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    tion , as well as a due appreciation of the benefits a national scheme would ensure . Let Englishmen but once heartily take up the matter with a determination to carry it and it will be carried . " I can give a traveller , who is desirous of comprehending at one short view the workings of the German and Swiss systems of popular education , no better advice , than to direct him to notice the state of the streets in any German or Swiss town , which he happens to visit : no matter where it be , whether on the plains of Prussia or Bavaria , on the banks of the Rhine , in the small towns of the Black Forest , or in the mountainous cantons of

    Alpine Switzerland—no matter where—let him only walk through the streets of such a town in the morning or the afternoon , and count the number of children to be found there above the age of four or five—or let him stand in the same streets , when the children are going to or returning from the schools—and let him examine their cleanly appearance , the good quality , the excellent condition , and the cleanliness of their clothing , the condition of the lesson books they are carrying , the happiness and cheerfulness , and , at the same time , the politeness and ease of their manners ; he will think he sees the children of the rich : but let him follow them home , and he will find that many of them are the offspring of the

    poorest artizans and labourers of the town . If that one spectacle does not convince him of the magnitude of the poorest artisans and labourers of the town : if that one spectacle does nor . convince him of the magnitude of the educational efforts of Germany , and of the happy results which they are producing—let him go no further , for nothing he can further see will teach him . Let him then come home , and rejoice in the condition of our poor ; but , should he start at this extraordinary spectacle , as I have seen English travellers do , to whom I have pointed out this sign of advanced and advancing civilization , let him reflect , that this has been effected , spite of all the obstacles which impede ourselves . Bigotry and ignorance have cried their loudest : Romanists have refused

    cooperation with Protestants , Protestants with Romanists , and yet they have cooperated . There has been the same strong jealousy of all Government interference , the same undefined and ill-digested love of liberty , there has been the same selfish fear of retarding the development of physical resources . In Bavaria , the war has been waged between Romanists and Protestants ; in Argovie , opposition has been raised by the manufacturers ; in Lucerne , by the religious parties , and by the political opponents of

    the government ; and in Baden , the difficulties h .. ve been aggravated by the numbers of Jews , whom both Romanists and Protestants hated to receive into alliance , even more than they disliked to cooperate among themselves . But in all these countries the great principle has finally triumphed ; and all parties have yielded some liule of their claims , in the full conviction that a da ) is dawning upon Europe , fraught with the most overwhelming evils for that country wtiiclx tias not prepared for its approach . " . ^

    Minor difficulties vanish before a resolute will ; we could all cooperate if we sincerely willed it ; but ' * Whilst in England we have been devoting most of our energies to the increase of our national wealth , the Germans and Swiss have been engaged in the noble undertaking of attempting to raise the character and social position of their poorer classes . To effect this , they have not vainly imagined that schools alone were sufficient , but to the accomplishment of this great end , every social institution and every social regulation has bpen rendered

    subservient . They began , it is true , by raising schools , and educating teachers ; but they have continued this great work by reforming their prisons and criminal codes ; by facilitating the transfer and division of their lands ; by simplifying their legal processes : by reforming their ecclesiastical establishments ; by entirely changing the mediaeval and illiberal constitutions of their universities and public schools ; by improving the facilities of internal communication ; and , lastly , by opening the highest and must honourable offices of the state to all worthy aspirants , no matter of how low an origin . "

    Our attempts at education are painfully futile . We build schools , and write pamphlets ; our ragged schools and Sunday schools not producing the enormous benefit that was supposed , we relapse into indifference . But , next to the want of some comprehensive scheme , the weakest part of our education of the poor consists in the want of trained teachers . Even the richer classes suffer in this respect . Any one is thought competent to teach . A widow left without resources opens a school . In Germany teaching is a profession ; men are trained to it as they are trained for the bar or the pulpit .

    " It has been said , by persons desirous of screening our own shameful neglect of the people's education , by the abuse of the great efforts of our neighbours , that the teachers of Prussia have been , in teality , nothing more than the paid servants of an absolute power , intended to prepare the minds of the people to passive submission to u despotic government . Nothing can bo more shamefully and ignorantly false than this assertion . 41 I have a right to speak on this subject , as I have

    seen more , per hups , of the Prussian teachers than any of my countrymen ; nnd of this I am certain , that the sympathies of the Prussian teachers have always been notoriously with the people , and not with the Government . The Prussian Government has always , in fact , bitterly complained of the too liberal spirit which actuates the teacher's profession , but without effect ; the body is popular in iu origin , its position , its education , and its sympathies . Many of the warmest friends of constitutional progress in Prussia have always been found among the teachers ; and it is a fact , well worthy of

