Board Schools Research Articles

DIPHTHERIA AND BOARD SCHOOLS.

DIPHTHERIA AND BOARD SCHOOLS.

SWIMMING AT BOARD SCHOOLS.

SWIMMING AT BOARD SCHOOLS.

Lending Libraries and Board Schools

Lending Libraries and Board Schools W. H. K. WRIGHT W. H. K. WRIGHT Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Library, Volume s1-1, Issue 1, 1889, Pages 166–170, https://doi.org/10.1093/library/s1-1.1.166 Published: 01 January 1889

Scientific Progress in Elementary Schools

A VERY remarkable Report has been received by the London School Board from a Special Committee appointed by it a year ago “to consider the present subjects and modes of instruction in the Board schools, and to report whether such changes can be made as shall secure that children leaving school shall be more fitted than they now are to perform the duties and work of life before them.”1

Geographical Notes

IN his presidential address at the annual meeting of the Royal Geographical Society on Monday, the Marquis of Lorne, referring to the matter of geographical education, said that the interest excited in the subject by the Society's recent action has been so great, and the expectation that the Society will continue it by taking some positive ste, s towards encouraging improvements in the position of geography in schools and Universities is so general, that the Council have felt encouraged and indeed bound to carry the scheme further. The Educational Committee of the Society therefore made certain suggestions to the Council, which are now under consideration, and will probably be adopted. The principal of these suggestions relates to the appointment of a lecturer in geography to deliver courses where the Council may direct. In this matter the Council will take suitable steps to obtain the co-operation of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In order still further to encourage the scientific study of geography at the Universities, the Committee suggest that a prize or travelling scholarship be given every alternate year to a student who has shown marked ability in geographical subjects, and who may desire to visit one of the less-known districts of Europe, or the Mediterranean or Black Sea shores, and any results be communicated to the Society. One or other of the annual grants which are at the Society's disposal might be devoted to this purpose. Another suggestion is aimed at reaching the intelligent middle and working classes through the medium of the University Extension Scheme. For this purpose a small annual grant is proposed. Another is that a medal be given by the Society to the student reported by the examiners to have done best in physical geography in the first part of the Natural Sciences Tripos (Honours Examination). And finally, in order that all classes of schools may be reached, it is proposed that prizes be offered for competence in geography to the students at the various training-colleges. “Here we reach the fountain-head of education, and if we can secure adequate attention to geography in the institutions which send forth yearly troops of teachers to our Board and elementary schools, the Society will have accomplished much. It is evident, then, that the Society has already accomplished a great deal. The mind of the public has been aroused and greatly enlightened on the subject; our best schools and Universities have expressed their willingness to co-operate as far as possible in carrying out improvements; and there can be little doubt that our proposed further action will bring results which the Council and all interested in geography have long desired.”

Erratum: British Association for the Advancement of Science

Page 281, col. 2, line 24, for 'school boards' read 'board schools.' Page 285, col. 1, line 18, for '$68,500' read '$342,500.'

Elementary Education

LORD NORTON and his friends seem determined to take eyery opportunity of hunting down the present system of education in Government elementary schools Last week the subject was again introduced in the House of Lords, with, as before, an unsatisfactory result. The action of Government with reference to Scottish educational endowments is rather an impressive commentary on the conduct of the obstructives who are so anxious to reduce the standard of education in England. The effect of the Scotch measure will be greatly to extend the means of education for those who usually attend Board Schools, placing as it does at their disposal the education to be obtained in secondary schools, an advantage, we should think, likely to be largely taken advantage of. Until some similar course be taken with reference to England, where so many valuable educational endowments have been diverted from their legitimate purpose, it seems to us cruel rigidly to limit the function of elementary schools in reference to pupils of exceptional promise. Still more cruel is it to turn out the great bulk of the children with an education quite unworthy of the name, and which renders them little better fitted to cope with their surroundings than if they were entirely unlettered. It is our bounden duty, since we insist on keeping children at school till a certain age, to do the best we can for them; and to turn them out equipped with nothing more useful than the three R's is a mere mockery of education. If reading at all events, is to be a really useful acquisition, let us make them understand that there are things quite as wonderful and quite as well worth reading about as the horrors of the penny dreadfuls. Many of these children the working men and working women of the future? will have but little time to put the three R's to much use, whereas if well grounded in the elements of one or two of the most useful of the sciences, they will have a continual source of pleasure within themselves, requiring neither books nor pens, but only the exercise of thoughtful observation. That education is admittedly the best which enables one to cope most successfully with the difficulties of his surroundings, and we cannot see how any candid man will deny that for this purpose an accurate training in the science of common things is worth all the books in the world. That the Government system as at present established commends itself to the sense of the people is clear from the fact that Government schools are practically killing all competitors. As to the dread of the over-education of the people, this is a bogy which only needs to be stared at to vanish. Do we find any lack of men and women to do all sorts of work in Germany or France, or in any other country where the people have a really substantial education? In nearly every county of the kingdom are local scientific societies, many of which are composed mainly of working men who have educated themselves into whatever they may know of science; but we have yet to hear that they are more discontented with their position than unlettered Hodge. The real truth is, as is too clearly shown on the Continent, the better educated the working man is, the better workman does he turn out to be. The great mistake is to confound a smattering with a grounding, and this, it seems to us, is the mistake made by Lord Norton and those who side with him, and possibly may account for the opposition to the Fourth Schedule. The exclusive use of such a reading-book as Lord Norton threatens to compile would be the best help to a smattering education; a very few hours a week devoted to a few well-selected experiments, the judicious use of specimens and diagrams, a little training of the observing faculties of children, and the systematic teaching of the great elementary facts of one or two sciences would be a welcome relief to the pupils, and would do far more for their real education than a library of reading-books.

