Page:Hints for the improvement of village schools and the introduction of industrial work.djvu/9

5 clergy and laity,—the government statistics prove that scarce any progress is being made in educating the masses of the people. Nay, I believe I am correct in stating, that year by year, the number of scholars over ten years old actually decreases, and that as a rule, children stay longer at old-fashioned dame schools, than at schools under first-rate teachers. The main reason, I believe to be this,—that whereas in a dame school the children can scarcely read and write by the time they are twelve or thirteen, in a good National School the children, owing to the improved appliances for teaching, have usually acquired those arts by the time they are ten years old; and the parents, having obtained for their children all they care for, instantly remove them from school. We must remember that the labourer has to exercise great self-denial to keep his children at school beyond ten years old; he knows and feels each Saturday night, that what his children could have earned, would be a most acceptable addition to his weekly wages. By sending his children to work, he gains an immediate and tangible advantage which he can perfectly understand, whereas it is no easy matter to convince him that his children are any the better for being able to tell the height of the Himalaya mountains, or to repeat, with the utmost volubility, the names and the products of every dependency of the British empire.

The poor have indeed a general idea that learning is a "fine thing," and usually wish their children to be scholars, but the term "scholarship" with them is used to signify merely the power to read and write. To other branches of instruction, such as history, grammar, geography, they are for the most part quite indifferent—ignorant of such things themselves, and conscious that they have done very well without such knowledge, they do not desire it for their children, nor are they disposed to make any great sacrifices to obtain it. When therefore their children come to be about ten years old, and are tolerably proficient in reading and writing, (as they of course would be at a good school, though at a bad school they would have to stay till eleven or twelve before they would be equally advanced) the parents naturally ask themselves, what is the use of Johnny and Polly staying at school any longer? they are now good enough scholars for labourers' children, and the five or six shillings a week which they could earn at work, would be a great help to us. On this ground it is quickly decided that Johnny and Polly shall make themselves useful.

The real argument for keeping children at school till thirteen or fourteen, viz., the formation of their moral character, the eliciting of intelligence, and the training them to habits of