Page:The probable course of legislation on popular education, and the position of the church in regard to it.djvu/12

 for our laissez faire mode of proceeding. That the unemployed are at school, must be made more than a fiction, when the employed can be brought there under legal enactment. Mr. Bright's Windsor labourer may not have been, as ho alleged, without school opportunity; but his wilful hostility cannot be allowed to deny to his children that with which their honest labours may not compete. It would seem to be an a fortiori^ that the ignorance forbidden to the employed, should not be permitted to the unemployed. If indigence and industry may not interfere with some amount of Education, it would be strange indeed if indigence and idleness may.

These points are only touched upon in passing, to show the way public opinion is gradually forming itself; and what is likely, as the question proceeds, to influence its more ripe and definite expression.

It will not be necessary that any educational measure should distinctly rule the point of detail on which we have just touched; nor some others which, while of great interest, are not of primary importance, and certainly are not ready for positive solution. But there is one among the practical items of this recent educational enactment, on which it may be well to remark, as it contains a truth which may help some day to settle a practical difficulty.

The competition of industry with Education is the only hindrance that is worth any thing but the most summary treatment. There are two points that entitle that hindrance to the gravest consideration. First, the circumstances of the parents—next, the nature of the work. Mr. Henley, in conceding lately the necessity of increased education, pleaded only that the exigencies of a certain kind of labour might be taken into account. It is undeniably true that the agricultural labourer scarcely can dispense with such increase to his income as his children may bring in. It is scarcely less true that, for certain field processes, juvenile labour is the best. On the other hand, any one acquainted with our rural districts must know that for no class are the elevating effects of Education more needed. Better houses and better wages would be great auxiliaries; but without Education they are little likely to attain either, or to turn them to any good uses, even if they did attain them. When this practical point comes up for treatment, the provisions of the Act of last Session, to which reference has been made, will be deserving of all attention.

The valuable fact recognized therein is, that whole-day schooling is not necessary. There is no reason why this part-time system should not be extended to agricultural as well as manufacturing Pursuits—why, in fact, it should not be made the condition of all employment whatever, and forbidding out-door employment to any child under eight; enforcing alternations of work and school on all employed between eight and thirteen. Of course agriculture is more fitful than manufacture; but not so much so as to make school teaching at the same time impossible. The conditions might have to differ. It might not be necessarily a continuous daily attendance of half-time. There are some periods wherein the school might have