Prof. Huxley on Technical Education

AT the lecture by Prof. Silvanus Thompson, on “Apprenticeships,” at the Society of Arts last week, Prof. Huxley was in the Chair, and in inviting discussion on the paper, said he would commence it by making a few remarks himself. He had listened to Prof. Thompson's paper with gratification, not only on account of the good sense it embodied, but also for a more selfish reason, inasmuch as it entirely accorded with the views which he, coming to the matter from a different side, had himself expressed. Unfortunately he had no personal acquaintance with the ordinary kinds of work in what were called handicrafts, but he ventured some two years ago in that very room to point his remarks with respect to technical education by the knowledge he possessed of medical education. He then expressed a hope that something real and practical would soon be done by the City Guilds, which had done him the honour of consulting him on this subject of technical education, and the advice he gave them was in precise accordance with the principles which Prof. Thompson had laid down that night. Whatever might be the merits or demerits of the old system of apprenticeship, it was as thoroughly doomed in the different kinds of ordinary handicrafts as it had been long doomed in physic. The only alternatives appeared to him to be of two kinds. In the first place, we ought to bring within the reach of the young people who were employed in our great manufactures the means of carrying on their education in the particular branches of business with which they were respectively occupied beyond the time during which the necessities of practical life obliged them to be at work in the workshop—that is to say, for a period corresponding virtually with what used to be their apprenticeship. One of his suggestions, therefore, was that there should be established in the neighbourhood of the great centres of industry schools to which young boys who are learning certain handicrafts could resort in order to receive instruction which would qualify them to work skilfully and intelligently at their trade. He likewise suggested that the guilds should employ part of their large funds in the establishment of a central institution, which should do for the teaching-power of the country that which such institutions as the École des Arts et Métiers in France, and the Polytechnicum at Zurich, did in their respective countries. In England there was not only a total absence of schools to which apprentices could resort, but there were no teachers competent to teach in such schools, even if they were established. He thought that the suggestions he made to the guilds were of a sound and practical nature, and calculated to advance the interests of technical education in this country. He understood Prof. Thompson to object to the existing elementary training in our Board schools on the ground of its technical nature and of its occupying the minds of the student entirely with book learning and matters which had no sort of bearing on his future life. No one endeavoured more earnestly than he, when he occupied a seat at the School Board, to remedy the evil of the exclusively book character of our ordinary school instruction. He did not entertain the slightest doubt that an extension of the Kindergarten system, including the use of tools and the knowledge of elementary machines, was a matter of great importance, but he could not think that the evil of not giving hand-work in the elementary schools was after all very great. Although it was a great thing to make skilled workmen, yet it was much more important to make intelligent men. The four or five years during which children ordinarily remained at school were not too much to devote to even an exclusive study of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and to the acquirement of some intelligent knowledge of geography, the elements of history, and the rudiments of physical science. On this point he might observe that no pupil was admitted to the Ecoles d'Apprentis in Paris until he was thirteen years old, or unless he presented his certificate of elementary education. If we attained,one half or a quarter of the good results reached in the Écoles d'Apprentis, the improvement in the condition of the average British workman would be exceedingly great.

Science Teaching in London Board Schools

IT was a fortunate circumstance that at each of the three elections of the School Board for London science has been represented. On the first occasion Marylebone gave Prof. Huxley a seat at the board, and at the second and third elections Chelsea has sent Dr. Gladstone as one of its representatives. To the former was due, in great measure, the Code of Regulations in which the subjects of instruction were laid down. To the latter has fallen the task of bringing them into a systematic and practical form. The Committee, of which Prof. Huxley was the chairman, determined that there must be given, in infant schools, “object lessons of a simple character, with some such exercise of the hands and eyes as is given in the Kindergarten system”; and in boys' and girls' schools, “systematised object lessons embracing in the six school years a course of elementary instruction in physical science, and serving as an introduction to the science examinations which are conducted by the Science and Art Department.” The time-tables of all the schools under the Board are made to conform to these requirements; the walls of the class-rooms are hung with illustrations in natural history and other diagrams; and in many of the schools boxes of objects are also to be found. Many of the teachers, especially those trained by the Home and Colonial Society, endeavour to carry out the regulations as fully as practicable; but hitherto the scheme has worked very irregularly, and there has generally occurred a break of continuity on the children passing from the infants' departments to the upper schools. The Board's Inspectors, who are required to report in all cases on object teaching, have often had to bear testimony to this defect.