    consideration , that liberal and constitutional ideas never made so rapid a progress in Prussia at any period of its history as they have done since the establishment of the present system of education . I believe that the teachers and the schools of Prussia have been the means of awakening in that country the spirit of enquiry and that love of freedom , which forced the Government to a bond fide constitution to the country . *• An evidence of the free spirit which has pervaded

    the Prussian teachers , may be derived from the fact , that the Prussian Government found itself compelled , in 1831 , to address a circular order to teachers , in which , after reciting that the Government had been informed that some of the teachers had converted their class-rooms into political lecture-rooms , and had selected the political topics of the day as the subject of remark , if not of instruction , —it prohibited such subjects being introduced into the lessons by the teachers , and ordered the inspectors to prevent the teachers perverting their schools to such objects as these .

    " The very fact that such a prohibition was found necessary , proves that my own observations were correct . If further proof were needed ,, it might be told , that the people have elected many teachers as their representatives in the different Diets ; thus proving their esteem and respect for the able instructors of their children . " Mr . Kay also exposes another error current in England respecting the abuse of centralization in Prussia . Although there is a Government scheme of education , the parish affairs are managed parochially ; it is not Berlin that settles the details of each parish school . This is how the thing is done : —

    " One of the more intelligent villagers has been chosen by the magistrates of the bezirke or county in which the village is situated , to direct its civil affairs . He has been appointed by these county magistrates to superintend the repair of the roads , the collection of the taxes , and the direction of the police , and he is empowered to interfere to a certain extent in the educational affairs of the district . We shall see presently how far Suppose that , at the period of our visit to this oasis of the Prussian plains , for some reason or other no school had been established , and that the Government inspector had just paid them a visit in order to notify to them that the laws require that parish , as every other , to provide itself with sufficient school-room for its children .

    " The inspector makes this notification to the village magistrate of whom I have just spoken ; this officer immediately informs the villagers of the m < saage hehas received , and requests the householders to elect three or fiiur from among themselves to attend a meeting or committee , in whic-h the best course to be taken in respect to these educational matters will be considered . This is accordingly done , and ou the appointed day the delegates , the religious ministers of the village , and the village magistrates assemble together . As the law obliges them to build school-rooms for thjeir children , ' they have only to consider how this is to be effected . According to our

    English notions , it would be utterly impossible for them ever to come to a decision , as the inhabitants of our village consist , as I have said , of Romanists and Protestants . But , although the churches of each se < t are regularly filled with the poor , and although there is every symptom which would lead a traveller to say that the religion of the Prussian peasantry exeicised a powerful influence upon them , yet the different religious parties in Prussia do find it possible to cooperate in their efforts to improve the condition of their poor . The fiist point , then , which the village committee have to decide is , whether they shall have one school for both religious

    parties , or a separate school for each . Perfect liberty of choice on this subjectis secured by thelaw to each different religious sect . All that the Government pays , is , ' You ( the different parishes ) must provide sufficient schoolroom for your children , but we leave it entirely to your own choice how you will do this . ' It is true that the Government encourages the erection of separate schools whenever this is possible , but it never attempts to interfere when any religious party of a parish wishes to have a separate school , if it can only find sufficient funds for the purpose . And if any one religious sect should not happen to be represented in the committee , still this

    party has the right of dissenting from the resolutions of the committee , should they be in favour of a mixed school , and should the unrepresented sect be willing to bear the expense of a separate school for themselves alone . It is important to bear this fact in mind , viz ., that the question of mixed or separate schools is , in Western Europe , left entirely to the decision of the parishioners and local religious ministers , and that it consequently occasions no difficulty whatsoever . The Governments do not attempt to fetter the people ' s right to decide this point , and therefore no one is jealous of the result of the parochial deliberations , as every religious party has the power of acting as it may desire . "

    On the beneficial influence " of education as raising the character of men all parties are agreed ; but Mr . Kay ' s volume shows some very staking collateral advantages derived from keeping children under some surveillance : — " Let any one spend a day or two of observation in the back streets of London , or of any of our great towns , and he may perceive that the life of crowds of poor children is passed altogether in the streets , entirely free from all surveillance . The companions they find in their earliest years arc of the most degraded character ; their pastimes , even from the age of seven , are , many of them , of the foulest and lewdest description ; filthy and disgusting practices , and promiscuous intercourse are common to nearly all of them : they are never accustomed to cleanliness , they are seldom washed ; they arc , from childhood , habituated to dirt , bestiality , and vice ; and , with such a training as this , the young children in our towns grow up

