we plead with the parents for their children's good we have a strong hold on them. In the midst of much ignorance and apathy natural affection still exists, and if carefully worked upon, will arouse the parents to an amount of self-denial, of which we should not have thought them capable. In the matter of education, as in all other matters, let us deal with the poor gently yet firmly; gently, because we, to whom from our youth up has given every luxury, can never fully enter into the privation and self-denial, which is necessarily involved when a labourer keeps his children at school instead of sending them to work; firmly, because we feel, that a child, left to itself, will not only bring its parents to shame, but will probably prove the pest of the village.

The only lever which can move the "vis inertiæ" of the parents is love, love to them and to their children for 's sake. Let us go forth in a loving spirit to win souls, and then as by a side wind we shall fill our schools. As time goes on, I am the more and more convinced, that the whole tone and "animus" of a parish may be altered in a very few years by vigilant attention to the school, but I confess that I am not altogether sure, whether we are quite right in relieving the parents of so large a share of that responsibility which naturally devolve on them, or that Scripture gives us any express sanction for doing so. It is a grave responsibility to take the parent's place even for a time and with their consent. We ought to feel it an unnatural position, and to endeavour to remedy the evil of it as far as possible by continually referring the child back to the wishes and authority of its father or mother.

If teachers would inculcate a deeper reverence for parental authority, studiously placing the authority of the parents above their own, (from which it is in truth derived) the parents would