    to manhood , with abominable habits , with no religious knowledge , with a long-engendered craving for the stimulants of vice , and with the coarseness of barbarians . This is the English picture : now look upon the German ! All children are obliged to be in the school-room , or school-playground , in company with their teacher , during six hours of every week-day ; they are obliged to present themselves in a perfectly clean state ; this prevents them from indulging in the filthy and degrading amusements , which become the natural pastimes of a child , who is accustomed to a street life from its infancy ; their parents are subject to punishment , if the children are not sent to the schools in a decent state ; and , as some time is

    necessarily taken in eating their meals , and m preparing for the morning or afternoon classes , the consequence is , that no children are to be found playing in the streets , excepting in the evening hours , and are to be then found amusing themselves in a much more innocent , decent , and cleanly manner than in the back alleys of our towns . This alone is sufficient to account for much of that difference which exists between the moral and social states of the German and the English town labourers , and for the striking fact that all the living criminals of Germany are at this moment lodged in prisons at home and that the German Governments are able to dispense altogether with the punishment of transportation . "

    The schoolrooms are lofty , clean , and well ventilated . The children axe forced to be clean and decent in their appearance while at school ( if the parents are too poor to send their children decently clad , the parish finds school clothes ) , and as for a large portion of the day they are thus forced to be clean , and live in well-ventilated , rooms , the habits of propriety and disgust at filth become so worked into them that on returning home they bring with them a standard of behaviour which raises their home , and prevents it from , degenerating into a hovel We close our notices of this valuable work with an extract bearing on this point : —

    " So long as the early domestic training is in direct opposition to the education of the schools , so long must the improvement in education be very slow ; but , however slow , it is the only sure means we have of c unteracting the effects of a vicious domestic training , and of cleansing the very fount of immorality . The labourer is occupied from twilight on to twilight , and the religious ministers nave but few opportunities of bringing higher influences to bear upon him . Those , too , who most need improvement , are generally the most unwilling to receive it ;

    and those whose homes act most injuriously on the younger inmates are precisely those who oppose most strenuously the entry of the religious minister , and who are most rarely brought under any ennobling influence whatever . Thus it often happens , that the only way by which we can introduce reform into a home is through the children ; for , most happily , there is among the poor such a great idea of the benefits to be derived from education , that it very rarely happens that the parent cannot be persuaded to send his child to school , when he is enabled to do so .

    *• But there are some who maintain that eight hours association with the good and enlightened teacher on the Sunday , and in the Sunday-school , are quite sufficient to counteract the bad influences of the immoral home to which the child has , perhaps , been exposed through the whole week' —that eight hours of religious exercises on Sunday can obviate the effects of the one nun red hours of immoral association of the past six days ! This ignorance is even more fatal than it is ridiculous ; how little would those who profess such opinions like to submit thfir own children to such an ordeal . How contrary is their practice to their profession ! Who would expect to save his child from vice if he turned him out into the

    streets during week-days , and only gave him instruction and religious education on the Sunday ? and yet this pit * tance of education is thought more than enough for the poor . If we would raise the character of our labourers , we must reverse this order of things . " It is delightful to see how thoroughly this truth has been recognized in Western Europe . From the shores of the Baltic and the North Sea to the foot of the great Alpine range , and from the Rhine to the Danube , all the children of both rich and poor are receiving daily instruction , under the surveillance of their religious ministers , from long and most carefully educated teachers . Throughout the plains of Prussia , Bohemia , and Bavaria ,

    among the hills and woods of Saxony and central Germany , in the forests and rich undulating lands of Wirtemburg and Baden , in the deep and secluded Alpine valleys of Switzerland and the Tyrol , in most of the provinces of the Austrian Empire , throughout Holland , Denmark , and almost the whole of France , and even in the plains of Italian Lombardy , there is scarcely a single parish which does not possess its school-house , and its one or two teachers . The school-buildings are often built in really an extravagant manner ; and in Switzerland and South Germany , the ^ illage school is generally the finest erection in the neighbourhood . In the towns the expenditure on is still

    these monuments of a nation ' s progress more remarkable . Here the municipal authoritiis generally prefer to unite several schools for the sake of forming one complete one . Tnis is generally erected on the following plan : —A large house is built of three or four stories in height , with commodious play yards behind . The one or two upper stories are used as apartments for the teachers ; the lower rooms are set apart for the different classes . A town school has generally eight to ten , and sometimes twelve or fourteen , of these classrooms , each of which is capable of containing from eighty to one hundred children . An educated teacher is appointed to manage each class , so that there is generally a staff of at least eight teachers connected with each town school of Germany , and I have seen schools with as many

    Untitled Article

    546 ffif ) * ^ LtVfott * [ Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 31, 1850, page 546, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1851/page/18/